Dr Martin Luther King Jr (15/1/29 -4/4/68) - I Have a Dream

Today marks the  anniversary of Dr  Martin Luther King Jr's famous  'I Have a Dream Speech, still resonating deep into the American psyche. The clergyman was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement, whose great progress has made him an icon for human rights causes across the globe.When President Kennedy brought the Civil Rights Bill before Congress in 1963, King made a speech on television on 11 June, in which he said:-

 ' The Negro baby born in America today regardless of the section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one third as much chance completing college; one third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year, a life expectancy which is even shorter; and the progress of earning only half as much.'

In an attempt to persuade Congress to pass Kennedy's proposed legislation, King and other civil rights leaders organised the famous March on Washington for jobs and freedom. The march 50 years ago was a huge success with estimates of the crowd varying between 250,000 to 400,000. King was the final speaker and outlined his vision of American racial harmony in a historic display of oratory, in the style of a fervent Baptist preacher.
Just months before he was assassinated, Dr King, was to take these ideas further, whilst organising support for the "Poor Peoples Campaigns," aimed at supplementing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with a full measure of economic and human rights for America's poor, arguing that African-Americans and poor whites were natural allies and if they worked together they could help change society.
But 50 years laters, despite some victory's and gains, the march for equality is unfinished, and for some the dream is unrealised, and  as tens of thousands of people marched to Dr King's memorial last Saturday, some pledged that his dream included equality for gays, latinos, the poor and the disabled, and we must remember our modern failures and wrongs, taking for instance, the way an all-white jury in Florida cleared George Zimmerman of murdering the black teenager Tayvon Martin, the persistently high unemployment among America's  black population, twice that of white Americans.
We cannot let go of Dr King's dream, because, surely it is everybody's dream, we must continuously try to change the world, remember those in the U.S.A fighting for jobs and freedom, a land  still lanquishing to find itself, while perpetrating injustice, discrimination and inequality.A country that imprisons more  of their citizens than any other country in the world. African Americans in particular, though they are 12% of the population, make up 38% of the state prison population, despite their crimes being no different from their white and hispanic counterparts.
Despite much positive change, the struggle continues, and we must continue pushing and shoving and  let freedom ring.

' Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today,my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold those truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons 
 of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Missisipi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governeor having his lips dripping with the words of 'interposition' and 'nulification' - one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

i have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain, shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day - this will be the day when all of God's children, will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my father died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Missisippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Martin Luther King Jr - I Have A Dream Speech
August 28, 1963
Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C

Ecce Homo

                                          William Blake - Ancient of Days

Once upon a time,
when man was born,
I imagine our first ancestors,
facing endless nights in darkness,
hours of waiting, for a light to reveal,
strangers footprints, the sound of laughter,
sailing through the air,
vistas of companionship.

Stored knowledge on a cave wall,
as voices learnt to sing,
discovered the rules of love,
sought progress, and the elements,
needed for survival,
water, air, earth and fire,
infinity's keys opening locks,
smoke signals rising across continents,
in innocent time, before the kiss
                                 of ideology,
and the need for cant and fear,
in past seasons, as wind lifted hope,
perhaps these little things,
are all we ever needed,
to help us understand.

Free Chelsea Manning

Throughout the suffering Manning has had to endure so far, from inhuman solitary confinement to a widely publicised military  court martial,the mainstream media has somehow neglected to cover this defendents greatest inner struggle. That she had been forced to live as a he throughout it all.
One day after being sentenced to 25 years in prison , the Army Private the world knows as Bradley Manning issued a statement about who she really is. " As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning, I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy treatment as soon as possible. I hope you will support me in this transition. I also reqeust that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and the use of the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility.'
The US army is refusing to give Chelsea Manning  the hormone therapy she has requested. I strongly object to this situation and believe Chelsea deserves the treatment she wants. Chelsea Manning should have her crushing 35 year sentence commuted by President Obama to the three and a quarter years she's already spent behind bars awaiting trial and sentence.
Manning is likely to serve her time at Fort Leavenworth, which does not offer hormone therapy or sex-reassignent surgery to prisoners, I just hope that the authorities see sense and do the right thing.
Mannings's leak of military data was driven, she says, by 'love for our country and a sense of duty for others'. and there was an undeniable interest in the public knowing more about the conduct of the US military in Iraq and in places like Afghanistan. With the Apache helicopter killings for instance, Reuters haas sought release of the cockpit video via Freedom of Information legislation, a route that proved totally unsuccessful.
Sometimes leaks are the only way.
Though Manning will be eligible for parole after serving a third of her sentence, many are finding the sentence completely disproportionate  when compared to the sentences given to other soldiers convicted of more serious crimes such as murder.
So in the meantime we must raise our voices, shouting free Chelsea Manning.

http://www.freebradleymanning.net/

http://www.bradleymanning.org/

Petition one can sign here

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/manning-treatment

Bradley Manning's Post Sentence Statement

' It is dangerous to be right in matters in  which the established autorities are wrong'
- Voltaire

After 3 years, 12 weeks and 4 days , Bradley has escaped the death penalty, it is still too long for someone who in my opinion has done no wrong, jailed for being a conscientious human, for speaking the truth, jailed because his voice cared, and because being  brave  refused to succumb to silence.

