Saturday 28 August 2010

La Cuenta (The Bill)


I have my own antiques
This rock, this majestic soil
Passed through the gullets of Pharoahs
Shat out into the Nile
Washing up at my feet
Antique

I can hear Joan of Arc’s voice still
Ringing from the stake
And God stood at her side as
She screamed and burned and succumbed
To humanity’s fate.

It is the arrogance of men they should put in museums
We should go there to look at its folly
And wander the cool mausoleums
Where the dead hide their stories
And their horrors

See the blue sky
Grab it while you can
Before you’re raped and mutilated
At the hands of stinking men

Leaves a bad taste in my mouth
Like radiation
To live in a world where a woman’s
Silence deafens the screams of her
Suffering and writhing to get away
And clawing, and screaming the
Names of her children to ‘Run, run’ run
To safety or to remain quiet with
A look from her eyes,
As she looks through the unseeing
Men as they pull at her clothes,
To where her children hide

We sit here in the
Cool. Outside the café
Drinking iced tea
And smoke spirals up from the Camels.
And the arms dealer smiles because
He has made a tidy packet
And the politician is smug because
The election is in the bag.
And the soldiers go where they are told.
And the masses surge up against the barriers of injustice
And the blood pools under their feet
And the mound of dead rises higher and
Higher
While we conspire around our polished
Glass table, what it is we will do this evening
And where we will have our dinner.
And the mound grows higher
‘Camarero, la cuenta por favor’
Waiter, the bill please, we ask

The bill please
And the millions dead keep dying
The millions raped keep
Surrendering
up their bodies
to the savagery of
men whose eyes

hold knives of lust
And whose hands thrust
their vile-nce
into girls vaginas.

It is the hatred
To which we are unaccustomed
As our mother reared us gently and with
love
If this is a man? I ask
At the table, shielded in the shade
From the hot spanish sun.
If this is a man? I ask
Then what’s become of us?

Crickets sing to their wives



Disclaimer - 'All creations declares the praises of the Lord' is the perspective of the film maker whose endeavours I highly respect.

My personal opinion - I personally find 'the Lord' a constrictive term to my experience and am more inclined to praise the crickets and their inherent divinity and the metaphysical presence of Dr Seuss in the universe

Why hasn't Omar Al Bashir been arrested? Er, I don't know why hasn't Omar Al Bashir been arrested?


It's time to protect the women and children isn't it?
Read more:- http://ow.ly/2w8ks and at the International Criminal Court

Who should clean this mess up? Should the Arab world take more of an active stance? Who is arming these people?

Will it continue to be the case that Arms dealers from Russia, China, Israel, India and big business in the US continue to make money on the backs of this sort of suffering? No it will not continue, it cannot continue. Should we arm the women so that they can protect themselves, their children, their livestock and their villages - at least then they would be on an almost equal footing with those 'that come on horseback and by air' to destroy them an their homes. There are certain people that it serves to have an immoral politician in the seat of government who will turn a blind eye to the smashing and grabbing of resources in return for wealth. It is my opinion that they should also be up for war crimes - because they are paying for them...

If you foot the bill of a war crime then you are complicit. It strikes me that you want this turmoil to exist between the Arab world and the rest of it because it serves you.

If I was the International Criminal Court I would find out who arms these people, who pays the bill and that is who I would arrest for war crimes. Perhaps that would mean condemning these countries/companies.

Whatever it takes to stop 'business'. Whatever it takes - that's what we need to do. And we need to help the ordinary folk. Who need the cavalry. They need to be seen as the last marine that the rest never leave behind.
because we are leaving these 6year olds and 70 to be raped and brutalised. We are leaving these so militias to mercilessly burn and kill. We are letting this happen.

