On Friday 1 June 2012, Cymdeithias y Cymod ( the Fellowship of Reconciliation) launched a petition against army recruitment in schools at the Temple of Peace in Cardiff. The UK is currently the only country in the European union and in NATO to recruit 16 year olds to the armed forces. The petition on the National Assembly's website declares:
" We call on the National Assembly of Wales to urge the Welsh Government to legislate to stop the armed forces from going into schools in Wales to recruit children to join."
Arfon Rhys, Secretary of Cymdeithas y Cymod, said : " The UN Committe on the Rights of the Child has aked the UK to consider stopping the recruitment of children aged 16 to the armed forces and not to target children from ethnic and deprived backgrounds. This is why we will submit the petition to the Assembly on United Nations Day on 24 October. Cymdeitas y Cymod is an organisation that on the basis of our faith believes in the power of love and non-violent ways of resolving conflict in our world."
The petition is also supported by CND Cymru, the youth branch of Plaid Cymru, and a whole host of social organisations.
This morally indefensible practice should not be allowed to continue. Education is one of the Welsh Assembly's, key areas of responsibility, so here is a good reason to raise the matter of MOD recruitment programmes aimed at minors. Children should never be used and manipulated in this manner. Schools should be a place of learning and education. There is absolutely no place for militarisation in schools or in association with schools. It is immoral and unjust. In a world of conflict and exploitation, I feel children could do with more engagement with the issues of peace and social justice.
If you would like to sign the petition you can go here
A few days ago I was down in Hay-On -Wye for its annual literary festival, listening to the writer Terry Pratchett, when he was asked about the news of Ray Bradbury's death. Oh no I sighed, another one gone, a writer whose many works I knew were waiting reappraisal back home.
His most famous novel written in 1953 was Farenheit 451 which painted apicture of a dystopian future America, where books were outlawed and burned. The books title gives the temperature in which paper will burst into flame.
Ray Douglas Badbury was an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, poet and mystery writer who with the afformentioned book plus the Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951),Something Wicked this way Comes, Ris for Rocket, The Golden Apples of the Sun ..... and many many others altered the landscape of fantasy forever.He has become known and celebrated as one of the greatest 20th Century writers of speculative fiction. Dark and chilling full of atmoshpere, once read his words will stay imprinted on your mind, his imagination, transformative and inspirational. He once said ' I'm not a science fiction writer, I've written only one book of science fiction ( farenheit 451). All the others are fantasy. Fantasies are things that can't happen, and science fiction is about things that can happen.' Well if you read his books well a lot of what he wrote about has actually happened, so who knows.
Famously distrustful of the internet, I think he would have been amused by the many tributes to him appearing across this forboding planet of ours. He was also an unrestrained idealist, who disliked totalitarianism, did not bow down to political correctness or political ideologies, but did believe in hope and unfettered imagination.
So thanks Ray,may you rest in peace .
And this is where we went, I though,
Now here, now there, upon the grass
Some forty years ago.
I had returned and walked along the streets
And saw the house where I was born
And grown and had myendless days.
The days being short now, simply I had come
To gaze and look and stare upon
The thoughts of that once endless maze of afternoons.
But most ofall I wished to find the places where I ran
As dogs do run before or after boys,
The paths put down by Indians or brothers wiseand shift
Pretending at a tribe.
I came to the ravine,
I half slid down the path
A man with greying hai but seeming supple thoughts
And saw the place was empty.
Fools: I thought. O; boys of this new year,
Why don't you know the Abyss waits you here?
Ravines are special fine and lovely green
And secretive and wandering with apes and thugs
And bandit bees that steal from flowers to give to trees
Caves echoe here and creeks for wading after loot:
A water-strider, crayfish, precious stone
Or long-lost rubber boot-
It is a natural treasure house, so why the silent place?
What's happened to our boys that they no longerrace
And stand then still to contemplate Christ's handiwork:
His clear blood bled in syrups from the lovely wounded trees?
Why only bees and blackbird winds and bending grass?
No matter. Walk. Walk, look, and sweet recall.
I came upon an oak where once when I was twelve
I had climbed up and screamed for Skip to get me down
It was a thousand miles to earth. I shut my eyes and yelled.
My brother, richly compelled to mirth, gave shouts of laughter
And scaled up to rescue me.
"What were you doing there?" he said.
I did not tell. Ratherb drip me dead,
But I was there to place a note within a squirrel nest
On which I'd written some old secret thing now long forgot.
Now in the green ravine of middle years I stood
Beneath that tree. Why, why, I thought my God,
It's not so high. Why did I shriek?
It can't be more than fifteen feet above. I'll climb it handily.
And did.
And squatted like an aging ape alone and thanking God
That no one saw this ancient man at antics.
Clutched grotesquely to the bole.
But then, ah God, what awe.
The squirrel's hole and long-lost nest were there.
I lay upon the limb a long while, thinking.
I drank in all the leaves and clouds and weathers
Going by as mindless
As the days.
