Thursday 18 December 2014

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER 2014



In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Images of cowled women, resonant of Bethlehem, clutching at each other as if to save themselves from tumbling into the coffins of their young, appear in newsprint and on-line.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

Rancorous, ungracious language poisons public discourse as food kitchens flourish in a green land of plenty, where water flows as coinage and no place is stable.

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Simple offerings of food and pleasure, compassion and warmth are packaged as commodities for consumption, while derelicts lie bereft in the streets, until a sentimental pity points politics at care, but never change.

But his mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

Spent mothers anguish over their young, scraping pennies for food and joy, breathing themselves hungry and bone-skinny.

Yet what I can I give him: give my heart.

Gifts of the heart warm longer.

Take time. And whisper 'no more'.

Shout 'change'.









Monday 24 November 2014

WATCHING THE IMITATION GAME



The cinema-goer realises he read Alan Hodges' book on Alan Turing, the University of Cambridge and British Military Intelligence mathematician who may single-handedly have invented modern discourse on Artificial Intelligence, almost twenty years ago. The cinema-goer hopes the film is as good, in its own way, as that fine book.

Enigma is a machine. A very well-designed machine. Maybe our problem is that we’re trying to beat it with men. What if only a machine can understand another machine.

The film is determinedly mannish. As the times (1939-1954) were. The women are decorous, smart in alluring ways, sometimes sexually active and most-times clerical. Their costumes are glorious. The woman cryptographer Joan Elizabeth Clarke, played marvellously by Keira Knightly, is peripheral until near the end when she manages to be in the shed, the film's significant location, with the men and the machine named Christopher. The echo with contemporary Mens' Sheds groups pleases the cinema-goer.

That’s the whole point. All this time we’ve been trying to beat the machine; but we should have been trying to beat the people who use the machine. Enigma is perfect. It’s human beings who are flawed.

This is a film full of secrets. Secrets of sexual orientation and practice, within and between genders, secrets within families, secrets of State, between States and between departments within States. Thus it is no surprise to the cinema-goer that the strongest character (the hero?) is the MI6 officer, Stewart Menzies, the secrets-meisterwho is always there, played by ace actor Mark Strong.

False jobs — pay stubs, bank accounts — will be created for you. No one can know what you really do.

The cream of contemporary London-based screen actors appear in the film. Rory Kinnear hasn't much to do as the cop who brings Turing down for indecency in 1951 and he does it well. Charles Dance harrumphs around brilliantly in a naval uniform. Mathew Goode is a star turn as handsome cad and brave sport, Hugh Alexander. Benedict Cumberbatch mixes fey with antic to good effect in playing Turing, though it all serves to present Turing as a very bold, precocious boy right up to the end, who would have his way, and stamp his foot if he had to, because he never got over the loss of his first love, his public-school mate Christopher.

I am well aware of my obligations, legal and otherwise. And I assure you that what I choose to tell or not to tell you will be entirely up to me.

And despite all the running about, as the Turing machine triumphs and the Enigma code is broken, the cinema-goer experiences a deflation as the film winds down. The scene where the MI6 officer, Menzies, tells Turing and his team to destroy everything and to go home and never speak about their work again carries no chill, simply the damp acquiescence of intelligent people. It calls out for a Julian Assange of the day, dressed in high-waisted trousers, with a floppy, side-creased hairdo and hang-dog look, to stand by the resulting bonfire, stuffing papers into his pockets and not into the flames.

No. They’re just... Normal people. Smart people. Creative people.

But this a bio-pic and it must stick to the facts of the life, as the film-makers see them. Thus, there is a lot of writing on the screen at the end, as they run out of images and dialogue. Film is shorthand in the end and writing on screen the most basic from of such shorthand.

In this case, love just lost the Germans the whole bloody war.

The cinema-goer wonders if the writing had run on would it have noted that MI6 continues to weave its devastating mysteries into all our lives; that public schools and elitist universities persist; that homosexuals still occupy less favourable positions in the world; that women, despite their best efforts, are often peripheral, even today. And that war-mongering rages on, now and into the future. That is no secret. Where is the victory for which so many lives were wasted?

Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes... Hollow.

Turing's great achievement is the concept and possibility of Artificial Intelligence. The challenge is how to use intelligence; really, artificially and without secrets.

The game was obviously a very simple one.

The film is a decent, well-made mid-twentieth century costume drama of middle England's experience of World War 2, principally as a site of bureaucratic in-fighting. For a fuller treatment of Turing's life and times, it's back to Hodges' book, nicely re-packaged as a film tie-in.

It is the very people who no one else imagines anything of who do the things that no one else can imagine.

The cinema-goer smiles to think Andrew Hodges may make a few bob from his good work.











