This poem, by San Juan de la Cruz, is possibly the most famous of all Spanish poems. It was written in the sixteenth century, at a time when Spain was the most psychopathic, hierarchical state in the world. In the search for gold and power the Spanish military destroyed the autonomous republics of Italy, made war on the prosperous people of the Netherlands and murdered millions of South Americans. The Crown of Castile even waged war on its own people, demanding the unconditional worship of Hierarchy through the Inquisition, demanding ideological conformity, attacking racial and religious minorities, persecuting merchants who made their wealth through trade and manufacture rather than through corporate power.
A dark night of poverty, war and social upheaval descended upon Europe, a dark night that was to last until the triumph of reaction against tyranny with the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688, a quarter of a century before the Spanish military bureaucratic complex finally extinguished any autonomy of any sort within Spain itself, with the conquest of Catalonia in 1714.
In dark times people often take refuge in beauty, through the contemplation of the Lord.
En una noche oscura,
con ansias, en amores inflamada,
¡oh dichosa ventura!
salí sin ser notada,
estando ya mi casa sosegada;
a escuras y segura
por la secreta escala, disfrazada,
¡oh dichosa ventura!
a escuras y encelada,
estando ya mi casa sosegada;
en la noche dichosa
en secreto, que nadie me veía,
ni yo miraba cosa,
sin otra luz y guía,
sino la que en la corazón ardía,
Aquesta me guiaba,
más cierto que la luz del mediodia,
adonde me esperaba,
quien yo bien me sabía,
en parte donde nadie parecía.
¡Oh noche que guiaste!
¡Oh noche amable más que la alborada!
¡Oh que noche que juntaste,
Amado con amada,
amada en el Amado transformada!
En mi pecho florido,
que entero para él solo se guardaba,
allí quedó dormido,
y yo le regalaba,
y el ventalle de cedros aire daba.
El aire del almena,
cuando yo sus cabellos esparcía,
con su mano serena,
en mi cuello hería,
y todos mis sentidos suspendía.
Quedéme y olvidéme,
el rostro recliné sobre el Amado;
cesó todo y dejéme,
dejando mi cuidado,
entre las azucenas olvidado.
On a dark night,
Inflamed by love's yearnings,
Oh, such happiness awaits me!
I went out without being seen,
With my house all at rest.
With a firm step, in the darkness,
In disguise, I climbed the secret stairway,
Oh, such happiness awaits me!
Concealed by the darkness,
My house all at rest.
In the happy night,
In secret, seen by nobody,
I saw not a thing,
With neither light nor guide,
Except that which burned in my heart.
The light burning in my heart guided me,
More surely than the midday sun,
To the One who was waiting for me,
The One I knew so well,
In a place where no one would disturb us.
Oh, dark night, you guided me!
Oh, night lovelier than the dawn!
Oh, dark night, you joined together,
The Beloved with his lover,
His lover transformed by the Beloved.
Upon my ample breast,
Which I keep for Him alone,
There I caressed Him
While He lay sleeping,
And the breeze from the cedars cooled the air.
The breeze blew down from the castle walls,
As I softly ruffled his hair,
With his gentle hand,
He touched my neck, wounding me,
Leaving me breathless, my senses stunned.
I stayed still, and forgot myself,
My face I leant against my Beloved,
Everything stopped, and I abandoned myself to Him,
Leaving my cares behind,
Forgotten amongst the lilies.
Sunday 30 June 2013
Saturday 29 June 2013
Abundance
From the Gospel according to John, Chapter 6:
'One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him,
There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?
And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men
sat down, in number about five thousand.
And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down: and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.
When they were filled, he said unto the disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.
Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.'
John Ball writes;
A miracle! The miracle of giving! The giving begins with Jesus, spreads outwards. The abundance grows as the giving increases.
God is the Living God. God is Love. Love is Charity. Charity is giving, selflessly, sacrificially.
Exchange and extortion are the way of death.
Exchange and extortion are the way of destitution, the way of those destitute of faith.
When the faithful give they are in Paradise.
Giving ever and always is the way of God, the way of Life, the way of Love, and it all begins with Jesus, the Lamb of God.
'One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him,
There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?
And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men
sat down, in number about five thousand.
And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down: and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.
When they were filled, he said unto the disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.
Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.'
John Ball writes;
A miracle! The miracle of giving! The giving begins with Jesus, spreads outwards. The abundance grows as the giving increases.
God is the Living God. God is Love. Love is Charity. Charity is giving, selflessly, sacrificially.
Exchange and extortion are the way of death.
Exchange and extortion are the way of destitution, the way of those destitute of faith.
When the faithful give they are in Paradise.
Giving ever and always is the way of God, the way of Life, the way of Love, and it all begins with Jesus, the Lamb of God.
Friday 28 June 2013
When We Can't Dream Any Longer We Die
Some further quotes from Emma Goldman:
'When we can't dream any longer we die.'
'People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.'
'Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has failed to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendour and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and colour. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.'
'Patriotism is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.'
'The import is not the kind of work woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her own body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc., by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. only that, and not the ballot, will set a woman free, will make her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life-giving; a creator of free men and women.'
'Religion, the dominion of the human mind;
Property the dominion of human needs; and
Government, the dominion of human conduct,
represent the stronghold of man's enslavement
and all the horrors it entails.'
'When we can't dream any longer we die.'
'People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.'
'Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has failed to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendour and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and colour. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.'
'Patriotism is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.'
'The import is not the kind of work woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her own body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc., by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. only that, and not the ballot, will set a woman free, will make her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life-giving; a creator of free men and women.'
'Religion, the dominion of the human mind;
Property the dominion of human needs; and
Government, the dominion of human conduct,
represent the stronghold of man's enslavement
and all the horrors it entails.'
Thursday 27 June 2013
Rape, Sodomy, And The Annihilation Of Personhood
From Men and Matriarchy, Mary Malone writes:
The promotion of homosexuality is a major plank in the patriarchal effort to deny the personhood of the Peasant Man.
The virility and vigour of the Peasant makes him the enemy of Patriarchy.
His instinctive independence makes him an enemy of the State.
An autonomous man only wishes to love his woman and to go about his business. He likes to feel the sun on his back, not the lash of the hierarch.
An autonomous man expresses his sexuality by serving his woman in love. For him, his family is all important, and that means providing for his wife and children.
But for those men degraded by the hierarchs, like the masters and slaves of the plantations, sexuality is at best an appetite, at worst a system of rape and sodomy.
When the Patriarchal Male has sex he is conquering the woman. He is 'taking' her. Whether she 'yields' willingly or not, the act of love has been turned into an act of domination and rape.
The Patriarchal Male uses his gift as a weapon to subjugate his woman. The woman is no longer his to serve, but his to possess.
Often the Patriarchal Man will sodomize his woman.
Whereas reciprocal genital sex involves mutual service and love, sodomy can only be an act of domination.
Sodomy and rape are the hallmarks of Patriarchy. Both have the aim of humiliation, of removing the victim's personhood. The aim of both violation and buggery is to dominate and annihilate.
The homosexual rape of Colonel Gaddafi as he was being murdered, is a prime example of this attempt at total destruction by sodomy.
Wherever there are men in uniform there is rape. Rape is not just a consequence of war. It is one of the prime aims of war. The destruction of the peasantry, the subservience of the ordinary man and woman, the annihilation of the common person's personhood, has always been the true objective of warfare.
The promotion of homosexuality is a major plank in the patriarchal effort to deny the personhood of the Peasant Man.
The virility and vigour of the Peasant makes him the enemy of Patriarchy.
His instinctive independence makes him an enemy of the State.
An autonomous man only wishes to love his woman and to go about his business. He likes to feel the sun on his back, not the lash of the hierarch.
An autonomous man expresses his sexuality by serving his woman in love. For him, his family is all important, and that means providing for his wife and children.
But for those men degraded by the hierarchs, like the masters and slaves of the plantations, sexuality is at best an appetite, at worst a system of rape and sodomy.
When the Patriarchal Male has sex he is conquering the woman. He is 'taking' her. Whether she 'yields' willingly or not, the act of love has been turned into an act of domination and rape.
The Patriarchal Male uses his gift as a weapon to subjugate his woman. The woman is no longer his to serve, but his to possess.
Often the Patriarchal Man will sodomize his woman.
Whereas reciprocal genital sex involves mutual service and love, sodomy can only be an act of domination.
Sodomy and rape are the hallmarks of Patriarchy. Both have the aim of humiliation, of removing the victim's personhood. The aim of both violation and buggery is to dominate and annihilate.
The homosexual rape of Colonel Gaddafi as he was being murdered, is a prime example of this attempt at total destruction by sodomy.
Wherever there are men in uniform there is rape. Rape is not just a consequence of war. It is one of the prime aims of war. The destruction of the peasantry, the subservience of the ordinary man and woman, the annihilation of the common person's personhood, has always been the true objective of warfare.
Wednesday 26 June 2013
Football In The Prison Yard
The local football club is in financial straits. It is just a small town non league team that has been punching above its weight for a few years, but in the last year or two it has begun to fall apart.
These days the footballers are full-time, and the entrance money is enough to make you think twice about going.
Apparently, the cost of the turnstile operators and the stewards alone cost £36,000 a year, and next season these operatives will be asked to work for free.
Forty years ago, when the club had the best non league team in the country, at one end there was a grass bank, there was only one small stand for seated spectators and you could lean upon the barrier that bordered the pitch.
Nowadays, you cannot stand next to the barrier. Regulations forbid it. The space between playing area crowd is patrolled by stewards who keep guard in case of crowd trouble and pitch invasions, and homophobic and racist language.
