Valentine's Day is almost upon us and for supermarkets and florists that means a massive increase in the sale of flowers. But how may romantic couples consider where the flowers we exchange are grown?
Farmers in Gaza have long been encouraged by Israeli export companies to focus their production on high risk 'cash crops' such as flowers and strawberries, and the arrival of carnations from Rafah to European markets for Christmas or Valentines' day is often cheered on by the Israeli Government who uses it as a PR exercise to show how it 'facilitates' Palestinian exports.
Growing carnations for Valentine has long been a love's labor lost for Palestinian farmers in Gaza thanks to Israel's export restrictions. The blockade and restrictions have prevented Palestinian farmers from shipping their stock to Europe forValentine's day in recent years, causing huge losses as exporters ended up either dumping truckloads of flower or feeding them to their sheep.
However, unsurprisingly , this is not the full story.
Next week on February 19, protestors will be gathering nationally outside 144 Atos centres to peacefully protest against the inhumane and disgusting treatment of people receiving emplyment support allowance, and its predecessors incapacity benefit and the severe disablement allowance.
The poor treatment of our countries most vulnerable citizens is well documented, so this protest will call for an apology from Ian Duncan Smith and Thiery Breton, Chairman and CEO of ATOS to the growing number of people who have sadly taken their own lives due to this government of millionaires war of austerity on the poor, which has resulted in changes to the benefit system.
These include
Tim Salter 53 year old blind man suffering from agoraphobia
Lee Robinson 39, who was the first person in whose suicide could be attributed to the government changes.
Shaun Pilkington 58, who was sent a letter saying he was to lose his Employment and Support Allowance, which he got after a long-term illness.
Edward Jacques 47 who took a fatal overdose after his benefit payments were stopped.
Richard Sanderson 44 who stabbed himself in the heart.
Jacqueline Harris 53, oormer nurse, found dead at her home, after taking an overdose of medication after being pronounced fit for work.
It seems targetting the vulnerable is now this Governments bloodsport of choice, using an unfair target driven culture, it seems also that the management of ATOS are pressuring assessors to fail many claimants and deny them the benefits that they depend on and entitled to, in a heartles, incompassinate manner. Also it seems to me that the Government and Atos are being aided and abetted at the moment by the media, assisting them with a negative portrayal of the sick and disabled, distorting and misrepresenting us. Pitting the poor against one another, while at the same time slashing taxes for banks, corporate giants and the richest people in Britain, the sale of their hypocricy is staggering.
In July 2013, ATOS whistleblower Dr Greg Wood lifted the lid on the horrible culture that existed within the organisation - carrying out assessments that are simply not fit for purpose, I personally know of people who have not been assessed by humans, but by computer, and just waiting for a decision adds to an already very stressfuli existence, and contributes unessesssary burden.
The Government seems to carry on regardless and like ATOS simply don't give a toss, if ATOS were really doing their job correctly they would have declared Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith unfit to do the job that he is supposed to be doing. I personally have been assessed declared fit for work, appealed won, moved into a support group where I have not seen anyone for over a year, and now have to undertake the whole gruelling process again. G.Ps medical reports are routinely ignored, simply the whole rotting procedure stinks. The scale of anxiety caused is immense.
ATOS's cruel insensitive tratment of vulnerable and ill people is utterly reprhensible and should not be allowed to continue, the appeal process which many people are winning is costly and unaffordable.
It is time this despicable company had its contract withdrawn and the Government started to put people before profit, that assesses people in a fair and dignified manner.
Please join me in one of the many demonstations that are taking place across the country and show some solidarity.
Details of where they are taking place can be found here :-
Continuing the celebrations to mark the centenary of William Burroughs birth, here is an extract from his 1969 book the Job. A book built around extensive interviews with William Burroughs uindertaken with Daniel Odier. Originally published by John Calder in France in 1969, it offers a brilliant and fascinating glimpse into Burroughs thoughts and ideas. Offering an insight to his political impuses.In which he powerfully attacks our traditional values, with his sharp undiluted vision, provoking in a a sincere, convincing way, pointing towards another world. I present a series of extracts, the book essential reading for anyone interested in William Burroughs work. .
" Navigare necesse es. Vivare no es necesse."
" It is necessary to travel . It is not necessary to live."
These words inspired early navigators when the vast frontier of unknown seas opened to their sails in the fifteenth century. Space is the new frontier. To trvel in space you must learn to exist with no religion no country no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence. Anyone who prays in space is not there.
The last frontier is being closed to youth. However there are many roads to space. To achieve complete freedom from past conditioning is to be in space. Techniques exist for achieving such freedom. These techniques are being concealed and withheld. In the Job I consider techniques of discovery.
London 1969
Language is a Virus from Outer Space
Your books since the Ticket that Exploded especially, are no longer "novels; a breaking up of a novelistic form is noticeable in Naked Lunch. Toward what end or goal is this break up heading?
That's very difficult to say. I think that the novelistic form is probably outmoded and that we may look forward perhaps to a future in which people do not read at all or read only illustrated books and magazines or some abbreviated form of reading matter. To compete with television and photo magazines writers will have to develop more precise techniques producing the same effect on the reader as a lurid action photo.
You wrote: " Writing is fifty years befind painting." How can the gap be closed?
