Labi Siffre - Into The Light

Young people today

Why else this uproar over cartoons and “blasphemy”
Clearly they believe their god is pathetic and
Weak egocentric and very thin skinned

Which means they believe their god to be neither
Omnipotent nor omniscient a god as powerful as
That would certainly not be bothered by

Human non-believers whatever they said or did
Perhaps it’s a young god a teenager we
Know how sensitive they are to criticism

Clearly these followers in their raving and ranting and
Rioting and screaming and threatening and flag burning
Are determined to emulate it (peer pressure perhaps?)

_source

_{HAVE YOUR SAY}

The difference between political violence and terrorism

Terrorism is not war because no process of public justification or formal legitimacy stands behind it. Nor is it political violence because the targets it chooses involve the collateral death of innocents – that define(s) an act as terrorist
... Will Hutton - The Observer 29.01.06

A British technology company and a secretive airforce base in Cambridgeshire are playing a key role in the CIA’s use of robot Predator planes deployed to assassinate suspected terrorists overseas, the Observer can reveal.
A Missile fired from a Predator killed more than 20 innocent people in Pakistan earlier this month in a botched US bid to kill Ayman al Zawahiri, the deputy leader of Al-Qaeda ... Antony Barnett - The Observer 29.01.06

no matter the debate
the dead don't differentiate

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why history must be banned

LEHI LOHAMEI HERUT ISRAEL
FIGHTERS FOR THE FREEDOM OF ISRAEL
STERN GANG STERN GANG
STERN GANG STERN GANG

HARAKAT AL-MUQAWAMA AL-ISLAMIYYA
ISLAMIC RESISTANCE MOVEMENT
HAMAS HAMAS
HAMAS HAMAS

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no comment

so israel will deal with hamas
with rockets and helicopter gun ships

but refuses to deal with them
around the negotiating table

let us hope this is merely
israeli pre election bluster

as hamas who took a similar
position now say they will

negotiate with israel if it is in
the interests of the palestinian

people by the way this
is not a poem

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Plus ça change, plus c'est la même merde

Palestinians and Iraqis fail to see the light / with democracy they can vote
for whoever we like

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for the record

in the middle east for years there’s been
from israel and the USA no “peace
process”
instead there’s been a "palestinians
must capitulate
process"
sharon and bush being never allied
to peace but tied to victory
through the emasculation
of the stateless
palestinian
nation
by means of “the occupation” - by increasing west bank
settlement building operations - by an internationally
condemned illegal "berlin wall" - by installing
palestinian bantustans - by ignoring UN resolution
242 - and by keeping palestinians short of water
the intention is to render palestinian parents
sons and daughters impotent of action
barren of hope irrelevant
helpless - bound with
israeli rope
consider
against fighter planes and missiles fired at market stalls
and civilians old and young- against tanks and bull
dozers demolishing palestinian homes - against
an occupation and a nation that rejected “the
roadmap” and insists they have the right to
violence - and to incite violence - but
insists palestinians do not have
those rights *
against all this perhaps
the palestinians have
at least the right
to fight

* "As in the other mutual frameworks, the Roadmap will not state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians". . . para 1 of the Israeli Cabinet Statement on the Road Map - (may 25th '03) . . . from  "Back To The Roadmap"  (posted May 13th 2004)

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occupational therapy

is a stateless nation

permitted

an army ?

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fundamentals

If everyone must “renounce

violence” certainly

it must first be

defined . . . (click HERE for definition)

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the wise one speaks

hopefully before i die

i’ll realize i’ve been a fool

most of the time i’ve been alive

my father and me

i’d like a metal plate
in my head
like the one fate arranged
for daddy to get
in the great gecko wars
at the battle of bluebottle ridge

his came with a catflap
and a designation
he called it morgan
to let the catnaps in and out
unbidden they'd arrive and exit
in the midst of conversation

about the baby’s name
the score in a game
or the brand of toothpaste
to tame those yellow stains
he'd nod off as the dreamings flew out
and around the place he happened to be
you could sit and watch the battles
raging back and forth on the ceiling and walls

sometimes they'd come when he was washing
the car sometimes when he was driving it
once injecting insulin he dropped
off and fell to the floor stabbing
the hypo into my thigh. laugh?
in the midst of visions
we nearly died

the best policy

funny how invest
igative journalist
s
don’t invest
igate journalist
s

*

or new
s
paper editor
s

or
media bar
ron
s

to be honest it
s
not
funny at
all

s

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untitled - thus titled

the round (or, like the planet, not?)
belling brown clock with the roman
face says V past X (how close to a truth
should mechanics be held to account?)
celestially in place in the landscape (politic
ally ordained by me) it speaks a languid
language i barely understand and always
too (boo!) late