(Indeed, a couple of years ago I was at a match at Leeds, when a spectator harangued a player for being so useless. The man used no offensive language, and the player, a defender, was largely responsible for the fact that his team had let in 6 goals, fully deserved the criticism. Yet the stewards saw fit to warn the angry spectator).
At one end of our little ground there is a camera on a pole, not to record the action on the pitch, but to record the actions of the crowd.
It used to be fun, long ago, going to watch the footie. Pay a small amount on the gate, watch a game on a field, shout and yell and get the working week out of your system. But now the game is played in the prison exercise yard.
Anything you do is regulated. Everything you do is regulated. Why pay good money to be shepherded, regulated, spied upon?
The football club is going bust because football is dead. Only by constant electro shocks of hype does the corpse keep twitching.
In the same way, the entire country is going bust, because society too has been put to death.
These days the footballers are full-time, and the entrance money is enough to make you think twice about going.
Apparently, the cost of the turnstile operators and the stewards alone cost £36,000 a year, and next season these operatives will be asked to work for free.
Forty years ago, when the club had the best non league team in the country, at one end there was a grass bank, there was only one small stand for seated spectators and you could lean upon the barrier that bordered the pitch.
Nowadays, you cannot stand next to the barrier. Regulations forbid it. The space between playing area crowd is patrolled by stewards who keep guard in case of crowd trouble and pitch invasions, and homophobic and racist language.
(Indeed, a couple of years ago I was at a match at Leeds, when a spectator harangued a player for being so useless. The man used no offensive language, and the player, a defender, was largely responsible for the fact that his team had let in 6 goals, fully deserved the criticism. Yet the stewards saw fit to warn the angry spectator).
At one end of our little ground there is a camera on a pole, not to record the action on the pitch, but to record the actions of the crowd.
It used to be fun, long ago, going to watch the footie. Pay a small amount on the gate, watch a game on a field, shout and yell and get the working week out of your system. But now the game is played in the prison exercise yard.
Anything you do is regulated. Everything you do is regulated. Why pay good money to be shepherded, regulated, spied upon?
The football club is going bust because football is dead. Only by constant electro shocks of hype does the corpse keep twitching.
In the same way, the entire country is going bust, because society too has been put to death.
Tuesday 25 June 2013
The Parasites' Assembly
So, the People's Assembly, the 'Socialist' alternative to Ukip has been launched.
The organisers of the 'People's Assembly' claim to be socialist and representative of the people, but just one look at its sponsors shows how unpopular and unrepresentative it is.
In fact the People's Assembly Against Austerity is simply a pressure group devoted to upholding the privileges of the hierarchical, patriarchal bureaucracy.
Rest assured, the very last thing the People's Assembly is, is a gathering of the horny handed sons of toil. Manual workers are distinctly thin on the ground.
And there are definitely no Peasants.
Amongst its supporters are;
the anti-Semitic pseudo charity, War on Want,
the civil service union, PCS (they represent tax bureaucrats and GCHQ snoopers amongst others),
another bureaucrats union, Unison,
the National Union of Teachers; the very people who hate the children of the working class and condemn their victims to lives of illiteracy, innumeracy and drug taking,
the National Union of Journalists who spew out the lies of the Vichy press.
Indeed the supporters of the 'People's Assembly' are the bedrock of the Vichy regime that rules England these days.
They support the capitalist state, increased taxation, increased regulation, increased debt slavery.
They wish to strengthen a regime which is collapsing because its very nature is to exploit the population till they can give no more. The parasites have eaten a good part of the body and the body is dying.
All these 'People' work in vast hierarchies. Their only responsibility is to their line manager and their own self interest. The power structures they inhabit and which they advocate are vertical power structures. Through taxation, power is expropriated from the real 'People' to be sucked up and reallocated to its supporters by the bureaucratic gang. In their world power flows down, and we must put in a claim for a small slice of the leftovers after they have eaten. The People's Assembly only wishes to turn us into beggars and slaves.
It is a far cry from truly democratic autonomous power structures, where the power is horizontal and where the power remains with the people.
The organisers of the 'People's Assembly' claim to be socialist and representative of the people, but just one look at its sponsors shows how unpopular and unrepresentative it is.
In fact the People's Assembly Against Austerity is simply a pressure group devoted to upholding the privileges of the hierarchical, patriarchal bureaucracy.
Rest assured, the very last thing the People's Assembly is, is a gathering of the horny handed sons of toil. Manual workers are distinctly thin on the ground.
And there are definitely no Peasants.
Amongst its supporters are;
the anti-Semitic pseudo charity, War on Want,
the civil service union, PCS (they represent tax bureaucrats and GCHQ snoopers amongst others),
another bureaucrats union, Unison,
the National Union of Teachers; the very people who hate the children of the working class and condemn their victims to lives of illiteracy, innumeracy and drug taking,
the National Union of Journalists who spew out the lies of the Vichy press.
Indeed the supporters of the 'People's Assembly' are the bedrock of the Vichy regime that rules England these days.
They support the capitalist state, increased taxation, increased regulation, increased debt slavery.
They wish to strengthen a regime which is collapsing because its very nature is to exploit the population till they can give no more. The parasites have eaten a good part of the body and the body is dying.
All these 'People' work in vast hierarchies. Their only responsibility is to their line manager and their own self interest. The power structures they inhabit and which they advocate are vertical power structures. Through taxation, power is expropriated from the real 'People' to be sucked up and reallocated to its supporters by the bureaucratic gang. In their world power flows down, and we must put in a claim for a small slice of the leftovers after they have eaten. The People's Assembly only wishes to turn us into beggars and slaves.
It is a far cry from truly democratic autonomous power structures, where the power is horizontal and where the power remains with the people.
Monday 24 June 2013
War On Want
War On Want is an organization of the bureaucratic class, dedicated to the persecution of the world's only Jewish state, Israel.
The reason why this one small state is so special, so worthy of so much vitriol, can only because it is Jewish.
The righteous ones, the moral ones, the caring ones, want someone to hate.
They join up with Christian Aid and Islamic Relief, and fall to their knees at the feet of big government, They ask for more taxation, for action to be taken against the supposedly rich and the Jews.
For some reason War On Want is regarded as a charity. It receives money from the UK government, the European Union, and the laughable Comic Relief.
Theresa Villiers, a Conservative M.P. and cabinet minister says;
'War on Want is an extremely politicised NGO which actively promotes the Durban Strategy and uses anti-Semitic themes to attack Israel. Given War On Want's extensive political campaigning and lobbying efforts, its one-sided approach to the conflict that ignores Palestinian terrorism, and the recurring investigations by the Charity Commission, funding from the EU and UK to this NGO is highly problematic.'
Sunday 23 June 2013
Workers Of The World Awaken
Workers of the World Awaken is by Joe Hill, an American labour agitator, who was executed on trumped up charges back in 1915.
Workers of the world, awaken!
Break your chains, demand your rights.
All the wealth you make is taken
By exploiting parasites.
Shall you kneel in deep submission
From your cradles to your graves?
Is the height of your ambition
To be good and willing slaves?
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
Fight for your own emancipation;
Arise ye slaves of every nation.
In One Union Grand.
Our little ones for bread are crying,
And millions are from hunger dying;
The end the means is justifying,
'Tis the final stand.
If the workers take a notion,
They can stop all speeding trains;
Every ship upon the ocean
They can tie with mighty chains.
Every wheel in the creation,
Every mine and every mill,
Fleets and armies of the nation,
Will at their command stand still.
Join the union fellow workers,
Men and women side by side;
We will crush the greedy shirkers
Like a sweeping, surging tide;
For united we are standing,
But divided we will fall;
Let this be our understanding,
"All for one and one for all."
Workers of the world awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might;
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying,
We'll have freedom, love and health.
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers' Commonwealth.
Workers of the world, awaken!
Break your chains, demand your rights.
All the wealth you make is taken
By exploiting parasites.
Shall you kneel in deep submission
From your cradles to your graves?
Is the height of your ambition
To be good and willing slaves?
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
Fight for your own emancipation;
Arise ye slaves of every nation.
In One Union Grand.
Our little ones for bread are crying,
And millions are from hunger dying;
The end the means is justifying,
'Tis the final stand.
If the workers take a notion,
They can stop all speeding trains;
Every ship upon the ocean
They can tie with mighty chains.
Every wheel in the creation,
Every mine and every mill,
Fleets and armies of the nation,
Will at their command stand still.
Join the union fellow workers,
Men and women side by side;
We will crush the greedy shirkers
Like a sweeping, surging tide;
For united we are standing,
But divided we will fall;
Let this be our understanding,
"All for one and one for all."
Workers of the world awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might;
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying,
We'll have freedom, love and health.
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers' Commonwealth.
Saturday 22 June 2013
Truth Is Fallen In The Street
From Isaiah, chapter 59:
For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch cockatrice's eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.
Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works; their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.
Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are of iniquity: wasting and destruction are in their paths.
The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.
Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity: for brightness, but we walk in darkness.
We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.
We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none: for salvation, but it is far off from us.
For our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us; as for our iniquities, we know them;
In transgressing and lying against the lord, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.
Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the Lord saw it and it displeased him that there was no judgment.'
For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch cockatrice's eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.
Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works; their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.
Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are of iniquity: wasting and destruction are in their paths.
The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.
Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity: for brightness, but we walk in darkness.
We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.
We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none: for salvation, but it is far off from us.
For our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us; as for our iniquities, we know them;
In transgressing and lying against the lord, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.
Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the Lord saw it and it displeased him that there was no judgment.'
