Tag Archives: Billy King

Billy King: Rites Again, 330

Billy King, Nonviolent News, , , , , , ,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts –

Well, welcome again to my musings, not too many amusings this month but still. Not very entertaining perhaps, INNATE did receive an email advertising wholesale ‘shotguns’ (rifles, including semi-automatic ones) during the month, prices starting at $200. Just what we always wanted. We are neither for gunning nor gurning so we will bid them begone before we have begun.

Northern culture wars

When it comes to De Nort, a k a Norn Iron, one good cultural or even sectarian expression of identity seems to demand an equal and opposite response from The Other Side, even where the appropriate response is either appreciation of difference or simple silence. Unfortunately the numbers in the Jewish community in Belfast have been declining for a long time as those associated with it have moved away for work, marriage or simply a desire, in the context of declining numbers, for places of greater religious vitality.

Obviously Judaism is a rather different and more diverse religious and cultural phenomenon than political support for Israel. The current context of the Israeli onslaught however makes things difficult for Jews, whatever their political views – and some Jews in Ireland have put their heads above the parapet to oppose the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza which followed the Hamas massacre of Israelis on 7th October 2023. The recent arrest of a 72 year old Jewish woman, a member of Jews for Palestine, for supposedly putting stickers (!) on a Barclays ATM in Belfast is a case in point.

However some people never miss a trick to make a political point and, while disagreeing absolutely with their actions, you have to admire their ingenuity. With most Catholics and pretty much all republicans in Northern Ireland supporting Palestine, loyalists have for a long time taken to supporting Israel. This manifests itself most prominently in Belfast with respective displays of Palestinian and Israeli flags. Irish language place names being included with English on street signs is also a political football, notwithstanding the fact that the origin of most such names is in the Irish language.

However the move to have Irish language signs has brought forward the proposal to have Hebrew language signs near the, predominantly Protestant, Village area off the Lisburn Road in Belfast. This is the latest in proxy battles in Norn Iron. However the move for this in Ebor Street has been stymied because a request for Irish language signs was made first – and Belfast City Hall will only deal with one request at a time. Time for a bit of shalom / salaam / síocháin in the culture wars I think.

The Paisley pattern

I am usually, not always, reading books long after they are out and been a topic of conversation. I recently read David Gordon’s 2009 book “The fall of the house of Paisley”. While not necessarily part of that book, part of the fascination of the whole Paisley phenomenon, at least so far as IRKP (Paisley Senior) is concerned is the extent to which he was a prisoner of his followers. The Rev Ian prospered while he stoked up the prejudices of his followers. Until his final conversion to powersharing, any time he had a progressive, original idea he quickly withdrew it when his followers raised questions.

As many commentators have said, making a judgement on a man like Ian Paisley Senior is difficult. Does a few years of saying yes and cooperating with others across divides wipe out a bitter legacy of stoking up sectarian discontent for decades? I think the answer to that is in the way I have phrased the previous sentence. No is the answer. Yes, we should be grateful that he did See The Light. But he ensured the years of violence and bitterness in the Troubles were longer and more bitter than they could have been, indeed more than anyone he helped create them.

Only towards the end of his life, perhaps more aware of his mortality following illness, and wanting to leave ‘a legacy’, did he face down those who questioned his path – and get chucked out of his position in the church he founded as a result. That he did finally join the establishment who were busy praising him for a few years before his conversion (the plámás was painful to watch) was a fascinating and positive move. But it could have been so different if he had Seen The Light many years earlier (I am deliberately using the term ‘Seen The Light’ to imitate the conservative evangelical language Paisley would have used). And he only saw that light when he was already political top dog which is another relevant factor.

Of course Ian Paisley Junior has been a different kettle of fishiness, not afraid to jump in to the promotion of dubious business arrangements or take fabulous and expensive holidays from brutal regimes (which he then supported) and didn’t declare in his parliamentary returns. It was the latter which finally got him ousted from the Westminster seat which he had inherited from his Da; he was beaten by the intelligent but even more hardline Jim Allister at the British general election of July 2024. That perhaps was a further twist in the fall of the house of Paisley. ‘Junior’ hasn’t gone away but it proved further that the house of Paisley did not have solid foundations. Political edifices that seem to be securely built are shown to have feet of clay retrospectively when popular (and sometimes brutally engineered) support is withdrawn.

And that brings us on to one of the theoretical foundations of nonviolent action: regimes of any kind depend on the support of the people, voluntary and/or forced. The withdrawal of support can be fatal for protesters, given the nature of the regime and its reaction, but if enough people do it then the state is literally powerless. Or, in the words of the originally Chilean protest song, “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” that I know as a chant – or in the translation ‘the people united will never be defeated’.

But….in Belarus

While the last paragraph above is undoubtedly true, in the short to medium term repressive regimes can make the lives of activists – and ordinary non-political people – hell on earth. An account by Belarusian activist, Olga Karach, in exile in Lithuania, shows the extent of that repression. “……the Belarusian authorities have intensified their campaign of repression and censorship, culminating in a new wave of court rulings that declared over 23 social media accounts and digital resources associated with the Belarusian human rights organization Our House (Наш Дом) as “extremist materials.” These decisions are not symbolic — they are instruments of legal persecution & legal harassment with potentially devastating consequences. Individuals who are members of organizations labelled as “extremist,” or who subscribe to resources designated as such, can face up to 7 years in prison under Belarusian law.” And those 7 year prison sentences can be consecutive, so for a number of charges, all for nonviolent civic activism, people can face an extraordinarily long prison sentence.

“Belarusian courts are now criminalizing not only content, but entire platforms, logos, phrases — even letters of the Russian alphabet. The phrase “Наш Дом” (Our House), regardless of context, is now effectively banned in Belarus.” In 2020, Dmitry Dudoits, a 43-year-old father of two, posted a comment under a photo on Olga Karach’s Odnoklassniki profile, calling a police officer a “bald scum.” He was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment but died shortly afterwards by suicide under extreme torture and abuse; he was later recognised as a political prisoner.

Olga Karach states that “Several Our House activists currently face deportation from Lithuania, despite documented political persecution in Belarus. If deported, they face immediate arrest, torture, or indefinite imprisonment under Belarus’s extremism laws.

But she does go on to say “What You Can Do”: “We urge you — as defenders of democracy and human rights — to take action:

  1. Publicly condemn the persecution of human rights defenders of Our House and the criminalization of digital freedom in Belarus.

  2. Demand international protection and asylum guarantees for the whole team of Our House — especially those now under threat in Lithuania. [[Contacts for the Lithuanian embassy in Ireland can be found at https://ie.mfa.lt/en – Ed]]

  3. Support and amplify the work of Our House in exile: https://news.house/donate “

Repression and dictatorships do not go on for ever. It is the work of bodies like Our House which help to keep hope alive. Belarus is like the worst of old Soviet-era regimes and in 1989 most of those got swept aside – and the day of Belarus will come too, let’s hope sooner rather than later. The effect of one effective action of international solidarity in relation to Belarus can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/54519453518/in/dateposted/

Doolough Famine walk

The Doolough Famine walk is the highest profile event in Afri’s year www.afri.ie with around a couple of hundred people gathering in Louisburgh (the ‘meadow of the buttercups’ in the Irish name), Co Mayo for the walk from Delphi Lodge back to Louisburgh. It commemorates a real walk Louisburgh-Doolough-Louisburgh in 1849 when the starving people on it died like flies. Refused help by the Poor Law Commissioners having lunch at Delphi Lodge, many were effectively condemned to death; by this stage the ‘Great Famine’ was declared over and supports withdrawn – but people had nothing.

Afri’s walk is never just about commemorating those people and their 36 km futile trudge in poor weather, poor clothing and poor health over poor paths. It always links with what is happening in the world today. This year photojournalist Eman Mohammed left not a dry eye in the house with her factual but also very personal account of realities in Gaza. This is another situation, very different to An Gorta Mór, where people and their lives are considered expendable – by the Israeli state and by the West. Biblical quotes can come across as preachy but Paul Laverty quoting the prophet Ezekiel that “They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear” was never more appropriate.

Clare O’Grady Walshe who has done much work and writing on food and seed sovereignty shared some of her considerable insights on how the multinational seed companies – often one and the same as the pesticide companies – are stitching up the world and depriving the poor of economic advancement by trapping them in in monocultural food production and crops where they cannot save seeds. Avoiding such control is a key part of empowerment in poor rural areas of the world, and for us all in taking control of our destinies. There is very powerful analysis by Clare O’Grady Walshe and more on this can be found in her book “Globalisation and Seed Sovereignty in Sub-Saharan Africa” which is available in an affordable ebook option (or look for the printed version through your library or college); you can also find out more online if you search her name. And photos of this year’s event, along with many others, can be found in the Afri album on the INNATE photo/documentary site https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/albums/72157623376298793/ and look out for video and maybe audio on the Afri website in due course.

Afri is involved in other, shorter, famine walks and commemorations elsewhere but the scenery and personal interactions as you walk make the Doolough walk special. There is a wild beauty to Doolough and passing Mweelrea (slightly higher than Croagh Patrick) that is really memorable. Not everyone is fit to walk 18 km but those who aren’t are well catered for. On occasions the event can be wet and wetting but determination sees people through. This year the problem with water was not getting wet but ensuring people had enough water to drink not to get dehydrated in the sunshine and heat.

Why riot? Why not?

The final report on an action-research project in relation to the ‘Why riot?” programme, covered at the start of the news section of this issue, is an important one not just for Norn Iron but more broadly. Why do young people, particularly young males, get involved in violent and anti-social behaviour? The importance of well supported and creative youth work shines through the report, about allowing young people to be fully who they can be despite all the negative influences and pressures around them.

Some people might say that the conclusions given are obvious (to those ‘in the know’) but this would be a very trite judgement on what was a very well grounded project. It is worth quoting the ‘key finding’ on what were the mechanisms that supported change: 1. Safe spaces (emotionally and physically) for learning. 2. A structured process for critical thinking. 3. Context specific tools e.g. Non-violence. 4. Dialogue and reflection. 5. Youth worker methods. 6. Led by and responsive to youth needs, issues and concerns.

One of the points in how it ‘works’ is “Using ‘safe dialogic space’ for young people to discuss difficult, contested topics of concern. By dialogic we mean non-judgmental spaces that foster questioning (‘the why’s beneath’), actively challenge biases and assumptions, and encourage young people to explore different perspectives and become self-reflective.” But there is much more which you can read in the report at https://societal-challenges.open.ac.uk/media/projects/145_learningfromwhyriot-report-final-28-05-2025.pdf

And while in Northern Ireland the problem of youth alienation and violence has very particular local aspects, and the report has very specific Northern Ireland recommendations, the methodology and learning involved have much wider implications.

–

Well, we are officially into summer so we’ll see how that goes after a record-breaking or near record-breaking spring of much fine, warm weather. In terms of being dry, April and May are often/usually better in Ireland than July and August but let’s see how we get on this year……. Things are rarely simple and while global warming may bring greater heat it will also bring more wind and flood-causing rain to Ireland. The vagaries of the weather allow some climate change deniers to excuse their pathetic lack of any scientific understanding of what is happening – but, tragically, the direction is clear; downhill all the way to damaging higher temperatures globally – and other damaging weather in Ireland. Nevertheless, make hay while the sun shines (‘make silage while the sun shines’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it….), and see you at the start of July, Billy. l

Billy King: Rites Again 329

Billy King, Nonviolent News, , , ,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts

Tittle title

Periodically someone in the Republic suggests in a letter to the papers, or such, that the state should have an honours system, and there is a debate on possible merits and demerits, including the view that any Republic worthy of the name doesn’t need such a system. I agree with the latter point.

But living in Norn Iron I can perhaps reflect my views on the matter from a territory which has such a system with UK honours bestowed on various people – including a few friends and acquaintances. The first problematic in a divided society like the North is that people of a unionist/British persuasion are more likely to accept the offer of an award from the UK state (or even be offered it) however much those making the decisions may try to make it all balanced. It thus tends to have what amounts to a sectarian dimension.

If an honours system exists then there are likely to be various gradations and various reasons why someone would accept. Some may believe they deserve the award because of their hard work, enterprise, and uprightness. In one case I know an award was accepted partly because what it would mean to their parents and be justification for choosing a career in the community and voluntary sector which might not have been what their parents wanted for them. Others certainly feel that it gives their work, and cause, recognition and a boost, and this may or may not be true. These are legitimate and valid reasons for accepting an award when such exists.

