In The land of the free, they have a word for Justice, I call it Bullshit.

Yesterday Troy Davis  was killed by lethal injection  by the American Georgia State, for allegedly  ( with so many shadows of doubt ) killing an off-duty Georgian policeman - a crime he and many many others insist he never committed. Just before this state execution Troy Davis lifted his head and declared one last time ' I am innocent' to the family of the victim he categorically said ' I did not personally kill your son, father, brother'  he asked them  to ' look deeper into this case, so that you really can finally see the truth. I ask my family and friends to continue to fight this fight'.
For 22 years he has continually expressed his innocence. Across the world people have rallied and united to try and avert his death. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions on his behalf.... we are now left feeling numb, but we will not be silenced. There is no justice in this senseless killing, most people who have looked a bit into the case know there was too much doubt to execute him. An eye for an eye some people say, but generally this does not achieve zilch, murders in the U.S.A still occur evey day, state sponsored execution does not act as a deterrant. It is legalised  murder under a different name. Many other innocent people are still scheduled to be legally murdered, it simply does not make sense.
At least his death has raised questions, the gaze of the World is now on America, looking on it with shame. Killing in the name of justice does not stop other people killing, does not valididate, just become a spectacle of obscenity and hate. I believe the death penalty  anywhere fails humanity, it is cruel, barbaric, fact. An act of barbarity that should not be tolerated.
Some people say signing petitions, raising your voices, achieves nothing, because the people in charge do not listen, I disagree, because whatever the outcomes , people still have the power to change things, to do nothing,  would be a shame, would be a waste, humanities breath can be validated  if we work together, standing together, that is my hope.
Today I AM TROY DAVIS, NO NOT REALLY BECAUSE TODAY I AM FREE.
I am not as strong.........
Other Nations that have held executions in 2011 are Bangladesh, China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, U.A.E ,  the good old U.S of A. What century are we living, one shared side by side with objectionable humanity.
Meanwhile 139 others have been wrongfully convicted in the U.S.A. . This should not continue. This is not justice, this is bullshit.

More info on death penalty.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/

Troy Davis the fight goes on,
response from Amnesty International
below

http://pthblog.amnesty.org.uk/troydavisthefightgoeson/

Wood Green Madrigal.

Anonymous
asks for spare change
Enemy: power
closes ranks
keeps secrets locked
Jesus laptop in hand
shares his thoughts under false name.
Poets get lost in poundshop
local mujahadin sell their wears
in top shop.
Down the street
boarded up windows
offer glimpse  of youths impulsiveness
the games kids play when pushed.
Strange things often happen
when we're simply not looking.
Got the late train back
into the station
looking now for a
souvenir shop
that sells freedom
where the electricity
costs nothing.
On the pavements outside
all that glitters is illusion
plastic smiles and forgotten prayers
hope rains down from passing windows.
Moralty is firm,
 lets us sit still  for a moment
Underneath the cracks of division
melt away and dissapear
dreams buried deep underneath
battered streets
laminate and reappear.
The purpose of all journeys
is one of discovery
please don't turn out the lights.

SABRA & SHATILA MASSACRE 9/16 Remembered

Almost 20 years before 9/11, an event took place that was just as barbaric, but does not seem to have  become rooted in our collective consiousness, a truth which is rarely mentioned in the September of our lives.
For 3 days in September 1982, Israeli forces in collusion with the Lebanese Militias, slaughtered, raped and massacred thousands of unarmed civilians, inside the sealed Palestinian refugee camp of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut, while Israeli forces surounded the camp.
To this day , amidst many attempts to seek justice, no one has been held accountable for this genocidal act.
The slaughter occured just days after the P.L.O had withdrew its fighters from Beirut after receiving guarantees from U.S led Multi National Forces that Palestinian civiliansin the camps would be safe.
The incident is considered perhaps the worst of the entire Middle Eastern conflict.
Hopefully justice will one day come, and may it not happen again, to anyone , anywhere.

Sabra and Shatila Massacre - A film by Robert Fisk

The following is a poem by the Morrocan poet  Tahar Ben Jelloun on the incident

Fatima Abou Mayyala - Tahar Ben Jelloun

They came in through the roof
They closed the doors and windows
They stuffed a fistful of sand into her mouth and  nostrils, Fatima
Their hands ripped her stomach
blood pooled
they urinated on her face
Fatima took the statue's hand
                                                     and walked lightly between the trees and the
                                                     sleeping children.
                                                     She reached the sea
                                                     her body rised above death.

                                         
      Poem reprinted from :-
      ' Rising of the Ashes - Tahar Ben Jelloun (2010)
      Translated by Cullen Goldblett                                                   
                                                                                                              

What is the true cost of the Afghanistan war? Narrated by Tony Benn. Music by Brian Eno...

Don't Execute Troy Davis.

Hi there, have you got 5 minutes to try and stop a death row execution? If so cheers , regards and all that .
Troy Davis has been on death row for 17 years for a murder he maintains he did not commit.
He was convicted in 1991 for the murder of 27 year old Officer Mark Allen MacPhail, white, who was shot and killed in the car park of a Burger King restaurant in Savannah , Georgia, in the early hours of August 19th 1989...
Amnesty International has been opposing Troy Davis's execution unconditionally regardless of questions of guilt or innocence for a while, as it does all use of the death penalty.
A judge has ordered Troy's execution to take place on Wednesday 21 September 2011 at 7 p.m, US time.
On Monday 19th September, 2 days before he is scheduled  to be executed, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles will hold a clemency hearing to decide whether Troy Davis's sentence should be commuted, or whether the execution should be carried out as scheduled. This is Troy's last chance to avoid execution.

