Bob Black: The Abolition Of Work.

I guess work is done by most out of necessity, not by choice. When I have worked however I did not define myself through my work or my pay packet. Some people are lucky, today I spend time doing things I find useful and simply enjoying it, but   without money perhaps we'd all be rich.
Anyway had my letter from the benefit agency, like many up and down the country, must say there timing is impeccable, so soon it looks that I might be conscripted.
All this is work where there is nothing.

Watch your thoughts, for they become words,
watch your words, for they become actions,
watch your actions, for they become habits,
watch your habits, for they become character,
watch your character, for it becomes destiny.

" The most wasted day of all is that during which we have not laughed."
- Sebastion D.N.Chamfort.

Willam Empson (27/09/06 - 15/4/84 ) - Let it go.

It is this deep blackness is the real thing strange
  The more things happen to you the more you can't
   Tell or remember even what they were.

The contradictions cover such a range.
   The talk would talk and go far aslant
       You don't want madhouse and the whole thing
        there.

1949

Simon Munnery's Cluub Zarathustra 1996.

Back again
Bored of the festive  T.V offerings ,so  here's a clip that was piloted for Channel 4 but was never actually shown.So here's some surreal experimental comic caberet from yesterday, featuring the talents of Simon Munnery, Kevin Eldon and Stewart Lee.
I find it rather enjoyable.
Hope you enjoy it too.

Cluub Zarathustra Pilot Part 1

Club Zarathustra Part 2

Follow earth's whimper.

Pentre Ifan - Pembrokeshire

David Cameron says
the U.K is a Christian Society
"and we should not be afraid to say so"
during a speech on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

Be grateful
depends from which basket
one has borrowed
this same country
that has abolished universal jurisdiction
that elects a government that preaches
an eye for an eye
moral collapse mirrored in politicians lies.

On this shortest day
celebrate love
the sun's rebirth
as spirits of fire,
twinkle in sky,
dance with old silver moon,
grant secret wishing prayer.
Man speaks of faith
trapped in ideological indulgence,
outside
time is stilled,
slips backwards
towards journeys end.

Quarks
act irresponsibly,
a puzzle of perception
within or without.
Take away our parachutes
and love is the key
that does not oppress
justice shared among neighbours,
and hope that convinces even the bleakest of nights
nature too has a soul, a voice.

I follow earths whimper
shining through humanities glimpses
her beauty for all to share
fix me up a murmour
and long echoes that search for peace
nature's spirit does not discriminate
and the great world rolls on  interminably
in the still of the night  follows diversity
uniting us together to lifes real necessities
it is possible for our minds to reel in wonder
reasons whirl along the changing seasons .

Happy Winter Solstice

" Who , out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body
understands by subtle analogies all other theories."

- Walt Witman.

A Festive Phone Call

As part of a  National Month of Festive action against Atos , there is now taking place a mass telephone complaint to Atos. Starting on Monday 12th December, this campaign is running up until Christmas, benefit claimants, disabled people and their supporters will be ringing both local and national Atos Offices to complain about theor obscene treatment of sick and disabled people.

Sometimes talking to someone at this time of the year can make a difference,  it's that seasonal radiance that makes some of us shout, some of us scream.
for more infomation  about this talkback  go here.

http://benefitclaimantsfightback.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/a-rolling-festive-phone-in

Mr Cameron and his allies like a bit of division, heaping more and more burden on those in society that cannot defend themselves. In times of hardship, the conservatives historically look out for scapegoats, at a time when our elected leaders (M.Ps ) have the audacity to demand thousands more pounds in expenses.
Matbe greedy politicians should look inwards before targetting the more marginalised in society.
There is much hypocricy.
If your feeling strong, how about some solidarity with some people who are at moment in time are being pilloried and stigmatised.
Seasons greetings.

Thomas Evan Nicholas ( Niclas y Glais) (6/10/1879 -19/4/71) - To a Sparrow

                                                                    
                                                                   TO A SPARROW
                 
                                                               ( Swansea Prison 1940)

                                                Look, here's another bread-crumb for your piping,
                                               And a piece of apple as a sweetener.
                                               It gladdens me to hear your steady pecking;
                                               It's good to see your cloak of grey once more.
                                               You've travelled here, perhaps, from Pembroke's reaches,
                                               From the gorse and heather on Y Frenni's height,
                                               And mabe on grey wing you've trilled your measures
                                               Above  fair Ceredigion at dawn's first light.
                                               Accept the bread: had I a drop of wine
                                               Pressed from  a distant country's sweet grape-cluster,
                                               We could take, amid war's turbulence,
                                               Communion, though the cell lacks cross and altar.
                                               The bread's as holy as it needs to be,
                                                Offering of a heart not under lock and key.

Translated  from the Welsh by Joseph P.Clancy
reprinted from  Twentieth Century Welsh Poems, ( Gomer,1982)

Born at Llanfyrnach. T.E Nicholas  was a congregational minister and a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and was a political journalist as well as a poet. He was twice imprisoned,  not the first or last Welshman to be imprioned by spurious charges.'To a Sparrow ' was a poem he wrote whilst incarcenated.
Main themes of his poetry were of injustice that stemmed from his  strong socialist faith.The Spanish Civil War gave rise to his verse denouncing fascism.  In later life  translated the internationale into Welsh.
It was whilst in prison though that he wrote some one hundred and fifty sonnets. The smallest incident would provide inspiration. Denied writing paper , he wrote on the slate in his cell, and on toilet paper. Main themse were  of injustice and the power of capital. 'Cana'r Carchar'  Prison Songs and 'Llygad y Drws' (referring to the eye hole of the prison door) were both collections that were written  whilst he was in prison.
He continued writing into his old age, his support for left wing causes undimmed.
Ke died in Aberystwyth in 1971 aged 91.