I did not write that . Mr Brion Gysin , who is a painter and writer wrote " writing is fifty years behind panting." Why this gap? Because the painter can touch and handle his medium and the writer cannot. The writer does not yet know what words are. He deals only with absractions from the source points of words. The painters ability to touch and handle his medium led to montage techniques sixty years ago. It is hoped that the extension of cut-up techniques will lead to more precise verbal experiments closing this gap and giving a new dimension in writing. These techniques can show wthe writerwhat words are and put him in tactile communication with his medium. This in turn could lead to a precise science of words and show how certain word combinations produce certain effects on the human nervous system.
What is the important thing in music, when you use music?
Music is extremely important. The whole Moslem world is practically controlled by music. Certain music is played at certain times and the association of music is one of the most powerrful. John Cage and Earl Brown have carried the cut-up method much further in music than I have in writing.
Do free men exist in your books?
Free men don't exist in anyone's books, because they are the author's creations. I would say that free men don't exist on this planet at this time, because they don't exist in human bodies, by the mere fact of being in a human body you're controlled by all sorts of biologic and environmental necessities.n this planet.
Is there a political path to the liberation of the world? Would a complete ideological change, the replacement of the capitalist world by a socialist world, for example, offer a solution?
It would seem to me most emphatically no, Because these are just battling around the same old formulas. What happens; for example, when the government takes over the so-called means of production? Nothing. Our factories in the West are practically state-owned now.
The anarchist is perhaps one of the few who offers a possible solution for the future. Do you believe in the solution in which he proposes?
I don't really know what they are, although I would say this, that I don't believe in any solution that proposes halfway measures. Unless we can abolish the whole concept of the nation, and the whole concept of the family, we aren't going to get anywhere at all.
Do Good and Evil really exist?
Not in the absolute sense. Something is good or evil according to your needs and the nature of your organism. What opposses or tries to anhiliate any person or species is seen by that person or species as being evil. I think it's naive to predicate any absolutes there; it only has reference to the conditions of life of a given organism or species or society.
Is the destruction of the police machine still possible?
Possibly, yes. The machine is certainly on the defensive at the present time, and with enough resistance, worldwide, it is still possible. Of course the police machine isn't going to be smashed until we destroy with it the whole concept of a nation. I see a future where guerilla armies of liberation have arisen in South and Central America and Africa. "We will march on the police machine. Everywhere, we will destroy it. We will destroy the machine and all its records, and we will destroy the house organ of police machine which goes under the name of conservative press."
" Nothing is True - Everything is Permitted," Hassan I Sabbah says. Is this the principle of freedom?
Yes, I would say that. If nothing were true, everything is permitted. That is, if we realise that everything is illusion, then any illusion is permitted. As soon as we say that something is true, real, then immediately things are not permitted.
You speak of the necessity of breaking down the whole formula of seperate countries and nations. How can this be brought about?
At the present time we are all confined in concentration camps called nations. We are forced to obey laws to which we have not consented, and to pay exorbiant taxes to maintain the prisons in which we are confined. The pretext that there is any measure of consent involved or benefits recieved is wearing very thin indeed. The American people did not even know that the atom bomb existed. Still less were they consulted as to whether or not it should be used. Thusone of the most disastrous decisions in human history, was made by incompetent, ill-informed, and ill-intentioned men.
Are the effects of drugs worse than alcohol?
Alcohol sedates the front brain relieving anxiety and discontent and is certainly a factor in preserving the status quo in Western countries. Of all drugs in common use, alcohol has the worst statistic as regards damage physical mental and moral to the individual and to society. How many crimes are committed every day by people under the influence of alcohol, criomes directly traceable to alcohol, crimes that would not have been committed had the person been sober? Drunken fights, drunken murders, drunken car accidents. How much objectionable stupid boring behaviour is due to alcohol? How many people are degraded by its use? How much money and time is spent on alcohol? How much innefficiancy is caused by its use or by the after-effects of its use? And how many illnesses can be directly attributed to alcohol? Cirrhosis of the liver, kidney disease. alcoholism, Korsokov's psychosis, stomach ulcers. How anyone can oppose legislation of cannabis without at the same time being an ardent prohibitionist is beyond my understanding?
Addiction is a prison. Is domination by drugs comparable to domination by the images and myths created by our civilisation? Is it worse?
It is verry dangerous to use the word "addiction" loosely, as addiction to images, myths, ets, thought this can occur. Addiction means something that causes acute physical mental discomfort if it is withdrawn. Perhaps the closes parallel is what I might call an addiction to rightness, to being in the right; such an addict - and their name is legion - experiences acute discomfort if his rightness is withdrawn. Without it he is nothing, and he cannot adjust to normal metabolism- that is, the realization that rightness and wrongness are relative concepts that have meaning only relative to position and purpose. I recall a French fascist who said : " Je ne comprends pas ces degeneres de la drogue comme William Burroughs." - (I wasn't on drugs at the time.) - " Moi, j'ai une seule drogue. C'est l'indignation." C'est la pire.. it's the worst drug of all.
You speak of the necessity of breaking down the whole formula of seperate countries and nations. How can this be brought about?
At the present time we are all confined in concentration camps called natons. We are forced to obey laws we have not consented, and to pay exorbiant taxes top maintain the prisons in which we a are confined. The pretext that there is any measure of consent involved or benefits recieved is wearing vet thin indeed. The American people did not even know the atom bomb existed. Still less were they consulted or not it should be used. Thus, one of the most disatrous decisions in human huistoty was made by incompetent, ill-informed, and ill-intentioned men.
