Sunday 31 March 2013

She Was A Minoan Girl

I was about fifteen years old when I first read this poem by Catullus. I was already full of thoughts of revolt and the overthrow of the established order. But thoughts of the sweet Minoan girl and her milky white bosom came as something of a distraction.
And, indeed, I came to realize that it is better to love one woman well than to love the whole world.
For what is a king or a conqueror, a pope or a revolutionary, a Saint Francis or a Napoleon, or a Theseus for that matter, compared to the poorest Peasant who is a good man to one good woman?


'The Minoan girl, at the water's edge, stares out far, far to see him,
with her suffering eyes. Like a stone statue, like a lover of Bacchus, she stares
so sadly! swept up in great billows of hurt;
blond hair blowing wildly under the delicate scarf ,
bosom scarcely covered by her thin dress.

Milk white breasts unbound, her inner garments fall away
Uncovering her tender body
The salty tide caresses her feet,
But she gives no thought to her dishevelled hair
or her dress that swirls in the wind. Theseus!

with all her heart, her mind, her spirit, this girl needs you!
Oh, poor girl, what endless grief harsh Venus has cast upon you!
She sowed in your heart nettles of hurt
ever since that sorry day when fierce Theseus
left for the curved shore of Piraeus harbour.'

Saturday 30 March 2013

Easter Sunday with John Ball

This day is the most amazing day of the year. This is what it is all about - the Resurrection. Against all the odds, at times, seemingly against all the evidence, Jesus is raised from the dead, life conquers death, love conquers hate, hope conquers despair, and you and I and the whole of creation have been reconciled to God. The Resurrection, the pivotal event in history, the pivotal event in eternity, the one event all roads lead to, happened on this day nearly 2000 years ago.

'And in one day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the grave, when it was yet dark, and she saw the stone moved away from the grave.
Therefore she ran, and came to Simon Peter, and to another disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith to them, They have taken the Lord from the grave, and we know not, where they have laid him.
Therefore Peter went out, and that other disciple, and they came to the grave.
And they twain ran together, and that other disciple ran before Peter, and came first to the grave. And when he stooped, he saw the sheets lying, nevertheless he entered not.
Therefore Simon Peter came following him, and he entered into the grave, and he saw the sheets laid, and the sudarium that was on his head, not laid with the sheets, but by itself wrapped into a place.
Therefore then that disciple that came first to the grave, entered, and saw, and believed.'

Friday 29 March 2013

The Coldest Hour

The coldest hour is just before the dawn. On this day, long ago, Jesus lay in the tomb . In the words of the Apostles' Creed, He descended into Hell. Jesus, the Lamb of God, took upon himself the death, the hate, the despair of you and I.

This hymn by Isaac Watt is called When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. It was first published in 1707.

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Thursday 28 March 2013

Good Friday On The Plantation

This is a short passage from the novel, Menino de Engenho, Plantation Boy, by Jose Lins Do Rego. It is set on a sugar plantation in the North East of Brazil around a hundred years ago, twenty or so years after the abolition of slavery.

'On Good Friday we only had one meal on the plantation. Fresh fish came from the city and relatives from other plantations came to visit; we ate much more than on other days. The maids in the kitchen would speak of Jesus's suffering from the heart and said that if the priest forgot to say the Hallelujah at the Saturday mass then the world would end once and for all.
The tenants came to the main house in large groups to ask for food, as was the tradition. They were given dried cod and flour. With their wives and their children they would leave, weighed down by sacks of food, as if they were walking one of the Stations of the Cross.
The whole day was sad. The train did not run on the railway line.
Sometimes an old lady called Totinha would visit the plantation at this time of year. She knew the story of the Life, Passion and Death of Jesus Christ in verse, and with her sad tale she would reduce us to tears.
Old Sinhazinha would say that Holy Week at Itambe was how it should be done. Padre Julio would kiss the feet of the poor and lead the procession through the streets. In church he would give a heart rending sermon while the congregation cried.
The maids stayed in the kitchen talking in whispers. No one bathed in the river, not wanting to appear naked on that day. The animals were not worked and no one insulted anyone or called each other names.
They made me release a canary that I had caught.
In our conversations we mulled over and corrected the Will of God. We decided that Jesus Christ should have liquidated all the Jews and taken over Jerusalem. The greatness of his sacrifice was lost on us. We wanted a material victory over his executioners.
For Holy Week the plantation's little chapel of the saints was open. The sanctuary was bedecked in black and the pictures of the saints were turned to face the wall. The saints were ashamed to look at the world.'


Wednesday 27 March 2013

First Things

Here we have an excerpt from 'Men and Matriarchy' by Mary Malone:

When men forgot to give, they first of all expropriated the power of women. By rendering Woman powerless they turned her into a thing. Woman was the first ‘thing’ to be objectified.
Woman was the first human resource.
Woman was the first commodity.
In the ancient matriarchal world there was no such thing as prostitution, there was no such thing as rape.
These concepts are unknown in ‘primitive’ societies.
Yet in a patriarchal society prostitution and rape go together like a horse and carriage.
Violence is taboo in a matriarchal society, but violence is the essence of Patriarchy.
In a society with no possessions and no expropriated  power there is no call for violence.
Only in patriarchal society does crime raise its head; because patriarchal society is crime itself.
Women are objectified and enslaved. Service and giving are despised, domination is all.
Women are subjected to men.
The world is turned upside down.
 

