Billy King shares his monthly thoughts –

It was sad to hear about the death of Margaretta D’Arcy. I only met her a couple of times, once in her home in Galway where she was very forthright (good for her) in demanding to know why I wasn’t sitting down or doing other things deemed unlawful by the state at Shannon AirWarport. I had or have no good answer to her question except I know that in doing so the legal charges can put your life on hold for some years and prevent you doing other things that you deem important.

It is fitting that the day before her death another three people entered the guarded space of that (effectively) US military base. My congratulations and thanks go out to them and all those who have put themselves on that line. As the Simple Flying (‘simple’ is the word) website says, “Shannon holds an exclusive role as a de facto logistics node for US military operations.” https://simpleflying.com/three-arrested-van-breaches-shannon-airport-us-military-aircraft/ And as The Ditch (Dia duit) said at the end of last year “The US government uses Irish territory as a critical hub for its illegal transport of munitions to the Israel Defense Forces and Nato member states. “ https://www.ontheditch.com/irish-airspace-a-critical-hub/

But on another matter, aren’t shortages terrible, when a desired product comes in short supply. Just look at the shortage of TNT in Europe. Ooops, TNT is the major component of most military munitions. I read that NATO is facing a critical shortage of explosives after much of Europe’s TNT supply was used in the bombardment of Gaza. Poland’s state-owned Nitro-Chem, Europe’s only large-scale TNT producer, is struggling to keep up with demand. This is just one of the many ways Europe has been complicit in the genocide in Gaza.

Love Orange, Love Green

I have been digging out a few oul books. This month I look at something a bit different: “Love Orange, Love Green – Poems of Living, Loving and Dying in Working-class Ulster”, Whitcor Publications, 1974. 178 pages; this was compiled by Marion White and Jim McCorry (their surnames presumably providing, in abbreviation, the publishing name) with some help from Sam Smyth.

It is an amazing publication which can take you back to the exceedingly raw emotions of that time in Northern Ireland. As its name suggests it is poems by working class people, presumably mainly or entirely from Belfast, some proclaiming a militant loyalism, some a militant republicanism, and some a sardonic view of everything or something specific around them. There are no punches pulled and no toning down of anything, what the editors/compilers got is, I imagine, pretty much what they published. It cost 50 pence at the time, the equivalent of about £5 in 2025.

Thus you can have a loyalist viewpoint cheek by jowl with a republican one:

“Hark, it’s the sound of battle, in action we must go

As we defend old Ulster from each rebel foe

Loyal Ulster calls her faithful sons, as we together join

To fight like good King William’s men at the battle of the Boyne…..”

and then in another poem –

“Men of the North, Thraldom who scorn

Never shall bend the knee,

Defiance we throw at the old foe

Free men we wish to be…..”

These expressions nearly makes you think that old lie, that all our wars were merry and all our songs were sad (a saying accredited to G K Chesterton), has something going for it. But there is much more than paramilitary-supporting bravado. A loyalist attacks moderates for, effectively they say, supporting the Provos. A republican attacks the Irish government. Laments for some who have died. Tragedies that should not have happened. Some poems are somewhat and perhaps surprisingly subtle in their support for one side or another, although support was presumably intended, so that it is difficult to say which foot they kick with and which side they kick.

It is divided into sections – Men behind the wire, Belfast, Some who paid the price, Emotions, Incidents, Miscellaneous, The conmen, Soldiers all, Songs.

My favourite is a non-political poem entitled “The people’s taxis”, taxis which acted somewhat like buses that took off in both republican and, to a lesser extent, loyalist areas when buses were hijacked or destroyed and bus services withdrawn. There is no author/poet attribution.

“When the earth has spun a few more years upon its axis

One of the things we’ll talk about will be the people’s taxis

And we’ll look back in fondness on those stalwarts of the road.

Who wouldn’t know the meaning of the phrase “to overload”

For who would travel poe-faced on a bus that’s so inanimate

With windows closed on smoke and smells

Our best friends won’t refer to.

We jockey for position…..but complain?…we wouldn’t dare to

And who would keep their hauteur…and who would want to try.

