Revolution

Have you begun editing The Front? Any idea when I might see a revised draft? There are a lot of items in the manuscript you need to review and give careful thought to, i.e. all those ellipses. Think about using semi-colons and colons to replace some of those. Tightening up sentences and paragraphs to novelistic standards will help sell the book. Some portions probably could be improved by expansion. Which photos are most important, and where do they go?

Don't forget to run the whole manuscript through spelling and grammar checker software. Remember that early on I tried correcting, but forgot the important differences between American and British usages. It has to be consistent, and probably using the British forms.

It may not be too early to begin looking for a literary agent, and/or publisher. At least begin the process of choosing who and where your manuscript has the best chance of being accepted, and... bought.

I hope you've had a nice holiday, but now its time to roll up your ink stained cuffs and get back to work on the manuscript that will make your reputation and fortune.

Hello Asherman

I haven't actually looked at the piece since I finished it here (and for anyone who hasn't the foggiest idea what we're talking about),

http://www.able2know.org/forums/about97334-0.html

I will, though.
Thanks for the pdf - its really helped. I needed a break - from all that mud!
But i'll get on it. This week. I'll pass it on to you soon as - that's a promise, and thanks.

As for my reputation and fortune -



sorry - but i wish i had your faith. :wink:

I finished the bottle of GM btw - now i'm on the Talisker (from the Isle of Skye) - its a bad, bad drop this one. God bless 'em !

The Fight




You tried to kill me
but you failed
In the end
my spirit held
onto love
The evil I could ride above
was yours alone
Vicious and barbaric
A war zone
Naturally inclined to be
traumatic
You are the fanatic
and I am only me
As honest as I can be
and you know,
I'm glad you nearly killed me
because it shows

I have climbed a mountain
that you would fear
I saved human lives
while immersed in my own fear
I have seen babies born
and held them new in my arms
I have closed the eyelids of the old
after they whispered their last
I have held a crying soldier
I have held a dying hand
I have held a screaming woman
Whose child died with no name
You are insane
If you think it is over
Each day that passes grows bolder
Gold is all you see
But me?
I am not to be
bought






Endymion 2008

PEEK

Newsagents Closed Come Back Later [/color]

Hi Endy,

I really love this one!
It means a lot!

Hope you're having a good start this year.

Regards
Naima

All the best of wishes to you Naima.

Arab stars to aid Iraqi refugees
By Abdul-Ilah As-Saadi


The Syrian Red Crescent handed out school supplies to Iraqi refugees earlier this year [EPA]

A number of Arab entertainers have launched a worldwide fund-raising campaign to assist more than four million Iraqi refugees, both at home and abroad.

The brainchild of Naseer Shamma, a popular Iraqi musician, the three-month campaign kicked off last week under the slogan "Arabs hand in hand with Iraqis".

Shamma told Al Jazeera: "Many Arab artists mostly from Egypt, Syria and Tunisia are taking part in the campaign to raise over $120 million for Iraqi refugees. Fund-raising will be based in Cairo but a group of artists will tour Arab capitals to rally support."

In Iraq, the donated funds will be used to build schools and medical facilities for thousands of internally displaced refugees.

In neighbouring countries, such as Jordan and Syria, where some two million Iraqis have fled, funds will go directly to the governments of the host countries in consultation with the Iraqi government and in co-ordination with international organisations.

"There are those outside Iraq because of sectarian violence that continues in cities like [Baquba in] Diyala, Mosul and in some areas in the capital Baghdad," Shamma said.

A benefit football match between Egypt and Iraq, African and Asian champions in 2007, will also be the highlight of the campaign.

"Shubair Ahmed Shubair, the former Egyptian renowned goalkeeper, will be responsible for organising the match," Shamma added.

International help

The Arab League, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Health Organisation, the World Food Programme, and the International Committe of the Red Cross (ICRC) have pledged their help for the campaign.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1EB153AF-9C8B-489B-AACF-EEAFB7E2F591.htm

Boy with sickle cell anaemia to be deported

By Emily Dugan
Published: 19 January 2008

A 14-year-old boy with sickle cell anaemia has become the latest in a string of failed asylum-seekers to be scheduled for removal from the UK despite the risks to his health if he returns to his home country, Nigeria.