Space is dream. Space is illusion. To travel in space tou must learn to leave the old verbal garbage behind. God talk, priest talk, mother talk, family talk, love talk, party talk, and country talk. You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to see what is in front of you with no preconceptions.
An international campaign to boycott Israel is gaining momentum in Europe. Eight years ago Palestinian civil society issued a call for a campaign of boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it started complying with International law and Palestinian rights. A truly global movement against Israeli-Apartheid rapidly emerged in response to this call.The impact has so far been minimal, but if US-led peace talks fail, some Israelis fear the movement will accelerate . especially with growing pressure from the European Union, a major trading partner. In the above video Al Jazeera's Atia Abawi reports from the Jordan valley.
The main reason the boycott seems to be working is that it is grounded in the well documented fact of Israeli policies. The daily institutional discriminatiom faced by Palestinian citizens. From the discriminatory control and distribution of water resources as reported by Amnest International,. Illegal settlements are still being used to colonise the West Bank, the Palestinians in Gaza are effectively sealed in an open prison. These are some of the reasons why I support this campaign. Whilst Israel continues to ignore International law and continues its systematic human rights abuses.Growing numbers from the world of academia, the arts world and faith communities are now routinely working together to try and achieve some form of justice. Drawing on parallels of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. These non-violent forms of resistance using economic sanctions are proving to be effective. The world has tried constructive dialogue but Israel does not appear to be listening, so we have to keep up the pressure, in acts of international solidarity in the name of justice and frredom.
Once derided as the scheming of crackpots, the campaign is turning mainstream, as illustrated in todays Economist. Link here:-
The heart and core of the BDS movement is a need for compassion , that is not seen as bulldozers rumble through the streets of East Jerusalem, tearing down more Palestinian homes, the existence of apartheid walls, and the denial of basic human freedoms, such as movement and assembly, these are the principle reasons that motivate me.
William Seward Burroughs born today in 1914, in St Louis, Missouri, the grandson of the inventor of the Burroughs adding machine.Young Burroughs went to Harvard university, graduated in 1936 with a degree in English literature and a $150 a month trust.Drifting around Europe for a while, with enough monety to sustain him, came back to America, diddled around for a spell, a brief period in the Army just after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, but was soon discharged, influenced by other writers who advocated the complete derangement of the senses, like Genet, Rimbaud and Artoud, t was not long before he fell into drug use.
Nowadays recognised as one of the most culturally influential and innovative artists of our time. Outsider, misfit, junky,homosexual, writer, painter, messiah, prophet, satirist, punk godfather, world and inner space traveller extrordinaire. he has been all these things.Those marking his century will have a thousand different versions of Burroughs to choose from. His novels, once banned and condemned over the years earned him membership in the American Academy and Institute for Arts and Letters and the title Commandeur de l'Orde des Arts et des Lettres in France. I first came into contact with his books about 1979/80, in my previous in my previous incarceration as a heavy metal kid. His strange books, drawing me into his parallel world, a perfect accompianment for my emerging adolesence.Now my personal bookshelfs groan under the weight of his tomes, often I listen to recordings of him reading from them, his distinctive voice, his rich elemental cadence speaking to me about freedom, nothing short of complete liberation, this was his mission, unfortunately I am only human, I have not yet wrestled my way from Control, how they control our bodies, our ideas, our imaginatuions, our spirits and our futures, but I try, and I remember that it was sweet William who first tempted me with new forms of thinking. His world was one that essentally contained no boundaries, continents limitless with imagination. As Burroughs saw it history dissolves into a perpetual present, driven by need, control and the need to control. Throughout his life Burroughs continued to share his message, in his attempt at breaking down the limiting structures that he saw, had been placed all around. His voice still lingers among us, with it's hypnotysing magnetism, his almost deranged tones of prophesy and warning.
A true iconclast of the first order, his vision has provoked, outraged, and inspired countless numbers of people.
Alongside his friends, Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Hunke, Gegory Corso and Jack Kerouac, Burroughs was part of the Beat Generation. Emerging out of the embers of the Second World War, this group of writers rejected social standards and celebrated narcotics, sexuality and Arcane religions in their witings. One of Burroughs first works Junky was published in 1953, recently reprinted, exploring his intimate experiences with the world of heroin, serving as a "memory excercise." He set himself a daily schedule, helped by injections of morphine. Originally published as a pulp paperback under the pseudonym ' William Lee' with the lurid subtitle Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict.
On September 6, 1953, Burroughs accidentally killed his second wife Joan Vollmer after shooting her in the head, in a drunken attempt to imitate William Tell's feat of shooting an apple of his son's head. Burroughs was charged with criminal impudence and eventually skipped bail, travelled to South America in search of a telepathy-inducing drug called Yage. These travels and his subsequent letters to Ginsberg would serve as the basis of his 1963 book The Yage Letters.
He would later claim that he would never have become a writer, if it was not for the guilt that he suffered after this unfortunate incident. The son that he had with Joan, Billy Jr was sent to live with his grandparents, Burroughs Sadly ever saw him, and Billy Jr, subsequently drank himself to death in 1981.
