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Archives for July 2020

The Lost Children

30/07/2020 By ACOMSDave

Who are the lost children? I read again with no little horror the story published in The Observer ‘The Long Walk to Europe’.  The facts given do not bring home the pain and loss that the children have suffered – the loss of homes due to war, the building depression and finally the journey to try and find a refuge of safety.

Caroline Brother’s fictional account about two brothers escaping the turmoil of war and a country in turmoil is no less real, but does bring home the plight of ‘The Lost Children’.

The Lost Children - Hinterland

On the 26 June, I watched a history programme about the USA, and how so much of its history has been re-written to suit political purposes (as indeed in so many other countries).  However, what I really found interesting was the cameo about the Statue of Liberty.  How it was in another guise meant for the Middle East, and because the cost was extortionate, it was redesigned for the West – the USA.

But whilst it initially started its career in the USA as a political reminder to the USA of France’s involvement in the USA’s independence, by the writing of one poem (…The New Colossus …) with the phrase 

… “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”… Emma Lazarus

which then ended up on a plaque beneath the statue and became symbolic for refugees looking for freedom, fleeing tyranny, and looking for freedom – this statue was their first sight of the land of freedom (USA) Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island, New York City, New York, U.S.

The Lost Children - Statue of LIberty

You may think this a detail, but it is not.  The youths fleeing the warzones in the Middle East and elsewhere are looking for a place of refuge, and with so many countries having economic problems (and now Corona Virus as well) and being under financial constraints, the doors to refugees are being shut.

Repeated governments from so many countries profess ‘that they are doing everything they can’, but fundamentally leaving so much of the work to charities, who depend on private individuals’ generosity, is not dealing with the problem.  And in all humanity, you cannot send these children back because what is there for them to go back to?

The Lost Children - Hinterland

We need a coherent, global policy that enables these disposed to be housed, educated, integrated and along with the youth in our own countries they deserve a fair and developed hope of work.

Further reading:

  • UNICEF – Latest statistics and graphics on refugee and migrant children
  • The Talking Cure
  • Amazon – Hinterland by Caroline Brothers
  • The Final Stretch by Cole Moreton
  • Eurostat – asylum statistics explained – 1Q 2020
  • Open Democracy – It’s not about reaching Europe, but fleeing Libya: accounts from a Mediterranean rescue ship
  • The Guardian – The Talking Cure by Lorenzo Tondo
  • UNICEF – Latest statistics and graphics on refugee and migrant children

Statistics

YouTube documentary

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Filed Under: Community Journalist Tagged With: homes, lack of food, Lost, Refugee camps, Talking Cure, The Lost Children

Invisible Manipulators of Your Mind

26/07/2020 By ACOMSDave

Source: Invisible Manipulators of Your Mind

When I read this article, I had to go back and read it again – ‘Invisible Manipulators of Your Mind’ when read properly shows that both government and big business are out to control us – does this not reflect back to ‘1984’ by George Orwell

Invisible Manipulators

“…“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
― George Orwell, 1984…”

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have thoroughly detailed how to go about controlling people through ‘hudges’ and not surprisingly the big names in the digital world have listened, understood and applied it  ( Jeff Bezos (the founder of Amazon), Larry Page (Google), Sergey Brin (Google), Nathan Myhrvold (Microsoft), Sean Parker (Facebook), Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla), Evan Williams (Twitter), and Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia).)

But it doesn’t stop there, there is every indication that President Trump’s election team have also applied the theory to his electioneering mechanism – and it seems to have worked!

Invisible Manipulators

We in the UK have also seen some of the applications with the  ‘Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data breach which occurred in early 2018 when millions of Facebook users’ personal data was harvested without consent by Cambridge Analytica to be predominantly used for political advertising’ (Wikipedia).

Is it not time that the human race realised what is happening and took a stand and stopped the erosion of human rights, our rights, and make an effort to clean up politics and business?

Invisible Manipulators

[Read more…]

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Filed Under: Community Journalist Tagged With: 1984, big brother, business, government, Language, Manipulators, Mind Control, Nudges, politics, Silicon Valley

How to Edit Your Own Writing – The New York Times

26/07/2020 By ACOMSDave

In writing you must kill all your darlings

Source: How to Edit Your Own Writing – The New York Times

For nearly 40 years I have been striving to learn to write, whether it be for examinations, letters to family and friends or indeed articles and reviews.  The one thing I have discovered is that something written at speed without time reconsider leads to disaster.  You need to take time out to edit your own writing.

In examinations, you have finite time and prescribed set of questions, and you need to set time aside to read, plan and then write and finally review what you have written.  I learned this as an adult doing trade examinations and also when I went back to college to continue my education.

For family and friends, this is a journey which is ongoing.  I think my first letter without supervision was when I was 8 or 9 – writing to thank family for looking after me on holiday.  I have continued to write, though less now with pen and paper and more with the computer in whichever mode I am using at the time (desktop, laptop, iPad or phone).  All have built-in spell checkers ( and some have even got grammar checkers), but it still takes a careful perusing after writing and before sending to ensure that I have not placed an incorrect word in the message (and it does happen regularly, even with the tools checking).

