No Skin Off My Nose

I won’t ask you where you are if you don’t try and drive my car
Into some outcrop of social structure; some game of mindfuck trivia
I would share my time and smile awhile with beer in hand and joke on tongue
Mutual interests we could discuss without recourse to compete for intellectual status
Or social standing
But don’t expect me to flutter with concern
When I don’t conform to your obscure law
Causing clouds to blemish your delusional grandeur
And confusion to find purchase in your dogmatic shallows
I have no need for consumer arms race
I have no time to play games of social etiquette
I don’t care for a circle of friends who live in one another’s pockets
I don’t need that sort of assurance
I don’t have that kind of endurance
So spin your yarn and check your references
Bow and scrape in social deference
But don’t expect me to care
I have no problem keeping my own company
In my own familial tower of solitude
Where all that is, is by our own bidding
Where masks are removed and don’t require polishing
Where honesty is prerequisite and self-deception is pointless
Where the smile on my face is from laughing


Bear with me dear Far Queue loiterer: It seems I have not finished dealing with the origami man and his cardboard wife. Let’s hope that this will be the end of it; I shall say no more unless provoked by further encounters.

Alchemy Lesson No.13: Distillation

Irritation comes about when the world does not conform to expectations.
Exasperation and frustration ensue when change is not instituted to the causes of irritation.
Anger sweeps exasperation to one side as it seeks to know the reasons for everything; every dropped object or irrational machine; every minor infringement of common sense.
Rage is the edge of logic that does not find those answers.
Rage is a force which does not confine itself to causes.
Rage is a cause without rebels to support.
When awoken it seeks to rip the annoyance of logic’s limitations from the framework of existence dash it to the floor, and proceed to jump on it with the force of planets colliding.
Rage does not find solace in its actions; does not provide relief from irritation, frustration and anger, it is the loss of controlled anger; it is impossible to control once released from its box.
Rage is the split atom of human behaviour.
Rage is an instrument of catastrophic change.
Every decision made in the crucible of anger gives birth to a demon whose weapon is rage.
Rage is best directed at the inanimate world since when directed inward it is liable to devour the stomach lining; when directed at the animate, the living, it is liable to draw blood.
Rage is best directed against a system of thought – it may yet bring about change.
Irritation is a statement of intent.
Frustration is a complaint.
Anger is a question of moral indignation.
Rage is the answer to a question which cannot be asked.

The Difference Between Kneeling & Bending Over

In light of the polarisation of the major religions and the killing being carried out in the name of God/Yahweh/Allah/(insert name of deity here) and in the name of the almighty dollar that funds them, here are some words about religion:

“If you're doing business with a religious son-of-a-bitch, get it in writing. His word isn't worth shit. Not with the good lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.” - William S. Burroughs (1914-1997)

“At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.” - Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

“When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” - Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)

“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” - Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

“I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance.” - Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

“Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent people.” - Voltaire (1694-1778)

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

“No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.” - George W Bush (1946-Not a Moment Too Soon)

“The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden story. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.” - Frank Zappa (1940-1993)

“It is true that the Muslim world is not totally mistaken when it reproaches the West of Christian tradition of moral decadence and the manipulation of human life.” - Joseph Ratzinger (1927-Armageddon)

Still I Remain Tied to the Mast

Philippe Caza - The Inner Ear(1981)

And it is so:
That beside the path bloom flowers of alien design.
Flowers of pattern intricate and purpose apparently benign
Nanoscopic conversion-engines that eat all your words
And in exhaust fumes minute expel them as hope.
To be inhaled through the nostrils of a brave new morning

And they say:
Don’t step on the flowers daddy; look where you walking
Please let me see the wonders of which you’re talking
Love and experience the world and its ways
Night and its ghosts and the living of days
Don’t blow it away on the roll of loaded dice
And sentence us all to the layers of ice
That will float in the glass of the swirling galaxy
Shaken not perturbed by the return to normalcy
Spinning on without noticing the global catastrophe
That left no full stop no exclamation or apostrophe
That unimaginable void for the human mind to ponder
That ultimate zero the end of all wonder

And as for me:
I will bite back these tears
That well in my foolish boy heart
that bypass all of my portentous fears
and tug at the place where the regrets start
the place where I am born, where your beauty is made
the place that struggles with power’s slow fade
For nostalgia that eats like rust on the bone
Of a homesick fool for a land not his own
I’ll fall from that narrow path into your arms
And there will I rest ‘till the storm water calms