 Bradley Manning's  has been sentenced  to 35 years in military prison, Manning's civilian defense attorney read a statement from Manning, which will be included in a filing requesting a pardon from President Obama.

 In this deeply moving testimony Coombs also describes what Manning was like after the sentence was announced. He recounted how he and his other defense attorneys had been crying. Manning looked at him and said, " It's okay, it's alright. I know you did your best. I'm going to be okay. I'm going to get through this."

Mannings's remarks to Coombs once again give an indication of the resolve and strong character that Manning  has as a  a human being.

Please sign this petition and stand together with Bradley Manning.
We owe him our thanks and gratitude for all the service he has done for humanity.
I will continue to support any further transition, until freedom is gained.

/http://www.standwithbrad.org/

Bradley Manning's statement appears below:

'The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of the concern for my country, and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We have been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on a trasitional battlefield. Due to this fact, we've  had to alter our methods of combatting the risk posed to us and our way of life.

I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help fefend our country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we are doing. It wwas at this time that I realsed that our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we had forgotten our humanity.
We consciously elected to devalue life both in Irag and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we percieved were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent children, instead of accepting resposibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.

In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached  countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionabble acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension, it is usually an American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-concieved mission.

Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtue of democracy - the Trial of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism and the Japanese-American Internment camps - to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.

As the late Howard Zinn once said, there is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

I understand that my actions violated the law. I regret thsat my actions hurt anyone or harmed the Unite States. It was never my intent to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified  information, I did out of a love for my country and my sense of duty to others.

If you deny my request for pardon, I will serve my request knowing that some time you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceieved in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.'

Statement from Nigel Kennedy on the BBC's censorship:

On Thursday 8th August, musician Nigel Kennedy performed at the Proms with the Palestine Strings - a group of young Palestinian musicians from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.
Towards the end of the concert, Kennedy said "We all know from experiencing this night of music tonight that giving equality and getting rid of apartheid, gives a beautiful chance for amazing things to happen."

The concert.including the quote was available on iPlayer here, although it's now unavailable:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b037v4q1

A recording of the concert was due to be aired on Friday 23d August at 7.30 pm.
Following ressure from pro-occupation lobbyists, including Baroness Deech, the Jewish chronicle has announced that the BBC will be cutting Kennedy's remarks from the televised broadcast amounting to political censorship on the part of the BBC

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/110366/bbc-cut-kennedy-slur-proms-broadcast

The article says the BBC confimed on Tuesday that his remarks would be edited out of the concert when it is shown on BBC 4 on August 23.

I believe to cut these comments would be an act of political censorship, seeing as there was nothing in Kennedy's actions or comments that were innacurate or untruthful. I believe that Mr Kennedy acted out against apartheid and have complained to the BBC about it's stance which you can do here:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

Suppressing free speech and political dissent is the norm for state broadcasters under dictatorships. It gets kind of worrying when we start to see this kind of supression being practiced by our own state broadcater the BBC.

Interesting article here, which helps define apartheid in relation to Israel.

http://electronicintifada.net/content/defining-apartheid-israels-record/4095

and here is an online petition that you could sign if you have the inclination

http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/don-t-censor-the-palestine-prom?time=1376841379

Here is  an official statement from Nigel Kennedy about the BBC's unprecedented decision to censor his brief statement about Apartheid during his prom.
https://www.facebook.com/yaronstavi/posts/10151880378849048

'Nigel Kennedy finds it incredible and quite frightening that in the 21st century it is still such an insurmountable problem to call things the way they are. He thinks that once we can all face issues for what they really are we can finally have a chance of finding solutions to problems such as human rights and even, prhaps, free speech. His first reaction to the BBC's censorship & imperial lack of impartiality was to refuse to play for an employee who is influenced by such dubious outside forces.

Mr Kennedy has, however, reminded himself that his main purpose is to provide the audience with the best music, he can deliver. To withdraw his services would be akin to a taxi driver refusing to drive their customer due to their political incorrectness. He, therefore, is not withdrawing his services that he owes to his audience, but is half expecting to be replaced by someone deemed more suitable than him due to their surplas of opportunism and career aspirations.

Mr Kennedy is glad, however, that by censoring him the BBC has created such a huge platform for the discussion of its own impartiality, its respect (or lack of it) for free speech and for the discussion of the miserable apartheid forced on the Palestinian people by the Israeli government supported by so many governments from the outside world.

Mr Kennedy believes his very small statement during his concert was purely descriptive and not political whatsoever."

PSC & Pink Floyd's Roger Waters condemn BBC for 'Political Censorship' over Nigel Kennedy

http://www.palestinecampaign.org/nigelkennedy/

E.M Forster (1/1/1879 -7/7/70) - In praise of reciprocal dishonesty

 

 

' I do not bang or blow them about as much as I should, or oil their leather backs, or align those backs properly. They are unregimented. Only at night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, and the lights are turned off, do they come into their own and attain a collective dignity. It is very pleasant to sit with them in the firelight for a couple of minutes, not reading, not even thinking, but aware that that they, with their accumulated wisdom and charm, are waiting to be used, and that my library, in its tiny imperfect way, is a successor to the great private libraries of the past. 'Do you ever lend books?' someone may say in a public-spirited tone of voice at this point. Yes, I do, and they are not returned, and still I lend books. Do I ever borrow books? I do, and I can see some of them unreturned around me. I favour reciprocal dishonesty.'