What, what, what if? I thought. But no. Some forty years beyond:
The note I'd put: It's surely stolen off by now.
A boy or screech-owl's pilfered, read and tattered it.
It's scattered to the lake like pollen, chestnut leaf
Of smoke of dandelion that breaks along the wind of time...
No. No.
Discussion with Ray Bradbury concerning Farenheit 451
The anger that breaks a man into boys,
that breaks the boys down into equal birds,
and the bird, then into tiny eggs;
the anger of the poor
owns one smooth oil against two vinegars.
The anger that breaks the tree down into leaves,
and the leaf down into different-sized buds,
and the buds into infinitely fine grooves;
the anger of the poor
owns two rivers against a number of seas.
The anger that breaks the good down into doubts,
and doubt down into three matching arcs,
and the are, then, into unimaginable tombs;
the anger of the poor
owns one piece of steel against two daggers.
The anger that breaks the soul down into bodies'
the body down into different organs,
and the organ into reverberating octaves of thought;
the anger of the poor
owns one deep fire against two craters.
On Saturday June 1st 1985. The combined forces of the state gathered to attack several hundred members of a peace convoy heading to the 14th Stonehenge festival in Wiltshire. Their was carnage and mayhem as the marginalised and dispossessed were brutally targeted and beaten by a police force taking orders from the Thatcher Government the most repressive and right wing Government of the 20th Century. A horrible time, a bit like today, where people who lived on societies edges were attacked for being different. In what has become known as the Battle of the Beanfield, people were beaten and bloodied because they refused to conform or bow down to a rotten system, and had decided to try and live by their own set of alternative values. Who simply wanted to gather under the stones to celebrate their lives, sing and dance. The intensity of the violence was shocking. with women and children being forced out of their homes, and in some cases whilst still inside their homes, they were savagely ripped apart. The overall cost of this operation was a staggering £5 miillion. The media of the time played their part too, with footage of the most extreme police violence being subsequently lost, and the subsequent demonising of the traveller lifestyle. We should never forget, this bitter bit of our social history. It marked a turning point after wapping, and the miners strike in the supression of our civil liberties. A dark day for justice and freedom.Echoes can be seen in recent history, the eviction of the residents of Dale Farm.
Firstly, thanks to Republic http://www.republic.org.uk/
They have been the rallying point for many republican sympathisers up and down the country. You might not have heard them mentioned much in the mainstream printed media, or on the television, due to excessive the excessive propogandering going on at the moment. All we have is spin,spin, and more spin.
Personally in a time of extreme poverty and austerity, I think it is pretty obscene to be forking out £32 million for the farce that is the Queens anniversary celebrations. Apparently 69% support the upcoming celebrations, this is because they never get to see the other side of the coin, fed daily images of good news of this archaic family. like the Olympics people are force fed to exhaustion point, but this weekend up and down the country their will be many who will not be celebrating, and will be hosting their own celebrations.
A key focus point will be down in old London town, details of which I'm posting here.
Jubilee Protest - 3 June 2012
The Thames Pageant is the key event in the Queen's jubilee celebrations. The pageant involves 1000 boats travelling in procession down the Thames from Putney to Tower Bridge, with the Queen and other parasitic members of her family on the lead boat.
We will be staging a major protest at the Tower Bridge end of the route, where banners and placards will be displayed and speeches will be made. This is a unique opportunity to make a bold statement about our opposition to the monarchy and to promote the republican cause.
Here are the details
Date:
3rd June 2012
Time:
12 noon till 5pm, with speeches from 1:30 pm. We'll be there from mid morning, so come and join us if you want to make a full day of it or want to help out.
Venue:
On the South Bank of the Thames, near Tower Bridge and City Hall.
As I've said their will be many other protests in cities across the Country, it is not all bunting and jubilation, despite what the B.B.C and the rest of those hand in hand with the monarchy are saying. So I hope they correct the balance against the pomp and privelege and inherited wealth of the biggest benefit cheats in Britain. Visitors to my blog might get the idea that I'm against everything, this is not the case. I do think humanity still is rather strange when we still have to bow down to our so called masters, but I do believe in fairness, justice and equality and it is these themes that I try to promote .
S'sssh........ don't wake her. She's pretty vacant anyway.
Anyway here's a quote from Aneurin Bevan
"Royalty, in the propoganda apparatus that it is, has four functions; to foster the illusion of national unity; to prescribe the hierearchy of honours and titles by which representatives of the workers are subjected to the most insidious forms of corruption, to supply a fertile source of diversion, and above all, to intervene at times of acute political crisis and exert its influence in favour of the existing social order."
and here's a tune
When the sheep go marching in - The Queen Elizabeth anti Diamond Jubilee song 2012
" Let the Globe's audiences and Habima performers squirm in discomfort and wonder what will happen, let them feel for a few hours what most Palestinians experience on a daily basis."