However I do have a number of negative points. The titles of the awards are not just anachronistic but imperialist – e.g. “Member of the British Empire”. And for every person who you might say deserves the award there are probably a couple of place servers who get a gong because of their position and sitting there for years. In general it creates a division between those recognised as ‘worthy’ in respectable causes and others [You’re not jealous, are you? – Ed] [Who, moi? I am not ‘worthy’. But ‘worthiness’ does come in to it, most awards are for what is considered ‘worthy’ work, and who is to say that ‘your’ mainstream activities are more worthy than ‘my’ fringe ones? There is an inherently conservative politic at work here – Billy].

The now dead brilliant black British poet Benjamin Zephaniah refused an OBE a couple of decades ago because of his opposition to empire and British involvement in slavery; his acceptance would also have indicated co-option by the system. While most awards are to the ‘worthy’, a few are offered to maverick choices to show the ‘openness’ of the system, and that would have been the case with Zephaniah.

I have a further objection which is not usually made. It is an old ‘law’ of physics that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Choosing worthy recipients, including occasionally people outside the usual box like Zephaniah, is not just an ‘honour’ for the individual but reflects back ‘worthiness’ on the system; ‘X’ is a person who deserves an honour for their work, the state has recognised ‘X’, so the state and its relevant apparatus must also be worthy to recognise such worthiness. This I find objectionable in a society as unequal and unjust as ours. The honours system thus helps maintain the status quo and division, not least with anachronistic and imperialist names for the awards given.

MAGAlomania – the game

I have written before [Well, it is quite a long time ago though maybe rather more than once – Ed] about the exceptionalism and/or imperialism in the USA referring to itself as ‘America’. OK, US Americans may be a majority in North America but they certainly are not in ‘the Americas’. There are nearly 350 million in the USA while Canada has 40 million, however Central America (including Mexico), South America and the Caribbean has an estimated population of nearly 670 million. Thus the USA has only a third of the population in the Americas. This blinkered nomenclature of using ‘America’ for one part of the Americas has perhaps reached its apotheosis – or perhaps nadir would be a better term – with President Trump’s childish relabelling of the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’ – and penalising anyone who didn’t toe the line on his conjured up name. This is just one point where the 78 year old president of the USA seems to be not 78 but 7.8 years old (and that is perhaps being unfair to 7 year olds everywhere). He believes when it comes to the USA everyone is agin’ us [‘A Guinness’? But he doesn’t drink alcohol, maybe his confusion comes from all the Diet Coke he puts away – Ed].

I have also pointed out the irony that Amerigo Vespucci, after whom the Americas are incongruously named, never actually wandered anywhere near the territory of what is now the USA, since he only ventured rather further south.

You may already know the game of rejigging the acronym MAGA from its Trumpian meaning. The G can stand for lots of things: Gerontocratic (rule by the elderly – Biden and Trump have been the oldest elected presidents I believe), Gasp (you never know what idiotic or quixotic idea or policy Trump and his cohorts will come out with next), Grotesque (a self explanatory explanation I think). See what you can come up with by yourself or with friends. ‘G’ up then. GUBU.

Signs of the times

Placing Irish language signs at Belfast’s ‘Grand’ Central Station (henceforth GCS in this piece) is one of Norn Iron’s ongoing divisive shibboleths at the moment. It wasn’t included in the original plans and the new minister responsible, who happens to be from Sinn Féin, decided it should happen. Unionists state that as a controversial matter it should be subject to a cross-community vote at Stormont but most don’t want to rock the boat too hard for fear of the Stormont barque (its barque is worse than its bite) sinking again. Perhaps there should be a vote so we can see where people stand. But some people, right across the divides, are perpetually looking for ways to ‘get’ the other side. Of course symbols and symbolism matter.

There are a variety of factors at work here. Is Irish ‘weaponised’ by some republicans? Undoubtedly. Is resistance to anything Irish weaponised by some loyalists? Also undoubtedly. Is the Irish language a treasure of many kinds and also a resource in relation to placenames throughout the island of Ireland? Yes. Is knowledge of Irish, partly through Irish medium schools, increasing in the North? Yes. And is signage at GCS going to include placenames as a key element? Of course. Was the Irish language virtually stamped out by official British policy? Yes (though that is only part of the story). Will the cost of the signage changes be substantial? Yes, perhaps £150,000. Could the money be used for other purposes including social need? Yes. Would it be so used? No, highly unlikely.

I have previously written about the use of ‘Grand’ in the ‘GCS’ name. But I have also pointed out that if unionists want to persuade nationalists, Catholics, and indeed some Prods, to keep Norn Iron in the UK then they need to bend over backwards in allowing Catholic and nationalist concerns to be catered for. As reasonable and redoubtable a figure as SDLP MP Claire Hanna has pointed out the extent to which nationalists in Norn Iron are perpetually subjected to British state imagery which they don’t go for.

Having Irish language signs at GCS should not be an issue for a variety of reasons and Welsh language signs in Wales are considered necessary. Unionists who object to Irish language signs at GCS are helping to book a ticket south for the whole of the North; they should think about that train of thought while the unification train is still in the station without a departure time. Action on the issue is currently halted because of loyalist legal action. However the two main unionist parties have not gone with a TUV/Traditional Unionist Voice petition on the matter at Stormont, as stated above because they don’t want the whole Stormont edifice to come crashing down yet again, so maybe some credit is due there.

Herbivores

A herbivore is an animal that eats plants or only eats plants. However I am deliberately mis- or re-interpreting the word here to talk about the use of herbs in food. I have to admit that I would feel distinctly impoverished if I didn’t have access to certain fresh herbs; yes, certainly, I use dried herbs in cooking but for some things I feel fresh is much superior because of the added flavour. But herbs in your supermarket or greengrocer are expensive for what you get, and you never know what you will need and when you will need it, and most don’t last too long in the fridge. So GYO (grow your own). This can be easily be done successfully, as I do, in tubs and window boxes, without needing too much space – though a bit of sun in that space helps. You do need to feed and water them though, and tubs dry out faster than the soil.

For some herbs you can cut the bother and buy a plant in a garden centre, for others you may want to or need to sow from seed. What? Sage, thyme, tarragon, rosemary, fennel, mint and oregano are some of the basics and are relatively perennial. Parsley you need to sow at least annually and you may need to cover it with protective mesh or fleece to protect it from carrot fly (yes, parsley is the same family as carrots); it would appear some years we have carrot fly about, other years not, and I can’t say whether it will be in your vicinity or not – but your burgeoning parsley getting sick and dying because carrot fly larvae have eaten the roots is very disappointing so I tend to cover it in case in the relevant period (around April to September, certainly for newly sown parsley). I only grow basil indoors or in a protected space because it is a favourite with slugs and snails as well as us humans. Mint is best grown in a bounded space because the roots spread so easily.

For salad herbs you can use some of the above but I also grow chives, garlic chives, Welsh onions (like chives but larger and I cut the stems but leave the bulbs to grow on) and lovage (a celery flavoured plant which I presume is a close relation). Garlic chives don’t grow so much in the winter but are still standing and can be picked then unlike regular chives.

Thyme and tide wait for no one, and I love lovage, so now is the time to get your herb garden sorted. Most herbs aren’t a lot of work apart from parsley and basil – and I wouldn’t like to being without those. With your own herb garden you can develop your own favourite salad dressings and bask in flavour for very little cost, and never be without that herb ingredient when you need it. When it comes to gardening, take the herb side not the herbicide.

–

Well, it has been a strange month in one way as I nearly went up in flames, and I am deliberately not going to go into details out of respect for someone we had just met who did get seriously injured in the accident concerned, this was out of the domestic environment is all I will say. It can be hard to take in when something like this happens and hard to appreciate how near I was/we were to either extinction or serious injury. But here I am and I shall return for June, come what May, Billy.

Billy King: Rites Again, 327

Billy King, Nonviolent News,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts

You couldn’t make it up, explosive munitions at Lidl

https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/54351562097/in/dateposted/ and an iPhone dictation bug that replaced ‘Trump’ with ‘Racist’ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/26/apple-to-fix-iphone-dictation-bug-trump?CMP=share_btn_url ……..manys a true word that was spoken in jest tech.

Fierce and farce in Dublin

OK, one was fierce but not a farce, the other was a fierce farce. My visits to Doubling tend to be either social or movement related so it was great to have a cultural visit recently. The first part of the visit was to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Parnell Square to see Brian Maguire’s “La grande illusion” exhibition there. The second was to see the stage production of Dr Strangelove. Both would get excellent marks from me.

We didn’t have enough time at the Hugh Lane because we hadn’t banked on spending three-quarters of an hour watching a video interview with Brian Maguire. It is at the entrance to his exhibition but once we started watching then we couldn’t pull ourselves away. Intelligent, humane, personable, concerned with justice, these are just a few of the terms that come to mind in describing the gentle but strong man in question from watching the interview. His work in prisons, at home and around the world, is remarkable.

In the video he quotes Lara Marlowe as saying he worked like a journalist and you can see that clearly in the video and his work (he can do much work to access photos of scenes of death or violence). But he gives more than that, he gives imagination, depth and humanity – where appropriate – to his subjects. The coverage in this exhibition includes Mexico and the devastation on lives by the drugs trade there, Syria, and migrants to the USA who did not make it. Regarding the first, one work looked like a stone or rock from a distance only on examination to reveal a severed head; shocking but a humane treatment of the topic. And regarding Syria his treatment of a damaged and abandoned street in Aleppo evokes the life which it once had and its emptiness now, it is an image that has stayed with me – I think you might have the same experience with any of his images. War and human rights are integral subjects to this work.

Brian Maguire’s exhibition at the Hugh Lane has had its run extended to 18th May (2025) and I certainly recommend it – but leave time for that video interview.

Doing Dr Strangelove as a stage production might seem a strange choice but it actually worked very well in the Iannucci/Foley/Coogan presentation of Stanley Kubrick’s original, and the stagecraft was good. Steve Coogan was to play 4 roles when we were attending at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre – this compares to 3 roles played by Peter Sellers in the 1964 film – and obviously doing it on stage requires nifty timing and a bit of ingenuity (which mainly but not always worked in my opinion). Not performing due to laryngitis meant Coogan’s understudy, Ben Deery, had that challenge and managed it very well when I attended.

It is of course a sign of the times that Dr Strangelove is – tragically – as relevant today as when it was filmed in terms of actual and possible mass annihilation. The violent crazies and smooth talkers are running the shows and any interventions by people with a titter of wit may be ineffective. If we even consider nuclear accidents and near misses of various kinds we can shiver in fear. Add in further human error and possible malice and we are on the edge of the precipice or indeed various precipices.

One of the stand out lines in the play is where the US President advises the Soviet ambassador and a belligerent senior air force officer that there should be no fighting as “This is the War Room”! Sadly the world is still going in the direction of gross violence and pulling back from this requires the imaginative goodwill which many of our leaders lack. So we have to provide some sanity in these troubled times.

It’s a Doge’s life

I do believe there is such a thing as ‘evil’, but as it is such an absolute term it is one I rarely use to describe people or situations. I am usually moderate enough in how I express myself [Really? – Ed] however when I saw Elon Musk gloating on television news about the apocalyptic cuts to the USAid budget, and his proud claim to have put it through the shredder, I really felt I was looking at the face of evil, undiluted evil.

The USA spends far more money on its military – and 800 military bases around the world – than any other country, by far; the budget for this is over $900 billion, say $1 trillion. You could attack USAid spending in some places for its political bias – Ukraine and Israel are the largest recipients – but the fact is it does make a difference to some of the poorest of the poor and the sickest of the sick. $40 billion is not a huge amount for a large, rich country like the USA to share though the total spent on aid by the USA is $72 billion (possibly 8% of the military budget). https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/feb/20/how-will-trump-and-musk-freeze-on-usaid-affect-millions-around-world?CMP=share_btn_url The Trump/Musk justification for the attack was also false; three of the four projects named as wasting money by USAid were funded as cultural projects by the State Department, not USAid.

For the richest man in the world to be part of destroying help to the very poorest and sickest in the world is obscene and vengeful evil, full stop. Two thirds of soup kitchens in Khartoum, Sudan, closed as a result. Many essential health programmes in the poorest countries in the world have been decimated. And for a ‘Labour’ prime minister in the UK to subsequently cut their aid budget, already miserly as a percentage of GDP, to up military spending feels like another betrayal on the world stage. But then with Trump in the White House everyone seems to be getting in on dangerous and unjust behaviour.