From
My Library (1951)
Ditto.....

Charles Bukowski ( 16/8/20 -9/3/94) - Alone With Everybody / Be Kind / Oh Yes

Cheers and thanks Charles whose  birthday would have been  today

Alone With Everybody

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but  keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds
fresh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the jukyards fill
the madhouse fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills


Be Kind

we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious,
one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with kindliness,
especially if they are
aged
but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see,
not their fault?
whose fault?
mine?
I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear,
age is no crime
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted life
among so many
deliberatelt
wasted
lives
is.

Oh Yes

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realise this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than t
too late.

DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM

This is a video from Amnesty International  with the link below that  tells you

DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK

http://www.ifoundtheletter.org/secretvideo

That contains a secret  message from well known Chinese contemporary  artist and social and political activist Ai Weiwei, promoting free expression.


' My opponent makes  a move then I make the next one -  Ai Weiwei

http://www.facebook.com/amnestyglobal?fref=ts

REMEMBER

NEVER BLINDLY FOLLOW RULES

It's Not Unusual To Boycott Apartheid

Sir Tom Jones is due to play in Israel later this year. Please ask him to heed the Palestinian call for boycott and ask him not to play in apartheid Israel.

Sir Tom Jones: Please don't play in apartheid Israel

Join the campaign here:-

https://www.change.org/en-GB/organisations/cardiff_psc

International Welsh superstar Tom Jones is scheduled to perfprm in Israel at Tel Aviv's Nokia Arena on 26 October.

We say Why? Why? Why?

Israel is guilty of ongoing ethnic cleansing, land and water theft and stands accused of war crimes. It is the subject of several UN resolutions which it routinely ignores.
Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank since 1967 and continues to impose a harsh blockade on Gaza, which even UK P.M David Cameron has called the largest open air prison in the world.

There is also a facebook page that you can find here

https://www.facebook.com/Tom.Jones.NotUnusual.Boycott.Apartheid

It should be noted that Sir Tom Jones was persuaded by Welsh campaigners without much difficulty to not go back and play in apartheid South Africa, it would be a lovely achievement if he was able to reconsider his position in relation to performing in Israel.
Artists must  continually  be asked not to contribute  to the whitewashing of Israel's occupation. The logic of cultural boycotts is that they hurt the image of the oppressor state, making it and its products less appealing to the international public.
I would be very grateful if Sir Tom Jones was to pay heed to the call, and join   other high profile performers that I admire, in responding positively to the calls for boycott.

We should never be ashamed  that apartheid, occupation, siege, blockades and institutionalised racism in all it's forms must be challenged and abolished.

P J Harvey releases Guantanamo Protest Song for Shaker Aamer

                                

Pj Harvey last Saturday released a new song to highlight the ongoing detention of the last British resident held inside the US prison at Guantanamo Bay.
The track, called Shaker Aamer, is available to stream  on behalf of the campaigning group Reprieve, which you can find a link for here:-
http://www.reprieve.org.uk/
It follows her politically charged album from 2001 'Let England Shake' which explored the horrors of war, and continues to cement her reputation as one of Britains finest songwriters. This new song describes the agony of it's title subjects four month hunger strike as he endures the prison's feeding tubes, restraining chairs and shackles.
Aamer has been detained in Guantanamo for more than 11 years , despite being cleared for release in 2007, and remains imprisoned without charge or trial. He has a British wife and his four children - the youngest of whome he has never met - were all born in Britain. They live in Tooting, south London.
The British government has repeatedly stated that it wants him back in the UK and only last week under mounting international pressure , the US announced it is to restart transfers from the prison. Concerns remain, though , that Aamer might be forced to be sent to Saudi Arabia and imprisoned there instead of being reunited with the family in the UK.
More than half the detainess inside Guantanamo Bay remain on hunger strike in protest at their indefinite and illegal detention. Aamer has recently alleged that prison guards had been sexually assaulting him and that he is subject daily to often violent 'forced cell extractions'.
Aamers lawyer : Clive Stafford Smith , Reprieves director and Aamers lawyer, said " We hope people listen to this song and think about Shaker Aamer's plight: detained for 11 years, without charge or trial, despite having been cleared for release by both Bush and Obama."
" The UK government must do everything it can to bring Shaker back home to his wife and kids in London, where he belongs. PJ Harvey has written a wonderful song - I know Shaker will be deeply moved by it, and hope that, with the support of the public, he will one day be able to listen to it in freedom."
 Here is a link to a Shaker Aamer campaigning group, which will lead to various petitions and campaigns conducted on his behalf:-
http://www.saveshaker.org/

Shaker Aamer

No water, for three days.
I cannot sleep, or stay awake.

Four months hunger strike.
Am I dead, or am I alive?

With metal tubes we are force fed.
I honestly wish I was dead.

Strapped in the restraining chair.
Shaker aamer, your friend.