We are complicit by our inaction. Anybody want to start paying for some security for these people? I mean anyone can buy a militia nowadays. Are there any wealthy humanitarians out there who wouldn't mind seeing the back of some of these dirty dealing folk be they arms manufacturers or genocidal dictators and monsterous militias. Either they turn themselves over to the ICC or someone scary will come and get them. The scary good guys.
In WW2 millions of people fought to bring an end to such abominations. People want to bring it to an end now. We don't want to hear any more stories on the news of the latest barbaric atrocities carried out with no repercussions. We want repercussions. I want repercussions.

Why hasn't Omar Al Bashir been arrested? Er, I don't know - why hasn't Omar Al Bashir been arrested? Because...

If you know the answer to this question please contact me. I want to know and also you might be able to tell me how we can stop the murdering/raping b********

Don't you think that if someone doesn't comply with UN human rights laws that someone should at least take their sweeties away?


Friday 27 August 2010

The Big Picture


When I went to Auschwitz I couldn’t believe what human beings did to each other even as I stood with my feet on that ground. No doubt the same disbelief went through those people as their breath was stolen from them. Is it that we have to believe it to stop it? Do you have to say ’Yes’ without any trace of wishful thinking or escapism, ‘Yes, this is how it is’. To stop fighting the truth with denial, with doubt and with anything that makes it less real. We spend a lot of our time making life look as little like its real self as possible. We are the plastic surgeons of our life. The last thing we want to face is our impermanence – our one hard solid truth, more reliable than God; a truth as hard and solid as its counterpart; existence. Our awareness and our awareness of our impermanence do this awkward dance in life; it will always end the same.

Until we put our faith in the truths that are apparent, we may as well float around in a spinning teacup looking at the stars for all that we will ever find out and learn about ourselves. And if we want to stop suffering; well, then we really have to take off our tinted glasses and take a good hard look around us. We need a curing song. Our souls are starving as we stock the supermarkets of our days with false nutrition. We swallow a pill to mask our hunger pains. We want truth, understanding,, an answer to our ‘whys’. We want security and control and will even avoid joy to have such certainty. We cling to suffering; it is an old old friend. We know the outlines of its face, the haunting of its sorrows, the weight of it about our shoulders. But when we start feeding ourselves joy, and bliss, divine stories, unassailable truths; such a little nutrition begins to persuade us that it comes down to the way we look with our eyes, the way we hold with our hands, the way we enunciate and alliterate life with love.

The suffering happens because we enact it. It is a play we prompt and allow to unfold; and are forced to watch. But what I know is that there is a final act and that played out upon the same stage is a dance of joy, a poet’s rendition of recuperation. After all of it is said and done it is a stage that we are standing on, with all the plays of the world upon it and we are the Shakespeare sprinkling tragedies and comedies upon it. What never changes is that stage. It is unsullied by joy or suffering. It is reliable, it is pure, it is the same shining awareness that runs through all things.

Here is one of my favourite poems by the Yuma Indians of North America:-

The Curing Song

Your heart is good.
(Spirit) Shining Darkness will be here.
You think only of sad unpleasant things,
You are to think of goodness.
Lie down and sleep here.
Shining darkness will join us.
You think of this goodness in your dream.
Goodness will be given to you,
I will speak for it, and it will come to pass.
It will happen here,
I will ask for your good,
It will happen as I sit by you,
It will be done as I sit here in this place.


As much as I am undone by suffering and walk through it in lost disbelief, disassociating, denying, wishing it away. It undoes me in away that forces me to unfold, it bruises my ignorance, it bullies my stuckpoints until they give way. I wonder - can't such a thing be done with love. I think it can, but when I think of how stubborn and willful we are as children; how a mother has to watch her child make mistakes, get hurt, before she can rush in with a mother's love; I wonder if it isn't like this also on the big scale of things. Such a warmth of love can envelop us when we finally surrender to understanding. I think this can take more than one life. That's why I think there are so many inexplicable tragedies; things that happen to good people; our lense is to small to see the whole picture. Really what tiny focuses we have got.