Solidarity with Bradley Manning

It was back in March that I first wrote about the case of Bradley Manning. Back then I called the post Bradley Manning - the forgotten Man, well since then things have not improved for Bradley Mannings lot, but at least the whole world is watching now.
Bradley Manning is being detained on suspicion of blowing the whistle on the Empire's dubious activities, by allegedly disclosing embarrasing U.S State Deparment cables.
He is due for a pre-trial hearing later today. Tomorrow, but especially here in Wales ( for we consider him one of us) there will many autonomous solidarity actions for Bradley across the globe.
Tomorrow will be Bradley' 24th birthday - a day that his supporrters will gather, many will gather outside Ft Meade and U.S embassies wordwide.
Not sure however if he will get anything resembling justice and freedom soon. Barak Obama has already come out saying that he is guilty, even before a trial. To many though, he is a hero.
He spent almost 4 years at Tasker Millward Comprhensive School in Havefordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales, his mother Susan still lives in Pembrokeshire. If he was ever freed and returned to Wales I am sure he would get a warm welcome.
Since his imprisonment he has been subject to punishment that has amounted to torture during his 18 month detention, which has included solitary confinement and denial of sleep and exercise, undermining his mental condition. It does not look that in the U.S.A he will get a impartial trial, the government seem to have already assumed his guilt.
Guilty or not, he is in prison for anyone who has ever protested against U.S wars of aggression and British ( and other countries ) complicity in these wars.
Whatever the outcome we will not forget him. Surely exposing war crimes cannot be a crime, his alleged leaks have subsequently  acted as a jump start  to freedom movements springing up worlwide. The world needs whisleblowers, because then we really will have a world without fear. You cannot hide the truth.

New song by Graham Nash
about Bradley Manning

Collatteral Murder - leaked Video clip.

earlier post

http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2011/03/bradley-manning-forgotten-man_11.html

good links

for further infomation

http://wiseupforbradleymanning.wordpress.com/

http://www.bradleymanning.org/

Possibility!

                                Omar Vega

Parlophone EP 8765 - Logue and Kinsey - Red Bird (side two)

Christopher Logue (23/11/26 -02/12/11) - Some Poetry and some Jazz (R.IP)

Very late with this post, was round my mates ken's last night where we shared a few smokes and a beer, we like to talk about poetry and jazz, he was there back in the day, mid 60s on the edge of Ladbroke Grove, we talked about old black and white  memories, improvised imaginings.
We listened, shared.... talked about powerful writers, we agreed that Christopher Logue had been good, a poet who succesfully merged jazz and poetry together, he had copy of red bird on tape, it was on it's last legs but still inspired. Mr Logue he had a fine voice clear, like an actor.Quite posh
His poetry like himself beyond categoriation, resolute with strong moral anger. My mate Ken said he'd written for Ken Russell another old rogue gone, acted too. His words public and dramatic, focused and confrontational,seriously mocking,above all darkly humourous, we liked that...
Also a pacifist, he too had walked on aldermaston , became a war poet but remained a man of conviction. A pornographer who saw no contadiction.
Remembered by some as 'spaghetti eating fanatic' in the film jaberwocky.
Another original gone. Silent or spoken - verse performs.
R.I.P

The song of the Outsider

This city and its citizens are green.
Quickly, those  who come from far off
and enter the city, turn green.
Many have rushed here suffering dangers unnumbered,
just to be green. And othe, with contacts,
with money, with skills that are wanted,
And have brought their children, dogs and servants,
so that all they possess shall be green.
Only one dweller herein,
only one, has not become green.
How much he would give to be green!
If he could be green, why nothing would matter.
He suffers from this. He may well go Pop!
As night, beneath the huge green stars,
he goes about crushing young greenies
to ease his hatred and fears.
It is bad to do this. He knows it is bad.
And thinking of his evil deeds he sheds
deeply felt tears 'If only I was green,' he says,
'life would  be like a children's game.'

To a friend in Search of Rural Seclusion

When all else fails,
    Try Wales.

 Rat, O Rat...

never in all my life have I seen
as hadsome a rat as you
Thank you for noticing my potatoes.

O Rat, I am not rich.
I left you a note concerning my potatoes,
but I see that I placed it too high
and you could not read it.

O Rat, consider my neighbour:
he has eight children (all of them older
and more intelligent than mine)
and if you lived in his house, Rat,

ten good Chritians
(if we include his wife)
would sing your praises nightly,
wheras in my house there are only five.

Air for the Witness of a Departure

A high wind blows
over the long white lea
lover
O lover
over the white lea.
Knows
who knows where my love is riding?

Thrush in the maybloom
high winds blow
O
over the long white lea.
Knows
who knows where my love is riding?-
riding
riding over the long white lea.

'Woke  up this morning '

Woke up this morning
In the middle of winter
Salt in my coffee
Swat in my hair.
The letter said: She's dead,
We know you will miss her.
Woke up this morning
In winter in winter.

