Thursday 1 August 2013

Sieze the the Day/ Carpe Diem


( written for Lammas Day,We have festivals of hope, of love and fertility, in honour of  death and the ancestors.this is one of gratitude, of celebrating what has been achieved, an affirmation of life, halfway between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox.
It is the harvest of the first grain. .
I'm wishing people joy amidst the chaos, roses as well as bread. )

In this spinning cauldron of time
hold on to any chance that breaks,
return again and again, to old ideas that glow
resurrect old threads, spread messages of survival
with ink and smiles, and a glint of hope.

Release sparkles of thankfulness
grenades filled with passion,
plant seeds of disobedience across the night sky
for flowers to bloom again and again 
as the day hums with  energies emergence.

Add some portions of light and shade
chuck in shards of possibility,
as autumn whispers in the corner
the future is shaped by borderless hands
working together towards transitions transformation.

As the earth rises into new foundations
allow gardens of independence to flourish,
echoes rising among the sweet rain,
take a walk into  rich, deep dimenson
avoid the obstacles, sieze the day.

Wednesday 31 July 2013

How Queen Elizabeth II profits from the arms trade



TEXT BY HEATHCOTTE WILLIAMS:

EDITING AND NARRATION BY ALAN COX

Queen Elizabeth II is one of the worlds richest women, worth £17 billion. Her investments in the arms trade includes firms that produce the uranium used in depleted uranium (DU) shells. The deployment of these shells by the US military in its attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, is believed to be the cause of a huge increase in cases of cancer and birth defects.

Monday 29 July 2013

Mick Farren (3/10/34 -27/7/13) R.I.P Street Fighting Man


Sad to hear of the passing of Mick Farren, who died after collapsing at the Borderline on Saturday  night. Forever associated with the counterculture, frequently getting arrested, and being at the heart of the struggle, he  was an anarchist and singer with the band the Deviants (a new line up, of which  he was playing with when he met his final curtain), white panthers from south London in the late 1960's.
Up to his final moments he was still attacking authority, agitating and spreading subversion as militant as ever. His blog was always a pleasure to look at.http://doc40.blogspot.co.uk/. A rock n'roller in the truest sense of the world, releasing a number of garage infused records, that still stand the test of time, sounding as fresh as ever, his 1978 album Vampires Stole My lunch a personal favourite, a right derailing of the senses, a demented classic.
He was also a fine writer of fantasy/horror writing, as well as being a critic, and cultural journalist , having witten for the N.M.E  and the International Times back in the day.
His autobiographical book  'Give the Anarchist a Cigarette '  is well worth checking out.
A truly iconic character, who lived his life to the full. He will be missed.


Mick Farren - The Battle for Grovenor Square


The Deviants - Let's loot the Supermarkets



The Deviants -Screwed Up


Mick Farren - I want a drink




Sunday 28 July 2013

G4S Profiteers of Palestinian Suffering



A British Company with it's fingers in wars everywhere. A London demonstration July 22 2013.

'After extracting confessions under torture, five of the Hares boys were charged with 25 counts of attempted murder even though there were only four people in the car. Apparently the military court had decided that 25 stones were thrown, each with an 'intent to kill'. The five boys - Ali Shmlawi, Mohammed Klieib, Mohammed Sileman, Tamer Souf and Ammar Souf are currently locked up in another G4S security facility - Magiddo prison where G4S provides the entire central command room.

If you look above you will catch a rare glimpse of teifidancer,out in the wild, who is at least free.

http://haresboys.wordpress.com/

http://www.inminds.com/caged/

Wednesday 24 July 2013

Ursula K. Le Guin (b.21/10/29) - The Dispossessed and some poems.

                                
                                 Picture by Benjamin Reed

American. One of my favourite writers  A daughter of an anthropologist and a writer. Organised and took part in non-violent demonstrations against atomic bomb testing and the war in Vietnam.Over the years her frequent critiques of  state  power, coupled with her rejection of capitalism and a fascination with alternative systems of political economy, place her within the anarchist tradition. An imaginative, questioning mind, now in her  eighties , still creating and pushing boundaries,battling the system, a fine writer of poetry too,which she has been writing since 1959. Her poems are both earthy and transcendent, humourous too with a bite, the fruits of of over a half century writing.
Ther following is  from one of her many science- fiction novels, The Dispossessed,  a very interesting book that explores how an anarchist society would work. A vivid portrait of an anarchist utopia. A society without  government, laws police, courts , corporations, money, salaries, profit, organised religion or private property. Shrevek is the first traveller from Anarres, a moon settled 200 years previously by anarchist exiles, to visit Urras, the mother planet. Atro is a physicist on Urras.
Following this I have included three fine poems from her.

