the siroccos of the hyperreal

i've been in foreign places quite a bit the last two years, and i can't help but think about how angry all these people are at george w bush for an unjust war.

everywhere i go, i hear it. i hear it everywhere i go.

the thing that pisses me off about it all is how ignorant everyone is about the rest of the unjust wars in the world. how quickly we jump on the media bandwagon to assault just this one war. what about the saharawi? they've been victims of an unjust war for over thirty years.

saharawi people are completely forgotten all over the world.

west african refugees of war escaping the napalm and aggression of morocco, and her monarch, have lived unjustly in tent cities in algeria for decades. whole generations of children are growing up without a future, and without a country.

and nothing is changing. no one is doing anything. nothing is getting better.

a brief quote about the situation:
"[Morocco] acknowledged the sovereignty of the Western Saharan nation in exile, the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) which was founded in 1976. On the other hand, Morocco refuses to this day to relinquish any claims to Western Sahara.

But the 200,000 Saharawis in the camps have proven they will not give up either. They have chosen a life in exile, hundreds of miles from home, rather than live under the rule of a king whose reign has sought to erase their existence."
from http://www.wsahara.net/camps.html

if you want to talk about america's injustice, fine. but, let's also talk about how spanish backroom deals with morocco and mauritania during the latter half of the last century threw a whole culture into the desert winds.

desert winds come and tear down the tents. the winds are called "siroccos".

i guess all these new firestorms blew new breezes into the datastream. all old injustices swim down beneath the sandstorm.

if an american walks into a bar and says the word "iraq", a firestorm of hot air swarms through the datastream to swallow dissension like napalm melting trees.

if anyone - american or not - walks into a bar and says "saharawi", people look at you funny. then, they take another drink and worry about what they saw on the news.