Video below examining Troy's case.

It is vital that you take action as soon as possible,
his execution is not inevitable.

PLEASE USE THE LINK BELOW TO EMAIL THE GEORGIA STATE BOARD OF PARDONS AND PAROLES TO EMAIL THE GEORGIA STATE BOARD OF PARDONS AND PAROLES ASKING FOR CLEMENCY FOR TROY.

.http://action.amnesty.org.uk/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1194&ea.campaign.id=11962&utm_source=aiuk&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=deathpenalty&utm_content=troy_page_to_action

11'9"01 September 11 - Ken Loach

THE OTHER SEPTEMBER 11th

SELF EVIDENT....... some musical reflections on anniversary of 9/11

                                          Ani Di Franco - Self Evident

                                       

Billy Bragg - The price of Oil

Wolfgang Gartner - illmerica

Pete Seeger - Last Night I had the strangest Dream

and perhaps
between the silent spaces
and  winding paths
objectives will  one day
be shared
Action  is louder than words
future shadows will not forget
time alone........
lasts forever.

R.I.P

to the 2,976 Americans who lost their lives on 9/11and the 48,644 Afghans and 1,690,903 Iraqis and over 30,000 Pakistanis who died for a crime they did not commit.

SAVE DALE FARM

This post is a bit late,soon the weekend will be upon us. But tomorrow wherever you are spare a thought for all the people at Dale Farm in Essex, at this moment waiting  for the Baliffs to arrive to commit one of the greatest acts of state endorsed violence against an ethnic group ever seen in the U.K.
The proposed eviction planned has already been roundly condemned by Amnesty International. Dale Farm is home to 90 familes, which could mean up to 400 people being left homeless, and actions to evict them might actually break international law. Is their not room for negotiations. In a time of recession , is it right that about £9.5 million  should be wasted kicking people out of their homes. Let us remember that the Irish Travellers who live  at Dale Farm actually own this land, they are not squatting this patch of earth belongs to them, for 10 years a strong and vital community has belonged here but time after time have been denied repeated requests to build on the land because of bueracratic measures.
So  soon Basildon council and the Coalition Government will have to explain why they have made 100 children homeless, which will result in them being removed from their schools...
If this eviction goes ahead , the world will see our government as a bully who refuses to listen, draconian, punitive and oppressive.

More info below

http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/ 

Petition to Support the U.N call to delay the eviction
at Dale Farm
here
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dalefarm

Emily Dickinson ( 10/12/1830 - 15/5/1880) - To dissapear enhances.

To dissapear enhances
The Man that runs away
Is tinctured for an instant
With immortality

But yesterday a vagrant
Today in Memory lain
With supersticious value
We tamper with "Again"

But "Never far as Honor
Withdraws the Worthless thing
And impotent to cherish
We hasten to adorn

Of Death the sternest function
That just as we discern
The Excellence defies us
Securest gathered then

The Fruit peverse to plucking
But leaning to the Sight
With the ecstatic limit
Of  unobtained Delight,

Fadhil Al-Azzawi ( b.1940) - In my spare time

During  my long, boring hours of spare time
I sit to play with the earth's sphere.
I establish countries without police or parties
and I scrap others that no longer attract consumers.
I run roaring rivers through barren deserts
and I create continents and oceans
that I save for the future just in case.
I draw a new coloured map of the nations:
I roll Germany to the Pacific ocean teeming with whales
and I let the poor refugees
sail pirate's ships to her coasts
in the fog
dreaming of the promised garden in Bavaria.
I switch England with Afghanistan
so that its youth can smoke hashish for free
provided courtesy of Her Majesty's government.
I smuggle Kuwait from its fenced and mined borders
to Comoro, the islands
of the moon in its eclipse,
keeping the oil fields intact, of course.
At the same time I transport Baghdad
in the midst of loud drumming
to the islands of Tahiti.
I let Saudi Arabia crouch in its eternal desert
to preserve the purity of her thouroughbred camels.
This is before I surrender America
back to the Indians
just to give history
the justice it has long lacked.
I know that changing the world is not easy
but it remains necessary nonetheless.

Fadhil al -Azzawi is an Iraqi writer who is highly respected in the Arab world having emerged and participated in Iraqi's 90s avant garde generation.
Outspoken, he has spent many  hours in prison and time spent in exile because of his refusal to conform to certain corridors of power. Born in Kirkuk in 1940.
The above poem speaks for itself...... speaking of empires, inhumanity, offering glimpses of another ideal world, a future not based on injustice, but on shared  values, giving  lands back to the people from which they were once robbed.
Given us history the justice it has long lacked, knowing, too , that changing the world is easy. The role poetry has to play in the world is to pull of the masks of peddlers of untruths, becomming a universal pointer, offering words without borders and unlocking the chains of illusion ... that can be steps in setting us free.

Fadhil Al-Azzahi, Miracle Maker ( selected Poems 1960 -2002)  Editions, 2003