When you are sitting cheek to cheek, and even thigh to thigh

When conversations feelers have established friend and foe

We debate politicians…and decide who’ll stay or go

We’re not afraid to speak our minds or commit a social gaffe

And always there’s a nut on board who’ll give us all a laugh

So though we long for peace to come, when trouble is no more

Then neither will the taxis be…

Just buses….what a bore…”

All aboard a very evocative poem (punctuation as in the original). In fact the “people’s taxis” have continued though, thankfully, bus hijackings are few and far between. The book was denied an Arts Council grant for effectively not being “work with aesthetic content”. This is rather sad since one of the meanings of ‘aesthetic’, which went through various transmogrifications from the Greek, is to perceive by the senses or the mind, and another is ‘attractive or appealing’ which the poems would be to lots of people. No, certainly it is not your conventional published poet-tree but heartfelt thoughts effectively expressed, a window on the real emotions of the time and a testament to both people’s humanity and their divisions. And the level of violence as in 1974 has gone but the divisions largely remain.

E-pistemology

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. E-pistemology is the study of knowledge online including AI. [Did you just invent a new take on the word epistemology? – Ed] [Yes, but dozens have probably done it before. However here is another one I guarantee no one else will have thought up – ‘epissedemology’, the study of what people know and don’t know when drunk – Billy] [Are your puns trying to drive people to drink? – Ed] [Surely you know that no one should drive and drink – Billy]

Elon Musk has come up with his Grokipedia (Chokepedia?) because he thinks Wikipedia is too left wing – but then he probably considers Adolf Hitler was too left wing and a wishy washy liberal. But not only that, he clearly considers his creation will be perfect; “Musk was so enamoured of his AI-encyclopedia he said he planned to one day etch the “comprehensive collection of all knowledge” into a stable oxide and “place copies … in orbit, the moon and Mars to preserve it for the future”. (Quote from The Guardian 3/11/25.) Talk about hubris, talk about MAGAlomania. Unchecked by human hand or brain, a significant proportion of Musk’s Grokipedia is and will be a right wing travesty.

He is clearly elon-gating his place in the history of the distortion of knowledge for nefarious purposes, or taking a musk-et to shoot up recognised and scientific processes for arriving at knowledge. Taking the ‘piste’ out of epistemology, a piste is a slippery slope for skiing and Musk’s actions are a slippery slope to a world where knowledge is all in the eye of the beholder – and that beholder is a right wing billionaire/perhaps soon trillionaire bigot. And the rest of us will be thoroughly piste off.

Speaking of billionaires, Bernie Sanders had a nice line about the USA which I am sure many others use too; Abe Lincoln spoke of “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” but the USA was now “Government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires.”

On Tyranny

You are not getting away from the North American continent here either. I have already done an oul book, above, but here I am writing about one from 2017, “On Tyranny – Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” by Timothy Snyder. It is a slim volume published a year into Donald Trump’s first, disorganised, term of office – that seems so long ago now. And the book seems particularly prophetic given what Thump and company have been doing in his second term. It is talking both universally and particularly – universal lessons but often especial mention of, or allusion to, Trump and the USA, and written by someone from that part of the world.

The author should know a thing or two about tyranny if you look at his numerous books focussing on Europe, especially in the Twentieth Century. Whether Trump is T Rex or T Wrecks, well there is still debate about the nature of the man and whether he is the primary mover and shaker with his MAGAlomania and egomania or a useful idiot for the far right – or both, and my money is on ‘both’.

Some of Snyder’s twenty points look major, some minor, but we don’t know what in particular will make ‘the’ difference so it would be unfortunate to say any of them are insignificant. It is scary in the US context how many of these twenty chickens have come home to roost; No.1 is “Do not obey in advance” and yet we have seen the tech giants, and others, rushing to do Trump’s will before being required to do so. No.6 “Be wary of paramilitaries” – people in Northern Ireland should not need reminded about that, whatever their persuasion – is not just about paramilitaries but also the transformation of the police and military. We have seen that with the deployment of the military onto the streets of the USA as well as Trump’s neutral or positive comments about the likes of the Proud Boys.

“Defend institutions”, “Remember professional ethics”, “Believe in truth”, “Listen for dangerous words” are just some of the short chapters in this book, which are then illustrated with historical examples – mainly of failures but also exhortations to positivity. “Make eye contact and small talk” might seem a strange injunction/chapter but it is about maintaining human contact and unspoken solidarity in the face of peril. All of this is important, wherever we are.

