Anne Waldman (2/4/45) - Poet of Consciousness

Internationally recognised  and acclaimed poet Anne Waldman is 74 years young today. A prominent figure in the beat poetry generation. She has been an active member  of the 'Outrider' experimental poetry community, a culture she has helped create  and nurture for over four decades as writer, editor, teacher, performer, feminist magpie scholar, infrastructure curator,  and cultural/ political activist of immense passion.
Born in Millville, New Jersey, Waldman only lived in New Jersey very briefly She grew up  on Macdougal Street in the heart of Greenwich Village where she still lives, on Beat Poetry and jazz, influences that have strongly persisted in her work, along with the second generation of the New York School. Her practice of Tibetan Buddhism has also deeply influenced her work.
The Late Allen Ginsberg, with whom she co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Diembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, called her his 'spiritual wife.'
In 1976, Waldman and Ginsberg were featured in Bob Dylan's film, Renaldo and Clara. They worked on the film while traveling through New England and Canada with the Rolling Thunder Revue, a concert tour that made impromptu stops, entertaining enthusiastic crowds with poetry and music. Waldman, Ginsberg, and Dylan were joined on these caravans by musicians such as Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Eric Anderson, and Joe Cocker. Waldman reveled in the experience, and she often thought of recreating the poetry caravan.
Waldman married Reed Bye in 1980, and their son, Edwin Ambrose Bye was born on October 21, 1980. The birth of her son proved to be an "inspiring turning point" for Waldman, and she became interested in and committed to the survival of the planet. Her child, she said, became her teacher. Waldman and Ambrose Bye perform frequently, and the two have created Fast Speaking Music and have produced multiple albums together.
For nearly half a century she has channelled her passions and experiences into poetry, urging us toward civic and political responsibility, long has she been committed to the survival of the planet, working actively for social change, and was arrested in the 1970s with Daniel Ellsberg & Allen Ginsberg protesting the site of Rocky Flats which was bringing plutonium onto property 10 miles from Boulder for the manufacture of “triggers” for nuclear warheads.  She has been a vocal proponent for feminist, environmental, and human rights causes; an active participant in Poets Against the War; and she has helped organize protests in New York and Washington, D.C.
She is recipient  of the Shelley Memorial Award from  the Poetry Society of America and is the author of over 40 books of poetry. She is also editor of The Beat Book (Shambhala Publications) and co-editor of The Angel Hair Anthology (Granary Books), Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action (Coffee House) and Beats at Naropa (Coffee House, 2009), with previously unpublished work by Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Diane diPrima, Joanne Kyger and William Burroughs, among others.
Her latest book that came out last year was Trickster Feminism an edgy, visionary collection that meditates on gender, existence, passion and activism, uniting  feminist history, Buddhist lore, contemporary politics, quantum physics, and more in a text of protest and upheaval.
She sees her poetry performances as  'a ritualised event in time'. She is conceptual, visionary, prophetic, and living icon for future generations, carrying on the Beat tradition. Long may she continue to inspire, hold on to her premise of imaginative consciousness, remaining vibrant and unpredictable.Her powerful genuine poetry to be felt. Happy birthday Anne Waldman.

Fossil Fuel - Anne Waldman and Ambrose Bye

The Lie

Art begins with a lie
     The seperation is you plus me plus what we make
           Look intolightbulb blink, sun's in your eye

I want a rare sky
     vantage point free from misconception
    Art begins with a lie

Nothing to lose, spontaneous rise
     of reflection, paint the picture
          of a lightbulb, or eye the sun

How to fuel the world, then die
     Distance yourself from artfulness
         How? Art begins with a lie

The audience wants to cry
   when the actors are real & passionate
       Look into footlight, then feed back to eye

You fluctuate in an artful body
    You try to imitate the world's glory
        Art begins with a lie
             That's the story, sharp speck in the eye.