Started my answer
But failed to remember
The sound of her voice
Or the shape of her head.
Wrote I was sorry
Will be there on Thursday
found myself busy
Sent flowers instead.

Several years later
I met her while dreaming.
Fingernails bitten
Her hands in her hair,
Lovely as ever:
I have to get started!
She shouted: Get started!
And parted the air.

Woke up this morning
In the middle of winter
Salt in my coffee
Sweat in my hair
All I could think of
Was sleeping beside her
And how she wore nothing
In winter in winter.

Reprinted from

Seleced Poems - Christopher Logue
faber and faber, 1996

Parlaphone L.P  Christopher Logue and Tony Kinsey ( side 1)

Guardian Obituary
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/03/christopher-logue?newsfeed=true.

Mumia Abu-Jamal - Another Nameless Prostitute Says The Man is Innocent.

Today is the 30th anniversary of Mumia Abu -Jamals incarcenation and is also the eve of International Human Rights day. Across the world anti-death penalty activists, lovers of justice and freedom and people of good conscience  will protest  at the violation of Pennylvania  inmate Mumia's constitutional rights.
This date marks the anniversery of the night that Jamal was shot, arrested, beaten up and framed for the murder of a Philadelphia Police Officer  called Daniel faulkner. 30 years later this political prisoner , critically acclaimed journalist ( before his imprisonment  he was the President of the Philadeplhia Association of Black Journalists) and became one of the world's most recognised death row inmates awaits a decision by Federal District Court Judge William H.John Jr, on his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Hopefully he will  finally get some justice and a full hearing by the federal court.
Mumia was born in 1954  in Philadelphia and was given the slave name Wesley Cook. At 14  he joined the Black Panther Party and was already showing signs of his strong articulateness and passion. Becoming known for his outspokenness and  his work as a radical journalist, mostly on radio as the 'voice of the voiceless', bringing him unwanted attention from the F.B.I and the local police.
He  moved on from the black Panthers and became a supporter and spokesperson for the Move Organisation  founded by an African American named John Africa a black back to nature group  with an anarcho primitist outlook that rejected  the system. It's members and supporters faced a daily onslaught against them for a number of years, being systematically tageted for their beliefs and on numerous occasions faced violent retribution from the state.
His support of this organisation and his reporting of unpopular causes  which included exposing the violence of the state as it manifests in entrenched poverty, endemic racism, police brutality and celebrating a peoples unending quest for freedom led him to lose his job as a radio journalist,   so he took up taxi driving in order to provide for his family. So one could imagine that  he already  was a marked man.
On  Dec 9th 1981 he had just dropped a client off  when he heard gunshot and saw people running. One of whom was his brother a Billy Cook who ran towards him, he then he saw a police officer aiming a gun at him, he was shot and beaten, and later was charged with the murder of Officer Faulkner who had died from gunshot wounds only a feet away from where Mumia himself had fallen. Mumia himself remained in critical condition for a period of time, but his case was rushed to trial  within 6 months .A trial that Amnesty International condemned as failing to meet even the most minimal standards of fairness, and that is an understatement.The trial was a farce with witnesses constantly changing statements, vital evidence being buried,  proceedings markedby racism, inept prepresentation andto cap it all a bigoted  and prejudiced judge. There was no way that Mumia was going to get the justice he deserved, and he was found guilty and sentence to death.
One of the key prosecution witness was a prostitute with a long history of arrests and her testimony contadicted previous statements and that of other witnesses. A man was with dreadlocks was seen running fron thescene, Mumia has dreadlocks, there are so many doubts. Several prosecution witnesses from his trial have since recanted their testimony , furthermore another individual Arnold Beverly has since subsequently confessed to killing Faulkner. Mumia has always maintained his innocence.
One reason for them finding Mumia guilty was like others he stood up against repression, for civil liberties and the government and the police  simply wanted to silence an activist long known for exposing corruption.. With their attempts to silence him we can see double standards , because this is not the message they dare preach to the rest of the world. But their 30 year conspiracy of silence has not worked

I believe he was a victim of a miscarriage of justice and had been systematically targetted by the police and the authorities in order to beget his silence. He has not been silenced despite the U.S Governments best efforts, Mumia is still writing, still speaking out, opening up the eyes of the people to the injustices of the system that imprisons him, still a powerful voice of the voiceless, a champion of the oppressed. Becomming a potent iconic figurehead for many.  Writing numerous publications with his  revolutionary spirit intact  and releasing a series of broadcasts  live from his  prison cell, through the Prison Radio Network. Link at bottom. You can imprison somebody but you cannot kill their spirit.
In December 2001 his death sentence was oveturned but not his conviction, so still he is not free.
An online petition for President Barck Obama 'Mumia Abu- Jamal and the Global Abolition of the Death Penalty'  was signed by over 20,000 people from around the world. Tomorrow let us also remember that internationally political opponents to nation states continue to face wrongful imprsonment too.

Today in Britain between 5.00 - 7.00 pm campaigners will assemble at Speakers Corner and make their way via Marble Arch and Oxford Street tothe US Embassy in London and will demand the unconditional and immediate release of Mumia Abu- Jamul. Many similar actions will take place across the globe,joining an international chorus who are actively calling for his immediate and unconditional release.

