The Psychology of a culture is revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat their children and in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable people within their society. Heal that and we can heal everything.
I was in my local chip shop, yesterday late afternoon, it's been a while since I splashed out on a bag of chips.
A bag of chips costs me £2.40, which is the same price as 2kg of Organic Potatoes, and so for me to buy chips - eating out - is a rare luxury. Some will say buying Organic is also a luxury. I have eaten Organic food all my adult life, and I deem it an essential element of my approach to food as the first medicine. I do not remember the last time I ate at a restaurant. I cook for myself everyday, using whole foods. Thus far I have fared well enough, I think.
It's mostly good luck. Health is. Most of us do not understand exactly how much good health is a matter of luck and circumstance. Ascribing personal responsibility for good luck is also a common error. Survivorship bias is among one of the most common biases.
I know because all of these are errors I make almost every day.
At 63, I can run 2 km without collapsing, I sleep 6 hours most nights, my cholesterol is 5.1, (recent blood test) and apart from genetic gum disease and loss of teeth exacerbated by 40 years of smoking (I have stopped smoking this past year, and feel so much the better for it) and neglect due to an irrational terror of dentistry, and the teeth grinding, a symptom of cPTSD from childhood and adult trauma, I appear to be in robust health. 'Appear' being the descriptive word.
I have not been to a doctor in 40 years, for any kind of detailed check up. I do not know what lurks within this battered body and mind in terms of chronic disease.
I feel the aging process, and I think am comfortable with it, (that said, I am thinking of getting rid of all mirrors in my home... lol!) and I can see into a future with more frailty. That's the nature of life. We grow, and we grow older, if we live long enough, we become decrepit. I'm well aware that I am very, very lucky. So far.
Health, Luck and Circumstance
There are millions of people who are not so lucky, who live with chronic disease, which they suffer through no fault of their own. Millions of people, active, working people, live with a vulnerability and an endurance and grace the fit are largely unaware of. Ableism is the conceit that anyone with a disability is somehow inferior, that they are lessor human beings, rather than simply unlucky in health. Ableism is also the un-realisation that some chronic disease states are almost invisible. There are a myriad of factors that determine a persons life health chances, many of which are determined even before that person is born.
So like I say, I know I am very lucky indeed. The fit are more lucky than actively fit.
Johnson and his sponsors are about to change all that. Again.
So there I was, buying a good sized paper cone of chips, (my chippie is generous with his portions) splashing out on a luxury, and whilst exchanging pleasantries, my Chippie Man was explaining his plan to move the business to a site opposite the local train station, a process that had been delayed by successive COVID surges.
He told me he hopes he will gain more passing trade. I have been buying chips from his shop, and from the previous owner, for 19 years. Their chips have remained the best standard throughout. I love those chips. He deserves more trade. He's also a really nice person.
He told me "COVID is over now, it's all going back to normal! I'm really happy about that."
"Hmmm..." I said as I handed over my payment, in change, in 5p coins. I am digging into my reserves for this luxury.
I suggested he might want to rethink that. "The Pandemic is not over." I said. "The virus is still circulating."
He was having none of it. He rejected my assertion. "It's in the papers! Covid is over. They are lifting all the restrictions."
I responded by asserting that Johnson was a liar, and a real danger to all of us, and that he could not be trusted. He accepted the liar allegation, (everybody does now, apart from other liars) but he did not my Covid risk assessment.
Arrogant Repetitive Reckless Serial Endangerment .
He was not angry, nor was I. He smiled, I smiled.
I said to him "I look to the epidemiologists and virologists, rather than the politicians or news papers."
He smiled back at, me, shook his head and repeated "It's over. We'll be fine."
Hope springs eternal, and flows more easily through knowledge gaps exploited by News Media and Politicians working for Oligarchs whose Wealth Extraction Cult dominates our lives.
Of course, I said none of this. Indeed that through did not occur to me until I was down the street a bit, munching on the slightly cooled, salted chips on top. That's when I started thinking about writing this piece.
My chippie is a hard working guy, looking after his small business, his family and he's not greedy. He's a good person. One of many, many millions. The vast majority of people are indeed good people.
Johnson is not a good person.
The UK Government - The Johnson Regime - is going to end the legal requirement for Covid positive tested citizens to self isolate, and that will also allow them to end payments for those who test positive, payments designed to support them self-isolating, as a way to reduce transmission of the virus.
It's not about saving money, it's about their hatred of giving ordinary people 'money for nothing'. That game is for the wealthy and their cronies. Well, it's money for connections, rather than nothing. Those connections are part of their currency of power and influence.
Someone asked, if we were back in 2020, and knowing what we know now what we have done differently?