From: Helping the Dreamer:Selected Poems, 1966-1988

Holy 21st Century 

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy!
Is the composite world holy? Holy phonemes holy neurons!
Holy the 5 senses! Holy the aggregates of being!
Holy impermanence! Holy the inter-connectedness of all beings!
Karma of atrocities holy and un-holy!
Is 21st century endless continuation of 20th century war holy?
Environmental degradation continuation
Of 20th century environmental degradation holy?
Every Woman’s a holy dakini! Matriot acts holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy!
Body parts blown over the charnel ground holy!
Eyes ears nose hands mouth holy!
Manipulated Bible holy? Koran holy? Anarchist tracts holy? Fatwas holy?
Geneva Convention holy? Holy Contract with America,
come on citizens, is that holy?
Star Wars’ “Rods from Hod” holy? Daisy cutters holy?
Thermobaric version of the Hellfire Missile that can turn corners
and blast into caves holy?
Allen’s Ginsberg’s “Mysterious rivers of tears under the sheets” holy!
Holy Kerouac’s “tender reward!”
Holy Baghdad! Holy Dharamsala! Holy Columbine!
Holy Kabul! Holy Israel/Palestine! Holy Bosnia! Holy Rwanda!
Holy Manahatta Isle! Holy Trade Center! Holy East Timor!
Holy Justice! Holy forgiveness! Holy Truth! Holy Accountability!
Baghram holy? Guantánamo holy? Abu Ghraib unholy!
All hooded torture un-holy! All bodily sadistic harm un-holy!
All the hate un-holy! Big lies unholy! All the rape un-holy!
Unholy! Unholy! Unholy! Unholy! Unholy! Unholy!
Holy rap! Holy hip hop! Holy klezmer! Holy Afro-pop!
Holy jazz! Holy gamelan!
Holy pneumatic drills boring into the depths of Brooklyn!
Holy old slave graves!
False the military recruitment centers
Knocking on tenement doors get a fresh martyr for!
Holy Creeley! Holy Lucia Berlin! Holy Jackson MacLow!
Holy Brakhage! Holy Carl Rakosi! Holy Philip Lamantia!
Holy Steve Lacy, blowing his saxophone in heaven!
Cloning holy? Stem cells holy?
Amphetamine holy? Un-holy the polarized universe!
Holy the unfettered Universe!
Holy Negative Capability! Holy No Ideas But In Things!
Holy Projective Verse! Holy Modal Structures!
Banish grief & greed
o compassionate green-skinned savioress of the Mind
HOLY OM TARA HOLY TUTTH TARA HOLY TURE SOHA

Anne Waldman - Battery

Here she reads her poem "Battery" as part of Dear Poet, the Academy of American Poets educational project for National Poetry Month 2017

Anne Waldman - Reading from Manatee/Humanity

Anne Waldman: Poetry in Performance

Join her here and listen to some of here shamanic and subversive poems
at a reading at Eastern Illinois University 2009.

Support the Kurdish Hunger Strikers

There will be a major march next  Sunday in solidarity with Kurdish  hunger strikers.
https://www.facebook.com/events/837556986578942/

Imam Sis  a well known activist in Newport, South Wales . currently living at the Kurdish Community Centre, who has lived in the UK for 14 years after coming to the UK as a political refugee. He has now exceeded 100 days of hunger strike, aince 17 December 2018, the longest in British history, and is surviving on only vitamin tablets, salty water, and a glass of lemonade a day. Read his article in the Independent  http://bit.do/eM8is

" As a Kurd, my commitment to a world of justice, equality and demoracy forced me to leave Turkey and beome a politial refugee in  the United Kingdom fifteen years ago. I have been living in Newport, Wales since 2014, where I am actively involved in struggles for coexistane and equality."

Imam Sis  on hunger strike since 17 December, 2018

7,000 more Kurds are now on indefinite hunger strike in the prisons of Turkey, in Kurdistan, Europe and North America demanding that Turkey abide by the European Convention of Human Rights ( to which it is a signatory) and allow imprisoned  Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan , access to lawyers and family visits.

Jailed by Turkey since 1999, Ocalan is the recognised leader of the Kurdish liberation movement. Since 2011, his lawyers have been unable to met with him.The isolation of  Abdullah Ocalan is contrary to Turkey’s own constitution and to international human rights law.Solitary confinement is commonly regarded as a form of torture, one that Öcalan has had to endure since his arrest in 1999. Ocalan’s ideas have inspired a major movement for grassroots, multi-ethnic secular democracy, and the respect in which he is held makes him key to a peaceful settlement for the Kurds in Turkey – an ideal for which he has strived repeatedly over the last two decades. Despite his continuing imprisonment he has made the whole world acknowledge the Kurds, with hundreds of thousands of people from various countries around the world  speaking about Ocalan’s ideas..

  Abdullah Ocalan

Ocalan is in his 20th year of imprisonment by Turkey and is being denied access to his family and to his lawyers. Ocalan’s importance, together with the lack of international action, has forced the Kurds to take the desperate step of mass indefinite hunger strikes. Leyla Guven, a democratically elected member of Turkey’s parliament for the left-wing, Kurdish-led People’s Democratic party (HDP), launched an indefinite hunger strike on November 7 from Amed Prison, where she was held jailed by Turkey’s regime. She has been joined by over 250 other political prisoners in Turkish jails and also by Kurdish activists around the world, including 14 at the seat of the European parliament in Strasbourg.

Leyla Guven

The Council of Europe, of which Turkey is a member, regards Isolation as a torture and a crime against humanity, but they need to act on their words. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture has yet to meet their criteria or serve their duties. This all proves that even today, Kurds are still not only denied their ethnic status, but also counted as not being worthwhile humans and all fundamental human rights are denied. The European Court of Human Rights must take action against Turkey on many counts, and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture must fulfil its role and visit Ocalan in prison. At the same time, the EU and UK must end their friendly engagement with Turkey, and European countries, including the UK, must stop selling Turkey weapons that will be used to suppress dissidents and minorities at home and attack Kurdish areas across the border.

