Revolution

(got a bit carried away here, sorry)

Hi Olga
Yeah, I know how I felt having my photograph taken last march I was on. The thing to do is smile and give them the peace sign.
There's one coming up in London soon and because I'm pretty isolated, I can't say for sure - but I think this will be more than 100, 000 people - I hope so. But there's a lot of fear going around.

I get nervous about the police, but to be honest I've got to the stage now when I have to ask myself how important I think it is to march and I've come to the conclusion that all this isn't just about me. It's about the world now, the future of the human race - and I know some people would sneer at that, but people were sneering back in 1939, when so called 'activists' stood up to the Nazis (or tried to). Difference was, the lunatic in the bunker didn't have his finger on the big red button. I do ask myself if living in a privileged society hasn't robbed us of our imaginations.

I recently read a statement by a female University student (US) asking that people stand up and not be afraid - that if we start to let our Governments intimidate us, we will soon feel disabled and unable to respond - that we'll find out what it really is to live in a police state. If that happens, I could be in trouble with this thread, my poetry, all that. I don't mean because I think my work is especially good or important but because of the idiot arrests there have already been. Because anyone speaking out against Government will be a threat.
Because of the stuff that happened to me when I was a kid, I do have a fear of being persecuted etc - but of course it also makes me feel protective of other, weaker people - our elderly and young for example - and they are getting a rough deal.

Really, Olga - sometimes I do despair about it all. I f*cking hate to see the bad guys win. I can't bare to look over there and see injustice and be too afraid to step in. I look at people out there risking their lives to try and protect us from fascism and I feel like a mouse.
****. I've been up all night thinking around some very important, but unanswerable questions.
What can I do?' What can I do about the hungry masses waiting on salvation in Africa? That traumatised child in Gaza? What can I do to ease Israel's generational trauma - or Hiroshima's? What can I do about that British soldier, carrying depleted uranium in his kidney? What can I do about Iraq?
Can I ever write anything that would change anything? Does my acknowledging the fear and despair of the uncharged prisoner in Cuba, make his suffering any less?

Someone asked me once - why do you feel responsible?
I don't completely know the answer to that question, not really. These days I don't really try and defend myself. I've accepted that I'm damaged, overly sensitive, but I like to think of it as perception and frustration, rather than simple sensitivity. Does that make any sense?

I remember reading something Mother Teresa once said. It was something like:
Don't bother asking your leaders to do what needs to be done, because they aren't going to do it. If something needs doing, you need to do it for yourselves. (D'you think they'd call her a terrorist these days for saying that?)

I'd really like to talk more about these feelings - but not tonight - today - look at that. It's eight o'clock in the morning.
Last time I slept was twenty-three hours ago, (I have to laugh at that) but it's been good to 'talk' about it.

See you, Olga

Endy, I'm writing this now. But you are going to read it tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that ..... after you've had a bloody good sleep! It doesn't matter when.

Do you hear me?

If you're not in bed now, then go. Immediately! Or else ...! :wink:

Yeah, I hate to see the bad guys win, too.

But, you know, these things go in cycles. (I'm older than you, trust me! :wink: ) "Good" periods in history slide into "bad" periods.

Unbelievably corrupt governments with not an ounce of integrity have happened & will continue to happen. Unnecessarily wars will be fought, people will suffer at the will of these people.

We fight against it, Endy, and eventually the wheel turns & opinion changes, revulsion sets in & a sort of morality is restored again.

The thing is, good & bad appear to take their turns in an endless cycle. There is little we can do to stop a Thatcher, a Bush, A Howard from taking control if & when the public mood is attuned to them.
That is terribly sad to me & many, many other people who hold strong beliefs about decency & compassion & fairness ..... but that is how things have worked & will most likely continue to work.

I once read something that someone wrote about "boulder pushers" & why they are so important. The boulder pushers keep pushing that load they believe in, despite the might of current public sympathies. They push the boulder up a bit, then it slips down a bit .... they keep doing it till eventually the time is right for their ideas to be accepted. That is when change happens. They have influenced that change.

But it can be a very tough, being a boulder pusher. There are no instant or easy results.

So, what I'm saying is that I don't believe that putting yourself at risk, causing harm to yourself in the name of "a good cause" is a good idea. It will not hasten the turn of that obstinately slow & frustrating wheel. Doing that only harms you. And that is not good for you, nor does it bring about public acceptance of the causes that matter to you.

