Where to start with the world in a state of chassis

It’s hard to know where to start. Captain Boyle in O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock got it correct over 100 years ago when he announced that the whole world “is in a state of chassis”. Over the past two weeks, we have been able to luxuriate in the greatness of the poet Paul Durcan and take the mickey out of the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t money concerns of Mayo GAA and the premature summer we enjoyed, while, the world is going down the tubes. 

Gaza is ablaze. Men, women and children are slaughtered. Netanyahu has been given free rein (or has he just taken it?) by the so-called Free World to eliminate every Palestinian from “Greater Israel”.

The Palestinians have been given the choice to be killed by Israeli fire or die by starvation or migrate to wherever, anywhere but Greater Israel, which is now the ambition of the majority of Israelis, knowing full well it is not a war but an extermination and empire building.

And it is not just Gaza. They want the Palestinians out of the West Bank so they can take the land. It is, after all, Jewish land given to them by Moses or whoever and Palestinians are merely squatters, and place decent “law abiding” settlers on it. And, of course, East Jerusalem has to be sorted. It is heavily populated by Arab people, not necessarily Palestinians, but not good Israelis either, so they, in time will have to be tackled and relocated or eliminated. And the world, including us Irish, wring our hands and stand idly by. Yes, we talk and condemn, but we always find a reason not to act.

Micheál Martin is the essence of diplomacy. He says all the right things but refuses to act until the EU agrees on a common approach. Germany, France, The Netherlands, Italy and Poland have skin in the game. They supply weapons of war to the Israelis and they won’t go against the interests of their arms industries. Now that these countries are gearing up to arm against the non-existent attacks of the Russian Bear, the armaments industries may not need to supply Israel. They will be kept in business by their own governments. It could be regarded as a subsidy for the arms providing billionaires. Illegal subsidy? Perhaps.

Our government won’t direct the Central Bank to drop the handling of Israeli bonds which support the “war” effort in Gaza because it is tied into EU regulations. The EU could well be told to get stuffed on this issue. We don’t always have to be best in class. We can be disruptive, if we wish to be. 

Mary Lou chooses to play politics with the issue in the Dáil. She would have been better to take a leaf from Rose Conway-Walsh’s book whose contribution to the Dáil was sincere, sympathetic and pleading for an end to the killing of the children of Palestine. A mother’s natural instinct. I only heard part of her contribution but it came across as a heartfelt plea for an end to the slaughter. Such pleas fall on deaf ears in Israel and will no doubt be classified as another example of Irish anti-Semitism.

Then there is Ukraine and Russia. In fairness to Trump, he is trying to get the warring parties to come together and work out a deal. All wars end in negotiations, we are told. Trump’s approach is in stark contrast to his dealings on Gaza where he gave the go-ahead to Netanyahu to create a French Riviera-style enclave out of Gaza for the enjoyment of the Israeli people. That, of course, required the re-location, or starvation, or indeed the extermination of the people of Gaza. That process is well under way while the world hangs its head in shame, or pretends to.

The Ukraine/Russia war is not an easy fix. Trump has applied pressure on Zelenskyy to accept that Russia will be rewarded for their successes on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine where there is a large element of the population who identify with Russia. I say that at the risk of being accused of being a red roaring communist but that does not change the reality on the ground.

The West, whoever that describes now that Trump has gone rogue, has not done anything to bring the war to a close. Very much the opposite in fact. They have pledged to speed up Ukraine’s access to the EU and to NATO at a time when such actions are only likely to further annoy Putin’s Russia. They, along with the UK, continue to supply Ukraine with the weapons of war but, in very cowardly fashion, refuse to put troops on the ground... troops that Zelenskyy needs if Russia is to be pushed out of Ukraine.

One would have to be concerned about the Irish media/RTÉ reporting of the war. The news of Russian attacks in cities in Ukraine (there’s a war on, remember) is reported as criminal acts while Ukraine’s offensive actions in Kursk, for example, or in far flung air-fields where planes are destroyed by drones in an operation eighteen months in the planning - pull the other leg - or the bombing of Putin’s Kerch bridge to Crimea are presented as examples of Ukrainian successes.

This biased reporting is what led to Gerry Adams' reputation of being the IRA’s main man being thrashed in the High Court in Dublin when he won his defamation case against the BBC. The defamation was in relation to a report that Adams had sanctioned the execution of Denis Donaldson, a Sinn Féin man who acted as a spy for the British authorities. That was the defamation but the BBC chose to turn the case into a trial of Gerry Adams' reputation.

Now, Gerry has always denied that he was in the IRA or that he was the main man on the IRA Army Council but the BBC was having none of it and sought to traduce his reputation further by concentrating on his reputation as an alleged IRA figure during the 'Troubles'. The upshot was, of course, that Gerry won the defamation case and, as he put it, somewhat gloatingly, "put manners on the BBC". He was awarded €100,000 for reputational damage and costs in the case went to Adams... leaving the BBC with a bill for lawyers of an estimated €3 million. The decision may be appealed and the BBC has big enough pockets to again resort to the courts.

A thing that I found somewhat distressing about the case was the suggestion that had the action been tried at a location outside of Dublin, in Northern Ireland, for instance, the outcome would (could) have been different. That represents a slur on the 12 good citizens sitting on the High Court jury. I’d have little doubt that those good women and men of the jury decided the case on the evidence presented to them and did so without fear or favour.

Obviously, as a member of the media for quite some time, I would prefer that people did not have to go to court to preserve their reputations. Mistakes will be made at times but, it seems, the BBC had the opportunity to resolve the case by agreeing to an apology, but declined to do so, relying on a single unnamed source to stand up their case. Unnamed sources are not reliable and we see an increasing number of them being used in media nowadays, especially in the political arena. If a man, or woman, has something to say they should be prepared to put their names to their conviction.

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Question: Whatever happened to the mixed grill?