In Camp 5 eleven years.
Never charged. Six years cleared.

They took away my one note pad,
and then refused to give it back.

i can't think straight, I write, then stop,
Your friend Shaker Aamer. Lost.

the guards just do what they're told,
the doctors just do what they're told.

Like an old car i'm rusting away.
You're friend Shaker, Guantanamo Bay.

Visiting Hiroshima - Marcel Junod (14/5/04 -16/6/61)

Today marks the anniversary of the devastating effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people and injured more than 70,000 others.
For many across the globe, it is an anniversary that we sadly cannot forget.
Ceremonies are held internationally to commemorate the victims and to remind humanity of the horrors of war and the evil of nuclear weapons. We should not be aloud to forget this war crime, for that is what this action was.
Marcel Junod was a Swiss red cross doctor who was one of the first foreign doctors to reach hiroshima, treating many of the bombing survivors and injured people. The following is an extract from his own personal harrowing account.

' The bare cone of Fuijiiama was just visible on the horizon as we flew over the 'inland sea' which lay beneath us like a lavender-blue carpet picked out in green and yellow with its numerous promontories and wooded islands...
Towards midday, a huge white patch appeared on the ground below us. This chalky desert, looking around like ivory in the sun, surrounded by a crumble of twisted ironwork and ash heaps, was all that remained of Hiroshima...
The journalist described the main official buildings of the town, which waere built of reinforced concrete and dominated a sea of low-rooted Japanese houses extending over six miles to the wooded hills I could see in the distance.
'The town was not much damaged,' he explained. 'It had suffered very little from the bombing. There were only two minor raids, one on March  19th last by a squadron of American naval planes, and one on April 30th by a Flying Fortress.
'On August 6th there wasn't a clod in the sky above Hiroshima, and a mild, hardly perceptible wind blew from the south. Visibility was almost perfect for ten or twelve miles.
'At nine minutes past seven in the morning an air-raid warning sounded and four American B-29 planes appeared. To the north of the town, two of them turned and made off to the south, and dissapeared in the direction of the Shoho Sea. The other two, after having circled the neighbourhood of Shukai, flew off at high speed southwards in the direction of the Bingo Sea.
At 7.31 the all-clear was given. Feeling themselves in safety people came out of their shelters and went about their affairs and the work of the day began.
'Suddenly a glaring whitish pinkish light appeared in the sky accompanied by an unnatural tremor which was followed almost immediately by a wave of suffocating heat and a wind which swept away everything in its path.
'Within a few seconds the thousands of people in the streets and the gardens in the centre of the town were scorched by a wave of searing heat.
Many were killed instantly, others lay writhing on the ground screaming in agony from the intolerable pain of their burns. Everything standing upright in the way of the blast, walls, houses, factories and other buildings, was annihilated and the debris spun round in a whirlwind and was carried up ino the air. Trams were picked up and tossed aside as thogh they had neither weight nor solidity. Trains were flung off the rails as though they were toys. Horses, dogs and cattle suffered the same fate as human beings. Every living thing was petrified in an attitude of indescibable suffering. Even the vegetation did not escape. Trees went up in the flames, the rice plants lost their greeness, the grass burned on the ground like dry straw.
'Beyond the zone of utter death in which nothing remained alive houses collapsed in a whirl of beams, bricks and girders. Up to almost three miles from the centre of the explosion lightly built houses were flattened as though they had been built of cardboard. Those who were inside wwere either killed or wounded. Those who managed to extricate themselves by some miracle found themselves surrounded by a ring of fire. And the few who succeeded in making their way to safety generally died twenty or thirty days later from the delayed effects of the deadly gamma rays. Some of the reinforced concrete or stione buildings remained standing but their interiors were completely gutted by the blast.
'About half an hour after the explosion whilst the sky all around Hiroshima was still cloudless a fine rain began to fall on the town and went on for about five minutes. It was caused by the sudden rise of over-heated air to a great height, where it condensed and fell back as rain. Then a violent wind rose and the fires extended with terrible rapidity, beacause most Japanese houses are built only of timber and straw.
'By the evening the fire began to die down and then it went out. There was nothing left to burn. Hiroshima had ceased to exist.'
The Japanes broke off and then pronounced one word with idescibable but restrained emotion: 'Look.'
About two and a half miles from the centre of the town all the buildings had been burnt out and destroyed. Only traces of the foundations and piles of debris and rusty charred ironwork were left. This zone was like the devastated areas of Tokyo, Osaka and Kobe after the mass fall of incendiaries.
At three-quarters of a mile from the centre of the explosion nothing at all was left. Everything haddissapeared. It was a stony waste littered with debris and twisted girders. The inccandescent breath of the fire had swept away every obstacle and all that remained upright were one or two fragments of stone walls and a few stoves which had remained inconcrously on their base.
We got out of the car and made our way through the ruins into the centre of the dead city. Absolute silence reigned in the whole necropolis.