I replied we would have removed the governments that ignored the epidemiologists, virologists, immunologists, public health experts as soon as they showed any signs of ignoring the science and gaslighting the population or enabling profiteering.
We would have chased down misinformation generators, and imprisoned them for attempted manslaughter
All of which still needs to be done.
The Johnson Regime, with Health Secretary Savige Javid (lately of JP Morgan) in political control of our NHS, and our National Health Policy, are going to end free test availability, be they Lateral Flow or PCR tests. Austerity was always a punishment strategy. Universal Credit : Sanctions, removing funding. Making the claimants scream! Making low paid work seem more attractive by maintaining or escalating poverty levels.
Circumstance
This new strategy of ignoring COVID, of removing support for self isolation, ceasing free availability of tests, and mandating full return to offices etc, is something that will impact most heavily upon those on the lowest incomes, the minimum wage and just above it - hospitality staff, shop assistants, care workers, prison officers, teaching assistants and many others whose work brings them face to face with lots of people, many of them clinically vulnerable, on a daily basis.
Low income workers who will be forced to pay out of their already meagre and shrinking budgets to assess their own risk in order to act as responsible citizens. Some may well decide to take the risk. We know that lack of economic support - lowest sick pay rates in Europe - has undermined suppression of the community transmission of the virus.
One cannot see what one does not measure.
The reduction in testing will of course lead to a reduction in the numbers of confirmed cases, but it will not reduce the numbers of cases. As noted by Trump and John Hopkins University, albeit it different contexts, less testing means less numbers of confirmed cases - but it does not mean less cases.
The reduction in PCR testing will diminish the UK's world beating genome sequencing, and we will begin to go blind to the virus and it's variants. What we don't know could well kill us, harm us, expose us to life long chronic disease.
And with regards SARSCOV2, what doesn't kill us quite evidently does not make us stronger.
This Johnson Regime policy is head in the sand, arse in the air: see no virus, hear no virus, virus is not happening. Pretend it is not happening. World beating denial. There were no parties. Well there were parties, but I was not there. OK, I was there but all guidelines were followed. Russia is on the cusp of an invasion. Brexit is working.
This is called living with the lying bastards. This is a world beating strategy. Tony Blair, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell. Liars that rule the world. Giving the world a beating.
In the most simple terms, the Johnson Regime is intent on ignoring the virus, letting the little people take it on the chin. We, the impotent plebs - oh my, how we are understanding our impotence in ways we never expected to or wanted to know - you and I and our elderly relatives, our vulnerable neighbours, everyone in our communities, we must take it on the chin.
Protect the Hoard, let the Herd take it on the chin.
The last two years has shown quite clearly that the poorer members of 'the herd' which includes people who are disabled, people from ethnic minorities, low income citizens and the clinically vulnerable have taken the most on our chins, with devastating harms inflicted upon these more vulnerable parts of our population.
This report is just one of a number detailing how ethnic minorities have fared worse than others throughout this pandemic.
"Ethnic minority groups have suffered the highest risk of COVID mortality in the UK, according to the latest official figures. In the first wave (before the vaccine roll-out), the risk of death was highest for those with a black African background. During the second and third waves, it was consistently highest among those with Bangladeshi origins.
Those high levels of risk are partly to do with where people live and how they earn a living. Members of ethnic minorities tend to work in sectors which require face-to-face contact such as social care, retail and transport. They are also more likely to live in places where it is difficult to practice social distancing."
"Our research into rates of ethnic poverty (systemic poverty within an ethnic group) found levels before COVID of 50% for Bangladeshis, 47% for Pakistanis and 40% for black people, compared with 19% for white British people. Our work also supports fears that the pandemic risks making things even worse if action isn’t taken to reverse its effects.
For example, reports suggest that while ethnic minorities had higher unemployment rates before the pandemic, they then suffered a higher proportion of job loses during it. Rates of ethnic unemployment in the period from October to December 2019 were 4.5% for Bangladeshis, 7.7% for Pakistanis and 8.7% for black people, compared with 3.4% for white British. A year later, after almost a year of COVID, those rates went up respectively to 6.4%, 9.8%, 14% and 4.5%."
It is important to note that while the impacts of pandemic mismanagement and poverty impact ethnic minorities are as described, the mismanagement has caused immense harm to the ethnic majority as well. Nobody is safe under the Johnson Regime.
This article from December 2020 by a human rights advocacy group looks at the failures of the Johnson Regime in terms of protecting the populations right to health which, as it happens, is the legal duty of the Government.