Tuesday 24 August 2010

Doing more than not enough


I see Twitter as a kind of meme storage device. Therefore often I will post Tweets of news stories I consider a 'priority' i.e. something of immediate importance that I think deserves attention. I also consider Retweets to be a gauge of whether other folk also consider your tweets important and worthy of attention.
It strikes me that what most of us find worth of attention are quotes that make us feel better; that make us see the world through new eyes, that reaffirm the truths we already have figured out.
The desperation of the world's poor, economic prejudice, conflict fuelled by our economies; these aren't considered important. In my experience they NEVER get retweeted; but then I don't have thousands of followers I have a random 600 with a hardcore loyal bunch of tweetery folk and some interesting newcomers who I enjoy getting to know.
My guidelines for following folk on twitter are that:-
  • You're not on a personal development pyramid scheme that wants to help me all for only a $100 or a $1000 or more become more succesful, perfect, healthy and the same as everyone
  • Your'e not a giant corporation or individual twittering on behalf of said giant corporation
  • You're not in the Tea Party or right wing anything
  • You're not an idiot or a time waster
It doesn't take too much perusal to figure out who fit into the above categories.
Of course if you are any of the above, I will be eternally patient with you and your ignorance. But you should know that:-
A - I haven't watched a commercial/advert since I learnt to use a remote control and especially the mute button and
B - I will spend a small amount of my time attempting to dissuade you from your chosen path on your behalf - not mine - yours; I have better things to do; there are worthier causes out there.

What I have discovered about Twitter is that a Tweet can save a person's life. I have discovered that you can connect with like minds. I have discovered that people love a good quotation. It must be part of our byte size capacity for using information as an escapist diversion - its feels good, its quick fix, it affirms that other people are like us; though sometimes when you delve a little deeper they're sometimes not, it's just that you both like football but don't mention health care.

I have been doing a little experiment to see what people's priorities are. I think Tweets fairly accurately reflect people's priorities; they are an informal log of people's daily or weekly activities that they consider noteworthy. So Retweets should also reflect this; my conclusion... ...my conclusion is that we are not doing enough. My conclusion is that most of us (not all us) have our priorities screwed. Well and truly superficially screwed.

Many of you know that cake is a favourite of mine. I often tweet about cake. The fact is most of the time I can't eat cake not if its got dairy, or wheat, glucose fructose or eggs in and lets face it - that's cake isn't it. So cake is generally symbolic. It stands for something I love that is a little out of reach, it stands for wishful thinking, for memories of happy moments full of friends, family and fun. But next to my cake tweet you will also find a article about genocide in Africa, or economic prejudice in Europe. You will find links to the stories that are absolutely crucial to all of our futures. Next to cake you will hear me talk about violence against women and children, about the insane economic bandwagon that ALL of the world's industries are on; the one that says 'It's Ok to turn a blind eye to massive conflict, industrial pollution and environmental degradation, not to mention the huge possibility of world immolation in the nuclear fallout from some random corporate human error/intention - 'Oh oops I pressed the wrong switch...' Oops-y-daisy.

But then those things are things that have ALREADY happened -we've already had 1000+ nuclear bombs blown up on this planet albeit in 'remote' places. Chernobyl happened and they never told us that they narrowly avoided a second explosion which would have rendered the whole of Europe uninhabitable. Narrow in that it was the observations of ONE scientist and the actions based on his advice that avoided it at least for now. That possibility looms once again - except they don't want to fund the 1billion for the avoidance of it this time - they'd rather pay 18billion for the hadron particle collider or whatever that is.
Please all of you nuclear loving folks out there, carry on, feel free after all it doesn't look like any of the big corporations or the governments are listening to any dissenters does it. And why aren't they listening? Because they can get away scot free, or at least they've budgeted for irritating court procedures ahead of time? Or because we don't care?

Some of the comments on Youtube - 'Why should we care about the West abandoning the Congo when we haven't even heard of it?' So the fact that the UN peacekeeping mission is clearly failing miserably doesn't really matter does it. or that four baby boys were gang raped along with 200 women less than a month ago. But it doesn't matter does it - because that was in the Congo and we've not heard of it.

