(Reyjavik, Iceland)
One thing has nothing to do with the other, but there is an appealing sense of irony that the biggest victim of the Icelandic volcano’s ash should be the United Kingdom.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Missing the plane, missing the point
(Reykjavik, Iceland)
On December 26th 2006 an undersea earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia triggered a tsunami which killed well over 175,000 people (and possibly as many as 250,000), injured around 125,000 more and displaced well over 1.5 million people.
On the 12th January 2010 an earthquake occurred in Haiti, killing a number of people estimated to be at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 150,000, injuring perhaps 250,000 and bringing destruction to an entire country.
Droughts, mudslides, hurricanes and floods have not only killed tens of millions of people the world over in the last century they have also devastated land to the extent that it has become uninhabitable for many years after the initial disaster.
On the 14th April 2010 the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupted for the second time in a month, sending a cloud of volcanic ash into the air over Europe. Nobody died; nobody lost their home. The greatest physical threat came in Holyhead in Wales where fighting broke out at the ferry terminal.
In the west we are largely cushioned from the effects of natural phenomena and we are prone to ignorance on the enormous part that geography plays in poverty. We are also prone to complaining vociferously whenever our tidy little lives are disrupted and to underestimating the power the Earth, which we are attempting to destroy, has over our lives.
It is time to stop whining and wise up.
On December 26th 2006 an undersea earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia triggered a tsunami which killed well over 175,000 people (and possibly as many as 250,000), injured around 125,000 more and displaced well over 1.5 million people.
On the 12th January 2010 an earthquake occurred in Haiti, killing a number of people estimated to be at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 150,000, injuring perhaps 250,000 and bringing destruction to an entire country.
Droughts, mudslides, hurricanes and floods have not only killed tens of millions of people the world over in the last century they have also devastated land to the extent that it has become uninhabitable for many years after the initial disaster.
On the 14th April 2010 the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupted for the second time in a month, sending a cloud of volcanic ash into the air over Europe. Nobody died; nobody lost their home. The greatest physical threat came in Holyhead in Wales where fighting broke out at the ferry terminal.
In the west we are largely cushioned from the effects of natural phenomena and we are prone to ignorance on the enormous part that geography plays in poverty. We are also prone to complaining vociferously whenever our tidy little lives are disrupted and to underestimating the power the Earth, which we are attempting to destroy, has over our lives.
It is time to stop whining and wise up.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Fempol
Edwina Curry and Margaret Thatcher, Condoleeza Rice and Sarah Palin, Esperanza Aguirre and Ana Pastor, Mary Harney, Imelda Marcos, Winnie Mandela, Laura Chinchilla and Michelle Bachelet. The list goes on.
The world suffers under middle-aged and simply aged men and the voters look for an alternative. But why is it that when a woman gets into a position of power she turns out to be just as bad as the men?
The world suffers under middle-aged and simply aged men and the voters look for an alternative. But why is it that when a woman gets into a position of power she turns out to be just as bad as the men?
Friday, March 5, 2010
Under the influence of stupidity
(La Paz, Bolivia)
Last week it was reported that political dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo had died in his Cuban prison cell after a hunger strike that had started nearly four months previously. The 42-year-old plumber and bricklayer was the first victim of this particularly personal form of protest in Cuba since 1972, and the near forty-year gap between the deaths only serves to emphasise the seriousness of his final decision.
Zapata was originally sentenced to three years in prison for what the Cuban government calls “disobedience” but was subsequently sentenced to another thirty-six years for various other “crimes”. The hunger strike was a protest against the constant torture at the hands of the prison guards – the torture must have been unbearable for Zapata to decide to starve himself to death.
In Bolivia this week another hunger strike took centre stage as Franklin Durán, the head of the transport drivers’ union, was reported to have gone on hunger strike in order to protest against the Bolivian government’s decision to punish drink-driving. In a country where nearly one hundred people died in alcohol-related traffic accidents in January alone, a new law was long overdue. President Evo Morales – himself no stranger to the hunger strike as a form of protest – proposed a law which would see drink-drivers punished with considerable fines and a lengthy driving ban. If the convicted driver worked for a public transport company then the company would also be fined.
It is staggering to think that within days of each other the news headlines could carry items about two similar protests based on such remarkably different reasons. The transport union chief has suffered no torture from Morales’ proposed law; nor has he been imprisoned on a whim or seen his life taken away from him and his family victimised. On the contrary, both he and his family should benefit from being able to drive, cycle or walk around their city with less to fear from drunken louts in charge of a ton of speeding metal.