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Friday 14 November 2014

INSTEAD OF PARKING A PROBE ON A COMET



Could scientists and engineers, for instance,

develop a cheap, widely-available and safe process to give a woman full control of her fertility at all times?

What really got me focused on cancer was when my best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, and even though she was a well-to-do person, I found that her treatment costs were crippling. (Kiran Mazumda-Shaw)

I don't believe medical discoveries are doing much to advance human life. As fast as we create ways to extend it we are inventing ways to shorten it.
(Christaan Barnard)

or explore the depths of the ocean for the origins of water on the planet as well as a sustainable source of food and minerals?

Water is to me, I confess, a phenomenon which continually awakens new feelings of wonder as often as I view it. (Michael Faraday)

even respond to climate change realities by advancing research into de-accelerating processes and flood prevention?

I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. (Isaac Newton)

consider supporting efforts to develop human scale socio-political structures of government?

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it. (Albert Einstein)

look into designing and engineering buildings that house and shelter people, not dwarf or displace them?

A scientist in her laboratory is not a mere technician: she is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress her as though they were fairy tales. (Marie Curie)

begin to review the concept of money and outline processes for removing the casino element in commodity trading?

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. (Albert Einstein)

commit to work with local people in threatened coastal regions, such as ocean atolls and Bangladesh, to secure land in advance of rising sea levels?

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. (Isaac Asimov)

undertake work in some of the most wondrous places on earth to halt the activities of fracking and coal-tar oil extraction, by modelling work in forestry and environmental management that brings long-term economic benefits to the people in those places, at minimum risk to the eco-systems?

Neuroscience is exciting. Understanding how thoughts work, how connections are made, how the memory works, how we process information, how information is stored-it's all fascinating. (Lisa Randall)

fully commit to imaginative research and development in co-operative social and business processes?

In mathematics and science, there is no difference in the intelligence of men and women. The difference in genes between men and women is simply the Y chromosome, which has nothing to do with intelligence.
(Christiane Nusslein-Volhard)

en masse, withdraw immediately from work on weapons development and production and create business partnerships to turn swords into ploughshares, missiles into prosthetics, bullets into blood vessel stents and tanks into people carriers with hoists to elevate wheelchair-bound passengers?

But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not, because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behaviour a lot of the time. (Jane Goodall)

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
(Albert Einstein)









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Sunday 9 November 2014

TO WEAR OR NOT TO WEAR: THAT IS THE QUESTION



James McClean is a young Irish professional soccer player from Derry Londonderry, making his living in England. He writes publicly to his employer to explain his reasons for not wearing a specific symbol on his team shirt.

Dear Mr Whelan,
I wanted to write to you before talking about this face to face and explain my reasons for not wearing a poppy on my shirt for the game at Bolton.

He personalises his respect for those who died in both World Wars. Perhaps in the context of the sensitive controversy he seeks to negotiate, he does not indicate the same respect for all those who died in those wars, far beyond the shores of Britain and Ireland, in uniforms other than British and in no uniforms at all. He is not alone in this. In the throes of remembrance, a great calamity of disremembering is enacted.

I have complete respect for those who fought and died in both World Wars - many I know were Irish-born. I have been told that your own Grandfather Paddy Whelan, from Tipperary, was one of those. I mourn their deaths like every other decent person and if the Poppy was a symbol only for the lost souls of World War I and II I would wear one.

No mention of the Turks, the Serbs, The Bulgars and the Germans among whose ancestors the young soccer player now plies his trade in England and across the world, when he dons shirts for his club, Wigan, and his country, The Republic of Ireland.

His country, the one he represents internationally, is The Republic of Ireland, even though he was born in The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And therein rests the dilemma for this young working class man, wresting a living out of his physical skills, his mental strengths and his personal and cultural resolve.

For people from the North of Ireland such as myself, and specifically those in Derry, scene of the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre, the poppy has come to mean something very different.

It is just part of who we are, ingrained into us from birth.

As is the wearing of the poppy. Try appearing on BBC television without wearing a poppy and you will experience a complex, negative and often vicious reaction. It is noticeable the degree to which the militarisation of the spectacle of football matches has increased in recent years. When did soldiers first carry trophies and other artefacts on to the pitch? Could the mayor not do that? Or the nurses from the local hospital?

Power chooses what to validate in our grand spectacles. And Power chooses symbols that validate the power relations in our society, so that we speak the language of power to ourselves. And send our sons and daughters to war once more.

Mr Whelan, for me to wear a poppy would be as much a gesture of disrespect for the innocent people who lost their lives in the Troubles – and Bloody Sunday especially - as I have in the past been accused of disrespecting the victims of WWI and WWII.

It would be seen as an act of disrespect to those people; to my people.

When did players first start wearing poppies on their shirts? Did it coincide with recent wars in the East? And how do we extend the range of people who we language as 'my people'? The people who we know as 'us'?