"The UK’s response to COVID-19 has been widely criticized by scientists and the public. According to EuroMOMO, a European mortality monitoring initiative, the excess mortality that may be attributable to COVID-19 in England is one of the highest in Europe, second only to Spain.
"In this article, we observe the UK’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and identify some issues that have emerged in such exceptional times. We argue that the right to health as enacted today is not sufficient to address these issues. The current international human rights framework is robust, but states’ obligations should be clarified so they can be adapted to public health measures in times of pandemic. At the same time, international public health documents to prepare for pandemics are not sufficient on their own to protect the right to health of everyone. We offer some recommendations to that effect.
Writing about issues as we witness them allows us to construct reliable historic memory. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many deaths that could have been avoided had we been better prepared with strong rights-based provisions. These are essential lessons to be learned, and the human rights community has a crucial role to play to ensure that future responses to pandemics are grounded in human rights law."
The People's Covid Inquiry laid out in greater detail the legislation on protecting the populations right to health, and how this Government has failed to uphold the law, and in some cases transgressed laws, including committing the offence of Misconduct in Public Office in relation to protecting the populations right to health.
Risk and Vulnerability.
Poverty aside, there are 11 million people in the UK living with chronic disease, 6 million of whom have two or more conditions - these people are clinically vulnerable. Many of these people are part of the working population.
There are are 1.3 million clinically vulnerable children.
A similar number of adults are now enduring Long Covid. We do not yet know or understand the long term implications of their condition.
Is this Government embarking on a strategy towards total population infection?
Are they assuming that the vaccines will keep the harms below the radar of public awareness?
Are they anticipating that the deaths of the vulnerable will reduce pension costs? Is that potential saving of any real economic significance? Or is it just spite?
Are they hoping that the apparently healthy survivors will retain some kind of immunity?
Are they planning that the cases of Long Covid will be excluded from Insurance under pre-existing condition clauses?
Is the strategy of failing to control transmission of the virus congruent with the plan to proceed with privatisation of the NHS and steady withdrawal of state funded and operated social care as laid out by various Free Market think tanks and writers?
As things stand all state funded and operated services are being unreasonably stressed, staff are facing burn-out, staff retention is at record low levels - ripe for take over by private capital to 'solve the problems of socialistic state inefficiency'.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
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I was very ill with COVID March/April 2020, so I had good reason to study what was real and what was twaddle and what was propaganda.
It was abundantly clear by mid March that New Zealand, Vietnam, Australia's State Governments, Taiwan, Finland, Norway, China and all the other Governments and countries populations that chose the strategy of stopping the spread internally, eliminating community transmission within their jurisdictions, as well as quarantining borders to prevent importing the virus, (rather than trying to control a slow spread internally aka 'mitigation' and continuing more or less unrestricted international travel) were taking the optimal public health and economy supportive approach.
Events - actions taken and outcomes that followed - have proven that to be the case. On every measure of health, economic performance, civil liberties those countries that opted to stop the transmission of the virus in their communities have done much, much better than those that allowed the virus to spread, thinking they could somehow control the virus and protect their economies.
Anyone who denies this very simple fact is being either silly or toxic.
Denial can be silly or toxic - either way it amounts to an avoidable tragedy.
Citizen denial is just silly.
Government denial is toxic. News Media Denial is toxic.
A song I improvised this morning, a blues song, about Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock, Boris Johnson and the dreadful policy choices they keep making, in spite of the evidence that Elimination Strategy prevents all of the harms caused by their 'live with the virus' Herd Immunity eventually Mitigation Policy.
Denial is a blithering Eejit, not a river in Egypt!
It is so frustrating, so utterly infuriating and very, very sad for us all, to be sitting here, on this Sunday morning in July 2021, waiting for the next surge, the new wave, the incoming tide, the looming season of increased rates of infection to commence it’s out of control spread, knowing that the disastrous policy choices of this Conservative and Unionist Johnson Herd Immunity government have placed us all in a much worse position than we ever needed to be in, and is doing so once again.
What we have is a government of immature, self serving adults, who are deploying passive aggressive management
across many areas, rather than adopting a mature, evidence based approach in order to best protect the people we are told 'they serve'.
The duty of every nation, every government is to eliminate community transmission of the virus within it's territory, not only to protect the people of each territory but also to protect the people of every other state - exporting the infection is a breach of that duty of care. #JohnsonVariant#CovidIsNotOver
The #JohnsonVariant has two fails - the first is letting the new variant in through porous borders, the second is the total lack of any elimination strategy to stop it spreading within the UK.
Here is the basic pattern, in the most simple terms.