It is to be hoped that Mister Durán, when he finishes his offensive and futile crusade and the sugar starts returning to his brain, sees sense and supports the government’s law. It is also to be hoped that he looks around himself and compares his own privileged position to that of a political prisoner in Cuba, or Guantánamo Bay, or Myanmar. Perhaps then he will understand that a hunger strike is not a decision to be taken so lightly.
Last week it was reported that political dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo had died in his Cuban prison cell after a hunger strike that had started nearly four months previously. The 42-year-old plumber and bricklayer was the first victim of this particularly personal form of protest in Cuba since 1972, and the near forty-year gap between the deaths only serves to emphasise the seriousness of his final decision.
Zapata was originally sentenced to three years in prison for what the Cuban government calls “disobedience” but was subsequently sentenced to another thirty-six years for various other “crimes”. The hunger strike was a protest against the constant torture at the hands of the prison guards – the torture must have been unbearable for Zapata to decide to starve himself to death.
In Bolivia this week another hunger strike took centre stage as Franklin Durán, the head of the transport drivers’ union, was reported to have gone on hunger strike in order to protest against the Bolivian government’s decision to punish drink-driving. In a country where nearly one hundred people died in alcohol-related traffic accidents in January alone, a new law was long overdue. President Evo Morales – himself no stranger to the hunger strike as a form of protest – proposed a law which would see drink-drivers punished with considerable fines and a lengthy driving ban. If the convicted driver worked for a public transport company then the company would also be fined.
It is staggering to think that within days of each other the news headlines could carry items about two similar protests based on such remarkably different reasons. The transport union chief has suffered no torture from Morales’ proposed law; nor has he been imprisoned on a whim or seen his life taken away from him and his family victimised. On the contrary, both he and his family should benefit from being able to drive, cycle or walk around their city with less to fear from drunken louts in charge of a ton of speeding metal.
It is to be hoped that Mister Durán, when he finishes his offensive and futile crusade and the sugar starts returning to his brain, sees sense and supports the government’s law. It is also to be hoped that he looks around himself and compares his own privileged position to that of a political prisoner in Cuba, or Guantánamo Bay, or Myanmar. Perhaps then he will understand that a hunger strike is not a decision to be taken so lightly.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
We're out of this world
(Somewhere above the Earth)
The world is gazing in awe at Noguchi Soichi’s twitpics from space, beautiful portraits of our lives from a vertical perspective. The first one I clicked on was a close-up of the underbelly of Noguchi’s ship and it filled me with many feelings at once. Vertigo, fear. Excitement, desire. I continued to scroll through the images of Earth as fascinated as when reading National Geographic but with an extra thrill because these photographs come from space, a place I will never see.
How amazing that you can now take a photograph and transmit it instantly to the internet on Earth and straight onto a social networking site without any need for somebody on the ground to facilitate the process. How wonderful that we can all feel so close together as inhabitants of this tiny, vast domain.
Yes, but no. What is amazing is that with all our capabilities all we choose to do is gild the technological lily while people the world over still die through starvation, war and the effects of the environmental damage we have inflicted on our own habitat. We marvel at all these places because we are seeing them from the only view which excludes the scars of all the evil we have done.
It has been said many times that the only reason we concentrate on space is because we need another place to destroy. These pictures, although beautiful and well-intentioned, show the start of that process. We can no longer photograph the world without revealing the unquestionable evidence of our arrogance, so now we take them from space to spare ourselves the guilt.
The world is gazing in awe at Noguchi Soichi’s twitpics from space, beautiful portraits of our lives from a vertical perspective. The first one I clicked on was a close-up of the underbelly of Noguchi’s ship and it filled me with many feelings at once. Vertigo, fear. Excitement, desire. I continued to scroll through the images of Earth as fascinated as when reading National Geographic but with an extra thrill because these photographs come from space, a place I will never see.
How amazing that you can now take a photograph and transmit it instantly to the internet on Earth and straight onto a social networking site without any need for somebody on the ground to facilitate the process. How wonderful that we can all feel so close together as inhabitants of this tiny, vast domain.
Yes, but no. What is amazing is that with all our capabilities all we choose to do is gild the technological lily while people the world over still die through starvation, war and the effects of the environmental damage we have inflicted on our own habitat. We marvel at all these places because we are seeing them from the only view which excludes the scars of all the evil we have done.
It has been said many times that the only reason we concentrate on space is because we need another place to destroy. These pictures, although beautiful and well-intentioned, show the start of that process. We can no longer photograph the world without revealing the unquestionable evidence of our arrogance, so now we take them from space to spare ourselves the guilt.
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