My writing of reviews and articles is more problematic.  Firstly it is time; there never seems to be enough time to do the research and reading necessary to build up sufficient working knowledge to write an in-depth piece.  Reviews are to a degree easier, they fall into a set piece of organisation.  I have developed a template for their structure. which enables me to fill the initial blocks in from various sites, but then it down to reading and/watching/or listening to the item. To think about how I feel afterwards and to ponder about whether I have come across any other pieces of work which are similar and whether they were better or worse.

So you can see, writing is something you need to practise.  It is something to think about.  And, it must never be confused with sending a quick message or tweet – though they should be actioned with discretion, and often aren’t.

Writing for me is a joy, a quilty sin, a pain and on its worse day a pain, but I wouldn’t give it up.

  • Amazon Link to – Politics and the English Language

    Editing and Writing

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Filed Under: Community Journalist Tagged With: books, editing, movies, my thoughts, reviews, writing

Pearse. The Educationalist – edited reprint from Church & State (Cork)

25/07/2020 By ACOMSDave

Ireland’s postal authorities have decided to issue stamps celebrating Patrick Pearse as an educationalist.  This turn of events at any time in the past thirty years would have led to yet another examination of Pearse’s sexuality.  The Irish Times article on the matter was headlined Pearse As Educational Pioneer (25 / 09 / 08)’

Pearse


Written by Elaine Sissons, it managed to keep to the point for most of its length.  She writes that the opening of Scoil Éanna realised Pearse’s “…long-held dream of providing a modern, child-centred. bi-lingual education for Irish boys”.  The opening of the girl’s Scoil Íte in 1911 is noted but is not made part of the article.  Pearse, in his writings on education, the most vigorous of which, The Murder Machine, Ms Sissons notes in passing, refers to “children” rather than “boys”.

Pearse - The Murder Machine


Elaine Sissons also notes “his clashes with the clergy…” which, apparently “belie the perception that Pearse was slavishly devoted to the Catholic Church…”.  Only those who made a point of not actually thinking about the matter thought Pearse was remotely orthodox in his Catholicism.  He was probably a sincere Catholic – but not very Roman.  It is useful for this sort of information to appear in an Irish mainstream publication.  
Those who have spent many years carefully fostering the image of Pearse as a proto-Nazi paedophile will be furious at this act of betrayal by the IT.  Ms Sissons notes the large number of well-known figures who sent their children to Pearse’s schools.  She describes them as “eminent nationalist families”.  She notes that George Moore – the novelist’s – son. Ulick attended.  Moore (senior) may have broken with nationalism later, but even in 1908, he was hardly “advanced”, as it was put.  Jim Larkin and Stephen Gwynn do not fit neatly into the category ‘nationalist’.  Certainly not as the term is understood by modern Irish academia; Elaine Sissons lectures in Dún Laoghaire’s Institute of Art, Design and Technology,  


Pearse annoyed the Castle and the Catholic authorities by running a religiously integrated (even secular) college.  Ms Sissons calls it “a Catholic lay school”.  She describes as “unlikely” the support Pearse got from “international figures”, including Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout movement, whose own sexuality has been ‘called into question’ recently.  Another ‘unlikely’ supporter was the poet Rabindranath Tagore, who emulated Pearse’s experiment in Bengal.


Quite why this support is ‘unlikely’ is difficult to understand.  The whole British Empire had its eyes on Ireland.  There were particularly close relations with the Indian national movement.  Alfred Webb* noted that in the 1890s there was a suggestion that Indian National Congress members be elected to Westminster from Irish constituencies.  That’s a close relationship.  (Congress felt that it should put down stronger roots in India, before going into any Imperial assemblies.  


Apart from those trapped in the British Empire, there were people trapped in other empires.  And the ‘diaspora’, in the British Empire, the USA. and Argentina (Ché Lynch Guevara. being the most famous of the latter).  The enemies of England / the City of London – there were many of them – kept a weather eye on Ireland.  There were people like the German scholar Kuno Myer, who found the intrinsically interesting. 


“Pearse is not now often remembered as an innovator in educational methods…”.  The last time The Murder Machine was published – anywhere – was by Mercier (Cork) in 1986; “…those who knew him said he was at his most fluent and enlightened when speaking about education”.  

We are told some of the education imparted to Pearse’s charges: “In the first year… the boys’ heard lectures… on French literature, phonetics, philosophy, medieval history, Egyptology, botany, and archaeology.”  Pearse “took them out of the classroom, using geography  to teach history, nature to teach geometry, music to teach maths, art to teach Irish.”