I hope this makes some sense to you, Endy, and doesn't sound like some wishy-washy mumbo-jumbo. I did some harm to myself, some time ago, when involved in a much smaller movement than you are talking about here, but which was very important to me. It didn't achieve anything, really, in terms of changing the things I fervently believed needed changing. It just harmed me. That was one less person (for a while) unable to keep pushing those boulders. It happened to others, too. Some of them were harmed so badly that they've stayed away since.

Olga - thanks for taking the time to write that.
I admit it's taken me a while to get my head around it - since I woke up on Sunday.
I'm sorry you've had to see friends suffer - I know how hard that is.
I read your post through a couple of times and I hear what you're saying. I want to assure you - I am not contemplating breaking any laws or doing anything that might draw attention to myself - outside of public, organised demonstration.
The marches I attend are well and lawfully organised and very well attended. The people I officially march with (amongst the thousands) are a down-to-earth crowd and because throughout the day I find people want to talk, I keep myself sober. I have a problem speaking and it's much worse if I'm drinking. (To be honest, I've never yet met a drunk protester.)
Don't worry, I don't take unnecessary risks.

On the other hand, I believe I have a duty to stand up and 'be counted' as one more British citizen who demands an end to the occupation of Iraq. Full stop. End of story. Bring 'em ALL home now.

As for hurting myself - I apologise for letting that continually slip into my work here. I'm not going to give you a load of excuses.

I think I'm very angry at myself for being duped over this war. But was I entirely… ? Or did I choose to go along with it thinking only about myself and what it would all mean to me? Worrying only about how I was going to deal with my ****.

…… Olga, I know you didn't necessarily mean 'writing poetry' when you said, "It won't change anything," but still, it made me question what I'm doing. Am I kidding myself thinking that putting stuff out here is doing anyone any good?
You say it's a never ending cycle - good to evil and back around again -that's just how it goes… I was fairly surprised you said this. Maybe in the past, people have failed to write history from the human angle - but I think that could be changing. Now that we share information (and imagery) from around the world, we are starting to get the fuller picture. Statistics are teaching us more. The history books are starting to be re-written as more information is made available to the public.
We have to learn where we're going wrong - or perish.
Like Orwell said (Or was it Wells?) - "We must end war before war ends us."
I see evolution as a 'spiral' more than a circle. Events resonate on through time, but hopefully we are always learning.

It might sound like blather coming from me, but I think everything we do makes a difference.
You said that what you did 'back when' didn't chance anything - but it did. It changed you. It made you wiser and more able and who knows how many people, like me, you've helped in some way, big or small, since then. Who knows how that's enabled them? And on and on…

After sleeping on and off for hours, I finally woke on Sunday to switch on the radio while I made coffee. On 'Poetry Please' (BBC Radio 4) some guy was reading poems by W H Auden.
The first poem I caught was described as being of significance today.
It's not often a poem really hits me hard, but this one did - nearly 70 years after Auden wrote it. I thought I'd share it with you as it seemed important.

Here it is:


SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
by W.H. Auden


I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.


Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.


***********

National Demonstration
Called by Stop the War, CND and BMI

Sat 24 February 12 Noon
•No Trident
•Troops out of Iraq
Assemble Speaker's Corner Hyde Park
March to Trafalgar Square

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.htm


I shall march next Saturday in London because I sincerely believe we should bring our lads out of Iraq and that we owe it to the world to have a proper debate on the escalation of nuclear weapons. Why spend billions on a weapon we can never use, when what we really need is a solidly equipped and conventional Defence? This is what I ask myself.

Good morning, Endy.

A very quick response from me. I'm in a rush this morning.

