CHOICE

 

                                 

                                  This spring is short.

 

                                 

                                  Daffs have been dead-headed early.

                                  Arid, shrivelled wheat

                                                     sings no more of bread,

                                  and demented cattle stumble

                                            through rogue summers

                                                                        prion-sharp.

 

                                 

                                  Ahead

                                      lies futures

                                                of dread

                                                where children cringe.

 

                                 

                                  Have we come

                                  along digital pathways to the abyss,

                                  to the ultimate mad philosophies;

                                            precise, military organisation

                                            of wide and awesome nuclear regions,

                                            infinite atomic voids

                                            where work is vapourised

                                            and people

                                                  - once numbered -

                                                                        are deleted,

                                            superflous as dust blown away?

 

                                 

                                  Or can we challenge,

                                                  change that which is,

                                  make imaginings

                                      like toy shops without guns

                                               - make our common dreams

                                                                              come true?

 

 

              

 

                     Les Skeates
 

I met my Mother today. The first time I had seen her for at least 9 months and she was looking better than I expected, but in a wheel chair - the osteoporosis has got to her. She was very much 'up' though which gave me a lift.

We met at the Sainsbury's Cafe in Weston-super-Mare, my home town. Its a good job the arrangement was not done through the mail, we would probably have missed each other by at least five days.

Torture for all the world to see.

When the Americans first opened Camp Delta torture centre at their Guantanamo base in Cuba to hold hostages from around the world, they released an official photograph of people dressed to be de-humanised in orange overalls, blindfold goggles, earmuffs, nose and mouth masks, gloves and shackled in chains. In enforced, total sensory deprivation - except for touch when tortured or beaten or as in the photo manhandled. I had originally thought that the photo was taken from Cuban territory and published as another expose of the long history of American barbarity in the Caribbean and beyond. Until I saw the by-line. The Times credited the photos to the US Navy.

Guantanamo is not just a torture centre, that would be bad enough in itself, but it is worse and much, much more sinister. Everybody knows that torture doesn't work in providing reliable information. The tortured tell the torturer what is already decided the tortured should say by the torturer before the torture starts. The torturer knows this but the torturer also knows the psychological power that torture has in instilling fear, hatred and opposition in those the torturer has demonised as 'Other', and for whom the tortured is identified with through race, religion, nationality or just their humanity. Torture is very effective in creating enemies.

I wasn't planning to post today. Wasn't even planning to write anything - not even a shopping list - till I realised I had made a mistake in my last posting. Only a small mistake and which doesn't detract from the success of the peace activist in making the Army rectruitment stall shut up and close last Tuesday.

Unless I rectify the mistake I am liable to get a very sever ear bashing for getting someone's age wrong. Not for writing that she is older than she really is but for telling everybody she was younger than she is.

The Army came to Totnes today. The Devon & Dorset Regiment set up a recruiting stall in the town centre's Civic Square. It's half-term for the local schools and Totnes is a small town of about 15,000 people so all the teenagers, the young people know each other and will congregate in the town centre during the day to meet up. As teenagers are wont when not at school and the sun is out.

I discovered the recruitment stall, to my great dismay as I went for breakfast of tea, bacon sandwich, fag and paper at my local cafe, the Brioche which is on the main street and faces the Civic Square. It wasn't the best start to the day. But the gloom lifted as soon as I entered the cafe. Poppy - cook of the day - exclaimed in wide-eyed righteous anger, "Have you seen what they are doing?!" The next half hour was a whirr of activity as she went up and down the High Street checking with shops and others about what should be done. She came back with a ton of paper to make placards and notices to plaster all around the square and up and down the street.

I've been away for a long time due to a winter break and a very severe hack. The hack has taken a few weeks to sort out, being a one man band and not a computer programmer. The spooks are still around, but enough of this self justification already.

Before I leave the topic of the Revolutionary Ccommunist Party as a front for the intelligence services of the USA and the UK, so that I can concentrate on other more important stuff for myself, the MS and open politics, a piece about a Christmas time discovery. Or Christmas present, depending on your interpretation.

I spent this years winter festival on a converted barge. A friend and old comrade, Peter and his partner Kate had acquired the boat 18 months ago. She had cancer and the boat was a refuge of sorts while she battled with it. Kate 'popped her clogs' in March and Peter has had a succession of visitors since - not all have meant for an easy time. Their dog, Douza died a few months after Kate and then, in Sept/Oct his new lover survived an overdose of medicine while on the boat. 2 days after Christmas Day, Peter was emailed about the death of an old lover from cancer. Not a good year for him, but the Loafer is resilient enough to get through with a little help from friends. It was not a morbid time.

 

If you can bear to read anymore of my ramblings after the posting of 'Empathy is not a Colour', then maybe it has helped you bring an even more critical approach to what I write. No bad thing. As Buddha said, "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense". Marx, being more economic with words for once, said, "Doubt everything". 

This is the re-post of an article I originally posted on 12th July this year. The original has been hacked and the article address changed to an impossibly big number that makes it impossible to find unless you read everything I've posted. It is not linkable in its present state.

The piece is about the London bombing of 07.07.05 and a Psy-ops article carried by the Guardian on 12.07.05. I think it is still relevant.

"I bought The Guardian again this morning, as I have done for the last 30 years. It will probably be the last time. The lead article in G2 is what has made me come to this.

“Its cream and scum that rise.”
A Russian Proverb

It started up the Brow.

Blunt had had a fairly easy first spell. Short and fairly easy. Not to many pratts to have to deal with. He had worked out that one percent of London bus passengers were arseholes and ten percent the sort that made the day worthwhile with a please, a thank you and a smile. The rest were decent, quiet people trying to get to work, or shops, hospitals, cinemas and clubs, relatives, school, and all with the least hassle. The eighty-nine percent who helped humanity rub along.

Eight hundred people a day would go through his bus and eight would be foul. As if driving London traffic wasn't hard enough, he was sworn at, threatened with violence, spat at, by men, women, children, black, white, whatever. And to top it all, if robbed of the days fares the driver would have the amount he had taken in fares, taken from his wages by the company. Beaten up and robbed then shat on by the company.