Clearly the big corporations didn't care in the first place because this was happening when they knowingly bought the shipments of minerals, or conflict diamonds, or sold them arms or nitrate fertilisers or GM seeds. I'm not just talking about the Congo, I'm talking about anyone that knowingly trades with those who don't care about human rights - and that's everyone. All of us by our silent acquiescing are buying up oil fields for the next fifty years, drilling for more oil; open-caste mining for nitrates to make armaments and fertilisers to feed us on our deeply eroded soils and fuelling conflict to destabilise areas for the smash and grab that is the 'free market' - .

My soul is deeply eroded by all the suffering we are willing to casually stand by and let happen because its someone else's problem.

There's some strange collusion between countries that agree to the capitalist manifesto regardless of human rights. China, Russia, Iran sell arms to Afghanstan, the Afghani police being trained smuggle them south to their opponents; we also do business with China, Russia and Iran. Anyone failing to see these connections or the careful balancing act that is international business and politics and considers them unimportant is kidding themselves.

'It's the governments who are dealing with it; they're doing something about it aren't they?' - we blithely assume. The corporations wouldn't do that, (sharp intake of breath at horrifying details); our almighty God the corporation would never do that - they love us and care for us like we are their children; this is a democracy.' Right, it is a democracy of corn-fed fatigued zombies easily mollified by technological gadgets, fantasy movies, anti-depressants and low-fat ready meals. There are no Churchill's or Eisenhower's standing in the wings ready to lead us; the Martin Luther King's of the present are dead; killed by clever advertising campaigns and distracted by Machiavellian political slandering and concocted media storms; while the corporations act out reckless smash and grabs around the world - wherever they wish.

We are not doing enough. The future is being wrenched out of the hands of children via the neglect of us - their parents. By our absence, by our silence, by our willingness to accept the status quo, by our willingness to let errant behaviour go, by our watching as power is confronted and then returned to those who were absolutely irresponsible with it. You think a corporation is responsible because they have high share prices? You think a government is responsible because... well fuck knows what makes you think any government is responsible. Four years is not enough time to prove integrity especially when most of it is spent maintaining power and deluding the public.

We are so myopic it sickens me. We are so willing to be ruled; to abdicate our seats of decision, to give up our freedom. We have given it up - everyone of us that rents or buys property, or lays claim to one kind of passport - that's nearly all of us except for those Aboriginals, or tribes, or travellers, or nomads, or homeless that don't fit the capitalistic 'ideal' of conformist zealots - especially those who don't adhere to one place of residence, address or country. Oh those address-less people, those country swapping parasites - they are sooo frightening. You know who they are? They are us before we became domesticated - before we became tamed or afterwards; after our moment of disillusion, after the matrix came undone, after we swallowed that red pill of flagellation by the world at large - when we became one of them, one of the parasites; by default, by flood, by landslides of falling stocks and shares. If you have a roof over your head do I consider you lucky? No, I consider you naive - as one homeless man put it 'I just got here first, it won't be long and everyone else will come and join me'.

We are not doing enough. We are not doing enough because the suffering is escalating all around and we are tweeting about 'community building', 'sustainable lifestyles' and 'raw food' - oh wait a minute, hang on, wrong list - those are my 'Redpill' Twitter friends. The bluepills are talking about the temperature their Ipad's melt at, portraits of weird germanic guys with flamboyant moustaches and beards and fox furs on their heads, (oh it's Dave Mead's Magnificent Specimens exhibit which recently came to New York city) and the endless advice about how to increase your presence on social media, or business acumen... 'Stop wait a minute; YOU wrote that tweet - you, my favourite liberal Obama loving leftist who supplies me with endless links from diverse and wonderful charities and dogooders around the world; and your Ipad melts at what temperature?

Because the thing is none of us have really taken the redpill.