Reasons to be Cheerful

Richard Stipl - The Sleep of Reason (2002)

• Elephants painted red in protest of poverty
• The price of petrol to propel our machines past the next election
• The colour of democracy red or blue
• The smell of your money in a virtual bank
• That steak hacked from the back of a mechanical cow, sacred no longer
• Battery hens that light up your meal
• e-coli; salmonella; flesh-eating burger
• The twinkling eye of your neighbourhood dealer
• GlaxoSmithKlineWelcomePfizerViagra
• Aborting the foetus of rapist paternity
• Racist legislation parading as virtue
• Cannon-fodder ghettos for the war on terra
• Sniffing the glue that holds us together
• DNA codes on the edge of whatever
• Drinking the juice from forbidden fruit
• Chastising children for stepping on cracks
• Pontificating Pontiff falling in line
• Hollywood activist saving the world
• The second (and healthier) coming of Ronald MacDonald
• The morality of Christian capitalism
• The morality Judeo expansionism
• The mobilisation of religious armies
• The yellow peril
• The poverty of culture in the face of the dollar
• The face on the dollar
• 24 things on television tonight
• Propaganda parading as entertainment (you know what I’m talking about Jack Bouer)
• Soap operas teaching our children to live
• Coronation Street corner preachers care in the community
• The small print on contracts with the devil
• The bar code on your soul
• The bar room philosopher who always knows better
• The armchair philosopher with a head full of butter
• The future
• The past
• The state of the nation
• You and me
• Alienation

Alchemy Lesson No.71: Evaporation

Here I go courting that melancholy muse
With eyes super-glued to my surrealist shoes
Whose laces are ceremoniously welded together
In an attempt to be cynical… yeah whatever

Yup, those idiot shoes on bright new wheels
Trundle along as the long week decrees
that Monday steals what Friday deals
and the managers rattle their captured keys
We deep cleanse our conscience with moral decay™
Never averting eyes from the newsreader’s array
of shiny new suits and dazzling dentistry
lies and more lies and vacuous piss-artistry
We dig our fingers into the arms of the chair
and curl our toes through imagining hair
Surround ourselves with aluminium* foil
to ward off the gamma from the paranoid coil
that sits behind the screen of the propaganda machine
and reports to BigDaddy all our thoughts obscene.
All our underwear unclean and behind-ear green
Uncrossed golf tees and polka-dot eyes
Pulled faces in the wind-change carnival disguise
Open scissor legs mirror grandma’s apple-pie demise
Crossed fingers broken in national security’s vice
Hooded head heathens detained without trial
Oil stained corpses on the golden mile
Islamo-fascists and right-wing beatniks
Altruistic celebrities and militant peaceniks
Satanist pope Marilyn Manson Messiah
Testicles burned with General Electric wire
Torture conducted by Peaches and Cream
Breast-fed on TV and Disney’s bad dream
Legal decrees to protect the already untouchable
Wire-tapped phones douse the extremely combustible
little man-in-the-street with his trusting ways
Unable to believe these are the end of our days
of prosperous growth on the wave of deceit
now melting like wax in a heap at his feet

Now dazed and confused I remove my clown shoes
Kick the muse in the teeth and shove my fears underneath
the rug in the hall in the hope I won’t fall
between the cracks of sorrow and dreams of tomorrow
Where everything could be just the same as today
And I won’t have to beg them to come out and play...

...and where love would await me as it does every day.

*Al-You-Min-Ee-Oom!

Equals

Golden Blind Man - Darren Levant

When the eclipse of mind over body’s desire does threaten to bring about the end of the world.
When the wind that blows from knowledge to nowhere causes icicles to form in thought’s dusty corners.
When you stumble from the barn of night’s dark whispers with blood in your throat choking fox fur flying in the henhouse haunting.

When the planets align causing water to rise
and those borderline witches their shrieking reprise.
When your black-lined etchings begin to reveal something darker
than the inside of your head or the pockets of your Parka.
When the dragon that coils in the base of your spine
threatens to rise and overcome all that is mine.

Then can we talk as equals undefined
by careers or possessions or diamonds mined.
Then can we see the other’s beauty unfold,
revealed in the light of all that is told.

Never Listen To Electric Guitars

I am not a music critic, quite the contrary, and I wouldn’t ever want to be known as one.
Neither have I aspirations of becoming a music intellectual (or any kind of intellectual for that matter) so don’t worry k-punk your turf is safe.