In 1956, Burroughs tried to cure his drug addiction with the help of a London Physician named John Dent. It did not work, and he would spend the rest of his life reliant on methadone, but after living for a spell in Tangiers, where he had headed inspired by the works of the writer Paul Bowles, he wrote one of his most enduring works Naked Lunch.
A collage of disturbing, bizzarre and for some obscene images, of hallucinatory intensity, written whilst under the influence of various drugs. It would become his most famous and read book. It was here that he came under the influence of the painter Brion Gysin, from whom he learnt the cut-up style, a technique that would dominate his work for the rest of his life, with ideas and images repeating over and over again, helping produce the works The Soft Machine (1961) The Ticket that Exploded (1962) and Nova Express(1963).
'All was enveloped in a flaming chromosphere..... Swirling within the incadescence of solar energy were sprays of blood.... Perception was heaving ..... WB - Nova Express
Gysin and Burroughs
'You were there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.' -WB Naked Lunch.
' The word is divided into unite which be all in one piece and should be so taken, but the pieces can be had in any order being tied up back and forth, in and out fore and arft like an inneresting sex arrangement. This book spill of the page in all directions kaleidoscope of vistas, medley of tunes and street noises, farts and riot yipes and the slamming steel shutters of commerce, screams of pain and pathos and screams plain pathic, copulating cats and outraged squawk of the displaces bull head, prophetic mutterings of brujo in nutmeg trances, snapping necks and screaming mandrakkes, sigh of orgasm, heroin silent as dawn in the thirsty cells, Radio Cairo screamink like a berserk tobacco auction, and flutes of Ramadam fanning the sick junky like a gentle lush worker in the grey subway dawn feeling with delicate fingers for the green folding crackle. - Naked Lunch
CUT UPS: WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
He would travel extensively, moving to Paris to live at the famous Beat Hotel, where he joind a younger generation, which included the poet Gregory Corso,and a motly accumulation of misfits and outsiders, a feral crew of miscreants, living lives of excess, coming and going as they pleased, like the rats that scurried through it, a place that endeared itself to Burroughs, perhaps because of its wildness and the fact that it's front doors were never locked at all. Whilst here he undertook his most important work, his second novel The Soft Machine was assembled and written while he was at the hotel.
In the early 1960's Burroughs moved to London, where he would spend 6 years, supporting himself and his continual addiction by publishing extensively in small literary presses and the burgenining underground scene, as his avant garde reputation grew internationally, as the emerging hippy counterculture discovered his early work. Quietly going about his own business in St James, living at Dalmery Court, 8 Duke Street, an unimposing place, near Picadilly, that I've visited once or twice as an act of homage. Not that much to see though. During his stay he took on the Church of Scientology, turning up outside their headquarters to take photographs, observe and simply annoy them. It worked they subsequently moved.
His primal books releasing his anti-government ramblings, political undercurrents coarsing through his work, libertarian, anarchistic, alternative models of thinking.Way beyond consensual reality.
In the 1970's he would move back to America, first moving to New York, from where he would undertake extensive reading tours,becoming associated with other cultural players like Andy Warhol, John Giorno, Lou Reed and Patti Smith, Keith Karingand a galaxy of other famous names. He became this notorious literary celebrity, lovingly embraced by young new wavers and became a sort of Godfather to the emerging Punk movement.
In 1981 he settled in Lawrence, Kansa, spending his time painting wonderful beautiful abstract picturesy, some used with the aid of shotguns, collaborating with many from Bill Laswell, Michael Franti and his Disposable Heroes of Hipocricy and Ministry. Appearing in films, including a seminal appearance in Guy Van Sants 1980 film the Drugstore cowboy.
William Burroughs shotgun paintings.
In 1990 he released the spoken word album Dead City Radio with musical back up from producers Hal Wilmer and Nelson Lyon and alternative rock band Sonic Youth. In 1992 he recorded with the Kurt Cobain, a piece called The Priest They Called him.
At the end of his life he was living in a two bedroom cottage, with his beloved feline companians,taking gentle stroolls around his garden, a lover of men and science fiction, visited by admirers on his front porch. Despite his struggles with his addictions, his rage, with an 'ugly spirit' that he knew well, was able to quote Prspero, finding some kind of peace "But his rough magic, I here abjure."
For Burroughs the war on drugs were totally unachievable, one that the world was incapable of winning, see the sad death of the fine actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman earlier this week. Burroughs considered opiates to be depressents. They work on the back of the brain, suppressing the emotional and social centres of thought. This was for him was part of the addiction. An addict does not need society, feels no love or hate, gripped by this illness, that cannot be escaped, hooked in junk time, their mind and body becomes regulated by their sickness, their addiction. But for Burroughs addiction was a general conditin limited to drugs. Politics, religion, the family, love are all forms of addiction. In the post-Bomb society, all the mainstays of ther social order have lost their meaning, and bankrupt nation states are run by control addicts.
Burroughs finally died in 1997 from a heart attack, still reliant on a methadone maintenence programe, but had survived most of his peers.His work continues to inspire, influence, writers, lyricists and artists of all kinds across the globe. Leaving behind a solid body of work, his legacy still evolving, regarded as one of the greatest writers of our time. His final written words were "Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE."
So thanks Uncle Bill, happy birthday to you and I am grateful for your genius. I hope you are listening, this agent's words are still shared, this El Hombre Invisible, is still visible for all.