Friday 21 June 2013
A Punitive Expedition
In the book Tarzan of the Apes, first published in 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs describes a punitive expedition against the village of Mbonga's tribe. We already know that these people are the remnant of a much larger tribe that has been enslaved and butchered by the Belgians.
Nevertheless, they are diminished and deprived of their personhood by the black propaganda of the Imperialist officer class. These poor Africans, we learn, are cannibals and they have been torturing a French officer. Like Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Vietnamese, and so on, the justification for their murder is now in place.
'It was a determined and angry company - a punitive expedition as well as one of relief.......... For half an hour the men with Lieutenant Charpentier crouched in the dense foliage of the jungle, waiting the signal. To them it seemed like hours. they could see natives in the fields, and others moving in and out of the village gate.
At length the signal came - a sharp rattle of musketry, and like one man, an answering volley tore from the jungle to the west and to the south. The natives in the field dropped their implements and broke madly for the palisade. The French bullets mowed them down, and the French sailors bounded over their prostrate bodies straight for the village gate...........
For a few moments the blacks held their ground within the entrance to the street, but the revolvers, rifles and cutlasses of the Frenchmen crumpled the native spearmen and struck down the black archers with their bows half drawn.
Soon the battle turned into a wild rout, and then to a grim massacre.........
They spared the children and those of the women whom they were not forced to kill in self defence, but when at length they stopped, panting, blood covered and sweating, it was because there lived to oppose them no single warrior of all the savage village of Mbonga
.....and finally the village was wrapped in the silence of slumber except for the wailing of the native women for their dead.'
Nevertheless, they are diminished and deprived of their personhood by the black propaganda of the Imperialist officer class. These poor Africans, we learn, are cannibals and they have been torturing a French officer. Like Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Vietnamese, and so on, the justification for their murder is now in place.
'It was a determined and angry company - a punitive expedition as well as one of relief.......... For half an hour the men with Lieutenant Charpentier crouched in the dense foliage of the jungle, waiting the signal. To them it seemed like hours. they could see natives in the fields, and others moving in and out of the village gate.
At length the signal came - a sharp rattle of musketry, and like one man, an answering volley tore from the jungle to the west and to the south. The natives in the field dropped their implements and broke madly for the palisade. The French bullets mowed them down, and the French sailors bounded over their prostrate bodies straight for the village gate...........
For a few moments the blacks held their ground within the entrance to the street, but the revolvers, rifles and cutlasses of the Frenchmen crumpled the native spearmen and struck down the black archers with their bows half drawn.
Soon the battle turned into a wild rout, and then to a grim massacre.........
They spared the children and those of the women whom they were not forced to kill in self defence, but when at length they stopped, panting, blood covered and sweating, it was because there lived to oppose them no single warrior of all the savage village of Mbonga
.....and finally the village was wrapped in the silence of slumber except for the wailing of the native women for their dead.'
Thursday 20 June 2013
The Colonisation Of Woman
From The Denial Of Woman, Mary Malone writes:
For all his faults Franz Fanon, the great psychologist of colonisation, successfully highlighted the deprivation of personhood suffered by the people of the colonies. They are at best the 'natives' or the 'masses', the passive backcloth of history.
The 'natives' and the 'masses' are deprived of their own history. What they achieve away from the presence of their masters is deemed irrelevant. They only exist in relation to their masters.
We hear endless stories of kings and conquerors, 'men of action', those who 'build', 'change the world' 'create civilizations', as if they did it all alone. These 'heroes' all had servants, they all lived in a world where half of humanity was female.
Somehow the colonised person feels inferior to their master, as if only the reality of the master has any validity, that somehow they, the colonised, are invisible, that their story is of no importance. They are told that they are less worthy than the master, that they must put the needs of the master before their own - and most of the time they believe it, for their social and economic situation tells them as much.
Woman is the first and foremost of the colonised. Ever since the beginning of Patriarchy she has been deprived of her personhood. Where once she was served, as nature and God intend, under Patriarchy she serves the man.
Man's endless silly games are given validity, while Woman's essential work is denied.
Woman is only valued in relation to Man. She is his object.
Woman has no history. The history books tell of few women, only those who accidentally take on male roles within the patriarchy, and those who relate to men as mothers and lovers.
As such is Woman valued, like the 'Native', as a service provider, as a sexual object to gratify the master.
And today, how do the Authority endorsed feminists propose to set us free? By assimilation!
Like the African who was forced to speak French or Portuguese or English, to dress like their master, to deny their own language and heritage, to think the thoughts of the master, to deny themselves at every turn, and place the interests of the master above those of their own kind, so the Vichy Feminist proposes to liberate her sisters, by assimilating them into male values, by pressing them to play competitive sports, to see achievement as working their way through the hierarchy, to internalize male values, male needs, male priorities, to deny Woman and to assimilate the very nature of Man.
For all his faults Franz Fanon, the great psychologist of colonisation, successfully highlighted the deprivation of personhood suffered by the people of the colonies. They are at best the 'natives' or the 'masses', the passive backcloth of history.
The 'natives' and the 'masses' are deprived of their own history. What they achieve away from the presence of their masters is deemed irrelevant. They only exist in relation to their masters.
We hear endless stories of kings and conquerors, 'men of action', those who 'build', 'change the world' 'create civilizations', as if they did it all alone. These 'heroes' all had servants, they all lived in a world where half of humanity was female.
Somehow the colonised person feels inferior to their master, as if only the reality of the master has any validity, that somehow they, the colonised, are invisible, that their story is of no importance. They are told that they are less worthy than the master, that they must put the needs of the master before their own - and most of the time they believe it, for their social and economic situation tells them as much.
Woman is the first and foremost of the colonised. Ever since the beginning of Patriarchy she has been deprived of her personhood. Where once she was served, as nature and God intend, under Patriarchy she serves the man.
Man's endless silly games are given validity, while Woman's essential work is denied.
Woman is only valued in relation to Man. She is his object.
Woman has no history. The history books tell of few women, only those who accidentally take on male roles within the patriarchy, and those who relate to men as mothers and lovers.
As such is Woman valued, like the 'Native', as a service provider, as a sexual object to gratify the master.
And today, how do the Authority endorsed feminists propose to set us free? By assimilation!
Like the African who was forced to speak French or Portuguese or English, to dress like their master, to deny their own language and heritage, to think the thoughts of the master, to deny themselves at every turn, and place the interests of the master above those of their own kind, so the Vichy Feminist proposes to liberate her sisters, by assimilating them into male values, by pressing them to play competitive sports, to see achievement as working their way through the hierarchy, to internalize male values, male needs, male priorities, to deny Woman and to assimilate the very nature of Man.
Wednesday 19 June 2013
Colony
When we think of the word 'colony' and its derivatives 'colonize' and 'colonial' we think of plucky folk from the British Isles upping sticks and making a healthy new life in great empty spaces in a sunny climate.
But if instead of using the word 'colonize' we use the words 'invade' and 'murder' and 'enslave' we would be nearer the truth.
Even when we admit that 'colonization' led to atrocities, we tell ourselves that this was the exception, not the rule. You see, even if God is not an Englishman, we can be sure that the English managerial class is the repository of all morality, the fit judge of human rights. The French, the Portuguese, the Belgians, and, of course, the Germans murdered the natives and stole their land, but surely not us.
Let us take the example of Kenya, a sunny place with some good farm land.
The British arrived in the 1890s. In 1901 they introduced a Hut Tax. In 1910 they introduced a Poll Tax. Africans were forced to become wage labourers to pay these taxes. The best land was expropriated and handed to British settlers, who became rich growing tea and coffee, using African labour.
More and more land was taken from the Africans. Those who, for whatever reason, did not work for a paltry wage faced the threat of forced labour or conscription.
Discipline was maintained by flogging. Sometimes the flogging was done at the magistrate's behest. Often 'justice' was meted out privately.
Africans who were 'squatting' on European farms were obliged to perform 270 days labour for the privilege.
By 1948 one and quarter million Kikuyo owned 2000 square miles of land, thirty thousand Europeans owned six times that amount. Africans fled to Niarobi in the hope of a better life.
Kenya was conquered. Africans were robbed and enslaved. Even that great imperialist, Mr. Churchill, was concerned at the scale of the murder.
In 1908 he said of Kenya, 'It looks like butchery.. Surely it cannot be necessary to go on killing these defenceless people on such an enormous scale.'
But if instead of using the word 'colonize' we use the words 'invade' and 'murder' and 'enslave' we would be nearer the truth.
Even when we admit that 'colonization' led to atrocities, we tell ourselves that this was the exception, not the rule. You see, even if God is not an Englishman, we can be sure that the English managerial class is the repository of all morality, the fit judge of human rights. The French, the Portuguese, the Belgians, and, of course, the Germans murdered the natives and stole their land, but surely not us.
Let us take the example of Kenya, a sunny place with some good farm land.
The British arrived in the 1890s. In 1901 they introduced a Hut Tax. In 1910 they introduced a Poll Tax. Africans were forced to become wage labourers to pay these taxes. The best land was expropriated and handed to British settlers, who became rich growing tea and coffee, using African labour.
More and more land was taken from the Africans. Those who, for whatever reason, did not work for a paltry wage faced the threat of forced labour or conscription.
Discipline was maintained by flogging. Sometimes the flogging was done at the magistrate's behest. Often 'justice' was meted out privately.
Africans who were 'squatting' on European farms were obliged to perform 270 days labour for the privilege.
By 1948 one and quarter million Kikuyo owned 2000 square miles of land, thirty thousand Europeans owned six times that amount. Africans fled to Niarobi in the hope of a better life.