Tuesday 26 March 2013

War Is The Health Of The State

From my point of view as a Peasant who at one time lived in the 1300s the above statement seems fairly obvious.
But a lot of you twenty first century people see the state as Big Mother.
I mean, if you set up a tiddlywinks club you guys ask Big Mother for funding, then ask her for approval once you’ve filled in the right forms and followed the right regulations.
Big Mother looks after your health and your safety, she makes sure you don’t drink too much, eat too much, or think too much.
There’s no time for thinking with all this regulated fun and entertainment on offer.
But I still think, just as if I were still living in the fourteenth century. We had lots of time for thinking back then.
I used to think, 'why do I have to work for the lord of the manor?, why must I pay taxes to the king and tithes to the bishop?'
All that extra work to do, and what did I get from it?
Blimey, the roads were even worse then than they are now.
I began to think about how nice it would be if there weren’t any lords and lawyers and bishops and kings, how nice it would be if there was no government at all.
Those Who Know Better Than Us reckon we need them because they sort out justice. They punish the wrongdoer.
But in Saxon times, when we English ruled ourselves, justice was not a matter of punishment but of compensation. The laws of our people saw to that, laws that had been agreed upon centuries ago in Germany, where our ancestors came from.
German, incidentally, is a word that means 'brother’, like in the Catalan word  ‘german’, or the Castilian word ‘hermano’.
Before the Norman Yoke, we English were brothers.
They tell us that the thugs they employ, ‘warriors’ they like to call them, are there to protect us from other thugs.
It is a protection racket, that’s what it is.
They fight wars to justify their existence.
They create enemies where there are none.
Instead of talking about love their priests always talk about the ‘Other’.
They say that they are good, and the ‘Other’ is evil.
The nature of the world, they tell us, is conflict and domination, murder and rape.
They want us to live in fear.
For our protection we must all march together behind them.
And if we step out of line……………….then we too become the ‘Other’.
Back in my day the king and his nobles wanted us to believe that we could not live without them, like you guys  believe you cannot live without Big Mother.

Monday 25 March 2013

Ne'er Shed A Clout Till May Is Out

A few years ago in England the winters were getting warmer and the summers wetter, and the seasons seemed to be melting into one. At that time, the global warming alarmists seemed to have a good point. It seemed possible than the sinful excess of humanity and its inability to recycle its own waste was causing damage to the whole of creation.
However, the last few years have seen a return to proper winters. Snow has become frequent again and temperatures below zero are becoming common once more.
This month we have seen snow and ice.
It has been cold, but by no means exceptionally cold. It has dipped a degree or two below zero, feeling a little colder because of the high winds.
However, the alarmists, having been discredited with their global warming scare, now seek to frighten us with talk of  Climate Change.
Climate Change is one of those terms like Emotional Abuse that can mean absolutely anything.
The alarmists talk of Extreme Weather.
Well, I've yet to see any extreme weather round here. I've seen nothing that I didn't see forty years ago.
Indeed, even further back, in the fourteenth century we had huge problems with global cooling. The fourteenth century was a time of famine, war and plague in Northern Europe, and the drop in temperature caused no end of difficulties. It was a century of cooling, and the cooling had nothing to do with humanity.
Forty years ago the Jehovah's Witnesses liked to warn us of impending global catastrophe with every earthquake, hurricane or blizzard.
Now they are being put out of business by the miserabilists who see wickedness everywhere, and the alarmists in the Vichy press.
Climate Change is a joke.  Modern day Greens are Jehovah's Witnesses gone mainstream.
Yet those who see wickedness in every act of affirmation are perilously close to wrecking England's energy supplies.
Coal, with its grim proletarian connotations, has been declared anathema. Wind farms which destroy countless birds and bats (for their own ecological good) will soon spread throughout the land, driving us mad with their low level hum, while we huddle together covered by blankets, wearing three pairs of socks, four sweaters, and a couple of coats for good measure.

Sunday 24 March 2013

Love and War - Sappho

This is a poem by the divine Sappho, the poetess of Lesbos.
It is loosely translated from the Aeolic Greek by your humble Peasant, with a great deal of help from his friend Epidurea.


Some say an army of horsemen,
some of foot soldiers, some say ships
are the fairest things on this dark earth,
But I say the most fair is the one I love.

People easily understand the way
I feel, for Helen, far above
all mortals in her beauty, who
left the best of all husbands

And sailed for Troy
Neglecting tears of infant child
And those of her dear parents,
Seduced with one enslaving glimpse

By Aphrodite. Her will so easily bent
Her feet so nimbly danced astray
She reminds me in her betrayal of
Anactoria who has gone away

I would much prefer to see the gentle sway
as she walks, the shining eyes that light her face
Than the war chariots of the Lydians or
their foot soldiers bearing their arms.

