horses for courses

national | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Wednesday May 05, 2004 13:26 by iosaf mac diarmada - (for the moot -) A J.R.R. Tolkien term for slow debate between Tree Leaf Branch Bole Crown and Root. eurasia. george orwell born eric blair (1) land.

a short reflection on the which window we daily are pushed through...

More than a year ago, we united to try and stop a War (for Oil on Iraq).
And perhaps through our efforts we stopped many states from being involved in that War. We are still obliged to do our best to stop that War.
More than a year ago, a war against the West became very apparant. We may all hold our opinions on the causes of that War.
We are obliged to do our best to stop that War as well. I'ts called the War on Terror.
We are obliged to stop the Terror.
More than a generation ago, a war began in the Levant, it has touched our country, it has touched everyone.
We are obliged to do our best to stop that War as well by something we call the Middle East Peace Process.

Iraq - Terror - Israel.

In the last few days many Irish readers will have become aware that the media machinery within Ireland played a pivotal ròle in preparing the public and police force psychologically for violent confrontation.

Together with the Fianna Fail and Progressive Democrat Coalition Government, most of the mainstream media in Ireland fought a long campaign to criminalise protest, stifle opposition, and prepare a riot.

During which time, it is very probably that national security was badly prioritised and during a politically convenient and socially divisive and needless confrontation, more serious enemies slipped through the net.

Irish mainstream media, does not sell or get read much beyond the borders of Ireland.

The Irish who constitute less than 4,000,000 people have long been kept isolated from many political and cultural debates and issues that are at the heart of the European Project for the XXI century.

The Fianna Fail and Progressive Democrat Coalition Government, have focussed on their own successes in having controlled the apparata of State for the majority of the period when the State was the recipient of European Structural Funding and the conditions were achieved to help the "Celtic Tiger" label stick.

But now, that it is over.

Europe, shares many borders of both land and sea with the states and cultures of the world who are obviously being caught up in the effects of the 3 wars referred to in the opening paragraph.

Spanish media likewise is not absorbed much beyond the frontiers of Spain. Here readers sometimes gets glimpses of another state, courtesy of my joe blogg letters home. Today the reader might like to know, last night during the Lunar eclipse that marked the 1060 day of Burlusconi's term as prime minister, and passed over the Iberian Peninsula, through southern Italy to Tunisia and the desterts of Arabia beyond, was marred in Spain. Two adolescents unfathomly took thier lives in that period, in what seems to have been a suicide pact.
Horror, pain, anguish, questions... "how could this occur?". "why?".
Or the reader might be more interested to know, the mayor of BCN, Juanito Clos, spent the day cycling yesterday with loads of other political and economic representatives. On your Bike! Or the reader might be interested to know the King returned for the first time in 17 years to visit the Basque country and thank the 700 soldiers stationed there for thier loyalty to Spain, but this time without the presence of the Lehandakari. Or the reader might like to know about the cartoons, one twisted big bole tree stump with some small sprouts shooting upwards, the last new life of Spring, and on the bark, an old carved love heart, Palestine and Israel. Or the reader might ponder the effects of the Sassar worm or replicant retrovirus or whatever it was that meant I spent days wondering why people I didn't know had sent me fines I couldn't open.
Then the reader would enter the "global world of concern, cause and effect".

Then the reader might ponder the pictures of torture, the list of US ex-diplomats, the woe and each day more shocking presence of the American led war on Iraq.

Ah.- there the rub.

In Ireland, you would know nothing of these things,
as in Spain, no-one will learn about Flynne being expelled from Fianna Fail.
Or the intense debate at in all sections of Irish Society on the lead-up to and handling of the May Day weekend in Dublin, or that Pat the Cox is not going to run again for MEP.

But we all know, what is going on in US foreign policy because we all are it appears obliged to digest on a daily and nightly basis the diet of US war and election propaganda and counter propaganda.

From Ireland to Barcelona,
from Cyprus to Helsinki,
from Moscow to Malaysia,
from Egypt to the Canarias,
from Baghdad to Damascus,
from Morrocco to Girona,
from Girona to Dublin.
from Dublin to Faranfore...

the circles of influence I have described many times before.
the circles of consequence, I had not really thought needed to be described.
I realise I over-estimated the capabilities of the Fianna Fail and Progressive Democrat Government.

They are the big circles of modern travel, and US media saturation, our partners, our masters, our cousins, our others, in the English Speaking Hegemonic Block of the World, they are the circles of hurt, anger, religious fervour turned to extremism, of cultural oppression, of lies that in the domestic US media might keep the system going, but beyond, in the Global US Media Reach, stoke the fire.

We see the smoke.

A daily provocation of generations and generations of who are already unhappy people, and instable people.

Who neighbour Europe and not the USA.

Long after Pat Cox's seat is warmed by another bum, and Bertie has presented his hardback memories, and Bush has been cast in Iron, painted in Oil, carved into Marble, the consequences of the conjunction of those three wars on Iraq, on Terror, between Arab and Israeli, will go on turning across the pivets so carelessly made during (for Irish reader's understanding) the Fianna Fail and Progressive Democrats Coalition government terms.
Or for Spanish readers' understandings the eight years of Aznar. Or for British Readers' understanding, the turn from Thatcher to Mr Blair (2) and the final testing of Airstrip 1.

Or for the Americans who ever look over all our shoulders, we in Europe are born of those who have long suffered War, in all it's presentations, forms, prosecutions, and consequences.

When will we speak of a Marshall Plan for the Levant to Samarkand?
When we will we speak of a UN again, being credible, trusted and functional?
Will that be when Bush is in Iron, Oil and Marble?
Will that be when some latter day DeValera goes and waves a paper at the League?

No. That is not going to happen.

We will live on as the frontline targets, the frontline investors, the frontline victims of the conjunction of all these three wars.

That is at least us on the mainland.
The Eurasian land-mass.
of the Europe of the other 23 states land.
the other 380,000,000 citizens.

Where we still take small comfort in being allowed our moments of anger and frustration at the picture in the newspaper, of the rumour that there is a global resistance at all levels to the Terror.

Where we hope there will be a Moot.

In Ireland, though you will continue be safe, on airstrip 1, it has been thatched, it has been bought lock stock and barrel, and there is it appears no family silver left to pawn you out.

But You know your friends and your allies.

Olé!