Face to Face with Edom?

 

Who will bring me face to face with Edom? (Psalm 107)

We are told that the bulk of the Russian population still supports President Putin. Most of us have little difficulty in perceiving that they are either the dupes, or at least merely the victims, of a massive edifice of lies. When it comes to confronting the injustices perpetrated in the name of those lies, things get more complicated, but the consensus is that it has to be done with missiles, drones, tanks, jets etc. 'Who will lead me to conquer the fortress?'

    The people who founded our modern Republic of Ireland had somewhat different ideas. They were not impressed by the slaughter of young men in France, in the name of what? They were suspicious of that cause, allegedly the freedom of small nations, but which looked to them more like a simple clash of empires. Still, they went on to establish a small nation on Catholic principles, which the modern Irish establishment however has been doing its best to row back on since I came to live here in 1973. They evidently have other fish to fry! One of the last of these principles to survive, in theory at least, is the cherished tradition of Irish neutrality.

    The British shot the leaders of the Uprising, and hung onto six counties, but let's say that an element of decency, and the pressure of the Americans, caused them to tolerate this independence and the neutrality that went with it, even through the Second World War. It is however about to be tested again. The question arises, does Ireland not care if Europe is overcome by tyranny? Or supposing China invades Taiwan, is it anything to us? Supposing the world succumbs to a third world war, an existential conflict pitting the democracies against China, Russia and a few hangers-on, like Iran and North Korea, will we be able to sit it out securely on our little island, keeping ourselves aloof? 

    We could have our work cut out, even keeping our own infrastructure secure, and other nations certainly would have a big interest in what's going on on the sea-bed around here, not to mention Shannon airport. If it comes down to actual self-defence, co-operation with our neighbours would be vital. Is it possible to sustain a distinction between that and joining NATO? In the big scheme of things, might there be a better contribution we could make, rather than a handful of jets etc? If so, what is it?

    The truth is, it's not just the Russians and the Chinese that are stuck with big lies; and it is lies that cause the warfare, for they invariably conflict and are very stubborn. It is for instance just about unthinkable that Putin should abandon his lies and admit he made a colossal mistake in invading Ukraine. He lives or dies in his lies, but then again he will probably only be confirmed in it if the West mounts a crusade to bring him down. Wars occur when instead of confronting the lies within, which is so very difficult, we find an enemy to project falsehood onto and we band together to fight them. This unites our tattered societies, gives us a cause and a reason for living.

    Where this confrontation with Russia and China will end, we do not know. I do not for a moment want their version of human society to prevail, but I think Ireland has potentially a far greater contribution for the cause of freedom if it remains neutral. I hear it said that there never was any civilisation that was not based on some kind of an empire,- and they take many guises these days. 

    It will indeed be interesting to see how modern Ireland fares, if we lose those billions that come from Big Pharma. Nonetheless, we should simply opt out of the attempt to reduce human life to competitions for power. We may be poorer, but not in the long run. We must dust ourselves down from our recent bad trip, and stand for the one and only empire that counts, based not on the sword but the Cross of Jesus. 

    This involves helping everyone to escape from their lies and the power systems that they support,- but the place to start is with our own lies. It happens that just now, the Irish establishment is in a panic about President Trump's threat to our share of the Big Pharma cake. 'Things will never be the same again' was according to RTE 'the Taoiseach's unnerving message',- not of course because of any questions about Big Pharma's motivation, past record, criminal convictions or approach to health,- oh no!

    To even ask such questions is widely regarded as an unpatriotic nono in Ireland today. We who refused the covid vaccines, and have been questioning them since they were foisted on the whole 'free world', find ourselves in a kind of alternative reality, subject to the same kind of social repression, in a more subtle form, as those in Russia who question Putin's narrative. But what was the self-destructive madness that swept the 'free world' with covid?

    Where does the politically correct covid conformity come from, begin and end? If we don't want it to end very badly, let us all start by listening to each other,- not to mention to ourselves,- but it's an uphill task. It seems one is not even supposed to  mention death anymore, let alone investigate excess mortality. Have you noticed, the correct crowd now refer to 'passing' instead of dying? Let us not shy away from confronting our own lies, along with our own mortality, and getting 'face to face with Edom'! 