Down North

What are you to make of the sadistic that while 81% of nationalist/republican voters in the North believe extreme weather events are at least partly caused by climate change, only 29% of unionist voters believe that. So 4 out of 5 nationalists/republicans are aware of the connection while more than 2 in 3 unionist voters have their heads in the shifting sand. Is this explicable by the Catholic/Nationalist/Republican ‘community’ being generally centre or left of centre and Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist politics tending to be centre or right of centre? You might expect some difference due to that but the void is staggering. I couldn’t look at the details more because the story was behind a paywall in the ‘Tele’ https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/environment/just-29-of-unionist-voters-believe-climate-change-is-partly-responsible-for-extreme-weather-poll-reveals/a1145304503.html

Meanwhile it does seem the gap is closing between those who support staying in the UK and those who want a united Ireland. In an Irish Times/ARINS survey the figures were 48% to 34% respectively, and there were some changes in the non-headline figures https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/02/07/support-for-irish-unification-grows-but-unity-vote-would-be-soundly-defeated-in-north-poll-shows/ However a Lucid Talk/Belfast Telegraph poll showed figures of 48% and 41%, much closer, which begs questions about their repective methodologies. While the latter poll has consistently shown a high proportion opting for a united Ireland, both show the gap narrowing.

The conclusion is that there should be all sorts of explorations on what a united Ireland might look like and how it would initially fund, and economically develop, the poorer North, as well as guarantees on human rights and other issues. However there is a reasonable case that unionists can or could make for continuing in the UK and one start to doing that took place recently in Coleraine with a ‘Safeguarding the Union’ meeting. While demographics show the Catholic population increasingly outpacing the number of Protestants, certainly from middle age downwards, it can’t be assumed that the current direction of travel will automatically continue. What would happen if, as the Coleraine meeting heard, there was a big economic shock to the Republic? What indeed.

It is all to be played for. The hope is that the players won’t engage in fouls and that the respective supporters will temper their behaviour. Unlikely? Maybe, but not if there are processes which encourage intelligent and analytical thinking at all levels and in a variety of ways.

Global injustice: It’s rich

I didn’t read the Oxfam report concerned but Stephen McCloskey of the Centre for Global Education in Belfast did a very useful precis in the February issue of their e-Bulletin which I quote here in full:

“Oxfam have published their annual analysis of global economic inequality which this year is titled Takers not Makers: The Unjust Poverty and Unearned Wealth of Colonialism.  This annual report has become an indispensible tool for understanding the key economic forces driving poverty between and within the global North and South.  The report’s main headline is that billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than 2023 with 204 new billionaires created.  Such is the global flow of wealth to the super-rich that Oxfam estimates that there will be five trillionaires within a decade.  Conversely, the number of people living below the World Bank poverty line of $6.85 is 3.6 billion people, the same total as 1990, which means poverty indicators are going in the wrong direction because of wealth accumulation by the one percent.  In explaining the concentration of billionaire wealth, Oxfam’s report cites two main factors: first, the rise of a new oligarchy that generates wealth through inheritance, cronyism (such as tax avoidance) and monopoly power (for example, Amazon controls 70% of online purchases in the UK); and second, both historic and ongoing colonialism of the global South through global institutions, financial markets and multinational corporations.  The report sets out the kind of systemic changes needed to address global inequities and they really should be seized by development educators as a platform for economic literacy, advocacy and activism.  The depth of the problems described in the report demand nothing less.” The report is at https://www.oxfam.org/en/takers-not-makers-unjust-poverty-and-unearned-wealth-colonialism and the Centre for Global Education is at https://www.centreforglobaleducation.com/

–

That’s me as we come up towards St Patrick’s Day, that national occasion when anyone or everyone can shiver in the open because wintry weather is still around. It’s a shame(rock) that the weather can be so poor…..the day marks the death date of St Patrick himself but whether 17th March is accurate or not I don’t know, perhaps it could be ‘discovered’ that it was really sometime in the period May to August that the man himself died….. Until we meet again next month, Billy.

Billy King: Rites Again 326

Billy King, Nonviolent News, , ,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts –

There’s gold in them thar hills…

…and that’s where it should stay… While gold does have some practical usages in fine tech and so on it mainly considered valuable for being valued, i.e. it is valuable as a store of wealth, a bit like crypto currency but in metallic form and less volatile in value – it is also comparable to celebrities being famous because they are famous. Humanity’s actual need for gold is relatively small today and could be met hundreds of times over by what is already extracted from the ground. Some of the uses of gold, such as the ‘gold standard’ or its use in dentistry (gold mining is a different kind of extraction but can be very painful) have been superseded by economic and technological advances.

So what is the point in ruining the Sperrins so Dalradian can make a profit? None. There are always less jobs than promised, they will disappear after a decade or two, while meanwhile farming and other developments, such as in tourism, are stymied or ruined. The recent public enquiry into the proposed goldmining there was quickly halted after a technical error by the relevant Northern Ireland government department not doing what they should have done. Two of the groups involved in struggling against an unwelcome extraction that you can look up are Save Our Sperrins (SOS) https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=save%20our%20sperrins (see the entry for 15th January 2025 on the collapse of the public enquiry) and Friends of the Earth in the North https://friendsoftheearth.uk/northern-ireland I have quoted before the Saw Doctors’ words (in ‘The green and gold of Mayo’) on prospective gold mining beside Croagh Patrick – “Do they think our greatest asset / Can be mined, dug up, and sold….” As with coal, oil and gas – ‘Keep it in the ground!’

Drill for the truth, baby, drill for the truth

‘There are none so blind as those who will not see’ is an aphorism about a disability, physical blindness, which does not insult those who have that condition. People who are physically unable to see usually develop other skills which compensate and many skills which sighted people are unlikely to have. The aphorism actually criticises sighted people who do not, because they refuse to, see what is in front of their eyes.

I do believe there is such a category as a ‘climate criminal’. Donald Trump, the most powerful elected leader in the world, fits that description with his denial of the human-based nature of climate change and his “We will drill, baby, drill” approach – which was even included in his inaugural address as president of the USA in January 2025, all happening at the time of the destruction by fire of significant bits of Los Angeles. The oil and gas industry bosses and owners are of course highly complicit in engineering cover ups and obfuscation of what is happening and why, and refusing to take the world and the vast majority of people into account due to their own selfish and destructive interests. Trump’s tech billionaire buddies are also climate criminals for permitting untruths to be told. Climate heating is, and will do, untold damage to our earth and its inhabitants with the poor, of course, suffering most.

It is difficult to come up with imagery about where we are. The best I can do is that the rich and powerful are driving a train with the rest of humanity on it. They come to a junction. One direction is clearly ‘Hell’ while the other is ‘Not hell but not quite heaven either’ (we are already far down the global heating track). The powerful are choosing to travel with the rest of the world to ‘Hell’ because they are, unlike everyone else, in Super First Class Climate Protected carriages which they believe are immune to the effects of Hell, and to travel the other direction they would have to transfer to slightly less comfortable carriages and they don’t want to do that because they know they are superior.

Getting the truth of climate heating across to those in denial is a subject much pondered in these pages by Larry Speight in his Eco-Awareness column. There are no easy answers. Telling the truth in different ways is of course part of it. But using personal relationships and getting people in the public eye to use their influence are important. And we, individual and ‘ordinary’ citizens, can show by our own example what to do in our travel and consumer habits. We ‘ordinary people’ in the rich world are highly complicit in global heating too.

Eventually, the truth of climate heating will trump denialism. But whether we arrive at the station marked ‘Hell’ before then is still a possibility.

Room for great improvement for Belfast Assembly Rooms

There is a wonderfully historic building in central Belfast which is in a woeful condition. It is historic for a number of reasons – the rejection of slavery, its connection with the 1798 rising, and with the preservation of Irish traditional melodies, and simply for being a prime meeting place when Belfast was ‘the Athens of the North’. In fact, in relation to the preservation of Irish traditional melodies, you could say it is perhaps the culturally most important building in Ireland. But it is currently, and very sadly, unused and near derelict. However one sign of the awareness of the risks to the building comes from its inclusion recently on the World Monuments Fund 2025 Watch List and it has been on the Ulster Architectural Heritage at risk list for a couple of decades.

It is where the 1792 harp festival took place, organised by the good Presbyterian citizens of Belfast, with Edward Bunting commissioned to record the music and thus preserve it for future generations – the old harping tradition was on its death bed after their prime sponsors, the Irish aristocracy, were long defeated and gone. It is where Henry Joy McCracken was court-martialled in ‘98 following the failure of the rising before being taken to be hung nearby. It is where Thomas McCabe intervened against a move to set up a slaving company (i.e. dealing in and transporting slaves) in 1786, a successful intervention in that Belfast continued to have no direct involvement in the slave trade though it did have trade involvement in selling salted beef and clogs to slave plantations as well as through individuals.

On a more prosaic and contemporary note the Assembly rooms are on INNATE’s Belfast peace trail where the INNATE coordinator loves to gently shock participants on the walk in telling of Thomas McCabe’s interjection by bellowing out his message “May God wither the hand of any man who will sign that document!”.

Used as a bank for a long time, the building then had intermittent cultural use – and it being a cultural centre is surely the appropriate course of action for the future. But it needs major work first. Belfast City Council has purchased a couple of iconic buildings, No.2 Royal Avenue and the wonderful art deco former Bank of Ireland on a corner of Royal Avenue for civic purposes. The Assembly Rooms building is currently privately owned but going to wrack and ruin. It needs urgent attention and deserves it. For more info see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c87d8121lj3o and https://sluggerotoole.com/2025/01/17/the-inclusion-of-belfasts-historic-assembly-rooms-on-world-monuments-funds-2025-watch-list-is-a-game-changer/#respond

A migrant story

She came from a war torn country where she had been married young. We can call her Anna because that is certainly not her name. After her father and eldest child were killed in the strife in her home country, she sold everything she had and eventually ended up in Northern Ireland where she claimed asylum. One of her other children has a disabling medical condition. The first place she lived in the North she had to leave because it was attacked. Then in the racist riots of August 2024 she was personally assaulted and injured in the street with lasting effects, and she had to move again. During her time in the North her ex-husband, the father of her children, was killed in the strife in her home country. Thus she had the violent deaths in three generations of her immediate family.

She eventually received refugee status. Any one of the deaths mentioned above could break someone. While obviously deeply affected, she has been determined to keep moving forward and do the best possible for her children despite attacks in a place where she had escaped in order to be safe.

Not all migrants have as dramatic and traumatic stories and experiences as Anna. However we should of course be ashamed that in “Ireland of the welcomes” the welcome (hellcome?) she received included physical attacks on her and where she lived, inhumanity when extreme humanity was called for. Where some saw an unwelcome alien there was a resilient but hugely suffering human being who had been through tribulations which her attackers could probably not even imagine, and someone who has much to contribute if allowed to do so. Meanwhile some people reached out to try to help her.

May she now live in peace and be able to establish the life she wants for herself and her children.

Contrast

The names ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘Gustavo Gutiérrez’ are seldom uttered in the same sentence, I would imagine. Donald Trump is the president of the USA and aged 78. Gustavo Gutiérrez was a Dominican priest from Lima who died in October 2024, aged 96.

INNATE is a secular organisation which is happy to carry material or organise events in relation to connections between humanism and nonviolence or particular religions and nonviolence, and respect people of whatever secular or religious beliefs while being critical of the practices associated with any of these which are contrary to building peace and justice. In terms of parity of esteem I usually avoid sharing on my own religious beliefs and background which would be a variety of Christian. However, in moving some books recently I came across the Gutiérrez book, from the 1970s, “A Theology of Liberation” – he was one of the founders of the ‘theology of liberation’ movement in Latin America at that time, even called the “Father of Liberation Theology”, and I thought of the contrast with Trump.

Donald Trump has monetised the Christian bible, as well as made it nation-specific, in his Trump Bible; the bible is clearly a book he has little knowledge about, effectively thinking of it as a MAGA-manual. Monetising the Christian bible sounds rather like being moneychangers in the Temple, i.e. turning religion into a commercial enterprise. JC drove the moneychangers from the Temple in what to me seems like a good example of determined nonviolent action (though one conservative Christian once told me Jesus shouldn’t have done that as it gave Christians a bad name!). One joke about Trump and his desire to cut things (taxes, environmental regulations etc) is that he has already got the Ten Commandments down to six, and is working on the rest. He uses the bible and Christianity as a political prop and tool.