William Burroughs - Words of Advice for young people
Finally thought I'd share this video it features one of the last interviews with William S Burroughs and previously unseen vintage footage of him during the 50's and early 60's - The great Beat generation experiments took place in Tangier, the Morrocan city were Burroughs, Gysin and the Moroccan painter Hamri taught Jack Kerouac., Timothy Leary, and Ginberg how to live outside the law.
Also featured are the Master Musicians of Joujouka collaborating with avant gade Dublim musicians, vterans of the Tangier Beat scene, and cutting edge writers. In addition, there is music from Bill Laswell, The Baby Snakes, plus contributions from Ira Cohen, Hakim Bey, and many more.
Destroy All Rational Thought.
We are all born to Go.
'After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space, would say ' I want to see the manager.' - William Burroughs
' My power's coming ... My power's coming ---- ... And I got millions and mullions and millions of images of Me, Me Me, meee. WB - Nova Express.
I support free movement and equal rights for all. We as people should be tryng to promote unity between all.This is what a free society encompasses, the freedom of movement, including freedom of immigration and emigration. We should support the rights and dignity and respect of immigrants and refugees, and people forced to live without status.Many people are forced to live undocumented after having their applications for asylum refused, many esacaping persecution, war, fleeing in fear, escaping danger, in search of safety, a better future. Forced to live underground, hidden lives.
We all have the right to settle wherever we please, are we not according to the principle ' From each according to his ability, to each according to her need' entitled to equal access to the worlds land resources. Immigration laws are inherently racist, because their purpose is to exclude outsiders, and feed and legitimise racism, and in the process causes intolerable suffering to many people.
People of the world should all be entitled to the same universal social, political and economic rights and conditions, with or or without papers, with the same entitlement to the world's resources.We should recognise the many valuable contributions to society made by migrants, immigrants and refugees stretching back centuries. Every country in the world has it's richness and diversity because of the waves of immigration that have occurred. We should recognise the people who daily, risk everything, including their life, to leave their own country's, their family and friends, in search of a new and better life.
I see no contadiction in my support for the Palestinian people against their illegal apartheid wall, thewalls that have been created in open air prisons in Gaza, the West Bank, are the same as any other border wall strewn with barbed wire that bleed migrants, or walls that are erected as barriers to dignity and humanity, from Mexico, and the internment camps of Australia, to Fortress Europe.
Imagine a world free of borders, it's easy if you try, the sky has none, there is only one world. no borders are necessary, no one is illegal.
( Dedicated to Peter Seeger and all other followers of Freedom)
The only flags I follow
are those of red, black and green,
but also proudly stand ,
with my brothers and sisters,
the Palestinian.
I create my own propoganda,
avoid the mainstream news,
there versions of truth,
just a charade,
under the influence I dance,
avoiding the arrogance of powers
that chain,
life is very dangerous,
and its getting very dark.
But on the margins,
along the cracks,
the invisible and powerless rise,
on the other side of walls,
dreams swat the air,
drives its mighty hammer,
in pursuit of fairness and justice,
for all
a world of peace that displaces
war,
as our keys, turn, turn, turn,
again, again and again,
the roads stretch out,
laden with hope.
Humanity twinkes with a new
sensibility,
watches as divisions blister,
while consciences affection ,
wraps her arms around our bodies,
in comradely tenderness,
I believe, all is not lost.
Jasri is a hip-hop MC in Pittsburgh, who uses the medium of Hip-Hop to provide social commentary on a variety of issues, who recently returned from a visit to Palestine where he participated in a delegation with other Black American artists, activistse, writers and academics.
Last week he released 'Checkpoint,' a track based on the oppresssion and discrimination Jasiri X witnessed firsthand during his recent trip to Palestine and Israel. The video also features footage Jasiri himself capyured of Israeli soldiers, as well as newsreel clips of IDF brutality against Palestinians and Internationals.It also features footage from their visit, and you'll see a cameo of the great Palestinian- American Poet Remi Kanazi.http://www.poeticinjustice.net/
Checkpoint is produced by Agent of Change, and directed by Haute Muslim.
Lyrics here:-
journal of the hard times tales from the dark side Evidence of the settlements on my hard drive Man I swear my heart died at the end of that car ride When I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheid Soldiers wear military green at the checkpoint Tavors not M16s at the checkpoint Fingers on the trigger you'll get leaned at the checkpoint Little children grown adults or teens at the checkpoint You gotta put your finger on the screen at the checkpoint And pray that red lights turn green at the checkpoint
If Martin Luther King had a dream at the checkpoint He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint It's Malcolm X by any means at the checkpoint Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint
Seperation walls that's surrounding the checkpoint On top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpoint Better have ya permits if you're at the checkpoint Gunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpoint The idea is to keep you in fear at the checkpoint You enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpoint It feels like prison on a tier at the checkpoint I'd rather be anywhere but here at this checkpoint Nelson Mandela wasn't blind to the checkpoint He stood for free Palestine not a check point Support BDS don't give a dime to the checkpoint This is international crime at the checkpoint Arabs get treated like dogs at the checkpoint Cause discrimination is the law at the checkpoint Criminalized without a cause at the checkpoint I'm just telling you what I saw at the checkpoint Soldiers get bad attitudes at the checkpoint Condescending and real rude at the checkpoint Don't look them in the eyes when they move at the checkpoint They might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpoint Soldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpoint Gas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpoint Everyday you stand to be accused at the checkpoint Each time your life you could lose at the checkpoint
If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint It's Malcolm X by any means at the checkpoint Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint At the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpoint They pulled over our taxi at the checkpoint Passport visa ID at the checkpoint Soldiers going all through my things at the checkpoint Said I was high risk security at the checkpoint Occupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpoint All a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint
On this day today/a date that wont be forgotten in Northern Ireland, when 14 innocent peaceful Irish Catholics were murdered in broad daylight by the British army, many more were injured as they were marching for their basic freedoms and civil rights, under almost siege like conditions under unjust British rule in the city and across Northern Ireland. in what is regarded.as one the darkest days of Northern Ireland's troubles.