Kenya was conquered. Africans were robbed and enslaved. Even that great imperialist, Mr. Churchill, was concerned at the scale of the murder.
In 1908 he said of Kenya, 'It looks like butchery.. Surely it cannot be necessary to go on killing these defenceless people on such an enormous scale.'
Tuesday 18 June 2013
A Function Of Morality
Divide and rule has always been a favoured tactic of those who inhabit vertical power structures. When a victim is being stripped of their personhood they are isolated from their history, their friends, their tribes.
And if they wish to assimilate into the managerial class a person must turn their backs on their own origins, their kin, even their close family.
They are taught to have contempt for their own people, scorning their local language as coarse, their own manners as uncouth, their culture as worthless and their pastimes as barbaric.
Managerial types are often dimly aware of what they have lost and are keen adherents of such things as synthetic folk music and synthetic football matches.
For it is a law of Hierarchy that not only is the oppressed deprived of their personhood but so is the oppressor.
The oppressor must not identify with the subject peoples. As they cannot identify with a certain race or region, they must identify with each other through consumer choice or, more particularly, through ideology.
Wherever there is a military bureaucratic complex there is morality. It is this morality that gives it's adherents a sense of superiority over the subject population. This morality defines them and it also defines the 'Other'.
It allows them to judge and to condemn.
It justifies the crimes committed against the subject population.
Often it does not matter what this morality consists of. It frequently changes with time and place, but the important thing is that there is a morality.
The morality may be that of the pagan Romans, or the muscular Christianity of the Victorians, or the Equality of the totalitarian age, or Nihilist Islamism but there must be a standard to conform to, a stick to beat both oppressor and oppressed.
The great hallmarks of the managerial class are these; subservience and conformity.
Morality is the mechanism by which the manager thinks, what should I think? what
should I do? how can I crush my neighbour?
And if they wish to assimilate into the managerial class a person must turn their backs on their own origins, their kin, even their close family.
They are taught to have contempt for their own people, scorning their local language as coarse, their own manners as uncouth, their culture as worthless and their pastimes as barbaric.
Managerial types are often dimly aware of what they have lost and are keen adherents of such things as synthetic folk music and synthetic football matches.
For it is a law of Hierarchy that not only is the oppressed deprived of their personhood but so is the oppressor.
The oppressor must not identify with the subject peoples. As they cannot identify with a certain race or region, they must identify with each other through consumer choice or, more particularly, through ideology.
Wherever there is a military bureaucratic complex there is morality. It is this morality that gives it's adherents a sense of superiority over the subject population. This morality defines them and it also defines the 'Other'.
It allows them to judge and to condemn.
It justifies the crimes committed against the subject population.
Often it does not matter what this morality consists of. It frequently changes with time and place, but the important thing is that there is a morality.
The morality may be that of the pagan Romans, or the muscular Christianity of the Victorians, or the Equality of the totalitarian age, or Nihilist Islamism but there must be a standard to conform to, a stick to beat both oppressor and oppressed.
The great hallmarks of the managerial class are these; subservience and conformity.
Morality is the mechanism by which the manager thinks, what should I think? what
should I do? how can I crush my neighbour?
Monday 17 June 2013
Empty Streets, Dead Society
I was talking with a Spanish guy from Cadiz the other night, a man who had come here for the work. Though a construction worker by profession, he was working in a local hotel.
He had come to England, because England is where the money is.
What he couldn't understand was why nobody was out in the streets at night. Even in summer the streets of our town are dead in the evenings.
They may be poor back in Cadiz, he explained, but they still went out for a beer or a coffee, walked around town, laughed and smiled and said hello.
Why were the streets of England deserted he asked?
I tried to tell him that where the cancer of capital is at its most virulent, the state replaces society, family, friends, church and charity, that we are all watched by cameras, that we are smothered by regulations, that we are monitored, that we are all suspects, that we are told to lock up behind closed doors, to Be Safe, Feel Safe, to hide alone with our televisions and our computers while vigilante thugs roam the streets, that the law of liberty has been replaced by Control.
In a consumer capitalist commodity world, where people worship things, they lose society. For hierarchy to grow, it needs to ever extend the realm of exchange, the kingdom of reward and punishment. It needs capitalism, the numbering and reification of all things.
All experiences, and life itself, are transformed into commodities, to be exchanged, to be given as reward, or to be withheld as punishment.
Society is in essence the free giving of one person to the next. Abolish the gift, replace it with reward, abolish unconditional love, replace it with conditional love, abolish grace, replace it with works, abolish society, replace it with the state, abolish life, replace it with death.
He had come to England, because England is where the money is.
What he couldn't understand was why nobody was out in the streets at night. Even in summer the streets of our town are dead in the evenings.
They may be poor back in Cadiz, he explained, but they still went out for a beer or a coffee, walked around town, laughed and smiled and said hello.
Why were the streets of England deserted he asked?
I tried to tell him that where the cancer of capital is at its most virulent, the state replaces society, family, friends, church and charity, that we are all watched by cameras, that we are smothered by regulations, that we are monitored, that we are all suspects, that we are told to lock up behind closed doors, to Be Safe, Feel Safe, to hide alone with our televisions and our computers while vigilante thugs roam the streets, that the law of liberty has been replaced by Control.
In a consumer capitalist commodity world, where people worship things, they lose society. For hierarchy to grow, it needs to ever extend the realm of exchange, the kingdom of reward and punishment. It needs capitalism, the numbering and reification of all things.
All experiences, and life itself, are transformed into commodities, to be exchanged, to be given as reward, or to be withheld as punishment.
Society is in essence the free giving of one person to the next. Abolish the gift, replace it with reward, abolish unconditional love, replace it with conditional love, abolish grace, replace it with works, abolish society, replace it with the state, abolish life, replace it with death.
Sunday 16 June 2013
Face To The Sun
Face to the Sun was the Falangist anthem in the Spanish Civil War. Like Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade it glorifies death and murder. Such is the degeneracy of those who love the military bureaucratic complex.
Here is the song and a loose translation:
Cara al Sol con la camisa nueva,
que tú bordaste en rojo ayer,
me hallará la muerte si me lleva,
y no te vuelvo a ver.
Formaré junto a mis compañeros,
que hacen guardia sobre los luceros,
impasible el ademán,
y están presentes en nuestro afán.
Si te dicen que caí,
me fui al puesto que tengo allí,
Volverán banderas victoriosos
al paso alegre de la paz
y traerán prendidas cinco rosas
las flechas de mi haz.
Volverá a reír la primavera,
que por cielo, tierra y mar se espera,
¡Arriba, escuadras, a vencer,
que en Espana empieza a amanecer!
¡Espana una!
¡Espana grande!
¡Espana libre!
¡Arriba Espana!
Face to the Sun, wearing the new shirt,
That you embroidered in red only yesterday,
Is how Death will find me, if he chooses to take me,
And I will see you no more.
I will be together again with my comrades
Who watch over us amongst the stars
With stern unflinching gaze,
Ever with us in our great deeds.
And if they tell you I have fallen,
Know that I have gone to the place waiting there for me.
The flags of Victory will fly once more
Waving in joy for peace
The arrows of my quiver
Will bring you five red roses.
The laughter of spring will come again
In the air, on the land and the sea.
Onwards, soldiers, to Victory,
A new day dawns on Spain.
Spain, one and united!
Spain, great again!
Spain, forever free!
Onwards Spain!
Here is the song and a loose translation:
Cara al Sol con la camisa nueva,
que tú bordaste en rojo ayer,
me hallará la muerte si me lleva,
y no te vuelvo a ver.
Formaré junto a mis compañeros,
que hacen guardia sobre los luceros,
impasible el ademán,
y están presentes en nuestro afán.
Si te dicen que caí,
me fui al puesto que tengo allí,
Volverán banderas victoriosos
al paso alegre de la paz
y traerán prendidas cinco rosas
las flechas de mi haz.
Volverá a reír la primavera,
que por cielo, tierra y mar se espera,
¡Arriba, escuadras, a vencer,
que en Espana empieza a amanecer!
¡Espana una!
¡Espana grande!
¡Espana libre!
¡Arriba Espana!
Face to the Sun, wearing the new shirt,
That you embroidered in red only yesterday,
Is how Death will find me, if he chooses to take me,
And I will see you no more.
I will be together again with my comrades
Who watch over us amongst the stars
With stern unflinching gaze,
Ever with us in our great deeds.
And if they tell you I have fallen,
Know that I have gone to the place waiting there for me.
The flags of Victory will fly once more
Waving in joy for peace
The arrows of my quiver
Will bring you five red roses.
The laughter of spring will come again
In the air, on the land and the sea.
Onwards, soldiers, to Victory,
A new day dawns on Spain.
Spain, one and united!
Spain, great again!
Spain, forever free!
Onwards Spain!
Saturday 15 June 2013
Whence Shall We Buy Bread?
'After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberius.
And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased.
And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples.
And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.
When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?
And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do.
Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that everyone may take a little.'
John Ball writes:
There are so many awesome passages in the Bible, but the Gospel according to John, Chapter 6 is, for me, one of the most awesome. Here Jesus feeds the five thousand, flees those who wish to make him a king, walks on water and discourses upon the bread of life, his sacrifice and those who are chosen for eternal life.
In these introductory verses Jesus goes up on the mountain to speak to the multitude that has followed him. The disciples worry that they cannot provide food for their guests. Jesus teases the disciples, asking Philip where they should get some bread.
Philip looks around him and seeing the great crowd tells Jesus that even a great deal of money would not be enough to buy sufficient bread for everyone to eat a little.
Of course not, we may smile. A world of exchange, a world of deals and each person for themselves can never provide enough. It can only lead to hunger and misery.