He also accused an Episcopalian bishop of being nasty in a presidential inaugural service when she called for him to exercise mercy in relation of migrants and people who are LGBT; mercy is usually considered a Christian virtue but Trump made it sound like a dirty word. Making the bible nation-specific, as the Trump bible seemingly does in relation to the USA, seems contrary to the ‘neither Jew nor Gentile’ part of the Christian New Testament. Trump was surrounded by billionaires at his January 2025 presidential inauguration whereas Jesus had plenty to say about those who loved riches. It was the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg who stated that the early Christian church was communist in consumption if not in production.

Gustavo Gutiérrez was an important and founding figure in liberation theology which opts for solidarity with the poor, something which seems totally in accord with Christianity and the ‘Sermon on the Mount’, while for Trump – where money is usually the bottom line – his beliefs seem to be more in relation to the ‘Sermon on the (Financial) Count’. Gutiérrez’ book, mentioned above, is overflowing with biblical references. He states clearly that “In the Bible poverty is a scandalous condition inimical to human dignity and therefore contrary to the will of God.” and that “Poverty is not caused by fate: it is caused by the actions of whose whom the prophet condemns….” (and then quotes Amos 2:6-7).

I stand with Gutiérrez.

Youphemisms

We all use euphemisms but sometimes there are ones we dislike or refuse to use, and what you use may not be something I would use. Language is always evolving so this is all a natural human process. The US English ‘restroom’ for what is commonly here called a toilet seems an unnecessary and inaccurate euphemism – and yet I might quite happily use ‘loo’ or even the southern terms ‘jacks’ (which may be medieval English in origin and also relate to the US English term ‘the john’, although the latter may also be connected with one of the inventors of the flushing toilet).

One US euphemism I refuse to use however is that someone has ‘passed’ when they have died. Passed what? Their final exams? To glory in heaven? From this earthly coil? No, not a term I find acceptable. And yet if referring to someone’s status in relation to being living or dead, e.g. on a letter coming for someone who is ‘no longer with us’ (another euphemism), i.e. dead, putting ‘Now dead’ seems too bald a statement and I might write ‘Deceased’ – which is simply another way of saying ‘no longer with us’. Death is kind of final and it is difficult not to be euphemistic. But, it is clear, I find some euphemisms a load of crap.

–

That’s me for now and the bold, bad January is over, I hope you weren’t badly affected by Storm Éowyn if you live in what was its path….unfortunately with global heating there is much more of that to come. But always look on the bright side, the snowdrops are well out, the daffodils are coming, some out, and we live in hope, so until next time, Billy.

Billy King: Rites Again 325

Billy King, Nonviolent News, , , , ,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts

Hello again, I start off on a culinary note this month, the first item being particularly relevant to the season that’s in it. Whatever about cooking from books, I am not in favour of cooking the books though I was just thinking that if a carload of chefs got done for speeding it would be booking the cooks…..

However before that I will make a comment or two about the elect-shuns in the Re:Public. It looks like we are back to the previous status quo with FF + FG in the driving seat and with others in place of the disappearing Greens (who, incidentally, didn’t come out greenest in the FOE study of election manifestos). I note the quotes from FF + FG in the news item from PANA in the new section of this issue. FF states that it will “continue to protect and promote Ireland’s military neutrality including sensible reform of the ‘Triple Lock’ legislation.” I take it ‘sensible reform’ here is a euphemism for ‘total removal’ since if you remove the UN approval part of deploying Irish troops overseas, as Micheál Martin is gunning (sic) to do, it just leaves the government/cabinet and Dáil. Once more the establishment is lying to the Irish people about the diminunition and removal of Irish neutrality.

Quizine

Why, with a title like ‘Quizine’, is this not a quiz about cuisine and only a question about the title? Why indeed, that is the question. The answer is of course my addiction to puns. Anyway, I begin below with a seasonal drink and proceed to something for a light meal, and another dish which is a meal in itself. It may have been Prussian king Frederick the Great who was the first recorded person saying “An army marches on its stomach” – to which I can add that a member of a ‘shanti sena’, satyagrahi or peace activist goes to work on their stomach, and they have to have a stomach for many things. I haven’t shared anything culinary for a while so ……

Mulling it over

‘Tis the season to be merry (or the season to be Mary if you are a young child chosen to be Jesus’ mother in a nativity play). Less people are inclined to drink alcohol these days, or if they do then they tend to do so in more specific circumstances. Catering for everyone can a nightmare but there is an easy mulled fruit juice drink which you can enjoy yourself or serve to guests, and in my experience it goes down very well, a very pleasant alternative to mulled wine – which I personally don’t go for that much. And one of the handiest things about it is that it is non-alcoholic but you can add alcohol (I use gin) at point of serving so it caters both for those enjoying alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. I usually serve it hot but it is also a very pleasant drink served cold, you could even try it chilled for a summer party.

It needs to be boiled up once before you heat it to serve – this is to allow the flavours to properly penetrate the liquid and be absorbed. You don’t need a precise recipe (I don’t usually believe in them anyway) and can adjust as you go along. For ‘a crowd’ I use 2 litres of grape juice mixed with 2 litres of apple juice; you could experiment with a mixture of other juices but this works very well (grape juice by itself would probably be too sweet). Add a couple of mulled wine sachets (if you don’t have these simply add more of the other flavourings), a cinnamon stick or two (these vary greatly in size), 15 or so whole cloves, and a sliced lemon. I use an organic lemon if I can get one so you are not adding the chemicals which the skin of the usual ones are sprayed with. You can experiment with adding other spices.

Bring the mixture to the boil and simmer, lid closed, for 15-20 minutes. Leave it with the lid closed. Reheat when it is to be served. I serve it just below boiling point in wine glasses which seem to take the heat well – I wouldn’t use your most precious glasses though just in case the heat would crack them. You can use a small jug or ladle to put the mulled juice into the glass. I give guests a choice of alcoholic or non-alcoholic punch as well as whatever other drinks you have on offer; a majority seem to go for the punch at Christmas time.

If serving this with alcohol you simply add the measure of alcohol you are using, and I use gin, before pouring in the punch. Last year, having received a bottle of non-alcoholic spirit/’gin’, having a measure of that in the drink was another choice for those having it as non-alcoholic. If it looks like you will need more punch then you can add more juice, and if necessary flavourings, as you go along, simmering it as you go – if serving over a period of time you need to heat it periodically anyway.

It will keep unrefrigerated for some time, certainly a number of days, and I tend to use the same batch for Christmas and the days after, even for new year depending on how much has been used, maybe with some more juice and flavouring added. I am sure you will be pleased as punch with the result. And if you keep it non-alcoholic you certainly won’t be punch drunk. And even the non-alcoholic version has a bit of a punch.

Vegan French toast

French toast, usually sweet, is made with egg and milk, but there is no reason it cannot be savoury too, or indeed vegan. And this is a vegan savoury recipe using gram flour, that old staple stand by for vegans wanting to go on a batter (or indeed for people who are coeliac and can’t take gluten). For this basically you are making the same kind of mixture as for pakoras or bhajis but with more water. With gram flour you always need to sieve it to start or you end up with lumps, so don’t take the shortcut of not sieving it.

80 grams of gram flour (how appropriate to weigh it in metric measure!) should be sufficient for a couple of good sized slices of bread. Add half a teaspoon of chilli powder, a teaspoon of cumin powder, a teaspoon of ajwain (I use seeds but you can also used ground), a small amount of asofoetida if you have it (look or ask in your Asian store for this and ajwain, a k a “bishop’s weed” – maybe with that title it is a ‘high’ church bishop!), and half a teaspoon of bread soda to help the mixture rise. If you don’t have these spices, improvise, even just use curry powder. Salt is up to yourself, you can do this without. Then add cold water to make it slightly thicker than a pancake batter mix. Soak your bread in the mix so it is completely covered and then fry in oil until golden brown, being careful to lift or move it frequently and gently with a slice/implement to stop it sticking to the pan. Serve as is or with some tomato and/or chutney, or whatever else takes your fancy.

If you wanted a sweet vegan French toast, you could use apple juice instead of water, and maybe add honey (which is not vegan), sugar, agave or whatever is your favourite sweetener or syrup is, to add to plain gram flour. And maybe a bit of cinnamon and or amchoor (dried green mango powder). And if you omit the bread then you can have savoury or sweet pancakes with similar mixtures. You can serve the sweet versions as is or with your favourite jam or fruit.

Potato and chick pea pot

This is a fast, easy, nutritious and tasty dish – what more could you ask for, and my take on a recipe received in a free magazine with another subscription, adapted a bit….. as usual I am, deliberately, lax on exact recipe directions.

Chop into medium pieces about 750g of potatoes and cook and drain them, their being cooked can coincide with the 20 – 25 minutes or so you need for doing the rest of the dish. Take a wok or heavy pot and add a couple of tablespoons of oil then for 30 seconds or so, when hot, cook 2 teaspoons of cumin seeds (if you don’t have cumin seeds you can omit this stage and add the same amount of cumin powder at any stage although the effect won’t quite be the same). Then add 1 or 2 chopped chillis, according to your taste, and 3 medium chopped onions and a couple of chopped garlic cloves, again according to taste.

When the onion is fairly well cooked and brown, add well chopped tomatoes, I would use 5 or 6 fresh but you can alternatively use tinned tomatoes, and possibly add some tomato puree. Reduce the heat under your pot and let this simmer until you have basically a tomato sauce. Add salt or soya sauce if you like. Then add a drained tin of chickpeas, or equivalent you have cooked yourself – not so difficult if you soak them and use a pressure cooker. Mix well. Finally, dump your drained cooked potato on top and half mash them into the mixture…..you want some of the potato to disappear into the mix and some to be still pieces of potato.

Serve and enjoy. This amount should serve 4 or 5 people by itself or possibly more if doing other things with it. But it is self sufficient as a meal, perhaps serving it with your favourite pickles or chutneys,

Talking about Frederick the Great as I was at the start of this piece, INNATE downloadable print-it-yourself posters https://innatenonviolence.org/wp/posters/ include another quote from said nongentleman – “If my soldiers began to think, not one would remain in the ranks.” Think about that. [The ‘Billy King Cookbook’ – it is not called that – can be found in the Pamphlets section of the INNATE website https://innatenonviolence.org/wp/pamphlets/ – Ed]

Dawn 50

Amazingly, some people still fondly remember ‘Dawn’ magazine though it is 50 years since it started (1974) and nearly 40 since the monthly publication ended. https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/albums/72157609617432905/ Producing a publication then was an incredible amount of work in the pre-computer era and before desk top publishing (even that term seems dated or outdated because it is so much an assumed part of modern life and producing anything for others to read). One jokey slogan was that “Getting up for ‘Dawn’ leaves you exhausted by tea-time”!

The production quality of early “Dawns” was appalling by modern standards, sometimes only just legible. For the first nearly two years most of the magazine was duplicated, a cut-a-stencil system with the stencil being placed on an inked drum duplicator machine to run off the pages. As the attempt was to produce the magazine over a weekend, graphics were copied beforehand onto a stencil in a specialist shop, cut out and adhered to a cut hole in the typed stencil using correcting fluid as a glue. The hope then was that the stencil would hold together long enough to do the print run. Primitive or what? It sounds prehistoric now but it more or less worked.

With the magazine having found its feet, just about (at the end of its legs), it then moved to offset litho printing, see e.g. https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/3048496288/in/album-72157609617432905 This entailed even more work over a longer time frame since even if layout was completed in the production weekend, which usually didn’t happen, it still had to be printed, collated and distributed. A key point in the process was not to lose any of the many bits of paper with the typing which were then stuck on a larger sheet with headings and graphics. The personnel involved changed somewhat – including through the tragic early death of lovely gentle man and key member Dermot Hurley in Dublin – but the enterprise had run out of steam after just over a decade.

To some extent INNATE picked up where Dawn laid off but it wasn’t a simple process or transfer and INNATE didn’t produce a monthly publication until 1994 (Nonviolent News had begun as an occasional publication in 1990), some years after its ‘dawn’ in 1987. Like INNATE, the Dawn group wasn’t just about producing a publication but had a wider remit on nonviolence, peace, and progressive social change. But certainly modern technology makes life, and publication production, far simpler. The good old days? Good grief.

The ace of Trump’s

The Donald’s victory in the US presidential election has been pored (and poured?) over enough in the mainstream media that I won’t say too much about it here. Part of it is that some people prefer compelling lies to prosaic truth, or are partial to partial truths. Part of it is that in the presidential election the Democrats were poor on vision and vague on detail, and both Democrats and Republicans are in hock to big business and the military-industrial complex so a plague on both their houses on that – but Trump was seen to offer more hope on economic matters for many despite what economic analysts might say. The effects for Ireland of the Trumpian victory for Ireland, and the Irish multinational goldmine, remain to be seen.