1. They issue deliberately vague directions, and they provide inadequate support
2. If people fail to make it work, blame the people
3. If people manage to make it work, claim the kudos
4. The aim is to stay on top with minimum effort, to maximise personal gain. They are 'serving themselves'.
So now we are being told to 'live with the virus'. Sajid Javid's advice as Health Secretary?
As Christina Pagel puts it "it's stupid, it's a terrible plan."
Mr. Javid is a stupid man. He might cunning, he might even be clever but he is stupid. He, and this odious Conservative and Unionist Party Government, are stupid, venal and callous.
I read the Governments phase one report on the Events Research Program when it was released. I saw that it had caveats and gaping data holes right across the board. Then Independent SAGE issued an open letter that confirmed my observations more precisely.
Turns out these 'tests' were a scientific nonsense, and the choice to give the go ahead to 'selected events' under the guise of 'testing covid safety parameters' was political, rather than a matter of public health or event safety. That other events have moved their plans forward and taking bookings on the basis of the government's false assertions that these 'tests' showed little or no spread is a disgrace, they were all misled - it ought to lead to litigation against the Government, for compensation.
I perceive a difference between cunning and intelligent. Evil and Avarice are cunning, never intelligent. Nurture is intelligence.
As Oscar Wilde pointed out, 'once is a misfortune, twice or more is carelessness' and in the case of Johnson, Bolsonaro, Modi, Trump, Hancock, and now Sajid Javid (and many others) what we are seeing is repetitive and blatantly callous recklessness. They stand proud and defiant of their record on this!
If anyone deserves to be proud of their record, Jacinda Arden does.
Sajid Javid, the new Health Secretary misleads from the start
This rainy, windy Sunday July morning on #Marr on the BBC, Sajid Javid, the new (inexperienced) Health Secretary claimed that that there are "compelling health arguments" for removing all covid safeguards on July 19, when in England we are seeing higher daily cases than whole of EU put together and we are on course for circa 80K cases a day by July 19th.
The Health Secretary blames public health safeguards/restrictions for rise of domestic violence, when his government have done so little to measure and buffer the impact of #COVID19 *on women* and vulnerable groups in this pandemic. He does not take into consideration the Conservative Governments 10 year record of Austerity driven cuts to those precise supporting services, coming into this pandemic.
Austerity is something Sajid avoids, like the proverbial plague. He spent 2020 moonlighting for JP Morgan.
JP Morgan spokesman said: “We are delighted to welcome Sajid back to JP Morgan as a senior adviser, and we look forward to drawing upon his in-depth understanding of the business and economic environment to help shape our client strategy across Europe.”
As to Mr. Javid's in-depth understanding of his constituents economic environment, and of their needs during this epidemic, those that voted for him and those who did not, we can only guess. His MP Salary and his ministerial pensions barely touch the £2 million retainer fee his part time role delivered - perhaps he takes the view that his role as an MP is a 'part-time job'. As to Mr. Javid's ability to inform an American investment bank on European Strategy - his Brexit stance suggests otherwise.
Insanely optimistic headlies!
Sajid Javid cites the harms caused by existing policy choices of his government to argue for worse management of the epidemic. This is a deliberate manipulation tactic. We have seen this before. He, like others before him, sat in tidy offices, flags on poles, huddled with key advisors and they worked out the messaging on this, they looked at how they could trigger support among vulnerable target groups for their adverse policy choice. Cry "Freedom!"
At the current rate of spread it is expected that there will be circa 80,000 new cases confirmed on a daily basis by July 19th. Hospitalisation and death rates are rising, at around 4% for hospitalisations, of confirmed cases. What is 4% of 80,000? Every day. Hardly insignificant.
Not even a week into the job, he is promoting lies and he is gaslighting us, telling us that what we know to be true is not true, telling us what to think.
He is not an improvement on Matt Hancock, (killing us softly, with his snog) and is likely going to be much worse for the health of the nation, if that is at all possible. It was reported in January this year that the Johnson Government had issued 64 sets of rule changes in 2020. That inspired me to do a parody version of '50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,' also a song about planned betrayal. How apt.
64 Ways (and more) to Mislead The Country
Misleading, callous money men.
Then there's Robert Jenrick - Robert Jenrick on #Marr just said that there will be an ‘exponential growth in new CoVID cases’ but we have to just “live with it now..”
In essence the policy is 'let everyone receive the viral infection, and see what happens', with an uncertain gamble that the death toll and morbidity levels will be reduced by the vaccine to 'acceptable levels'. This 'acceptable levels' attitude reminds me of English Government attitude towards the Irish Famine.