  

Saturday 23 March 2013

Altruism and Free Will - Sundays with John Ball

It is better to give than to receive.
Yet in modern times people think it is better to receive than to give. They want more and more and more. Altruism is thought to be something commendable, if slightly odd.
Self interest is thought of as something normal and sane.
Back in the fourteenth century altruism was normal behaviour. Self interest was regarded as sick, insane, anti social.
Indeed, in these present dark times, when there is an epidemic of mental breakdown, everywhere we see worshipped the Holy Trinity of the Madman;  I, Me, and Myself.
People used to give because giving was what they did. They gave from their abundance. They competed in the giving of gifts.
In their weakness, in their paucity, they would take. But they knew that, when strong again, they would give once more.
They gave because to give is to live.
However, those who have sold themselves to the hierarchy, the bureaucracy and the military, adhere to the notion of free will.
Free will has always been a favoured doctrine of the Roman Church, a church which is the embodiment of hierarchy, not Christ, whose main concern is submission and obedience to the hierarchy.
Nowadays, even Protestant churches 'offer' salvation, teaching poor sinners that they have the 'free will' to refuse God.
In a world of reward and punishment, of deals, of take, people consider that they have a choice, to be good or bad, to be obedient or disobedient, to be moral or immoral.
People stop just giving, and consider what is in their best interest.
This selfishness they call free will.
So instead of giving from their natural abundance, those blessed with free will only choose what is best for themselves.
So, giving is confined to a minor sphere, a peripheral action exceptional and rare, and what was once seen as perverse selfishness becomes the norm. The sick are regarded as healthy, the healthy are thought of as crazy.
Free will traps people in the hell of themselves.
People stop giving.
Society collapses.
Each person is at war with their neighbour. 

Friday 22 March 2013

To Be Governed

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon:

'To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, valued, censured, commanded; by creatures who have neither the  right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown it all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government: that is its justice; that is its morality.
Oh humanity! How can it be that you have cowered in such subjection for sixty centuries?'

Thursday 21 March 2013

Prejudiced

It's a bit pathetic, accusing those who disagree with you of prejudice, but such is the way of the modern totalitarians. It is a way of shutting down debate.
Peter Tatchell, the Gay Rights activist,  has written to the new Archbishop of Canterbury accusing him of being 'homophobic' because of his opposition to Parliament's redefinition of marriage. Indeed, I am surprised he stopped at insulting the Archbishop. After all, why not insult God, and call Him a bigot too?
The Bible is quite clear that sexual activity for sexual activity's sake is not pleasing in the eyes of God, particularly those activities which play no role in procreation. It is a sad fact of life that most of us indulge in non procreational sexual activities at some time or other. Like getting drunk, it may be fun, but is not to be recommended. I see no reason to expect that either the Almighty or organised religion should approve of our sexual tastes.
God does not do lust.
Surely Mr Tatchell knows that.

In Europe homosexuals are often known as 'pedos', pederasts, men who like sodomising boys.
Mr Tatchell, by his own admission, finds value in sodomising children. 

‘The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends - gay and straight, male and female- had sex with adults from the ages of nine to thirteen. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.
While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.’

Pederasty often occurs in all male societies, such as the barracks of Ancient Sparta. Where there is hierarchy and violence and an absence of female love, in such places as British Public Schools and American Prisons, among Hitler's  Brownshirts, male on male rape and authoritarian homosexual relations are frequent. Such relations are based on domination not love. The children who are brutalised in such a manner often become brutes themselves, as their emotional training has been in power rather than tenderness.
Although there are some naturally effeminate men who are attracted to other men, there are many homosexuals who have been trained  in brutality in situations where masculinity is equated with authority and violence and women are treated as weak, pitiful, contemptuous, and with disrespect.

Like Mr. Welby, I too am prejudiced about some things.

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Conspiracy Theory - The Joker

Does the Joker really exist?

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in a report of 15th March 2013, there are 25 or so people currently living in Israel who were at Columbia University at the same time as Obama, who graduated in 1983.
The report quotes one graduate,

'But here's the thing: not one of us remembers Barack Obama from our undergrad years, nor do we know anyone who does.'

Another one says,

'When he first came on the political scene, back when he was running for Senate, I was living in Illinois, and I was like, 'Wait, this guy went to school with me.' But I had no recollection of him whatsoever, and neither did anyone else I know, which I found very strange.'

Given the controversy over Obama's birth certificate, and his mysterious years in Indonesia, the question must be, not only who exactly is Barrack H Obama, but does he exist at all?
Is he perhaps just a fantasy invented by a racialist Progressive conscience?

Tuesday 19 March 2013

The Real Target Is The Internet

Clearly  press regulation  does not just hit large newspapers which, for the most part, simply spout the Narrative.
Now the principle of censorship and regulation has been established, eventually control will extend to anything that is written, either in a small local or specialist newspaper or on the internet.
Indeed the internet is the real target of Authority.
During the twentieth century there were not many sources of independent news and comment. When you are stuck in a small town, and the newspapers and magazines and distribution networks are all part of the state/corporate monopoly, it is difficult to find out what it is really going on. With Authority television re-enforcing the Narrative, and hourly 'news' bulletins on the radio, before the internet was invented it was not easy finding out what was going on.
But these days people read their news from many different sources.
The Leveson Inquiry is not really about embarrassing revelations concerning politicians and public figures, or the occasional tasteless intrusion on private grief. It is more to do with covering up the widespread corruption of the English Establishment, a system of monopoly and patronage and feathering your nest at the peasant's expense.
At the moment there are libel laws, and a host of other laws too, which the Powerful have at their disposal.
See how difficult it is for people to raise concerns even when thousands of people are murdered in NHS hospitals! No action is taken against the perpetrators, only against those who dare to rock the Ship of Fools.
But regulation is so much easier than law, so much more arbitrary.
Before long someone will find some comment on the internet that can be deemed 'Offensive', and a web site will be closed down.
Free and fruitful discussion has always been the enemy of the Tyrant.
For three hundred years, since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, England was a free country.
In that time, England transformed the world both politically and economically. But that dynamic free society is dead. We have returned to the dark age of the Stuarts where a Court political class smothered the nation with monopoly, patronage, and arbitrary power. 
We have to watch what we say, and watch what we write.

