A Brief Episode in the Paddy’s Day War. Joe Lost His Phone. Iggy the Infiltrator.

Saturday April 05, 2003 16:26

by Rodents against Rodents in Anoraks

A Lament for Civil Liberties and our National Day. Psychic Youth. Aggressive Rats.

Ireland spent a day on the autopsy of an event that in less dangerous times would have consumed the meeja in a raging bushfire for a week. This time though it is forgotten about immediately by everyone because JR himself is flying into Belfast on Monday for a war - council with Berty and Tony.

A former Member of the temple of Psychic Youth present to take part in the dail blocade on Wedensday evening last, the 2nd of April in the year of the Paddy’s Day war, at approximately the time at which the Greek IMC was shut down in the midst of violent repression of peace protests, recovered Joe Higgins’ phone after the said gentleman and elected represantative and member of The Socialist Party (of Ireland) had been most unceremoniously dragged out from the sit-in at the gates of said building by the new paddys day public order unit (unmarked) in the full glare of the media spotlight. The phone fell out of his pocket basically. You saw him in the papers. The man was upside down.

Ireland spent a day on the autopsy of an event that in less dangerous times would have consumed the meeja in a raging bushfire for a week. This time though it is forgotten about immediately by everyone because JR himself is flying into Belfast on Monday for a war - council with Berty and Tony.

Joe got in some good lines during the day considering he was experiencing difficulties in the communication department during the course of the day. He had to deal with Iggy the Infiltrator and with Pat Kenny’s rehersals of the same tired red-scare mongering that that Aggressive Rat McDowell would deploy like a hapless Nixon rerun minutes later in the chamber. Pat Kennedy’s inane and insulting to his listenership by numbers formulaic red-baiting almost caused Joe to miss the bell and be excluded from the debate that followed. For a man working on his feet dealing with his newfound national prominence without his mobile he performed admirably. He called a spade a spade. The Priest Was a Liar. The War was Wrong and no he was not a publicity hound.

‘I assure the house that the photocall was completely unscheduled’ - Joe quipped in the eye of the storm. If it was any kind of decent setup operation the man would have got away with his mobile phone. I mean - wouldn’t you. But he didn’t.

He genuinely believed that his phone had been robbed by the Paddys Day Brigade and Co.

He was wrong. It fell into the wayward clutches of an ex Member of The Temple of Psychic Youth who was taken by it’s many strange and advanced features and who was also taken by the idea - widespread in the country - that all politicians have far too much thinking to be doing about money and property to be trusted with such a potentially serious instrument of communication enhancement technology. He left the scene with the phone in his posession. He didn’t know who owned it.

He subsequently, in a kind of dizzy love your neighbour fashion at the aid for red crescrent and red cross gig, passed the phone widely among emigrees af wildly varying backgrounds, and asked them to make use of it to phone home and talk to their families at some length. Michael Mc Dowell will probably try at some stage to use the records of the calls from his misplaced phone made by russian or middle eastern emigrees to stitch poor Joe up as a Red Russian or a Dictatorial Islamo-Fascist with contacts in the Middle-East or maybe even in Colombia or Argentina. They keep the records for 7 years I think. I wonder how long they keep the cctv footage from the two cameras outside the dail. This stuff should be on pay per view.

Our information does not belong to us anymore, it belongs to Fr Iggy. And his mate Pat Kennedy and of course to Willie’s Doktors. They stop spinning sometimes though and thousands have a front row seat as their brains appear to melt and a seething mixture of a concern for profits expensive tribunals and landlords rights beams out of then that daleks would be proud of. Delete Delete any reference to war and irelands involvement in it and pretend that it’s ok not to worry about the weather and build big roads and erode civil rights promote excessive drinking and hope that 1000 spindoctors can make it all seem like nothing untoward is happening. Paddy’s Day War indeed..

Much Later the phone was returned to Joe, coming via the paws of many virtual warriors, by a very enthusiastic former jazz musician courier by the name of Gary-Okie who is planning a punk rock concert in honour of Joe shortly with his band. It will be held in the International Bar. Joe made some comments about one of the first meetings he had been at in 1968 having been held in the same room. Joe explained to Gary Okie how like some other politicians in the Dail he lived on the average industrial wage and gave the rest to his comrades for organisational purposes.

Even BOC is thinking about 1968 and Nixon and is already getting into the ‘freaky long hair peace terrorists’ routine and the ‘how so like Sandymount Ringsend is’ property shark CRH Sindo triangle.

It is not the sixties again though no matter how much the law and order brigade in FF FG and the Aggressive Rats would like it to be. We are nearing the end of the first decade of the Fourth World War and the war is everywhere now. The Zapatistas are invading Europe and at a time like this a man can’t be without his phone.

‘Psychological operations may become the dominant operational and strategic weapon in the form of media/information intervention. Logic bombs and computer viruses, including latent viruses, may be used to disrupt civilian as well as military operations. Fourth generation adversaries will be adept at manipulating the media to alter domestic and world opinion to the point where skillful use of psychological operations will sometimes preclude the commitment of combat forces. A major target will be the enemy population's support of its government and the war. Television news may become a more powerful operational weapon than armored divisions.’ Marine Corps Gazette
October 1989, Pages 22-26.