Not that I'll be watching
Saturday 26 May 2012
Eurovision mired in deeper controversy by further clampdowns on dissent in Baku
Eurovision mired in deeper controversy by further clampdowns on dissent in Baku
Not that I'll be watching
Not that I'll be watching
Thursday 24 May 2012
John Cowper Powys (8/10/1872 - 17/6/63) - The Magic of Detachment
' But it is in relation to individual human beings that Detachment is most necessary of all. The wise man spends his life running away. But luckily he can run away without moving a step. We are all - men and women alike - teased by the blue-bottle flies who want to lay their eggs. These are the people who have never learnt and never could learn the art of detachment. They are blue-bottle flies - as my sister Phillipa says - and they want to lay their eggs; and they can only lay their eggs in carrion. Not one of us has carried in him, carrion in her; and the buzzing blue-bottles, among our fellows, smell this afar off, and fly towards it, and would fain settle upon it and lay their eggs.
Here indeed, here most of all is it necessary to excercise the very magic of Detachment, that magic that makes it possible for you to be in one place - like the man seated on the naked stone by the flowing water - and yet to be in the heart of the flaming sun and at the circumference of the divine ether. For if you fail to exercise the magic of Detachment upon the blue-bottle fly who infest your road they will really lay their eggs - the eggs of the maggots of civilisation - in your soul. And then you will believe in the justifiability of vivisection; in the sacrosanct importance of private property; in the virtue of patriotic war; in slaughter-houses, in brothels, in slavery, and in the great, noble scientific, gregarious, loving, human, undetached art of - Advertisement.
Rouseau was right. It is only by detaching yourself from human civilisation that you can live a life worthy of a living soul.'
Quotation Reprinted from
John Cowper Powys
A Record of Achievement
- Derek Langbridge
The Library Association,
1966
Tuesday 22 May 2012
Omotola says: Shell must own up, pay up and clean up.
It's Shell's AGM today and despite huge profits they've still not stumped up the money to clean up two major spills in the Niger Delta. The pollution has ruined the lives of the millions who live there. Here Omotola, an actressfrom the Niger Delta explain why Shell must own up, pay up, calling on Shell's chief executive , Peter Vosey to take resposibility for the pollution in the area.
Then sign Amnesty International's petition, http://amn.st/LiosFv
Then sign Amnesty International's petition, http://amn.st/LiosFv
Monday 21 May 2012
Royal Babylon by Heathcote Williams (rough cut)
Narration and montage
by Alan Cox
' Can we go on bowing and curtseying to people who are just like ourselves? We begin to wish that the Zoo should be abolished. That the royal animals should be given the run of some wider pasturage - a royal Whipsnade. Will the British Empire survive and will Buckingham Palace look as solid in 2034 as it does now?
Words are dangerous things remember. A republic might be bought into being by a poem.'
- Virginia Woolf, Time and Tide, 1/12/34
http://www.royalbabylon.com/
Friday 18 May 2012
Edward Thomas (3/3/1878 -9/4/17) -Bright Clouds
Down in Plymouth at moment for grans 100th Birthday..... her name is May, so a little poem. Am I the only one in this city at the moment, who is not overjoyed with olympic torches and stuff..... a mass delusion seems to be taking place. Have been called a killjoy 3 times this morning already. Hey ho.
Bright Clouds
Bright clouds of may
Shade half the pond.
Beyond,
All but one bay
Of emerald
Tall reeds
Like criss-cross bayonets
Where once a bird called,
Lies bright as the sun
No one heeds.
The light wind frets
And drifts the scum
Of may blosson.
Till the northern callsAgain
Naughts to be done
By birds or men.
Still the may falls.