9 September, 1945

REPRINTED FROM:
Warrior without Weapons - Marcel Junod,
Cape 1951

For years the American government refused to release images and photographs, such was the sheer horror that they did not want the world to Know.
Those who did not get incarcented on the spot, were to be traumatised for the rest of their lives. Hiroshima and Later Nagasaki are  remembered  today as the most deadliest slaughter of modern civilains in modern history.
Hibakusha is a term widely used in Japan , that refers to the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it translates as 'explosion effected/ Survivor of the Light. This post is dedicated to them and and  to all who were less fortunate.
Hiroshima now stands again, but  68 years laters reminds us why the world needs to get rid of  the madness  of nuclear weapons and proliferation, once and for all.

DEATH IN LONDON : Stop the Arms Fair

28,000 arms buyers and sellers are due to arrive in London in September, but we want to be there to stop them.
Please order postcards and posters if you can spread the word.
Put Sunday 8th September down for massive day of action.
http://www.stopthearmsfair.org.uk/order-leaflets-to-stop-the-arms-fair/

Garry Davies (27/7/1921-24/7/2013) World Citizen of No Borders R.I.P

Peace activist Garry Davies, who dramatically renounced his U.S citizenship in the dark days of the Cold War and founded a government for self declared 'world citizens' like himself has died. He would have been 92 last Saturday. On May 25th 1948, this former United States B-17 bomber pilot and broadway star entered the American Embassy in Paris,because of his own negative view of his own actions in the war, renounced his American citizenship and as astonished officials looked on, declared himself a citizen of the world . In 65 years after that until the end of his long life last week, he remained by choice a stateless man - entering and leaving, being regularly expelled from and frequently arrested in a spate of countries carrying a passport of his own devising, as the international news media chronicled his every move.
His rational was simple, his aim immense, if their were no nation states, he believed there woild be no wars. An idea he relentlessy campaigned for over many years, gaining the support of thousands of people across the globe. Garry Davis did not invent the One World movement. Philosophers and poets and emperors alike have imagined an Earth united. “As long as there are sovereign states possessing great power, war is inevitable,” wrote Albert Einstein in a letter to World Federalists in 1949. “There is no salvation for civilization or even the human race other than the creation of a world government.” These ideas also  attracted support from the likes of novelist Albert Camus and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer.
The World Passport is currently distributed by the Government of World Citizens, a self proclaimed, International Government body which he set up, that has issued documents, passports, identity cards, birth and marriage certificates and occasional postage stamps and currency. The world passport is issued to refugees and stateless people for free, and are seen by some as a political statement about borders and restrictions placed on travel.

In 2012 Davies sent wikileaks founder and refugee of Ecuadorean embassy in London - Julian Assange - a world pasport, and only weeks before he died he sent a passport to whistleblower Edward Snowdon in Moscow. And there is the probability that his hand of friendship if he had lived would have reached out to the great hero of our times Bradley Manning. 

“We are born as citizens of the world,” Davis wrote in Passport to Freedom: A Guide for World Citizens. “But we are also born into a divided world, a world of separate entities called nations. We regard each other as friends and yet we are separated by wide artificially created barriers. Whatever we may think of one another, each one of us on this planet is designated as ‘alien’ by billions of his or her fellow humans. The label applies to everyone who does not share our status as a ‘national citizen.’ And many millions of us, despite our religious, ethnic or racial kinship, are forced to wear another label: ‘enemy.’”Sadly though the world is still divided, run by nearly 200 governments, and unfortunately we still live in a very unfree world, but that does not stop us dreaming, and striving for a better one.   A person who can make her heart into a home doesn’t need a passport and already lives beyond nations. They are a map without borders.

Sieze the the Day/ Carpe Diem

( written for Lammas Day,We have festivals of hope, of love and fertility, in honour of  death and the ancestors.this is one of gratitude, of celebrating what has been achieved, an affirmation of life, halfway between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox.
It is the harvest of the first grain. .

I'm wishing people joy amidst the chaos, roses as well as bread. )

In this spinning cauldron of time
hold on to any chance that breaks,
return again and again, to old ideas that glow
resurrect old threads, spread messages of survival
with ink and smiles, and a glint of hope.

Release sparkles of thankfulness
grenades filled with passion,
plant seeds of disobedience across the night sky
for flowers to bloom again and again 
as the day hums with  energies emergence.

Add some portions of light and shade
chuck in shards of possibility,
as autumn whispers in the corner
the future is shaped by borderless hands
working together towards transitions transformation.

As the earth rises into new foundations
allow gardens of independence to flourish,
echoes rising among the sweet rain,
take a walk into  rich, deep dimenson
avoid the obstacles, sieze the day.

How Queen Elizabeth II profits from the arms trade

TEXT BY HEATHCOTTE WILLIAMS:

EDITING AND NARRATION BY ALAN COX

Queen Elizabeth II is one of the worlds richest women, worth £17 billion. Her investments in the arms trade includes firms that produce the uranium used in depleted uranium (DU) shells. The deployment of these shells by the US military in its attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, is believed to be the cause of a huge increase in cases of cancer and birth defects.