Elimination Strategy works
We know that a well resourced elimination strategy works really well, that it is eminently doable, that the strategy to stop the spread of the virus from person to person within the community within any bordered area is efficacious, and prevents the harms associated with mitigation strategies.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00978-8/fulltext - Lancet reviews the evidence of the efficacy of elimination strategies and compares it with the adverse outcomes of mitigation policy. The evidence is incontrovertible. The kind of evidence Johnson can only deny - he dare not discuss it in any detail in Parliament, and Starmer abides by Johnson's need at our expense.
You do know that circa 1.8 billion people are living with that degree of effective protection, where responsible governments took firm action to resource elimination of community transmission strategies and took clear action to support the population in achieving that, and indeed the population engaged with their governments and together they avoided immense harms we in the UK have not That is a huge evidence base.
Mitigation aka Living with The Virus causes avoidable harm
Another 2 billion citizens are suffering the consequences of mitigation strategy, where reckless governments have rejected elimination strategy, have refused to take firm action, have laid the bulk of the responsibility for limiting spread of the infection upon the individual citizen, resulting in repeated waves of infection what got out of control, necessitating global shutdowns and intense restrictions limiting movement of people, in order to protect health services and to slow the spread, all of which caused immense harms. Death, disease and business collapse as the measure of the policy choice.
The English government, the News Media - the political class of England, which dominates the so-called United Kingdom, are all ignoring the evidence. They are basically refusing to discuss elimination strategy. They are blanking the science. What is that?
What it means is that one can tune into any chat show or talk radio and listen to ordinary citizens, not knowing that they don’t know, speaking with great authority about 'living with the virus', about 'opening up the economy', about vaccinations as if they provide total cover and block transmission, about ‘restrictions’ and 'freedoms', about holidays hugging and football and citing the harms caused by bad policy to argue for worse policy, all of this the hp to alleviate their frustration (understandable) in the hope that they can ‘ just get back to normal’ and the presenters dare not confront them with the evidence, they merely acknowledge ‘that’s how you feel, I hear you’ and they let it slide. Or worse, they agree and thus amplify the nonsense!
Free speech
Free speech as a concept is all about speaking truth to power. Telling the truth in public. Free speech is not a free for all, a right to spout nonsense that has lethal and morbid consequences. It’s not that I’d want to inhibit the nonsense speaker, it is that someone must speak truth to the nonsense speaker when the nonsense is being presented through public media channels that reach the eyes and ears of millions of people. The truth must be told in public, in the same fora where the nonsense is being broadcast and at the same time. The unknowing are not being confronted with the truth.
It is not good enough that the evidence is available, and can be read and listened to on platforms that do not have the reach of public news media and government briefings.
People just don't know
I understand, of course, that these people genuinely do not know what they are talking about because the bodies that ought to be disseminating grounded information are not doing that.
The news media, the politicians, the Church leaders are all mute on elimination strategy. Ordinary citizens who rely on those channels for information are in a vulnerable position, they are not getting accurate and timely information. The English government is exploiting that vulnerability. Crony capitalism is part of that exploitative mind set. Avarice governs this dynamic.
This is an infuriating situation, after 17 months of pandemic.
For the epidemiologists and public health scientists, it must be even more distressing to be caught in a position where their skill sets are being set aside in such manner.
Yesterday, England recorded 24,000+ new cases of covid19 infection, the actual numbers are probably higher, and the current growth rate suggests we will see +40k by the end of this week, and +80k, daily, by the 19th of July.
Hospitalisations and deaths lag a few weeks following on from infection. The reduction in rates of hospitalisation due to vaccine efficacy has been from 10% of cases down to 4% of cases.
For the health professionals, in hospitals and doctors surgeries, to be held hostage to repeated waves by a reckless government must be exhausting and debilitating - the resilience with which they have maintained service is all the more remarkable.
Mute Labour
Why is The Labour Party mute on all of this? Why are they ignoring the evidence? Why are they refusing to confront this situation, in Parliament and in their briefings?
Why does Keirless with the Evidence Starmer refuse, time and time again, speak truth to power in public? Why does he avoid bringing the evidence that elimination strategy prevents the harms mitigation causes?
What is that? Savile, Assange, The Forde Report and now this?
England beat the Ukraine at football, 4-0!
The feel good factor is great, yet it does nothing to protect the people from harms caused by a reckless Government.
Sajid Javid must go - he is not qualified to lead the country as Health Secretary.
The evidence from a number of detailed studies shows that countries that opt for rapid action to eliminate community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by transparently engaging the well informed support of their citizens better protect their health, their economies and minimise restrictions on civil liberties compared with those that strive for mitigation aka 'living with the virus'.
1.8 billion people's health and their economies have been spared the ravages inflicted upon the UK, USA, Brazil and the EU.