I really mustn't have made myself very clear in my (far too long!) ramble the other day. I'm actually not overly concerned about breaking laws. (Not that I rush around looking for opportunities to break them! :wink: ) I think what I was trying to say (re potentially hurtings one's self) was, despite passionate commitment, to hold enough back in reserve for one's self. The "harm" I was talking happened when some of us became so immersed in a particular cause that really we actually became lost it. You could say we "lost the plot". It is hard to explain without going into the details ....
I wish the human race was intelligent enough to reject war & conflict as a solution to anything! It has always astonished me that, following what we learnt about the futility & horror of war after WW1, that the fighting just went on & on & on throughout the 20th Century. That we have to keep re-learning the same things, over & over! When I talk about cycles & boulder pushers I mean those people whose "role" it is to keep the sane, right & "good" ideas alive in very hard times.
Here's a current example of boulder pushing very close to my heart: David Hicks (Australian detainee in Guantanamo Bay. Still no trial) For the best part of 5 years the Australian government & public didn't give a rat's about his predicament. They accepted the Bush/Howard line that he was an evil "terrorist" & was getting what he asked for. It took years of a tiny little group of pro-human rights folk & his lawyers to push & push until the idea that he was being treated disgracefully & unlawfully to take hold. Bit by bit, very slowly, support for him has increased through the efforts of these good people. Then one prominent public figure after another stood up to be counted. Suddenly there was huge media interest! Now, even John Howard talks of his "dissatisfaction" with how the US has handled his case! 6o% of polled Australian disapprove our government's handling of his case! Suddenly David Hicks is an election issue! Every statement by the US & our government is carefully scrutinized & dissected. Etc ...

So I totally agree with you, Endy. Everything we do makes a difference!

OK, enough! You get my gist? :wink:

Looking forward to your reports on the demonstration on Saturday. Good luck! It should be huge!

Cheers,
Olga

Endy wrote-



So we men can die in the trenches all over again. Bullocks to that.

Much better when Downing St, The White House and the Kremlin are ****-scared.

Sorry Olga - I had to get something up here about Trident - I've been writing to Spendius for about three hours!

My brain is truly aching - must crash

Thanks for your reply - I'll check in on Sunday
all the best, Endy

And I have read it Endy and it doesn't convince me in the least. I want any future major wars to fry the leadership. That will concentrate their minds goodstyle.

It already has done during the cold war. Nukes will bring peace. War war rather than talk talk was popular when millions of men could be ordered into battle by people miles from the action sat in cosy offices and sometimes suspected of enjoying it.

How would you justify our seat on the Security Council if we had no nukes?

Chernobyl wasn't about nukes.



They would be engaged in trench war right now but for the fear of their nukes. And a long one.

I don't think you are aware of what it takes to make these things and their delivery systems. Most countries can't afford them. And they are not going to be allowed to possess them in any really effective form.

I think you are oversimplifying things.

Enjoy your demo though. It will give the cops some overtime.

I didn't write all that to try and convince you, Spendius

I wrote it because I think the British people have a right to know what they're really buying into here.
What was it Olga said? About a boulder pusher?
That must be me!

I was once one myself Endy. I admire it.

But I have lived long enough to discover the error of those ways.

I normally can't stand rap, but this.. this is amazing. The only rap I can tolerate, and not only tolerate, but love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8svjkIIzfs

Ended up spending nearly a week in London
I'll put something up later about the march



Thanks Cobbler
Wow - well edited film and to that really haunting track.. The clip of the lads using slings against a modern army just about sums up the criminality of what is going down in the Middle East. The symbolism can't be ignored… at least not by me.

Please feel free to contribute more to this thread - I'd appreciate the input
**************************************************************************

Hi Spendius

Even if you're right -I've always had to learn the hard way!
Right now, I'm following my instincts, because, to be honest, I don't really trust in anything else.


more later....

London Demo
24th Feb 2007



There are a certain things that will stay with me following the march on Saturday, including the Scottish piper right at the beginning, who, during a downpour before the march set off, lifted our spirits by firing up and playing the bagpipes from the shelter of a bus stop beyond the park's railings. Before he'd finished, the rain had stopped and the sun was streaming out between grey clouds. The rain mostly held off for the remainder of the demo, I'm happy to say.

My mind also keeps returning to the very elderly woman, I met in Trafalgar Square at the end of the march. Frail as a bird, curled in a wheelchair, this woman was once an ambulance driver in the WAF . She used to ferry wounded British troops to hospital - her contribution to the WWII battle against nazism. When she talked to me, tears fell from her eyes. Maybe it was just being out in the cold, I don't know… but I wondered how she coped with life, knowing that this world is soon over for her and what she did back in 1941-45, all that she sacrificed to do, is now being thrown back in her face and in the faces of millions of others who stood up to defend democracy against an insanity.