There are of course a huge number of dangers in a Trump presidency, the worst probably being his refusal to acknowledge, and act on, global heating. With the USA just as vulnerable to climate change as anywhere else, and with the results already manifesting themselves, it requires very particular shortsightedness or stupidity to ignore it. [I think you can add greed to that – Ed]. While Trump may have a certain astuteness in relation to some things, the previous two qualities are undoubtedly his much of the time. Perhaps MAGA could be spelt out as Make America Great Amadáns. But of course there are also the people who do know the risks/results of global heating but still refuse to take action.

One point where President Trump may well be better than the Democrats is a possible reluctance to go to war or support wars abroad. This is from his isolationist, US-first, MAGA standpoint. If he had a greater reluctance to go to or support war but also a greater commitment to global justice and peace then he could have done great things – I write in the past tense because I am making judgements about his future behaviour based on his past performance. Perhaps, just perhaps, his reluctance to commit millions of $ to warmaking abroad could yield some peace dividends but that is not likely in relation to the Israeli genocide in Gaza since Trump is even more supportive of Israel than the ‘send arms first and ask occasional polite questions afterwards’ Biden. Donald Trump’s greatest commitment is of course to Donald Trump and he will continue to serve that cause fearlessly.

Traditional and modern mediation

We sometimes forget that most – if not all – traditional societies had or have their own conflict resolution techniques, and these usually involved sitting down and talking – and listening, often with particular ritual or formats attached. Even the Brehon laws had the aim of restitution rather than retribution. You may think of modern mediation methods as having particular ‘stages’ that need to be completed before moving on to the next one but this is no less ritualistic than traditional society methods, only different and having more of a theoretical base.

I was sad to learn of the death of an old colleague-of-a-kind, Ali Gohar, who died in Bradford (England) at the end of September. He visited and talked for INNATE https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/5044664047/in/photolist-7rJkCS-8FMdSk a decade and a half ago. Though living in Bradford for some years he was of Pashtun origin – the main ethnicity in Afghanistan – but from Pakistan. Part of what made Ali wax lyrical was the jirga, the traditional Pashtun elders council meeting to deal with conflict and work for restorative justice, and also for consultation – but updating it to the modern age by expanding it and including women was also part of it. A word search for Ali Gohar and ‘jirga’ will throw up material and a couple of books, one of them online.

Because of wars in Afghanistan and the current dire situation for women and human rights in general, Pashtun culture is sometimes considered intrinsically violent. Ali Gohar would refer to Abdul Ghaffar Khan, that great nonviolent leader who was sometimes referred to as ‘the frontier Gandhi’. Khan was a devout Muslim and a pacifist, and leader in his part of the world of a nonviolent movement for independence from Britain – but stood for Hindu-Muslim unity and against the partition of India. There is one remarkable quote from Abdul Ghaffar Khan, which Ali used to quote: “Is not the Pashtun amenable to love and reason? He will go with you to hell if you can win his heart, but you cannot force him even to go to heaven” – this definition of their strength and determination is one that that both the Russkies and the Yanquis would have been wise to heed, and might have led to much better outcomes for everyone in that part of the world.

There are many strands to mediation and in our complex world we should not rule out any method of mediation and dealing with conflict, including shuttle mediation which has at times been part of dealing with issues in Norn Iron. Nor should we abandon hope if mediation is impossible; longer term conciliation efforts (think Quaker House in Belfast) are possible as are approaches to conflict which don’t involve mediation, see e.g. https://innatenonviolence.org/workshops/anotherroad.shtml The only limitations are our imagination and our perseverance.

Bordering

Rowel Friers was a fairly gentle cartoonist but certainly the best or one of the very best in Norn Iron in the mid-20th century and through the Troubles (he died in 1998). One cartoon of his showed two decorators together, one of whom has just had a tin of paint poured over his head. This unfortunate house painter states – “All I said was I thought they would be better off without the border”!

But speaking of ‘borders’, and decisions about borders, there is also the de Borda institute on inclusive voting methodologies headed up by Peter Emerson. www.deborda.org The said gentleman is an inveterate overland traveller across borders, even over long distances, and having meaningful interactions as he goes. I am advised that his blog on his current travel to China can be found at https://deborda.substack.com/p/debordaabroad2 and you may be interested to Czech it out though Georgia is more on his mind, at least when I looked. Meanwhile his thoughts on democracy in Israel and the Middle East currently can be found at http://www.deborda.org/home/2024/10/17/2024-23-the-middle-east.html

–

Well, that’s me for now and I will be back with you at the start of February (in January there is just a short news supplement to Nonviolent News and no Billy King column, awwwww). In the mean time I wish you a peaceful Christmas period – something denied to a huge number of people around the world, not just through wars but economic injustice and the effects of global heating. And is my wont I also wish you a Preposterous New Year – Billy.

Billy King: Rites Again, 322

Billy King, Nonviolent News, ,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts

Well, it was one of those years when you might feel, as I did, that summer forgot to come and autumn came first. With climate change that may be increasingly our lot, not that Ireland was ever renowned for tropical summers. The rain in Spain Ireland stays mainly on and on. Oh well, I hope you got your head showered somewhere and you are fit and ready for autumn and winter. Of course it wasn’t a good summer for racism either but that is another, and unpleasant, story.

Marching orders

For imaginative audacity and brass neck over the summer though you have to admire Portadown Orangemen, still smarting after all these years on not being able to march down the Garvaghy Road and through a Catholic area where they are not welcome. They argued the toss with the Parades Commission that they should march through when Armagh (the county Portadown is in) were playing in – and in the event winning by a point – the All-Ireland Gaelic football final. The premise was that all the taigs* would be either in Croke Park or watching the match so it wouldn’t matter to them. Nice try lads [I thought a try was in rugby – Ed]. But you’ll have to do better than that next time, like actually talking to residents. *’Obviously not the term used by them in seeking permission, but Taig’ is used in a highly derogatory way by some Northern Prods about Catholics; as its origin is in the personal name ‘Tadhg’, coming from ‘poet’, I use it as a positive term but being careful to explain why.

Genius

It was a bit of a coincidence. Edna O’Brien’s impressionistic and excellent 1999 biography of James Joyce had sat on a bookshelf of ours for a long time but it caught my eye and, it being short, I thought I could read it in a couple of days and I had, it being summer, time to do so. That I did and finished it on the day that Edna O’Brien’s death was announced, before I heard she was dead or even at death’s door. illy King

Without going into details of the book, my chief thought following the reading was how Nora Barnacle stuck to her man through thick and thin (mainly thin), it is absolutely amazing. Lesser people would have headed for the hills, or in her case close to the sea, very early on. But it got me thinking. JJ is usually thought of as a bit of a genius, and he certainly proclaimed it himself, but are all ‘geniuses’ impossible (or at least improbable) to live with? O’Brien however talks about writers in the context of James Joyce (and I am not equating ‘writers’ with ‘geniuses’) – “Do writers have to be such monsters in order to create? I believe that they do. It is a paradox that while wrestling with language to capture the human condition they become more callous, and cut off from the very human traits which they so glisteningly depict” (in the “Fame” chapter of her book). I don’t necessarily agree.

Edna O’Brien herself chose to stay single most of her life though that did not preclude relationships. She was a determined and dedicated writer but I don’t think she would have been impossible to live with. Certainly some writers or geniuses would require a genius at putting up with them to sustain a relationship, and probably a certain amount goes with the territory. But so too in relation to political activists, peace or otherwise, given the commitment made to The Cause and how this relates to, or can tower over, family relationships and commitments.

Isn’t it a strange world.

Struth

The old adage that the first casualty of war is truth is one that isn’t much bandied about in relation to the war in Ukraine. The fact is that we usually in our neck of the woods only get one version of what is happening and that is taken as gospel truth; Russians bad, NATO good, Ukraine saintly. No, I am certainly not going to say the Russians are good, it was a brutal and opportunistic invasion that went badly wrong for Putin but he has used it for his own purposes (cf perpetual war in Orwell’s ‘1984’). But NATO had a part in setting up the scenario for the war by its expansionist aims and actions (cf perpetual war in Orwell’s ‘1984’, NATO was set up to counter the Russian communist bloc and should have got moth-balled when it fell, instead it came up with new enemies).

Occasionally we get a glimpse at greater truths. Take https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2024/08/13/we-killed-many-of-them-on-the-first-day-they-didnt-expect-us-how-ukraine-pulled-off-its-invasion-of-russia/ about the Ukrainian invasion of Russian territory in August 2024. A Ukrainian soldier says of this incursion into Russia that “We killed many of them on the first day……..Because they were unarmed and didn’t expect us.” Ahem, I know this is a war, but this sounds like the Ukrainians killing many unarmed soldiers, contrary to the ‘laws of war’ as I understand them as they were no threat to the Ukrainian army. He does say many surrendered too.

Reading

between the lines

is a necessary skill and never needed more than at the moment.

Picture it

INNATE’s photo and documentation site at https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/ has plenty to choose from and in the last year has averaged over a thousand photos a week opened (you can look at photos in the photostream without opening them but then you can’t read any detailed descriptions etc). But I must admit I am often surprised about what gets hits and what doesn’t. You can browse from the latest entries but if you are looking for something in particular then using the albums tab makes things much easier; word searching can work well but not always.

One of the surprising ‘top hits’ is a photo of dumped rubbish on the seashore at Carnsore Point in a photo essay on the wind farm there – if you click on https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/2835010165/ you will see a fairly basic and unexciting picture of rubbish, rocks and sand; it is a commentary on Irish attitudes to getting ‘rid’ of ‘rubbish’ – one person’s ‘rid’ is another’s ‘rud’ (multilingual pun) [Or multilingual punishment? – Ed] – but it doesn’t feel earth shattering. Yet it is second in the photos having the most hits. Of course tastes and interests vary but often what I expect to be popular is not.

And other photos that do feel special get relatively little attention. I feel https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/53703463429/in/dateposted/ is an absolutely brilliant photo (by Larry Speight), coincidentally concerning rubbish, where the shape of human and animal at a landfill site in Kampala seem to mimic each other. And for me the most powerful photo of all on the site comes from Palestine (taken by Mairead Collins) of a young boy running with bottles of water to try to put out a fire in an olive grove started by Israeli settlers in the West Bank – the triumph of hope and dedication over the reality of what can be achieved.

If a photo or album is linked in someone’s blog, email or article it can suddenly receive lots of hits. Others get occasional visits but the point in documentation is something is there when someone really wants to find it. And if you find your group or field of endeavour in the peace and social change fields is missing, well, put yourself in the picture by sending in some pics. That is an invitation.

The growing year

If you have green fingers I hope it has been a good year (if you have orange fingers it is because you have likely been handling orange lily stamens). Overall it wasn’t a great growing season, not that it is over yet, and I recently sowed rocket and land cress which I hope will over-winter. In general it has been a very undistinguished gardening year (and I pity farmers); germination of the purple sprouting broccoli was very poor, I think I did three sowings under a tunnel cloche to get at least some seedlings and the plants are small. The Russian kale grew well however but caterpillars did a lot of mischief I didn’t notice partly because with the shape of the leaves it wasn’t seen. We have a now well-established fig tree but the figs have been quite small, not enough sun, and unfortunately our blackbirds have taken a liking to them so we need to pick them early and ripen indoors if they are not to be pecked and eaten to bits.

My new success of the year was undoubtedly delicious akito outdoor cucumbers which grow vertically though they need a bit of a hand with canes of some kind, and some string or twine to help secure them. Seeds bought in Lidl, they were started indoors and I put them in tubs and they have been well fed, and are currently performing excellently; we have had cucumber salads three days in a row…..day one was a recipe with a dressing and chilli flakes, day two a dressing with mint, and day three was tzatziki (store that one up for Scrabble though the game for some racists this year was Rabble……). Of course how long they will keep going into autumn I don’t know and when the cucumbers will take cucumberage at colder weather. Organically grown veg has a higher dry matter level than those using artificial fertilisers and I think this makes a big difference especially with a veg which has a high water content like cucumbers. With them performing well, though a bit slow to get into gear, maybe I can feel as cool as a cucumber. [I hope that is the end of cucumbersome puns – Ed] [Given that cue I think I’ll head off to Comber – Billy]

I nearly danced for joy outside a week ago – I did cry out aloud – when I saw a living creature hop away from me….it was a frog in our suburban garden. We have had one, or a succession of them (the Irish Common Frog can live for 5 – 10 years) for some considerable time but then I hadn’t come across any evidence for the last few years until one hopped very briefly into view away from me and the sage bush and into a clump of montbretia where it was well covered. Speaking of hopping, for a period a bit more than a decade ago Donegal town had a ‘Donegal hopping centre’ when a letter fell off a sign there….is that the triumph of hop over experience? Hop until you drop may leave you hopping mad tired but does not pander to consumerism so has that in its favour.