Earlier this month Wales became the first parliament in the world to declare solidarity with the demands  of hunger strikers passing a Plaid Cymru motion https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-47646773?fbclid=IwAR2sNgZdwbxhI4kxcGRKURneJMdhdxnQY0xOgUNTdyJU-MsQ3aD8gyPG0lI

This  weekend Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbot meet with friends of Imam Sis and members of  the  Kurdish  community and speaking at a rally in Newport, Mr Corbyn highlighted the calls for lawyers to be allowed to visit Mr Ocalan- a key demand  of Kurdisg hunger strikers. Read more here https://freedomforocalan.org/jeremy-corbyn-calls-for-lawyers-to-be-allowed-to-visit-ocalan/?fbclid=IwAR0kJP11-rWBZJxTfmbWV-gG5rC7e5GCwAS-YmaHRBUzYEwRCSHV3DLDEHQ

Ask your MP to sign this EDM, https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/52440/hunger-strike-by-leyla-g%C3%BCven-mp; to raise the issue of Ocalan’s illegal isolation publicly wherever possible; to demand that the Foreign Minister puts pressure on Turkey to comply with its obligations to end the isolation of Ocalan and to restart the peace talks; and to demand that the UK stops selling Turkey weapons. It is the Foreign Minister, Jeremy Hunt, who is the UK representative on the Council of Europe, so they should specifically ask him to get the European institutions to back their words with actions and make Turkey comply with their own constitution and European human rights conventions.

The Human Rights of the Kurdish people in all nations they reside,should be respected and they are also entitled to preserve their language and cultural heritage which would be possible through autonomy. We should continue to demand that the Turkish government  be responsive to prisoners on hunger strike in Turkey demands.
It is important that the international community stands in support of theKurdish hunger strikers and their campaign for rights, equality and an end to Turkish repression.The ending of the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan is necessary not only for a resolution to the ‘Kurdish Question,’ for peace in the Middle-East, but for the whole world. For solutions to large challenges that we will all face this century, Abdullah Öcalan’s safety and ideas are of critical importance.
Your voice will make a difference.Please sign the  following change.org petition calling on the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture to visit Ocalan,

 https://www.change.org/p/european-committee-for-the-prevention-of-torture-cpt-we-want-cpt-to-visit-mr-ocalan-at-imrali-prison

Palestinians mass at Gaza border to mark protest anniversary

Thousands of Palestinians  have been rallying  at the Gaza-Israel border today to mark the first anniversary of the weekly 'Great March of Return' protests, facing off against Israeli forces massed across the perimeter.
The protests call for the lifting of a security blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, and for Palestinians to have the right to return to land from which their families fled or were forced to flee during Israel’s founding in 1948.
 The Gaza Health Ministry said two Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli forces near the border fence, during clashes that began on Friday. About 200 Gazans have been killed by Israeli troops since the protests started, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.
Gaza's Health Ministry said Saturday ten people have sustained injuries from live fire coming from Israeli troops, who also fired tear gas as dozens of protesters approached the fence.
The territory's Hamas rulers are trying to restrain the rallies.The militant group hopes a calmer demonstration would allow for the implementation an Egyptian-brokered agreement with Israel to ease the economic blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2007. But warnings to stay far back from the heavily fortified fence were not being heeded by all."We will move towards the borders even if we die," said Yusef Ziyada, 21, his face painted in the colours of the Palestinian flag.
"We are not leaving. We are returning to our land."
March 30 also marks “Land Day”, that Palestinians  worldwide have commemorated Land Day since 1976, when Israeli security forces shot dead six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces during demonstrations over government land confiscations in northern Israel in 1976.
The main Land Day march in Israel is planned for Saturday afternoon in the northern city of Sakhnin, with additional marches and demonstrations expected across the country, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza.
More than 2 million Palestinians are packed into the Gaza Strip, a narrow coastal enclave where poverty and unemployment rates are high. The blockade is cited by humanitarian agencies as a key reason for impoverishment in Gaza. Lat year alone , about 200 Palestinians, including children, journalists, and the disabled, were killed  at the border, most by Israeli  live ammunition; 23,000 have been injured. 
Israel’s use of lethal force has drawn censure from the United Nations and rights groups. U.N. investigators said last week that Israeli forces may be guilty of war crimes for using excessive force.
The protests mark nearly  twelve years of a blockade that has made Gaza into what is often called the world's largest open air prison. They also come to invoke UN Resolution 194 their right to return in peace to their homes, from which they were expelled in 1948, when Israel was created.
 The Palestinians have no choice but to protest, their spirit not broken, despite their suffering they continue to carry on undaunted. Lets continue to gie them the solidarity and respect they deserve.

Show your solidarity with Palestinian resistance Stop Arming Israel

Incredible dancers in the UK perform Dabke, the dance of Palestinian resistance, in solidarity with the Palestinians on the frontline of the Great Return March. In the face of Israel's military attacks funded by complicit companies like HSBC, the Palestinian people continue to resist and fight for their fundamental rights. Tell HSBC to end its complicity in Israeli war crimes: https://bit.ly/2GQnrtB And take to the streets this Saturday in solidarity with the Palestinian people, one year since the start of the Great Return March: https://bit.ly/2TYR2rJ
On March 30, 2018  evoking memories of the South African apartheid regime’s massacre of peaceful protesters in Sharpeville in 1960, Israel’s military committed a new massacre against Palestinian civilians as they were peacefully commemorating Palestinian Land Day, calling for an end to Israel’s brutal blockade of Gaza and asserting the UN-stipulated right of return for Palestinian refugees.

