Artscape: Poets of Protest - Manal Al Sheikh: Fire Won't Eat Me Up

Poet, editor and activist Manal Al Sheik, says it is now lethal for her to be a writer in her home town of Ninewh, Iraq. We follow her as she prepares a new poem for a public reading in Norwegian.

Happy Autumn Equinox

Every day, the season air humming, for some can be numbing, walking on the edge..... beyond the weight, voices talk, voices share, navigate between imperfect intervals and mornings rush..... towards a mutlitude of possibility. Shadows become a thousand words, and the roaring continues , the wind is never silent.


Happy Autumn Equinox

heddwch/peace.....

Nick Clegg Says Sorry - The Remix

I like it when people say  sorry, it can't be easy.But sometimes it just happens to come a little too bloody late. Is this for the country or is it for his party's conference this weekend. His original apology did not sound very heartfelt either, I prefer this version
Not sure if it will change anybodies opinions about him though. Don't think he's goin to win any popularity contests any time soon, either. ****R

Kelvin MacKenzie doorstepped over Hillsborough

Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie declines to answer question from Channel 4 news  reporter Alex Thomson on  his record over the papers coverage of Hillsborough football tragedy.
This video has now been watched on youtube over 64,000 times.
Here's a response to it.

Kelvin Mackenzie Dorstopped Remixed

Sarah Ahmed (b.1969) ) On Solidarity

" Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves committment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies we do live on common ground."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Ahmed

Mgicineni Noki  at Markan Mine, addresssing his comrades in an act of solidarity  before he and 34 of his fellow miners were shot dead.

Jack Clemo (11/3/1916- 25/7/94) - Outsider

                                          image, Tricia Porter, National Portrait Galllery
                                                                            1975

Outsider

You are so civilised, so alert
In your tunnel, arching the drilled brain;
So  desterous in control
Of the tricky signals, the obvious gain.
I am outside, a truant soul,
Deep in the Word, stung by the dirt
Of primal clues which you disdain.

I cannot be a comrade
To you who claim your victory
In affliction's craft and trade.
I am angry with your tunnel life,
For a free wind, out here, storms the base
Of resignation, topples the perch of suffering.
Slits like a knife
The bladdered boast, the wan, competent face;
And it seeks you also, but you hide from its sting.

I pioneer for you,
But the gulf is too wide
And you cannot see my clue.
I do not have to overcome,
I do not face the worst, I do not accept:
I just speed home
With no flakes of darkness admitted or defied.

Your skilled courage is not for me:
I have overstepped.
By God's grace, some mark or boundary
Where faith branches higher
And its vagabond thrills never cool.
I am wild with expectation, full of strange fire
That would scorch a mundane tool.

You miss that fire through your efficiency:
Your triumphs only prove
You are too sleek for miracle. It takes
An unkempt faith to make a mountain move:
Unsheltered savage trust, bare to the mud,
Till your ego's clay-seam quakes
And the kingdom seethes in your blood.
This fierce old pilgrim's way I have known,
But you despise it, so I sing alone.

Reprinted from Penguin Modern Poets 6
Jack Clemo, Edward Lucie-Smith, George MacBeth
1964


On a personal note I lost my faith many moons ago
but still believe in tomorrow, but hey that's another story.

Remembering 30th anniversary of Sabra & Shatila massacre

Video including testimony of journalist covering the massacre

This week the world has remembered the victims of 9/11. But this weekend also marks the 30th anniversary of the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, so a moments silence please.
This massacre took place between 16 to 18 September 1982. It is now considered  to be the bloodiest single atrocity committed against the Palestinian people in living history. Similar in magnitude to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US,which left close to 3000 innocent people dead according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, more than 2,750 Palestinian/Lebanese,  men, women and children were massacred in the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut, by Christian Lebanese Phalangists while  the city was occupied by the Israeli army .
Israel for a while denied it had conspired in the massacre, yet as a result of international condemnation it launched an inquiry in 1983, known as the Kahan Commission  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/kahan.html this found  that the Israeli military were completely aware of the massacre taking place, but had done nothing to stop it. The Commission subsequently regarded Israel of being part of the 'indirect responsibility' for the massacre. and Ariel Sharon, then Israel's highest military leader, later the country's Primeminister of bearing personal responsibility for the massacre because he did not prevent the Lebanese Phalangist militia from entering the camps.
One of the reasons why people still talk about Sabra & Shatila, is that no one has actually ever apologised for this crime against humanity, which this incident surely was. Also no one has ever stood trial or been  held account fot this crime.
 We should not forget any crime against humanity, either, all are of equal importance. It is unfortunately part of us all a  history and legacy that is  both shameful and bitter.
On all accounts this was not an isolated incident, and to this day Israels oppressive policies towards the Palestinians continue. We still see the ongoing blockade of Gaza, which has made the Gaza strip one of the biggest prisons in the world.
Every September since then hundreds of Palestinians and friends from around the world gather now in Shatila at the Martyr's Square  to remember  and mourn, and mark the events that had previously occurred.
Even contemplating this dark anniversary, I never give up feeling that their is still much hope in the future for the lot of the Palestinian and their ongoing plight is not simply forgotten.