1.2.3.4.Hit it..!

The Devil Plays Rock ‘n’ Roll (Death by Sexy is the meaning of life.)

Not Death Metal: Eagles of Death Metal

Everytime you get to thinking that rock 'n' roll is dead (finally, really, no way back now) some bunch of misfits hit you in the gut with it.
I don’t know how tongue in cheek this album is, since these guys aren’t teenagers., but it manages to be cool and amusing, cheeky and wild all at once.
If the teenager in you was ever enthralled by QOTSA's video for Go With The Flow you will appreciate this.
Gone are all attempts at navel gazing, gothic posing, credibility seeking – this is rock and roll at the Stooges level. But it's Iggy without the angst.
In a country that is now unashamedly censorious of it people, these guys have managed to get away with it by stripped away all evidence of questioning authority, or of walking the thin line between what is and what is not acceptable. In fact they have used the one left-over acceptable rebellion from the 50's and 60's: sex.

I love subversity on any level – but the subtle/obvious subversity exhibited here is bye-the-way, since this lot kick you in the balls and make your body listen.
This is teenage rock ‘n’ roll for all generations – a wide demographic – but it works beyond any cynical thoughts of marketing since it isn’t marketed – not as far as I can see anyway.

Jesse"The Devil"Hughes - Republican

In a weird contradiction, they manage to incorporate into this stripped down frame an element of tex-mex psychedelic gospel. It makes your head nod, your head spin; your body move.
This is the devil’s music. Christian fundamentalists (not to mention all of the other kinds of fundamentalists) may well find this as objectionable as they find the evil Harry Potter trash.
They will you know… well if they can take the time to think about it they will…
Put it this way, some uptight-guilt-ridden-middle-aged-man-with-incestuous-thoughts-about-his-daughter (anybody remember him) is bound to object to this smut.
And as the last hum fades and the room goes quiet, you go back Jack and do it again 'cos this is nothing more than teenage sex… and what other requirements can there possibly be for rock ‘n’ roll.

-------------------------------

My AK-Rig Goes Boom

Blue Lines was launched in the hazy years of daddy Bush’s Desert Storm after famously having their name curtailed to Massive by their record company for fear of being seen to glorify the 1991 yanqui assault on Iraq.
It was a launch that showed a new view; a non-egocentric vision of music’s future; invisible magicians behind the music.
Unfinished Sympathy, both track and video, became an immediate classic – hitting a visual and sonic vein in the collective unconscious.

Not content with being the platform for the careers of a number of vocalists – and, on Protection, introducing the wonderful Tracy Thorn to a new generation of listeners – they grace us with music that speaks directly to the soul; is both non-aggressive and cool; says it all by explaining nothing at all.

Mezzanine hit hard, a hole below the waterline; brutal and bleak, spiky and arachnoid, an album that takes no prisoners, an album that took Massive Attack, unbelievably, to a deeper level.

And then there is the whittled-down-to-perfection 100th Window.
A wall of sound that is at once minimal and complexly layered, fragile, subliminal, dark and frightening, it murmurs at the edge of your awareness, leaving little barbs in your consciousness, compelling you to return.
And when you do, you’ll find the one you love is you.

Massive Attack is the soundtrack to the end of the world; being neither whimper nor bang, but rather a deep tug of regret.

The Far Queue awards Massive Attack 1 000 000 stars (and 1 universe) for services to the soul.

The Fifth Square

Bent of Mind - Tony Cragg

The Board:
In a black and white world will the number of your square be decided by other hands,
hands no different to yours; five fingers on the end of an arm?
Hands with access to the gilded edge of the world.
Cold hands, warm hands, hands that hold, hands that push or shove
Unskilled hands for calloused heart, hands without love, hands in glove
with the machinations of empire that grind away at the bones of those who labour
…and know little return.

The 1st Square:
And in your square, shared with so many others, do you turn to the one standing next to you and call him fool?
Do you stand on his toes while smiling in his face?
Do you climb on the back of those who would bend?
Will you accept your place on the square without ever questioning the board’s purpose, without seeing the square adjacent?

The 2nd Square:
And you knights on the next square, standing isolated, ostracised and wondering why.
Graced with assault by legislation backed and cold hands directed so that those who would leave their allocated square are beaten into shape.
Riot control and criminal conviction by quota and paperwork performed.
Shoulder to shoulder on your uniformed and crowded square, jostle for position, what brings you here?
What misguided need to oversee, to enforce?

