DEAR ATOS - Send us your messages for atos

On Wednesday 29th August, as part of the Atos Gameshttp://www.dpac.uk.net/2012/07/our-atos-games/, Disabled People Against Cuts will deliver a coffin full of your messages to the Atos headquarters in central London. Why? Because over 1,000 people have died after being found 'fit for work' by Atos.
Marking the fourth anniversary, the coffin  will be delivered as a memorial. A minutes silence will also be held on the day.

More here
http://www.dpac.uk.net/2012/08/dear-atos-send-us-your-messages-for-atos/
This will all be happening at the same time as the Paralymics will be commencing, which David Cameron will use as a propoganda tool... cheering it on, while robbing many other disabled people of their benefits, in a festivity that is actually sponsored by, of all people Atos.
Personally speaking, the fear that Atos has inflicted  on  my friends and associates on a daily basis has been terryfying. I know of people who are simply trying to survive, I like to refer to them as survivors instead of victims. But some of these people who have been steadily making progress with their lives, are then set back because of Atos's sheer lack of compassion and empathy, no caring feeling is expressed by their daily actions. Simply doin the governments rotten work. Ordinary people are being made to suffer, because of Atos's thirst for profit, and people are dying. The actual assesments bear no resemblance to real life. And it is the most vulnerable members of our society,that  are singled out and targeted, this I feel  is unjust.
Atos  because of the way they carry out their procedures, have been responsible  for causing added misery, stress and anxiety to peoples daily lives. Some people I know who have been on incapacity Benefit, when making a new claim for one of the new benefits it has replaced, have not even had an assessment by an actual real person, their claim form simply processed by a computer in a dehumanising way... their G.Ps opinions tossed aside.
Atos assesments are simply not fit for purpose. we need a fair sytem that protects the sick and disabled that offers them dignity.
Their are a number of petitions on line addressing these issues, two of which you can find links to below

Ian Duncan Smith, Maria Miller, David Cameron: Stop Supporting Atos origin http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/ian-duncan-smith-maria-miller-david-cameron-stop-supporting-atos-origin

Stop and review the cuts to benefits and services which are falling disproportianately on disabled people, their carers and families
 http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/20968

REMEMBER

Bob Kaufman (18/4/25 - 12/1/81) - Believe,Believe

I couldn't  resist mentioning William Blake today, today marks the anniversary of the death of this great poet and visionary. Today also marks my beloved dad's 80th birthday celebrations, apart from a tumble down the stairs recently he's doing fine. Both still continue to inspire me. I guess it was my dad, that taught me to question everything.... I don't think he thought I'd take it quite so literally though. I think he would have preferred if I had not spent so much time living on the margins.
But because of a healthy defiance of some of his thoughts too, long ago became attracted to other outsiders and outsiders who did not follow the straightened path, who's tokes of breath  inhaled from  unity's breath, whilst  embracing the dislocations  of the world's hypocricy, whilst retaining a thirst for dream. Who longed for social justice, another world.
I guess too I discovered a love of poetry too, as an act of defiance, my dad see has never really shared this enthusiam. Nevetheless  it is because of him, I found a sort of identity, an anchorage, and for that I am always grateful.
Moving on, a poet who owes much debt to William Blake, is Mr Bob Kaufman, one of the hidden masters of the beats, who's words too continue to ignite my passions.
Born of a German Jewish father and a Native American Martinique Black Roman Catholic mother in New Orleans, April 18, 1925, Kaufman grew up speaking Cajun as well as English. His maternal grandmother, who'd come to America on a slave ship fom Africa, used to take him on long early morning walks. These early experiences and influences constantly appear in his work informing it with a deep personal empathy with minor cultures as well as with a wider rang of voice that is evident in most American poetry. He spent his life committed  to a  visionary echoe, never doing anything halfway, committed to wild abandon. His work owes a debt to Blake to , his words still  provoking, so today happy birthday dad, hello William Blake...... here's to deepness and  the delights of  raw vision. Raging against conformity.

Believe, Believe

Believe in this, Young apple seeds,
In blue skies, radiating young breast,
Not in blue-suited insects
Infesting society's garments.

Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz,
Tearing the night into intricate shreds,
Putting it back together again,
In cool logical patterns,
Not in the sick controllers,
Who created only the Bomb.

Let the voices of dead poets
Ring louder in your ears
Than the screechings mouthed
In mildewed editorials.
Listen to the music of centuries,
Rising above the mushroom time.