    Allelujia, it's making a lovely Spring here in Ireland! I must get out into the garden, and am intending to concentrate on the Anna M, after Easter.

Ailsa Craig, as we returned from a wee visit to Scotland

Frozen at a Crossroads of History

Just occasionally, we find ourselves at an historical crossroads of such moment that we may feel overwhelmed by it. Even our familial and day-to-day relationships can become paralysed; there is no escape unless one is very adept indeed at burying one's head in the sand! So let me attempt to summarise some of these polarized perspectives:-

Scenario a):- President Putin is an evil dictator, and if he is not emphatically defeated he will go on to threaten at least the Baltic States, Moldova, probably Poland and the whole of the old Soviet Empire. Tyrants everywhere will be emboldened, especially Chi in China who will take Taiwan. Even President Trump himself will achieve his dream of becoming a dictator. The rule of law and all moral principles in international relations will be irreparably damaged. The West must stand up to tyranny just as it did in WW2. We must get behind President Zelensky and enable him to win. 

Scenario b):- Putin may be a dictator and Russia corrupt, but there is some doubt as to whether things are so very much better in Ukraine. Instead of embarking on a quixotic campaign, we need to be realistic and pragmatic about the facts of power  politics. It is the height of folly to risk the mother of all forever wars, possibly ending in nuclear armageddon. We also need to take the beam out of our own eyes before trying to get the splinter out of our neighbour's. There will be time enough to build the great new world order if people can only be stopped from blowing each other to bits. Trump may be a bit rough, but at least he is focussed on stopping the killing and not toboganning into unsustainable debt....

Let us, for once and for all, try the Gospel trick mentioned above. The war in Ukraine is by no means a simple matter of Russian aggression. Professor Jeffrey Sachs in his address to the European parliament spelt it out much more authoritively than I could. However getting our head around the big picture, in which that part of the world has been fought over since time immemorial, is frankly beyond most of us. What is clearly unacceptable is to go on fighting over it, especially with modern technology. Trusting that peace will allow us to improve our relationship with neighbours is infinitely preferable to destroying our country by fighting over it. This is a truth that we in Ireland should have learned the hard way! 

Instead of indulging the widespread russophobia, we need to renew our efforts to understand and appreciate Russia. There are the great works of literature to revisit. There is the obvious and simple truth that European prosperity and security requires us to live in peace together with our big neighbour to the East.

Let us also accept that it is long passed time to recognise that Western, aka American, policy needs a radical overhaul, to say the least. Must we everlastingly remind ourselves of the litany of disaster,- Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan, Libya, Syria, Gaza etc? We may take comfort in the heroic stand against Hitler; we remember with gratitude the role of America then, but let us remind ourselves also of the massive part played by Russia. When we are told that Putin is not to be trusted and it is a waste of time talking to him, let us remind ourselves of the role played by one Joseph Stalin. I daresay the British were not too nice to address him with diplomatic courtesies when it suited them, but I fear that people whose whole worldview is shaped by nostalgia for those heroic times, when 'Britain stood alone against tyranny', are apt to forget this.

Whether one may be peering through murk to take the bearings of some established marks, or using a machine that takes the bearings of satellites, the more cross-bearings, the better.  One may wonder why it is that a person's orientation with regard to the above bears a strong relationship to their attitude to a few other big issues, unrelated as they may appear to be, such as covid and climate change. In the case of covid, the situation is still evolving fast; much that used to be 'disinformation' has been quietly shelved, but let us consider the official narrative from start to finish:-

Scenario a) - The virus was a spill-over from nature. The vaccines were a triumph of technology that saved countless lives, and not alone protected the recipient, but prevented the disease from being passed on. The lockdowns were nonetheless essential for nearly two years, and together with the vaccines eventually defeated the virus. The chatter about vaccine harm is largely disinformation.

