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:
Pete Seeger, the iconclastic American singer, songwriter and social activist, who devoted his whole life to fight against social injustice, armed with a banjo, a guitar and the transformative power of song, has died , aged 94.
He lent his voice to the labor, peace and civil rights movements, being a musician and a revolutionary, his powerful songs helped soundtrack the 1960's protests, advocating for change, offering his services too in opposition to war and racism.
A Harvard College dropout, he became the indefatigable champion of the voiceless, at the same time almost single-handedly sparking the folk-musical revival,over the course of his long journey, despite blacklisting, even death threats, he never softened his core political beliefs. His dedication never wavered, his indomitable spirit, one to be celebrated.
Born at his grandparent's estate in Patterson, New Jersey on May 3, 1919, he was the son of a musicologist called Charles Seeger, and his mother was a violin teacher called Constance de Clyver Edson Seeger.
From meeting Woody Guthrie in the 1940's he was to be on the frontline of every key progressive crusade- from labor unions and migrant workers in the 1930's and 1940's,anti-fascist, the banning of nuclear weapons and opposition to the Cold War in the 1950's , civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movement, environmental responsibility, opposition to South African apartheid, the oppression of the Palestinians in the present day, the occupy movements and a supporter of human rights throughout the world. Blacklisted by the media for more than a decade after tangling with the House of UnAmerican Activities Committe in 1955, at the height of McCarthyism, and paranoid withchunts. He never stopped fighting, never stopped believing.
His legacy consists of over 80 albums, his influence on other musicians immeasureable, from Bob Dylan, to Rage Against the Machine bringing political and folk traditions to the masses, his contribution to the world cannot be overstated, inimitable and courageous, singing with defiance, inspiring countless generations.
It only takes one person to care, one person to make a difference, Pete Seeger, musician and activist did all these things with abundance.We shall overcome, someday soon, Pete Seeger R.I.P. Heddwch/peace.
A selection of my favourite Pete Seeger songs, there are so many wonderful ones to choose from.
Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers- Solidarity Forever
Pete Seeger - Little Boxes
Pete Seeger - Where have all the flowers gone.
Pete Seeger - If I had a hammer
Pete Seeger - Bells of Rhymney
Pete Seeger - To my old Brown Earth
PeteSeeger -Turn, Turn, Turn
"IFTHERE'S SOMETHING WRONG SPEAK UP"
"THIS BANJO SURROUNDS HATE AND FORCES IT TO SURRENDER"
One of the main reasons that people don't like Oxfam and Channel 4's ( who are currently promoting Sodastream via their programme ' The Jump' ) association with this company is the fact that Palestine Solidarity activists across the globe are currently boycotting it, because it is produced in an illegal Israeli settlement, on stolen Palestinian land. This is why Oxfam, a charity I volunteer for,must disassociate itself from their current ambassador Scarlet Johannson, who has recently also been seen promoting this soft drinks firm, who despite valid criticism has continued her support in a display of casual disregard to the core issues at stake. I respect Oxfams recent statement in response to the bad publicity to one of their ambassadors seemingly endorsing a product that for many is complicit in profits made from occupation and apartheid.
Oxfam and Channel 4 I believe should drop their association, they cannot be allowed to cosy up to this unethical company.
SodaStream is made in the Mishor Edomim industrial zone, that is part of the illegal Israeli settlement Ma'aleh Adumim, which cuts deeply into Palestine's West Bank, severing Palestinian towns and devastating their economy and daily lives, Sodastream's factorty is built on stolen land, on seperated Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jericho.
The fact remains that daily, Palestinian workers in factories like this are underpaid, denied basic rights such as holiday or sick pay, denied the riht to organise into unions, and are left to fend for themselves if injured at work, and lets remember that the Israeli government encourages companies like this to locate within its illegal settlements by allowing less environmental and labor standards than those required in Israel., allowing a complete disregard for human rights and international law to continue.
I believe it is impossible to be an 'ambassador' or pretend to be a respectable Public broadcasting Company whilst at the same time through association promote what in my eyes is a human rights abuser. Businesses that operate from illegal settlements further the ongoing poverty of the Palestinian Communities, we should keep up the pressure on Oxfam and Channel 4, any one of value really, to dissasociate from a company that profits from the exploitation of Palestinain land, labour and resources. Sodastream tries to garner repectability, but under international law, operates illegally , exploiting the poor of this region, whilst promoting a dubious ecological agenda, and while it remains constitutes as a barrier to peace in this region.