–

As the Triple Lock policy faces obliteration by the Irish government in furtherance of its unimaginative and little-minded pro-militarist agenda, I am reminded of a joke written on a lock securing a park gate in Belfast. Someone had taken the trouble to write on what was a reasonable sized lock, it looked like Tippex was used, “So is your Mammy”. Spoiler alert: ‘Locked’ is a euphemism for being drunk. The government has of course ruled out, without any exploration, positive and peaceful alternatives to its pro-NATO and pro-EU militarism policies. In fact I think they are triple faced or talking trip(l)e.

Finally, as regular readers [Plural? – Ed] will know, this is my least favourite time of year, not because I dislike autumn weather and nature – I like it – but because I dislike autumn schedules and busyness. But the wheel of the year keeps on turning (Happy Christmas anyone?). See you soon, Billy.

Billy King: Rites Again, 321

Billy King, Nonviolent News,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts

I get to read Nonviolent News before publication so I can make comments on contents in the same issue [What a privilege! – Ed]. The comment in the editorial about mediation and conciliation seeming to be forgotten in the international arena made me think that they are, collectively, one of the Secrets of the Universe. And that made me think about the cartoon of the guru on the mountain top, looking glum. One acolyte below the guru says to another “He has forgotten the secret of the universe again”. There seem to be a lot of Secrets of the Universe forgotten at the moment….

Elect shun

Well, the nativist far right did make a very few gains of local council seats (from zero) in Ireland in the local elections but nothing compared to what they were hoping, and nowhere near a seat in the EU elections. Now there are some people who claim true Irishness but who don’t remember anything about one of the most essential parts of Irish history in the last number of centuries, emigration.

However I was sad in particular to see Clare Daly voted out from MEP-dom. She has been a fearless advocate of peace and against EU military aggrandizement, as well as being a sensible voice on many other issues. There was a vindictive piece in the Irish Times following her defeat https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/06/21/justine-mccarthy-clare-dalys-dog-whistle-to-haters-of-the-media-wasnt-just-hypocritical-it-was-reckless/ She was continually mocked and abused by the conservative media in Ireland (I would feel the above piece after her defeat was confirmation of this) so it is not surprising that said media can be judged to have had a significant hand in her defeat, or that she reacted as she did.

Meanwhile in de Nort we await the results for 18 seats at Westminster in the British general election on 4th July, using the primeval first-past-the-post voting system. This system does encourage tactical voting – voting for someone you don’t fully support but who has a chance of getting elected in order to deprive someone you definitely do not support winning. Sinn Féin did atrociously – compared to expectations – in both elections (local and EU) south and west of the border but are likely to hold most of their ground in Northern Ireland. How the DUP will fare after a) ‘Sir’ Jeffrey Donaldson’s departure in less than auspicious circumstances, and b) the admission by new DUP leader Gavin Robinson that they overstated their case on the trade barriers or checks Britain/Norn Iron having been removed. But all in all there is plenty for psephologists to get their teeth and calculators into (psephologists study voting and voting patterns, pepsiologists study teeth rot and obesity), North and South, not forgetting east and west.

While there may be one or two surprises in the British general election in the North, there will be no such surprise in Britain itself on the overall result where the Conservative party are on track for one of their worst defeats ever. In the North in general however most people will vote as they usually do, and change comes slowly; the 40-40-20 pattern of the last number of years is likely to be maintained (40% unionist, 40% nationalist/republican, and 20% for the others or less constitutionally-aligned parties).

I had hoped that the Sinners would be the lead party in the next coal-ition (it may not be very green…) government in the Re:Public. This desire on my part wasn’t for their policies on the North – which I thought would be tempered by their partners – but because they might actually stand up for a positive Irish neutrality. However on the recent showing it will be another conservative-conservative deal with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, and the vestiges of neutrality will continue to be sold down the river while FG and FF proclaim no change on it….

Haven’t we heard that before?

Speaking of neutrality, the Oireachtas, well the Seanad, missed the opportunity https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/2024-05-29/11/ to prevent arms coming from or passing through Ireland to Israel – this was thanks to a rearguard action by the powers that be not to do anything (full stop). Recognition of Palestine, how are ye. Suspending a decision for 6 months on the matter, and on adequate inspections of planes at Shannon, was a death knell for any measure being of relevance – and maybe a literal death knell for some people in Gaza too.

I just happened to come across a cutting I had taken from the Irish Times of 14/6/06….which mathematicians among you will realise is 18 years ago, i.e. almost two decades: “US military-linked flights may face inspections in Shannon” was the heading which began that “The Government is to reconsider introducing inspections on US military-related flights landing in Shannon after a US marine being held prisoner was transported through the airport without the necessary permission being obtained from the Irish authorities.” The then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, said he was going to engage with the US Embassy “with a view to strengthening the verification procedures and if that entails inspection so be it.” So, that was then, and nothing happened. Don’t be surprised when nothing happens now or in the future either. Heaven forbid that little Ireland should even look at what the the most powerful military in the world is shipping through Irish territory and skies…..or that it should actually consider what it is using it for, or the fact that simply permitting troops to pass through is directly assisting US hegemony and warmaking.

Mapping it

The randomness of the effects of war and violence never ceases to amaze me. I mean of course the randomness of the victims in the sense that they could be anyone, anywhere, you, me, your granny. There is nothing random however in the planning of the violence, it is often meticulously planned even if who actually dies may be subject to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being in Gaza at the current time is being in the wrong place at the wrong time for everyone; even if you are not injured, killed or dying from lack of medication or food, you face constant fear from there being no safe place available anywhere.

I was drawn back to Tom Weld’s artwork by these thoughts, particularly https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/48861290991/in/album-72157711237159086/ with parallels between the terrors of the Second World War and today. For me the power of his imagery is in people – living, breathing human beings – being reduced to lines or areas on a map. For me this illustrates the worst aspects of the militarist mindset. However in the current situation in Gaza it seems everywhere is marked for obliteration, not just the carefully marked areas in Tom Weld’s artwork.

Transcending war and violent conflict

Nonviolent News often uses pieces from Transcend Media Service (‘Solutions-oriented Peace Journalism’ is their strapline), indeed there is one in the Readings in Nonviolence slot in this issue. Some of the pieces are very much written from a US point of view, but there is no harm in that, especially given that they come from the belly of the beast, the world’s number one military superpower. If we wanted we could use lots more from that source. If you are interested in the origins of US imperialism, apart of course from the initial colonialism of taking the land in north America, you can read about the 1823 Monroe Doctrine which proclaimed the US hegemonic interest, and intent to control, the northern and southern American continents, in the issue of 24-30 June 2024 https://www.transcend.org/tms/weekly-archive/

The issue of 17-23 June (available at the same link) had a piece about a survey showing “94% of people in the US and 88% in Western Europe want a negotiated settlement to end the war in Ukraine, but NATO opposes a peace proposal made by China and Brazil, and refuses to invite Russia to talks in Switzerland.” And also in that issue Mairead Maguire writes “A mother’s plea for peace” to the people of Gaza. And that is only touching on a tiny amount of their coverage. It is worth keeping in touch with what is online at https://www.transcend.org/tms/

Ancient caring in situations of disaster and disability

In common with doubtless the rest of yez, I receive dozens of items of spam and unsolicited ‘news’ daily to my phone or email. Most are relegated to the netherworld without being seen by my eyes. One piece that did get my attention, being interested in history and archaeology (primarily what it says about humankind) was about the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. https://www.yahoo.com/news/records-pompeii-survivors-found-archaeologists-124107499.html

But this study by Steven Tuck was not about those incinerated or overcome by the tidal wave of heat, or fumes and ash, but rather the survivors. There were many people who survived, perhaps a majority of people he concludes, some of whom prospered and others didn’t when they moved, mainly nearby. But some of the conclusions of the piece are worth quoting: “While the survivors resettled and built lives in their new communities, government played a role as well. The emperors in Rome invested heavily in the region, rebuilding properties damaged by the eruption and building new infrastructure for displaced populations, including roads, water systems, amphitheaters and temples. This model for post-disaster recovery can be a lesson for today. The costs of funding the recovery never seems to have been debated. Survivors were not isolated into camps, nor were they forced to live indefinitely in tent cities. There’s no evidence that they encountered discrimination in their new communities.”

How’s about that then. Another very different piece I will refer to here indicates that our cousins the Neanderthals were caring and compassionate to those who could not reciprocate. https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/26/fossil-of-neanderthal-child-with-downs-syndrome-hints-at-early-humans-compassion A severely disabled child with Down’s Syndrome (possibly from a couple of hundred thousand years ago!) survived to the age of six which implies that their mother received lots of help from others. There is no mention of possible support from the Da but that could have been an important part of it too, I don’t know and no one will ever know except those people aeons ago. Caring and sharing is in our DNA – and except for those from Africa we do all literally have Neanderthal DNA in us.

–

It is my wont at this time of year to quote Christy Moore’s definition of holidays, in his old song Lisdoonvarna, when he says “When summer comes around each year / They come here and we go there’”. I wish you time and space to get your head showered (with Irish rainfall rates that is likely to be literal) but a good break anyway. Summer goes by in a flash [of lightning? – Ed], be good to yourself and each other until I see you again in September, Billy.

Billy King: Rites Again, 320

Billy King, Nonviolent News

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts –

A round robin

Well, robins are relatively round, at least their front is, compared to some other birds. But a ‘round robin’ is something else with variable meanings, look it up, relating to something done ‘in the round’ or as a round. But I am going to talk about robins being around, specifically nesting robins. In our suburban garden we get many avian visitors, mainly of common garden species. As organic gardeners with many insects to be eaten we provide food for the birds and they in turn keep the slug and insect population under control. This makes me think of the total stupidity of Mao Zedong in China in 1958 trying to obliterate sparrows (along with other ‘pests’) for eating crops as with greatly decreased numbers of birds the damage by insects escalated astronomically; locust populations boomed and were one cause of subsequent famine. Mao certainly didn’t know how to cooperate with nature.

We have also had a resident or semi-resident frog in our garden which was great for slug control. Achieving an ecological balance is something which we all need.

We have a variety of ivy in our garden growing up a neighbour’s garden wall. I try to keep it in order so it doesn’t extend its tentacles too much, either along or out from the wall. Ivy can easily take over and then it is much more work to deal with, unless you have the space to let it grow wild. Not very long after I had pruned our ivy this spring I noticed robins going in and out. Garden birds do visit it anyway perhaps because it can be a haven for snails. But this was different; robins going in and out regularly at the same spot or certainly two spots less than half a metre apart. Yes, we had robins nesting. It took only 10 – 15 seconds for a parent robin to enter the ivy, feed its offspring in the nest, and exit again.

We were away for a couple of periods and don’t know if the baby robins successfully fledged and fled, or whether the brood failed for some reason. But it was certainly a nice little nature tale or tail for some of the grandchildren and they were appraised of some of the facts of robin breeding. Mind you, robins are reputedly very territorial and aggressive towards interloper robins. But being relatively unafraid of humans, coming within a very short distance of us in the garden, they are a human favourite.

Trump, trump, trump

Nellie the elephant went trump, trump, trump and said goodbye to the circus (to trunk-ate the story in that song a bit) but there is no sign that we will be saying goodbye to the Donald Trump circus anytime soon. His story in recent years is an illustration that if you repeat a lie or lies long enough then some people, perhaps many people, will believe it, as in “It’s a witch hunt” and even that Trump is the most persecuted politician (arguably the most prosecuted but that is another matter). It is, literally, criminal.

This isn’t just a feature of life in the good (?) ol’ USA. Here in Ireland politicians from some of the major parties in the Re:Public have been saying for decades that “neutrality is not under threat” and that a particular measure of change “doesn’t affect neutrality”. All lies of course. And a new more recent lie from the far right is that “Ireland is full” for asylum seekers – what nonsense. Of course housing is an issue, particularly in Dublin and to some extent elsewhere in the Republic, but the idea that “Ireland is full” shows a myopic understanding of Irish history – if Irish population numbers at home kept growing at the same rate as Britain from the time of the famine (An Gorta Mór) the island would have 30 million people now.

