Friday 16 September 2011
Monday 12 September 2011
Don't Execute Troy Davis.
Hi there, have you got 5 minutes to try and stop a death row execution? If so cheers , regards and all that .
Troy Davis has been on death row for 17 years for a murder he maintains he did not commit.
He was convicted in 1991 for the murder of 27 year old Officer Mark Allen MacPhail, white, who was shot and killed in the car park of a Burger King restaurant in Savannah , Georgia, in the early hours of August 19th 1989...
Amnesty International has been opposing Troy Davis's execution unconditionally regardless of questions of guilt or innocence for a while, as it does all use of the death penalty.
A judge has ordered Troy's execution to take place on Wednesday 21 September 2011 at 7 p.m, US time.
On Monday 19th September, 2 days before he is scheduled to be executed, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles will hold a clemency hearing to decide whether Troy Davis's sentence should be commuted, or whether the execution should be carried out as scheduled. This is Troy's last chance to avoid execution.
Video below examining Troy's case.
It is vital that you take action as soon as possible,
his execution is not inevitable.
PLEASE USE THE LINK BELOW TO EMAIL THE GEORGIA STATE BOARD OF PARDONS AND PAROLES TO EMAIL THE GEORGIA STATE BOARD OF PARDONS AND PAROLES ASKING FOR CLEMENCY FOR TROY.
.http://action.amnesty.org.uk/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1194&ea.campaign.id=11962&utm_source=aiuk&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=deathpenalty&utm_content=troy_page_to_action
Sunday 11 September 2011
SELF EVIDENT....... some musical reflections on anniversary of 9/11
Ani Di Franco - Self Evident
and perhaps
between the silent spaces
and winding paths
objectives will one day
be shared
Action is louder than words
future shadows will not forget
time alone........
lasts forever.
R.I.P
to the 2,976 Americans who lost their lives on 9/11and the 48,644 Afghans and 1,690,903 Iraqis and over 30,000 Pakistanis who died for a crime they did not commit.
Billy Bragg - The price of Oil
Wolfgang Gartner - illmerica
Pete Seeger - Last Night I had the strangest Dream
and perhaps
between the silent spaces
and winding paths
objectives will one day
be shared
Action is louder than words
future shadows will not forget
time alone........
lasts forever.
R.I.P
to the 2,976 Americans who lost their lives on 9/11and the 48,644 Afghans and 1,690,903 Iraqis and over 30,000 Pakistanis who died for a crime they did not commit.
Friday 9 September 2011
SAVE DALE FARM
This post is a bit late,soon the weekend will be upon us. But tomorrow wherever you are spare a thought for all the people at Dale Farm in Essex, at this moment waiting for the Baliffs to arrive to commit one of the greatest acts of state endorsed violence against an ethnic group ever seen in the U.K.
The proposed eviction planned has already been roundly condemned by Amnesty International. Dale Farm is home to 90 familes, which could mean up to 400 people being left homeless, and actions to evict them might actually break international law. Is their not room for negotiations. In a time of recession , is it right that about £9.5 million should be wasted kicking people out of their homes. Let us remember that the Irish Travellers who live at Dale Farm actually own this land, they are not squatting this patch of earth belongs to them, for 10 years a strong and vital community has belonged here but time after time have been denied repeated requests to build on the land because of bueracratic measures.
So soon Basildon council and the Coalition Government will have to explain why they have made 100 children homeless, which will result in them being removed from their schools...
If this eviction goes ahead , the world will see our government as a bully who refuses to listen, draconian, punitive and oppressive.
More info below
http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/
Petition to Support the U.N call to delay the eviction
at Dale Farm
here
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dalefarm
The proposed eviction planned has already been roundly condemned by Amnesty International. Dale Farm is home to 90 familes, which could mean up to 400 people being left homeless, and actions to evict them might actually break international law. Is their not room for negotiations. In a time of recession , is it right that about £9.5 million should be wasted kicking people out of their homes. Let us remember that the Irish Travellers who live at Dale Farm actually own this land, they are not squatting this patch of earth belongs to them, for 10 years a strong and vital community has belonged here but time after time have been denied repeated requests to build on the land because of bueracratic measures.
So soon Basildon council and the Coalition Government will have to explain why they have made 100 children homeless, which will result in them being removed from their schools...
If this eviction goes ahead , the world will see our government as a bully who refuses to listen, draconian, punitive and oppressive.
http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/
Petition to Support the U.N call to delay the eviction
at Dale Farm
here
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dalefarm
Wednesday 7 September 2011
Emily Dickinson ( 10/12/1830 - 15/5/1880) - To dissapear enhances.
The Man that runs away
Is tinctured for an instant
With immortality
But yesterday a vagrant
Today in Memory lain
With supersticious value
We tamper with "Again"
But "Never far as Honor
Withdraws the Worthless thing
And impotent to cherish
We hasten to adorn
Of Death the sternest function
That just as we discern
The Excellence defies us
Securest gathered then
The Fruit peverse to plucking
But leaning to the Sight
With the ecstatic limit
Of unobtained Delight,
Saturday 3 September 2011
Fadhil Al-Azzawi ( b.1940) - In my spare time
I sit to play with the earth's sphere.
I establish countries without police or parties
and I scrap others that no longer attract consumers.
I run roaring rivers through barren deserts
and I create continents and oceans
that I save for the future just in case.
I draw a new coloured map of the nations:
I roll Germany to the Pacific ocean teeming with whales
and I let the poor refugees
sail pirate's ships to her coasts
in the fog
dreaming of the promised garden in Bavaria.
I switch England with Afghanistan
so that its youth can smoke hashish for free
provided courtesy of Her Majesty's government.
I smuggle Kuwait from its fenced and mined borders
to Comoro, the islands
of the moon in its eclipse,
keeping the oil fields intact, of course.
At the same time I transport Baghdad
in the midst of loud drumming
to the islands of Tahiti.
I let Saudi Arabia crouch in its eternal desert
to preserve the purity of her thouroughbred camels.
This is before I surrender America
back to the Indians
just to give history
the justice it has long lacked.
I know that changing the world is not easy
but it remains necessary nonetheless.
Fadhil al -Azzawi is an Iraqi writer who is highly respected in the Arab world having emerged and participated in Iraqi's 90s avant garde generation.
Outspoken, he has spent many hours in prison and time spent in exile because of his refusal to conform to certain corridors of power. Born in Kirkuk in 1940.
The above poem speaks for itself...... speaking of empires, inhumanity, offering glimpses of another ideal world, a future not based on injustice, but on shared values, giving lands back to the people from which they were once robbed.
Given us history the justice it has long lacked, knowing, too , that changing the world is easy. The role poetry has to play in the world is to pull of the masks of peddlers of untruths, becomming a universal pointer, offering words without borders and unlocking the chains of illusion ... that can be steps in setting us free.
Fadhil Al-Azzahi, Miracle Maker ( selected Poems 1960 -2002) Editions, 2003
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)