' Another Nameless Prostitute Says The man is Innocent'
                              For Mumia Abu -Jamal
By Martin Espada

The board-blinded windows knew what happened;
   the pavement sleepers of Philadelphia, groaning
in their ghost-infested sleep, knew what happened;
                    every black man blessed
        with the gashed eyebrow of nightsticks
                     knew what happened;
      even Walt Whitman knew what happened
             poet a century dead, keeping vigil
    from the tomb on the other side of the bridge

                  More than fifteen years ago,
        the cataract stare of the cruiser's headlights
                the impossible angle of the bullet,
                the tributaries and lakes of blood,
Officer faulkner dead,suspect Mumia shot in the chest,
       the nameless witnesses who saw a gunman
       running away, his heart and feet thudding.

               The nameless prostitute know,
       hunched at the curb, their bare legs chilled.
           Their faces squinted to see that night
     rouged with fading bruises. Now the faces fade
Perhaps an eyewitness putrifies eyes open in a bed of soil,
       or floats in the warm gulf stream of her addiction,
         or hides from the faged whispers of the police
                   in  the tomb of Walt Whitman         
                  where the granite door is open
                  and fugitive slaves may rest.

         Mumia: the Panther beret, the thinking dreadlocks,
dissident words that swarmed the microphone like a hive,
            sharing meals with people named Africa,
singing out their names even after the police bombardment
                    that charred their black bodies
         so the governer has signed the death warrant.
       The executioner's needle would flush the poison
                   down into Mumia's writing hand
              so the fingers curl like a burned spider;
        his calm questioning mouth would grow numb,
and everywhere radios sputter to silence, inhis memory.

                   The veiled prostitutes are gone,
             gone to the segregated balcony of whores
But the newspaper reportsthat another nameless prostitute
says the man is innocen, that she will testify at the next hearing.
   Beyond the courthouse,a multitude of witnesses chants,
 pray, shouts for his prison to collapse, a shack in a hurricane.
                   Mumia, if the last nameless prostitute
                 becomes an unravelling turban of steam,
                if the judges' robes become clouds of ink
                      swirling like octupus deception,
                if the shroud becomes yourAmish quilt
            if your dreadlocks are snipped during autopsy,
                 then drift above the ruined RCA factory
                             that once birthed radios
                         to the tomb of Walt Whitman
                         where the granite door is open
                           and fugitive slaves may rest.

Philadelphi, PA/Camden, NJ, april 1997

Mumia Abu -Jamal Radio Broadcasts

http://www.prisonradio.org/mumia.htm

Other Links

http://www.freemumia.com/

http://www.millions4mumia.org/

http://www.mumialegal.org/

Home page of John Africa's  MoveOrganisation
http://www.onamove.com/

Link to excellent film on the case
by acclaimed director Marc Evans here

http://www.inprisonmywholelife.com/intro


" This message comes toyou from the depths of America's dungeons, from the cages in Babylon's bowelsthat are in a sense, America's own 'Taten Trakle', Wings of death where men await execution by electrocution.
As radical journalists we have another tale to tell - it is a tale not of plenty but of loss, of torture and injustice. In short it is a tale of the oppressed, but it's also a tale of brighter tomorrows, of seas aflood with life, of air sweet to the lung, of forests green, of health, of hope, of freedom and peace, for all the worlds people.
We can create islands of liberated consciousness,afloat with truth of peoples sentiments for dignity and freedom, free from the systems slur of terrorism. We can produce you progressive portraits of the possible so that a better tomorrow may dawn."

- Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Further Reading :-

Mumia Abu-Jamal , Death Blossoms: Reflections of a Prisoner of Conscience, Plough Publishing House 1997

David Lindroff - Killing Time: An investigation into the Death  Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Amnesty International - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal , Seven Stories Press.

Expect Us! - Bill Allyn

Heretic Productions brings you an extraordinary piece of Poetry by Bill Allyn

Expect us

Once we were weak, but now we stand tall.
Millions of citizens, heeding the call.
Demanding our freedom, the birthright of all.
The Arab Spring turns to the American Fall.

We're the 99, and we'll never forgive.
Well never forget how you've made us live.
Expect us at your door, prepare to defend!
The reign of the moneyed and privileged now ends.

Once we were few, now we grow by the hour.
The lamb sheds its mask - the emperor cowers.
The wolf bares her teeth, the hunger devours.
The gleaming skyscrapers, the ivory towers.

We're the 99. and we'll mever forgive
We'll never forget, how you've made us live.
Expect us at your door, prepare to defend!
The world of the moneyed and  privileged now ends.

There's no "job creators" a "trickle-down" bust.
And time's running out for your greed and your lust.
You've earned no respect, and squandered our trust.
From this day forward, you must expect us!

We're the 99, and we'll never forgive.
Well never forget how you made us live.
Expect us at your door, prepare to defend!
The reign of the moneyed and privilged now ends.

Ted Hughes (17/8/30 -28/10/98) - The God

You were like a religious fanatic
Without a god- unable to pray.
You wanted to be a writer.
Wanted to write? What was it within you
Had to tell its tale?
The story that has to be told
Is the writer's God, who calls
Out of sleep, inaudibly: 'Write'.
Write what?
Your heart, mid-Sahara, raged
In its emptiness.
Your dreams were empty.
You bowed at your desk and you wept
Over the story that refused to exist,
As over a prayer
That could not be prayed
To a non-existent God. A dead God
With a terrible voice
You were like those desert ascetics
Who fascinated you,
Parching in such a torturing
Vacuum of God
It sucked goblins out of their finger-ends,
Out of the soft motes of the sun-shafts,
Out of the blank rock face.
The gagged prayer of their sterility
Was a God
So was your panic of emptiness - a God.