The 3rd Square:
And you who by fair means or foul has managed to pay for your place in this particular square; who jostle for position in front of cameras and hacks; you with your plastic enhancements and genocide bodies – how different is your square?
Do you climb over the bodies of those who went before?

The 4th Square:
And you who occupy this space by birthright raised or corruption gained; your path cleared by those in the squares that you dare not enter for fear of being ripped limb from limb by the angry mob; squares that do not exist for you other than to exploit.
What worms do writhe beneath your skin; surrounded as you are by high walls electric where you only have yourself to consult and where your view is filtered by distance and conspiracy?

Triangle (Judgement/Reward):
Don’t kid yourself, there is no redemption for persistent ignorance in the face of overwhelming enlightenment.
The path you walk is yours alone – it is your responsibility to find out.
There is no heaven for martyred killers.
There is no hell for martyr killers.
You will not be forgiven by history; you will merely be forgotten or written out…
…providing, of course, that your hands leave us with a history to write.

Circle (The 5th Square):
Theorist; Anarchist; Atheist; Speaker in Tongues
Individualist; Philanthropist; Hippie-Beatnik; Writer of Wrongs
Questioner; Curious Kat; Witch and Discredited Intellectual
Shouting out loud with words ineffectual
What the fuck are you doing thinking you’re special?
Get on with the job of blurring the borders
between black and white square
Between requests and orders
shout louder; let us know you are there.

View From The Treetops (13 Sept '06)

Cloak & Dagger

Keep Your Eye on the Money

The increasingly desperate and dark dealings that constitute the US’s foreign policy with regards to Venezuelan Oil are discussed in this ZNet article by by Federico Fuentes.

-------------------------------

We Await Silent Trystero’s Empire

It’s official: the next offering from the man who gave us Oedipa Maas and (my personal favourite) Benny Profane, is due for release in October.

Amazon offers this discription – apparently from the man himself:

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.
With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.
As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.
Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.
Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.
--Thomas Pynchon

-------------------------------

Destroy All Thy Army

I Think Mr Newton Has Had Enough...

Patriotism or Peace
By Leo Tolstoy

Strange is the egotism of private individuals, but the egotists of private life are not armed, do not consider it right either to prepare or use arms against their adversaries; the egotism of private individuals is under the control of the political power and of public opinion. A private person who has a gun in his hand takes away his neighbour’s cow, or a desyatina(1) of his crop, will immediately be seized by a policeman and put into prison. Besides, such a man will be condemned by public opinion - he will be called a thief and robber. It is quite different with the states: they are all armed - there is no power over them, except the comical attempts at catching a bird by pouring some salt on its tail - attempts at establishing international congresses, which, apparently, will never be accepted by the powerful states (who are armed for the very purpose that they might not pay attention to any one), and, above all, public opinion, which rebukes every act of violence in a private individual, extols, raises to the virtue of patriotism every appropriation of what belongs to others, for the increase of the power of the country.

Open the newspapers for any period you may wish, and at any moment you will see the black spot - the cause of every possible war: now it is Korea, now the Pamir(2), now the lands in Africa, Now Abyssinia, now Turkey, now Venezuela, now the Transvaal. The work of the robbers does not stop for a moment, and here and there a small war, like an exchange of shots in the cordon, is going on all the time, and the real war will begin at any moment.

If an American wishes the preferential grandeur and well-being of America above all other nations, and the same is desired by his state by an Englishman, and a Russian, and a Turk, and a Dutchman, and an Abyssinian, and a citizen of Venezuela and of the Transvaal, and an Armenian, and a Pole, and a Bohemian, and all of them are convinced that these desires need not only not be concealed or repressed, but should be a matter of pride and be developed in themselves and in others; and if the greatness and wellbeing of one country or nation cannot be obtained except to the detriment of another nation, frequently of many countries and nations - how can war be avoided?