There is nothing clean about SodaStreams product, parroting its message does not build bridges, it is time to let it's bubbles free.
Under Ceredigion sky,
the wind catches my breath,
her presence all around,
plants her smile on our lips,
takes us to places where we don't mind,
sighing, bursting, laughing, singing,
her voice lingers long in our hearts,
turns grey spaces, into colourful bloom,
wraps us up in warm swoon,
like a marvellous scent,
that runs inside and out,
takes away the darkness,
overcomes barriers and borders,
in every language, releases poet's tonque,
there is consolation in love's certainty,
deep, deep, deep, it's roots are strong,
I try my utmost, that she is not hurt,
share it's sap, for this fragile world to consume.
I remember when, reason got lost,
wild rivers, ran their ragged course,
on old mountains, the sky spat its blood,
veins of burnt silver burst,vapours released,
thick white smoke, waved it's dragons tail,
and the pretence of tomorrow, released a form of
satisfaction.
A line was drawn,
bunkerered down, in a dream of rest,
measured vision one by one,
navigated, transcended, forgot,
released abandonment,
from the weight of perception.
The night softly dissolved into flames,
and comforts ambience, lifted its finger,
wrapped up in a warm place, of numbed release,
consciously blinking, in stretched defiance,
he fell asleep, to quietly wait,
for mornings hungry breath, to wake,
and the return of summer,
bringing some new shards of hope.
People aren't 'playing the system' to even a fraction of the degree the media and politicians make out.
Scapegoating just paves the way for further cuts in support to people who need and deserve help - including pensioners, low waged workers and people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.
The government is currently using the right wing tabloids and media to lead an assault on the welfare system, in a deliberate attempt at misleading the public with this constant onslaught of propoganda.
In the above video from the T.U.C it tries to tackle some of the media and political myths about the benefit system, with the aid of a talking dog.
Oh and lets remember the words of H.L Mencken who once said ' The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed ( and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
The claim by (now suspended) UKIP coucillor David Silvetor that the recent flooding in Britain was caused by Gay marriage, has been met with confustion and more than a touch of anger. But most people hacve just subjected this party to severe mockery and all the disdain that they deserve.
Here is Nicholas Peggs spoof BBC Radio 4 UKIP shipping forecast. A wonderful comedic response.
At the moment, we have a government made up of public school educated millionaires, presiding over the dismantling of the welfare state. These are the real scroungers in our midsts. A healthy media would tell us about them, but they stay silent, carrying on this governments vile agends.
People are daily suffering, the consequences of an economic crisis, caused by the governments friends, and they expect us to accept it, as they try to lay the blame on the marginalised and the powerless, at the same time demanding a wage rise.
It seems there is rule for them, and stuff the rest of us. Yes, the biggest scroungers in this country comprises of an unelected Tory Government, and their allies, claiming every last penny from the taxpayers.
Cruel headlines from the right wing media, daily create false narratives, luckily we have our own media now, and we can answer back.
This is a war that Cameron and his cronies should not be allowed to win, for all our sakes and all of our tomorrows.
Very sad to hear of the Death of Roger Lloyd- Pack, Only Fools and Horses, Vicar of Dibley and the Old Guys star, a fine actor and contributor to moments of comical genius, who has died at his London home, after suffering from pancreatic cancer.
He was also a tireless committed socialist, dedicated follower of peace and social justice, a supporter of Left Unity, a recently formed 'radical party of the left, and gave unstinting support to various radical causes and movements such as Stop the War Coalition and the People's Assembly, as well as being a vocal supporter for Palestinian rights.
A versatile character actor who was at home with both comedy and drama, his expressive face and comical timing will be missed.
My thoughts go out to his family and friends. So long Trigger. R.I.P
My Name is Rodney - Classic scene from Only fools and horses.
Trigger and Ghandi
Trigger gets wrong Idea
Roger Lloyd- Pack speaking about why he would be at Anti-War Mass Assembly tback in 2011, to mark 10th anniversary of Afghanistan War and the war on terror.
Today I remember the murder in 1919 of the Jewish agitator, internationalist and theoritician, Rosa Luxemburg who was killed by right wing troops opossed to the revolutionary movement that swept through Germany in the wake of the First World War. A leader of the radical wing of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), since 1899,she became an important figure in the world socialist movement, and became involved in the international organisation of workers, she broke with the SPD however after it supported the imperialist drive towards war, she believed in the build up to the First World War that ' workers blood should not be shed in defence of the captalist system' Because of her socialist agitation during this terrible war , she was imprisoned for it's duration, but after Germany's defeat she was released, and with her friend Karl Liebnecht, forming the Spartacus league, and she assumed the leadership of the radical independent socialists. Her will and her desire was to see an end to all exploitation and oppression.