You offered him verses. First
Little phials of the emptiness
Into which your panic dropped its tears
That dried and left crystalline spectra.
Crystals of salt from your sleep.
Like the dewy sweat
On some desert stones, after dawn.
Oblations to an abscence.
Little sacrifices. Soon

Your silent howl through the night
Had madeitself a moon, a fiery idol
Of your God
Your crying carried its moon
Like a woman a dead child. Like a woman
Nursing a dead child. bending to cool
Its lips with tear drops on her finger-tip.
So I nursed you, who nursed a moon
That was human but dead, withered and
Burned you like a lump of phosphorus.

Till the child stireed. It's mouth-hole stirred.
Blood oozed at your nipple,
A drip feed of blood. Our happy moment!

The little God flew up into the Elm Tree.
In your sleep, glassy eyed,
You heard its instructions. When you woke
Your hands moved. You watched them in dismay
As they made a new sacrifice .
Two handfuls of blood, your own blood,
And in that blood gobbets of me,
Wrapped in a tissue ofstory that had somehow
Slipped from you. An embryo story.
You could not explain it or who
Ate at your hands.
The little god roared at night in the orchard,
His roar half a laugh.

You fed him by day, under your hair-tent,
Over your desk, in your secret
Sirit-house, you whispered,
You drummed on your thumb with your fingers,
Shook Winthrop shells for their sea voices,
And gave me an effigy - a Salvia
Pressedin a Lutheran Bible.
Youcould not explain it. Sleep had opened.
Darkness poured from it, like perfume.
Your dreams had burst their coffin.
Blinded I struck a light.

And woke upside down in your spirit-house
Moving limbs that were not my limbs,
And telling, in a voice not my voice,
A story of which I knew nothing
Giddy
With the smoke of the fire you tended
Flames I had lit unwitting
That whitened in the oxygen jet
Of your incantaory whisper.

You fed the flames with the myrrh of you mother,
The Frankincense of your father
And your own amber and the tongues
Of fire told their tale. And suddenly
Everybody knew everything.
Your God snuffed up the fatty reek.
His roar was like a basement furnace
In your ears, thunder in the foundations.

Then you wrote in a fury, weeping,
Your joy a trance-dancer
In the smoke in the flames
'God is speaking through me,' you told me
'Don't say that,' I cried. 'Don't say that.
That is horribly unlucky!'
As I sat there with blistering eyes
Watching everything go up
In the flames of your sacrifice
That finally caught you too and you
Vanished exploding
Into the flames
Of thestory of your God
Who embraced yo
And your mummy and your daddy,
Your Aztec, Black Forest
God of the euphenism grief.

Reprinted from

New and Selected Poems 1957-94

Manchester walkabout.

What a lovely thing a movement is
when the currents of unity smell
and voices speak with optimistic roar
side by side, the young and old
shooting out branches to oppose
tory dereliction.
The hiss of collective breath
with hungry eyes
communities dreaming together
swarming with warmth
and much hospitality.
Lover bought an accordian
needs must, we lugged it through the streets
a little indulgence perhaps,
but we are not yet broken.
People grow fierce
learn how to paint the sky
committed though in debt,
we are as strong as tempered steel.
As spirits rised, canal crossed
popped into music stores
to overload senses
already worked overtime.
But long shadows are growing
tory spite charges at Winter's cold blast
disconnected themselves from the people.
They will not kill our spirit
they will not banish our care. 

Idris Davies "Do you remember 1926" Poem animation

lest we forget.

Earlier post on Idris Davies here.

http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2010/02/idris-davies-poet-of-people.html

All OUT N30

Remember the public sector workers strike will cost economy 1/10th of the royal wedding.
Cameron seems to think people are going to  take what he is doin to this country lying down, well its clear that the people are not,  it is he who is unwilling to compromise, still talking to the public like their idiots, he'd rather spin the media, he critisises the unions when he himself is on a sticky electoral mandate, ordinary people did not make this economic crisis. Up in  the North at moment, joining Manchester's people in their time of struggle.
A total of 29 unions will be walking out across the U.K, the biggest Industrial action in Britain since the 1970's.
The tories protect their own, up to 3 million workers are trying to protect the future.

Solidarity with all those out tomorrow.

United we stand
Divided we fall.

Cecil Collins (23/4/01- 4/6/89) - Fool and Flower

Fool & Flower
(1944)
Private collection

Some whimsy, why not.  Cecil Collins  an artist of transcendent imagination, was born in Plymouth , he became influenced by the Surrealist Movement, he had two paintings exhibited at the Surrealist Exhibition in 1936.He had won a schorship at 15 to the Plymouth School of Art from 1923 -1927 and then onto the Royal College of Art until 1931. He fell in love with a Elizabeth Ramsden  a fellow student who inspired him to create a series of visionary paintings celebrating her beauty.
He departed with surrealism  however and subsequently he said:" I turned my back on it and went into the country and started to think..... and meditate on what I wanted to do."  And this is what most of his subsequent work were about,  they were both  meditative and gentle.
In this picture a fool reaches out to a single flower to a backdrop of an empty sky. A sense of wonder occurs, a moment in time suspended, the earth reaching back , a symbol of unity, a balancing act. The present or the future perhaps offering possibilities providing a link between what is visible and under the ground the roots, that we cannot see. An image of ceremony, an image of ritual beyond mere materialism, a touch of Zenarchy.Connecting us to an aesthetic window. Sometimes what binds us is both outside and in.