Mick Farren (3/10/34 -27/7/13) R.I.P Street Fighting Man

Sad to hear of the passing of Mick Farren, who died after collapsing at the Borderline on Saturday  night. Forever associated with the counterculture, frequently getting arrested, and being at the heart of the struggle, he  was an anarchist and singer with the band the Deviants (a new line up, of which  he was playing with when he met his final curtain), white panthers from south London in the late 1960's.
Up to his final moments he was still attacking authority, agitating and spreading subversion as militant as ever. His blog was always a pleasure to look at.http://doc40.blogspot.co.uk/. A rock n'roller in the truest sense of the world, releasing a number of garage infused records, that still stand the test of time, sounding as fresh as ever, his 1978 album Vampires Stole My lunch a personal favourite, a right derailing of the senses, a demented classic.
He was also a fine writer of fantasy/horror writing, as well as being a critic, and cultural journalist , having witten for the N.M.E  and the International Times back in the day.
His autobiographical book  'Give the Anarchist a Cigarette '  is well worth checking out.
A truly iconic character, who lived his life to the full. He will be missed.

Mick Farren - The Battle for Grovenor Square

The Deviants - Let's loot the Supermarkets

The Deviants -Screwed Up

Mick Farren - I want a drink

G4S Profiteers of Palestinian Suffering

A British Company with it's fingers in wars everywhere. A London demonstration July 22 2013.

'After extracting confessions under torture, five of the Hares boys were charged with 25 counts of attempted murder even though there were only four people in the car. Apparently the military court had decided that 25 stones were thrown, each with an 'intent to kill'. The five boys - Ali Shmlawi, Mohammed Klieib, Mohammed Sileman, Tamer Souf and Ammar Souf are currently locked up in another G4S security facility - Magiddo prison where G4S provides the entire central command room.

If you look above you will catch a rare glimpse of teifidancer,out in the wild, who is at least free.

http://haresboys.wordpress.com/

http://www.inminds.com/caged/

Ursula K. Le Guin (b.21/10/29) - The Dispossessed and some poems.

                                
                                 Picture by Benjamin Reed

American. One of my favourite writers  A daughter of an anthropologist and a writer. Organised and took part in non-violent demonstrations against atomic bomb testing and the war in Vietnam.Over the years her frequent critiques of  state  power, coupled with her rejection of capitalism and a fascination with alternative systems of political economy, place her within the anarchist tradition. An imaginative, questioning mind, now in her  eighties , still creating and pushing boundaries,battling the system, a fine writer of poetry too,which she has been writing since 1959. Her poems are both earthy and transcendent, humourous too with a bite, the fruits of of over a half century writing.
Ther following is  from one of her many science- fiction novels, The Dispossessed,  a very interesting book that explores how an anarchist society would work. A vivid portrait of an anarchist utopia. A society without  government, laws police, courts , corporations, money, salaries, profit, organised religion or private property. Shrevek is the first traveller from Anarres, a moon settled 200 years previously by anarchist exiles, to visit Urras, the mother planet. Atro is a physicist on Urras.
Following this I have included three fine poems from her.

Click on image to enlarge

' Atro had once explained too him how this was managed, how the sergeants could give the privates orders, how the lieutenants could, give the privates and the sergeants orders, how the liutenants could, give the privates and the sergeants orders, how the captains . . . and so on and so on up to the generals, who could give everyone else orders and need take them from none, except the Commander in Chief. Shevek had listenened with incredulous disgusr ' You call that organisation? he had inquired. ' Yu even call it discipline? But it is neither. It is a coercive mechanism of extraordinary inefficiency - a kind of seventh millenium steam engine! With such a rigid and fragile structure what could be done that was worth doing? This had given Atro a chance to argue the worth of warfarevas the breeder of courage and manliness and the weeder out of the unfit; but the very line of his argument had forced him to concede the effectivesness of guerillas, organised from below, self-disiplined. ' But that only works bwhen the people think they're fighting for something of their own, you know, their homes, or some notion or other,' the old man had said. Shrevek had dropped the argument. He now continued it, in the darkening basement among the stacked crates of unlabelled chemicals. He explained to Atro that he now understood why the army was organised as it was. It was indded quite necessary. No rational form of organisation would serve the purpose. He simply had not understood the purpose was to enable men with machine guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told to do so. Only he could not see where courage, or manliness, or fitness, entered in.'

Reprinted from: The Dispossesed (1974)

High Desert

Out there, there is another way to be.
There is a rising brightness in the rock,
a singing in the silence of the tree.
Something is always moving, running free,
as quick and still as quail move in a flock.
The hills out here know a hard way to be.
I habve to listen for it patiently:
a drumming vcanter slowing to a walk,
a flutter in the silence of a tree.
The  owl's call from the rimrock changes key.
What door will open to the flicker's knock?
Out here there is another way to be,
described by the high circles of a hawk
above what hides in silence in the tree.
The cottonwoods in their simplicity
talk softly on, as hidden waters  talk
an almost silent singing in the tree
that says, here is another way to be.

