Saturday 5 February 2011
Thursday 3 February 2011
Robert Tressell (nee Croker/Noonan) 17/ 4/1870- 3/2/11. A Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.
One hundred days ago today Robert Tressell died aged 41 of tuberculosis.His book 'the ragged trousered philanthropist' still gives me inspiration. It has been a primary influence on a lot of my outlook. A powerful book that to this day still has social significance, still has relevance.A story of the most important struggle in history, the struggle between the underprivileged and their oppressors. So on this day I remember him with this extract. May his words continue to echoe on down through the years. If you haven't read it I strongly recommend that you do. Essential.
" Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it's not caused by machinery; it's not caused by 'over-production'; it is not caused by drink or laziness; and it is not caused by 'over population'. It is caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolised everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth.The only reason they have not monopolised the daylight and the air is that it it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air - or of the money to buy it - even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless they had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it is right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: "It's their Land," "It's their Water," " It's their Coal,"
"It's Their Iron," so you would say "It'sTheir Air," "These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing? And even while he is doing that the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispenscing advice on "Christian Duty" in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the yound. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air tht he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And whn you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smshing a hole in the side of the gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you will drg him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to "justice," in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble."
Wednesday 2 February 2011
Tuesday 1 February 2011
St Brides' Day: Imbolc, the Celtic feast of Spring's awakening.
On a brighter note today is St Bride's day, it was after her that we named our daughter ( Bridget) . St Brigid or Bride of Kildare is said to have helped the Virgin give birth to Jesus - whence she is the protector of pregnant women and midwives - and to have kept Mary's cows, whence her title of 'Christs Milkmaid'.
The saint's pagan namesake and predecessor, the Celtic goddess Brigit, was also associated with fertility, childbirth, and cattle. On her feast day - which is also the Gaelic spring festival of Imbolc or Imbolg - Highland girls made the 'Last Sheaf' of the previous harvest into images of her, which were laid in a decorated cradle called 'Bride's Bed'.
This is the day of Bride
The Queen will come from the Mound
This is the day of Bride
The serpent will come from the hole.
On this mystic day adders were beleved to abandon their winter lairs: and the oyster-catcher birds - called in Gaelic Gille Brighde, ' the servants of Bride' - made their appearance, bringing Spring with them.
So on this day Imbolc blessings. Ok daughter. From now on Spring awakes.New hope new light. Things moving onwards in the outer world and in our hearts, starting afresh with renewed purpose and fresh possibillities. Take it easy now. Unless that is your part of a revolution that happens to be occuring , then salute.Onwards and upwards.
Monday 31 January 2011
Will Palestine march? The tyrant exists only in the imagination of his subjects- Tamim Al- Barghouti.
Some of us are witnessing the beginniing of regime change in Tunisia and Egypt. ( I say some of us because the major news channels in the US are not reporting the massive Egyptian uprising) This is not the 'regime change' so beloved by our governments workong covertly behind their chosen despots and dictators who disenfranchise their own people and keep them in poverty and humiliation. The people on the streets in Tunisia and Egypt are not lookung for palaces and wealth. They are marching for the universal values of justice and human rights; the right not to be tortured by their own police; the right to freedom of expression; dignity and the right to choose their own leaders fair and square.
The price of food is rising. An income of $2 a day allows no room for manouvre. All over the world forests and peatlands are being ripped up to provide plantations, not for food, but for fuel to satiate the ever growing demand for energy for industry and 3 car families who will not comprehend their own greed.
$2 dollars a day is the average Egyption income. In Gaza where there is over 60%unemplyment ( due to the obliteration of Industry by the IDF) there is barely any money at all. The Palestinian Papers have served to highlight the truth we already knew - that the PA was just another western puppet, bought off and toeing the delinuwnt Zionist line.
Egypt recieves rhe second highest monetary handout, after Israel, from the US. Egypt is the puppet of America and the people will have a hard time effecting change. They know this, and their bravery is all the more remarkable because of it. Without the compliance of Egypt the Palestinians could not be kept under siege, and it is this way because our governments conspire to make it this way. The US conspires with the UN to announce the illegality of sttlements, bombings, massacres, siege and destruction, yet ensures that each of these things can happen by funding them all. Nothing is achieved except bloodshed. Rhere was no peace process. Ordinary citizens are taking to the streets and it is entirely possible that Palestinians, so badly let down by those purprting to represent them, will follow. The 7.6 million Palestinian refugees could march. The door is opening. The borders are creaking. Would Israel massacre 7.6 million people walking peacefully back to their homes, or are the thrd generation refugees so snug in their cocoon not worth the risk to life and linb after all. This may be their only chance. Public opinion os on the side of the oppressed.
Israel wants the world to forget that the right of millions of Palestinian refugees to return to the place from which they fled is enshrined in international law. The right of return is a Right. They do not need permission.
Tamim Al-Barghouti is a Palestinian poet. He is currently a visiting professor at Georgetown Univerity's Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies.
Saturday 29 January 2011
JOSE MANUEL PINTADO - INHERITANCE
Because you began to learn
that love is to blood and fire a war for freedom
for the poem marching among us
leaving fractures & losses on the bed of battle
it would be better to start over.
Our sheets still smell of fresh gunpowder
and thunder trembles in our ears.
That's why I walk the streets
of every city, town, village
the highway crosses
with you always very much within
the magnificent beast we were
leaving behind in this world
now throwing us out of its paradise.
But we also inherit a whole earth
with hoes and seeds
from where wildflowers bloom
to the fragment of world that is ours to share
without fur on the heart
in the middle of a solitary rain.
translated by John Oliver Simon
from Peace or Perish
Acrisis Anthology/Poets for Peace 1983.
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