I am not a war monger, or anti-British, or a terrorist or any of the accusations levelled at me in the past. I am a peaceful guy, I believe everyone should live side by side, whatever their religious or political beliefs which I respect and ask for people to respect mine in return. Since last year, I am a father and I want my daughter to grow up in a peaceful world, like any parent.

Do the small actions of one young man make a difference? It is complex and highly sensitive. And for the record, James McClean's team, Wigan, were thumped 3-1 by Bolton. He came on as a substitute in the 58th minute and was booked in the 86th. Frustrating afternoon all round? Not for Bolton fans.

I am very proud of where I come from and I just cannot do something that I believe is wrong. In life, if you’re a man you should stand up for what you believe in.

The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.



http://www.derrynow.com/article/6557
Contingency, irony and solidarity: Richard Rorty; book, Cambridge University Press; Cambridge; 1989
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29844395





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Wednesday 29 October 2014

JERUSALEM AND NEW INIS FÁIL



Blake's famous poem. Then my rewrite.
From England to Ireland, from religion to mythology and from war to art.




JERUSALEM © William Blake 1757-1827




And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?




And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?




Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.




I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.




NEW INIS FÁIL © Dave Duggan 29.10.2014




And did those feet in ancient times
Walk upon Ireland's mountains green?
And was the great goddess Danú
On Ireland's pleasant pastures seen?




And did the Tuatha de Danann
Race swift upon our rolling hills?
And was Old Inis Fáil builded here
Amongst our struggles and blood spills?




Bring me my quill of ancient oak:
Bring me my verses of desire:
Bring me my ink: black berries soak!
Bring me my fancy flights of fire.




I will not cease from artful fight
Nor shall my pen sleep in my hand
Till we have built New Inis Fáil
In Ireland's green and pleasant land.




Chris Wood sings Blake's Jerusalem.








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Monday 27 October 2014

FURY, POPPIES AND MADNESS



Best job I've ever had.

So speaks a character in the war film Fury. Other characters repeat the phrase throughout the film.

How often do we hear the phrase 'just let me do my job' (or some such) when a character in a film is about to perform a violent act or deliver a treachery?

One of the myths of war is that it's a job and someone's got to do it. Another, the vehement basis of the film Fury, is that war brings out the best in small groups of men. And that men need that.

Shakespeare knew the truth of such madness.

Some say he's mad; others that lesser hate him
Do call it valiant fury.

Repetition of the phrase Best job I ever had serves to underline the economic basis of war.

There are small teams of highly intelligent and educated men now working in dynamic small groups in the development, production, marketing and sales of weapons of mass destruction. Not all Shakespeare's madmen are in ISIS.

Ideals are peaceful. History is violent.

On BBC Radio Five Live's Stephen Nolan show on 26th October 2014, an articulate and intelligent British Army Infantryman, returned from war in Afghanistan, spoke about bayoneting people close up. He could not/did not remember how many he had killed. He noted that he is a not an airman, delivering payloads of death from a great height. He engages in the close-combat killing of men he describes, as 'a son, brother, father'.

Here's a Bible verse I think about sometimes. Many times. It goes: And I heard the voice of Lord saying: Whom shall I send and who will go for Us? And... I said: Here am I, send me!

The listener sees the Infantryman up close to a Taliban soldier, bayoneting him and wonders at the huge resources it took to get the Infantryman into that situation in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, literally the other side of the world from his home place. The Infantryman says he notes an 'increased confidence' among the Afghanistan army and police and the local population as an outcome of the war campaign. The listener wonders if the resources it took to bring the Infantryman and his armed colleagues to that population could have been spent on other, less-destructive, confidence-building measures.

It will end, soon. But before it does, a lot more people have to die.

This is the myth that underpins the war machine. And in the film Fury an appeal to the deepest of human myths is asserted, naming both the weapon of mass destruction - the tank - and the heart-place.

[Referring to Fury] It's my home.

Football pundits and other presenters, on British television, wear poppies as a symbol of remembrance of British military war dead and as a fund-raiser for charitable acts to the maimed or deranged following acts of war. The State who sent them does not adequately compensate them for their losses and their sadness on their return.

O, yet I do repent me of my fury,
That I did kill them.

The myth of sacrifice is offered as a shimmering veil over the slaughter, the gore and the misery that is war. Without a commitment to 'never again', earnest in words and deeds, why wear poppies? Poppies, as badges of remembrance, do not offer such a commitment. Often they are bugle-calls to further slaughter.

Wars are not going anywhere, Sir.

Are we forever condemned to idiot-echo Shakespeare?

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.