But the really outstanding image I keep returning to, is of the lone man with the placard, who stood across the road from where the march set off. (I'll get around to him).
For those nearer the front of the demo, there was a long wait for the crowds to fall in behind the police barriers.
Standing around hoping for the rain to hold off and trying to ignore the police cameras is bad enough. For me, being fenced in with a crowd of restless souls (even ones of good conscience) isn't easy. There was a lot of tension. When a lad with an Iranian flag (proudly stripped to the waist) knocked into me as he ran passed, I had the strange urge to turn and walk away - Get an underground train to Camden, go get pissed, and forget it.
Not because I was particularly angry with the flag-bearer, but because of my own problems and ****. I don't know if he saw some of this, but he stopped and turned around, "Alright, mate? Sorry." He said. He sounded more of a Londoner than I now do (having lived away for some time).
I also noted that he was only about sixteen, maybe seventeen and that underneath his cheerful manner, he was afraid. Probably of his relatives in the leafy city of Tehran being cremated by a nuclear bomb.



Behind us, the drums were beating out a tattoo.

Although I was taken up with what was going on around me at close quarters, and even talking a little, my eyes kept returning to the man I could see every now and then, standing facing us in silence on the other side of the traffic.
He was a ghost from a future nightmare. The kind of odd figure you might catch a glimpse of in an early Hitchcock film. Or be drawn to in a scene written by Stephen King. A middle aged man whose features I can't remember.
His placard read (in thick black letters),

It's going to get worse



After the march I went to an Irish pub with a friend and got totally smashed.
We talked about the demo of course - there were a few 'firsts' that came up this time round and I think they are important.

1. First march I've ever been on where several times along the route, the public on the other side of the barriers came over and gave the marchers the peace sign, or the thumbs up, or a nod of thanks - even on one occasion a straight thank-you.



Drivers beeped at us and I had my hand shaken twice. This hasn't happened (at least not to me or any of the group of fellas I was marching with) ever before. Not on the actual route, anyway.

2. First time any of the official speakers have talked of direct civil disobedience.

3. First time the police (using two circling helicopters) have 'silenced' the speakers (to some extent) by drowning out their voices.
(In the pub that night the terms 'Copper-choppers' and 'Pork-choppers'
resulted in a highly hilarious song - which I could not possibly print here).


Some Thing Don't Change



The Police initially told the BBC that 4,000 people were on the march! (The idiots)
(They later upped this to 10,000)
Lying bastards

100,000 people were there and if no one else knows it - the people of London who saw us all there in Trafalgar Square do.

I've seen a lot of things in my time....

but this beats it all


Gesture politics: young Blair revealed in full


Lee Glendinning
Friday March 2, 2007
The Guardian
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,2025203,00.html

"...the future world leader who offers the universally understood gesture."


The US know they have it bad
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=9332

...but at least they don't have to stomach one of these

Newsphoto: Basra
Collateral Damage
by Steve Kowit

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands
as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators-
General F.S. Maude, commander of the British Colonial forces in Iraq, l914

Apparently, the little girl is dead.
In Basra, bombed to rubble by the Yanks,
her stricken father cradles her small head.

Her right foot dangles, ghastly, by a thread.
Cluster bombs & F-16's & tanks.
That is to say the little girl is dead

whose fingers curl (small hand brushed with blood)
as if to clutch his larger hand. He drinks
her--sobbing--in & cradles her small head,

& rocks her in his arms, the final bed
but one in which she'll lie. The father clings,
as if his broken daughter were not dead,

her face, as if in sleep, becalmed, but red,
bloodied, bruised. At bottom left, the ranks
of those still dying die beneath her head.

Legions of the Lords of Plunder: the dread
angel of empire offers you thanks!
Look, if you dare! See? The child is dead.
Her stricken father cradles her small head.

(Endy- I found this poem in a back issue of a magazine I subscribe to. I thought it was a ironic juxtaposition to Blair and friend in their photo of hijinks and good times).

Great photos of the demonstration by the way....

Hi Rebecca

Thanks for posting that. I'm always on the look out for Iraq war poetry.

I know the photograph quite well, even before a favourite blogger - Tom Degan put it on his site. It is an outstanding image of this war and I believe will continue to haunt us for years to come.

I have asked myself before, why this image over thousands of others that equally address the brutality of war, should be so affecting - and why it is chosen again and again by humanitarians as a symbol of injustice.