Wednesday 16 May 2012
Albert Camus (7/11/13 -4/1/60) - The Smoking Philosopher
Ah Mr Camus........see him up there, he did not smoke because it was a luxury or even pleasurable he smoked because it was just part of something he did. The writer is almost as famous for his love of Gauloises as he is for his novels. He even named his cat Cigarette, Absurdity as philosophy, this was his way. He describes his whole philosophy in an essay The Myth of Sisyphus
http://www.vahidnab.com/sisyphus.pdf
Despite several attacks of tuberculosis with which he was first diagnosed aged 17, and living in poverty he kept on smoking. For him life itself and therefore humanity was irrational, he was labelled an existentailist but he rejected this..
Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria on the 7th of November 1913, his father died one year later, and Camus was bought up alone, in acute poverty. He spent a lot of his days looking for reason in a world of alienation.In 1934 he joined the Communist Party, but his relationship with the party was difficult and would remain ambivialent throughout his life. In 1934 he married Simone Hie, a morphine addict and in 1938 he became a journalist, writing for an anti-colonialist newspaper after dropping out of the University of Algiers.
He moved to Paris in 1940, looking for work with the leftist press, married again, to a pianist and mathematician named Francine Faure, and had two twins Catherine and Jean in September 1945,and found himself a teaching post. In 1943 he joined Combat a clandestine resistance cell, working underground, helping with smuggling activities and acts of sabotage.
He became the editor of Combat's magazine in 1943 where he deveoped his philosophies and strong moral convictions, and it was during this period that he published works that extended his ideas. He wrote ' This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction.' He became associated with the French Anarchist movement, and wrote for several anarchist publications like Le Libertaire, La Revolucian Proletarienne and Solidaidad Obrera. His real concerns were for the plight of the ordinary man, not just in France or in Algeria, a search for solidarity, a humanity that does not divide.
His novels...... The Ousider (1942) and The Plague (1947) and The Fall (1947) have become pivotal texts for me to reach over the years. Here his themes developed further, a humanism grounded in nature with people of the left accusing him off drifting away, because he strongly critisized elements of communist doctrine. However he remained a man of the left. In 1949 he founded The Group for International Liasons with the Revolutionary Union Movement, through which he wanted to show the world the more positive aspects of surrealism and existentialism.. He labelled nihilism as the most disturbing problem of the twentieth century, in is essay The Rebel he paints a terryfying picture of ' how metaphysical collapse often ends in total negation and the victory of nihilsm, characterised by a profound hatred, pathological destruction and incalculable death. Another theme that remained with him was his pacifism.
And whatever your opinion of the man he became obsessed with the human condition and its many forms.He accepted it's contradictions, and that's good enough for me, just because life defies logic, and is irrational, does not mean it is less valuable or means that it does not need to be defended.
Towards the end of his life, human rights in particular were what essentially preoccupied him, and when the United Nations welcomed fascist Spain as a member under Franco he resigned from his work for UNESCO. He worked with imprisoned Algerians, and in 1957 was awarded the Nobel Prize of Literature.
Albert Camus died on January 4, 1960 in an absurdist car accident... he was buried in the Loumarin, Vacluss, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, France.
So thanks Albert, whose ideas I have often found represented in the world around me, peppering them and illuminating them. He was also a goalkeeper of rare promise from what I have heard, oh and I forgot to mention Mr Jean Paul and Simone de beauvoir....another time perhaps.
In the end he accepted lifes contradictions, he once remarked ' life is absurd and death renders it meaningless - for the individual. But mankind and its society are larger than one person'.
Right off to light myself a cigarette.
Despite several attacks of tuberculosis with which he was first diagnosed aged 17, and living in poverty he kept on smoking. For him life itself and therefore humanity was irrational, he was labelled an existentailist but he rejected this..
Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria on the 7th of November 1913, his father died one year later, and Camus was bought up alone, in acute poverty. He spent a lot of his days looking for reason in a world of alienation.In 1934 he joined the Communist Party, but his relationship with the party was difficult and would remain ambivialent throughout his life. In 1934 he married Simone Hie, a morphine addict and in 1938 he became a journalist, writing for an anti-colonialist newspaper after dropping out of the University of Algiers.