More on Cecil Collins here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Collins



( For Ervine

space bard

r.i.p )
.

Thanksgiving: A Native American View

Today at a time of poverty, recession, unemployment, occupation and discontentment, a little revisit to the less than benevolent beginnings of the good old  U.S.A.Thanksgiving day a whitewashing of genocide, colonialism and racism is celebrated. Hey ho.
To any American visitors of this blog hope your fox New relatives try not to season too much of  their thanksgiving dinner with to much pepper spray and I thank goodness I'm not a turkey.





More  info
here

http://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/

John Trudell - The voices said.

The Workers: Let's Work Together

The workers are a group of 14 public service staff from around the country, who have come together to record the classic song ' Let's work Together ' .Please help get some solidarity in the charts on the day of action on November 30th, by watching the video, buying the song, and spreading the word. On November the 30th millions of workers across the country will be taking action in support of a fair deal on public service pensions. Up the workers, even though I don't at moment, solidarity is the keyword word. Always thought music and politics make healthy bedfellows, depending I guess on which side. Yes charts are rigged, like the economy is rigged, just like banking is rigged, the system and the government used against the interests of the whole, so we have to try out different methods.Power concedes nothing without a demand.

More info on single and campaign
here.

http://action.goingtowork.org.uk/page/share/the-workers

 to download

 http://www.theworkers.org.uk/download-the-single/

Edward Thomas (3/3/1878 - 3/4/17) - November

November's' days are thirty:
November's earth is dirty,
Those thirty days, from first to last;
And the prettiest things on grounds are the paths
With morning and evening hobnails dinted,
With foot and wing-tip overprinted
Or seperately charactered,
Of little beast and little bird.
The fields are mashed by sheep, the roads
Make the worst going, the best the woods
Where dead leaves upwards and downward scatter.
Few care for the mixture of earth and water,
Twig, leaf, flint, thorn,
Straw, feather, all that men scorn,
Pounded up and sodden by flood,
Condemned as mud.

But of all the months when earth is greener
Not one has clean skies that are cleaner.
Clean and clear and sweet and cold,
They shine above the earth so old,
While the after-tempest cloud
Sails over in silence though winds are loud,
Till the full moon in the east
Looks at the planet in the west
And earth os silent as it is black,
Yet not unhappy for its lack.
Up from the dirty  earth men stare:
One imagines a refuge there
Above the mud, in the pure bright
Of the cloudless heavenly light:
Another loves earth and November more dearly
Because without them, he sees clearly
The sky would be nothing more to his eye
Than he, in any case, is to the sky:
He loves even the mud whose dyes
Renounce all brightness to the skies.

Jackie Leven ( 18/6/50 - 14/11/11) Spiritual Soul Warrior R.I.P

It is with great sadness that I found out that the great Jackie Leven had passed away. I feel numb and will try to explain in a bit. I knew the man had been ill,suffering from cancer but thought he'd get through it, like he had got past many other demons.
An idiosyncratic outsider with a magical voice, a poet who saw the world through his rich different eyes, he sang songs fron the heart of lifes deep experiences. If you have never heard of him his songs typically described hard drinking loners and often their lost lovers, with a rich deep resonant voice that used to soothe me, when I too was lost, like a dark chocolate laced with something bad.
His was a wild Scottish spirit redolant of a fire within. Never fashionable or cool but that did not stop him being admired by many.Born to Gypsy Blood in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland with a London Irish father and a Northumbriam mother. A loner in childhood, he led a life of an intinerent wanderer. He found his way to London by the mid 70s forming the band Doll by Doll whose records had a certain rawness but ones I still reach out too.

Doll by Doll - Main Travelled Roads

By 1982, they'd split and in 1983 he was nearly murdered by a group of strangers severely damaging his larynx and unable to play guitar or sing. He sank into a despondent place , cutting himself adrift, finding heroin and alcohol , and so perhaps it might have ended. But he reemerged stonger founding the CORE trust which helped fellow addicts. His songs have rescued me from many a dark hour, soothed me with their raw tenderness. His work took on a soulful, spritual intensity, redemptive , haunted,becomming prolific in his journey, releasing for me a series of staggering dazzling solo records, full of tragedy, but resonating with warmth that somehow I connected to. Other friends of mine, never quite got him, but that did not matter, his records became like certain books, ones to treasure. Live I was lucky to catch him twice he dislayed his honesty, mixed with humour and candour.Always a brooding intensity, you got what you got, what must of us wanted, never an encore and never fake.
Tonight on the way home from the library I'll raise a small miniature bottle of whiskey to the night air. A True original voice has been lost, but some of us will continue to remember him.Such beautiful music, burning vision. Goodnight Jackie, R.I.P


Jackie Leven- Hidden World of She

Jackie Leven- Call Mother a Lonely Field

Jackie Leven - Revenge of Memory

Jackie Levem -  I Say a little Prayer

http://www.coretrust.co.uk/

http://www.jackieleven.co.uk/

Rejected Crumb !