And so, not to have any war, it is not necessary to preach and pray to God about peace, to persuade the English-speaking nations that they ought to be friendly toward one another; to marry princes to princesses of other nations - but to destroy what produces war. But what produces war is the desire for the exclusive good for one's own nation - what is called patriotism. And so to abolish war, it is necessary to abolish patriotism, and to abolish patriotism, it is necessary to it is necessary first to become convinced that it is an evil, and that is hard to do. Tell people that war is bad, and they will laugh at you: who does not know that? Tell them that patriotism is bad, and the majority of people will agree with you, but with a small proviso: "Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but there is also another patriotism, the one we adhere to." But wherein this good patriotism consists of no one can explain. If good patriotism consists in not being acquisitive, as many say, it is nonetheless retentive; that is, men want to retain what was formerly acquired, that is, by violence and murder. But even if patriotism is not retentive, it is restorative - the patriotism of the vanquished and oppressed nations, the Armenians, the Poles, Bohemians, Irish, and so forth. This patriotism is almost the very worst, because it is the most enraged and demands the greatest degree of violence.

Patriotism cannot be good. Why do not people say that egotism can be good, though this may be asserted more easily, because egotism is a natural sentiment, with which a man is born, while patriotism is an unnatural sentiment, which is artificially inoculated in him?

It will be said: "Patriotism has united men in states and keeps up the unity of the states." But the men are already united in states - the work is all done: why should men now maintain an exclusive loyalty for their state, when this loyalty produces calamities for all states and nations? The same patriotism which produced the unification of men into states is now destroying those states. If there were but one patriotism - the patriotism of none but the English - it might be regarded as unificatory or beneficent, but when, as now, there are American, English, German, French, Russian patriotisms, all of them opposed to one another, patriotism no longer unites, but disunites. To say that, if patriotism was beneficent, by uniting men into states,, as was the case during its highest development in Greece and Rome, patriotism even now, after 1,800 years of Christian life, is just as beneficent, is the same as saying that, since ploughing was useful and beneficent for the field before the sowing, it will be useful now, after the crop has grown up.

It would be very well to retain patriotism in memory of the use which it once had, as people preserve and retain the ancient monuments of temples, as mausoleums stand, without causing any harm to man, while patriotism produces without cessation innumerable calamities.

What now causes the Armenians and the Turks to suffer and cut each others throats and act like wild beasts? Why do England and Russia, each of them concerned about her share of the inheritance from Turkey, lie in wait and not and not put a stop to the Armenian atrocities? Why do the Abyssinians and Italians fight one another? Why did a terrible war come very near breaking out on account of Venezuela and now on account of the Transvaal? And the Chino-Japanese War, and the Turkish, and the German, and the French wars? And the rage of subdued nations, the Armenians, the Poles, the Irish? And the preparation for war by all the nations? All that is the fruits of patriotism. Seas of blood have been shed for the sake of this sentiment, and more blood will be shed for its sake, if men do not free themselves from this outlived bit of antiquity.

C'est prendre ou laisser, as the French say. If patriotism is good, then Christianity, which gives peace, is an idle dream, and the sooner this teaching is eradicated, the better. But if Christianity really gives peace, and we really want peace, patriotism is a survival from barbarous times, which must not only be evoked and educated, as we do now, but which must be eradicated by all means, by preaching, persuasion, contempt and ridicule. If Christianity is the truth, and we wish to live in peace, we must but only have no sympathy for the power of our country, but must even rejoice in its weakening, and contribute to it. A Russian must rejoice when Poland, the Baltic provinces, Finland, Armenia, are separated from Russia and made free; and an Englishman must similarly rejoice in relation to Ireland, Australia, India, and the other colonies and cooperate in it, because the greater the country, the more evil and cruel is its patriotism, and the greater is the amount of the suffering on which its power is based. And so, if we actually want to be what we profess, we must not, as we do now, wish for the increase of our country, but wish for its diminution and weakening, and contribute to it with all our means. And thus must we educate the younger generations: we must bring up the younger generations in such a way that, as it is now disgraceful for a young man to manifest his coarse egotism, for example, by eating everything up, without leaving anything for others, to push a weaker person down from the road, in order to pass by himself, to take away by force what another needs, it should be just as disgraceful to wish for the increase of his country's power; and as it now is considered stupid and ridiculous for a person to praise himself, it should be considered stupid to extol one's nations, as is now done in various laying patriotic histories, pictures, monuments, textbooks, articles. Sermons, and stupid national hymns. But it must be understood that so long as we are going to extol patriotism and educate the younger generations in it, we shall have armaments, which ruin the physical and spiritual life of our nations, and wars, terrible, horrible wars, like those for which we are preparing ourselves, and into the circle of which we are introducing, corrupting them with our patriotism, the new, terrible fighters of the distant East.