William Blake - Angel of Revelation

See
The Ancient Rain: Poems 1956 - 1978 - Bob Kaufman
New Directions Press
1981

Olympic legacy London 2012 and some sweet Comedy Gold from seminal comedy duo Skint Video

Former Skint Video ( remember them, back in the day I thought they were absolutely fantastic, like a Left Wing Barren Knights, only personally speaking much better)   member  Gerry Mulligan on the Olympic Legacy. Remember Skint Video, I thought they were hilarious, still do in fact, tried looking for a tape of them I used to have, sadly lost, thank goodness to youtube. Saw them playing at many a benefit back in the day, supporting the likes of Billy Bragg, Redskins, and er Red Wedge.... Then I grew up , well for a little bit, thought I'd post a few favourites. Still find them hilarious.


Skint Video - about Thatcher Health Service Cuts

still somewhat topical

Skint Video - Billy Bragg, tribudy, half tribute, half parody

Skint Video- Bono pay your taxes, glastonbury 2011

Skint Video - Smiths parody glastonbury 84

I was in the audience smewhere high as a kite

my first glastonbury experience

Skint Video - Police Demo March, cops on 45

for some freedom of fairness

We are heading towards a transition

and we're supporting ourselves to go

w'ere not wasting our lives by tradition

cause we'll finally end up this show

My Beloved Olive: Palestinian Farmers On their Land

This film, produced by the Union of Agricultural Work Committees in Palestine, explores the role of the olive in Palestinian farmers lives, and in the Palestinian economy, and the struggles of farmers to remain on their land and continue to harvest their olives in the face of the construction of the Apartheid wall, military occupation, settlement building, and land confiscation at the hands of yhe Israeli occupation, includes numerous interviews with Palestinian farmers.

Albert Camus (7/11/1893 -4/1/60) -Humanity's last Chance: Between hell and reason

Following Hiroshima Memorial Day, thought it would be fitting to  publish this famous essay from Albert Camus originally published in the French Resistance Paper Combat 67 years ago on August 8th, 1945. At the time not as many people spoke with such clarity, it still to has much relevance. A warning that we should never forget.

' The world is what it is, which is to say, nothing much. That is what we  all learned yesterday, thanks to the formidable chorus that radio, newspapers, and infomation agencies have just unleashed, regarding the atomic bomb. We are told, that  in the midst  of hundreds of enthusiastic commentaries, that any average sized city can be wiped out by a bomb the size of a football. American, English, and French newspapers are filled  with elegant essays on the future, the past, the inventors, the cost, the peaceful incentives,  even the military advantages, and the bombs  independent character.
Our technical civilisation has just reached its greatest level of savagery. We  will have to choose, soon, between collective suicide or the intelligent use of our scientific conquests.
Meanwhile  we think there is something indecent in celebrating a discovery in this way, whose use  has caused the most destruction that humanity has ever known. What will it bring to a world already given over to all the convulsions of violence, incapable of any control, indifferent to justice and simple human happiness,  to a world where science devotes itself to organised murder?
These discoveries must be recorded, commented upon for what they surely are, announced to the world so that humanity may have a truthful idea of its desitiny. We cannot allow these terrible revelations to be surrounded by humourous or picturesque writings.
It was already hard to breathe in a tortured world. Here now is is new source of anquish being offered, without reservation, its last chance. And that could, after all, be the pretext for a special edition. But  should  be an occassion for a few reflections and a lot of silence.......
Lets be clear. If the Japanese capitulate after the destruction of Hiroshima due to intimidation, we will be glad of it. But we refuse to draw from such grave news anything other than the determination to plead even more energetically for a real international society in ,which great powers  will not have rights superior to small or mid-sized ones, in which war, a scourge that has become definite through human intelligence alone; will not depend on the appetites or doctrines of this or that State.
Before the terryfying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only fight worth struggling for. This is no longer a plea, but a demand to be made by all the  people  to their governments - a demand to choose  definitely between hell and reason.'

Thanks to Jane

Further Reading

Camus at Combat
1944 -1947
Albert Camus, Jacqueline Levi Valensi,
David Carrol, Arthur Goldhammer
2007.

                                                

Denise Levertov (24/10/23 - 20/12/97) - Gathered at the River

Today marks the day that on August 6th , 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese City of Hiroshima, followed a few days later by another dropped on the city of Nagasaki. This effectively, ended World War II, but at such cost - the two cities were destroyed , about 2000,000 people were slaughtered, with many more people dying later from injuries and illnesses.
Today has now become a focus for anti-war and anti-nuclear discussions and demonstrations across the globe. We must never forget, and hope it never ever happens again.

As if the trees were not indifferent...

