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Rights, Freedoms and Repression
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Anti-Empire
Human Rights in IrelandIndymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Lockdown Skeptics
Voltaire NetworkVoltaire, international edition
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The Terror of Holy Water international |
rights, freedoms and repression |
other press
 Thursday August 30, 2007 13:07 by +
 Many Irish people will have missed the pomp & ceremony, smells and bells which launched Europe's latest lowcost airline on ¨Monday. Despite its obvious competition with two of our most cherished little earners & institutions. The Holy See is offering cheap flights from Rome to Lourdes which I need not tell you will surely undermine both Ryanair and Knock. The Vatican is promoting the service as an opportunity for the faithful to maintain a proper atmosphere conducive to such religious devotion and prevent their journey falling into some Chaucer like tale. Needless to say unlike Ryanair they won't be charging wheelchair users any extra money either. But already it has run into TERROR problems. They estimate 150,000 people will use the service in its first year and though the tickets are lowcost the budget for setting the whole thing up stands at five million euros. Part of that was spent on painting the plane yellow and white (the papal colours) and providing headrests with an inspiring "I search for your face oh Lord" slogan. Ah yes- I hear the average reader moan, what has this to do with our globalised socialist concerns iosaf? Simple laides and gentlemen - for only two days after launching the service passengers have been hauled off for carrying Holy Water. You know the rules. No Liquids means NO LIQUIDS. and yes sirree in the time of Bush's war on terror - we'll have no easy pilgrimages either. |
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Comments (2 of 2)
Jump To Comment: 1 2Is it security guards/occupying armies who won't allow Muslim pilgrims of Iraq to use wheelchairs or barrows?
A lot of people underestimate the compelling power of the holy water lobby & indignation at the plight of the Vatican's pilgrims who had their sacred homeopathic liquids confiscated as if they were terror suspects. God, christian democrats & indignation are just the recipe to bring out the disinformative or "non-starter" element in the Irish media's spin coverage. Thus you wouldn't be surprised to see that this afternoon RTE announced the EU parliament was to rethink the ban on liquids. http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0905/liquids.html nor that the Irish Times would follow up on this in their breaking news section assuring us that FG MEP Avril Doyle was the Bernadette of our age http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/0905/bre...7.htm But within an hour of the resolution being passed thanks to the majority held by the EPP-ED group of christian democrat right wingers whose German MEP Manfred Weber had tabled it as part of a wider discussion of counter-terrorism http://www.epp-ed.eu/Activities/pday07/day112_en.asp only the BBC thought to clarify that the EU commission had utterly dished the whole thing http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6980208.stm
reporting :- ""The understanding and the readiness with which the vast majority of our citizens have accepted this measure and the inconvenience it brings are the best proof that they consider it to be adequate and necessary," EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot said.He added "Europe must not show any sign of weakness" in the face of terrorist threats. "It must not lower its guard but on the contrary reinforce its vigilance and maintain the full range of prevention instruments it has adopted," Mr Barrot said in a statement. ""
Meanwhile the story of the Lourdes incident travelled further across the world than the ban on all vehicles ranging from vans to handcarts in Karbala destiny of about a million Shiite pilgrims near Baghdad every year in the same week.
And as this comment gets written, all over European christendom people are still going on about the Grotto water Lourdes thing and hoping the glory and credit goes neither to Avril Doyle or Manfred Weber but Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert who was the MEP who wrote to the Commission in indignation in the first place.
Compelling stuff.
Now, I'm not in this for the thaumaturgy. I just think life would be simpler for many workers if the ban is rethought, and also ahem - cough cough - it would be easier to move certain other liquids of near magical effect & potency about the shop.
:-) Let's see how it spins.