In reply to a prince's question on how to increase his army, in order to conquer a southern tribe which did not submit to him, Confucius replied, "Destroy all thy army, and use the money, which thou art wasting now on the army, on the enlightenment of thy people and on the improvement of agriculture, and the southern tribe will drive away its prince and will submit to thy rule without war."

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910, Lev Nikolayevich, Count Tolstoy), is the Russian author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Later in life he formulated a unique Christian philosophy which espoused non-resistance to evil as the proper response to aggression, and which put great emphasis on fair treatment of the poor and working class. Tolstoy's books Confession (1884), What Then Must We Do? (1886), and most notably The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894) outline his radical revision of traditional Christian thinking and were important in winning over Gandhi to the idea of non-resistance to evil.

(1) A desyatina is a Russian unit of land measurement, about 2.7 acres
(2) The Pamir is a mountainous region of central Asia, located mainly in Tajikistan and extending into NE Afghanistan and SW Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China; called the "roof of the world."

This reading is from The Class of Nonviolence, prepared by Colman McCarthy of the Center for Teaching Peace, 4501 Van Ness Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20016 202/537-1372

**UPDATE**
Larry has also posted on non-violence over at Tampon Teabag

The Reign of Terror - 5 Years On

Okay, so who could not be aware of the date today? A day that will go down in my version of history as the day the US missed a golden opportunity to make the world a better place.
At the risk of upsetting those citizens of the great beast (a risk I’m willing to take) I would like to suggest that America should have taken those planes as messages; as a wake up call to the effect that the foreign policy practiced by their administration, both Republican & Democratic, was (and even more so now – is) having on the world – especially on those parts of the world where US and European interests extend no further than resources.
Clinton’s forays into the Balkans and Central Africa were no more that dummy runs for the big one – weapons needed testing, troops and propaganda boosted. Of course their little embarrassment at the hands of the Somali gangsters should also have been a message on how incompetent the US military and administration are in analytical situations.
Much of this stems from the practice of national isolationism; their notorious geographic ignorance and most importantly the sanitised cowboy-in-a-white-hat version of world history coupled with the belief that if you throw enough guns and money at a situation, you will succeed.

Just as it should be evident that Bush's election victory in 2000 was rigged, so should it be questioned as to what things might have been like if Gore had got in.
(I defy anyone to watch Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and not reflect on the chasm of ideological and moral differences between these two men. )
It should by now be evident that the Cheyney/Bush/Rumsfeld war on terror is a lie. As is the war on drugs – but that’s another layer of the onion that continues to make our eyes water.
There are many questions around what is now accepted as 9-11, most notably the plane that flew into the pentagon – questions that should be held in mind when taking stock of the way things went in the aftermath of ‘9-11’
It should be common knowledge that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attacks on the WTC.
It should also be common knowledge that both Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden achieved power, one way or another, with the overt and covert assistance of various US administrations and agencies.
It should be understood by now that the climate of international hysteria around al Qaeda is no more that the latest cycle of crowd control through fear and the threat of terrorist attack (or terraced attack as some insist on pronouncing it) is no where near as high as the media flunkey’s report. Then again some people still fear the threat of communism.
It should be quite clear by now that Israel is no more than the US’s colony in the middle east, a convenient Rottweiler that as a pup was been beaten repeatedly with the hatred of ‘a-rabs’ in order that it may be used to further the quest for a subservient oil producer by providing diversionary focus while the ‘contractors’ do their thang in the Middle East.
Now that unhappy factions in friendly Saudi Arabia have bitten the hand that fed it, it has become increasingly ‘necessary’ for the American Cartels to subjugate at least one (and if possible all) of the major ME oil producers and at the same time have clear access to those oil producers via the Mediterranean, hence the demonising of Syria and Iran.

The Spoils of War?

Perhaps the Bush dynasty’s shady past should also be more widely publicised in order that we may be able to make clearer (and informed) judgement on the man’s trustworthiness.
And what of Cheney, the man who, I believe, is the power behind the throne; the man who, when directed to choose a vice-presidential nominee, chose himself; what of his past?

Unfortunately for those who lost family in the events of September 11 2001, it appears at the moment that their loss was in vain – nothing has been learned and those in power will continue their filthy agenda regardless of the continuing losses incurred by those they claim to represent.