Importantly, elimination has been framed as a civic solidarity approach that will restore civil liberties the soonest, protect the healthy and the vulnerable and stabilise the economy; this focus on common purpose is frequently neglected in the political debate in these islands.
Stopping the spread is spreading the love.
In the UK and Ireland, and elsewhere, a new variant that is more transmissible, that is showing signs of significant vaccine escape, is surging and there are no mechanisms in place to suppress it.
Why is it that the evidence for elimination strategy is being ignored by Governments, Parliaments and the bulk of News Media?
Are we to endure more death and disease?
To what end does it serve to set the bar at 'living with the virus'?
Why must we gamble with citizens lives in such manner?
Yours sincerely,
Corneilius Crowley
(Address with the Editor.)
It's beyond belief: Dido Harding - the Conservative crony who oversaw the catastrophe of Test and Trace - is applying to run the NHS.
Dr. Rachel Clarke - who has seen first hand what the government did to the NHS and country during the pandemic - beautifully rips apart this absolute affront.
Rachel points out that prior to the Covid19 Epidemic, the NHS waiting lists were in the region of 4 million cases. Also heads up on Michael Gove's plan to rerig the NHS in a top down manner, led by Sajid Javid, the Duetche Bank executive who helped crash the banks in 2008 who has taken over from super spreader Snogger Hancock.
A God that can send you to Hell is a violent God. A God that says he, she or it loves you and can still send you to Hell, is a gaslighting God. Such Gods are always, always projections of violent people.
Hierarchies of Wealth, Power and Violence are cults, they are mafia cults.
I know this much, I am not the problem. Me not fitting into this society is a healthy response.
Would we or could we do things differently if we were trauma informed?
"I argued then that the study of psychological trauma is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of oppressed people. I predicted that our field would continue to be beset by controversy, no matter how solid its empirical foundation, because the same historical forces that in the past have consigned major discoveries to oblivion continue to operate in the world. I argued, finally, that only an ongoing connection with a global political movement for human rights could ultimately sustain our ability to speak about unspeakable things." ~ Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery
The News is not helping, is it?
The news media is full of a myriad of stories, images and narratives - more commonly biased and less so objective - and we see that violence erupts once more as Israeli State Mechanised Warplanes bomb the prison of Gaza, where people have nowhere to run to, for safety; we see the outcome of reckless policy on COVID19 in UK, USA, Brazil and India as wave after wave of infection surges; we are all aware of the intrusion into and colonisation of 'undeveloped lands inhabited by older indigenous cultures; Myanmar's youth resist the Military oppression of their new-born democracy... there's a lot going on.
The truth is not being told.
Meanwhile, for 1.8 billion people, across East Asia, Oceania and elsewhere zero community transmission strategy is protecting their lives and livelihoods in large measure.
What is the climate within which all this is happening, and can we change that?
Music helps me ground myself when facing all of this. Here's two songs in particular, that emerge from the Irish experience, that I find particularly resonant. They humanity of both songs, and of their writers is a beauty to me.
Won't you settle down, stop fighting for your gods...
Oh, settle down, stop fighting for your gods.
They can't hear you now, not with the noise of your guns.
Once were towering steeples
Now there's a soaring eagle
A crescent moon and a rising sun
Our prayers ascending, but what good will they bring?
If all that's willin' is more and more killin'
Won't you settle down, stop fighting for your gods...
Oh, settle down, stop fighting for your gods.
They can't hear you now, not with the noise of your guns.
The mountains of Mourne
The county Cork I was born in
This dirty old town
Where the rain's always fallin'..
Our prayers ascending, but what good will they bring?
When all that's willin' is more and more killin' ~
What a beautiful song, so movingly performed. Fergus O'Farrell died young, aged 48. His career was blighted by his health, he suffered from Muscular Dystrophy - his body of work is immense, intense, beautiful and worthy of all praise in and of itself.
For me this song speaks to the inhumane cruelty and ultimate futility of Religion, when Religion is used as a reason to wage wars of colonisation. It also speaks of a deeply felt empathy and a humane view. It is an historical song.
It sits comfortably with Damien Dempsey's song Colony, a fierce rebuttal of the colonial mindset and a resounding song of defiance. This song makes the hair stand on end, and is as strong a heart beat of the humane as any. Here's the writer, on why he wrote the song, for whom he wrote it.
Here's the full song, off the album. When Damien sings this, the crowds no sing with him, and the atmosphere is electric, everyone in the room is on point, fully alive to the meaning of the song, and our place in history with it. Bearing in mind that the Palestinian people, the Aboriginals of Australia, the Ashaninka of Peru and Brazil, and many, many others all live with the oppression upon them, and resist and defend their lands and rights as best they can with little in the way of support from the rest of the world. Justice is still a long way off.