Jesus, of course, has the answer, not only to hunger on this Earth, - the miracle of giving.
But, here Jesus is also referring to himself, as the bread of life. Only those who can give selfishly and sacrificially like Jesus himself, can enjoy freedom in Christ and know what it is to be redeemed.
And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased.
And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples.
And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.
When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?
And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do.
Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that everyone may take a little.'
John Ball writes:
There are so many awesome passages in the Bible, but the Gospel according to John, Chapter 6 is, for me, one of the most awesome. Here Jesus feeds the five thousand, flees those who wish to make him a king, walks on water and discourses upon the bread of life, his sacrifice and those who are chosen for eternal life.
In these introductory verses Jesus goes up on the mountain to speak to the multitude that has followed him. The disciples worry that they cannot provide food for their guests. Jesus teases the disciples, asking Philip where they should get some bread.
Philip looks around him and seeing the great crowd tells Jesus that even a great deal of money would not be enough to buy sufficient bread for everyone to eat a little.
Of course not, we may smile. A world of exchange, a world of deals and each person for themselves can never provide enough. It can only lead to hunger and misery.
Jesus, of course, has the answer, not only to hunger on this Earth, - the miracle of giving.
But, here Jesus is also referring to himself, as the bread of life. Only those who can give selfishly and sacrificially like Jesus himself, can enjoy freedom in Christ and know what it is to be redeemed.
Friday 14 June 2013
Voltairine de Cleyre - Self Help And Liberty
'As long as working people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman bid them 'move on', as long as they go from factory to factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old 'no', the old shake of the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they wrought; so long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered at value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing through plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made, but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, priest, or politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be delayed. When they conceive the possibility of a complete international federation of labour, whose constituent groups shall take possession of land, mines, factories, all the instruments of production, issue their own certificates of exchange, and, in short, conduct their own industry without regulative interference from law-makers or employers, then we may hope for the only help which counts for aught - Self Help.'
'It is an American tradition that a standing army is a menace to liberty; in Jefferson's presidency the army was reduced to 3,000 men. It is an American tradition that we keep out of the affairs of other nations. It is American practice that we meddle with the affairs of everybody else from the West to the East Indies, from Russia to Japan; and to do it we have a standing army of 83,251 men.'
'They thought it possible to compromise between liberty and government, believing the latter to be 'a necessary evil' and the moment the compromise was made, the whole misbegotten monster of our present tyranny began to grow. Instruments which are set up to safeguard rights become the very whip with which the free are struck.'
'Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that 'freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty licence,' and they will define and define freedom out of existence.'
'It is an American tradition that a standing army is a menace to liberty; in Jefferson's presidency the army was reduced to 3,000 men. It is an American tradition that we keep out of the affairs of other nations. It is American practice that we meddle with the affairs of everybody else from the West to the East Indies, from Russia to Japan; and to do it we have a standing army of 83,251 men.'
'They thought it possible to compromise between liberty and government, believing the latter to be 'a necessary evil' and the moment the compromise was made, the whole misbegotten monster of our present tyranny began to grow. Instruments which are set up to safeguard rights become the very whip with which the free are struck.'
'Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that 'freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty licence,' and they will define and define freedom out of existence.'
Thursday 13 June 2013
Real Men
Mary Malone writes:
Like Bonnie Tyler, sometimes I ask myself, where have all the real men gone? Where are all the strong men? Where are all the good men, the self sacrificing, honourable men who would give up their seat in the life boat for me?
How nice it is, I think, when a man opens a door for me. I know his eyes are fixed on my behind as I walk ahead of him. He only wants to serve me.
Too many men these days justify their selfishness by hiding behind the notion of equality. They justify themselves by claiming that to serve a woman is sexist.
Stupid women let them get away with it.
Amongst the overseer class you are unlikely to find any real men at all. Equality, sexism, diversity and such rot, right on attitudes to justify consuming and being consumed, rights that are enforced by Big Mother are what they consider ethics.
These are the ethics of the emasculated.
This is the morality of the sick, men who have lost their personhood. These are the passive homoerotic values of the overseer class.
Little better than the overseers are the degraded proletariat, the passive takers of the homoerotic hierarchy.
Real men with true values are only found amongst the peasantry, the self-employed, those who strive for independence.
The true peasant man does not claim, he works.
The true peasant man is not the taker. He gives to his women and his children. He works hard for his woman, protects her anyway he can, serves her like the bull serves the cow!
The true peasant man believes in the virtues of courage, service, charity, hospitality, thankfulness, effort, creativity.
He is not forever looking over his shoulder, categorising according to race or income.
When Franz Fanon went to France as a very young man to help liberate the motherland from the German invader, he was shocked by the indifference of the peasants he had come to save.
A real man does not don a uniform and march up and down on the parade ground and murder some stranger at some other stranger's behest.
A real man is a peasant, a man who sees to his own and knows the joy of ploughing his own furrow.
Like Bonnie Tyler, sometimes I ask myself, where have all the real men gone? Where are all the strong men? Where are all the good men, the self sacrificing, honourable men who would give up their seat in the life boat for me?
How nice it is, I think, when a man opens a door for me. I know his eyes are fixed on my behind as I walk ahead of him. He only wants to serve me.
Too many men these days justify their selfishness by hiding behind the notion of equality. They justify themselves by claiming that to serve a woman is sexist.
Stupid women let them get away with it.
Amongst the overseer class you are unlikely to find any real men at all. Equality, sexism, diversity and such rot, right on attitudes to justify consuming and being consumed, rights that are enforced by Big Mother are what they consider ethics.
These are the ethics of the emasculated.
This is the morality of the sick, men who have lost their personhood. These are the passive homoerotic values of the overseer class.
Little better than the overseers are the degraded proletariat, the passive takers of the homoerotic hierarchy.
Real men with true values are only found amongst the peasantry, the self-employed, those who strive for independence.
The true peasant man does not claim, he works.
The true peasant man is not the taker. He gives to his women and his children. He works hard for his woman, protects her anyway he can, serves her like the bull serves the cow!
The true peasant man believes in the virtues of courage, service, charity, hospitality, thankfulness, effort, creativity.
He is not forever looking over his shoulder, categorising according to race or income.
When Franz Fanon went to France as a very young man to help liberate the motherland from the German invader, he was shocked by the indifference of the peasants he had come to save.
A real man does not don a uniform and march up and down on the parade ground and murder some stranger at some other stranger's behest.
A real man is a peasant, a man who sees to his own and knows the joy of ploughing his own furrow.
Wednesday 12 June 2013
A Prussian Education For All
Prussia was the first state to introduce free universal compulsory tax funded education.
In the eighteenth century, the modernising kings, such as Frederick the Great, encouraged industry, drained land and turned it into farmland, reformed Prussia's tax system, brought the church under close state control and introduced an efficient bureaucracy.
This was the modern state as we know it today.
The Prussian elite realized that educated, regimented and indoctrinated subjects were more useful to them than the usual peasants and townsmen wandering about doing their own thing.
The state wished to loosen the bonds of family and religion and replace these loyalties with king and country.
The modernizers understood that the schoolmaster could counterbalance the influence of the priests, that the King could replace God as the source of authority and the object of worship, and that young minds could be moulded to learn obedience to a higher, more distant, entity than family or society.
A brainwashed population would learn the Narrative and ask few questions. The people would learn to obey the voice of Authority, and when told they would betray their own kith and kin, put up with unbearable hardship, commit unspeakable crimes, throw themselves on the barbed wire.
The official religion was changed to a moralistic version of Christianity called Pietism, similar to Methodism, a religion that emphasized self discipline, works rather than faith, and above all, obedience.
Obedience to God the Father, dressed up in stern patriarchal disguise, was easily mixed up with obedience to the King.
Reforms were introduced over the years, particularly in 1809, after defeat at the hands of Napoleon.
In the nineteenth century Progressive governments throughout the world swept away the old order, and ruling elites turned to the Prussian model of education in order to produce disciplined factory workers and self sacrificing soldiers.
In the eighteenth century, the modernising kings, such as Frederick the Great, encouraged industry, drained land and turned it into farmland, reformed Prussia's tax system, brought the church under close state control and introduced an efficient bureaucracy.
This was the modern state as we know it today.
The Prussian elite realized that educated, regimented and indoctrinated subjects were more useful to them than the usual peasants and townsmen wandering about doing their own thing.
The state wished to loosen the bonds of family and religion and replace these loyalties with king and country.
The modernizers understood that the schoolmaster could counterbalance the influence of the priests, that the King could replace God as the source of authority and the object of worship, and that young minds could be moulded to learn obedience to a higher, more distant, entity than family or society.
A brainwashed population would learn the Narrative and ask few questions. The people would learn to obey the voice of Authority, and when told they would betray their own kith and kin, put up with unbearable hardship, commit unspeakable crimes, throw themselves on the barbed wire.
The official religion was changed to a moralistic version of Christianity called Pietism, similar to Methodism, a religion that emphasized self discipline, works rather than faith, and above all, obedience.
Obedience to God the Father, dressed up in stern patriarchal disguise, was easily mixed up with obedience to the King.
Reforms were introduced over the years, particularly in 1809, after defeat at the hands of Napoleon.
In the nineteenth century Progressive governments throughout the world swept away the old order, and ruling elites turned to the Prussian model of education in order to produce disciplined factory workers and self sacrificing soldiers.
Tuesday 11 June 2013
Surplus
The purveyors of Progress tell us that there is no specialisation in primitive society, because all the available time was taken up in hunting and gathering, that specialization and surplus only come with authoritarian society, that co-operative societies are 'backward' and that exploitation is the motor that drives so-called 'Progress'.