Fury; film; David Ayer; Columbia Pictures; Los Angeles; 2014
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2713180/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu

The Tragedy of Macbeth; stage-play; William Shakespeare; London; 1605





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Monday 20 October 2014

HOME, WEEK 3


A sonnet. A companion to WARD 32, WEEK 8


I make the move from crutch to newel post.
Let me pause. The house knows I have returned.
I settle here once more, not yet the ghost.
Home, with less toes. Replete with lessons learned.

Below, her hand will sofa-slide to mine.
She will whisper 'ready?' My eyes will glisten 'yes.'
One button pushed, light flounces, crime fills the time
We are aloft in Danish noir. I almost confess.

I thought I'd never see this room again.
Or her face. I am upright, not on my knees,
With septic suffering or piercing pain.
Yet tears fall from me in diffident ease

This respite cannot be taken for granted.
Restless and fearful, now, just now, landed.

© Dave Duggan 20.10.2014


Thursday 2 October 2014

WARD 32, WEEK 8



My hands are one short of a soccer team.
My feet make five-a-side.


I rise by pushing off my left hand.
I descend by leading with my palms.


Hand rails, hand holds, furniture grips
Are the resolute friends on which I depend.


My right foot bears weight on the heel.
My left bears all else. Sinisterly.


Salts in my blood grow testy.
My kidneys struggle to pass their molecular bulk.


Sugar in my blood oscillates.
I measure, conclude frailly and dose.


The medics mull, ponder and prescribe.
The nurses test, cajole and care.

I wallow, wait and fret.

Will I ever see home again?

Tuesday 29 July 2014

WHAT DO WE TELL THE CHILD ABOUT GAZA?




Tell her it’s a game
Tell her it’s serious


The current onslaught on the people of Gaza, the latest in a series by The Israeli State and Defence Forces, shows:


That if they wish they could blow the people of Gaza into the sea of oblivion. Perhaps that is what they wish.


But don't frighten her
Don't tell her they’ll kill her


That this onslaught does not stop the activities of Hamas and other militants, which include the firing of rockets into Israeli cities.

Tell her we’re stronger
Tell her we’re entitled
Tell her they don't understand anything except violence


That this onslaught is resourced by the highest level of military might on the planet, supplied at commercial rates from the biggest economies. That the onslaught makes profit for those economies.


Tell her something about the men
Tell her they’re bad in the game
Tell her it’s a story




That Gaza is a densely populated strip of Mediterranean coastal land squeezed into a corner of an arc of land that runs from modern day Turkey south into the Arab lands towards the Gulf of Aden, east into Iran and west towards Morocco.




Don't tell her Arabs used to sleep in her bedroom


That there is an immense amount of oil and gas under the ground in all of these lands.




Don't tell her they said it was a land without people

Don't tell her I wouldn't have come if I’d known





That religious fundamentalisms of a variety of hues characterise these lands and give succour to forms of social and political organisation that are hypocritical, despotic, exclusive and apartheid-like.




Tell her there were people who hated Jews

Don't tell her
Tell her it’s over now
Tell her there are still people who hate Jews
Tell her there are people who love Jews
Don't tell her to think 'Jews' or not 'Jews'
Tell her more when she’s older
Tell her how many when she’s older
Tell her it was before she was born and she’s not in danger





That there is a 20th century history of genocide in the recent memory of the dominant people in the state of Israel that underpins the belligerence of the state and rationalises acts of extreme violence and aggression in the name of defence.




Tell her we want peace


That the activities of the militants in Gaza echo the activities of the militants, who were also embedded in the civilian population and who also dug tunnels, in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943.




Tell her maybe we can share




That worldwide demonstrations are necessary to say that the killing of children is wrong. Otherwise there is a question as to whether we can call ourselves 'human'.




Tell her they’re attacking with rockets

Don't frighten her
Tell her only a few of us have been killed
Tell her the army has come to our defence
Don't tell her her cousin refused to serve in the army. Don't tell her how many of them have been killed

Tell her the Hamas fighters have been killed


Don't tell her about the family of dead girls
Tell her you can't believe what you see on television

Tell her we killed the babies by mistake

Don't tell her anything about the army





That without a thorough-going dismantling of the international arms industry the onslaught will recur.




Don't tell her anything about water

Don't tell her about the bulldozer
Don't tell her not to look at the bulldozer
Don't tell her it was knocking the house down
Tell her it’s a building site
Don't tell her anything about bulldozers
Don't tell her about the queues at the checkpoint





That the dismantling of the arms industry will mean job losses in the major economies, job losses for which the economies and their people are not ready.




.. tell her I wouldn't care if we wiped them out, the world would hate us is the only thing, tell her I don't care if the world hates us, tell her we’re better haters, tell her we’re chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? Tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her. Don't tell her that. Tell her we love her. Don't frighten her.




That the onslaught must stop. That all people must be safe. And free.










Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza; Caryl Churchill; stage-play; London; 2010




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