There are dissenting voices within the US, the propaganda machine continues in its attempts to discredit the likes of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Alexander Cockburn, Cindy Sheehan, to name but a few, while some, like Michael Moore have already been successfully discredited by the stupid white men. Michael Moore's Farenheit 911 remains a powerful work and should not be dismissed. The US has a long history of civil uprising against the corruption of those in power, the oppression of races and lower economic groups, the exploitation of workers (internal and external) and the blatant misuse of power. It is up to the American people now to rid themselves of the ugly growth that their government has become, a government that exhibits all of the symptoms of corruption listed above.
I saw the quote recently “ It doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in”
The environment that breeds this attitude is the Two Party State in which both parties are effectively factions of the same gang and simply take turns in exploiting the position of government while blaming the other for the state of the nation. A pot and kettle situation where no water is ever boiled.
It is time for the American people (and the British too) to get rid of this bipolar government and vote for a third party – one which has not been corrupted by the misuse of the privilege of being elected and holding power for long periods.
The time of apathy must end else we’re all doomed to a bleak future on the downward spiral to the self-fulfilling Armageddon.

**UPDATE Sept 13**
For further non-aligned reading on this year's celebrations... erm I mean commemorations see Lenin's post 'Global terrorist organisation commemorates terrorist atrocity'

Subliminal Message

Afro-Celtic groove on the Sound System - A Groove that questions the complacency of habit. A Groove that bypasses the genetic detectives’ flatfooted work; short cuts the in-betweens; connects the scars of generations, like join-the-dots through the layers of our ape brains – pre-recorded there in synaptic paths layered like the skins of a mutant onion.

Celt is the child that remembers home but knows not the way.
Celt is the child who yet allows the music in.
Celt is the soul that questions the music for clues; that laughs at his fears when the moon does her duty.
Celt is the one who most wants to return to the warmth and the vastness of space and the dome of the sky.
Celt is the child who remembers his name.

Africa is the great mother from whom we are all spawn.
Africa buried beneath the rubble strewn by her children who went back to show off their big-boy skills. Skills learned in the brutality of deserts traversed and bitter mountain ranges crossed.
Skills learned in the places where the tribes meet and interact; the quest for land; the quest for knowledge and the misuse of power gained over many.
Africa reels; those who remain do so because they must, despite the fact that everything they knew has been ripped and shredded in the meteoric introduction to 'progress' and the subsequent desertion when the plunderers had drank their fill at her breast - now only good to bleed her black blood from festering wounds.
Africa forgotten, the bastard children squabble yet over other lands; ignoring the lessons of the mindful.
Some squabble like hungry ape ancestors over a nut; the nut bound in the glory of the absentee fathers Yahweh and Allah
Some squabble for an unshared portion of what should be abundant to all; in the name of the greatest god, more fearsome than all – Greed.
And yet, the great mother still sings us to sleep, her music and her soul are imbedded in the world.
She lingers in the corners of our psyche; she is the source of all the stories; source of all our fears.
She tells us that our bodies are instruments of beauty – we dance to that rhythm more comfortably when we are without steps to learn; without disco; without the waltz; without the mamba.
She reminds us that those bodies may be played like flutes and drums and wailing horns; each an instrument in Africa’s orchestra.
Breathe her in, the soul of Africa that questions the wisdom of ‘More’; the soul that entreats us to slow down and enjoy the journey for what have we gained if we cannot enjoy the fruit of our intellectual growth from survivor to controller; from hunted to hunter
The soul that begs us not to blow it all away with nuclear dust up speedway nostril.
The soul that begs us to reconsider the laws of gun.

Paper Cuts

don't you understand, and don't you look about
I'm trying to take nothing from you
so why should you act so put out for me?
- Sixto Rodriguez

It might sound strange to compare a person with a piece of folded paper.
It might sound strange but I don’t care, for I have met the origami man and his cardboard wife.
The origami man is folded very neatly along lines of class and twisted social etiquette.
Internally those folds are sharp and complicated, resembling flattened out twists of factual logic that have no bearing on any sense of humanity or compassion.
The origami man totes up debit and credit of favours given and favours repaid – endevouring always to be the one owed.
The origami man is slave to facts and figures, lists and league tables; so much so that the truth is often obscured; his seeking eyes seeing nothing save the totals on the scoreboard.
The origami man is deeply disappointed by the lack of appreciation received from his fellow man – specifically from those of perceived lower social standing – of course to be unappreciated by those above him is to be expected – they are, after all, of higher standing by virtue of career, education or birthright.
The origami man knows his place (and resents it)
The origami man carries the weight of his class burden to the far reaches of the empire where, rather than shed this burden and explore new territory, he continues in the belief that here, at least, he has higher standing than the natives; here he may mix with the higher ranks by virtue of being a fellow countryman.
The origami man dreams of becoming the gentleman he always believed himself to be.
The origami man works hard at achieving nothing more than that which he already had.