He moved to Paris in 1940, looking for work with the leftist press, married again, to a pianist and mathematician named Francine Faure, and had two twins Catherine and Jean in September 1945,and found himself a teaching post. In 1943 he joined Combat a clandestine resistance cell, working underground, helping with smuggling activities and acts of sabotage.
He became the editor of Combat's magazine in 1943 where he deveoped his philosophies and strong moral convictions, and it was during this period that he published works that extended his ideas. He wrote ' This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction.' He became associated with the French Anarchist movement, and wrote for several anarchist publications like Le Libertaire, La Revolucian Proletarienne and Solidaidad Obrera. His real concerns were for the plight of the ordinary man, not just in France or in Algeria, a search for solidarity, a humanity that does not divide.
His novels...... The Ousider (1942) and The Plague (1947) and The Fall (1947) have become pivotal texts for me to reach over the years. Here his themes developed further, a humanism grounded in nature with people of the left accusing him off drifting away, because he strongly critisized elements of communist doctrine. However he remained a man of the left. In 1949 he founded The Group for International Liasons with the Revolutionary Union Movement, through which he wanted to show the world the more positive aspects of surrealism and existentialism.. He labelled nihilism as the most disturbing problem of the twentieth century, in is essay The Rebel he paints a terryfying picture of ' how metaphysical collapse often ends in total negation and the victory of nihilsm, characterised by a profound hatred, pathological destruction and incalculable death. Another theme that remained with him was his pacifism.
And whatever your opinion of the man he became obsessed with the human condition and its many forms.He accepted it's contradictions, and that's good enough for me, just because life defies logic, and is irrational, does not mean it is less valuable or means that it does not need to be defended.
Towards the end of his life, human rights in particular were what essentially preoccupied him, and when the United Nations welcomed fascist Spain as a member under Franco he resigned from his work for UNESCO. He worked with imprisoned Algerians, and in 1957 was awarded the Nobel Prize of Literature.
Albert Camus died on January 4, 1960 in an absurdist car accident... he was buried in the Loumarin, Vacluss, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, France.
So thanks Albert, whose ideas I have often found represented in the world around me, peppering them and illuminating them. He was also a goalkeeper of rare promise from what I have heard, oh and I forgot to mention Mr Jean Paul and Simone de beauvoir....another time perhaps.
In the end he accepted lifes contradictions, he once remarked ' life is absurd and death renders it meaningless - for the individual. But mankind and its society are larger than one person'.
Right off to light myself a cigarette.
Tuesday 15 May 2012
Nakba Remembered
Nabka Oral History: Sarah Odeh of Lifta (Arabic)
Today marks the anniversary of the Nabka ( Cataclysm). In human terms, on this day in 1948, saw the mass deportation of a million Palestinians from their cities and their villages, it saw the massacre of civilians, and the razing to the ground of hundreds of Palestinian villages.
Zionist forces used a terror campaign to expel 800, 000 Palestinians from their land. Today Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza strip, as well as pro-Palestinian supporters across the globe, will mark the 'catastrophe' and the inception of the State of Israel.Toaday is the Palestinians annual day of commemoration of this displacement. The vast majority of Palestinian refugees, both those outside the 1949 armistice lines at the wars' conclusion and those internally displaced, were barred by the newly declared state of Israel from their right to return to their homes or the reclaiming of their property, and in doing so Israel violated international law.
The Palestinian Authority has declared a general strike and mass rallies and marches are planned across the Palestinian Authority and in Arab cities in Israel. But today is also a day of celebation too in Gaza, because a deal has been reached where the hunger strike of thousands of Palestinian prisoners has ended, with Israeli authorities agreeing to concessions.With inmates currently being held under administrative detention being allowed for ther sentences to be renewable on the basis of new evidence. Also prisoners being held in solitary confienement will be allowed back to normal cells. So I guess a victory of sorts.
Unfortuantely there is no peace in stolen lands.... especially when people still cry for liberation and the right to return to their lands.
