Monthly Archives: September 2015
Dog’s might in fact go to heaven. And my poem’s reduntant…
I posted this poem just a month ago…
Dogs don’t go to Heaven
They told me dogs don’t go to Heaven.
If so, then much less the wolf,
Nor would the fleet deer flee.
If there are no dogs allowed,
Then neither birds nor bumblebees
Enter, I’m sure. Who visits flowers, then?
None need, for they are also absent.
Mountains there are equally bare
Of the forest that covers the one before me.
When they tell me of Heaven, I can hardly
Imagine how the water flows and falls there,
Or why one would swim in the wide blue sea
Without a fish to see.
They tell me
Dogs don’t go to heaven, so I’ve decided
That’s not somewhere I’d for ever want to be.
But there goes Pope Francisco changing the catholic church and its dogma under our feet…
Seems dogs just might get to slip through the bars of the pearly gates, like all dogs sneak into our gardens – at least those little jack russell gits and their ilk.
Good on him. Not sure how the theology of it will work out, but who cares?
The future of nations when the current refugee crisis is only a sample of what is to come.
Europe is in crisis. Again. For a better reason this time than most times. At least this is something serious, with people who really need help (sorry, the Greeks did/do need help, but it seems these guys are more photogenic). But seems like there’s less political will to spend money on helping people fleeing war zones than bankers fleeing bad loans.
After a couple of weeks of wringing hands (and lots of xenophobia, as you do) a few governments are willing to actually accept the idea of accepting “their fair share” of refugees from Syria.
It’s hard to figure out exactly what we should do, though we know what we should not do. We should not leave people in the position they are currently in.
One thing is clear, however; it is time to re-evaluate Europe.
We can see that the idea of Europe, a European Union, as touted to us all those years ago is bullshit. As someone who lives as a European – i.e. out of his own country in a new one with a different language (an “ex-pat,” don’t you know) and a child (and one on the way) who’s got two nationalities, I really think it’s time to do away with the whole idea of nationality, or at least try to. Doing away with religion would also be a big fucking step, of course, but that’s going to take a bit longer.
I am “proud” to be Irish. I mean, I know where I am from. If I could transport myself via google maps to the hills of Wicklow I’d smile and take a nap, knowing I’m home.
But I don’t feel the need for an Irish football jersey or anything of the sort. Never have.
And I certainly don’t feel the need to protect Ireland from infiltration by others (it would be a bit hypocritical if I did, I know). Any man or woman, of any colour or creed can stand on Djouce or Lugnaquilla and say, with the same feelings as I (of the clan O’Brien, don’t you know), “I fucking love this landscape (despite it’s ecological failings and my avocation of complete transformation via rewilding…).”
The above image, posted on the Irish Worker’s Solidarity Movement facebook page, is completely right.
I pondered the future of these nations, our worries that our cultures might disappear under the weight of numbers somewhat facetiously, in my short story, The Bottleneck (soon to be published in my first collection).
The current spate of stupid posters and photos on the internet saying we should look after our own before we look after refugees (well, they don’t call them refugees, but other names like “illegals,”) are an embarrassment to any person of any nationality. Let’s be clear – the fact that our own homeless are not being taken care of is down to the pack of wankers called politicians supposedly running the country (any country, not just Eire. I admit I don’t know the leaders of all nations, but the four I know fairly well – Ireland, Great Britain, America and Spain are all the same; filled with the kind of creeps you wouldn’t let into a career guidance seminar at your kids school. Of the English-speaking countries, Australia seems to be in a league of its own when it comes to being run by dickheads, as far as I can see, but Hungary is around about there) who don’t give a fuck about our (their?) own. They don’t give a fuck about us, you and me, never mind the homeless, and certainly not the refugees. They are the only ones who really stand to gain from this clinging to “our own” and our nationalities.
If the nations of the earth were merged, who would need all these assholes? We’d get by with a hugely reduced set of assholes, like when two companies merge.
Why is this merging of nations, or blurring of nations, or complete rubbing out of nations necessary?
Because this crisis our leaders are wringing their hands about is only one country, one war we are kindasorta responsible for (yes, all of us westerners), and there are so many more.
Let’s skip over the fact for the moment that people have been drowning in the Mediterranean for years (talked a little about that a few months back) and Europe has done fuck all but hand-wring and the citizens weren’t quite as mobilised till a fairly pale-skinned child was washed up (no disrespect to the child or his family, and I know that sometimes we (humans) need an image we can actually get our heads around rather than statistics to really understand how fucked up shit is). The Syrians and Afghans have been able to trek on foot to the “Doors of Europe.” Those who tried our shores instead of doors are still ignored, at least here in Spain, where they were shot at to keep them in the sea just a couple of years ago.
Africans have been making a trek from equally war-torn and dangerous places for years. And most of those wars have to do with drought and famine caused by climate change.
What will our glorious leaders do when faced with actual “hordes” (yes, I used that word, because we need to visualise the reality, not a few thousand people in Calais, but hundreds of thousands and millions of people on the move, with no home to go back to even if these constant wars stop) made homeless by global warming (also caused kindasorta buy us westerners) make their way to our little fake continent?
They will find out that their charade can’t continue. There can be no us and them on a planet sinking into meltdown. The only us and them that actually exists – no the ones propagated in this look after our own before we look after them nonsense – is the us who are poor and the them who control the resources of this planet until we take it back from them.
When the real exodus arrives, we (Europeans) will either spend more money than we spent on the banks trying to close a border that will not be closed, to a mass of humanity that will not be stopped, or we will welcome these fellow humans in to our lands (the part not also swamped by rising sea levels) where they can seek a better life.
Perhaps in the process, our lives will become less rosy and super-eiderdown-duvet comfortable, but there can be no equality without us stepping down off our velvet seats, since the planet can’t sustain our level of bullshit in any case.
Wolves in Luxemburg: what’s good for the Grand Duchy is good for the Republic?
I came across this article a few weeks back. For those who don’t have time to read it all, it says “Luxembourg is developing an action plan for when wild wolves return to the Grand Duchy, if they are not already present in the country.”
Part of this, according to Secretary of State Camille Gira is raising awareness, which “is important given the fact that a lot of people have an inaccurate image of the wolf, driven in part by fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood, as well as negative campaigns which are not based on science but are launched by anti-wolf lobbying groups.”
And I thought to myself, in my innocence and naivety and my clinging to a scientific logic that few politicians seem to share, that if other European nations see themselves ethically obliged to have a plan for when the wolf returns, why don’t we have a plan to help the wolf return?
I mean, the wolf was eradicated from Luxemburg 120 years ago. There are still some who hate the wolf there, no doubt. But the plan will not pander to these citizens and kill the returning wolves. Instead, it will help the canine to re-establish itself, including giving compensation payments for loss of livestock.
The wolf can return to Luxemburg by itself, as long as it’s not eradicated by the surrounding German and French citizens. Unfortunately, the wolf can’t return to Ireland and Great Britain itself by natural expansion given current geographical problems that didn’t exist when it first expanded its range across Europe. But we eradicated it, and if Luxemburg and other continental nations are willing to take on the burden of taking it back rather than killing every returning individual or pack which they could just as easily do, then we on these islands should similarly have a plan to help the wolf get back.