Monday 18 March 2013

Let's Get Lazy

The 1960s and the 1970s were the heyday of the working class in Western Europe and North America.
After centuries of eking out a living on marginalized land and constant drudgery in noisy dirty factories, ordinary people were allowed to enjoy some of the fruits of their labour.
Ordinary folk could eat at the top table.
Houses became homes, indoor bathrooms, fitted carpets, double glazing and labour saving devices were installed, shoes and clothing were mass produced and cheaply available, colour television was switched on, jet aeroplanes sent us far away for our holidays in the sun.
We no longer had to light the fire each morning. The heating was put on by the flick of  a switch. We no longer had to play music, we could listen to records. We no longer had to make our own entertainment, it was made for us.
And, indeed, since those glory days of the working class technology has rattled on apace, so much so that the jobs that are essential to life, the building of houses, the growing of food, the provision of heat, are all done by a small minority of people, instead of by the great majority.
For most of us work is unnecessary.
If we need to work at all we only need to work a few hours a week, paid or unpaid. The rest is play.
That is the basic cause of contemporary unemployment and underemployment, and it will never go away.
So why do we still work so hard?
Why do we pretend that we need more goods, more services, more weapons, more war?
Why has that most advanced country, the United States of America, become a Security State?
A hundred and fifty years ago around 70% of Americans worked the land. Now it is about 2% who provide the food for everyone else.
The flight from the land to the cities is a phenomenon throughout the world, because there aren’t enough jobs to go around in the mechanized countryside.
But the same is happening in industry now. Industries like coal mining and steel production use a fraction of the work force they once did.
So why do we serve the economy instead of the economy serving us?
Jobs have been created to keep the structure of hierarchy in place. Indeed, the structure of hierarchy has been expanded to absorb women in ever greater numbers.
And so, in this time of plenty, we have whole armies of middle men and middle women doing unnecessary jobs, people who once might have been occupied in doing a skilled mechanical job or tilling the soil, or mending, cooking and washing, darning socks and pruning trees.
At every turn you find a busybody with a regulation. Where, not so long ago, there were two people in administrative support there are now twenty. You need to sit in a classroom and take a course and acquire a certificate for even the simplest of jobs.
All of this just to maintain the hierarchical principle.
All of this unnecessary activity just to ensure that we all have a boss.

Sunday 17 March 2013

As You Sow, So You Will Reap

Voltairine de Cleyre was an American Anarchist and Feminist who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If anything, she was more of an individualist, a libertarian, than an anarcho-syndicalist. However, her interests and output were too varied for her to to be categorised and contained.
Here is one of her poems;


Ut Sementum Feceris, Ita Metes
(To the Czar, on a woman, a political prisoner, being flogged to death in Siberia)

How many drops must gather to the skies
Before the cloud burst comes, we may not know;
How hot the fires in under hells must glow
Ere the volcano's scalding lavas rise,
Can none say; but all wot the hour is sure!
Who dreams of vengeance has but to endure!
He may not say how many blows must fall,
How many lives be broken on the wheel,
How many martyrs fix the blood-red seal;
But certain is the harvest time of Hate!
And when the weak moans, by an indignant world
Re-echoed, to a throne are backward hurled,
Who listens, hears the mutterings of Fate!



Saturday 16 March 2013

I am Lazarus - Sundays with John Ball

Sometimes I say to myself  'I am Spartacus.' In reality I am Lazarus.
In the words of John's Gospel, translated by Mr. Wycliffe and his friends:

'But when Mary was come where Jesus was, she seeing him felled down to his feet, and said to him, Lord, if thou haddest been here, my brother had not be dead.
Therefore when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping that were with her, he made noise in spirit, and troubled himself, and said, Where have ye laid him? they said to him, lord, come, and see.
And Jesus wept.
Therefore the Jews said, Lo! how he loved him.
And some of them said, Whether this man that opened the eyes of the born blind man, might not make that this man should not die?
Therefore Jesus again making noise in himself, came to the grave. And there was a den, and a stone was laid thereon.
And Jesus saith, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith to him, Lord, he stinketh now, for he hath lain four days.
Jesus saith to her, Have I not said to thee, that if thou believest, thou shalt see the glory of God?
Therefore they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I do thankings to thee, for thou hast heard me;
and I knew, that thou ever more hearest me, but for the people that standeth about, I said, that they believe, that thou hast sent me.
When he had said these things, he cried with a great voice, Lazarus, come forth.
And at once he that was dead, came out, bound the hands and feet with bonds, and his face bound with a sudarium. and Jesus saith to them, Unbind ye him, and suffer ye him to go forth.'

Friday 15 March 2013

Thomas Paine - Rights of Man

‘Rights of Man’ appeared in 1791 and 1792, at the time of the French Revolution. Coming only a few years after the American Revolution, it must have seemed as if the whole world was being turned upside down. Certainly the English elite thought so. ‘Rights of Man’ was banned, Paine tried and sentenced to death in absentia. Yet tens of thousands of copies were sold, hundreds of thousands of English people reading and hearing the words written by Thomas Paine.

‘It could have been no difficult thing in the early and solitary ages of the world, while the chief employment of men was that of attending flocks and herds, for a banditti of ruffians to overrun a country, and lay it under contributions.’

‘Those bands of robbers having parcelled out the world, and divided it into dominions, began, as naturally is the case, to quarrel with each other. What at first was obtained by violence, was considered by others as lawful to be taken, and a second plunderer succeeded the first.’
          