However I would feel there are some deficiencies in the book. Firstly, there is no mention of the USA as a colonial enterprise ‘internally’, well, what became internal as the settlers took native lands and also Hispanic lands; this is an important factor in macho politics and (the lack of) gun control which contributes to the right wing political situation. It is an essential part of the backdrop and something which if not addressed contributes to the kind of politics we see today. Secondly, while the law being used to undermine the law is covered, the inadequacy of the US constitution in relation to modern times is not really dealt with.

Finally, although the importance of ‘standing up‘ to authoritarianism is covered, there is no specific mention of nonviolence, nonviolent action and struggle, which is a bit remiss; there is a mention of the danger of terrorist/retaliatory violence (the attack in setting fire to the Reichstag in 1933 is covered and how Hitler used it to gain total control) but not of the importance of building a nonviolent movement or the possibilities of nonviolence including hidden disobedience. Nonviolence is not easy but avoids many of the pitfalls of violence, especially in confronting a power that has most guns.

Trump is keeping his (gun)powder dry before making a move to stay on as President when his second term ends. I consider it would be out of character if he didn’t. He also knows the legal immunity he enjoys as president would disappear if he was no longer POTUS or he would be dependent on having a MAGA-Republican presidency for pardons. What false emergency he can proclaim or use to try to justify an end to US democracy at a national level, such as it is, remains to be seen. But even if that doesn’t work out Vance is waiting in the shadows. Unfortunately watch this and lots of other spaces as to how things develop. US democracy isn’t and wasn’t great but it would be obscene (morally repulsive, disgusting) for it to disappear. They may have talked the talk far more than they walked the walk but it has had positives.

But we shouldn’t imagine we, elsewhere in the world, are immune to tyrannical impulses. Racism is the Trojan horse that the right wing works hard to use to further its agenda, and we see that in both jurisdictions in Ireland. And if you come to believe in racism then you can come to believe in ‘the great replacement theory’ and all the other far right conspiracy theories. And then we are heading to hell in a souped up handcart. All the imperatives in this book apply to us too.

Losing it

There are many things we can lose – our keys, our bank cards, or even our friendships and, in the extreme, our humanity. One story which I saw recently concerned the last two of these. It was a production of ‘Address Unknown’ written by Katherine Kressman Taylor as a novelette before the Second World War and later turned into a one act play. It largely portrays the interaction between two former friends through their letters. It was an excellent amateur production in November at the Southbank Playhouse off Sunnyside Street in Belfast.

The play is set in the period 1932-34 during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and concerns two relatively well to do German friends who were art dealers in the USA, one of whom, Martin, returns to Germany and for reasons perhaps of herd mentality and lack of conscience but certainly self interest gets caught up in serving the Nazi regime. However his friend Max back in San Francisco is Jewish, watching at long distance the horror unfolding, including the horror for his younger sister who is in Germany. When Martin does not aid Max’s sister, Max plots ingenious long distance revenge. You can imagine what the curt message ‘Address unknown’ on a returned envelope implies in this context and it appears twice in the drama.

It is a fairly short book/drama but portrays how easily we can become caught up in things which we would previously have rationally rejected. No society is immune to this. The dehumanisation of others is also our dehumanisation. As we watch right wing violence in Ireland, North and South, we need to be imaginative and creative in how we support and portray the humanity of all. The tragedy of Ballymena race riots in the summer – with charges now withdrawn against the Romanian teenagers who were then-alleged rape perpetrators – is crazy; race riots with no ‘race’ to it.

It is too apocalyptic to say we are always on the edge of the abyss but it does not take long for a society with problems to become a society with extermination at some level – there are many examples of this including Northern Ireland from 1969. This of course means addressing those real problems while they can be dealt with and not leaving them to fester and become totally overboard. Ireland has much working out to do yet.

–

Well, perhaps that is not ending on a bright note but my first item, about Norn Iron, portrays the past there which was a load bleaker than the present. To say the North has problems would be an understatement but progress has been made in some areas which I hope will continue.

It’s now the race into Christmas, I hope you survive the pressures and get to enjoy your Christmas parties and festivities. I enjoy it when we get there and the lull afterwards. And speaking of lulls, there is no full issue of this e-steamed publication, just a news supplement, in January so I won’t see you again until the start of February. Meanwhile, as is my wont [Won’t what? – Ed] [Won’t give up on using that good old fashioned word ‘wont’ – Billy] I wish you and yours a peaceful Christmas and a preposterous new year – Billy.