Scenario b) -'The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream lead by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media and international agencies.' - Russell L. Blaylock in February, 2022. Anyone who still believes those lies no longer has much excuse for doing so, thanks to the 'disinformation' provided by a courageous minority of scientists and doctors on the internet - for which let us thank God. Here is just one recent example. 

What a long way we have come since I wrote 'Sorry Doc, I won't be taking the Vaccination' on this blog back in January '21! How innocent I was! I had no idea how horrific the extent of the deception was, and how I would be gradually forced to recognize that there is a World Economic Forum and World Health Organisation cabal out there, including people like Gates and Fauci, who managed to subborn all the so-called democratic governments. Furthermore, they mean what they say about reducing the world's population, in the grand Rockerfella tradition of eugenics. 

Actually they have made no secret of their intentions. Pandemics and wars mean nothing to such people,- ordinary humanity can suffer and die, while they adeptly make money every way. If there is war, they make money out of arms while getting rid of plenty of people; if there is peace, they are capable of orchestrating a fake pandemic with a remedy that kills far more people than the disease. The same crowd are making vast fortunes while driving the masses into poverty, and meanwhile are busy buying up farmland and making people eat their extremely dodgy food.

A particularly disturbing aspect of it all is the way it is bound up with the narrative of climate change, as in Gates' Ted Talk in which he made the curious boast about 'using vaccines to reduce the world population'. That we have a severe problem of pollution and bio-diversity loss is undeniable, but the proposition that addressing it is mainly a matter of radically reducing the world's population, or even of attempting to reduce emissions to net zero, is highly questionable to say the least. Unless one considers that one's own folks are exempt from the cull, or one is just deep into nihilism, such a proposition will only alienate one from the tasks in hand.

In short, scenario a) tends, whatever the grand intentions, to actually mean death, ill health, dreadful food, ugliness, environmental degradation, extreme individualisation coupled with totalitarian control, polarisation, the collapse of families and general misery.

Scenario b) offers life, health and well-being, real organic food, beauty, sustainability, harmony with thriving nature, reconciliation, community life, freedom, family and fun all round.

'I set before you life and death, saith the Lord. Choose life!' (Deuteronomy 30:19)

It comes down to a choice between the idolatrous worship of technology and power, or the love of one's neighbour and of God,- an exercise that, indeed and alas, is by no means free of cost!

                          

Of Emperors and Fishes.

I have just responded to the request for input to the upcoming review of the CFP (Common Fisheries Policy). This may seem to be an esoteric matter, but hang in, dear reader, and you may see it as archetypal, and of very immediate relevence to our more general concerns. Besides having a very real impact on the lives of small coastal communities such as my own, it sheds light on our day to day struggle to keep our lives together, and other ways in which the overall politics of today affect our lives.

    I realise that even if some minion in the Commission actually gets around to reading it, and even if that minion broadly accepts the truth of it, one can just imagine him saying to himself 'Hum, he may be right, but pushing that kind of stuff up the line is not going to get anywhere'! Yet, especially in times like these, I believe that everyone who can raise their heads above day-to-day tribulations and trivialities must do so, and then try to make the results of their experience heard. Here are the comments which I submitted:-

CFP Review

While I retired as a full-time fishing skipper in 1998, I have remained in close contact with Irish west coast fishing communities, through having lived in three of them. I continue to do so, through the fact that I have a son still actively engaged as a commercial fishing skipper, along with a more general involvement with matters of the Gannets' Way and sailing.

    It was already obvious towards the end of the 20th century that the fishing industry had serious problems, stemming in part from the same kind of factors that have brought about the general biodiversity crisis, and especially from the brake-neck pace of technological development, particularly in the context of hungry capital anxious to facilitate and promote it in the name of Profit and Progress. Evidently our sense of self-restraint and communal responsibility was failing to keep up. In spite of many fine intentions about conservation and subsidiarity, instead of seeking out a different path, the EU responded in the only way it apparently knew how, with an elaborate system of Command and Control, quite beyond the mind-set of an artisanal fisher.