The arsonist tactics of far right anti-immigrant activists in Ireland is a violent and highly xenophobic response to a small result of what is happening in the world today. They are also going for soft targets (potential or actual sites for housing refugees and asylum seekers). Ireland has taken in a considerable number of Ukrainian refugees, as it should, but overall refugee numbers are small compared to the neighbouring countries of conflict and disaster areas. Irish history of course points in the direction of a warm welcome for refugees and economic migrants, based on the Irish experience of being an emigrant country for literally centuries due to necessity. The slogan “Ireland is full” is missing further text as in “Ireland is full – of people exploiting others’ suffering to try to gain political traction”.

We will see in the European and local elections in June in the Republic, and in the UK general election in the North in early July, the extent to which ‘the right’ have benefited from such lies recently though in the case of Norn Iron there is sectarianism in inglorious technicolour (with the colours orange and green being dominant) to be concerned about too.

Pick and mix

There is a long history of people reclaiming derogatory terms as a badge of honour; a relatively recent one over the last number of decades has been non-cis people (the term ‘cis’ itself can be controversial) claiming the label ‘queer’ as a badge of pride and honour. I would say Catholics in the North could likewise claim the label ‘Taig’, used as a nasty and derogatory term of abuse by some loyalists/Protestants for Catholics; reclaiming could be especially positive as it comes from the Irish personal name ‘Tadhg’ which indicates ‘Poet’, now that certainly is a badge of honour.

I am not sure where the term ‘pick and mix’ came from, in relation to sweets and confectionery, but I presume it was around from the time Woolworths department stores hit our shores. Some small sweet shops would have had the same practice. Psychologically and commercially it was a success; allow people more choice and they are likely to buy more.

It may seem strange to jump from that to the year 697 CE and the Law of the Innocents (see elsewhere this issue) then, but my mind works in mysterious ways [That’s very true – Ed]

The term ‘Micks’ for Irish people in Britain comes it having been common for Irish people being called Mick, short for Michael or Micheál, in the same way that Irish people were also called ‘Paddies’; ‘Micks’ has been particularly applied with the British army for people of Irish origin, either ‘Irish’ regiments or people from Ireland. It is generally understood these days as an offensive and derogatory term, not quite on a par with some offensive words for black people but objectionable nonetheless. However if it was to be reclaimed, and as Adomnán’s 697 ‘Law of the Innocents’ included (Scottish) Picts as well as Gaelic Irish perhaps therefore we could call the Law of the Innocents ‘Pict and Micks’. [Groan…..a mighty groan – Ed] Given that the powers that be in the current era choose which ‘laws of war’ they will obey and which they want, their own violent pick and mix, it is perhaps not that inappropriate a term. We also note that the new Lex Innocentium has been translated into Latin, the language of the original law – so perhaps this is a packed pax pact.

Casting and costing a united Ireland

This publication has consistently said that we need much greater detailed analysis of the possibilities in relation to a united Ireland. Yes, a group like Ireland’s Future is coming at it from a broadly nationalist angle but where is the detailed and structured analysis by the Irish state? And why is there not also thinking going on by the British state? While it might be unreasonable to expect the British state to initiate such thinking, it is not unreasonable to expect it to respond to possible situations and models, or indeed to point out pluses for people in the North to continue as part of the UK (despite any commitments to act impartially in the Good Friday Agreement). If it believes in democracy and democratic decision making then it seems rational it should do so, particularly as recompense for the British state’s role in mishandling the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and even its attempts, as in its ‘Troubles Act’, to airbrush its negative role. Please note I am not saying other entities, including the Irish state, are not also guilty of mishandling the Troubles; they are, but the powers that be, and were, in the North is the British state.

Analysing possibilities for the future does not mean you are necessarily going to jump that way. But the public deserve to be treated as adults. At the moment confusion rains. What would happen regarding contributory and non-contributory pensions? What would happen about national debt? What would be the tax burden? These financial questions are aside from questions about the nature of any new united Ireland state. No, there cannot be firm answers on anything at this stage but the public, North and ‘South’, deserve detailed and clear analysis so they can make rational decisions rather than purely emotional ones based on nationalist or unionist sentiment, or self interest. There needs to be detailed and systematic analysis which includes thinking from all possible ‘sides’.

John Fitzgerald and Edgar Morgenroth kicked off the recent discussion of financial aspects of the issue which seemed to show higher costs than generally thought of; this was followed by John Doyle and others questioning their thinking and suggesting there would be much less in terms of costs, and more recently, for example, Newton Emerson has also come back with suggestion of higher costs. As stated, there can be no definitive answers on anything at this stage but we need clear thinking about what are possibilities and likelihoods. While there has been some limited discussion in the Oireachtas and elsewhere what we need is a planned and systematic analysis of an ongoing nature, pulling in research and analysis from all over. And that should come primarily from an initiative of the Irish state.

It might seem to some people that the Irish state engaging in such an exercise could have destabilising effect in the North (and this may be a reason why nothing has been done). But the numbers in the North favouring a united Ireland are slowly creeping up. A warts and all picture of what possibilities exist or might exist would not be a nationalist propaganda weapon since, as Fitzgerald and Morgenrath argued, there may be massive costs without immediate massive benefits in bringing about a united Ireland. The truth may not set anyone free, whatever you consider freedom to be, or indeed truth, but searching for the truth could at least allow people on both sides of the border to think with their head and not just their heart.

–

Well, meteorologically we are now into summer, I hope it lives up to the name but maybe living in Hibernia we don’t have a chance of escaping winter-type weather. Mind you the courgettes came on in leaps and bounds (they were initially under a cloche when planted out) when there was a blast of heat for a couple of days. If the oul ‘Gulf Stream’ gives up the ghost however with melting Arctic ice and climate heating, well, Newfoundland here we come, weather wise – and wise is certainly not what we humans are when it comes to greenhouse gases. Anyway, I hope that things are gearing up well for you and I’ll be back in July before the summer break, so see you soon, Billy.

Billy King: Rites Again, 319

Billy King, Nonviolent News, , , ,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts

Hello again – I am a simple soul, believing in long-term simple solutions. What if, instead of providing food aid to Gaza now to perhaps keep starving and desperate people alive, countries such as the USA (especially) and Britain had not supplied Israel with arms or the money to buy arms so that it would not now be totally destroying Gaza, and might have negotiated a reasonable deal with Palestine? The US has given Israel $220 billion in military aid over the years. https://www.warresisters.org/resources/pie-chart-flyers-where-your-income-tax-money-really-goes Maybe if the USA had chosen a different path then Palestine would be properly established as a state and self sufficient, and Israel and Palestine be at peace today. Just thinking.

Protecting the innocent in war

Great to see a project, covered in the news section of this issue, taking the 697 CE Law of the Innocents, associated with Adomnán, abbot of Iona, into the 21st century. The original is very much of its time and the new one will be too, including an emphasis on protecting the earth. Those familiar with INNATE’s quiz on nonviolence in Irish history will be familiar with the bones of the story (see “Nonviolence: The Irish Experience! Quiz” at https://innatenonviolence.org/wp/resources/ ) Adomnán was travelling with his mother, Ronnat, when they stumbled across the bloody and terrible aftermath of a battle – you can imagine the scene, dead and mutilated bodies and people in agony. Anyway, Ronnat made Adomnán promise he would do something about this kind of thing if he ever could, and so he tried later when he was in a position to act, when abbot of Iona.

What is interesting too is that there were lots of attempts, in different world cultures in antiquity, to put limits on the violence and destruction inflicted by war. Of course there can be arguments about the inherent violence or nonviolence of the human being. Some people, once humanity got into arms races, sought to benefit themselves though violence – often under the guise of bring civilisation and modernity. But some others, without necessarily having the resources of the rich and powerful, have sought to restrict warfare and build peace.

Talking about the innocent can be powerful because we have a tendency to think in terms of the innocent and the guilty. But it isn’t always helpful and in Northern Ireland the term ‘innocent victims of violence’ was often used as a way of targetting other people dragged into the conflict by the circumstances of the time (I am not implying that they made the right choice) and contrasting people not involved in the conflict in any way. And ordinary soldiers, while they can commit atrocities and be brutal in warfare, are usually also victims of war through PTSD, injuries or death. Think of those fighting on either side of the Russia-Ukraine war; presumably 99% of them would rather be home and out of harm’s way. While many soldiers may have entered that occupation because it seemed to offer personal opportunities (in the case of Russia possibly a way out of a long prison sentence), many have been cajoled or conscripted, and none deserve to be mutilated or die in battle.

Sometimes even generals can be a restraining force because some of them know the personal cost of war. So we should not scapegoat soldiers. What we as nonviolent activists need to do, however, is both rejecting the whole panoply of war, in all its aspects, while showing the effectiveness of nonviolence – and that means building a movement and alliances which can take on the powerholders and warmongers to remove the reasons and basis for war and violence. And building on what has been done in the past, such as by Adomnán in 697 CE, can be an important part of establishing the cultural/political support required.

Oh, and you do know, or if you don’t you ought to (important historical fact? – Ed) that Adomnán in his life of Colmcille/Columba (like ‘his’ Derry he has a stroke name!) was the first person to write about the Loch Ness monster. How deep is that? [Up to 230 metres – Ed]

Rhubarb, rhubarb

I’m not sure how, in European English, ‘rhubarb’ came to mean nonsense or drivel, as in saying “rhubarb, rhubarb”. The online suggestion is it has a theatrical origin (actors saying ‘rhubarb’ continuously when expected to make indistinct word sounds) but the theatre could have taken it from somewhere else. Rhubarb the plant is of course a vegetable used as a fruit when lots of sugar is added so although we grow it in our garden we don’t use it much since a spoonful of sugar helps the dentist go down on dental caries (it is also high in oxalic acid later in the summer). However I did want to tell you the story of the organic gardener, not me, and the story may be apocryphal, who was asked what they put on their rhubarb. They answered that it was manure or compost. “That’s interesting”, said their questioner, “I use custard”…….. Rhubarb, rhubarb! [That story doesn’t, to alter the words of Ian Paisley Jnr, cut the custard – Ed].

We need to talk about Kevin

No, I am not referring to Lionel (she) Shriver’s well written but grim novel with the fictional, eponymous Kevin (use of the word ‘eponymous’ always allows me to feel intellectual). [That will be the day – Ed] What I am referring to is Kevin McAleer, the Northern comedian introduced to a new and wider audience in his role as Uncle Colm in Derry Girls (and if you don’t know that role which took a toll on Liam Neeson’s PSNI officer, look it up). Anyway, Kevin McAleer has been doing a farewell tour, “One for the road”, though of course the hope might be for successive farewell tours and not a cul de sac.

It is a difficult act, deadpan humour. I certainly find it extremely hard to keep a straight face when telling an amusing story or engaged in a humorous escapade of some sort, particularly when others are laughing. McAleer has it down to a fine art, the faux naif guy telling some incredibly ridiculous story with a manner that can 99.9% convince you he really is a straightforward amadán or eejit. Stories that he told included the one about being in a hotel where he thought various strange things were happening – then when going to the fancy hotel restaurant he was asked at the entrance if he had a reservation, and he said he had several. And someone who could get a good laugh out of a riff on the difference between internment and the internet, and that they weren’t the same thing at all, has to be a bit of a genius.

I was pleased to see a bit of recycling going on with his (ancient) story about being a contemplative young man in the Co Tyrone countryside in The Troubles…. The version he told in this tour was of being a young man in the Norn Iron countryside at nighttime, gazing at the stars and wondering about the meaning of the universe. Then along came a British army patrol; he was thrilled when they asked him “Who are you?” and “Where are you going?” because these were exactly the deep philosophical questions he was dealing with. More soldiers joined the conversation and they invited him to go with them. He was reluctant and they practically had to drag him away. They stayed up talking that night, the next night and the night after that. “They practically had me tortured” he concluded.

There is of course a serious side to comedy, satire and so on (touched on by the story immediately above) which we in political and social change movements don’t take seriously enough. It is however true that humour can be a little bit dangerous since knowing when to use what can be a delicate balancing act (yes, I have got it wrong often enough…). But it can also be incredibly effective not only in drawing attention to an issue but in making an strong political point – or even in lightening the mood in a meeting which is dragging on or risking being boring.