It only takes a moment's thought to realize that this cannot possibly be true, that even from the beginning there must have been some surplus. Human beings are active by nature, and given time, people are creative both in play and in their crafts.
Yet, still, some maintain that surplus value came about only through Hierarchy and with the institutionalization of violence through taxation and the State, as if, without the whip people relapse into a state of indolence.
Again, a little thought and we would realize that this is not the case.
Indeed free communes and self governing villages have provided not just food and shelter, but craft and art , literature and music for nearly the whole of humanity's existence.
A non hierarchical society might lack the instruments of domination and enforced passivity, but there was plenty of surplus value, plenty of time for poetry, astronomy, religion, music, storytelling and the beautifying of objects, all those things that are so lacking in the instant-coffee, off-the-shelf society that we have today.
Indeed, the great art of the Middle Ages was produced by the free cities and boroughs of Europe.
It is when people need to get a licence simply to play a little music or put on a little performance, that creativity dies.
The passive can only be derivative and dead.
Only the free can create with love and beauty.
It only takes a moment's thought to realize that this cannot possibly be true, that even from the beginning there must have been some surplus. Human beings are active by nature, and given time, people are creative both in play and in their crafts.
Yet, still, some maintain that surplus value came about only through Hierarchy and with the institutionalization of violence through taxation and the State, as if, without the whip people relapse into a state of indolence.
Again, a little thought and we would realize that this is not the case.
Indeed free communes and self governing villages have provided not just food and shelter, but craft and art , literature and music for nearly the whole of humanity's existence.
A non hierarchical society might lack the instruments of domination and enforced passivity, but there was plenty of surplus value, plenty of time for poetry, astronomy, religion, music, storytelling and the beautifying of objects, all those things that are so lacking in the instant-coffee, off-the-shelf society that we have today.
Indeed, the great art of the Middle Ages was produced by the free cities and boroughs of Europe.
It is when people need to get a licence simply to play a little music or put on a little performance, that creativity dies.
The passive can only be derivative and dead.
Only the free can create with love and beauty.
Monday 10 June 2013
Aid Dependency
When a country is in debt bondage or has just emerged from a period of instability or war, Aid from Western governments and semi official ‘charities’ is often most welcome.
European powers set up centralized governments in the countries that they conquered, destroying local society in Asia, Africa and Australasia. Not wishing to have their work undone, European governments subsidize these new governments in the form of Aid. Centralized government in the former colonies would be severely weakened without this Aid.
However, when there is a lot of cash up for grabs it inevitably leads to corruption.
Just as England has become a country of patronage and corruption with government contracts being the route to many a fortune, a similar mechanism is at work in poorer countries.
In countries like Cambodia, Aid Dependency has led to the corrupting of democracy as donors want a say on where the money goes, to increasing rates of infant mortality as money is spent to suit the needs of the donors, bad governance due to corruption and missed commercial opportunities as entrepreneurs chase the money instead of make the money.
Almost every country in Africa is in the grip of Aid Dependency. South of the Sahara, perhaps only Zimbabwe, Angola and Nigeria do without.
In some African countries there are more Europeans running around than there were in colonial times, now working for the shadowy pseudo charity NGOs.
When people in England help out a 'charity' with their time and money they should think very carefully.
No doubt, superficially, they are doing good, but at what price?
The destruction of local agriculture?
The destruction of local industry?
The corrupting and destruction of democratic government?
The stifling of local initiative?
The colonisation of Africa and Asia by the Imperial West?
Does the Aid Worker walk ahead of AFRICOM just as the Missionary used to walk ahead of the White Man with the Maxim Gun?
Many Africans wish the Europeans would go home once and for all.
But for our government the Aid Budget is sacrosanct. It is a source of power and patronage that reaps many rich dividends.
And with increased economic activity in Africa, due to the rise of new trading partners in Asia and South America, we can expect plenty more Aid and Military Intervention for some time to come.
Only by suborning local elites can our rulers destroy all hope and maintain their power.
European powers set up centralized governments in the countries that they conquered, destroying local society in Asia, Africa and Australasia. Not wishing to have their work undone, European governments subsidize these new governments in the form of Aid. Centralized government in the former colonies would be severely weakened without this Aid.
However, when there is a lot of cash up for grabs it inevitably leads to corruption.
Just as England has become a country of patronage and corruption with government contracts being the route to many a fortune, a similar mechanism is at work in poorer countries.
In countries like Cambodia, Aid Dependency has led to the corrupting of democracy as donors want a say on where the money goes, to increasing rates of infant mortality as money is spent to suit the needs of the donors, bad governance due to corruption and missed commercial opportunities as entrepreneurs chase the money instead of make the money.
Almost every country in Africa is in the grip of Aid Dependency. South of the Sahara, perhaps only Zimbabwe, Angola and Nigeria do without.
In some African countries there are more Europeans running around than there were in colonial times, now working for the shadowy pseudo charity NGOs.
When people in England help out a 'charity' with their time and money they should think very carefully.
No doubt, superficially, they are doing good, but at what price?
The destruction of local agriculture?
The destruction of local industry?
The corrupting and destruction of democratic government?
The stifling of local initiative?
The colonisation of Africa and Asia by the Imperial West?
Does the Aid Worker walk ahead of AFRICOM just as the Missionary used to walk ahead of the White Man with the Maxim Gun?
Many Africans wish the Europeans would go home once and for all.
But for our government the Aid Budget is sacrosanct. It is a source of power and patronage that reaps many rich dividends.
And with increased economic activity in Africa, due to the rise of new trading partners in Asia and South America, we can expect plenty more Aid and Military Intervention for some time to come.
Only by suborning local elites can our rulers destroy all hope and maintain their power.
Sunday 9 June 2013
A World Safe For Poverty
John Cage was an avant -garde experimental musician who wrote the sort of elitist music that my friend Dick likes to call "a load of bollocks". John Cage wrote this pious poem too. It is of a similar elitist quality as his music.
'We don't need government
We need utilities.
Air, water, energy,
Travel and communication means
Food and shelter.
We have no need for imaginary mountain ranges
Between separate nations.
We can make tunnels through the real ones.
Nor do we have any need for the continuing division of people
Into those who have what they need
And what they don't.
Both Fuller and Marshall McLuhan
Knew, furthermore
That work is now obsolete.
We have invented machines to do it for us.
Now that we have no need to do anything
What shall we do?
Looking at Fuller's geodesic world map
We see that the earth is a single island, Oahu.
We must give all the people all they need to live
In any way they wish.
Our present laws protect the rich from the poor.
If there are to be laws, we need ones that
Begin with the acceptance of poverty as a way of life.
We must make the world safe for poverty. Without dependence on government.'
'We don't need government
We need utilities.
Air, water, energy,
Travel and communication means
Food and shelter.
We have no need for imaginary mountain ranges
Between separate nations.
We can make tunnels through the real ones.
Nor do we have any need for the continuing division of people
Into those who have what they need
And what they don't.
Both Fuller and Marshall McLuhan
Knew, furthermore
That work is now obsolete.
We have invented machines to do it for us.
Now that we have no need to do anything
What shall we do?
Looking at Fuller's geodesic world map
We see that the earth is a single island, Oahu.
We must give all the people all they need to live
In any way they wish.
Our present laws protect the rich from the poor.
If there are to be laws, we need ones that
Begin with the acceptance of poverty as a way of life.
We must make the world safe for poverty. Without dependence on government.'
Saturday 8 June 2013
The Moses Complex - by John Ball
'And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked upon their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.
And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?
And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.'
In these few brief lines lies the key to much of the history of the world since the French Revolution.
Who was Robespierre but a lawyer, a man set up by Pharoah, but who proclaimed himself as judge over the people?
Who was Ben Bella, but an 'assimilé', an Arab who spoke French and no Arabic?
Who was Agostinho Neto, Eduardo Mondlane, Nelson Mandela, Idi Amin, Sékou Touré?
They too were not quite of the people and set themselves over the people.
Or Chou En-Lai or Mao Tse-tung, a teacher by profession.
Or Lenin and Trotsky, neither of them part of the working class they wished to lord it over.
Or Hitler, the son of a government official who felt himself too special to be taking the orders.
Or the famous feminists, such as the Pankhursts, privileged women whose wounded vanity they equated with the suffering of their sisters.
Down to the modern day post Fascist Labour Party, moralists whose upbringing leads them to feel outside of the old establishment, but who damn the little people as 'bigots'
These are the managerial people, the bureaucrats, the hierarchs, resentful because they are kept out of the highest counsels of Pharoah. These are the Nobody People from Nowhere who set themselves above the ordinary people, whose rule is even more cruel than that of Pharoah.
These are the people who organize the Terror, who build the Concentration Camps, who do not flinch at killing Numbers, for whom Genocide is an afternoon's work, for whom the deaths of 500,000 children is 'a price worth paying', who bomb the countries of the world, blowing the limbs off and burying the Non-People.
These are the psychopaths of the hierarchy, and they are seen throughout the land, in every school, every government office, every branch of the hierarchy, extending their surveillance state, snatching children, disposing of old people, censoring, damning, closing down life itself.
And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?
And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.'
In these few brief lines lies the key to much of the history of the world since the French Revolution.
Who was Robespierre but a lawyer, a man set up by Pharoah, but who proclaimed himself as judge over the people?
Who was Ben Bella, but an 'assimilé', an Arab who spoke French and no Arabic?
Who was Agostinho Neto, Eduardo Mondlane, Nelson Mandela, Idi Amin, Sékou Touré?