She herself took part in revolutionary events , recognising the need of a revolutionary party, which could unite and give a lead in a revolutionary situation, seeing socialism as a movement of the proletarian masses that should emphasise unity and equality rather than highlight the oppression of any particular group, with an undogmatic committment to an unfinished notion of freedom that still appeals to many people today.
In November 1918 after four years of war, German society crumbled both at the front at home, and a revolutionary fervour swept the land, the working class took to the streets in a series of strikes and the navy mutinied., though critical with some demands of the revolutionary movement, Rosa threw in her lot with her comrades, believing that she could not simply wait on the sidelines. Subsequently on January 15, she and some of her her comrades were arrested, including Karl Liebnecht, Rosa was shot and dumped in the Landweher canal, Berlin.
Famously on the evening of her murder almost certainly knowing that her fate was sealed she wrote.
'"The leadership has failed. Even so, the leadership can and muust be recreated from the masses and out of the masses. The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built... Order reigns in Berlin! You stupid henchmen! Your 'order' is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will already 'raise itself with a rattle' and announce with fanfare, to your terror: I was, I am , I shall be!"
Today her ideas can be pressed into many meanings. There is a feminist Rosa, an anarchist Rosa, then there is a red Rosa, but she remains an icon inthe truest sense of the word.Here is poem written by Bertolt Brecht in 1920 about Rosa.
About the drowned girl - Bertolt Brecht
As she drowned, she swam downwards and was borne,
From the smaller streams to the larger rivers,
In wonder the opal of the heavens shone,
As if wishing to placate the body that was hers.
Catching hold of her were the seaweed , the algae,
Slowly she became heavy as downwards she went,
Cool fish swam around her legs, freely,
Animals and plants weight to her body lent.
Dark light smoke in the evenings the heavens grew,
But early in the morning the stars dangled, there was light,
So that for her, there remained too,
Morning and evening, day and night.
Her cold body rotted in the waters there,
Slowly, step by step, god too forgot,
First her face, then her hands, and finally her hair
She became carrion of which the rivers have a lot.
Last night Channel 4, broadcast again their programme Benefits Street in what appeared to me, to be blatant tory propoganda and poverty porn. The programme focuses on the lives of hard-up families on James Turner Street, in Winston Green, Birmingham, but so sensational is its approach the only thing that Channel 4 seems to be concerned about is their lazy attempt at boosting its ratings, Channel 4 after all is a 'public service broadcaster' but has not got the luxury of the BBC's license fee, so instead relies on advertising, and cheap programmes like this. A programme condemned by many organisations for being damaging and grossly unbalanced, whose only true intention is to demonise the poor. It seems to be suggesting that all benefit claimants are like the poor people of Benefit Street, stigmatising and hunting down the most negative examples in an attempt to stir up some controversy, or carry on the tory's agenda of trying to lay the countries economic problems on the poorest and most vulnerable in society.
I guess the programme has fulfilled Channel 4's intentions, divide and rule, target audience achieved, as the tories continue reducing millions of people to abject penury while their friends, much better off, cheers them on, and the bankers still wave their wads of cash at us and laugh. As M.Ps spend £250,000 of taxpayers money on portraits of themselves, in the real world, the governments cruel welfare cuts, have led to people taking their own lives, and the fact is that tax fraud and error outweigh welfare claims by some 20 billion pounds!
I confess I only watched the first programme in it's entirety, because after the first 20 minutes of the latest installment I just couldn't bare to continue, and was forced to switch it off, there was something cartoon like, about its lazy pigeonholing, and its editing, leaving us with images and lazy stereotypes straight out of central casting from any mainstream right wing media outlet.
Meanwhile the government has suffered a major defeat on Michael Meacher M.Ps motion to establish an enquiry into the impact of welfare reforms on the incidence of poverty. One of only a handful of M.Ps with a little conscience. So perhaps the tide is beginning to turn.
Programmes like Benefits Street, which I usually manage to avoid are designed to stir up hatred and divide communities between the rich and poor, and more dangerously, the 'deserving' and the the 'undeserving' poor. Designed to set sections of society which face the same problems, upon each other.
There is a petition people can sign about the programme, if any visitors to this site, could add their name, it would be much appreciated. Together we must stop this war on the poor and disadvantaged.