    The results are clear and are not good. All around the coast, the fishing communities are in a state of decline and demoralisation. Ownership of fishing vessels has become only accessible to big companies or the very well-off; and they need the resources to conduct lawfare, because it is frequently impossible to make a living within the law! Our seafood restaurants now mainly get their fish from many miles away, and it is very expensive, despite the fact that here on the Loop Head peninsula for example we are nearly surrounded by the sea. There are precious few young fishermen hereabouts; they have gone away while some have sadly even taken their own lives. The navy and other maritime industries will not find the young recruits that they used to from these communities.

    There are other paths open to us. Somehow a sense of fun and adventure needs to be rediscovered. ‘Small is Beautiful’ and intermediate technologies may be revisited. Here at Gannetsway Marine Services, we want to develop a sail/electric fishing vessel for fishing with hooks or traps, with the propeller charging the batteries when under sail. Every small port around the coast could support a fleet of such craft. The concept of the skipper/owner, which as of now has all but died out, could be resurrected. Fishermen would no longer need to work to pay for diesel fuel for up to half their time, nor would they need to worry about the notions of distant bureaucrats telling them to stop catching this or that species all of a sudden, while tons of good fish get thrown away dead.

    Conservation measures need to reconnect with the fishers, but any real responsibility depends on a sense of ownership. Subsidiarity is a vital principle for any solidarity, yet it has been mainly honoured with neglect. All this is of course part of a wider malaise. As a supporter of the European project, I consider that real solutions need to come as part of a massive change of attitude; otherwise the EU will not survive the erosion, not to say collapse, of its popular support, which is already occurring. Let us hope that this CFP review may be part of a genuine change of heart and of direction. If it is not, it is very doubtful if there will be another chance!

*****

    

    The CFP for sure has failed to deliver good results for Irish fishermen, yet when one comes to consider what they have been doing wrong, and might do better, one has a problem with recommending alternatives other than pulling out. I have to conlude that a better future can only come from a radical paradigm shift,- a change of attitude and approach which is not perhaps so very far apart from that which we are 

witnessing in the USA lately. 

    Let it be remembered that the CFP, like the EU itself, was full of the grandest intentions. I now have considerable difficulty in defending both the one and the other to many, probably most, of the people I meet from day to day. I suspect it would now be the same on the ground in most of the member states, especially in the heartlands of France and Germany, and we have already witnessed Brexit. J.D.Vance was spot on in Munich the other day when he recommended that Europe had better figure out what it really stands for, if it wants to prevail in the forthcoming struggles.

    Can there even be some sense to President Trump's statements about Gaza and Ukraine, let alone relevence to the future of the CFP, and what can Europeans possibly have to glean from them? We are in a weird situation, likened by a wise Spaniard, whom I came across online, to a new variant of The Emperor's New Clothes, in which it is the Emperor himself who is saying,- Can't you see that I'm naked?

    Here in Ireland, the bien pensants, the right-thinking people, are busy wringing their hands, and sadly will probably be among the last to get the message.  Some working people who do after all remain in contact with reality, will remember that if Ireland has one valuable role, it is to act as a bridge between the two sides of the Atlantic. Yet we Irish, who pride ourselves on our ability to relate to other people and to handle big-wigs to boot, know only too well how to keep our mouths shut. 'Say nothing!' may after all be better than 'Tell 'em plenty lies!'

    Today the largest political party in Ireland, Sinn Fein, is going to boycott Washington DC on St Patrick's Day,-  but whatever one thinks of President Trump's habit of making somewhat wild, provocative and over-the-top statements, surely this kind of folly in the grand cause of virtue signalling is hardly sensible either? I recall that in covid times, not content with urging measures to 'ensure maximal access and vaccine uptake', Sinn Fein actually wanted to prolong the lock-down, when at last our Government was bringing it to an end.