‘As time obliterated the history of their beginning, their successors assumed new appearances, to cut off the entail of their disgrace, but their principles and objects remained the same. What at first was plunder, assumed the foster name of revenue;’

‘Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in  the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the parts of a civilized community upon each other, create that great chain of connexion which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything that is ascribed to government.’

‘But how often is the natural propensity to society disturbed or destroyed by the operations of government! When the latter, instead of being ingrafted on the principles of the former, assumes to exist for itself, and acts by partialities of favour and oppression, it becomes the cause of the mischiefs it ought to prevent.’  

Thursday 14 March 2013

Votes For Women and White Feathers

We live in Progressive times. The past is denigrated, the future, exalted. Our Progressive ideology assures us that we are ever more civilized than our stupid, brutish ancestors.
Our superiority is obvious. Not only are we more tolerant, more diverse, more free, but we are also more prosperous than those who have grunted and hunted before us.
We worship at the altar of Democracy and Equality and we are prepared to sacrifice no end of Others to satisfy the hunger of our gods. 
The Narrative tells us that, a hundred years or so back, women had no Rights, no Opportunities, were Powerless, the Slaves of exploiting Man. And Woman did not have the Vote.
Yet, most women were either unconcerned by votes for women or were actively opposed!
Many women did not want to be equal.
One of the great fears of the women who opposed female suffrage was conscription.  
The problem arose in the eighteenth century, and particularly with the French Republic.
Before the French Revolution, Europe was governed by Monarchs. Each kingdom contained peoples of many different cultures and languages. But the French Republic replaced the Monarch with the concepts of the People and the Nation.
From then on when the government went to war, the whole Nation went to war. Now we had Total War.
Total War for the French Republic and some other European countries meant the conscription of men.
Along with conscription, and the reach of the state into many aspects of an ordinary person's life, came the not unreasonable demand for democracy.
However, women did not want to be conscripted.
Neither did many want to be 'independent'. For many working class women the Great War was a disaster, as the family breadwinner went off to fight the enemy. Being independent meant hardship.
The Great War of 1914 to 1918 was mostly a war between armies of men. Ten million men and a few women died.
Most women did not want to be part of such butchery.
But the spoilt little rich girls, the suffragettes of the overseer class, were all for the war. These daughters of privilege, such as Christabel  Pankhurst, raised by servants and governesses, turned the Women's Social and Political  Union, into a  pro war movement. In an early example of an NGO/Charity being co-opted by the state, the WSPU accepted a £2000 grant from the English government and arranged a pro war rally in London.
Pankhurst toured England making speeches, encouraging recruitment, giving out white feathers to the sons of servant women, men who had no wish to die on the barbed wire.
In 1916 conscription for men was introduced.
In 1918 women got the vote.

Wednesday 13 March 2013

Prussia and the Disappearing Germans

When Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 he was saved in the nick of time by the arrival of the Prussian army. But who were the Prussians and where was Prussia?
By 1815 Prussia was the major German state (with the exception of the Austrian Empire). Its capital was Berlin, which lay in Brandenburg, rather than old Prussia which lay to the east and is now occupied by Poles and Russians and Baltic people.
The original Prussians spoke a Baltic language, like the Estonians and the Finns, but during the Middle Ages they were conquered, colonised and Christianized by Germans from the west.
Eventually they were assimilated into German culture. Over the centuries German Prussians held their own against Poles and Russians and Swedes. They welcomed the Protestant Reformation, but later on they preferred to worship the state instead.
In the eighteenth century, under Frederick the Great, Prussia became a militarized bureaucratic state, fifty years before the French Republic. To instil habits of obedience the state usurped the role of parents by instituting compulsory education and by promoting moralism in the form of Pietism. The people were taught to equate 'good' with obedience to Authority.
Eventually this military state overcame Austria and France and spread westwards till it had absorbed all Germany.
Eventually, in the 1930s Prussia more or less lost its separate identity within Germany, and in the 1940s the old Prussian lands were lost to Germany entirely, being occupied by Poland and the Soviet Union.
All the Germans of Eastern Europe were expelled in one of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing in history. It is estimated that 12 to 14 million Germans fled to the new countries of East Germany and West Germany, leaving their ancient homes not just in Prussia, but in Transylvania, Ukraine and Czechoslovakia too.
The refugees played a full part in the reconstruction and prosperity of post-war Germany.
They have also shared in Germany's decline. Far from expanding eastwards modern Germany imports millions of immigrants as it suffers demographic decline.
Each German woman produces on average 1.4 children, well below the replacement rate.
After centuries of dynamic expansion the Germans have disappeared from their Prussian homeland.
They replaced their faith and their families with militarism and bureaucracy. They diminished themselves and became Reichsdeutsche.
Having suffered terrible wars and catastrophic defeats, the Germans appear to be calling time on their great civilization.  

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Del Lado Del Verano - Film Review

Spanish and Latin American Film Festival, Manchester.