The civil rights protestors were shot in the Bogside by British soldiers from the Parachute Regiment. The protestors were opposing the policy of internment which allowed the authorities to imprison suspected members of the IRA without trial. On 9 August, 11, British soldiers detained 342 people, many of whom were tortured and had no connection to the IRA . This disastrous policy led to an immediate increase in violence, with 17 people killed within the next 48 hours.On 22 January 1972, soldiers attacked an anti-internment protest in Derry, firing rubber bullets and beating protestors severely.
However the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was determined not to be intimidated. so on this day around 10,000 people marched towards the city centre, but their route was blocked by army barricades. Here and there, some stones and bottles were thrown at the troops but collectively the marchers posed little threat to the well armed British soldiers, who exceptionally on this day were members of an elite parachute regiment, thus trained for combat, not policing crowds. At some point for reasons that as never been established, British soldiers began firing into the crowd of civilians.
Soon many were falling to the ground.
All of the dead were unarmed, five were shot in the back. Most were shot fleeing the soldiers and several were killed trying to assist the wounded. One man was shot and killed while assisting a victim and waving a white handkerchief another killed with his arms raised in surrender position. Seven of them were teenagers.Another marcher died a month later and there were many more wounded from rubber bullets. The massacre became a worldwide symbol of state brutality – and community resilience.
Like internment, Bloody Sunday provided the IRA with a huge recruitment boost and 1972 marked the single most violent year of the troubles. I can understand why any working class Catholic who having watched their friends get killed and detained, their houses burnt down and their communities left attacked by pogroms, could choose the path of resistance, in defense of their people.
List of those killed. Never forget their names.Still no justice for any of them.
Patrick ('Paddy') Doherty (31)
Gerald Donaghey (17)
John ('Jackie' ) Duddy (17)
Hugh Gilmore (17)
Michael Kelly (17)
Michael McDaid (20)
Kevin McElhinnet (17)
Bernard ('Barney') McGuigan (41)
Gerald McKinney (35)
William ('Willie') McKinney (26)
William Nash (19)
James ('Jim') Wray (22)
John Johnston (59)
It was later revealed that some days prior to this massacre, the British soldiers had been briefed 'to shoot to kill' at the march. An immediate inguiry, led by then Lord Chief Justice Lord Widgery, was labelled a whitewash, after it largely cleared the soldiers of blame.
It would take the Saville report and inquiry which had taken 12 years to confirm the innocence of the victims, exonerating every one of them, and even our own Prime Minister David Cameron at the time was forced to announce that the British armies actions on this day were' Unjustified and Unjustifiable,' It vindicated not only those who died, and the many injured, but also the families and supporters who had campaigned for so long to have their innocence recognised. Like the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa a shameful day in history, it is a continuing outrage that not one person was prosecuted for the murder in cold blood of 14 innocent peaceful civilian protestors. Let us hope that the future sees no more bloody Sundays.The long road for true justice continues.;
Take a moment of silence wherever you are at 16.10pm, the time the shooting started. Remember those marching for civil rights, marching peacefully in their own home town, before being gunned down by British soldiers.
“I walked among their old haunts, the home ground where they bled,
And in the dirt lay justice like an acorn in the winter
Till its oak would sprout in Derry where the thirteen men lay dead.” Seamus Heaney (The Road to Derry)
I conclude with a poem called Butcher’s Dozen. from the poet Thomas Kinsella that he wrote in the aftermath of the massacre:
BUTCHER'S DOZEN:
A LESSON FOR THE OCTAVE OF WIDGERY
by Thomas Kinsella
I went with Anger at my heel
Through Bogside of the bitter zeal
- Jesus pity! - on a day
Of cold and drizzle and decay.
A month had passed. Yet there remained
A murder smell that stung and stained.
On flats and alleys-over all-
It hung; on battered roof and wall,
On wreck and rubbish scattered thick,
On sullen steps and pitted brick.
And when I came where thirteen died
It shrivelled up my heart. I sighed
And looked about that brutal place
Of rage and terror and disgrace.
Then my moistened lips grew dry.
I had heard an answering sigh!
There in a ghostly pool of blood
A crumpled phantom hugged the mud:
"Once there lived a hooligan.
A pig came up, and away he ran.
Here lies one in blood and bones,
Who lost his life for throwing stones."
More voices rose. I turned and saw
Three corpses forming, red and raw,
From dirt and stone. Each upturned face
Stared unseeing from its place:
"Behind this barrier, blighters three,
We scrambled back and made to flee.
The guns cried Stop, and here lie we."