    Mention of covid brings me to a matter that is rather more germane to the current crisis of meaning than the CFP, even for myself. We observe how this crisis divides not just America, nor just Europe from America, nor just so many families and communities, but even one Donald J. Trump himself, who in his last presidency boasted about Operation Warp Speed getting out ill-tested vaccines so fast, and in his current presidency appointed Bobby Kennedy as his health czar.  Just tacking with the wind, or a genuine change of heart and policy, Mr President? If so, the world deserves an explanation and an apology! But even Pope Francis flunked his prophetic role, when he urged us all to get the shots. I would humbly suggest that an apology would be good for himself and the whole world, before he goes to meet his Maker! 

    We are in a weird situation, likened by a wise Spaniard whom I came across online, to a new variant of The Emperor's New Clothes, in which it is the Emperor himself who is saying,- Can't you see that I'm naked? But precisely who or what is this naked Emperor? How may we identify and characterise him? We must take care not to be projecting stereotypes onto anyone, but I cannot think of any civilisation without some kind of emperor; we also need a pope who is ready to defy him!

    In this little blog, I can only offer a few suggestions. Firstly, as indications of the old naked emperor's presence, we can look wherever someone is resorting to demonising, cancelling, locking-up, murdering or otherwise attempting to do away with their enemies, other than by engaging with them and seeing if indeed there is any chance of appreciating each other's vestments, or perhaps one might say, respecting each other's investments? But what then happens, when they only seem to do harm, when for instance these investments are in arms, of either the explosive or injected varieties? What happens when the people find that the fruits of them are bitter or downright poisonous? Where do we turn for a more befitting emperor and a more effective pope? Well, a spot of retrospection all round might help! -

                  

Salamanca cathedral.

    

Let the heavens rejoice and earth be glad,    

    let the sea and all within it thunder praise,

let the land and all it bears rejoice,

    all the trees of the wood shout for joy

at the presence of the Lord for he comes, 

    he comes to rule the earth.

With justice he will rule the world,

    he will judge the peoples with his truth.

- Psalm 95.

    

The Turn of the Tide?

The River Rother at Rye Harbour in East Sussex dries out at low tide, so that one could wade across it. My father used to keep his boat tied up to the Admiralty Jetty, a long wooden structure that had been constructed  during WW2 to accomodate air/sea rescue vessels, since there was much action in the Channel off Rye, where a lot of pilots were shot down in the dog-fights of the Battle of Britain. Such memories were still very fresh in those years of the 1950s. Anyway his boat and those of the little community of sailors there used to dry out leaning against the piles of this structure, and only float for about three hours either side of high water.

    It's easy to imagine how the whole atmosphere of the place changed with the rhythm of the tides. Unfortunately the fishing boats from Rye, another couple of miles up the river, were inclined to belt up against the ebb at the last minute possible, just when those wooden sailing boats were taking the rather firm bottom. That ebb was at its strongest, probably around four or five knots,- the fishing boats would make a big wash, which frequently lifted the sailing boats off the bottom and thumped them down on it again. The yachtsmen would curse and the fishermen would not take a blind bit of notice. Class warfare, you might call it.

    It's not easy for toilers on the sea to respect those who go there for pleasure, and especially those who merely play at it, but just occasionally the fellowship of the sea and mutual respect prevails over such little problems. Fishermen may sometimes find it in their hearts to recognise that toilers in offices have their problems too, that they too are necessary, and might possibly do their jobs a lot better if they retain grounding in physical realities such as especially the sea. I reckon that our politicians and civil servants would do a much better job if they spent more time with Nature and less chasing their tails, trying to please everyone and for the most part failing to do so! 

    I'm somewhat fascinated to watch where the Trumpian change in the political tide will take us. I would be happier if he went sailing rather than playing golf, yet I could not but admire his fighting spirit! I tried my hand at the political game briefly, after I gave up fishing. The experience brought home to me how 'fighting the tide' is to be avoided if possible, despite the necessity of keeping faith when the tide is out, preparing for the next flood. We should beware of those trying to force their way against the ebb, who may lift you for a moment and then dump you on the bottom again, shivering those timbers! 

    I am disgusted to see Palestinian representatives who fail to condemn the October 7th attack, continuing to attack Israel while playing the victim tune for all its worth. How on earth did they expect the Israelis to react,- which is not to condone what they have done either! Jesus surely had the only answer, which is to love our enemies. Apparently impossible, but there really isn't anywhere else to turn!