Majken Sørensen’s book “Humorous political stunts – nonviolent public challenges to power” (Irene Publishing) looks at humour in relation to nonviolence (and activists’ imagination and creativity). What goes on in the war and arms industries is absurd. The refusal, particularly among rich countries, to adequately deal with global heating is absurd. The current Irish government’s protestations of commitment to neutrality internationally are absurd. There are still many absurd elements to the nature of sectarian divisions in the North. All of these things are ripe for humorous ridicule. Make no funny bones about it, humour can be important so let’s get serious about it. Doing illegal, nonviolent actions can be a necessary part of being a peace and political activist, but so can more zany legal (or borderline illegal) manifestations and acting the maggot. [There are no flies on you – Ed]

Snails and horses

I am a glutton for useless trivia particularly where it is relevant to wider concerns. Take the fact that one of the British Army’s Household Cavalry horses injured in a riderless four horse stampede through the streets of London in late April had the name Quaker. Were they going about trying to be gratuitously insensitive to Quakers who are generally pacifist? Speaking as someone who had a great-great-great-grandmother [looks like she was pretty great – Ed] who was a Quaker I am, of course, an expert on such matters [! – Ed] [I was being facetious – Billy] [I would say not for the first time, I think for you ‘face time’ is short for ‘facetious time’ – Ed]. Or they were probably just insensitive full stop. Or maybe it was because that horse was keen on oats (because of the ‘Quaker’ Oats brand) but it is still oatrocious.

Mind you religion can be, and usually is, in cahoots with the the military big time; you just have to look at the British Army 1970s chapel at the west side of St Anne’s Church of Ireland Cathedral in Belfast which has a massive Celtic cross on the outside, which to me is cultural appropriation (a British establishment institution purloining a venerable Irish religious symbol) as well as hideously inappropriate for any Christian building and inimical for anything to do with the founder of said religion.

And then there are the snails holding up developments at the Doonald’s Doonbeg golf course. Clare County Council has requested more information on how proposed developments at the site will affect the protected Vertigo Angustior (tiny) snail. Good to see that development does not trump nature in this case – and what have snails ever done to undermine democracy? Anyway, the development there hasn’t been all plain snailing. You could say it is going as a snail’s pace. However you might also conclude that the owner of said golf course, while never one to retreat into his shell, leaves trail that could be described as slimy anywhere he goes, even if there are issues about the provision of employment locally. My final point on this is that if accommodation pods were developed there at Doonbeg perhaps they could be called gastropods.

There’s gold in them there hills

Yes, there is. Gold in the Sperrins. But should it be mined by Dalradian? Gold has value mainly because it is considered valuable. It is a vanity metal. In the modern era it is basically not needed for promoting the wellbeing of people/humanity. It is a kind of currency that we can do without.

In the case of Dalradian, because of local opposition they introduced the narrative that they would not be using cyanide in extracting the gold locally. But my understanding is that they will simply use cyanide elsewhere – overseas, so it is just exporting the problem to some other place and community which may be much less able to ensure safety and accountability. And it is pathetic to allow mining on this basis, inflicting a terrible problem on people elsewhere.

The public enquiry on Dalradian’s mining will be in the autumn and is expected to run for a month or two and the North’s Department for Infrastructure will then receive a recommendation. As usual ‘the company’ promises lots of jobs – usually a lot more than materialise – during a twenty year existence. Local opposition focuses on slag heaps and pollution of air and water, as well as all the increased lorry traffic and general environmental issues including possible effects on farming and the possibilities for developing tourism. Save Our Sperrins group and others have been beavering away on the issue for years, see e.g. https://www.facebook.com/SaveOurSperrins and http://dontmineus.com/public-inquiry/ and you can also do a word search.

The language is not quite what I would use but the Saw Doctors put it pithily in talking about the possibility of gold mining in Co Mayo near Croagh Patrick:

“Do they think our greatest asset

Can be mined, dug up and sold?”

But to put my ore in I have come up with a few slogans. Spare the Sperrins! Gold diggers out! All that’s gold does not glitter! Our goal is no gold mining! A pox on toxic gold mining! Dalradian gulders about gold! Green meaning not mining! Head for the hills to head off gold mining! Dalradian mining would be all downhill! It’s ‘our’ countryside resource not ‘mine’! Gold mining makes you gilty! Insert your slogan here……

–

Well, that’s me for now. Summer is (meant to be) coming in which means in our neck of the woods that the rain is getting warmer, if April is usually the driest month in Ireland I hope the rain then is not a portent for the rest of the year. See you soon, Billy.

Billy King: Rites Again, 318

Billy King, Nonviolent News, ,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts

As I have proclaimed oft times before, April is on average the driest month in Ireland so, after some wet weather recently – including some wetting through on our bi-cyles – perhaps we can hope that the month lives up to its norm. But four seasons in a day is also an Irish reality. Anyway, that is the weather dealt with (obligatory in discussion in this land of ours) and so on with My Thoughts for the Month [I hope they are not wet through too – Ed].

Not out of arms’ way

The people of Gaza are, tragically, the recipients of the products of the arms trade. And profits for the arms companies are BOOMING, literally and figuratively, due to the war in Ukraine and uncertainty in the Middle East with the Israeli war on Gaza. The arms trade is many things including astronomically expensive, corrupt (news was coming in during the last month on British bribes for arms sales to Saudi Arabia, something which is not even the tip of the iceberg) and wasteful – money spent on arms is money that cannot go on human security and wellbeing.

Congratulations to the activists on Gaza and Palestine who have joined up the dots and organised protests at Thales in Castlereagh, Belfast, https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/53546068897/in/dateposted/ and Spirit AeroSystems in the docks area of Belfast. https://www.flickr.com/photos/innateireland/53602899095/in/dateposted/ There has also been an Irish Anti-War Movement meeting in Dublin on “The Gaza genocide and the arms trade”. The west has its bloody hands involved in the war in Gaza in a variety of ways.

In 2023 Irish ‘dual use’ exports (which can be used for military or civilian purposes) to Israel were worth €70 million, an exponential increase – how much of this was due to the Irish government’s promotion of dual use production is unclear – and, ahem, severely conflicts with Ireland standing up (or at least crouching up) for Palestine and against the obliteration of Gaza. The arms trade has consequences, something which Simon Coveney and company seem to have blatantly ignored.

Thales seems to have been going on a charm offensive, e.g. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/uk-world/production-at-weapons-plant-doubles-amid-war-in-ukraine/a933017996.html and

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/26/im-not-profiting-from-misery-im-averting-more-thaless-uk-boss-on-making-missiles-for-ukraine?CMP=share_btn_url Of course what Thales is not so keen to state is that they were supplying parts for Russian tanks and planes until a western embargo in 2014 so they are probably still helping the Russian war effort, and they have worked closely with major Israeli arms company Elbit on drones, a key weapon used by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza. The bottom line for arms companies is profit.

We would of course dispute most of what Thales’ personnel have to say. Thales UK CEO proclaiming how good a deterrent ‘his’ weapons are is nonsense, we don’t know whether they have had any deterrent effect whatsoever, they certainly didn’t stop war in Ukraine. Thales’ Belfast weaponry includes Starstreak, Lightweight Multi-role Missile (LMM) systems as well as assembly of NLAWs (a kind of bazooka if you want to know). The Guardian reports that “Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February 2022, the group’s shares have gained more than 80%, its value has swelled to €33bn and its order book has reached a record high, at €45bn.” It’s definitely an ill wind.

The Thales CEO is also quoted as saying “It’s a peculiarly British thing that we uphold our armed forces, but simultaneously despise the industry that produces things that will protect them or make them more effective.” No it’s not and that is a militarist assumption. But in any case challenging militarism means challenging all aspects of it.

Thales Belfast production has doubled since before the 2022 Ukraine and yer man says it will double again (the UK sent lots of weaponry to Ukraine and are also restocking themselves). He also said that the Belfast plant was “its best kept secret” during the Troubles in the North; no it wasn’t, not to peace activists anyway, it was always the biggest bomb factory in Belfast. Why kill a few people in Northern Ireland when you can kill far more abroad?

Wheely good, a spokesperson said……

A survey of five metropolitan areas in the Republic https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/climate-crisis/2024/03/05/walking-and-cycling-take-680000-cars-off-road-daily-in-states-five-largest-cities/ could be considered relatively optimistic for self-propelled travel, cycling, walking and so on. This study estimates a saving of some 160,00 tonnes of greenhouse gases. For more info see also https://www.nationaltransport.ie/planning-and-investment/transport-investment/active-travel-investment-programme/walking-and-cycling-index/

This survey showed walking, cycling and wheeling (using wheeled mobility aids such as wheelchairs or strollers) took 680k cars off the road in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Shannon-Limerick and Waterford. While a modest 15% of people cycle weekly, one in two residents want to do more cycling or walking. More than half of people in these areas walk five days a week or more. And there is a high level of support for increased government funding on cycling and walking – much higher than support for increased spending on motoring.

The fact that more men cycle than women probably has a number of reasons, one perhaps being being the higher involvement of women in childcare (though modern cycle options can include a variety of child seats and attachments) but also gender-based safety issues. The way to get more people cycling is of course to provide more dedicated and safe cycling routes – and the more people out and about on bikes, the more others will want to do it too. Dividing cycling lanes from pedestrians is also essential, not least to avoid recrimination between those who are self-propelled and should be allies.

While some Irish cities are hilly in places – Cork and Derry come to mind – the advent of ebikes can also help to make for a more level playing field, so to speak, though I much prefer the plain old push bike for normal usage.

Ireland, North and Republic, has a long road to travel to make cycling the default option for short distance travel, and much more of an option for medium or longer distances. But this has to be achievable both for ecological and health reasons, and through providing safe spaces to cycle. It has recently come to light that serious accidents to cyclists are far higher than Garda figures indicate, particularly for children (by a factor of six). Scary.

Nevertheless two wheels good….. https://innatenonviolence.org/wp/posters/ and go to “Cycling……[CW]”

Not a wind up

It is amazing how we can set challenges to ourselves to do this or that, achieve that or this, fulfil some sort of bucket or non-bucket list. I was engaging in the unfashionable task of looking through the CDs in my favourite Oxfam shop when I stumbled across an audio box set of Haruki Murakami’s “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles”, still unused and sealed, for £2. CDs are, if course, not zeitgeisty now, call me old fashioned [Yes….. – Ed] but I like them and, as with vinyl, they will return to be fashionable at some stage (unspecified).

26 hours of audio, the box proclaimed, in 21 CDs. I’m not sure where it came from within me but I immediately pronounced to the the person on the till right beside the CDs, and the shop manager who was nearby, that I accepted the challenge (….actually set by me) to listen to the whole thing. 26 miles is the length of a marathon. There are 26 counties in the Republic. There are only 24 hours in a whole day. But 26 hours of listening? What was I thinking, and I knew nothing about the book.

Well, well, well, I won’t divulge the most dramatic happenings to the main protagonist Toru Okada in the book and this is not a review as such. Spoiler alert, early on in the book my companion in listening thought it was unsurprising that Toru’s wife left him, so passive was he to things that happened to him (at that stage). But things change and get more mystical and fantastical.

It is not a humorous book as such, and there are passages depicting extreme violence, but I did laugh out loud at some of Murakami’s descriptions (the English translation is excellent, done by the author himself, and the reading by Rupert Degas likewise). The situations described range from the mundane to the truly bizarre and mystical. I don’t think “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles” is intended as a wind up, to use an English language idiom (and different sense of the term), but it can certainly feel like that at times.

But to return to challenges. We all benefit from setting challenges, whether it is some kind of bucket list or one off tasks or goals which we set ourselves to achieve. This applies in the socio-political realm as much as in our ordinary lives. If we don’t continually push ourselves to try and do new things and explore new horizons (by horizons I mean ‘at home’ and not as a tourist where, as the saying goes, it is possible that ‘travel broadens the arse’) then we can stultify in our routines. I am a creature of routine, I enjoy the routine, so I am talking primarily to myself here.

However next time I see a 26 hour audio book for sale in a charity shop I might just leave it on the shelf. I have done that particular challenge.

–

That’s me for now. May Day, May Day or thereabouts will see the next instalment in my perverse [oh, are you going to take to poetry? – Ed] take on the universe [more poetry? – Ed], until then, Billy.

PS in reply to the Ed, above, it may not be known that I am an accomplished poet, in fact I wrote an epic poem years ago having seen the poet Padraic Fiacc (he died in 2019) in my local supermarket. My poem includes the memorable lines:

I saw a poet shopping in Dunnes

I presume for bread, and not for puns.

Meanwhile I await my No Bells Prize for Litterature (sic).

However, I admit I cannot write as profound and sublime poetry as deceased Irish citizen Spike Milligan who penned the immortal lines:

Said the general of the army

‘I think that war is barmy’,

So he threw away his gun,

Now he’s having much more fun.