behind time the stone wall displays
its fluid nature every time i look (see, there
it’s done it again – another face and there
another!) and with the ninety three percent
that is the bulk of language it says longer than
you by two hundred years i’ve been here
without fear without joy without needing
understanding my place in the cosmos i know
more and will always than you no matter
how long you ponder

but you, i sneery say, are dead even molten
you were and have always been so
and you, says the wall, in universal terms
are dead though you clearly don’t know it

you mean dead and alive be the same to
the universe it not being sentient but sentience
means merely being able to react to sensation an
amoeba does that bacteria do that and the uni
verse definitely reacts to a super nova does that
mean perhaps the universe reacting is therefore
sentient i mention it only because we pat our
selves on the back with our third arms constant
lie for being so solely designated

somebody get a dictionary, look up 'feeling' and
'sensation', and clear this shit up so we can all
go home ok
___

friends romans dolts etc

morality is a matter of sociology not religi
osity; a matter of practicality and trust
(in one another) we agree

not to rape, club, stab or shoot each other
in the supermarket so that we can
do the shopping, you idiot

not because a deity (whose existence is
unproven, unprovable, untested and un
testable) tells us not to

hello? is there anybody out there?
can you hear me?
hello?

_{HAVE YOUR SAY}

an alternative theory

when the majority
individually
agree

that short term
personal gain be
the prime dire

ective there be
no need of con
spiracy

plucking hell

"why are women obsessed
with body hair?"

b cos men
ah

so ladies
no need now
to buy

(neither for "substance"
nor "style")
today's "Observer"

the USA deceived

TomPaine.com with "Proof Bush Deceived America"

relativism

learning the way
of the nuremberg trials of
world war two nazi war crims I note

that those murderers of millions
(even those hanged)
were prisoners handled in
a more humane way

than at guantanamo
bay

pandemic

Kim Howells : “outspoken” - “colourful” -

“maverick” - and worse, “a welsh man”

Rupert's Sky News : as puss filled and virulent

a Murdoch disease as ever

abstinence

our egos
so delicate

we resent
the didactic

thus
history reigns

as entertainment

not prophylactic

Still Living in Hope

My fight against “Faith” began in 1961, aged sixteen, in a confrontation during Religious Instruction class. Pursuing the case of Galileo Galilei v Pope Urban VIII in the matter of the sun not revolving around the earth - I persisted terrier-like until the hapless monk in charge, spittle on his lips, ordered me to desist.

I continued in ‘73 with the songs “Prayer” and “Let’s Pretend” (on the album “For The Children”) - in ‘91 with the song “Reason” (on the album “Man of Reason”) - in ’93, ’95 and ‘97 with the poetry books “Nigger”, “Blood on the Page” and “Monument” and on to the net with the two sites, "Breaking the Bloody Glass" (discontinued) and this one.

In all that time, while the rejection of critical reasoning grew to be the most popular buzz on the block, I knew we were losing the battle against religion (that political pimp for spiritual and intellectual cowardice). Watching Richard Dawkins in "The Root of all Evil" I am comforted to know that, as Winston Churchill viewed Hitler as a vicious, evil threat (while Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain did not) so now, amidst perhaps overwhelming complicity and complacency, there are a few raising their heads above the parapet who take religion seriously. The struggle continues.

Living in Hope

I write this prior to this evening’s viewing of "The Root of all Evil" 8.00pm C4 (UK TV). This two parter is Richard Dawkins' chance to do what Jonathan Miller failed to do in his “Brief History of Disbelief” admirable as it was.

The failure so far is to address on a wider stage the question posed in the poem - Starting the Debate at Letter ‘A’ - from my second poetry book Blood on the Page published in 1995 and, I am reliably informed, by John Milton in Paradise Lost, published in the 17th Century:

If God is omnipotent
can do anything

And if God is omniscient
knows everything

Then
(if it also has free will)

God is ultimately responsible
for evil

23rd century penance

The pinkie fallen
from my hand
beckons me to follow

The table laid before me
I
return the knife

Into the room the portal swings
the gun fires twice
the bodies fall

I raise the stump to my lips and lick
the flow then tip the glass and drink
a toast to you and the piebald rat

In that other house in that other town
the portal closes the gun dissolves
while i drink to technology and revenge
___

rule #1

there are few honourable

men or women in the world;

do not assume you are one of them

memo to IT century citizens

information

is not the same

as knowledge

Angel overhead

I taught my son he could fly
With faith strong enough
God would lift him up

Today he rode in a tower high
An elevator to the top then climbed
The stairs to the roof and dived

Thirty nine floors I believe
So did he
___