CARMAGNOLE OF THE THIRTIETH OF JUNE

I will grow fingernails
to scratch the scab
that stops the sore's lips on  the scream
the pusty whistle of escape
EEEEEeeeoooooo steamboat annie  comin roun the bend
I will grow fingernails
ten feet long and walk on them like stilts
& breathe steam out of my nostrils
& split boards with my eye
                                          HAI!
don't get near me with your martial arts
unless you want to get split right down between the balls
neat as a colone's chicken
                  I got Real Bad Vibes
I have neen talking to my father
who died in 1960
he's 101 years old not feeling very perky
he get's left out of things
locked out.
                I will grow fingernails
and claw down the Lubyanka
stone by stone by stone.
                                     Yeah. Sure.
Listen, my vibrations areso bad
they're Richter  8-7
look out there in Daly City.
My toenails are growing too.
i can dig up graveyards with them
and dance on the burning ground.
I use the urns for footballs
& my tongue hangs out a yard.
I am WUMMUN, ta doody boo-bah,
but even worse than that I'm me
and feeling mean
                           God's stomach
rumbles like a drum
when I jump on it
when I dance on his chest he snores
when I dance on his giut he farts,
when I dance on his cock he comes
when I dance on his eyes he wakes and all the stones fall down
                    ashes, ashes

all fall down.

                    Get up and dance, creation!

Coast

In bed in the fist salt light
with the east ear I hear birds
waking and with the right
Ocean breaking inward from the night.

        
image by Clifford Harper

poems can be found in:-

Finding my Elegy - New and Selected Poems
- Ursula  K. Le Guin

Uncertainty?

Where are we?
Are we moving forwards or back
a bottle of red or white,
get off here, or follow the crooked lines
go faster or stop.
Simplicity versus complexity
a long night, or a longer day,
are sounds outside stronger
than those within?
Is it time time to smile or cry
get drunk on words 
or high on sighs?
Wishes of  future promise
or abandonment in the past,
do you remain silent, and afraid 
or seize the day, carry on,
speak of things, or leave unsaid 
turn the keys or lose the locks?

Stuff the Banks

The sun at least is smiling, but despite everything people have achieved throughout our history, society is more unequal now than it has ever been before. 
Whilst hundreds of thousands of people in the UK rely on foodbanks, and millions around the world starve, the wealthiest millionaires (& billionaires) continue to accumulate yet more wealth  - and mostly avoid giving any of it back in tax.While most of the country continues to tighten its belts bankers continue to recieve bonuses and subsidies. It is definitely a case of us not being in it all together.
There are now over half a million people in the UK going hungry, foced by the government's brutal and unnecessary cuts to make the choice between paying the bills or eating, feeding themselves or feeding their children. 
Tomorrow Saturday 20th July, UK Uncut invites you to help them transform  branches  of the big tax-dodger HSBC into a food banks, setting up UK Uncut style food banks inside branches of HSBC - shutting down hopefully the UK's biggest, bonus-munching, crisis-causing, tax dodging bank.
Am down in London at moment so will probably pop down to 133 Regent Street from 12pm, in an act of solidarity. Whilst people on benefits, and immigrants are daily attacked , it seems obvious to me who is reponsible, capitalism allowed to run amok, ruining peoples lifes. The Government smiles as it shifts the blame, does not direct it to any of their friends.
It's going to be hot tomorrow, but please try participating or in the least support the various Uncut actions across the country .Put on your shorts and  demand  that the government stops propping up the people who caused  this crisis of capitalism in the first place.
And if you can't get to a city,  wherever you are , try and  keep on pushing........

More  details and  of London action here:

http://www.ukuncut.org.uk 

https://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/1058

 

Robert MacFarlane (Travel writer b.15/8/1978) - A Road of One's Own.

                                   
                                   map of London , 1860.

' Psychogeography: a beginners guide. Unfold a street map of London, place a glass, rim down, anywhere on the map, and draw around its edge. Pick up the map, go out into the city, and walk the circle, keeping as close as you can to the curve. Record the experience as you go, in whatever medium you favour: film, photograph, manuscript, tape. Catch the textual run-off of the streets; the graffiti, the branded litter, the snatches of conversation. Cut for sign. Log the data-steam. Be alert to the happenstance of metaphors, watch for visual rhymes, coincidences, analogies, family resemblances, the changing moods of the street, and the record ends. Walking makes for content, footage for footage.'

Reprinted  from: Time Literary Supplement

7/10/05

Melting Pot

Dedicated to the streets of London town,
which I'm visiting at the moment.

Sitting outside on the pavement,
still looking for the future,
as life's wild unstoppability,
hurries by in the air.
People walking on filters,
of time and memory,
on corners tapestries are woven,
seamless threads stitch together,
while new languages are formed,
under hot baking sun. 
On the edge, the lost and abandoned
the hungry and the thirsty,
paths carved, with fear and danger
warm energies releasing chains,
ignitions turning on another logic
as wild petals blow in all direction, 
the sunlight following free blades of grass
while this city drips in every corner,
trailing the rhythms of different beats
the heat moves people steadily together,
embracing passion's kiss,  labourers of love
cancel out divisions, keep planting kisses
flaming in firmaments, a new day dawns.

 

Anonymous - A message to Humanity

A very powerful message to all the people of the world.

United we stand. . .

Together we can fight for a better world.

No man, women, or children should be in-salve for the greed of the few.

No human life should ever be sacrifice!