The above video is a story about a house and a woman - Sarah's mother died in 1998. Sara's father died soon after the Nabka, in 1952, leaving her mother to bring up eight young children. Aged 10 in 1948, Sara was the oldest daughter, so much of the upbrimnging of her brothers fell on her. Between 1967 and 1969, two of the brothers were arrested ad imprisoned. Sara's mother used to go daily to the main interrrogation center, the Moscobiyya, to ask about them. It was during one of these visits that sge got news that the Israeli army had surrounded the home. They were given 15 minutes to remove their belonging before the house was blown up. Then comes the most remarkable part- Sara's mother pitched a makeshift 'tent' on her land , and insisted on staying with her young children. Then stone by stone, she rebuilt her home. Of course the neighbours helped, also the children after school. But essentially it was her work, so onerous that her health was permanently affected. Other tragedies befall her but she remains firm in her faith in God and in the 'watan' (homeland), an inforgettable model to her children.
Sarah Oden speaks
"I am Sarah Ahmad Odeh. In 1948 I was about ten years old, and I remember how we left Lifta. In Lifta - the Jewish gangs began to attack the villages near Jerusalem, among them Lifta. They attacked us once, then a second time, but we didn't want to leave. Our home faced the Jaffa road, and all the firing was on it. So we left our house for a lower house, a little far from the Jews, and still the shooting followed us. My motheer was frightened for my brothers. She said to my father, 'Lets take them to a village near us so we shall be a little far from, the Jews'. He said, 'No, its impossible that I should leave my village. This is my village and my land. How can we leave?' She said, 'We wont take anything with us. Just the children. We'll take them away for a week until the shooting stops' - because all my brothers, all of us were young, and we were screaming. My father used to come and go through all the shooting, and he got wounded in his legs. He crawled on his hands and feet until he reached the house. He took us to another house. And still the shooting continued, night and day. Then they started to send shells, because our village, the old one, was on the road to Jaffa, and they took the Jaffa road and one side of Deir Yassin. They began to hit us with shells. And anyone who went outside of his house, they aimed at him and shot him. At that time they hit a Lifta coffee house and many people were killed. People wer maddened by the noise... so my mother convinced my father that we should leave for a week... ny father did not allow her even to take bread..."
This story and audio copyright Al Mahrig (the Levent) to contact Al Mashrig visit their website at
http://almashriq.hiof.no/ Reproduced audio March 2011 by Lifta Society, http://www.liftasociety.org.all/ pictures blong to their rightful owners. Contact if you have any questions, or concerns.
Al-Nabka Remembered.
Remember 64 years after the Nabka, Palestinians still have no state and no equality. Refugee camps still exist all over the world and a majority of Palestinians live in the diaspora. Against their will, the Nabka has divided the Palestinian people between Palestine and diaspora, between Gaza and the West Bank, between those who hold a refugee identification card and who don't.
Still searching for dignity. Rememberance acts as resistance to a country that still tries to bury and hide history.
Dier Yassin.... ghosts of massacre
Al Nabka - A poem
- Mary Pneuman
Dier Yassin
Almond and Cactus
Clinging roots of memory-
ghosts of massacre
Ein Karen
Almonds in green velvet
swelling pomegranete buds
grow more bitter now
Havara
Dreams of motherhood
lie still born at the checkpoint,
hope of Palestine
Today marks the anniversary of the Nabka ( Cataclysm). In human terms, on this day in 1948, saw the mass deportation of a million Palestinians from their cities and their villages, it saw the massacre of civilians, and the razing to the ground of hundreds of Palestinian villages.
Zionist forces used a terror campaign to expel 800, 000 Palestinians from their land. Today Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza strip, as well as pro-Palestinian supporters across the globe, will mark the 'catastrophe' and the inception of the State of Israel.Toaday is the Palestinians annual day of commemoration of this displacement. The vast majority of Palestinian refugees, both those outside the 1949 armistice lines at the wars' conclusion and those internally displaced, were barred by the newly declared state of Israel from their right to return to their homes or the reclaiming of their property, and in doing so Israel violated international law.
