As I write, the May public holiday is drawing to a close. There are traffic jams all around the country, of course, but in my street all is calm. Children's voices bicker lightly over garden walls. Park footballers sweat up the road, cans in hand, after their afternoon's hacking. The sun is shining, the blossoms are out.
Only the sound of an ambulance in the distance jars this peaceful reverie. But that discordant note is just enough. It reminds me of my privilege, and ours. This wealth, this peace, this space, this opulence (the beef roasting in the kitchen!) is the preserve of a rich minority of the world's population.
I am not making any special plea that we should change this I like my comforts and there are other far more credible and persuasive voices than mine regarding the rich-poor divide. No, the point is more that so few have what we have, and that we usually overlook our relative privilege.
Elsewhere, the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride. If the war doesn't get you, the famine will. Or the pestilence, or the angry earth, or the despots. Western Europe, North America, Australia and Japan comprise a small proportion of the earth's population, but possess the vast bulk of its wealth and privilege.
We're lucky. I know it came late to Ireland, but it came. And we're privileged beyond description relative to virtually everyone else. I won't go into the comparisons and the statistics, except to say that in parts of the earth, people must survive for a year on what we spend in a day.
It's a mean old world, sang Little Walter. And he was right. Full of exclusion, greed, fear and murdherin' hate. I know there's love as well, but look at the news for Chrissake.
There's the ongoing and developing horror in Kosovo. There's racist nail bombs in London. There's appalling sectarian violence in Glasgow after a fucking football match. There's Drumcree. There's kids slaughtering fellow kids in a Colorado schoolyard. And so on.
By the day now we hear of mistakes and disasters in Kosovo. Is the cure worse than the disease?
Well, the disease is pretty bad. Serbian nationalism has always been fanatical and terroristic, but the peculiar fascist strain developed by Slobodan Milosevic has added a new viciousness and expansiveness. The term ethnic cleansing (though not necessarily the concept) was introduced to the English language by latter-day Serbs, driving Bosnian Muslims out of their homes.
Yeah, sure, the Croats learned pretty quickly, and became as bad as their enemies. Or as bad as they themselves were in World War II when, led by fanatical Franciscan monks, they collaborated with the Nazis and butchered Serbs, helping to establish the kind of monstrous political sectarianism that thrives today.
So . . . the disease is pretty bad. You have the Yugoslav army on one hand, and the Serb paramilitaries by their side. If there's a problem, the paramilitaries can be sent in. Milosevic can wash his hands of them. Deny they exist. Blame NATO . . . or the Albanians. Whoever.
These are the people who slaughter entire villages. They were responsible for the outrage at Srebrenica where, lest those who advocate UN involvement forget, Dutch soldiers stood by while the men of the village were marched out, shot and shovelled into a mass grave.
So what to do about it?
Well, there are optimists who believe that the bombing is working. There are cracks beginning to show in the Yugoslav facade, but Milosevic could be one of those blokes who'll bring the house down rather than quit. Which means that this has only just started.
You know, observers warned about Kosovo years ago. I believe that you'll even find a warning in the backpages of the Hog. So why was nothing done? Surely it would have been smarter to have started training the Kosovo Liberation Army way back then, rather than waiting for the inevitable, and the present long-term bombing campaign?
And even now, is anyone working with the KLA as a means of opening a second front? The point is not to encourage terrorism, or guerilla warfare, but to ask why the great strategists were so unable to think . . . strategically.
Meanwhile, other headlines intervene. For example, there's the riots during and after the Old Firm game in Glasgow. Gross, unprecedented, bizarre, unbelievable . . . This shit is from the stone age.
No matter how hard I try, I can't understand it. What's the difference between rioting Celtic fans and the British National Front thugs who rioted in Lansdowne Road? And why do otherwise sane people in Ireland follow teams associated with sectarianism and thuggery . . . in Scotland??
Beyond belief. And don't give me that pathetic Catholic nationalist crap . . . I'm neither. One side is as daft and unpleasant as the other. I don't claim to be especially civilised, but I'm a minimum of two generations past that shit. So shove it.
The nail bombs in London are another, even uglier matter. Apparently planted by someone with a hatred of minorities like blacks and gays, they're not far at all from the kind of sectarian hatred evinced by the fans of Rangers and Celtic.
What they all need is some peace and tranquillity. Dare I be completely irreverent and say that what they need is just a little tiny smidgeon of the Christianity they claim to espouse. Maybe they need Siniad O'Connor uh sorry, Mother Bernadette to bring them love and peace and healing.
As regards Siniad, whatever turns you on, I suppose. And nuns sure turn on lots of people. Priests too, I m told. It s not my bag and it won t be. Too long in the tooth, the Hog is, even for a death bed conversion.
But you knew that already, didn t you? n
The Hog