The Israeli military killed  at least 17 and injuring 1,400. Almost half of these were children. While Israel routinely carries out mass killings of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza strip, the massacre nonetheless stands out as a particularly flagrant attack on non-violent demonstrators with no conceivable pretext. 

Last month, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) published a damning indictment of Israeli forces' conduct in suppressing the protests. According to the COI, Israeli soldiers have been deliberately shooting civilians, killing and maiming protesters - including children, as well as journalists and medics. The COI's findings were welcomed by human rights groups who last year unsuccessfully challenged the army's rules of engagement and its shooting policy in Israel's Supreme Court.
Land Day has been commemorated by Palestinians every year since 30 March 1976, when Israeli military forces killed six Palestinian youth in mass peaceful protests in the Galilee against Israel’s large scale policy of confiscating their ancestral land to create exclusionary Jewish-only colonial settlements.
The Palestinians call for Israeli authorities to lift their 11 year illegal blockade on Gaza and allow Paletinian refugees  to return to their villages and  towns has still not been met.These demands are supported by international law as well as nearly every country in the world – with the marked exception of Canada, the USA, and Israel. In addition, the organizers of the march, which was supported by a wide cross-section of Palestinian political organizations, repeatedly insisted upon the non-violent nature of the march – claims supported by the observations of human rights workers
People of conscience across the world  must continue to pressure   international banks and investment funds, like HSBC  to end their complicity in Israel’s human rights violations,  support and show solidarity with  the Palestinian struggle, and demand that Palestinians’ fundamental rights to exist, resist , freedom , justice and return are respected.
If you're not around London, take action in your communities. Full list of events across the country here.

So Long Scott Walker ( January 9, 1943 – March 22, 2019)

Pop music legend and avant-garde icon, 60's pop crooner, visionary  Scott Walker has died at the age of 76. The news was announced by his label, 4AD on Monday morning. “For half a century, the genius of the man born Noel Scott Engel has enriched the lives of thousands”, reads a statement posted to the label’s website. “He has produced works that dare to explore human vulnerability and the godless darkness encircling it.” The cause of death it seems was cancer.
 Radiohead’s Thom Yorke yesterday said the “kind, gentle outsider” would be much missed.
The poet Ian McMillan described his “unforgettable” voice as being like “a cathedral lit by a sunset”.
Walker was best-known for his work with blue-eyed soul trio The Walker Brothers in the 1960s, but it was his late-career trilogy of challenging art-rock albums that defined his reputation as one of avant-garde music's most electrifying auteurs.
Walker was born Noel Scott Engel in Ohio on Jan. 9, 1943 and rose to fame in the United Kingdom as part of The Walker Brothers.Who were pretty much the '60s equivalent of a boy band, and for a while  were bigger than The Beatles. (The group's members were unrelated, and none were born with the name Walker.) With the help of Scott Walker's booming baritone, the act topped the British charts  with covers of "Make It Easy On Yourself" (1965) and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)" originally recorded by Frankie Valli.(1966), but the trio never achieved the superstardom in the United States that they enjoyed overseas.
Hating the pace and hollowness of pop-star life, so much that he called time on the band at their peak, having tried to escape it all by using drugs, holing himself up in a monastery and attempting suicide. 
Scott said: “It was a very bad period. I thought everyone was trying to destroy my life. I had this idea that the press were people who misquoted me, fans were the ones who would not stop ringing my phone, smashing my door and making me move flats.”
Scott relied on Valium and sleeping pills to cope with his paranoia. He dabbled with cocaine and tried marijuana but abandoned it because it hurt his throat.
In August 1966 he tried to kill himself, but was saved when the obsessive fans outside his apartment that he had been so desperate to escape alerted the authorities. He later reflected: “Pressure wasn’t the only reason.“Nobody has the right reasons. I don’t remember a thing.”
Later that year he escaped to Quarr Abbey, on the Isle of Wight. He intended to spend ten days taking part in Gregorian chanting. But even a monastery provided no escape.
 He said: “We had obsessive fans and they discovered the monastery and they were ringing the bell the whole time.“We were plagued, and eventually I had to leave.”
The Walker Brothers split in 1967 but Scott went on to sell millions of records as a solo act, even though the BBC banned his first single, Jackie, for its references to drugs and “phoney virgins”.
Scott went solo  releasing the first of four eponymously titled solo albums: Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and Scott 4 — the latter released under his birth name.These records  are rightly considered today to be masterpieces,  that turned him ino a different sort of star—a cult icon revered by people who crave lyrics of profound literacy and powerful, complicated emotions, as he took on darker and more experimental tones as Scott’s interests in Jacques Brel, European art and cinema, formative drone music, Gregorian chanting and themes of death, decadence and European culture and history grew.