Her father's grief is evident in the way he holds her - you can see his physical pain at the loss - but I've come to the conclusion that it is the little girl herself who provokes my outrage. Not just because her life has been snatched from her - but because she has been stolen from the world, from us.

When I look at her bloody clothing, when I look at her bloody face, I see the same things as her father - a child of character, an interesting character, an intelligent face - and I think, 'what a terrible, criminal waste.'

She's been stolen from us all, not just from her father; - and forever. And for nothing.

Thank you for drawing my attention back to this iconic image.

peace
Endy

You're welcome. You know what's scary to me though Endy, is that I used to think along those lines too. I used to automatically just rage against the tragedy of it all, but now more and more I find myself thinking things like, "Maybe she's better off".
God- what does that say about our world, and/or my perception of it?
It just seems that the world, and life within it, is just getting more and more unliveable, for more and more people.
And though there is still beauty to be found, it's hard to enjoy it with a clear conscience when you see what has become the reality for children like that beautiful little girl.

(*I think the reason this picture is iconic, and the reason I chose it is because the little girl looks like she could be anyone's child- her face-her jacket-she reminds me of children I've seen playing in front yards or gardens in England, in the US- anywhere. Also really powerful to me is the way her father holds her with such obvious tenderness, though without any overt emotion except sadness and resignation. Both their faces communicate dignity-in death and in life.

Yes, I see what you are saying about their dignity. How true. And the colourful clothes the girl is wearing would look appropriate in Camden.

As for thinking 'maybe she's better off' - I can't agree with that.
I know it's terrible out there - especially for the children, who are being traumatised by their surroundings, their fear and grief, but each of us should be free to choose life if we want it over death.

Sometimes, when I think about suicide (and I believe everyone has the right to choose) - I remember a Muslim prisoner who spoke about his experiences of being 'ill-treated' by US guards (I won't go into details) - and how he had basically given up on the world, given up on himself.
He felt he no longer had a reason (or the strength) to fight depression - that he would be better off dead.

One morning, despite it being cold and snowing, he saw something strange just outside his tiny window, right on the ledge where he could poke his fingers out and touch it. It was a single, perfect flower, small and blue and lasting only for that day, but it was like a message to him - a gift. He said (something like) "When I saw that little flower, which should not have been there, anymore than I should have been there, I found some courage to go on."
Maybe he realised that we are all a part of nature and sometimes the frailest thing of all can give the strongest message.

You said, " …though there is still beauty to be found, it's hard to enjoy it with a clear conscience."

I know. But Rebecca, not everyone sees beauty in the things you do - trees and sunsets and Iraqi children. Just being able to see the beauty is a gift (especially if you're a good photographer - and I know you are).

I don't think we can celebrate the beauty of this world enough - so please, don't give up.
In all this destruction, we should seek out the 'beauty' - like that prisoner's blue flower - and encourage a greater appreciation of its power.

(But who am I to give advice?)

I watched the eclipse of the moon last night - wow
We've had water on mars (beginning of the age of Aquarius?) and now a red moon
Is something trying to tell us something? - Or is that just pagan superstition?
While I listen to the signs, at least for me, they have a voice.




Blood Moon (A Revolution)


Last night I saw blood on the moon
A cold eclipse
Shadow of the earth
Leaving a bloody fingerprint
Did you watch the revolution alone?
You and the mysterious
In a dark void
Did you see the sign
Of the avenger?
Or was it the rosy kiss
Of an angel's lips?
There's blood on the moon
Blood on the moon
Blood on the moon




Endymion 2007




Andrew Cairns, in West Lothian, Scotland, captured the redness of the moon during totality.

Only the best at it, (along with my big sister Laura )

I saw that moon too. Wasn't that something?
Thanks Endy, for all that you do here, the poems, the photos, the articles, and especially the encouragement.

*Your story about the blue flower reminds me of something I saw Wednesday, maybe you saw it too-in the morning, around 7:00- it was raining really hard, the sky was just grey-no trace of the sun, and then suddenly, right through the rain, the clouds parted and there was the sun-this watery, yellow perfect circle. It seemed so out of place in such a grey, rainy sky-but also so strangely beautiful and promising-like that blue flower was to that prisoner.
My drive to work is beautiful in the morning especially. One of these days, I'm going to leave an hour early and take some pictures on the way.
Thanks again for your inspiration and encouragement-Rebecca