A breeze flutters the candles but the trees give off
a sense of listening, of hush.

The dust of August on their leaves.
But it grows dark. Their dark green
is something known about, not seen.

But summer twilight takes away
only color, not form. The tree-forms,
massive trunks and the great domed heads,
leaning in towards us, are visible,

a half-circle of attention.

They listen, because the war
we speak of , the human war with ourselves,

the war against earth
against nature,
is a war against them.

The wordsare spoken
of those who survived a while,
lying shadowgraphs, eyes fixed forever
on witnessed horror,

who survived to give
testimony, that no-ne
may plead ignorance.
Contra naturam. The trees,
the trees are not indifferent.

We intone together, Never again,

we  stand in a circle,
singing, speaking, making vows,
remembering the dead
of Hiroshima,
of Nagasaki.

We are holding candles: we kneel to set them
 afloat on the dark river
as they do there in Hiroshima. We are invoking

saints and prophets
heroes and heroines of justice and peace,
to be with us, to help us
stop the torment of our evil dreams. . .

                           *

Wind threathened flames bob on the current . . .

They don't get far from shore. But none capsizes
even in the swell of a boat's wake.

The waxy paper cups sheltering them
catch fire. But still the candles
sail their gold downstream.

And still the trees ponder our strange doings, as if
well aware that if we fail,
we fail also for them:
if our resolves and prayers are week and fail

there will be nothing left of their slow and innocent wisdom,

no roots
no bole nor branch,

no memory
of shade,
of leaf,

no pollen.

Link

to C.N.D

Cymru piece about

commemorations in Wales.

http://www.cndcymru.org/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-1945-2012-anniversary-commemorated-across-wales

Poem reprinted from

Peace or Perish /A crisis Anthology

Poets for Peace, San Francisco, 1983

                          

Chris Morris & Will Self hate Sebastian Coe (I Hate Sebastian Coe EXTEnded Acid Remix)

Justice for the Critical Mass 182

Meanwhile Shami Chakrabarti

 of Liberty http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/ in the Guardian says ' while proud  to represent Liberty holding the flag in such incredible human rights company, my lack of personal sacrifice was rarely far from my thoughts.'http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/29/london-2012-danny-boyle-opening-ceremony . Good then, but she was carrying the flag of LIBERTY while 182 cyclists were being kettled. This went on all night, where protestors were beaten and arrested for their right  to use the roads. What sort of Wholesale assault on Human Rights is that? A lot of blatant hypocricy coming out of Liberty's  mouths. Does Liberty officially support the Olympics or something, and perhaps  too, the nations that are taking place that it usually strongly condemns? Scotland Yard has said it respected that people had a right to protest, but said officers must stop protestors who  disrupted guests from trying to reach the Olympic Park. Protecting corporate interests again, perhaps, business as usual. All hail the free Olympics.

Critical Mass is a monthly bike ride that takes place every last Friday of every month. It has been happening for the last 18 years, so the Metropolitan Police knew in advance that it was happening.
 The authorities response to me,  contradicts the idea that  the games would encourage people to participate in sport or that these are the greenest games ever. How ironic that cyclists featured so heavily in the actual opening ceremony too, while in the real world, counterparts were being arrested nearby.

Justice for the Critical Mass 182 Petition

They were fully in their rights to take to the streets as they always have

Here is a link to a petition set up to defend  those arrested and kettled

help stand for a police and legal system we can believe in.

please sign and share.

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/metropolitan-police-criminal-justice-system-uk-justice-for-the-critical-mass-182

http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk/

Fishing For Gold

So it's started then,
it seems the world has faith
in  this spectacle of celebration
this feast of people pride.

Critical opinion is tossed aside
homeless Londoners have dissapeared
they've been clearing up the town
streets have been erased, old maps have been rearranged.

It's all about the taking part I guess
not necessarily the winning
G4S have taken the money and run
in the spirit of peace and co-operation.

The Olympic idyll, adrift somewhere
amidst the corporation signs,
and the cries of sponsor, sponsor, sponsor
spin, spin, spin, the sick corpse of capitalism, waving every hour.

Perhaps no borders will be necessary,
long distances have been travelled,
hope and unity might prevail,
tales of adversity will melt our hearts.

Summers great sporting bonanza has commenced
rain clouds  are driven off, Londons famous gloomy skies
everyone celebrates, and all is good in the lie of the land.
or have we all been cajoled and misled.

Don't believe the hype myself, will turn the telly off
go and hide in the long green grass,
search for dreams that have not happened yet
go fishing for some gold.