Colony Lyrics:
I sing the song of the colony
How many years and you're still not free
And your mother cries and you ask god why
Greed is the knife and the scars run deep
How many races with much reason to weep
And your children cry
And you ask god whyAnnie, she came from Dunlavin Town
The TB came and killed her family all around
Population booms
Eleven in two rooms
Katie she came from down Townsend street
Ten in a bed and no shoes on their feet
1916 came
They played the patriots game
Freddy, he came from the Iveagh flats
Tenement slums and infested with rats
Sleeping on damp straw
Trying not to break the law
Thomas, he came from Kilmaine in Mayo
Semi starvation was the only life you'd know
In a two room shack
Then jailed in Letterfrack
I look to the east, I look to the west
To the north and the south, and I'm not too impressed
Time after time
After crime after crime
They raped, robbed, pillaged, enslaved and murdered
Jesus Christ was their god and they done it in his name
So he could take the blame if it's not all a game
With bible in one hand and a sword in the other
They came to purify my land of my Gaelic Irish mothers
And fathers, and sisters and brothers
With our own ancient customs, laws, music, art
Way of life and culture
Tribal in structure
We had a civilisation
When they were still neanderthal nations
We suffer with the Native American, the Indian in Asia
Aboriginal Australia
The African people with their history so deep
And our children still weep and our lives are still cheap
You came from Germany, from France, from England
And from Spain
From Belgium and from Portugal
You all done much the same
You took what was not yours
Went against your own bible
You broke your own laws
Just to out do the rival
But did you ever apologize
For the hundreds and millions of lives
You destroyed and terrorised
Or have you never realized
Did you never feel shame
For what was done in your country's name
And find out who's to blame and why they were so inhumane
And still they teach you in your school
About those glorious days of rule
And how it's your destiny to be
Superior to me
But if you've any kind of mind
You'll see that all human kind
Are the children of this earth
And your hate for them will chew you up and spit you out
You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free
You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free
You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free
Inside our minds we hold, hold the key.
These two songs hold for me the sense of resistance that is deeply humane, that reaches for peace, knowing that although we are vulnerable, we are decent, we are lovers and builders of healthy community at heart and the bullies are bullies. They are not healthy people. Rulers are not healthy people. Colonisers are not healthy people.
Hierarchy of Violence Culture
From the many stories of the Bible, and before, going back 12,000 years or so, through the many Empires as they fought for territory and dominance, through to the invasion of Ireland in 1159 (I am of Irish ethnicity) and onwards as the Crusades and Islam swung back and forth, to the destruction of the Taino of the Caribbean, and the people's of South America, in 1492 onwards, to the British Colonies on what we call North America built by and for religious refugees, that stole land from Native people, and then destroyed them, utterly to the various Colonial excursions across Asia and elsewhere, pastors and merchants, armed to the teeth, through to the scramble for Africa, to the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe where Jews and others were slaughtered in their millions 'to make room' for the German Reich, and on through to today, where yet again the Palestinian people face the brutality of colonial warfare designed to extirpate them from their native homes.
Ireland cannot adopt a zero community transmission strategy to protect it's people in large part because of the partition, (and because it's own ruling class are as venal as rulers anywhere else).
The dominant neighbour, the English government rejects zero community transmission strategy, even as ZCT is proven to protect the lives and economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania and elsewhere, and prevent new variants from emerging, and this places of the British Isles at risk. It could so easily have been avoided.
These are the ill effects of a thousand years of overlordism.
Who rules the English people?
Ireland is still partitioned - those old wounds are still painful, and the political interference still blatant.
What the Israeli state has done and is continuing to do the Palestinian people for the past 75 years, the Normans did to Ireland for 800.
Do the Palestinians have to go through the same?
PROMISED LAND a poem by Michael Rosen
A family arrived and said they had papers
to prove that his house was theirs.
No, no, said the man, my people have always lived here, my father, grandfather .... and look, the garden, my great-grandfather planted that.
No, no, said the family, look at the documents.
There was a stack of them.
Where do I start? said the man.
No need to read the beginning, they said,
turn to the page marked ‘Promised Land’.
Are they legal? he said, who wrote them?
God, they said, God wrote them, look -
Here come His tanks.
Both groups of colonisers cited religion and culture as their justifications for their behaviour. There's always a justification rooted in entitlement and supremacy. It is always a logical fallacy.
Conquest, Occupation and resistance.