We can not escape our realities that easily, though we try. We try with cake, with discussions about politics, movies, the news, the latest catastrophe. The conditioner for our reality, is our awareness - it's our life lube - except nothing goes smoothly, its hard to focus, we don't ever know what will happen next, so we Twitter about cake and German moustaches and devote our lives to distraction, to entertainment, to our children, or our nearest and dearest, to control and compromise.

Even if we're the Aid worker up to our necks in deepest darkest Taliban crawling Afghanistan we're talking about acquiring silk for evening dresses and the amount of cosmetics on display at the local supermarket - we weren't to know, were we that we would be next weeks latest victim. Why do we do that; talk about these inanities next to dire straits?Because it enables us, it helps us to do what we can.

Dr Karen Woo did more than not enough.

(See Karen's picture above)
She went to a valley to help 50000 Afghanistani people to have access to eye care and medical aid; she did it while praising the Shewee that enabled her to pee standing up or in a moving vehicle. She did more than not enough while caring for stray cats and lamenting the idiosyncrasies of Kabul that mean security guards are given the leftovers of Westerners to eat (and they wonder why there's a security issue).

Her blog makes for fascinating reading, shining light into the daily life of westerners, aid workers and journalists in Afghanistan as well as the lives of the local people. Throughout her concern for others is obvious - she laments the freedoms we so readily take for granted being unavailable in so many places; she grates at the disparity between the affluent and the poor and the ostentatious ways we try and mould the natural world and the human environment to fit our idea of how it should be. Poverty doesn't fit and we prefer to look away. Except she didn't look away, she was compelled just days before her wedding to go to one of the most hostile places on the planet and help people. Compelled by humanity, compelled by the needless suffering of others, compelled by the massive obstacles facing a mother bringing a child into the world in the rugged environment that is Nuristan where there is the highest infant mortality. Dr Karen Woo was killed on the way back from her successful humanitarian mission. She was one of a team of nine on that mission who were killed doing more than not enough.

They are dead but we are still alive. We can carry on where the inspired have left us - our options; to be humanitarian or die, or to be humanitarian and die. There is no other choice, we are going to die any way - all of us eventually.

So I will continue to Tweet about cake and when I do so please don't think that my priorities are screwed, or that I'm a bluepill. I am a redpill at heart. We all are. We are Churchill's, Eisenhowers and Martin Luther King's-in-waiting; with the political. military and humanitarian will there just when it's needed.

Karen set up an organisation called Bridge Afghanistan to channel hospital stock from the UK that would have been destroyed to where it was desperately needed. Her work is being continued by close friends who are setting up the Karen Woo Foundation to this end.
The question is what will you do? Will you let them, who ever they are, decide our fate?





Monday 23 August 2010

#140conf Roadtrip!

View The #140conf Roadtrip: Aug 22-28 2010 in a larger map

The #140conf: Roadtrip will be taking place from August 22 to August 28, 2010 and they intend on broadcasting live from inside our car while we are on the road. You can call them at the same time on Skype and join in. They are going on the road to reach out and meet community members across the Midwest in advance of #140conf Detroit, which takes place at the Fillmore Detroit on October 20, 2010.
Cities: Cleveland, OH - Columbus, OH - Dayton, OH - Cincinnati, OH - Indianapolis, IN - Bloomington, IN - St Louis, MO- Kansas City, MO - Omaha, NE - Sioux Falls, SD - Fargo, ND - Minneapolis, MN - Dryersvile, IA - Madison, WI - Chicago, IL - Detroit, MI

Have your voice and your stories heard in The State of Now. Thye’ll be having breakfasts, lunches, dinners and events including the opportunity to sign up for test-drives of Buick cars. They’ll also have t-shirts, give-aways, and more surprises along the way.

The #140conf events provide a platform for the worldwide twitter community to: listen, connect, share and engage with each other, while collectively exploring the effects of the emerging real-time internet on business.

Find me on twitter

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