    The eternal rhythms go on and on,- home and away, friend and enemy, day and night, summer and winter, calm and storm, health and sickness, wealth and poverty, strength and weakness, life and death, - mostly sadly out of sync. Indeed they can make a ghastly cacophony, pulling one this way and that; it is a life's work, and an extraordinary feat, to learn to embrace both sides, so that we can get them in sync and learn to dance to the cosmic beat. As good a place to start as any may be in a sailing boat that does not assume the power of beating that tide by force, but is content to work with it and use it, with humility. However one way or the other one does have to come to terms with contrary currents, even if this inevitably involves fighting them! 

    There's not much sign of a strong fair tide for the Anna M yet, still no sign of finance for the electric drive project, but nonetheless I hope to be in a position to sail her home to Ireland this year. Then either the Gannetsway Sailing Association and Marine Services will shape up, or I fear she will have to be sold. Meanwhile, however, perhaps you too might like to adopt the sobrequet 'Gannet', indicative of an attitude of encounter to all dancers on the waves of the 'Gannetsway'. We still have to clarify what this will involve, but it is significant for me of an attitude that, though based on the sea, transcends it,- of a cultural and spiritual dance that reconciles all those opposites. 

    Our photographer friend Nutan, with whom I sailed the West coast of Ireland making his photographic book about them, bestowed that sobrequet on our family long ago, though especially on our Luke, because of the way he pounced on food. They had a great time slagging each other off. Little did 'Swami Nutan' realise what fun I would have with it in due course! 

    To enable you, dear reader, to follow and perhaps participate in this effort, Dominic Peer and I are getting a podcast together. Here is the link:- https://www.youtube.com/@FollowtheGannetsway/videos

And here is the link for the talk in Kilkee:-

https://vimeo.com/1051930066/6566a46337?&login=true#_=_

Self with Dr Simon Berrow of the IWDG and John O'Mahony of Belco Marine electronics 
on stage in the Sweeney Library, Kilkee.

Layered Like an Onion

 

25 years ago at Carrigaholt

In the photo above the 'Anna M' is tied alongside my old fishing boat, the 'Whitebank', the ice plant indicates that some fish is being landed, thanks to Finbarr Murphy, recently deceased, God rest him. Ahead is Geoff & Sue Magee's (then) new dolphin-watching boat, the 'Driocht', and as well as the fishing boats there is a new sea-angling boat that I was involved with. I handed on the 'Whitebank' to our son Luke, but after a few years, he felt the fishing was getting too problematic and found easier ways to earn a crust, including his angling boat the 'Clare Dragoon', B&B and beef. 

    My own living, which principally was a matter of taking people dolphin-watching under sail, also involved various efforts like taking Nutan on a cruise to make a photographic book on the 'Islands of Ireland', and Tony Whelan to the Cape Verde Islands with the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group  to research and film breeding humpback whales. All these were exciting and fun, but did not exactly add up to a viable living,- too much of the '60s, not enough '80s, you may say. 

    I also engaged in various other somewhat fruitless activities, such as standing for the Christian Solidarity Party in a general election, and writing a novel that nobody wanted to publish. (I did get some copies of 'Wavedancing' printed myself, and will be giving them away at my forthcoming talk on Wednesday 15th January at 7.30pm in the Sweeney Library, Kilkee.)

    We ended up selling the lovely house we had built beside the sea near the castle, but we bought a cottage in a magical spot overlooking Horsehoe Bay on Sherkin Island in West Cork, where we were able to keep 'Anna M' moored in front of the house, doing sailing trips and B&B. We lived there very happily for 16 years, many of them with no car, and of course eventually found we were in a great place to live through a pandemic. Luckily we were on the pension trip by then,- 'a whole new journey', said the lady in the social welfare office; 'Ay,' says I, 'with a one-way ticket!'  Then this house in Rahona near Carrigaholt, between two sons and their families, came on the market, and it was too good not to take. I have always been advocating living in clachans, and here at last we are doing so!