The origami man’s wife is made of cardboard.
Not the decorative kind of cardboard used for home-made greeting cards of the vegetarian ethos, but the utilitarian kind of cardboard used to protect fragile objects in transit.
The cardboard woman keeps herself firmly inside the box.
The cardboard woman inquires after your health; your past; your beliefs; the colour of your underwear.
The cardboard woman ventures no information unless specifically asked, and then delivers it in minimal detail.
The cardboard woman appears quite harmless and ecologically sound until you snag yourself on one of the staples she uses to keep herself together.

A Science Fiction

5000 Year Old Cave Painting - Kimberley, Austalia

Once I dreamed of an open plain where the wind blew futile with nothing to howl about.
For what use is a hero without an audience? His white horse will not thank him for those spur scars on its flank.
The wind and weather-worn wood of the frontier outpost offers no comfort for those who died, abandoned by the system of supply and demand.
Even those wild desert dwellers; four-legged reptilian - outcast species evolved to survive by virtue of their singular tenacity – even they do not thank us for progress that defines them and places them in boxes that glorify our species as master of all.
Even they will suffer our ascent to godhead when we open the smallest of those boxes and unleash our knowledge.

If perhaps there is life on other planets; other systems; other plains or planes – will they bear witness to our spectacular finale; a cosmic lesson at least on the dangers of arrogance?
Will some form of alien astronomer; some light years hence; ponder the demise of a once blue world; perhaps theorising on the nature of the extraterrestrial force that would turn a planet into glass?
And on the dark side of his world would there be room for those who disagreed; those who question his telescopic quest? Would they plot his downfall, quoting revolutionary slogan, and question his reasons for looking so far?

And what minute percentage; what malleable mass; can be driven like cattle to do their ugly duty, to justify slaughter with slogans and political manoeuvrings and never comprehend their positions to be so insignificant as to never even be credited as pawns in the game.

Once I dreamt of an open plain where silence was all; where the grains of crystal sand held no clue to what went before.

Camera Obscuring

Jams O’Donnell recently posted a well researched piece on the manipulation of perception via photography, particularly the ethical considerations of posed war photos by famous photographers, a notable example being the iconic ‘raising the flag on Iwo Jima’

The photograph has come to represent to us a short-cut to the facts, we believe what we see since it is reported to be true and the evidence is right there in front of us.

The photograph, through chemical process (more recently digital-electrical process) and manipulation of light through a hole is little more than modern man’s equivalent to cave painting.

What should be obvious to anyone who has ever taken a photograph is that fact that the camera offers a limited vision of reality.

There are a number of factors to remember:

Intrinsic in the act of pointing a camera is the limitation of framing. For example, most photographs of the Pyramids of Giza exclude the proximity of Giza’s encroaching buildings.

The camera should be viewed as a visual pen, especially when used to portray ‘news’. Just as words are manipulated to serve political/propaganda/poetic & literary ends, so too can pictures be manipulated by cropping; posing; filters and numerous other darkroom tricks.

The camera does not capture reality any more than Hollywood captures morality. A photograph is a two dimensional rendition of a four dimensional experience with all four dimensions being distorted in one way or another:
- Dimensions x (width) and y (height) are now limited to the size of the photograph or image on your screen.
- Dimension z (depth) is transposed into the realms of
illusion.
- Time (a dynamic dimension) becomes static.

Given the above, you would be hard-pressed to describe a photograph as being anything more than a representation of reality; an illusion; a magician’s trick.

With the advent of ever higher quality digital cameras and photo editing software, we, the amateurs, with a little practice, can now achieve what before could only be achieved in the darkroom by professionals. Cropping; lighting and masking, we can now manipulate with the best of them.

When preparing my recent ‘View From The Treetops’ post I excluded everything bad about the town where I live – no houses or people, with the exception of a snippet of philosophical graffiti, only green landscape.
Those who viewed/commented on the post were misled into believing that my walk constituted lush greenery, solitude and quiet.
Let the following go some way to balance that particular manipulation.

A House Afraid of Meeting the Street




The Street




God will See you at the Times Shown



Wha?



Art (Allegedly)



Water Held Captive