The Palestinian Authority has declared a general strike and mass rallies and marches are planned across the Palestinian Authority and in Arab cities in Israel. But today is also a day of celebation too in Gaza, because a deal has been reached where the hunger strike of thousands of Palestinian prisoners has ended, with Israeli authorities agreeing to concessions.With inmates currently being held under administrative detention being allowed for ther sentences to be renewable on the basis of new evidence. Also prisoners being held in solitary confienement will be allowed back to normal cells. So I guess a victory of sorts.
Unfortuantely there is no peace in stolen lands.... especially when people still cry for liberation and the right to return to their lands.
The above video is a story about a house and a woman - Sarah's mother died in 1998. Sara's father died soon after the Nabka, in 1952, leaving her mother to bring up eight young children. Aged 10 in 1948, Sara was the oldest daughter, so much of the upbrimnging of her brothers fell on her. Between 1967 and 1969, two of the brothers were arrested ad imprisoned. Sara's mother used to go daily to the main interrrogation center, the Moscobiyya, to ask about them. It was during one of these visits that sge got news that the Israeli army had surrounded the home. They were given 15 minutes to remove their belonging before the house was blown up. Then comes the most remarkable part- Sara's mother pitched a makeshift 'tent' on her land , and insisted on staying with her young children. Then stone by stone, she rebuilt her home. Of course the neighbours helped, also the children after school. But essentially it was her work, so onerous that her health was permanently affected. Other tragedies befall her but she remains firm in her faith in God and in the 'watan' (homeland), an inforgettable model to her children.
Sarah Oden speaks
"I am Sarah Ahmad Odeh. In 1948 I was about ten years old, and I remember how we left Lifta. In Lifta - the Jewish gangs began to attack the villages near Jerusalem, among them Lifta. They attacked us once, then a second time, but we didn't want to leave. Our home faced the Jaffa road, and all the firing was on it. So we left our house for a lower house, a little far from the Jews, and still the shooting followed us. My motheer was frightened for my brothers. She said to my father, 'Lets take them to a village near us so we shall be a little far from, the Jews'. He said, 'No, its impossible that I should leave my village. This is my village and my land. How can we leave?' She said, 'We wont take anything with us. Just the children. We'll take them away for a week until the shooting stops' - because all my brothers, all of us were young, and we were screaming. My father used to come and go through all the shooting, and he got wounded in his legs. He crawled on his hands and feet until he reached the house. He took us to another house. And still the shooting continued, night and day. Then they started to send shells, because our village, the old one, was on the road to Jaffa, and they took the Jaffa road and one side of Deir Yassin. They began to hit us with shells. And anyone who went outside of his house, they aimed at him and shot him. At that time they hit a Lifta coffee house and many people were killed. People wer maddened by the noise... so my mother convinced my father that we should leave for a week... ny father did not allow her even to take bread..."
This story and audio copyright Al Mahrig (the Levent) to contact Al Mashrig visit their website at
http://almashriq.hiof.no/ Reproduced audio March 2011 by Lifta Society, http://www.liftasociety.org.all/ pictures blong to their rightful owners. Contact if you have any questions, or concerns.
Al-Nabka Remembered.
Last years post
on Nabka day
http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/63-years-of-nakba-day-of-catastrophe.htmlRemember 64 years after the Nabka, Palestinians still have no state and no equality. Refugee camps still exist all over the world and a majority of Palestinians live in the diaspora. Against their will, the Nabka has divided the Palestinian people between Palestine and diaspora, between Gaza and the West Bank, between those who hold a refugee identification card and who don't.
Still searching for dignity. Rememberance acts as resistance to a country that still tries to bury and hide history.
Dier Yassin.... ghosts of massacre
- Mary Pneuman
Dier Yassin
Almond and Cactus
Clinging roots of memory-
ghosts of massacre
Ein Karen
Almonds in green velvet
swelling pomegranete buds
grow more bitter now
Havara
Dreams of motherhood
lie still born at the checkpoint,
hope of Palestine
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