Palestine - where the act of self defence and resistance, a legal right agreed upon by the all Earths nation states, is punished by full on ethnic cleansing, social, cultural and military war fare, and where that constant punishment of an entire population has been and is still supported by the USUK political ruling classes and is enabled by the EU and UN who play the role of bystanders, even as millions of ordinary citizens in all these countries oppose the violence of the Israeli State, and are also saddened by the violence of the resistance. The Palestinian people should never have been put into that position that they needed to resist war, occupation and colonisation.
What use is there in all of this killing?
What futures are nurtured by so much blood and gore?
I understand Faith, the way people grow up with the Faith of their parents and grandparents, never consciously chosen, always internalised through habit and thus integrated into sense of self - I understand the psychic trap that otherwise decent people fall into, when the Institutional and Political Power of the religion is harnessed in warfare. That is an abuse of Faith.
Unicorns against masks is yet another similar faith dynamic that pollutes responsible behaviour in the midst of a pandemic.
I detest those who build that trap, who ensnare the decent, the innocent, the children, generation after generation, just to maintain an institutional power base. They are to me the most abusive of people, bullies without pause, they liars and charlatans.
And I have no easy, simplistic answer on how to free the innocents from the trap. I was entrapped myself a number of times. It was honesty that finally freed me.
But this I know - these traps must be unset, be they religious, ideological, nationalist or genderist, and the innocent must be allowed to grow free. We have to find ways to ceasing indoctrination of defenceless children that lead to the kinds of extremism we are seeing in Israel and Saudi Arabia, in USA and elsewhere.
The Psychological Climate Issue.
Climate change is one thing, the global Pandemic is another as is the conquest and colonisation of lands already long inhabited by people who nurtured that land - be it Palestine or the Amazon Rainforest - and the psychological climate of hierarchies of violence culture is part of the problem and the puzzle to be resolved that all of these present.
What is happening in Israel, what is being done to the Palestinian people is emblematic of what this hierarchy of violence cult is doing to all of us, to humanity, and we the humane must find ways to stop it in it's track.
The train of hierarchy of violence must be halted, and we must disembark.
What is happening in England and India, and elsewhere, what is being done to the people by the reckless policies of the ruling factions in regards to COVDI19 is emblematic of what this hierarchy of violence cult is doing to all of us, to humanity, and we the humane must find ways to stop it in it's track.
The train of hierarchy of violence must be halted, and we must disembark.
We must do this, we must commit to doing, even if we do not know how that is going to work out. It is not merely the success of the project that drives this - it is integrity.
Ani Di Franco has a song, Inside Out, in which she sings "We are all citizens of the womb." This is true.
This line inspired me to write this poem.
A SONG FOR THE CHILDREN OF PALESTINE AND ISRAEL
The push, the release the squeeze, the belief in letting go - we both surrender to the next life as in the new world
I arrive to the softness of the strange dry air, something unknown to me, the pulse of my mothers heart the thumping with which I have for nine months lived - all of my life thus far - oh the relief of hearing that sound again having been briefly, yet intensely separated from that fundamental pulse.
I gaze with all my body, all my soul and we catch each other, before I reach to feed. and oxytocin mediates the adrenaline I am born, and we are clean, together...
My fathers deep voice rumbling in peace and joy, amazement and bliss.
Being born is the art of the eternal welcome.
Mind and body one ingenuous zone of love, head to toe I know that my love of life, this desire to nurture, the qualities we see and feel in each other,
and we are recognised, for these are the echoes, these are the dreams that are essential above all else.
Nurture love, tend the garden
Blessings are these tears of love, these peals of laughter like a silken glove held and yet unrestricted.
And then the flags, the tanks, and the shelling?
This tragedy is pathology, the loving is all gone, the culture says no breast-feeding in public, it's more important that you learn your Nations song!
Booooom!
~
What to do?
The first things that must be done is that states that organise violence on the scale that USUK and Israel and Russia and others do must be inhibited from doing so by their own populations - and in that populations across the Earth must find ways to build solidarity and generate material support for each other in achieving this. We are in this together.
It is for the British population to control their State and Oligarchy who interfere in other countries.
It is for the American population to control their State and Oligarchy who interfere win other countries.
It is for each countries population to assert our right to self govern - it is not the exclusive right of any ruling class, no such right exists. The ruling class rules by might and leveraged power and that is, in this 21st Century, wholly illegitimate.
This means we must as people in humane, informed intelligent solidarity take control of the democratic legislatures and write the laws that will control these powers and forces, and thus make them safe for people everywhere.
We need to do this just to get to the position where we can deal with Climate Change, Environmental Pollution, Air Particulate Pollution and poverty.
Climate change demands a psychological change among all democratic electorates.
We need peace to be able to work on Climate Change in meaningful ways.