Then from left and right they came,
More mangled corpses, bleeding, lame,
Holding their wounds. They chose their ground,
Ghost by ghost, without a sound,
And one stepped forward, soiled and white:
"A bomber I. I travelled light
- Four pounds of nails and gelignite
About my person, hid so well
They seemed to vanish where I fell.
When the bullet stopped my breath
A doctor sought the cause of death.
He upped my shirt, undid my fly,
Twice he moved my limbs awry,
And noticed nothing. By and by
A soldier, with his sharper eye,
Beheld the four elusive rockets
Stuffed in my coat and trouser pockets.
Yes, they must be strict with us,
Even in death so treacherous!"
He faded, and another said:
"We three met close when we were dead.
Into an armoured car they piled us
Where our mingled blood defiled us,
Certain, if not dead before,
To suffocate upon the floor.
Careful bullets in the back
Stopped our terrorist attack,
And so three dangerous lives are done
- Judged, condemned and shamed in one."
That spectre faded in his turn.
A harsher stirred, and spoke in scorn:
"The shame is theirs, in word and deed,
Who prate of justice, practise greed,
And act in ignorant fury - then,
Officers and gentlemen,
Send to their Courts for the Most High
To tell us did we really die!
Does it need recourse to law
To tell ten thousand what they saw?
Law that lets them, caught red-handed,
Halt the game and leave it stranded,
Summon up a sworn inquiry
And dump their conscience in the diary.
During which hiatus, should
Their legal basis vanish, good,
The thing is rapidly arranged:
Where's the law that can't be changed?
The news is out. The troops were kind.
Impartial justice has to find
We'd be alive and well today
If we had let them have their way.
Yet England, even as you lie,
You give the facts that you deny.
Spread the lie with all your power
- All that's left; it's turning sour.
Friend and stranger, bride and brother,
Son and sister, father, mother,
All not blinded by your smoke,
Photographers who caught your stroke,
The priests that blessed our bodies, spoke
And wagged our blood in the world's face.
The truth will out, to your disgrace."
He flushed and faded. Pale and grim,
A joking spectre followed him:
"Take a bunch of stunted shoots,
A tangle of transplanted roots,
Ropes and rifles, feathered nests,
Some dried colonial interests,
A hard unnatural union grown
In a bed of blood and bone,
Tongue of serpent, gut of hog
Spiced with spleen of underdog.
Stir in, with oaths of loyalty,
Sectarian supremacy,
And heat, to make a proper botch,
In a bouillon of bitter Scotch.
Last, the choice ingredient: you.
Now, to crown your Irish stew,
Boil it over, make a mess.
A most imperial success!"
He capered weakly, racked with pain,
His dead hair plastered in the rain;
The group was silent once again.
It seemed the moment to explain
That sympathetic politicians
Say our violent traditions,
Backward looks and bitterness
Keep us in this dire distress.
We must forget, and look ahead,
Nurse the living, not the dead.
My words died out. A phantom said:
"Here lies one who breathed his last
Firmly reminded of the past.
A trooper did it, on one knee,
In tones of brute authority."
That harsher spirit, who before
Had flushed with anger, spoke once more:
"Simple lessons cut most deep.
This lesson in our hearts we keep:
Persuasion, protest, arguments,
The milder forms of violence,
Earn nothing but polite neglect.
England, the way to your respect
Is via murderous force, it seems;
You push us to your own extremes.
You condescend to hear us speak
Only when we slap your cheek.
And yet we lack the last technique:
We rap for order with a gun,
The issues simplify to one
- Then your Democracy insists
You mustn't talk with terrorists!
White and yellow, black and blue,
Have learnt their history from you:
Divide and ruin, muddle through,
Not principled, but politic.
- In strength, perfidious; weak, a trick
To make good men a trifle sick.
We speak in wounds. Behold this mess.
My curse upon your politesse."
Another ghost stood forth, and wet
Dead lips that had not spoken yet:
"My curse on the cunning and the bland,
On gentlemen who loot a land
They do not care to understand;
Who keep the natives on their paws
With ready lash and rotten laws;
Then if the beasts erupt in rage
Give them a slightly larger cage
And, in scorn and fear combined,
Turn them against their own kind.
The game runs out of room at last,
A people rises from its past,
The going gets unduly tough
And you have (surely ... ?) had enough.
The time has come to yield your place
With condescending show of grace
- An Empire-builder handing on.
We reap the ruin when you've gone,
All your errors heaped behind you:
Promises that do not bind you,
Hopes in conflict, cramped commissions,
Faiths exploited, and traditions."
Bloody sputum filled his throat.
He stopped and coughed to clear it out,
And finished, with his eyes a-glow:
"You came, you saw, you conquered ... So.
You gorged - and it was time to go.
Good riddance. We'd forget - released -
But for the rubbish of your feast,
The slops and scraps that fell to earth
And sprang to arms in dragon birth.
Sashed and bowler-hatted, glum
Apprentices of fife and drum,
High and dry, abandoned guards
Of dismal streets and empty yards,
Drilled at the codeword 'True Religion'
To strut and mutter like a pigeon
'Not An Inch - Up The Queen';
Who use their walls like a latrine
For scribbled magic-at their call,
Straight from the nearest music-hall,
Pope and Devil intertwine,
Two cardboard kings appear, and join
In one more battle by the Boyne!