By 1969’s ‘Scott 4’, his first entirely self-penned album and released under his birth name, he was playing chess with Death himself on the Bergman inspired ‘The Seventh Seal’ and dedicating a track to the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Though he was popular enough to be granted his own TV show Scott by this point, the album was a commercial disappointment, but is now considered his masterstroke, cited as a major influence on David Bowie , Radiohead, Nick Cabe among others.

Failing to chart 'Scott 4' sent Scott spiralling into booze and depression. On the orders of his record company he returned to making more commercial records but became more disillusioned with the music industry. He said: “I was acting in bad faith for many years during that time. I was trying to hang on. I should have stopped. I should have said, ‘OK, forget it’ and walked away. “I started going downhill, imbibing a little too much of everything.“I think I did temporarily go crazy, because I don’t remember the period at all very well.”
 A loner, Scott insisted he was not a recluse, but a solitary type, saying: “I like people but sometimes I can’t wait to get away and be on my own again.”
In the late Seventies The Walker Brothers reformed and put out three more albums. But it was not long before Scott disappeared into obscurity again after apparently becoming enraged by an out-of-tune trumpet while performing with his band on a cabaret tour in Birmingham. He never sang live again.
He released several albums, written by others, which failed to chart and which he described as “middle-of-the-road dross”. Much of the next few years was “sat in pubs watching guys play darts”.

Walker returned to other writers' songs for an eight-year stretch, resulting in four forgettable cover albums. But in 1978, Walker penned four of the songs on the regrouped Walker Brothers' final album, Night Flights, a noisy, avant take on the disco sound of the day. One of his credits on the album, an eerie track called "The Electrician," distinctly foreshadowed where Walker would wander on future recordings.
It was another eight years before Walker emerged again,interest in Walker’s output was renewed thanks to the Julian Cope-curated compilation Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker, released in 1981. Three years later, Walker returned with Climate of the Hunter, an avant-garde collection of fragmented and trance-like compositions lacking either titles or easily identifiable melodies.Though the album was again a commercial dud, Climate of the Hunter set the stage for Walker’s immense talents to be fully appreciated.
This album featured an assortment of studio musicians who — according to Walker in the documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man — recorded their parts without knowing the melodies, to ensure that there was "no chance of everyone swinging together." Unlike most of Walker's recordings from the previous 15 years, Hunter was critically acclaimed.
It would 11 more years before Walker completed his metamorphosis from pop crooner to avant-garde godfather. That would come on 1995's Tilt, a work of art that features bleak, atmospheric orchestrations, with touches of minimalist experimental music and industrial music. Tying it all together was Walker's inimitable voice, which he pushed to awkward, operatic heights. Tilt was a harrowing listen, but its uncompromising singularity attracted experimental music fans of all types.
Again, it would be 11 years before Walker would release new music when 2006's The Drift was released on 4AD, Walker again sent shockwaves through the avant-garde community. While Tilt was, in part, adored for its misdirection, The Drift was celebrated for its execution. As the second part of Walker's late-career trilogy, it took his ornate orchestration to new depths; every second of its nearly 70-minute runtime felt intentional and intricate.
 Scott, who never listened to his own records, explained that he “needed an undercurrent of violence and that came into my head” and added: “There’s darkness in everything I do.”
Even Scott believed his penultimate album, 2012’s Bish Bosch, was not one to listen to for hours on end. “No! No! You’ll end up dead if you do that,” he told one reviewer.
Walker then surprised many fans with Soused, a collaboration with experimental doom-metal droners Sunn O))), in 2014. Consisting of five songs, each circa ten minutes in length. Each consisting of Walker’s abstract, Beckett-like incantations. Each consisting of sweeping monolithic guitar drones. Truly incredible channeling stuff,peerlessly deep and complex . 
In his final years he produced Pulp’s final album, We Love Life, in 2001, was celebrated with a Proms concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 2017 and, last year, composed the score for the Brady Corbet-directed film Vox Lux, a musical drama starring Natalie Portman.
Much of his time, though, was spent out of the public gaze with long-term partner Beverly or doting on his granddaughter Emmi-Lee. He lived in Chiswick, West London, until his death.
He said: “I’m an outsider, for sure. That suits me fine. Solitude is like a drug for me. I crave it.” Speaking to The Guardian in 2018, Walker predicted that even his most far-afield work would eventually find an appreciative audience. "I'll be six feet under — but they will."
An absolute Musical genius, enigmatic, existential and intellectual. From teen idol  to avantgarde recluse , no one quite had  a career like him. The music world  currently mourns this uniquely challenging artist, whose seismic influence on popular culture will long be felt. So long Scott Walker.Rest in Peace.