    I don't fancy myself as a politician, nor hardly as a writer, but the preoccupation has stayed with me all my adult life of pondering how the presence of God, and catholic Christian culture, might be better mediated in our present world. Frankly I underestimated the resilience of the present cultural set-up, with its chronic individualism, consumerism and materialism, but now as I run more or less the last lap of my life, I am hoping that the world may have become more receptive to my way of thinking, and I had better make another effort!

    I have to confess myself at this stage somewhat encouraged by my bizarre but extraordinary contemporary, Donald Trump. Having poured scorn on him as 'the Ducky', I have come to hope that he may succeed in turning some kind of a corner for America, and also for the rest of us, in Europe and the world as a whole. It is very encouraging that he seems to have given up the hankering to try to do so as a one man band, which would indeed set him on a Putinesque path, but also that, with his coterie of lapsed Democrats, he has practically collapsed the now tedious and irrelevent left/ right wing political party thing. Still,  this new beginning cannot be achieved by a handful of men and women any more than by just one man, so his famous 'fight, fight, fight' struck a new and welcome note for myself and I hope many others.

    So what is this corner to be turned? I would rather not over-dramatise, but I did come to Ireland in 1973 somewhat in the spirit of a defeated revolutionary. In the late sixties, I had been at Cambridge University at the height of that cultural and spiritual upheaval that was popularly trivialised into 'flower power' and 'the sexual revolution'. For a time, it had held out hope of collapsing the barriers to human freedom and autonomy, of liberating great potential from the storehouse of our collective subconscious, until it collapsed into the rather miserable seventies, to be followed by the even worse eighties. Mamon ruled, get back to 'reality' and making money!

    Well, what goes round comes round, but now indeed we find ourselves peering into the abyss of war and societal collapse. Making money is only working for an ever-decreasing minority. The inadequacy, not to say impotence or incompetence of governments everywhere is being revealed more and more starkly. At which point, you may be asking what has all this got to do with dolphin-watching under sail?

    For a start, one of the basic tenets of our famous flower power was that whatever one does, let it be fun, but there are other considerations,- for example, instead of getting bogged down on a left wing which claimed to take its stand on social responsibility, or a right wing that champions the individual, we have to find out how to harmonize them both. Dolphins and whales seem pretty good at doing so. They seem to be highly socialized,

even in the case of some whales when they are many miles apart, but also they seem to be the epitome of autonomy. Add to this another theme, that of 'getting back to Nature', or let us say in harmony with Her, and you have enough to be going on with!

   


As for the sailing bit, there is a huge difference between just going places under power as one wills- as a consumer of thrills- and subjecting oneself to Nature's whims, working with the wind and currents, and humbly seeking relationship with nature, and those creatures at the head of the natural pyramid. It is in this spirit that I champion the transition from diesel engine to electric drive, especially when one uses the sails to generate the power for it. Not that there aren't plenty of other reasons which I could expatiate on, and indeed have done in previous blogs. 

    Meanwhile it is a very serious proposition to make a hub for developing and implementing this transition here in the Shannon estuary. I'm all for making jobs and for sound industrial development, and most surely developing our own power supplies is fundamental, but vigilant environmental sensitivity must be in there too, so as to avoid disasters such as that at Aughinish, where they are still busy making alumina for Russia,- a good example of environmental vandalism going hand in hand with health damage and injustice too, as well as hypocrisy!

    The way things are shaping now, we will have a Gannetsway Marine Services Ltd to

Our onions

develop and fit electric drives, and a Gannetsway Sailing Association to administer trips in the 'Anna M' and cooperate with the Marine Services. We might take note of the way the Kerry Group is structured,- the cooperative which it came from is still in there, its members having shares and representation on the Board. Brittany Ferries, initiated and as far as I know still run by a farmers' cooperative, is another inspirational company for me. They have come a long way from the Breton farmers who took their onions over to England on fishing boats after WW2, and whom I recall going round the streets selling them hanging in strings over the handlebars of their bicycles,- I'm still inspired by them!