Who could love them? God above..."
"Yet pity is akin to love,"
The thirteenth corpse beside him said,
Smiling in its bloody head,
"And though there's reason for alarm
In dourness and a lack of charm
Their cursed plight calls out for patience.
They, even they, with other nations
Have a place, if we can find it.
Love our changeling! Guard and mind it.
Doomed from birth, a cursed heir,
Theirs is the hardest lot to bear,
Yet not impossible, I swear,
If England would but clear the air
And brood at home on her disgrace
- Everything to its own place.
Face their walls of dole and fear
And be of reasonable cheer.
Good men every day inherit
Father's foulness with the spirit,
Purge the filth and do not stir it.
Let them out! At least let in
A breath or two of oxygen,
So they may settle down for good
And mix themselves in the common blood.
We are what we are, and that
Is mongrel pure. What nation's not
Where any stranger hung his hat
And seized a lover where she sat?"
He ceased and faded. Zephyr blew
And all the others faded too.
I stood like a ghost. My fingers strayed
Along the fatal barricade.
The gentle rainfall drifting down
Over Colmcille's town
Could not refresh, only distil
In silent grief from hill to hill.
Printed in the Republic of Ireland by the Elo Press Ltd., Dublin
for PEPPERCANISTER and sold by the Dolmen Press Limited and the booksellers.
26 April 1972.
Found out yesterday, the very sad news that the people of Wales have lost one of their most eminent writers, the poet, Journalist, psychogeographer and associate English Professor at Swansea University, Nigel Jenkins, aged 64 after suffering from a short illness. Active on the Anglo-Welsh literary scene for over 30 years, he has long been a personal inspiration.
Emerging in prominence in the 1970's, his voice established the emerging politicised voice, released with warmth and candour. An activist who stood among us in the peace, environmental and movements for social justice here in Wales, identifying himself as an internationalist, who also happened to be a localist. He was also editor of Radical Wales magazine and was actively invloved in the Welsh Union of Writers. A learner and great supporter of the Welsh language. I first became aware of his presence at demonstrations against a nuclear bunker in Carmarthen in the 1980's.
Nigel Jenkins was born on a farm in Gower, after periods of travel abroad, including a spell working in a circus, Mr Jenkins returned home, to base live in the Mumbles, near Swansea, capturing his love for the land of Wales, and his locality in his various collections. He was also a great writer and devotee of the haiku poetical form.
A generous and gentle man, with a rich voice who I was privileged to meet several times. At a reading in Aberteifi, his strong voice drew me in, and over the years I would chance upon him at hay- on-wye, and bump into him a couple of times on the train to Abertawe. Was also privileged to encounter him under his guise as a fine blues musician, and I remember that he always seemed to have a warm glint about him. He will be missed by his friends, family and students alike as a kind man and a wonderful poet.
2999,792.5 kilometres a second - Nigel Jenkins
Light leaves us as it leaves the stars:
I see you as you were
a fraction of a fraction of a second ago,
sunned at the window, this bitter day,
by a light that's eight minutes out from home
we kick heels waiting
And for a sudden upturn, the happy accident
while gazing perpetually out on the past:
a quasor as if it was fourteen billion years back;
a face across the room
whose light hit the road
a hundred millionth of a second ago.
think us back some years, you and I...
Where now, I wonder, is the light of that time?
Autumn 96, New Welsh Review
The Watch - Nigel Jenkins
To pass the time, time after
time in those last long days
he'd take his watches to pieces
and dreamingly
shove it together again.
Time passed. And with time's
passing - a lightening
of the load, as one by one
the little screws wandered
the gems hid their light
in the folds of his chair,
and the glass smashed.
Time passed, and now the watch
is mine. From time to time
it turns up un a drawer.
and I hold it in my hands, cloud
its mirrors with my breath.
His toil remains: the tobacco,
hayseeds. sand of his pockets
gathered round the rim: the hands
of the watch ripped clean away.
And what time does it tell
with its blank face? You can
sometimes shake it into brief life,
and the time it tells is
always never, always never,
never never, always never,
always never, always never,
always always now.
from Acts of Union; Gomer, 1990.
.
Full Stop- Nigel Jenkins
Whatever in life
is muddled, side-stepped, misconstrued
there is no ignoring me,
full stop, new sentence.
And should that sentence prove
too painfully long
you have only to invoke
my careful abbreviatory skills,
full stop, new par.
Whichever way you wind-
via colons of plenty, dashes of joy -
I will oblige yo, ready or not,
with your vanishing point.
From Ambush; Gomer, 2006
Last Word - Nigel Jenkins
She, like the planet, lovely and hurt
by squalorious man, shocked the fiesta.
"Why not?" she smiled, congested with grief,
"Why not make the whole disater,
let nature start again...?
It would be like having a good shit."
But, they reasoned, there might not be time
for a wiser model to fumble from the wreck
before the Sun, swollen
to a red giant, and devouring its children,
gobbled up the Earth.
"Well," she said, "perhaps we should all
self-obliterate, leave the planet in peace
to the birds, the gorilla, the wiser whale."
A noble4 abdication, butno, they said, it is
now too late: our madness, our systems-
we cannot simply walk away from them,
there'd be anarchy, melt-down, a thousand
Chernobyls, death world-wide to bird and beast:
