The Sunday Papers "plague of locusts" edition.

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Sunday September 25, 2005 13:38 by iosaf .:. the ipsiphi Barcelona

It has been long observed that people for some reason on their non-banking days readily absorb shite about Dangerous Places, Famous People, Sensible Saving Options, Holidays, Interesting facts, Sport results, Media, gardening and health as well looking ahead at “upcoming issues” and looking back at "how history was made".

Today is september 25 of 9th month.
It is also the 20th day of Elul, year of Moses 5765
It is also the 20 th day of Shaban, 1426 years since the Hegira.

We are looking at :- Iraq, Kate Moss, Kyoto, the Mercé festival, Millenium Goals, the GAA final, indymedia, locusts and as usual some of "my recollections / observations"
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schistocerca gregoria (the sociable plague of insects) generally number 2 or 3 on the biblical list.

"Dangerous Places"

Yesterday sincere and diverse people from many backgrounds joined again on the streets of 2 major world capitals (London & Washington) to ask that the war in Iraq stop, and to demand explanations as to why it was declared and lasted so long. They were joined by their peers in Ireland who went to Shannon airport, a key link in the chain of convenience which allows the USAF to logisitic supply its troops in Iraq and who spent time at the vigil at the US embassy in Dublin.
In Ireland were seen the same faces and heard the same voices which have since the campaign to stop the war being declared began. They though, have never acted alone, and every time are joined by other less familiar more representative faces of Irish integrity, you don't need to be famous or infamous to oppose this war.
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"Famous People"

In the last weeks it emerged that just over 1% of London's population is addicted to smoking crack cocaine.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1573750,00.html
Pretty soon after Kate Moss found herself again in the scandal pages and without work. She'll be ok, she has insurance and has saved and is keen to tackle her personal problems in a well equiped clinic. Unfortuantely most of London can't afford the £500 a week habit, and neither can Ireland's new affluent "cocaine schnufflers". We have recently looked at the cost of a decent funeral with horses, hearse and plumes and lamented the bereavement grant offered by our current FF/PD regime of 635€. http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=72010
A london crack head would use that grant in a weekend. Gardaí in Ireland were pleased to announce seizures worth €5.5m in the past week, but aren't keen to link that to an internationalised drug war which has seen
competing "irish franchise holders" eliminated and a new consolidation emerge. Coke heads will be guaranteed their supply for Christmas. Cocaine and Crack are problems which most need to be treated at level of user, and level of production. All too often the image of Kate Moss and FF minister gruggling shite in the chamber has hidden the reailty of - paranoia, psychosis, heart failure, poverty which the problem user quickly experiences and the forgotten reality of the campesinos who every four months clear yet more Forest of the Andean Mountains in South America to plan the cashcrop.

On the same global stage that we fight the warmongers we fight for the rights of those campesinos to sustainable development, to schools, housing, hospitals and support their political representatives and their emergent political voice. There are at source, few moral differences between the value of a life in South America's poorest regions and the value of a poor person's funeral in ireland.

http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?search_text=south+america

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"Sensible Saving Options"

Kyoto was the name given to accords agreed at a global conference on climate change by the industrialised "polluting" nations which quite famously was disregarded. About the same time that I first attended a party with Kate Moss in London my peers travelled over land to attend the UN conference as protesters. Their landroute (chosen over an air-route for ecologically sustainable reasons) brought them through areas of Siberia where the subterranean turf has been on fire for almost 10 years. Those who live in that region are few, and mostly ignorant of the world beyond. The fires are impossible to extinguish and till they have consumed all the peat banks will burn, the land is cracked, and the cracks glow red and smoke billows out. one of the team captioned her photographs "hell on earth", and when i was invited that season to the birthday party of "storm" model agency in London (by mistake) [they really though I was someone else] I brought the photos with me, along with a portfolio of Salgado a brazilian photographer who collects images of workers in third world conditions. I spent three hours in a converted warehouse in east London observing at close quarter some of the most excessively paid pretty people in the popular imagination. Those who boasted that they would not get out of bed for less than 10,000$. (a decent two week supply of cocaine). I left that night without any salicious tales of supermodel flirtation memories, but in the company of one of the then research translators of a Channel 4 (british tv) program called "eurotrash". We agreed as we walked home 8not having money for a taxi and not finding a night bus) that in the length and breadth of our lives, this would hopefully be the closest we had come to one of Dante's circles of hell on earth.

Kyoto is an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Those states which ratified the protocol between December 11 1997 and Feb 15th 2005 commited to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases.

Some current estimates indicate that if successfully and completely implemented, the Kyoto Protocol is predicted to reduce the average global rise in temperature by somewhere between 0.02°C and 0.28°C by the year 2050
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol

The USA is not alone in experiencing extreme weather in the last 3 years, and those who oppose Kyoto are quick to point out that it is has always had extreme weather, therefore I remind readers, that if we look for "proof" of climate change, we need not dwell long on Katrina or Rita, but look to Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, and beyond to the burning bogs of Siberia and China.
What has occured in New Orleans and the states of Louisiana and Texas, Alabama and Mississippi captures our imagination because it is seen on TV. The same TV that tought youngsters what "europe" meant in trashy comedy in the last decade, and picked up beautiful girls from Croydon and left some 1.8 million others in underage sexual slavery in the tourists resorts of SE Asia, South America and Africa.

The disaster of Katrina is a failure of the state and government to protect its citizens, and no wonder they can't leave their cars behind.

On the same global stage that we fight the warmongers we fight for the rights of those children to sustainable development, to schools, housing, hospitals and support their political representatives and their emergent political voice. There are at source, few moral differences between the value of a life in South America's poorest regions and the value of some foresight in a US gulf state suburb. Indymedia in the states helped save lives in New Orleans and Texas,
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=71806
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=72116
But there are so many who died and will die due to weather, due at end to the American car and its global culture, the machine line production values of Henry Ford whom are help is unknown.

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"Subvertisement"

What do we want?
simple.
A tiny minority of the human species "are in the good old times" and the live behind barbed wire, war, exploitation, starvation and TV.

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"Holidays & Interesting Facts"

This weekend in Barcelona (where I came to live at the turn of the century) is currently celebrating the 318th anniversary of a plague of Locusts which was seen in the peninsula every year for four years in late 17th century. According to legend the plague was averted by everyone going "super Mary devotional" (and making her the patroness calling her maria de la mercé) and its now the holiday weekend of Barcelona. This disaster followed plague and preceded the "war of the sucession" which keen readers will remember ended on the last editions anniversary. The 11th of September defeat of Barcelona and victory of the Bourbon King. The plague of locusts of 1687 was felt in many "modern countries" of Europe. Locusts are normally solitary creatures, but under certain conditions they become "gregarious" and swarm.
Each one eats its own weight per day.
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"Gardening & Health"

The last serious plague of locusts occured in 2004 and saw swarms eat the farmland of Niger, Mail, Maurtania and swarms reached the following states :- Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Occupied Palestinian territory, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Spain, Sudan, Tunisia, Turkey.

The swarms were fought at the frontiers to the European Union by satellite technology, aircraft, sprays, aucustic devices, all the gizmos and high tech you'd expect. Neither the EU or the US, neither the G8 or the World Bank, the IMF or the largest private/corporate donors have yet delivered their promised aid to the region.

You don't see the Niger famine on your TV now.
You might read (because I believe you ought know that Nigeria's abject poor hoped oil would be denied us by "terrorist action" this last week).
You probably aren't aware, that the Locusts have swarmed in Darfur Sudan in the last week.
Because in the last 2 years, american TV (the template) only gave 30 minutes coverage to Sudan. Until Condoleeze Rice was josted during a visit, no-one was interested in the Sudan.
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"Upcoming Issues & Media"

We are all so terribly proud of our civilisations and our science, our culture, our heritage, our games,
I often wonder why is it we are so reluctant to share them, to give them, to gift what is fine to the majority of the world?

What is the reason for the perfidity?
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"Sports Results & How History was made"

Also many joined to celebrate the legitimate but for too long marginalised and manipulated wish to a unified Ireland, an end to the ludicrous partitioning of our island which has done little other than cause our unwarrented and fawning reliance on US economics and culture, foisted bigotry and division and allowed 2 crypto-fascist states and identities to grow on our Irish land.

Biut of the pity that so many of them, perhaps missed the subtle point of what partition did to their own consciousness of their nation as a developing vehicle fit for this century we are beginning. or ro put it simly "the hope of Republic".

Don't go gaa!gaa! on me we'll all be winners yet, I'n a young man, I'll be around a while, I'll get ye that constitution /(without taking the credit), but there's other stuff on the list first.

.:. @ € / $ % + *

Have a good week!
reader & writer,
contributor & recipient of Indymedia advice & wisdom, information & space, in Ireland or not.

© iosaf mac diarmada. 0034 636 105 231
( i do hate the anonymous caller )
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the last edition of the Sunday Papers "independence day" edition 11thSeptember 2005
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=71913&search_text=sunday%20papers