 The Sun Ain't Gnna Shine Anymore - Walker Brothers

Make it wasy on yourself - Walker Brothers
 

Scott Walker - Jackie

 Scott Walker - Get Behind Me

Scott Walker - Dimple

 Scott Walker and  Sunn O))) - Lullaby

Free Lula Movement

The International Committee of Solidarity in Defence of Lula and Democracy in Brazil ( Portugese: Comitê Internacional de Solidariedade a Lula e à Democracia no Brasil), also known as the Free Lula Movement (Portuguese: Movimento Lula Livre), is a political and social movement composed of several Brazilian entities that advocates the release of the ex- Brazilian President Lula  from prison.
Lula has long proved a divisive figure , but the summary imprisonment has sounded the alarm for many people – even those who might not agree with his politics – about a danger to the fabric of Brazil’s democracy. How did a rising global power with a vibrant democracy plummet into a political abyss? 
Luís Inácio Lula da Silva was the most influential trade union leader in Brazil in the 1970s, and the most important leader of the ‘new unions’ emerging under the military dictatorship. These combative unions were centred in the consumer goods industries, state-owned enterprises and the civil service.
Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lula led some of the largest and most influential workers’ strikes in Brazilian history. He was also the leading founder of the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) in the early 1980s, spending several years as party president. But, despite media hype at the time, Lula was never a ‘socialist’ of any description. He was always a social democrat, and a negotiator: he is impressively good at reaching agreement across economic and political divides, and this quality was essential in his political trajectory.
He built the largest party of the masses in the country, he ran and lost three presidential elections, and he challenged the discrimination, the powerful upper class and the media, to become, in October 2002, the first worker elected president of Brazil. In eight years in office, he proved it was possible to change the destiny of the country.
Lula was favourite to win Brazil's 2018 presidential election but was barred from running by the country’s top electoral court, due to a controversial corruption conviction, which people  say was just a means of keeping him from returning to power.in a move condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee.
This was the outcome of an unprecedented judicial persecution already lasting four years: the most egregious case of lawfare in the world today. The affair is thought to have contributed to the sudden death of Lula’s wife Marisa. His bank accounts, savings and pensions have been blocked, rendering him destitute. Yet, no allegation has been proven, and this ruling comes courtesy of a judge overtly aligned with a right-wing party and with close contacts with the US Department of Justice, who also played the roles of prosecutor and jury
The result was the election of Jair Bolsonaro, an ultra-militaristic, right-wing, religious extremist who has pledged to continue imposing neoliberal economic policies that impact Brazil’s working class and poor while encouraging hatred and violence against LGBTQI people, Black people, poor, social movements and dissidents in general.Threatening civil liberties, the rights of minorities and Brazil’s fragile democracy. These dark forces are preventing Brazil from being a truly democratic country.
On January 24, 2018, an appeals court in Porto Alegre, Brazil confirmed a previous ruling against Lula of the Workers’ Party, sentencing him to over 12 years in jail.
On April 4, the Supreme Court rejected the habeas corpus presented by Lula’s defense. The habeas corpus would have permitted Lula to remain free while he appealed his criminal conviction. The following day, Sérgio Moro, the federal judge heading the Lava Jato investigation and the soon-to-be Minister of Justice in the Bolsonaro presidency, gave Lula until 5 p.m. of the next day to present himself to the Federal Police of Curitiba, a city in the south of Brazil, to begin his sentence. The declaration of the judge caused an uproar both within Brazil and internationally. Major international media organizations denounced the decision as a sign of the decay of Brazilian democracy.
For  many he is considered  to be a political prisoner whose continuing detention tarnishes Brazilian democracy. Persecuted and imprisoned by the Brazilian elite he remains a symbol for progressive forces in Brazil. He is backed by the Brazilian trade union movement he used to lead and the Workers’ Party he helped to found.His supporters also include numerous MPs, cultural figures, alongside foreign leftist leaders, such as Michelle Bachelet from Chile and François Hollande from France, as well as the Bolivian leader Evo Morales and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.
Please  help  this important campaign by adding your name here: https://brazilsolidarity.eaction.online/freeLula

Happy 100th Birthday Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti heretic, civil libertarian, painter, poet, political activist and countercultural icon,  celebrates his 100th birthday today, a living legend who in 1953, founded the City Lights bookstore. Ferlinghetti's mission for City Lights was aligned with his socialist politics: to break poetry out of its stuffy academic cage and make it accessible to all.
A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, he has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues. His work counters the literary elites definition of art and the artists role in the world. Though  imbued with the commonplace, his poetry cannot be simply described as polemic  or personal protest, for  it stands out for  his craftmanship, thematics and grounding in tradition. Born in Yonkers, New York in 1919 , an activist whose beats still goes on, still brave enough and daring to challenge people's beliefs.His life  has seen him act as a catalyst for numerous literary careers and for the Beat movement itself, publishing the early work of Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder etc.
Ferlinghetti’s own verse came to national, and later international attention, with his  first self-published poetry book, “Pictures of the Gone World” (1955),  which was followed by “Coney Island of the Mind” (1958). a  voice  fresh and optimistic, even as he denounced consumerism, capitalism and the deadening effects of conformity. Making poetry accessible to all, with his lucid views he has long watered my senses. His bookstore long now  has been an iconic literary institution that  has embodied social change and literary freedom. A truly remarkable person, Ferlinghetti urges poets and writers to “create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic… you can conquer the conquerors with words.”
Fame first came to Ferlinghetti when he and City Lights clerk Shigeyoshi Murao were arrested and put on trial in 1957 for publishing Allen Ginsberg’s “controversial Howl and Other Poems , drawing attention to te issues of free speech. In a landmark decision, Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that the Beat poet’s work was not obscene.Since then, Ferlinghetti’s activist voice has not softened. When speaking about President Trump, he is unequivocal: “Trump is an evil man,” he says. “He’s so dangerous. I think you’ve got to take this man seriously. I think he’s out to destroy democracy.”
He's grown "frail and nearly blind," writes Chloe Veltman at The Guardian in an interview with the poet this month, "but his mind is still on fire." Ferlinghetti “has not mellowed,” says Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, "at all."  but  he's  still got the edge, still got so much  force.His innovative poetics incorporating  slang, pop cultural references wry humour continue to examine the human condition.
Ferlinghetti  who has recenly released his latest book Little Boy,  is a consistently spirited and astute observer, spiking his vital, frank accounts with cultural, political, and personal insights both funny and stinging in language that is jazzy and lyrical. Soulfully open to the world and all its sorrows and wonders, Ferlinghetti affirms, in every line, the power of literature and art as essential navigational tools. Happy birthday  Lawrence Ferlinghett, whose voice  is still vital as ever, a giant who  long will inspire.