Del Lado Del Verano is a Spanish film from the Canary Islands financed wholly or in part by governmental institutions.
It concerns a dysfunctional working class family. If the protagonists had been of African ethnicity the film would have been damned as racist.
It is supposed to be funny, but there is little kindness in the film.
For a film to be funny we have to be able to identify with the characters to some extent, to recognise our own actions in the ridiculous behaviour of others.
Otherwise it is nothing more than cruel posturing, self righteous mockery and nasty stereotyping.
Del Lado del Verano is nothing more than a hate film by the Authority Thought Police directing their contempt at the indigenous peasantry.
There is little empathy for any of the characters, except the two gay boys and the girl who studies at university, hoping for a better life in Australia, away from her dreadful family.
The rest of the characters are held up to ridicule for the their bigotry and grotesque behaviour.
The characters are shown up to be manipulative, racist, homophobic, dishonest and hypocritical.
As usual, Those Who Know Better are projecting their own crimes upon their victims, whilst proclaiming their own superiority.
The film is an excuse for the ideologically pure to have a right good sneer at the peasantry.
It is 'gay' in the sense that it is naff, and  'gay' because there are an extraordinary amount of homosexuals in the story.
From Spanish cinema and television you would think the world is being overrun by homosexuals.
Some people are gay, let them get on with their lives, get over it.
The film is a Eurosoviet propaganda exercise, and all the more wearisome for it.
The characters are portrayed as drunks, drug dealers, adulterers and so on.
Hard working folk, sticking together in hard times, they definitely are not.
If it provides the Guardianistas a chance to sneer, an opportunity for the overseer class to dehumanize their prey, all well and good, but as far as your humble Peasant is concerned Del Lado del Verano is nothing but poisonous prejudiced horse manure.

Monday 11 March 2013

The Benevolent State

‘The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.’ Albert Camus.

Some time ago the corporate state was called the mixed economy. It was meant to be kinder than the rabid free market economy of the USA and freer than the stultifying regulatory economy of the USSR. There were those who controlled private capital and those who controlled the state. Each had their place.
Those who controlled private wealth were like Father was supposed to be; male, dynamic, but ultimately destructive if left to his own devices.
Mother State was there to keep the boys in order, to soften the rough blows we receive each day and to protect the weak from the strong.
Nowadays Mother State is everywhere, sticking on the plasters and handing out the pills. Those naughty bankers have been on the rampage.
Oh, Mother State, come protect the poor powerless peasants!
We are sick, feeble, a bit thick, helpless in the face of the cigar chomping capitalists!
We don’t need our chapels and self help co-operative societies. They can fade away when we rest our heads on the warm bosom of Mother State.
We can forget how the children were once taught by their parents, taught at Sunday School, taught in little independent schools up and down the land. Mother State will provide free universal education.
And there’s no need for mutual aid societies, for hospitals built by local subscription, with local effort, the love and care of family and neighbours and friends.
According to the Narrative there was no education, no health care, no social security till Mother State stepped in.
The workers in field and factory, feeble in body and mind, and deficient in should and shouldn't, could not so much as organize a piss up in a brewery, according to the Narrative.
The workers, the passive backcloth of history, not the doers but the done to, those without willpower or history or culture, we need the help of Mother State.
So we are told. Such is the Narrative.

Sunday 10 March 2013

Mary Collier - The Woman's Labour

Mary Malone writes:
Mary Collier was a washerwoman from Hampshire. She knew how things used to be before Patriarchy. 

No Learning ever was bestow’d on me;
My Live was always spent in Drudgery:
And not alone; alas! With Grief I find
It is the Portion of poor Woman-kind.
Oft have I thought as on my Bed I lay,
Eas’d from the tiresome Labours of the Day,
Our first Extraction from the Mass refin’d,
Could never be for Slavery design’d;
Till Time and Custom by degrees destroy’d
That happy State our Sex at first enjoy’d.
When Men had us’d their utmost Care and Toil,
Their Recompense was but a Female Smile;
When they by Arts and Arms were rendered Great
They laid their Trophies at a Woman’s Feet;
They, in those Days, unto our Sex did bring
Their Hearts, their All, a Free-will Offering;
And as from us their Being they derive,
They back again should all due homage give.



Saturday 9 March 2013

Kings - Sundays with John Ball

And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel.
Now the name of his firstborn was Joel; and the name of his second, Abiah: they were judges in Beersheba.
And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.
Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel; unto Ramah,
And said unto him, behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.
But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord.
And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.
According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.
Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.
And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king.
And he said, this will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.
And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give it to his officers and to his servants.
And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
He will take a tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.
Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;
That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.
And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord.
And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king.

Friday 8 March 2013

Tacitus

Tacitus might have written,  ‘Illegitimi non Carborundum.’

He certainly did write;
‘The more corrupt the state the more numerous the laws.

A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of a few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the acquiescence of all.

To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they name empire; and where they make a wilderness they call it peace.

All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.

If you would know who controls you, see who you may not criticize.

Indeed, the crowning proof of their valour and their strength is that they keep up their superiority without harm to others.

It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.

Once killing starts it is difficult to draw the line.

He that fights and runs away, may turn and fight another day; but he that is in battle slain, will never rise to fight again.’

Thursday 7 March 2013

Masters and Slaves

Mary Malone writes;

In his book Casa Grande e Senzala, the Brazilian writer Gilberto Freyre comments on how writers and ideologues have blamed the African for the sensuality of Brazilian life in the time of slavery.
As Freyre points out, the writers and ideologues casting the stone of blame were white, male, and from the overseer and owner classes.
Freyre points out that in a patriarchal slave society the slave women were frequently raped by their white masters.
The white women were frequently married off to their cousins at the age of 12 or 13, mere breeding cows, riddled with the disease they caught from their husbands, dying from the complications of child birth when little more than children themselves.
Freyre points out that it was the European Brazilian who spread the syphilis in the slave quarters.
He points out that folk wisdom had it, that if a European syphilitic male had sex with a pubescent African virgin he would be cured of his ailment.
In Freyre’s opinion it is not the nature of the African that leads to a libidinous slavocratic society. It is the brutality and degradation of slavery itself.
According to Freyre, the Africans who remained in Africa showed a much lower level of sexual activity, that special ceremonies were needed to encourage copulation, that sexual union required ceremony and retained its sacred nature.
Unlike the Brazilian, unlike the European, the African was not ‘up for it’ all the time.
In a patriarchal society the senses are blunted, passivity and despair prevail, and sexual relations  become warped by concepts of power, domination, and conquest.
In such a hyper patriarchal society Master and Slave are both degraded.
Excess is the inevitable consequence. 