Stop the Prawer Plan

On June 24th the Israeli knesset approved the discriminatory Prawer-Begin bill, with 43 votes for and 40 against, for the mass expulsion of the Arab Bedouin community in the Nageb (Negev) desert in the south of Israel. If fully implemented the Prawer-Begin plan will result in the destruction of 35 (unrecognised) Arab Bedouin villages, the forced displacement of up to 70,000 Palestinian Bedouins citizens of Israel, and dispossession of their historical lands in the Nageb.
Despite the Palestinian Bedouin Community's complete rejection of the plan and strong dissaproval from the international community and human rights groups.
The Prawer Plan is happening now. Protests have been taking place all through Israel and Palestine today, where Israel Police have been attacking demonstrators.
The Palestinian Bedouin have lived in  the Nageb since the 7th century - long before the state of Israel was created. This plan was completed wthhout consultation of the local community is a gross violation of basic rights, and can be seen as Israel's determination to escalate the dispossession of these  people, a process that has been ongoing for 63 years now,and if forced to abandon their long historical  existence and forced into towns it would spell disaster for the Bedouin community. It must be rejected and suspended immediately, it is not just an attack on the Bedouin people it is also an attack on universal human rights. 

Their is a petition you could sign here,
please consider adding your voice  if you have not already done so.

Thanks/diolch.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Stop_Prawer

Poster by Palestinian graphic designer
Mohammed Hassona

Arthur Machen (3/3/1863 -15/12/47) - An Enchanted Land

Arthur Machen, Welsh writer and mystic, best known for his wonderful supernatural, fantasy and horror fiction.

' I shall always esteem it as the greatest piece of fortune that has fallen to me that I was born in that noble, fallen Caerleon-on-Usk in the heart of Gwent . . . .
The older I grow, the more firmly am I convinced that anything I may have accomplished in literature is due to the fact that when my eyes were first opened in early childhood they had before them the vision of an enchanted land. As soon as I saw anything I saw Twm Barlwm, that mystic tumulus, the memorial of peoples that dwelt in the region before the Celts left the Land of Summer. This guarded the southern limit of the great mountain wall in the west; a little northward was Mynydd Maen - The Mountain of the Stone - a giant, rounded billow; and still to the north mountains, and on fair, clear days one could see the pointed summit of the Holy Mountain by Abergavenny. It would shine, I remember, a pure blue in the far sunshine; it was a mountain peak in a fairy tale. And then to eastward the bedroom window of Llandewi Rectory looked over hill and valley, over high woods quivering with leafage like the beloved Zacynthus of Ulysses, away to the forest of Wentwood, to the church tower on the hill above Caerleon. Through a cleft one might see now and again a bright yellow glint of the Severn Sea, and the cliffs of Somerset beyond. And hardly a house in sight in all the landscape, look where you would. Here the gable of a barn, here a glint of a whitewashed farmhouse, here blue wood smoke rising from an orchard grove, where an old cottage was snugly hidden: but only so much if you knew where to look. And of nights, when the dusk fell and the farmer went his rounds, you might chance to see his lantern glimmering, a very spark on the hillside. This was all that showed in a vaque, dark world; and the only sounds were the faint distant barking of the sheepdog, and the melancholy cry of the owls from the border of the brake.'

 

Reprinted from 'Autobiography -Arthur Machen

5 year old Palestinian boy detained in Hebron.

The above five year old Palestinian boy was caught after allegedly throwing a stone at a tyre belonging to a settler. throwing a stone in Hebron. The soldiers detained, blindfolded and hancuffed his father. Imagine what the father thinks? Imagine what the boy feels? Remember that the age of criminal responsibility is 12. Imagine if this was a European child and the outrage that this would stir. After  the incident, the boy was taken into an I.D.F jeep and taken to his parents house where his father joined them. The soldiers took the father and son to an I.D.F base from which they were eventually transferred to a Palestinian Police Station.  B'Tselem released a video capturing the moments of his apprehension.
For many a daily occurence under occupation. This the latest in a number of similar detentions. But Israel we should remember has a long list of human rights violations , including it's siege of Gaza, demolition of Palestinian homes, to name just a few.

For more on this story go here

http://972mag.com/watch-idf-detains-5-year-old-in-hebron-blindfolds-and-hancuffs-father/75594/

Free Shaker Aamer

At 6.30 today hundreds of us will simultaneously share the same message to Cameron and Obama.

Free Shaker Aamer.

There's still time to add your voice.

Head here now

http://thndr.it/12m3coi

Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) force fed under standard Guantánamo Bay procedure

Yasmin Bey (aka Mos Def) force fed under standard Guantanamo Bay procedure.

As Ramadan gets underway, more than 100 hunger strikers in Guantanamo Bay continue their protest. More than 40 of them are being foce-fed. A leaked documen sets out the military instructions, or standard operating procedure, for force-feeding detainees. In this four minute film made by Human Rights organisation Reprieve and Bafta award winning director Asif Kapadia, US actor and rapper Yasmin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), experiences the procedure.

Warning some viewers may find these images disturbing.

Read more about Ramadan force-feeding AT Guantanamo Bay
HERE
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/08/obama-urged-halt-ramadan-guantanamo

Link to article on Reprieve website:

Judge : Obama  has power to address "Painful degrading Guantamo hunger strike.

http://www.reprieve.org.uk

Thanks Mona

Happy Ramadan Mubarak