According to the Roy Johnson’s A Century of Endeavour (a study of his father’s and his own contributions to Irish life), Pearse employed at least one science teacher, David Houston.  Science teachers were rather rare in Irish schools then.  “[F]ive teachers, including Pearse, were executed for their part in the 1916 Rising: William Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, Thomas Mac Donagh, and Con Colbert…” (something of a forgotten man – his first biography was produced on the centenary of the Rising).
This latter matter is not the “darker note” to which Ms Sissons refers,  That is “…Pearse’s promotion of valour and heroism…”, which is “uncomfortable” to modern audiences.  The boys in pageants and plays dressed “as ancient Irish warriors”, are “inevitably viewed through the lens of Pearse’s later militancy”.  ‘Pearce’s later militancy’ was in large part (if not entirely) a response to the Great War.  That gigantic act of mass murder, on nearly every continent; a major naval battle was fought off the Falkland Islands in 1914, and when the USA entered the fray every State in Latin America declared war on Uncle Sam’s enemies, is simply ignored, Ireland is a little universe all of its own.  Not even the Other Island obtrudes until the Irish decide to do something distasteful.  Like, assert their own right to independence.   In parenthesis, Ms Sissons writes that the boys in these pageants look “like extras from a Wagnerian opera”.  It is possible that Pearse might have wanted them to look like extras/super [numerie]s from Lohengrin or Parsifal.  The Belfast Sinn Féiner Herbert Moore Pim wrote the libretto (wee book/opera script) on the subject of Cuchuillain, nobody took up the idea.  Wagner only ‘became viewed through the lens of Hitlerism’ after WW2.  Wagner escaped the 1914 hysterical denunciation of everything German mainly due to the musicians – especially Henry Wood, the founder of the Promenade Concerts, refusing to toe the line.


Presumably ‘Wagnerian opera’ is mentioned because Ireland’s largely tin-eared intelligentsia takes its line on such matters from Radio 4 UK.  And not from the evidence of its own ears and eyes. which might necessitate their making an individual decision.


Elaine Sisson praises parts of Pearse’s “complex” legacy the “vibrancy. enthusiasm and child-centredness lives on in the Gaelscoil movement”.  But adds that the “emphasis on heroic self-sacrifice” belongs in the Pearse Museum.


Does it?


Is the heroic self-centredness of ‘Celtic Tiger’ Ireland so obviously morally superior to that of Pearse, his brother, Connolly, Colbert, Plunkett, and the rest of ‘that delirium of the brave?

Written by Sean McGouran

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Filed Under: Editor to ACOMSDave Tagged With: A Century of Endeavour, Con Colbert, Educationalist, Elaine Sissons, Joseph Plunkett, Pearse, Pearse As Educational Pioneer. Postage Stamps, The Murder Machine, Thomas Mac Donagh

Common Sense Comes to Computers | Quanta Magazine

04/07/2020 By ACOMSDave

common sense

Source: Common Sense Comes to Computers | Quanta Magazine

 

The curiosity is that so many of us at work, at home and in so many circumstances state ‘use your common sense’, which is non-sensical because it assumes that we have all had precisely the same life experiences, that we’ve all had the same teaching, the same upbringing, the same exposure to risk…  (ROPSA)

Having spent a lot of my 66+ years working around and with computers, and my own nature being one of natural organisation (and even control!), I have always found it difficult to understand why so many others live in chaos.

Common Sense

I have come to accept that life is chaotic and the everyone adapts to it in their own way, but I cannot accept chaos and disorganisation.

 

However, I do love watching The Marx Brothers, reading Groucho Marx’s letters and listening to Harpo Marx play the harp and piano – that is common sense!

 

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Filed Under: Community Journalist Tagged With: chaos, common sense, disorganisation, harp, Marx

Amal Clooney Transcript of UN Speech on Trump and Journalism | Time

04/07/2020 By ACOMSDave

Source: Amal Clooney Transcript of UN Speech on Trump and Journalism | Time

I am writing as a community journalist, who in the past along with Sean McGoruan and others have tried to write and reflect about the LGBTQ community in Northern Ireland.  There were times when it felt an uphill struggle, as we fought censorship and bureaucracy, not to mention the establishment.

We wrote about murders, about police sting operations, about AIDS.

Even today we still have to write about homophobia, how the ‘lockdown’ has and is affecting people; but we are lucky now to not have people thrown into prison without trial.  Though I must say that the government’s current stance on ‘gay cure’ therapy beggars belief – is the Prime Minister trying to go back to the days of Margaret Thatcher?

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney’s speech is thought-provoking, and also worrying, because only this morning I re-published on the NIGRA website about  the film ‘

Welcome to Chechnya: The Gay Purge, review: a heart-stopping account of those fleeing persecution

which was shown on BBC TV this week

Take time to read the articles and watch the film, if you haven’t already.  YOu won’t’ be disappointed.

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Filed Under: Community Journalist Tagged With: attacks, big brother, Chechnya, free speech, homophobia, imprisonment, journalism, murder, Russia

‘The love letter to my neighbourhood that helped me flee my country’ – BBC News

04/07/2020 By ACOMSDave

Source: ‘The love letter to my neighbourhood that helped me flee my country’ – BBC News

 

This is a wonderful insightful letter from the journalist  José Gregorio Márquez, who is writing about his believed Venezuela.  It flows with love and wonder, but also heartache when he references the killings and disappearances in his country, and why he had to finally leave for Buenos Aires and start a new life.

 

A photo on his wall

 

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Filed Under: Government & Politics Tagged With: Argentina, Buenos Aires, disappearances, José Gregorio Márquez, journalism, killings, Venezuela

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