Poet as Fisherman -  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 As I grow older I percieve
Life has its tail in its mouth
and other poets other painters
are no longer any kind of competition
Its the sky that's the challenge
the sky that still needs deciphering
even as astronomers strain to hear it
with their huge electric ears
the sky that whispers to us constantly
the final secrets of the universe
the sky that breathes in and out
as if it were the inside of a mouth
of the cosmos
the sky that is the land's edge also
and the sea's edge also
the sky with its many voices and no god
the sky that engulfs a sea of sound
and echoes it back to us
as in a wave against a seawall
Whole poems whole dictionaries
rolled up in a thunderclap
And every sunset an action painting
and every cloud a book of shadows
through which wildly fly
the vowels of birds about to cry
And the sky is clear to the fisherman
even if overcast
He  sees it for what it is :
a mirror of the sea
about to fall on him
in his wood boat on the dark horizon
We have to think of him as the poet
forever face to face with old reality
where no birds fly before a storm
And he knows what's coming down
before the dawn
and he's his own best lookout
listening for the sound of the universe
and singing out his sightings
of the land of the living.

The World is A Beautiful Place - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen

and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling

mortician

Spinning Predators

Catchy jingles, striking slogans and subliminal commands
Cook up the tailor baked insidious mixture,
Guilefully iced with fairy fingertips
Cunningly crafted to engender the bite,
Cultivating tastes and erasing senses
Resetting fashion and exploiting the impressionable,
Crippling the mind with fabricated dreams
Epitomising the dysfunctional corporate culture.

Relentless blitz campaigns infiltrate young minds
Wafting of empty catchpenny blurb,
Magnetising and harvesting incipient souls
Channeling conception of lifelong habits,
Casting the spell of deluded grandeur,
Emblazing emblems and velvet voices,
Pull at the fraying parental purse strings,
Planting the seeds of the anticipatory crop.

As unscrupulous measures invite comparison
And polarizing attitudes sever relationships,
Advocating change and facilitating division
Endorsing the social class perimeters.
Glorifying the rich, shunning the poor
Harbouring hate and compromising principles,
Breeding contempt and empowering crime
Stimulating suicides and signing death warrants.

The spectre of materialism courts capitalism
Reinforcing elitism and widening the gap,
The opulent empires triumph and prosper
Home to rapacious fat cats and parsimonious millionaires,
Embroiled in a mission of propelling persuasion
Shooting sugar coated spears at the statistical melange,
Bagging vulnerable victims with wily schemes
Prey of the coercive stimulus of obsequious ladder climbers.

https://iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com/2019/03/21/spinning-predators-by-dave-rendle/

Spring Resurrects

(Spring Equinox Greetings,we llive in sad times but life can renew, this old poem bought back afresh)

I have prayed for miracles
That simply do not exist,
Perception tested, rearranged
Obscured by realities mist,
In the morning tinged with sadness

Tickling blossoms return to nurture,
The air, bright clear and glorious
Plough all depths of possibility,
Old spirits return, needing to inspect
Sit beside me once more and investigate,
Call my name as birds sing
Spring guiding lifeblood of existence,
Resurrecting in subtlest way
While daffodils dance, and snowdrops bow
Nature alive again, with scented  treasure,
Love resonating with every sound
Touched with truth, that needs no eye,
In Camouflaged ripples of time
Trees whisper secrets of surrender,
darkness dwindles, hope releases
Under open sky, dreams tapestry unfurls,
Pagan life forces of crescendo
Lift  us forwards to tomorrow.