They too were not quite of the people and set themselves over the people.
Or Chou En-Lai or Mao Tse-tung, a teacher by profession.
Or Lenin and Trotsky, neither of them part of the working class they wished to lord it over.
Or Hitler, the son of a government official who felt himself too special to be taking the orders.
Or the famous feminists, such as the Pankhursts, privileged women whose wounded vanity they equated with the suffering of their sisters.
Down to the modern day post Fascist Labour Party, moralists whose upbringing leads them to feel outside of the old establishment, but who damn the little people as 'bigots'
These are the managerial people, the bureaucrats, the hierarchs, resentful because they are kept out of the highest counsels of Pharoah. These are the Nobody People from Nowhere who set themselves above the ordinary people, whose rule is even more cruel than that of Pharoah.
These are the people who organize the Terror, who build the Concentration Camps, who do not flinch at killing Numbers, for whom Genocide is an afternoon's work, for whom the deaths of 500,000 children is 'a price worth paying', who bomb the countries of the world, blowing the limbs off and burying the Non-People.
These are the psychopaths of the hierarchy, and they are seen throughout the land, in every school, every government office, every branch of the hierarchy, extending their surveillance state, snatching children, disposing of old people, censoring, damning, closing down life itself.
Friday 7 June 2013
Peter Kropotkin - Quotes
From 1890:
'America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There, the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society. The peoples of the world are becoming profoundly dissatisfied and are not appeased by the promise of the social-democrats to patch up the State into a new engine of oppression.'
'But the inveterate enemies of thought - the government, the law-giver, the priest - soon recover from their defeat. By degrees they gather together their scattered forces, and remodel their faith and their code of laws to adapt them to the new needs.'
As for the impostor, Saint Darwin:
'As soon as we study animals - not in laboratories and museums only, but in the forest and the prairie, in the steppe and in the mountains - we at once perceive that though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, and especially amidst various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence amidst animals belonging to the same species, or at least, to the same society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.
Of course it would be extremely difficult to estimate, however roughly, the relative numerical importance of both these series of facts. But if we resort to an indirect test, and ask Nature: 'Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?' we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest.
They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development and bodily organization. If the numberless facts which can be brought forward to support this view are taken into account, we may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle; but as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favours the development of such habits and characters as ensure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy.'
'The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men and can be enforced on them only by terror.'
'The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.'
Thursday 6 June 2013
Dualism And The Politically Correct Attack On Woman
From Mary Malone's The Denial Of Woman.
The rise of Dualism in the Ancient World marked an intensification of the vilification of Woman. Already, in the first millennium B.C., patriarchal states were sweeping away the matriarchal societies of the Mediterranean and Central Asia. Patriarchy, with its violence and its pyramid of power, was searching for justification, for validity, for justification for its crime.
What better solution than to blame the victim?
For two thousand years the battle raged. The Dualism of Zoroaster, its opposition of material and spiritual, its denigration of sexual activity, its denial of woman, its sneer at life itself, appeared to conquer all. Then came the reaction of Christianity - matriarchy with a patriarchal face - where the material and the spiritual were reconciled in Christ. Some sort of balance appeared to have been restored.
But the Manicheans, and the pseudo Manicheans, such as Jerome and Augustine perverted Christianity by reasserting the dominance of hierarchy and the unworthiness of Woman, the nadir being reached in the woman hatred of Islam, a religion that from the beginning has exalted violence and destroyed women.
The modern Atheism of the Politically Correct is much like Islam. It is a religion without love or freedom, a religion of great morality, a religion that judges and damns.
Above all it judges and damns women.
Under the guise of 'liberating' women, the Politically Correct teaches girls to hate themselves. Woman's Body, under attack from many centuries of Dualism with its Morality of Purity, is under attack as never before.
Thin is beautiful. Loveliness and curves are damned. Long flowing hair is a luxury of the Politically Incorrect 'unliberated' woman. The power of her body is condemned.
Her domination of the family is dismissed as unproductive, being replaced by an infantile role in the hierarchy, where thin and boyish, she fulfils the role of sex object in the Pederast Society.
Never has Woman been so unhappy!
Even Islam allows women to retain their Womanhood. Throughout the world women are converting from Atheism to this most patriarchal of religions, this Dualism gone mad, because, although Islam holds out the prospect of an existence in the shadows, it is better than no existence at all.
The rise of Dualism in the Ancient World marked an intensification of the vilification of Woman. Already, in the first millennium B.C., patriarchal states were sweeping away the matriarchal societies of the Mediterranean and Central Asia. Patriarchy, with its violence and its pyramid of power, was searching for justification, for validity, for justification for its crime.
What better solution than to blame the victim?
For two thousand years the battle raged. The Dualism of Zoroaster, its opposition of material and spiritual, its denigration of sexual activity, its denial of woman, its sneer at life itself, appeared to conquer all. Then came the reaction of Christianity - matriarchy with a patriarchal face - where the material and the spiritual were reconciled in Christ. Some sort of balance appeared to have been restored.
But the Manicheans, and the pseudo Manicheans, such as Jerome and Augustine perverted Christianity by reasserting the dominance of hierarchy and the unworthiness of Woman, the nadir being reached in the woman hatred of Islam, a religion that from the beginning has exalted violence and destroyed women.
The modern Atheism of the Politically Correct is much like Islam. It is a religion without love or freedom, a religion of great morality, a religion that judges and damns.
Above all it judges and damns women.
Under the guise of 'liberating' women, the Politically Correct teaches girls to hate themselves. Woman's Body, under attack from many centuries of Dualism with its Morality of Purity, is under attack as never before.
Thin is beautiful. Loveliness and curves are damned. Long flowing hair is a luxury of the Politically Incorrect 'unliberated' woman. The power of her body is condemned.
Her domination of the family is dismissed as unproductive, being replaced by an infantile role in the hierarchy, where thin and boyish, she fulfils the role of sex object in the Pederast Society.
Never has Woman been so unhappy!
Even Islam allows women to retain their Womanhood. Throughout the world women are converting from Atheism to this most patriarchal of religions, this Dualism gone mad, because, although Islam holds out the prospect of an existence in the shadows, it is better than no existence at all.
Wednesday 5 June 2013
It's Not Fair
Around 1979 something happened in England, and it wasn’t just the election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party.
It was the dawning of the age of self-pity.
The exuberant glory days of a working class who had 'never had it so good' were coming to an end. For twenty years the serfs had been dining at the top table along with the masters. Ordinary people enjoyed unimaginable wealth - cars, foreign holidays, centrally heated, double glazed homes, an abundance of cheap clothing. The childhood killers - polio, diphtheria, pneumonia, whooping cough, - had been defeated.
The world was a sunny place.
And then, suddenly, the flares and the broad lapels, the long hair and the sense of freedom, seemed so far away. The music of laughter and cheek, of love and hate, of war and peace, died. All that was left was a pose, a drum machine - and self pity.
Poor old Mrs. Thatcher, for all her sins (which were many), she is hated for one thing above all. She wanted the precious ones to pull their fingers out, take responsibility for their petty existences, have responsibilities as well as rights, take control of their own destinies.
But the children wanted their toys, so they took out a loan and carried on playing.
They wanted Big Mother but instead they got poor Mrs. Thatcher.
Gone was the swagger and the attitude, the brashness and the spirit. Instead we had the age of ‘Charity’, social concern, equality, the belief that no one should be advantaged, and the hatred for all those who in some way, any way, had more.
Some time around 1979 England was killed.
It wasn’t the wretched Mrs Thatcher who killed her.
No, the ones who killed her were those who sang about Rat Traps, Bricks in the Wall, London Burning, whingers and whiners like the Clash and the Jam and Elvis Costello, always with a note of hatred and self pity in their mouths, always ready to condemn.
With self pity, which is the prerequisite of fascism, came the resurgence of anti-Semitism, dressed up as criticism of Israel. The New Establishment of the terrorist states, Britain and the US, are people who love their own criminals but hate the Other.
Today is a present filled with fear and blame, witch hunts and worries, bogus diseases and bogus freedoms.
Yes, back then, in the 1970s, people in England laughed and smiled and strutted their stuff. After all, there was no rationing and no war. They couldn't even hang you any more.
But then the people had got used to playing with toys. They wanted to carry on playing.
So they stomped their feet and cried out with one resounding voice; 'It's Not Fair'.
It was the dawning of the age of self-pity.
The exuberant glory days of a working class who had 'never had it so good' were coming to an end. For twenty years the serfs had been dining at the top table along with the masters. Ordinary people enjoyed unimaginable wealth - cars, foreign holidays, centrally heated, double glazed homes, an abundance of cheap clothing. The childhood killers - polio, diphtheria, pneumonia, whooping cough, - had been defeated.
The world was a sunny place.
And then, suddenly, the flares and the broad lapels, the long hair and the sense of freedom, seemed so far away. The music of laughter and cheek, of love and hate, of war and peace, died. All that was left was a pose, a drum machine - and self pity.
Poor old Mrs. Thatcher, for all her sins (which were many), she is hated for one thing above all. She wanted the precious ones to pull their fingers out, take responsibility for their petty existences, have responsibilities as well as rights, take control of their own destinies.
But the children wanted their toys, so they took out a loan and carried on playing.
They wanted Big Mother but instead they got poor Mrs. Thatcher.
Gone was the swagger and the attitude, the brashness and the spirit. Instead we had the age of ‘Charity’, social concern, equality, the belief that no one should be advantaged, and the hatred for all those who in some way, any way, had more.
Some time around 1979 England was killed.
It wasn’t the wretched Mrs Thatcher who killed her.
