Oh for a Gannet's-eye View!

I love the sharpness of a gannet’s eyes, as they fly so gracefully over the waves. They don’t miss much, they are not deceived as they patrol with their wonderful air of detachment. They might or might not cast a disdainful eye down on my boateen as they soar past.

Winging their way past Cape St Vincent, for example, they of course know just when it is time to head east, but one will not detect the least glance at the land. The land! It is just and only that, whatever name we may choose to put on this or that chunk of it. Cast a cold eye on life, on death! - the poet Yeat’s epitaph seems to sum up their attitude as well.

It’s all very fine when you’re dead though! We all have our lives to lead. Would that we could suss out the truth of things that affect us with the gannet’s ease! There seems to be some sort of crescendo of confusion in the world, which pulls at our minds more and more. ‘Truth?’ said Dave here in Guadianaland; ‘I’ve given up on it!’ Indeed, if it’s peace of mind you want, this sometimes seems the only thing to do; it certainly is a proposition that appeals to most of us in times like these. There's a lot to be said for simply letting the horsemen pass by! Especially the ones like this Duckie!

In theory, I consider it an unacceptable and lazy cop out, but I realised with renewed force the other day that I am guilty of it myself. The occasion was a casual encounter with a fellow Irishman at Faro. Canice and I met him at the bus stop and we decided to take a taxi together to the station, then we had time for a coffee together. He had spent 30 years in the States and was a clued up, sane kind of a man. Somehow 9/11 came up and he professed his opinion that the official story was a white-wash. Now of course I’ve heard this before and even looked at some of the web-sites; but I’ve never actually bothered to screw myself up to seriously considering their truth. Well, says your man, take another look at them so!

How about this:-

Scientific Panel Investigating Nine-Eleven  Association Statement: "We have found solid scientific grounds on which to question the interpretation put upon the events of September 11, 2001 by the Office of the President of the United States of America and subsequently propagated by the major media of western nations."*

Or this:- Twenty-five U.S. Military Officers Challenge Official Account of 9/11 1/14/08:

• “September 11, 2001 seems destined to be the  watershed event of our lives and the greatest test for our democracy in our lifetimes.  The evidence of government complicity in the lead-up to the events, the failure to respond during the event, and the  astounding lack of any meaningful investigation afterwards, as well as the ignoring of evidence turned up by others that renders the official explanation impossible, may signal the end of the American experiment.  It has been used to justify all manners of measures to legalize repression at home and as a pretext for behaving as an aggressive empire abroad.  Until we demand an independent, honest, and thorough investigation and accountability for those whose action and inaction led to those events and the cover-up, our republic and our Constitution remain in the gravest danger.”**

Well ok, anyway havn't we all seen the video of the third building collapsing straight down on itself; and bought the story that it was just collateral damage? How could we have possibly done so? Then there is more, much more…. And then the next thing, President Kennedy’s assassination! Just a lone nutter?

I remember clearly the moment I heard about it, as a teenager waiting to buy some chocolate in the tuck shop at school. Well we’ve all heard long since how the CIA or some such seemed to be involved. Now take a look at the evidence that President Johnson himself was in it…. So that’s my active life gone by without facing what is at the very least a strong possibility. How would things have been different if this had come out at the time? Apparently there was a big story calling out LBJ on other bad stuff ready to roll on the Time/Life presses at the time, which was pulled when he suddenly became president.*** But why should we be surprised at it all, we who have read our Shakespeare and a bit of history? I suppose we just kidded ourselves that somehow things were different in our modern democratic age!

Which brings us to now, and Mr Tim Cook, the boss of Apple, calling in the Daily Telegraph:- ‘for governments to launch a public information campaign to fight the scourge of fake news, which is “killing people’s minds.”

‘In an impassioned plea, Mr Cook, boss of the world’s largest company, says that the epidemic of false reports “is a big problem in a lot of the world” and necessitates a crackdown by the authorities and technology firms.

‘He said that this crackdown would help providers of quality journalism and help drive out clickbait. “The outcome of that is that truthful, reliable, non-sensational, deep news outlets will win,” Mr Cook said.’       
-Daily Telegraph, 10/2/17.

Yea right! Mr Cook, you just don’t get it! I doubt if there is anything as sensational as unvarnished truth! (Why, a small outbreak of it is currently set to bring down the Irish Government. Thank God it can happen in our wee country!) A crackdown by the authorities and technology firms, in order that we may have truthful, reliable, non-sensational, deep news !!! I find this statement as alarming as any of the many alarming statements that have come out recently. I'm sure our Duckie would love it. If that is to come about, we have but a short window of opportunity to insist that the potential of the internet to facilitate freedom of thought is not stifled.

Meanwhile, we have the said Duckie confusing the issue even more, even as he calls the mainline news providers liars. No doubt there's truth in that, but is it the way he means it? It seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black, if ever there was one. Yet he is capable of coming up with the odd little flash of truth, as in the well-known exchange on Fox News:-

O’Reilly: “He’s a killer, though…Putin’s a killer.”

Trump: “We got a lot of killers. What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

There is indeed need to drain the swamp, but it is very hard to believe that this Duckie is the man to do it. Meanwhile the USA appears to be about to sink further into it. The present situation actually makes Europe look like a bastion of sanity. How very sad, for anyone like me who is fond of England, that they should choose such a moment to go taking the wrong way! Looking at things strategically, who in their right mind would want their country to turn in the American direction, rather than the European, at this particular moment in history? Can anyone possibly get it into those thick Tory heads that it might be wise to put off invoking that famous article 50 at least for another while? Could they not cite 'circumstances of exceptional peril' or something like that? After all, things have moved on since the famous referendum!

And what can we do? Pace our Luke, who was making snotty noises about 'cyber-warriors' the other day, I think it is useful to engage on the internet. The Russians certainly seem to think so, because even this little blog suddenly had a score of hits out of the blue from them, when I said something about their president. Very likely only mechanical hits, but it still goes to show the extent of their engagement!

Meanwhile, perhaps the best we can do is to get rid of censorship in our own minds, as we keep quietly and courageously striving to get a handle on what's happening in the world around us. At least we won't be bored, as we try to build up our little communities of truth and solidarity!

Here is some food for thought, courtesy of Fergal whom we met at Faro and who suggested a few good 'alternative' news sites:-

Meanwhile some of the Gannet's distant relatives are
preparing for Spring in VRSA!

http://patriotsquestion911.com/
http://www.tomdispatch.com
https://consortiumnews.com/
http://truthdig.com/
http://theintercept.com/
http://spartacus-educational.com/

*http://www.physics911.net/
**http://www.opednews.com   

***http://spartacus-educational.com/USAjohnsonLB.htm

Eh Duckie, Hang On!

Stormy weather in Horseshoe Bay.

The Donald...Duck...Dux...Il Duce...Duckie (pronounced with a long u, the way I used to be addressed as a young lad on the buses in Nottingham!):- Fiona and I are still trying to decide what to call the new incumbent of the White House. After all it’s presidentially infradig to use the name blazoned on the baseball caps, carpet slippers and just about everything else in Trumpland! We seem to be settling for Duckie. 'America first, quack quack!'

He certainly is proving a Godsend to the newspapers that he purports to despise; never a dull moment so far! And he certainly has a knack of putting everyone on the spot! Here am I, a conservative liberal rebel just back from ‘metrosexual’ London, having I hope adequately spelled out my opposition to Brexit, nationalism, isolationism, chauvinism, narcissism etc, but who nonetheless has to admit that this Duckie fellow does have just a few points going for him that the liberals cannot get.

It’s undeniable that his cavalier attitude to facts and his vanity are appalling, and these are bound to result in incoherent and dangerous policies. However there he is with whatever it takes to throw political correctness to the winds, and with it some of what might be termed the foundational lies of the post-truth age. I refer to old chestnuts like calling the deliberate destruction of a human life a ‘right’, or a relationship of two persons of the same sex a ‘marriage’.

