Labi Siffre - Into The Light

TV Reality

He hated that they wouldn’t show

The footage of him covered in blood

And pieces of his friend

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Le Paradis (Esquelbecq May 2010)

When the priest said (In commemoration)
“Do God’s Work”

It was absurdity, insult, spoiled goods

Blueprint in hand, his God, having seen
Dunkirk, before birthing the first star,

With a will set to

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The leaves of these trees are stained with blood

They are tall trees and broad

Is that not enough?

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There are warbirds on my dinner plate

They taste of anchovies and carborundum
So as to avoid getting grit between my teeth
I try to swallow them whole and of coarse

They stick in my gullet crop craw; better still
“Gorge”: I’m fortunate to have one I suspect
This won’t be the last warped bird on my plate
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I know nothing of death

Bereavement, yes
I am familiar with bereavement

It is of such slight entertainment value that
Men add war to the measure

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For Harry Patch

The dead speak out against war
War doesn't listen to the dead

And those of the living
Who are not deaf
Don't speak the dead's language
_

Harry Patch
_

Taliban

The lake with no stream in or out has forgotten
The ocean. You have forgotten your home.
Though the breeze remembers and whispers
“There is a land of truth awaiting you”
You are trapped here by the fear of women
Freed from your control

You have forgotten how to build, but you know well
How to persuade your sons to kill; you promise them
The lie of eternal sex with renewable virgins
Young girls, of course eager to be deflowered
By any of you:
It’s a man’s world (men have written)
And heaven too (men have written). Most
Women, ungrateful of your claimed superiority,
Go to hell (men have written)

With self-interest masquerading as faith
Allergic to mirrors, you are unable to rise
Surrounded by mountains that see
Beyond you; laughing they enjoy gossip and family
Banter with the sky, while you
Torture, live, kill and die
With fear in your hearts
Ice in your lies

Aeons will pass
You will not have grown
Be comforted
You are far from alone
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What violence is (2)

I stop at the red street light
You open the kerbside door
You slide into my dusty car
It is an ordinary car but
It is my car
I love my car
It fits my shoulders
The driver's seat is good
For my lower back
I don't know you
Who are you?
What do you want?
The street light turns green
You shout, "GOD!"
Right up close to my face, "GOD!"
Right up close to my face
You refuse to get out of my car
That is An Act of Violence

You walk into my house
Wave God and a flag in my face
Take over my front room and the kitchen
(What the hell?!)
Yes, the air conditioning is eccentric
And the doors creak
But i love my house
You move your family in
Your wife, her mother, your brother,
Your second cousin, twice divorced,
Her two kids
You bar mine from the door
You refuse to leave
You spread to the spare room
You start re-decorating
All of that is An Act of Violence

You bulldoze your way into my garden
You build a house there in my garden
You wave the promise God made you
You ignore the promise God made me
(How God must be laughing up there in the sky)
You bring more of your relatives in
Their families with their beautiful
But in the wrong place
Children
To live in that house (a war zone)
That is An Act of Violence

What would you expect me to do?
What in any one's name
Would you expect me to do?
What would you do if it happened to you?

You build your cities on Palestinian land
That is An Act of Violence
The world watches
And does nothing to stop you
Is that not also An Act of Violence?

To stop the war religion gives
To stop the war that greed lives
To stop the testosterone initiative
To stop the killing of innocent kids
First, stop the denial of what violence is
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The Way

“It’s a bucket of pistols”, said the sergeant. “Just take one. Take anyone!” his voice rose, exasperated as Johnson’s hand wavered and wandered from butt to butt.

“For God’s sake Johnson, pick one, then get your ass over there, choose a prisoner, put the barrel to the back of his or her head, pull the trigger and see them dead. That’s all there is to it.