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Genital Imperialism

My good lady Revoltina wants me to sing her some of those soppy songs those troubadours like to sing.
No chance!
I'll leave that kind of smarmy behaviour to Dick.
That said, a bit of  romance is better than the sexualisation of all life you people get here in the twenty first century. Honestly, you’d think docking was the only game in town.
A romantic guy may see the loved one as a projection of his own ego, but at least she is regarded as something precious, not just a piece of meat.
People will always want to form families; the union of a man and a woman, the fruit of their love, keeping each other warm at night, is all good and natural.
But if the Authority had its way we’d all be bucking like bunnies and living in splendid isolation. We'd just be consuming each other with mutual masturbation.
In a free society people are mutually dependent. This leads to mutual respect and mutual service.
But in a regulated society, where our jobs and our incomes, our education, our health, and our leisure activities are all dependent on the patronage of government, on government funding, naturally we are dependent on Authority, not on each other.
So, although young people want to form families, this is discouraged. Many young people have massive debts hung around their necks, while at the same time they are encouraged by a bombardment of massive propaganda to fritter away what money they have.
Consumption, despair, and lack of self respect is inevitable.
Pills to thrill, pills to numb the emptiness, oh yes, and docking too!
Authority redefines marriage as two people who want to hang out together.
The prime purpose of work is no longer to serve your family, but to serve yourself.
Your basic relationship is one of power, (or powerlessness) within a hierarchy. You obey, you watch your back, you blame others.
In such a society there is little room for social solidarity.
Family bonds are loosened, if not dispensed with altogether.
Relationships with the opposite sex have a hopelessness about them. They can lead nowhere, and with divorce and single parenthood becoming acceptable, there can be no guarantee of the duration of any marriage.
Loving, committing, being brave enough to give, leaves a person at risk of great hurt.
Relationships become transitory and uncertain.
In such a world, where we scarcely dare love, we can only exchange sexual pleasures. We can only consume each other, like starving rats in a loveless cage, condemned to the hell of the self. 

Tuesday 5 March 2013

The Idea of America

The United States of America may be a rogue state, dedicated to war and destruction, and run by control freaks who want to boss every inch of the planet, yet running parallel to this reality is the myth of America, the Land of the Free, the land of immigrants, the land of unrestrained energy.
These days the United States is hollowing out. Only two per cent of the population are left to work the land. The days of the family farm are all but gone.
The days of the great manufacturing industries are over too. More than thirty percent of the manufacturing jobs have gone in the last ten years alone.
The illusion of economic activity can only be maintained by an ever more frantic monetarization of  human activity, and endless government stimulus.
Government increases, debt increases, but real wealth decreases.
America cannot compete for resources with the emerging powers through trade alone. Its one remaining great manufacturing industry is the weapons industry.
So America has become a security state. It is attempting to occupy the Middle East and attempting to occupy Africa, in the hope that the threat of violence will persuade local elites to send business its way.
American bases dot the globe ready to wreak havoc on those who step out of line.
Indeed, America has become so obsessed with security that it appears to be invading itself. It has the highest prison population on earth.
Yet the idea of America remains.
Throughout the world America still stands for freedom and liberty and opportunity. It is the land of the common person.
America has long been the hope of peasants the world over.
In the Old World, in Latin America too, ruling groups controlled the land and the government, but not so in the United States.
In the eighteenth century the United States was born, the only popular, democratic, free country in the world, totally unencumbered by a ruling aristocracy.
In the nineteenth century millions of peasants went to America to escape persecution and taxation back home and the hunger caused by brutal landowners and their governments who reduced good people to destitution. In America the oppressed peasantry of Europe produced the most dynamic and richest society the Earth has ever known.
In America the common man could sit at the top table and eat his fill.
In the twentieth century America defeated the dictatorships of Germany and Russia so that nowadays, for all its defects, Anglo Saxon democracy is the measure of government the world over.
And the people of the United States gave us jazz and rock’n’roll too!
The music of freedom, the music of hope.
The reality of the United States, a country in lock down, with millions in prison, the world bully, may be far from ideal, but the idea of America lives on. 