Likewise I realise better than most that the Brexiteers are challenging the European establishment to face up to many issues that they seem to have thought they could safely ignore. I have witnessed the systematic destruction of the hopes of Irish fishing communities, for instance, which occurred primarily on the watch of the Common Fisheries Policy, although the national government was not shaping to do any better before it. Looking through the American prism helps us to see that this is just one little piece in the failure of neo-liberal market capitalism, which has left too many people out of the technological wonderland that it promotes. The whole creaking system of bureaucracy meanwhile gobbles up public money more for its own survival, it sometimes seems, than for whatever good it may or may not do.

While I can sympathise with the Brexiteers and Trumpites thus far, I completely disagree that we will solve these problems by going back to nationalism, that has failed so catastrophically in the past. Anyway, I cannot get away from the suspicion that their so-called ideals are more of a cover for the shady corporate interests that tend to dominate the modern world than anything else, while the national governments tend to be more accessible to graft than the EU. I recall brown envelopes for politicians being even a help in securing fishing licences! Also, contrary to the impression generated in sections of the British press, it is obvious that there are all sorts of efficiencies to be gained by combining the work of 28 separate governments.

I may have spent my life trying to find an effective alternative to neo-liberal market capitalism, but I do not claim to have one. However, I have some firm convictions as to how to set about developing one, while I'm quite certain Trumpites and Brexiteers will not do so, with their dreadful divisive ‘cowboys and indians’ approach, their 'might is right' attitude and the everlasting glamorisation of wealth.

One good place to start along the path to a real alternative is with the recognition that we are all, I mean the entire human race, in this together, and the reckless pursuit of our own interests or supreme prioritising of our own security will be counter-productive. There is no real way forward but by listening to ‘the other’, in humility; by striving for consensus, being ‘slow to claim one’s rights’, endlessly patient. A reverence for truth and physical reality will go a long way to help as well, and steering clear of bogus notions like ‘the will of the people’.

Western democracy only became possible when mankind began to admit that the only will capable of uniting human beings in freedom and integrity is that of God.  While we Christians pray that this will of God be done on earth, we also know this to be a work in process beyond any secular set-up. But surely one does not need to be a Christian to realise that life is infinitely more grand, complex, interesting, mysterious and exciting than any human ideology or set-up can do justice to!  

Democracy allows people to have their own wills and respond in their own way, and when anyone who disagrees with the current dispensation are told that they are ‘traitors’, well then we should have learnt by now that we are being short-changed and on the road to tyranny. The institutions of democracy have indeed to do their best in the circumstances of the day, making messy compromises if necessary so that vital common action may be undertaken; but meanwhile Lady Truth herself is rather more likely to be found among the poor and in those whose minds are not distorted and clouded by the pursuit or enjoyment of power! Any real democracy must learn to hear their voices, though if the wheel turns and they do come to power, well she will probably swing around to the other side!

By the way, if such considerations as these don’t

Back to work.

convince you that nobody has any business trying to close down the Brexit debate on account of that referendum, nor Mr Kenneth Clarke's eloquent words in the House of Commons, how about this:-

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/10/24/brexit-is-not-the-will-of-the-british-people-it-never-has-been/ ?

Thank God we decided to rear our family here in Ireland, but it’s a pity that Irish opinion has not been taken into account although we are bound to be profoundly affected by the outcome. I can only hope we will find the strength to contribute to a European Union that will hopefully become much more proactive and dynamic without the constraints imposed by the everlasting imperial nostalgia of too many of our neighbours on the bigger island.

As for the Brexiteers palling up with Duckie, all I can say is Good Luck, and I sincerely hope they will be able to put some manners on him! But unless most of what we have been taught about economics for the last fifty years is rubbish, he will provoke an economic disaster. Then it will be time to find someone to blame, and I’m not sure the Arabs or even the Chinese will altogether do for that. One has to remember that these dudes in Washington got their education from Hollywood. It is extremely disquieting and ominous that they are already lining up a dodgy narrative about Germany.* But I even heard a perfectly intelligent person in England, who voted for Brexit, blaming Germany for it. Oh...My...God!

*https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/31/trump-trade-adviser-germany-euro-us-eu-peter-navarro

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-31/euro-surges-after-trump-trade-advisor-accuses-germany-using-grossly-undervalued-currency