No, the ones who killed her were those who sang about Rat Traps, Bricks in the Wall, London Burning, whingers and whiners like the Clash and the Jam and Elvis Costello, always with a note of hatred and self pity in their mouths, always ready to condemn.
With self pity, which is the prerequisite of fascism, came the resurgence of anti-Semitism, dressed up as criticism of Israel. The New Establishment of the terrorist states, Britain and the US, are people who love their own criminals but hate the Other.
Today is a present filled with fear and blame, witch hunts and worries, bogus diseases and bogus freedoms.
Yes, back then, in the 1970s, people in England laughed and smiled and strutted their stuff. After all, there was no rationing and no war. They couldn't even hang you any more.
But then the people had got used to playing with toys. They wanted to carry on playing.
So they stomped their feet and cried out with one resounding voice; 'It's Not Fair'.
Tuesday 4 June 2013
Theirs Is A Country Called Hierarchy
Why does the managerial class hate their own people, the people who live in the same land as them, the people who share their same history, their own blood?
It is one of the puzzles of modern life that modern political elites and their underlings in the managerial and 'caring' professions should hate their own people to the extent that they prefer the foreigner to their own kind. It is seen not only in England, but in Canada, the U.S., Sweden, France, Germany and so on.
To these Progressives, these lovers of the State, their own people are the enemy.
Just by existing, the 'bigot' class offends them.
The Managerials come from far and wide, they live on housing estates, they travel in their cars. The town where they live is just the backcloth to their real lives - that as members of the Hierarchy.
The Hierarchy is their country. They are Nobodies from Nowhere. Their function is their identity. Their faith is Obedience.
They look over their shoulders at the darkly sullen Menials. The Menials belong somewhere. Often, they live their whole lives in one town. Often as not their families live there too. They are Somebodies from Somewhere.
The Menials are not on the ladder. They do not worship Obedience. They do not need to stick their noses up the arse of the person on the rung above them, or kick out at the person on the rung below.
The Managerial person, the worshipper of Obedience, cannot understand these Menials. They look like us, but they don't dress like us, or talk like us, or even walk like us.
They are an ever lasting reproach.
It is so much easier when the Menials have a darker skin, adhere to a savage religion, so much easier to patronize.
When the hated indigenous menial class is gone forever there will be no one left to hold up a mirror to the servility and the emptiness of those whose country is called Hierarchy.
It is one of the puzzles of modern life that modern political elites and their underlings in the managerial and 'caring' professions should hate their own people to the extent that they prefer the foreigner to their own kind. It is seen not only in England, but in Canada, the U.S., Sweden, France, Germany and so on.
To these Progressives, these lovers of the State, their own people are the enemy.
Just by existing, the 'bigot' class offends them.
The Managerials come from far and wide, they live on housing estates, they travel in their cars. The town where they live is just the backcloth to their real lives - that as members of the Hierarchy.
The Hierarchy is their country. They are Nobodies from Nowhere. Their function is their identity. Their faith is Obedience.
They look over their shoulders at the darkly sullen Menials. The Menials belong somewhere. Often, they live their whole lives in one town. Often as not their families live there too. They are Somebodies from Somewhere.
The Menials are not on the ladder. They do not worship Obedience. They do not need to stick their noses up the arse of the person on the rung above them, or kick out at the person on the rung below.
The Managerial person, the worshipper of Obedience, cannot understand these Menials. They look like us, but they don't dress like us, or talk like us, or even walk like us.
They are an ever lasting reproach.
It is so much easier when the Menials have a darker skin, adhere to a savage religion, so much easier to patronize.
When the hated indigenous menial class is gone forever there will be no one left to hold up a mirror to the servility and the emptiness of those whose country is called Hierarchy.
Monday 3 June 2013
Disappearing Bulgarians
The Bulgarians are about to invade England. According to the papers, they are about to dump their tractors in the middle of the turnip field and join the masses of cheap labour in search of the gold that paves the streets of London. The people of Bulgaria will be leaving their country in droves.
But this is nothing new. In 1989 there were around 9 million people living in Bulgaria. According to the 2011 census, 22 years later, there were only 7,364,570 inhabitants of Bulgaria.
That is quite a drop in a less than a quarter of a century.
And with a fertility rate of just one and a half children per woman the trend appears ever downwards.
Twenty-first century Bulgarians, like the people of China and Iran and Italy and many other places seem to wish for things other than family life.
One of the great phenomena of the twentieth century was the flight from the land to the city, a trend which, if anything is increasing nowadays.
And over and above this trend we see the flight from the periphery to the centre of capital.
Travel has never been easier and the young of all nations want a slice of the action.
It is a shame when some places are depopulated, leaving the old to fend for themselves, and others are overrun, causing the native population to flee.
In the meantime young people from many countries have no wish for home and family life. They want to live in London and Paris, Barcelona and Berlin. They want to enjoy the adventure of living in a great city in some foreign land.
But this is nothing new. In 1989 there were around 9 million people living in Bulgaria. According to the 2011 census, 22 years later, there were only 7,364,570 inhabitants of Bulgaria.
That is quite a drop in a less than a quarter of a century.
And with a fertility rate of just one and a half children per woman the trend appears ever downwards.
Twenty-first century Bulgarians, like the people of China and Iran and Italy and many other places seem to wish for things other than family life.
One of the great phenomena of the twentieth century was the flight from the land to the city, a trend which, if anything is increasing nowadays.
And over and above this trend we see the flight from the periphery to the centre of capital.
Travel has never been easier and the young of all nations want a slice of the action.
It is a shame when some places are depopulated, leaving the old to fend for themselves, and others are overrun, causing the native population to flee.
In the meantime young people from many countries have no wish for home and family life. They want to live in London and Paris, Barcelona and Berlin. They want to enjoy the adventure of living in a great city in some foreign land.
Sunday 2 June 2013
I Prefer Roses, My Love, To My Country
Here is a poem written by Fernando Pessoa, under the guise of Ricardo Reis:
Prefiro rosas, meu amor, à pátria,
E antes magnólias amo
Que a glória e a virtude.
Logo que a vida me não canse, deixo
Que a vida por mim passe
Logo que eu fique o mesmo.
Que importa àquele a quem já nada importa
Que um perca e outro vença,
Se a aurora raia sempre,
Se cada ano com a Primavera
As folhas aparecem
E com o Outono cessam?
E o resto, as outras coisas que os humanos
Acrescentam à vida,
Que me aumentam na alma?
Nada, salvo o desejo de indif’rença
E a confiança mole
Na hora fugitiva.
I prefer roses, my love, to my country,
And I love magnolias
More than glory and virtue.
As long as life does not weary me,
I let life pass me by,
As long as I can stay the same.
What does it matter when nothing matters to me,
That one wins and another loses.
As long as the sun rises each day.
As long as each year in the Spring time,
The leaves burst forth
And in Autumn shrivel and die?
And all the other stuff and nonsense
That humans add to life,
What do they add to my soul?
Nothing, except a craving for indifference,
A soft faith and a sweet trust
In the fleeting hour.
Prefiro rosas, meu amor, à pátria,
E antes magnólias amo
Que a glória e a virtude.
Logo que a vida me não canse, deixo
Que a vida por mim passe
Logo que eu fique o mesmo.
Que importa àquele a quem já nada importa
Que um perca e outro vença,
Se a aurora raia sempre,
Se cada ano com a Primavera
As folhas aparecem
E com o Outono cessam?
E o resto, as outras coisas que os humanos
Acrescentam à vida,
Que me aumentam na alma?
Nada, salvo o desejo de indif’rença
E a confiança mole
Na hora fugitiva.
I prefer roses, my love, to my country,
And I love magnolias
More than glory and virtue.
As long as life does not weary me,
I let life pass me by,
As long as I can stay the same.
What does it matter when nothing matters to me,
That one wins and another loses.
As long as the sun rises each day.
As long as each year in the Spring time,
The leaves burst forth
And in Autumn shrivel and die?
And all the other stuff and nonsense
That humans add to life,
What do they add to my soul?
Nothing, except a craving for indifference,
A soft faith and a sweet trust
In the fleeting hour.
Saturday 1 June 2013
Concluding Conclusions Of The Lollards
11. That the vow of celibacy made in our Church by women, who are frail and imperfect in nature, is the cause of bringing the gravest horrible sins possible to human nature, because, although the killing of abortive children before they are baptized and the destruction of nature by nature and vile sins, yet copulation with themselves or brute beasts or any creature not having life surpasses such sins in foulness to such an extent as that they should be punished with the pains of hell. The corollary is that, widows and such as take the veil and the ring, being delicately fed, we could wish that they were given in marriage, because we cannot excuse them from secret sins.
12. That the abundance of unnecessary acts practised in our realm nourishes much sin in waste, profusion and disguise. This, experience and reason prove in some measure, because nature is sufficient for a man's necessity with few arts. The corollary is that since St. Paul says, "having food and raiment, let us be therewith content, it seems to us that goldsmiths and armourers and all kinds of arts not necessary for a man, it cording to the apostle, should be destroyed for the increase of virtue; because although these two said arts were exceedingly necessary in the old law, the Old Testament abolishes them and many others.
12. That the abundance of unnecessary acts practised in our realm nourishes much sin in waste, profusion and disguise. This, experience and reason prove in some measure, because nature is sufficient for a man's necessity with few arts. The corollary is that since St. Paul says, "having food and raiment, let us be therewith content, it seems to us that goldsmiths and armourers and all kinds of arts not necessary for a man, it cording to the apostle, should be destroyed for the increase of virtue; because although these two said arts were exceedingly necessary in the old law, the Old Testament abolishes them and many others.
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