Free Chelsea Manning Again

 

In 2013  the  courageous Amrican activist. human rights heroine and  US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning was given a 35-year prison sentence after she had leaked more than 700,000 confidential US State Department and Pentagon documents, videos and diplomatic cables about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. Mannings leak of military data was driven, she has said  by 'love of country and a sense of duty for others;'
In the documents that would become known as the Iraq War Logs and the Afghanistan War Logs, Manning exposed the military's standing orders to ignore the many allegations of physical and sexual abuse and torture of detainees perpetrated by the Iraqi Security Forces. She exposed contractors trafficking children in Afghanistan, and many instances in both countries where large numbers of civilian casualties went conveniently unreported between 2004 and 2009.
Perhaps the most notorious of the releases was a US military video that WikiLeaks titled 'Collateral Murder'. It showed the indiscriminate slaying of up to eighteen people in Baghdad on 12 July, 2007. The footage, taken from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, showed the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters journalist and his rescuers. A second Reuters staff member, employed as a driver and camera assistant, was also killed. Two young children, whose father was among those killed, were seriously wounded.

The video, together with the transcript of army exchanges during the indiscriminate US killings, shocked many around the world:

Let's shoot.
Light 'em all up.
Come on, fire!
Keep shoot, keep shoot. [keep shooting]
keep shoot.
keep shoot.
[...]
Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards.
Nice.

Were it not for Chelsea Manning’s courageous disclosures, certain U.S. military atrocities might have been kept secret. She brought to light secret U.S. drone strikes carried out in Yemen, as well as the fact that Egypt's State Security Investigation Service, a wing of the police force which has committed obscene human rights violations, received training from the FBI. Her revelations were also key to exposing U.S. approval of the 2009 coup against the elected government in Honduras and U.S. dealings with dictators and oligarchs across the Middle East, which helped spark the Arab Spring rebellions.

Prior to her arrest in 2010, Chelsea Manning wrote: “I want people to see the truth, regardless of who they are. Because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”

Manning, who’s now 31, spent a substantial amount of time in solitary confinement before her trial, in addition to years in prison afterward. She publicly came out as transgender just after she was sentenced, and she struggled with mental health while behind bars, resulting at one point in another week of solitary confinement. While in prison, Manning twice attempted to commit suicide.She was released in 2017, after her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama, two days before he left office following sustained pressure from activists.

In a move her defenders called "an outrageous government overreach and absolutely inhumane, on 8 March – International Women's Day – Manning was once again jailed after she refused to testify against WikiLeaks, and its founder Julian Assange, before a grand jury in Virginia, and was  incarcerated in the Alexandria, VA federal detention center. Her imprisonment can extend through the term of the Grand Jury, possibly 18 months, and the U.S. courts could allow formation of future Grand Juries, potentially jailing her again.

She said in a statement: 

'I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury.'Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.'I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.'

Chelsea Manning is widely considered to be an American hero for risking her own freedom to expose war crimes committed by the United States military in Iraq. Many compare her with Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon Papers exposing U.S. government lies about the Viet Nam War. Ellsberg calls Manning a patriot:
"She’s a very patriotic person. I know no one more patriotic, actually, willing to risk and even give her own freedom, her own life, in order to preserve our constitutional freedoms and the Constitution. I admired her then. I admire her now. And right now she’s refusing to take part in basically a conspiracy against press freedom in this country, led by the president of the United States and the secretary of state."

In an interview last week with Dennis Bernstein on Radio KPFA, John Pilger described the significance, and injustice, of the recent jailing of Chelsea Manning. The irony of her being imprisoned on International Women's Day was first noted, then Pilger pointed to the shameful silence from the women's movement, and other human rights activists:

'Where are they [human rights activists] on Chelsea Manning? Why were there only ten people outside the Court House? Where is Amnesty International? Where are the women's groups? Where are the LGBT groups? Where are the Pride people? Why aren't they massing in support of Chelsea Manning? Instead I see Chelsea Manning's story relegated in a sort of, "Oh well, that's almost inevitable this is going to happen." But this [...] is the most significant act of principle; an inspiration to all decent people; to democrats, to people who believe in justice. So where are the groups who have been very loud in their condemnation – rightly - of Donald Trump? Where are they? Why are we not hearing from them?'

The U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia is fooling itself if it thinks locking up Manning will compel her to testify. She has  bravely made  it clear that she has no interest in testifying in such a secretive setting. Her only offense is an unwillingness to cooperate with the same government that locked her up for exposing the kinds of horrors its military forces perpetrated in Iraq and  Afghanistan.
Chelsea Manning is a political prisoner who is being used as an example, her  imprisonment is cruel, punitive, criminal and totally unjustifiable. The White House wants to set a precedent for jailing whistle-blowers and journalists who publish information critical of the military and state apparatus. Even now, after her original sentence has been commuted, the state continues to pursue her and demands that she testify in secret hearings about events that she has already gone on the public record about . We  must demand the immediate and unconditional release of Chelsea Manning. There will always be a welcome for here in Wales.

Sign petition: https://bit.ly/2F9qU2X

Write to her

Chelsea Elizabeth Manning, A0181426
William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center
2001 Mill Road
Alexandria, VA 22314

She can NOT accept books or cards.
She can receive letters, as well as newspapers.