That's why we're here, doing this course in “An Appropriate End To Torture”
and frankly your scores up till now have been crap
but this is your chance to redress that
so MOVE IT!!
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The USA today – I pray not

Justice is the perfect meal
In an honorable
Land

But the condemnation of those
Who confess under the duress
Of torture

Is a mouth full of ashes
Washed down
With sand
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The story so far

Pakistan, that refuge for Sociopathic-Islam (as opposed to the kind, loving and peaceful one) has the atomic bomb, with the blessing of the USA - at least without the opposition handed out to “evil” Iran, that creature spawned by the Anglo-American sponsored 1953 regime-change-overthrow of Iranian democracy - a coup orchestrated (for possession of someone else’s oil) by an MI6/CIA coalition (no change there in fifty years of destabilizing, political vision).

The resulting theocratic Iran (the beast) later got important nuclear bomb info from (guess who) Pakistan (welcome to the feast).

Yes that’s Pakistan, our ally and friend in “The War On Terror”, so much of which (terror that is) is born and nurtured in Pakistan’s madrasa schools for Islamic instruction (a clerical error?) though the garlands and applause for birthing the hydra, Al Qaeda, go to our ally and bosom buddy in that same “War On Terror” - Saudi Arabia - from where fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 bombers hailed, along with their leader, Al Qaeda messiah Osama Bin Laden. Incidental fact: none of the 9/11 bombers hailed from Iraq.

Alas, like the G8 / world bank / “free trade” imperative of heroin and crack cocaine, tragic comedy has always prevailed. For example, in late 2007, 30-40% of Americans still believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. This lethal level of American ignorance and denial endures long after US president George W. Bush was forced, in 2003, to admit to and reject that lie - though (not so dumb in the world of the dumber) he cynically repeated the lie in innuendo soon after (as did vice-president Tricky Dicky Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice).

Wise, we in the west have been with our plan to eradicate Islamic religion-empowered-terror, as opposed to Christian oil-empowered, US/UK coalition terror - defined as terrorism by none other than Secretary of Defence Donald H. Rumsfeld in 2003 when he said, “any time people, innocent men, women and children are being killed that is, in effect, the definition of terrorism". Conservative estimates of innocent Iraqi civilian men women and children killed by US/UK coalition forces: 10-30,000.

Tough on terror, tough on the causes of terror: not quite, as we fail to address that perverse intellectual and spiritual justification for terror islamique - The God Clause (otherwise known as theism). No mystique in our reticence, just a self-serving dearth of rigour on our part because in honest pursuit we’d have to “mirror mirror on the wall” and address that same - God Clause (theism) - here at home, as the majority of us have signed up to it (90% of Americans admit to a belief in God).

Secular!? hah! Blether, blether. Who we trying to kid? Ourselves, and doing an A+ job of it to the extent that the nuclear bomb and Osama Bin Laden slip ‘n slide closer to (boom!) the Christian biblical “Rapture” (an apocalyptic “end of days”) in a religious embrace designed to (boom!) Islamically reveal the Koranic “Hidden Imam” (unsurprisingly heralding an apocalyptic “end of days” [yawn]). Meanwhile, we continue to play the cowardice-in-denial game – who sir? me sir? yeah, whatever.

prime numbers

in war the safety is to join the military
the dangerous decision
is to be civilian

they wander see
foolish into the range of firing
squads of various shades of red

their blood from almost black to gasping
pink with bubbles they share this tradition
among themselves from all out holocaust

to merely “troubles”
and all of this with no regard for gender,
colour, sexuality or years on stage

a selfless example
to us all
in this cynical age

*

From World War 2 onwards most casualties of war have been civilians. Apologists for the War Against Terror maintain that though we, the "good guys", have killed more innocent civilians than "the terrorists", the difference is that we didn’t mean to. This is at best ingenuous and at worst dishonest when, from past experience, we know that a predominance of civilian deaths is the most likely outcome of such conflicts.