Emmanuel - who does not want his surname to be published - has lived in Britain with his family for more than four years, but is due to be removed to Nigeria at lunchtime today.

When he lived in Nigeria he suffered frequent bouts of life-threatening falciparum malaria, to which sickle cell anaemia sufferers are particularly susceptible. His campaigners have said that returning him to a malarial country is tantamount to a death sentence.

Emmanuel's case follows that of Ama Sumani, a cancer patient who was sent back to Ghana this month, where she will not be able to receive the treatment she needs. Defending Ms Sumani's deportation, Lin Homer, chief executive of the Border and Immigration Agency, told MPs that the Home Office sent home "hundreds" of such people each year.

*

.............on Tuesday this week, following several failed appeals, Emmanuel's mother, Helen, and her six children were seized from their family home in Plymouth and taken to Yarl's Wood detention centre near Bedford. The family say they were taken in what they describe as a "terrifying" dawn raid by "more than 20" immigration officers.

The family were known in both Plymouth and Wallington in Surrey, where they lived previously, as "exemplary" members of the community.

Helen is a qualified physiotherapist, but was unable to work while their asylum case was pending, so she spent her time volunteering for refugee agencies and working as a governor at her children's school, where they were excelling academically.


A 17-year-old friend of Emmanuel's is co-ordinating a campaign to keep the family in the country. Alex Stupple-Harris has galvanised friends and supporters to write letters of appeal to MPs, Home Office officials and British Airways executives.

Alex said: "We only found out on Thursday night that this was happening, so we're all in shock. They have given so much to our community; far more than most people do here. The thing that annoys me is people saying that families like them just 'take, take, take', but with them it's the reverse. We are not going to stop fighting for them."

more


btw the Independent is the only page on the web right now covering this story.


f'fux sake - and this is the labour party?? We are all f*cked - more f*cked than i care to think about. We're fu cked in the fu cking head

Sigh. That is a really tragic situation for that boy & his family to be in.

The compassionate & enlightened folk of the whole global community are going to have to urgently look to solutions for the many people in similar circumstances to Emmanuel & his family. Right now they are treated as just flotsam & jetsam. Terrible.

i think the really telling thing is the method used to round up women and children in these terrible dawn raids - We only behave like thugs and hooligans when we know what we are doing is wrong.

Meanwhile in the US - I look at this man

and what i see is an American President. To me, it is obvious that Kucinich has the brains, the experience and the balls to give America back to the people and make it a country leading the world in environmental alternatives to the obsession there is currently for oil. I think the fact that he has been cut out of the debates proves one thing - the corporate media and 'the rich' see him as a threat and if you ask me - that's a powerful man.

Dennis Kucinich's Fight to Bring Credibility to the Democratic Party

By Chris Hedges, Philadelphia Inquirer. Posted January 19, 2008.

The resilient 2008 candidate attacks the "inside game between competing corporate interests" in U.S. politics.

http://www.alternet.org/story/74268/?page=entire

The Lessons of Violence




BY CHRIS HEDGES

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080121_the_lessons_of_violence/

They Like to Piss on Good (Dead) Men (so fu ck 'em)
________________________________________



Fu ck them
What do they know?
People like them
ain't got no soul
Hey, you stood up man
for what you believed
and sometimes - yeah
you were brave indeed
I saw you marching against
their empire war
while they sat on their fat arses
mongering for more
Now they moan and whine
and make up their minds
before stopping to think
Man, they are sick
fu cking hypocrites
Yeah, I hate them
The way they vomit that ****
Treat you like you were one of them
when they just don't get it
I'm just glad you got home, friend
out of their way
They have no rights to you, man
and even when they say your name
I want shut their filthy mouths
with my fists
Their lying tongues spit
And when the dummies read this
Hey Heath, guess what they'll say?
Whatever…..
I couldn't give a flying fu ck anyway
brother - I'm just sorry you are dead
And the evil out there has spread
You were a compassionate man
And me?
All I can be is what I am
Alone without a plan
A dead man in a dangerous land






