iosaf´s weekly round up.
the Year 2002 or 1423 depending on your sphere of influence. Christmas or Holidays depending on your sphere of influence.
Venezueala counted its 23rd day of general strike on Christmas day.
This morning 1,000,000 barrels of Oil were delivered to Venezueala from Brazil.
It is still difficult to say which side will win but it most certainly can be said that their victory will be short lived. For a general strike to have lasted more almost four weeks with state wide dewprivation of Fuel, in the hottest part of Summer means that the 2 million people who are almost daily taking to the streets of Venezueala are evenly matched.
On the 23rd of November Israel for the fifteenth time in its history occupied Bethlehem.
ON the 25th of December for the first time in history Christians were prevented from holding religious ceremonies at the traditional birth place of Jesus.
On the 23rd of December John Bird founder of the Big Issue magazine in the UK (through a right wing thinktank allied to Fine Gael Politea) called for increased use of the Vagrancy laws to prohibit begging. The Vagrancy laws of England date to 1824, and are bolstered by tresspass law in the 1995 Criminal Justice Act.
The ten crowns of Christendom made their christmas speeches, only the Kings of Sweden and Norway had anything bright to say, all the others commented on how terrible their years had been.
The Kings of Sweden and Norway are considered to be the "poorest" of the ten crowns of christendom, the richest being Elizabeth of England who is very rich indeed, so rich she owns the beach between low tide and high tide.
The beaches of Gallizia are dead.
60% of oil tankers on the seas are singlehull.
The Oil which arrived in venezuela from Brazil this week came in a single hull tanker.
These tankers are now illegal under European Law.
Fishing talks hit home in several European states, Ireland, UK, Portugal are foremost in resisting proposed fishing cuts, which are estimated to cuase 7000 anual job losses.
The crusades popped up on RTE, nearly a year after Bush 2 first likened his "war on terrorism" to a "crusade" RTE spoke to several people for about half an hour.
::::George Bush's reference to the fight against Muslim extremists as a
'crusade'
-Conor Kostic, Medieval Historian at Trinity College Dublin, outlines
the
historical parallels between the current tensions and the first
crusade
28k - http://www.rte.ie/news/2002/1227/morningireland/morningireland4a.ram
Discussion on the issue by Author and Commentator, Tariq Ali;
Minister for
Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen; London Bureau Chief of Newsweek
magazine,
Stryker Maguire; and TCD Historian, Conor Kostick
28k - http://www.rte.ie/news/2002/1227/morningireland/morningireland4b.ram
Americans and Britons were found to be very ingorant of Levant history, and the Israeli occupation of Csijordania, Gaza, and Lebanon.
And a religious cult claimed to have cloned a human born on the 26th of December at 23h55 local time.
The world is very sad and silly.
and I went to the park this morning to feed the ducks, and though to myself how bread doesn´t mould the same way as when I was a kid. & the ducks just didn´t seem the same. In 2000 I issued with others a manifesto and started a campaign called "Reclaim the Genome!".
It called for a global ban on human cloning.
IT still does.
here are some links to consider at the Guardian newspaper, coz the Guardian is nice and safe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/0,2759,395698,00.html
We expect laws to be enacted this following year to ban human cloning. We have always called for the upholding of the European Convention on Embryology, a convention that the UK is currently in breach of. (since Feb 23 2001).
I have not the strength any more to explain why the genome and how it is used (Nobel prize winners this year bla bla cures for cancer) are the most important scientific and ethical issues of our day.
I have not the strength any more.
We asked back in 2000 that the Universal Human Rights Charter be amended or expanded to take account of Genomic experimentation.
....that all humans are born equal.
There are those now ranging from the lunatic to the most celebrated and respected scientific minds of our generation that would change that equality for ever.
And at the same time there are those who would use that knowledge to create yet more weapons of mass destruction.
Last night I saw a american movie of the late nineteen forties which dealt with the Communist Party, it was broadcast in subtitled form on Catalan TV in the small hours, I learnt that Communists are terrible and wreck strikes and foment trouble in dockyard disputes. I learnt how these people should be dealt with for how they were, agents of a foreign power intent on spreading misery and ending democracy.
I have never been a member of the communist party.
but
I have been a member of the international green movement.
and I have been a member of the international anarchist movement.
I suppose that is damning enough?