Though it can be more difficult for the “good guys” than for the “bad guys” (if the "good guys" are constrained by international / humanitarian law) the “good guys” should be trying harder to find more appropriate responses. For example, which is more likely to win hearts and minds:
1) Harassing and killing civilians or building hospitals and schools?
2) Exploitation or fair trade?
3) Negotiating with a democratically elected government we dislike - or punishing that country’s citizens by starving them of funds, with the clear aim of reducing that country to turmoil until a government more to our liking is installed?
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For an honorable fan of a dishonored man

^{(an open letter to President George Walker Bush)}

Get on the bus George and tell me you'll save
me a seat for Rapture and a job for life, paid
in the wages of victory in the battle of Babylon
like in your re-write of the screenplay
in which we win the battle for Vietnam

Meanwhile, in these mean times, a sports-
utility-vehicular-penthouse-address will do
(if I want one enough) to go with the pool and
the house in the hills (if i want one enough)
and most important of all respect
as just one of the guys
and the title "The Best" and a seat on the right
hand of God and gas cheap as snowflakes in
Reykjavik (before global warming)

Stand with the flag George and tell me you're
just like me: not clever but savvy, a family
man who believes in God - not some liberal,
intellectual, atheist faggot, 'cause that's what they
must be to be different from me; and that's fair
and balanced as any red blooded American can be

Stand tall at the podium George, smile and say
you love this country and Jesus does too
that this is the greatest nation any year, any
hour, any day, any where. tell us we're good,
tell us we're really good, tell us our hearts
are pure and we'd never do anything false, unjust,
dishonest or cruel because that's not how we
in the USA live, endure and play

Tell it like it is George
and I'll give my child's life
so you can have your way
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Jam (the invasion of Iraq explained)

At first, though the regime was brutal, there was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Remember that. So we killed Iraqis (not bothering to count ‘em) to free them, not from oil (so our leaders said) but from Saddam Hussein, the mad cat.

Forgetting grandma’s advice about hornet’s nests, and Sir Isaac Newton’s law that says, “every action has an equal and opposite re-action” - after our liberating invasion, we planted Al-Qaeda in the people’s hatred by not turning our faces to home and marching back (while expecting thousands of Iraqi bereaved to say, “our family members have been cluster bombed, “smart” missiled, shelled or shot ... dead. But never mind, the invaders were doing us a favour, so that’s alright, no hard feelings, ‘nuff said”).

Instead, mystified by the lack of rose petals thrown at our feet, we dug in and fertilized insurgency, while our leaders, in smug and steadfast speech, said that if Al-Qaeda was busy in Iraq, they couldn’t be hurting our folks in the good old fifty states … and a good strategy was that.

But now we’re told it’s from Iraq that Al-Qaeda will attack! Slap face, slap face, slap face, slap! As history, alive and well and chorus line kicking, sings - “it’s a funny old world, our leaders are crap, and we, in our numero uno arrogance, ignorance and fear have been irresponsible and dumb. It’s been a no happy-ending, mis-adventurous rap”.

And that ... is that (as “never apologise, face saving, Eddy the testosterone abuser” said to “that’s another fine mess we’ve got our children into, Freddy Future”) … splat!
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Tell me, if you can, what am i missing here?

A man at war walks up to a line of citizens waiting for the homeward bus. He takes out from under his coat an automatic blunderbuss and mows the women, children, men and the two pet dogs to kingdom come.

In another part of that hell-hole town, a man at war walks up to a line of similar citizens awaiting a train and under his coat he’s wrapped in a bomb - which he triggers and blows the women, children, men, himself and the little girl’s parrot and the blind man’s gentle, labrador guide dog to that same sorrow-free kingdom come.

And you tell me you don’t understand the second. That by killing himself, he’s somehow worse than the first?

Well, I just, in all justice, don’t get it. I don’t understand your wriggling, quibbling denial; and neither, I suggest (no matter how contrived and hypothetical) do the dead.
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Osama bin Laden captured !

Extra! Extra!

Today in sensational revelations at a closed, sealed and vacuum packed hearing, alleged al-Qaeda mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has confessed, not only to responsibility for World Wars 1 and 2, the Vietnam War and a recent nose-bleed in Budapest (plus several low profile diamond heists in London’s Hatton Garden) but most sensationally of all, to being none other than al-Qaeda supremo, Osama bin Laden.