Endymion 2008




Naomi Watts, Heath Ledger, Joel Edgerton (all worked together on the film Ned Kelly).
Marching in Australia against the US invasion of Iraq
(Get Ledger's ANTI-SHELL T-shirt) RIP man

Shell unveils £1.5m-an-hour profit

By Graeme Evans and Alan Jones, PA
Thursday, 31 January 2008

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/shell-unveils-pound15manhour-profit-776293.html



A Great Loss



I cannot express
with any rich eloquence
my distress
Indeed, I struggle myself
to find some sense
buried in all this terrible mess
Words inked are cheap, I know
and all but useless if one means to sooth
the sorrowed soul
And I?
I must confess a deep uneasiness in all of this
The stealing of the thief
Yes…. but in the face of grief who amongst many
hears the torrent of goodbyes?
Tears steal memories when you were young
and running wild under a crazy sky
Watch silent the afterglow of lonely light
Its briefest moment saturated night
At that moment
watch beauty fade and die away
No more than a dream turned into day
I still feel your pain
Taken in the giving
and I guess it shall remain
for I am living






Endymion 2008





**************************************************************


Cold Brain


Uninspired
Tired
Wired by the liars
n policy buyers
Cold brain mangled
It takes two to tangle
Like chi
(It does it for me)

Weird water pools
float lilies in my eyes
Stirring chest pain
no big surprise
Storms crash from the skies
in the night long knives free-fall
Hell, I dodge em all

Woken at dawn
in torn bloody sheets
Softly weeping
fleeting war beats
And the boom of laughter
on the broken rubble streets
The cheats
turning heartless treats like tricks
designed by lunatics
The trusting reds
run and fall for it
And then fall prey
Live it - then get blown way
against a crumbling wall
Killed em all
like sweeping scythes
drop tall relentless dreams
unsophisticated screams
Raw
(like an improvised score)
Pull back the hammer n
obliterate the stammer
What you waiting for?

So seal my rhymes, (Hokahey)
Screw the New York Times
and toss it away
They? They like to piss on the dead
so fu ck them instead
Power to the secret signs
V symbolic graffiti
V this critical entreaty
in these hard times
If the snobs break m pen
I start over again
No shame

What's it gona be?
You don't want to believe?
Perceive or recognise
Well then…
Tell yourself again
a hundred sorry lies
I won't be surprised
I've defined
what guilt is mine
I'll wait for you
Take your time





Endymion 2008






3 Monkeys




You hear no evil
Or so you say
You cannot hear
the prisoner who prays
You cannot hear
a father's goodbyes
Or the woman who is raped
Or the child that dies
You cannot hear their cries

You see no evil
Or so you say
You cannot see
how his legs got blown away
You cannot see the anguish, the grief
Or the suffering that lies deep beneath
You did not see
the dog chewed faces
A child's empty shoe
trailing pink laces
You did not see
the bereaved, the insane
and when you flirt in your mirror
you see no blame
My god, you are so vain

You speak no evil
Or so you keep saying
but sometimes I wonder
to whom you are praying




Endymion 2008




Anyway fu ck this **** - i'm gone
the smell of the right-wing is getting too much for me


**************************************************************

I'll leave this message here for all you good souls (and you know who you are) - take good care, Endy

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it-ALWAYS.

Mahatma Ghandi.

Endy- Isn't it sad how even in death people judge others - even those they have no way of knowing.
No one was living his life but him- how can anyone possibly comment?

I didn't know who Heath Ledger was, before he died. Thanks for making him human, indy.

Hi there Endy.

That photograph of Heath Ledger & friends at the rally: I didn't know till you posted it that he had political commitments. (If that rally was in Melbourne (a good chance it was), I was there, too. One the biggest rallies ever held in the city.)

thanks all for posting - Yeah that's Melbourne Olga

I hope you are all well and good

peace
Endy

Yes, I thought so. And that makes me feel good, Endy.

To know that we were all stomping the streets together with other good folk (some "famous" ... & some not).

We tried our best (though sadly, like others around the world, we were not successful in stopping the carnage.) And that's what matters, isn't it? We just have to all keep trying for sanity, again & again & again & again, it looks like.