Monday 4 March 2013

Christian Aid in the Service of Caesar

Christian Aid is an organization that takes around 20% of its money from governmental organizations.
Last year it sent out a ‘Tax Bus’ around the country to encourage people to pay their taxes with a smiley face and to let people know that we’re all in this together with our caring sharing rulers. They also let us know who is to blame  - the tax dodgers!
Christian Aid is supported by many churches, so I had assumed that it was a Christian organization.
I do recall Jesus Christ telling us to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but I was not aware that Jesus was a cheer leader for the state.
Jesus was crucified by the Roman state. Many of his followers were persecuted and murdered by the state.
The state, then as now, had an army, an army that killed, maimed, raped and tortured, the only difference being that the Roman state did not bomb people.
In Roman times, like in the fourteenth century, people did not consider the state to be some kind of Big Mother. No doubt there were advantages to living under Roman rule, as there were no doubt advantages for the people of India living under the British Empire, but they were incidental. 
According to Christian Aid there is something called ‘tax justice’. More tax means more money to give to the world’s poor, helping them get an education and health services, supposedly.
Or perhaps the poor will receive the present of a humanitarian bomb?
Perhaps they will receive the gift of depleted uranium, along with its cancers and birth defects.
Perhaps the ‘aid’ will go to the aid of local elites. Perhaps our ‘aid’ will reward them for their co-operation.
Perhaps the ‘aid’ game will continue to corrupt and demoralize the recipients, just another form of patronage, undercutting local industry and agriculture, creating destitution where once there was hope.
The state was not Christian when Jesus was alive and it is not Christian now.
The State is a hierarchical, authoritarian structure based on violence.
Christianity is based on love and freedom.
Caesar is forever the enemy of love and freedom.
 

Sunday 3 March 2013

Rosalia de Castro - Why?

Por Que?   

Escoita! Os algoasiles
Andan correndo a aldea;
Mais, como pagar, como, se un non pode
Inda paga-la renda?

Embargarannos todo, que non tenen
Esas xentes conciencia, nin ten alma.
Quedaremos por portas
Meus fillos das entranas!

Mala morte vos mate
Antes de que entredes…!
Dos probes, o sentirvos,
Os corazons, cal baten tristemente!

Maria, se non fora
Porque hai un Dios que premia e castiga,
Eu matara eses homes
Como mata un raposo a unha galina.

Silencio! Non blasphemes,
Que este es un valle de lagrimas…!
Mais por que a alguns lles toca sufrir tanto
I outros a vida antre contentos pasan?




Why?
Listen! The tax collectors
Are all over the village!
But how can we possibly pay them,
When we can’t even pay the rent!

Look out! They’ll take it all!
They have neither conscience nor soul,
They will turf us out of our home
My dearest darling children

May a terrible death await you,
Before you even get here!
When the poor folk hear your footsteps
Their hearts are crushed with sorrow

Dear Mary! If it weren’t for there being
A God who rewards and punishes the wicked
I would kill those evil men,
Like the fox kills the chicken!

Silence! Don’t blaspheme! you say,
This world is a vale of tears!
But why must some people suffer so much
While others are happy all their days? 

Saturday 2 March 2013

Activity - Sundays with John Ball

There is nothing more natural than activity. It is what we do when we are awake. To be active is to be human.
Activity is work and work is creation and creation is an attribute of God. By working we are divine.
Activity is a form of giving. The Powerful have always made a virtue of their inactivity, their taking, their use of servants, but they are not the crown of creation, as they like to think. On the contrary the Powerful are the lowest in creation. To be forever avoiding activity, to be ever looking to avoid work, as you do in your consumer society is to seek death.
Contemplation, too, is creative. When Mother Julian prayed and contemplated the Divine, she too was active, she too was working.
But you don’t contemplate, you don’t pray, you don’t even think. You blot out your minds. Even in your minds, especially in your minds, you are passive, lazy consumers. 
It is better to give than to receive. Free people wish to donate their activity to others, to the people in their families, to the people in their village, to their neighbours.
Free people wish to offer their work to God, in whose image they are made.
Work is a gift.
Work is the gift of our power.
Work is service.
Work is a service that is donated, not expropriated.
An economy of service, a gift economy, an economy of work donated from our strength and our love, is the basis of  the free society.
But the armed gang enslaves. With threats of extreme violence people are forced to perform expropriated work, begrudging, unwilling conscripted drudgery.
In its most basic form expropriated work is slavery.
When this exploitation is systemized and bureaucratised, forced labour is transformed into debt slavery. It is called taxation.
Money tokens are introduced by Authority, with Caesar’s head on the coin, so we know to whom we owe our labour.
Each activity is given a number relating to the amount of coins it is worth, and the coins are interchangeable. In this way each activity is numbered and taxed.
In this way Authority owns our activity. Authority enslaves our power. Its followers steal our God given power of creation, they subvert it and pervert it into an enslaved service to their own glory.
These perverts cannot give, they can only take, they live not in faith but in fear. For them God given activity is a burden and these, the undead, long for the grave. They number our power, they take our power, but however much they have they must have more, never satisfied, reaching into every corner, numbering, taking, eating up everything like locusts, this cancer of joylessness, of unfaithfulness, of  hopelessness, of selfishness, these cancerous idolaters of the self.  

Friday 1 March 2013

Mother Julian of Norwich

Mother Julian of Norwich lived in the fourteenth century. She lived a life of contemplation and love for God. Here are some quotes from her about God our Mother.

‘For the Almighty Truth is our father, for he made us and preserves us in himself; the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our mother, in whom we are enclosed.’

‘And thus in our creation God Almighty is our natural father, and God all-wisdom is our natural mother, with the love and goodness of the Holy Spirit.’

‘The Second Person of the Trinity is our mother in nature, in our substantial making. In him we are grounded and rooted, and he is our mother by mercy in our sensuality, by taking flesh.’

‘Our natural mother, our gracious mother, because he willed to become our mother in everything, took the ground for his work most humbly and most mildly in the maiden’s womb.’

‘A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our precious mother Jesus, can feed us with himself.’

‘To motherhood as properties belong natural love, wisdom and knowledge - and this is God.’