After four years of careful handling at US "ghost prisons" including a year at Cuba's famous Club Guantanamo Bay, this awesome confession neatly ties up almost all the loose ends necessary for the announcement of a successful conclusion to this stage of the War Against Terror.

End of newsflash :  much more later from myriad agencies all over the place.
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Robert Scheer: Silencing Saddam

Posted on Dec 29, 2006      

By Robert Scheer

It is a very frightening precedent that the United States can invade a country on false pretenses, depose its leader and summarily execute him without an international trial or appeals process. This is about vengeance, not justice, for if it were the latter the existing international norms would have been observed.

The irony here is that the crimes for which Saddam Hussein was convicted occurred before the United States, in the form of Donald Rumsfeld, embraced him.  Those crimes were well known to have occurred 15 months before Rumsfeld visited Iraq to usher in an alliance between the United States and Saddam to defeat Iran.

more ...    

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no mistake

i be no part o' the solution
but i don't despair
there be money to be made
out there

in prolonging da problem
no mistake no confusion
no weeping no wailing
its a fun run thing; i get

me to the trade fairs, no failing
i get me behind my stall
i network; smiling
i stand tall. as long as there

be good folks eager
for killing tools everywhere
me and my family
will continue to care
___

the wrong war

LIke I said:  Macdonald’s* kills more Americans than al-qaeda

Deaths from Obesity: 300,000 premature deaths associated with obesity annually (CDC)
Death rate extrapolations for USA for Obesity: 300,000 per year, 25,000 per month, 5,769 per week, 821 per day, 34 per hour, 0 per minute, 0 per second.
Deaths from Obesity: Approximately 280,000 adult deaths in the United States each year are attributable to obesity.⁹  (Source)

_{(* generically)
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outsourcing

to retain one’s composure in the midst of this
slaughter is surprisingly easy and surely
allowing oneself to be agitated by it does no
good, no good at all. so i slit throats, rip bodies,
blind eyes, shatter and/or tear off limbs, ex
plode skulls and generally evict life from living
flesh calmly and with as little emotional

input as possible

admittedly it’s easier to accomplish this
from afar and more convenient (especially
for the children) being close to amenities,
shops, schools, cinemas, restaurants, TV etc
though it’s distressing the number of epi
sodes of my favourite programs i’ve missed
due to this war between terrorists
___

what goes around

Is Halliburton
on song
to reconstruct
Lebanon?
___

Faces painted on the bark of trees

The man in the photo holds out the top half
Of an infant. seven or six years old i reckon.
Its head hanging limpid to the side. a boy
Or girl i cannot tell. from the waist down is
Missing mostly, with rags of clothing
And flesh dangling, the frayed edges

Of a much used flag. a good fellow he seems
This man. i wonder, is blood dripping onto his
Shoes. do his shoes have laces. on that hill of
Rubble, i cannot tell. calm he looks
Reassuring broad shoulders and belly wide
Face heavy with a black mustache.

His hair is grey with dust. his eyes reflecting
My feelings. his are beyond. my grasp. his hands
Are full. of loss. reaching out there are trees
In the valley below my house

The buzzards have gone but a red kite swoops
Like water over rock as i wait, here at the open
Window, a dead infant in my arms. it weighs
Very little as you know. wherever we are,
Whatever we do, we hold, each of us,
An infant, dead in our arms
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"Reason for Their Death Is Known"

from Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches

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the big question is

as the killing continues
the answer remains
vital to find

how can these blind men
blind from birth
learn that they’re blind
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après histoire

to save the moth you must
snuff out the candle and live
in the dark. the choice is yours.

very well,
you choose to save the moth.
laudable but in the gloom
you continue stamping your feet
continue lashing out with your
knife loaded fists.

on behalf of the moth we thank you.
but the rest of us ...
___