Click on image to enlarge


' Atro had once explained too him how this was managed, how the sergeants could give the privates orders, how the lieutenants could, give the privates and the sergeants orders, how the liutenants could, give the privates and the sergeants orders, how the captains . . . and so on and so on up to the generals, who could give everyone else orders and need take them from none, except the Commander in Chief. Shevek had listenened with incredulous disgusr ' You call that organisation? he had inquired. ' Yu even call it discipline? But it is neither. It is a coercive mechanism of extraordinary inefficiency - a kind of seventh millenium steam engine! With such a rigid and fragile structure what could be done that was worth doing? This had given Atro a chance to argue the worth of warfarevas the breeder of courage and manliness and the weeder out of the unfit; but the very line of his argument had forced him to concede the effectivesness of guerillas, organised from below, self-disiplined. ' But that only works bwhen the people think they're fighting for something of their own, you know, their homes, or some notion or other,' the old man had said. Shrevek had dropped the argument. He now continued it, in the darkening basement among the stacked crates of unlabelled chemicals. He explained to Atro that he now understood why the army was organised as it was. It was indded quite necessary. No rational form of organisation would serve the purpose. He simply had not understood the purpose was to enable men with machine guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told to do so. Only he could not see where courage, or manliness, or fitness, entered in.'

Reprinted from: The Dispossesed (1974)



High Desert

Out there, there is another way to be.
There is a rising brightness in the rock,
a singing in the silence of the tree.
Something is always moving, running free,
as quick and still as quail move in a flock.
The hills out here know a hard way to be.
I habve to listen for it patiently:
a drumming vcanter slowing to a walk,
a flutter in the silence of a tree.
The  owl's call from the rimrock changes key.
What door will open to the flicker's knock?
Out here there is another way to be,
described by the high circles of a hawk
above what hides in silence in the tree.
The cottonwoods in their simplicity
talk softly on, as hidden waters  talk
an almost silent singing in the tree
that says, here is another way to be.

CARMAGNOLE OF THE THIRTIETH OF JUNE

I will grow fingernails
to scratch the scab
that stops the sore's lips on  the scream
the pusty whistle of escape
EEEEEeeeoooooo steamboat annie  comin roun the bend
I will grow fingernails
ten feet long and walk on them like stilts
& breathe steam out of my nostrils
& split boards with my eye
                                          HAI!
don't get near me with your martial arts
unless you want to get split right down between the balls
neat as a colone's chicken
                  I got Real Bad Vibes
I have neen talking to my father
who died in 1960
he's 101 years old not feeling very perky
he get's left out of things
locked out.
                I will grow fingernails
and claw down the Lubyanka
stone by stone by stone.
                                     Yeah. Sure.
Listen, my vibrations areso bad
they're Richter  8-7
look out there in Daly City.
My toenails are growing too.
i can dig up graveyards with them
and dance on the burning ground.
I use the urns for footballs
& my tongue hangs out a yard.
I am WUMMUN, ta doody boo-bah,
but even worse than that I'm me
and feeling mean
                           God's stomach
rumbles like a drum
when I jump on it
when I dance on his chest he snores
when I dance on his giut he farts,
when I dance on his cock he comes
when I dance on his eyes he wakes and all the stones fall down
                    ashes, ashes

all fall down.

                    Get up and dance, creation!

Coast

In bed in the fist salt light
with the east ear I hear birds
waking and with the right
Ocean breaking inward from the night.


        
image by Clifford Harper

poems can be found in:-

Finding my Elegy - New and Selected Poems
- Ursula  K. Le Guin






Saturday 20 July 2013

Uncertainty?


Where are we?
Are we moving forwards or back
a bottle of red or white,
get off here, or follow the crooked lines
go faster or stop.
Simplicity versus complexity
a long night, or a longer day,
are sounds outside stronger
than those within?
Is it time time to smile or cry
get drunk on words 
or high on sighs?
Wishes of  future promise
or abandonment in the past,
do you remain silent, and afraid 
or seize the day, carry on,
speak of things, or leave unsaid 
turn the keys or lose the locks?

Friday 19 July 2013

Stuff the Banks


The sun at least is smiling, but despite everything people have achieved throughout our history, society is more unequal now than it has ever been before. 
Whilst hundreds of thousands of people in the UK rely on foodbanks, and millions around the world starve, the wealthiest millionaires (& billionaires) continue to accumulate yet more wealth  - and mostly avoid giving any of it back in tax.While most of the country continues to tighten its belts bankers continue to recieve bonuses and subsidies. It is definitely a case of us not being in it all together.
There are now over half a million people in the UK going hungry, foced by the government's brutal and unnecessary cuts to make the choice between paying the bills or eating, feeding themselves or feeding their children. 
Tomorrow Saturday 20th July, UK Uncut invites you to help them transform  branches  of the big tax-dodger HSBC into a food banks, setting up UK Uncut style food banks inside branches of HSBC - shutting down hopefully the UK's biggest, bonus-munching, crisis-causing, tax dodging bank.
Am down in London at moment so will probably pop down to 133 Regent Street from 12pm, in an act of solidarity. Whilst people on benefits, and immigrants are daily attacked , it seems obvious to me who is reponsible, capitalism allowed to run amok, ruining peoples lifes. The Government smiles as it shifts the blame, does not direct it to any of their friends.
It's going to be hot tomorrow, but please try participating or in the least support the various Uncut actions across the country .Put on your shorts and  demand  that the government stops propping up the people who caused  this crisis of capitalism in the first place.
And if you can't get to a city,  wherever you are , try and  keep on pushing........

More  details and  of London action here:

http://www.ukuncut.org.uk 

https://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/1058