I feel damned in any case, and wonder why my week old bread grows orange mould and is rejected by the ducks.
If you have children, cherish them, cherish the passing of humanity and it´s fraility from generation to generation.
As we knew back in 2000 they will ban human cloning, for they fought the NAZIs to a stand, and stopped the Holocaust and all its experimentation, but know too, that just as Europe bears the responsibility for the holocaust and it´s perversion of science, the USA bears the responsibility for the technology developed in Europe between 1922 and 1945.
They will ban human cloning now.
Now that they have learnt how to identify cancer genes, how to extend the lives of the hyper rich, how to excise the fraility of human reproduction.
Their children were never as ours, their lives less so, so why do we care?
The only states of Europe that did not succumb to dictatorship between 1922 and 1945 were
Sweden
UK
Ireland
Switzerland.
I count Quisling as a dictator of Norway.
food for thought.
We face enemies of civilisation, enemies of the planet and biodiversity and enemies of humanity.
And the ducks in Barcelona are well fed.
surreality is all I can offer you today.
2003 or 1423 will be no different from last year.
money will still mean nothing.
death will still mean something.
birth will still be a reproductory option of those engaged in the meritocracy.
But they have learnt now all they wished to.
And somewhere are the words of Nemesis and Cassandra being uttered against what they have done.
In Religious terms to qoute John 23 Pope of the Roman Catholic Church (humanae Vitae) "it shall never be lawful to intefere with creative principle"
In mathematical terms, in can never be the remit of simian species which is the human being to so change the cosmos.
The Rules have been broken.
And it is too too late to say you were told.
The arrogance of this civilisation that everywhere celebrates the myth of Atlantis, that can not see it´s own end.
Happy New Year my cyber pals.
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3are you people Luddites?
what is the problem with technology and civilisation?
why shouldn´t we have genome research?
what is your problem in Barca? too much smoke?
(i am presumeing you are part of that lot.)
The people at the link are the 5th international of loved up crusty hippy anarkisty trippy muppets.
I´m affiliated to the 5th international of loved up hippy crusty trippy anarkisty muppets.
(we really are quite distinct, we disagree over key elements of material dialectism such as whether a boiled egg should be broken or cut open).
Luddites?
there is a neo-Luddite movement.
and to some the idea of tracking genetic crops and destroying them is Luddite.
hmmm.
I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Luddite conspiracy.
but neo-luddites are different.
and I have at no stage spoken against scientific research, I have spoken against the "evil marriage of scientific and capitalist speculation".
and I like the uncivilisation conferences.
I recommend them.
if you´re american let me know, and i will be very simple in my next explanation.
:-)
For the second time in Bush's Presidency the outage of Venezuelan Oil becomes a critical factor in GeoPolitical Stability.
But this time Aznar is not president of Spain.
the last time was the weekend of the Vienna OPEC summit, in January 12-14 2003.
THen Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi sent a "strong message" to world oil markets, where prices had then hit a two-year high, above $33 a barrel, (for U.S. crude).
The previous week it had been only 32$.
I took a passing interest in such things to work out how much the Prestige might have been worth.
"There is a shortage. It is significant," said Naimi then of the Venezuelan outage. "I can assure you that there will be no shortage." He predicted that oil prices "would be lower" after that weekend.
They were not.
That scary "32$" mark has been passed for quite a few weeks now. Against the backdrop of instability which stretches from the European Mediterranean to the Borders of China and India. Both Saudi and Bush seem to have "raked a profit" and "failed stability".
In Ireland, this translates into your ESB bill.
As you find it harder to pay the "bin tax", you also find the ESB goes up. The other utilities will follow, and you might have noticed the other problem with interest rates. Or maybe you haven't.
Today:-
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/dh/0,14-0@14-0@2-3208,39-22960219,0.html
510 days ago I didn't qoute the French.
I maintained Venezuela was "key".
Even with Aznar as wicked witch of the East, Wookie Bush and the British Hun, couldn't keep the world in order.
510 days ago, there was an Aznar.
there was a prestige which now would be worth a lot more if it docked safely.
there was no war in Iraq.
there were no WMD in Iraql.
and there had been no explosion of Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism in the World.
All things considerd 510 days ago,
life was sort of "better".
But now there is no Saddam.
olé!
This is exactly what in vulgate of the street, blogging chatroom ephemera
We tried to tell you.
510 days ago.