Habima is performing at the Globe Theatre as part of the Globe to Globe festival despite protests from over 30 actors, directors and playwrights, including the founding artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Mark Rylance, and actors Emma Thompson and David Calder, who signed an open letter in March condemning the Globe for its invitation.
Habima has a history of performing for illegal settlements in the West Bank, and Palestinians living in the West Bank are prevented from attending due to Israel's policies of ethnic and religious segregation.
Sarah Colbrne, Director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said " We are asking people to boycott Habima in protest against their support of illegal settlements.
Being an artist does not remove your responsibility as a uman being to stand up against oppression. And Habima have been complicit in supporting that oppression by performing in theatres built on land illegally occupied by Israel, and performances which exclude Palestinians from attending.
Protest Habima at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre from 6 p.m 28/5/ - Tues May 29th
Why we say "no" to Habima at the Globe - Miriam Margolyse
Protestors holdinga banner and forcefully removed from Habima performance
So the Olympic flame trundles on through the country. Yesterday it passed through my home town, here in West Wales.It seems the country has gone mad. About 7,000 or so gathered to watch it pass, (from all accounts in a matter of minutes) quite a lot for a small town.For some people the recession does not seem to be happening, as this government slashes benefits, attacks the poor!
Sure there are tales of courage and fortitude, but overall I just don't get it. Crowds gather in excitement and delight wherever the torch appears, following the smell of spin and propoganda. It has an air of craziness about it, people whooping, people crying. Celebratng a torch that is on its way to London, where it will be used again as a symbol at the Olympics great spectacle of wealth.
I came home to my garden before the flame actually arrived ( heard the cries, of joy and hysteria) but what I saw in the town was blatant publicising for the Olympics main sponsors - Coke a Cola, B.T, Samsung and Lloyds/T.S. B Plc, McDonalds, the epitomy of junk and greedy captitalistic endeavor, their only common dominator is their thirst for profit. Corporate advertising latched on to a cavalcade of vehicles.
And coke, not really a healthy drink that I would associate with sport. As for the participation of Dow Chemicals..... the mind simply boggles, have people simply forgotten the Bhopal disaster that killed 15,000 people. And the people whoop and the people cheer.
The Olympics are going to cost an estimated £11billion - more than the Tory governments latest cut to the welfare budget. So lets celebrate our austerity.... hip hip hooray.
The relay is supposed to 'promote peace and make the world a better place' according to the International Olympic Committe President Jacques Rogge - but at such enormous cost. A true spirit of international co-operation would have seen us bailing out the Greeks, the originators of the Olympics, letting them host the games permanently and giving them our £15 billion.
And who invented the modern torch relay - the bloody Nazis.... Torches and flames had a strong link to Nazi ideology, they were used as a key part in Leni Reifenstahl's Nazi propoganda documentary Olympia.
They used the 1936 Olympics and the torch relay as a way of spreading their racist message of hate.
Today I feel this event is being used as a mass distractive action, to mask over the current problems we have in our country. I do not belittle peoples happiness, but think that it's all a bit of a con. At least some people will make something out of the games, by selling their torches on, with some perhaps being given back to charity.
In my garden it felt like I was living on another planet, as I heard the crowds roar, down the road from me. We have been experiencing some exceptionally good weather. But as the mass delusion rolls on I remain, deeply cynical. Will the flag waving, clapping and shedding a few tears of national pride continue, yes, many international groups are eagerly anticipating the event, but many people in London themselves are searching for ways to avoid the Olympics entirely, perhaps this hopeful distraction give us some kind of illusion that we can beat this austerity...... and its the Jubilee coming up soon too. No I'm not buying it, I simply don't believe the hype. But at least the Sun is shining.
' But it is in relation to individual human beings that Detachment is most necessary of all. The wise man spends his life running away. But luckily he can run away without moving a step. We are all - men and women alike - teased by the blue-bottle flies who want to lay their eggs. These are the people who have never learnt and never could learn the art of detachment. They are blue-bottle flies - as my sister Phillipa says - and they want to lay their eggs; and they can only lay their eggs in carrion. Not one of us has carried in him, carrion in her; and the buzzing blue-bottles, among our fellows, smell this afar off, and fly towards it, and would fain settle upon it and lay their eggs. Here indeed, here most of all is it necessary to excercise the very magic of Detachment, that magic that makes it possible for you to be in one place - like the man seated on the naked stone by the flowing water - and yet to be in the heart of the flaming sun and at the circumference of the divine ether. For if you fail to exercise the magic of Detachment upon the blue-bottle fly who infest your road they will really lay their eggs - the eggs of the maggots of civilisation - in your soul. And then you will believe in the justifiability of vivisection; in the sacrosanct importance of private property; in the virtue of patriotic war; in slaughter-houses, in brothels, in slavery, and in the great, noble scientific, gregarious, loving, human, undetached art of - Advertisement. Rouseau was right. It is only by detaching yourself from human civilisation that you can live a life worthy of a living soul.'
Quotation Reprinted from John Cowper Powys A Record of Achievement - Derek Langbridge The Library Association, 1966