A lot of posts on the net on this subject already, but what the eck.
Famed Cartoonist and someone else whose work I admire, ( don't really do hero's , not enough room in my head) has had a proposed cover for the New Yorker rejected.  They commissioned him, back in 2009 to  do them a cover on the subject of 'gay marriage', so he drew them this. They subsequently rejected it but gave Mr Crumb no reason. The story would possibly have gathered no moss had it not been unearthed at the VeniceArt Biennale recently.
What possible reasons did the magazine come to this descision? It's fairly common knowledge  that Robert Crumb is  known for pushing the boundaries a bit and is not everybody's cup of tea. His work has been attached to the 'underground' and the words 'cult artist' have often been bandied about, so his appeal was never one for the mainstream, what with his repetative style and his obsession with an exaggerated sense of the female form. He has a rather twisted way of looking at certain things. Another possible reason is that the New Yorker is majorly concerned with political correctness, and they must have suddenly realised this work might upset some of their friends, nevermind the artist in question, who has stated he will never work for them again. I for one don't know how it could offend anyone who appreciates  Crumb's  work, it is  kind of to be expected, this one for instance, after all  seems to have been done in all the best possible ( Crumb) taste. If the New Yorker doesn't want it, I would be happy enough to put it up on my living room wall, where it would be lovingly appreciated , I don't suppose it will bother him too much though, he will continue to illustrate the world as he sees it and I believe it's simply too late in the day for his fixations to simply dissapear, and despite criticisms will remain, one of the most important and influential graphic artists of  contemporary America.

More on this story below

http://www.vice.com/read/the-gayest-story-ever-told-0000048-v18n11

Crumb by Crumb

Palestinian Freedom Riders and Wales Residual waste.

50 years ago the US Freedom riders staged mixed-race bus rides through the roads of the segregated American South, Palestinian Freedom riders will be asserting their own right for liberty and dignity by disrupting the military regime of the Israeli Occupation through peaceful civil disobedience, this will take place on Tuesday 15th as all over the West Bank they will attempt to board buses that discriminate against them. They will attempt to board segregated Israeli settler publlic transport headed to occupied East Jerusalem.
Meanwhile 5 North Wales Councils are considering the notorious French company Veolia for their Residual Waste Treatment Project. Personally I think they should reconsider.
The Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR) which veolia has subsequently built in the West Bank serves the Jewish-only Israeli settlement. Remember that Britain has declared, through the UN Human Rights Council, that the JLR's operation is a breach by Israel of international law.
Veolia at the moment is trying to sell its LJR shares to a company called Egged, that seems to let Veolia of the hook and North Wales project in the clear.M'mm Egged is the same company that until January 2011 also operated gender-segregated lines, commonly called " mehadrin" buses, mainly running in and/or between major Haredi population centers. In these sex segregated buses women are expected to sit the in the back of the bus and wear so called modest dress. Sounds like gender discrimination to me, it is interesting how companies that violate international laws reappear in disgiuse so to speak. Welsh councils in a spirit of solidarity I feel should have nothing to do with either company. But sometimes transparency can get buried in the search of deals.
50 years apart 2 symbolic journeys, different locations but apartheid is apartheid , no matter where it rears its ugly head, so this week I  hope the world stands in solidarity with the modern freedom riders. An old tradition awakened .Who knows perhaps the future will let justice and freedom prevail .

http://palsolidarity.org/2011/11/palestinian-freedom-riders-to-ride-settler-buses-to-jerusalem/

Anthem for Doomed Youth - Wilfred Owen

POETIC PILGRIMAGE - NO MORE WAR

Occupy Cardiff

Democracy in action

Cocaine Unwrapped Trailer 13 03 2011

Lupe Fiasco - Words I Never Said ft. Skylar Grey

It's so loud inside my head
With words that I should have said!
As I drown in my regrets
I can't take back the words I never said
I can't take back the words I never said

I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullshit
just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets
How much money does it make to really make a full clip
9/11 building 7 did they really pull it
Uhh, and a bunch of other cover ups
Your childs future was the first to go with budget cuts
If you think that hurts, then, wait here comes the uppercut
The school was garbage in the first place, thats on the up and up
Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the uppercrust
You get it then they move you so you never keeping up enough
If you turn on TV all you see's a bunch of "what the fucks"
Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such
And that aint Jersey Shore, homie tha's the news
And these the same people that supposed to be telling the truth
Limbaugh is a racist, Glen Beck is a racist
Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn't say shit
That's why I aint vote for  him, next one either
I'ma part of the problem, my problem is I'm peaceful
And I believe in the people.

It's so loud inside my head
With words thay I should have said!
As I drown in my regrets
I can't take back the words I never said
I can't take back the words I never said

Now you say it aint our fault if we never heard it
But if we know better than we probably deserve it
Jihad is not a holy war, where's that in the worship?
Murdering is not Islam!
And you are not observant
And you  are not a muslim
Israel don't take my side cause look how far you've pushed them
Walk with me into the ghetto, this is where all the Kush went
Compain about the liqour store but what you drinking liqour for?
Complain about the gloom but when'd you pick a broom up?
Just listening to Pac aint gone make it stop
A rebel in your thoughts, aint gon make it halt
If you don't become an actor you'll never be a factor
Pills with million side effects
Take em when the pain felt
Wash them down with Diet soda!
Killin off your brain cells
Crooked banks around the World
Would gladly give a loan today
So if you ever miss a payment
They can take your home away!

It's so loud in my head
With words that I should have said!
As I drown in my regrets
I can't take back the words I never said, never said
I can't take back the words I never said

I think all the silence is worse than all the violence
Fear is such a weak emotion that's why I despise it
We scared of almost eveything, afraid to tell the truth
So scared of what you think of me, I'm scared of even telling you
Sometimes I'm like the only person I feel safe to tell it to
I'm locked inside a cell in me, I know that there's a jail in you
Consider this your bailing out, so take a breath, inhale a few
My screams is finally getting free, my thoughts is finally yelling through

It's so loud inside my head
With words that I should have said!
As I drown in my regrets
I can't take back the words I never said

Roger Waters - The Tide Is Turning (Re: Occupy)

Occupy - Roger Waters

Being treated fairly and with dignity

At the heart of human rights is the belief that everybody should be treated equally and with dignity - no matter what their circumstances.
This means that nobody should be tortured or treated in a inhuman or degrading way.
It also means that nobody has the right to 'own another person or force them to work under threat of punishment.
And it means that eveybody should have access to public services and the right to be treated fairly by those services. This applies to all public services, including the criminal justice system. For example, if you are arrested and charged tou should not be treated with prejudice and your trial should be fair.
UK law includes a range of human rights which protect you from poor treatment, and which require you to have equal and fair treatment from publc authorities.

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/human-rights/what-are-human-rights/being-treated-fairly-and-with-dignity/

Sadly up and down this country people on incapacity benefit are being forced to take assessments that are not only impersonal, they are mechanistic and lack any kind of empathy. Many people are being injustly treated and left in distress.But this is what happens in a Tory led Britain, stigmatise a group, seek to dissimate and destroy.Basic sensitivities ignored!! The B.B.C themselves have recently been adding to the flames with blinkered sensationalist programmes on benefit cheats straight out of the Daily Mail. John Humprey's recent programme " The future state Of Benefit"  was an absolute shocker, a right wing thesis playing loosely with the facts, as if witten by some governmental department.
New tests designed to stigmatise the diadvantaged, the disabled , the mentally ill in order to save money. Taking from many who are already impoverished.
Is this the future for all, look to America and follow their flawed policies and agendas.Human dignity and fairness overiden, justice and human rights denied.
As for the cold, it's bloody freezing!!

A PAGAN PHILOSOPHER ON THE USE OF IMAGES

( Maximus of Tyre,' Oration,' V111, 10)

Maximus of Trye (ca.A.D 125 -185) was a Sophist and eclectic philosopher who reavelled widely and lectured both at Athens and at Rome.

For the God who is the Father and Creator of all that is, older than the sun, older than the sky, greater than time and eternity and the whole continual flow of nature, is not to be named by any lawgiver is not to be uttered by any voice, is not to be seen by any eye. But we, being unable to grasp his essence, makes use of sounds and names and pictures, of beaten gold and ivory and silver, of plants and rivers, of mountains peaks and torrents, yearning for the knowledge of him, and in our weakness  naming all that is beautiful in the world after his nature. The same thing happens to those who love others, to them the sweetest sight will be the actual figure of their children, but sweet also will be their memory - they will be happy at ( the sight of) a lyre, a little spear, or a chair , perhaps, or  a running ground, or anything whatever that wakens  the memory of the beloved. Why should I go any further in examining and passing judgement about images? Let all men know what is divine; let them know, that is all. If Greeks are stirred to the rememberance of God by the art of Phidias, or the Egyptians by paying worship to animals, or others by a river, or others by fire, I will not quarrel with their differences. Only let them know, let them love, let them remember.

Translation by Frederick C. Grant, in his Hellenistic Religions ( New York , 1953)

Revealed - the capitalist network that runs the world

 Graphic: The 1318 transitional companies that form the core of the economy

Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot pepresents revenue ( Image: PLos One)

by Andy Coghlan and  Debora Mackenzie

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protestors' worst fears. An analysis of the relationship between 43,000 transnational cororations has identified a small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysrs contacted by New Scientist say iy is a unique effort to untangle control in the global econony. Pushing the analysis further, they say could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters rlsewhere. But the study, by a trio of complex system theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empyeically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics longused to model systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

" Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. " Our analysis is reality-based."

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world's economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownership, so could not say how this affected the global economy - whether it made it more stable or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships owning them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work to be published in PLoS One , revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 has ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 percent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to colectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent og global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity"
of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the superentity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JP Morgan Chase & Co, and the Gold man Sachs Group.

John Driffil of the University of London, a maroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather it's insights into economic stability.

Concentration of poer is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core's tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. "If one (company) suffers distress," says Glattfelder, "this propogates."

" It's disconcerting to see how connected things really are." agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.

Yaneer Bar -Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), warns that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is nor always true. Most company shares are held by fund managers who may or may not control what the companies they part-own actually do. The impact of this on the system's behaviour, he says, requires more analysis.

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could hep make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading throgh the entire economy. Glattfelder says we need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivitity to discourage this risk.

One thing won't chime with some of the protesters' claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. "Such structures are common in nature," says Sugihara.

Nwecomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECS1: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, "is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups". Or as Braha puts it: "The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the waelth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy."

So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is ehether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.

When this article was first posted, the comment in the final sentence of the paragraph beginning "Crucially by identifying the achitecure of global economic power..." was misattributed.

The  top 50 of the 147  superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Plc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellingtom Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Mank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Societe Generale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brother Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depositary Trust Company
40. Massachussetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

Republication from Newscientisthttp://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalistnetwork-that-runs-world.html