The Rehabilitation Of Karl Marx.
February 8, 2009 at 9:20 am | Posted in sheer selfindulgence, writing | 23 CommentsTags: Karl Marx, no peace without justice, revolution
No-one can read Karl Marx without at least being amazed by his combination of imagination, intellect and love of his fellow humans. He didn’t worry about the numbers, he had his mate Engels for that, he imagined a world in which justice was put before profit and figured out a way to get there. Indicated a direction whilst accepting a margin of error. He said ‘man’, perhaps better put these days as human-type creatures. (Sometimes lovingly referred to as ‘the little pink people.’)
There is no peace without justice. This is both a statement of the physics of the event in that a crime unpunished will continue to reverberate through a community, eat at its conscience, resentments will brew in dark corners and it is also a promise made by people like me. And here is why.
There is no defence of ‘I was just following orders’. Go ask Adolf Eichmann if that one works. If you push a button knowing there is a possibility in which that missile will kill and maim innocent children you have committed a crime. If you sell the missile to him knowing he might do that, to make a profit for yourself, you have committed a crime too.
There is no left or right to politics. There is the little pink people and the corporation and you are being eaten by your own machines! Everybody Panic!
Haha, for some of us there is no rehabilitation.
the gentle art of forgetting,
November 27, 2008 at 6:27 pm | Posted in writing | 11 CommentsTags: F., revolution, the time swirl device, writing
Once discovered, the need for the gentle art of forgetting, otherwise immortal, he said chuckling, shrugging on the long cloak Takeshi had given him and locking the door behind him. At the other end of the alley a limo was waiting but not for him. I remember the recruitment he had boasted earlier after winning at cards, watching the older boys march so straight and proud and everyone giving thanks. Was it Spain that time, a flash of silver? Or Guatamala when a flower burst sudden red? The music was long and strange and high so perhaps it was east of elsewhere, gathering the chips. Which is where we ended up anyway distort statues bleeding in sand and tank tracks winding off into the heat. Later he put the drink down on the piano. Fuck it, son. I don’t think I can face another one. He turned the corner into the street just as the limo door opened and another opportunity emerged.
Spray.
October 7, 2008 at 6:22 pm | Posted in poetry, writing | 11 CommentsTags: poetry, revolution, writing
Oh I hear you go and rant again,
the soldier stands by a burning bridge,
at his back the ocean spray,
there’s not one of you alive in here whose
been here more than just one year
who has not hated all you’ve seen
the foulest rank hypocrisy
men who use their tongues so svelte
but have never swung a sword
mothers in the bible belt
calling real witches whores
I call your secrets ten times ten
and raise them now by two
because you’ll be dead
before the time this tale
is done and through.
The Henry Rollins Riff.
October 3, 2008 at 9:01 pm | Posted in writing | 18 CommentsTags: australian sentences, Henry Rollins, just another Friday night At The Orchid Room, revolution, riff
There are only two basic fundamental motivations to action. Love which is a permanent desire, fulfilled only in moments of perfect communion in which there is no individual ego not necessarily for one person but for the world as it is and anger.
It is not some flaw in human nature, anger belongs in humans as it does in tigers and in fires. Fuck me, that is a lot of money to just magic out of nowhere, 700 billion dollars? What did they just ring the mint and say print more money and give it to us and then we’ll give it to the same bastards who ripped you off the first time. And yet, people are homeless, your public education system is a mess, you don’t have universal free health care but you need $700 000 000 000 for the banks and it just appears. (According Zfacts.com the U.S. National Debt, that is the amount owed by the General Fund into which your taxes are paid, is already 10 Trillion dollars. And they are saying they just dipped into it and come up with another 700 billion? Who did they borrow it from, cos 10 Trillion in debt sound like empty pockets to me.) Was it just sitting under a rock and they forgot about it til now? Why not save the interest and just pay off the poor bastard’s mortgages?
And you’re a Christian country, of course. Well that explains a lot. Your legends are of revolutionaries, your intellectual tradition is one of dissent and questioning and yet you watch America’s Next Idol and you are voting for actors. You praise the smoothest slickest conartists that ever lived. Actors. These people you trust.
The Charlatan has his place, not always in the deck.
( a big shout out here to the infamous and mythic Paul M. Peterson.)
the pornography of the self
July 21, 2008 at 6:28 pm | Posted in writing | 23 CommentsTags: Abbie Hoffman, poetry, revolution, revolution versus the pornography of the self, writing
I have a red rubber nose and bright red fingernails,
a green felt hat and an oversized geranium.
I have a history of Abbie Hoffman,
a box full of astonishing connecticons,
assistance apparent from mysterious sources,
a Chinese Puzzle Box
and several spies with flowerpot eyes but
because you asked so nicely,
(the grass is damp but
i will still sit on it i
have a new book of
haikuschmaiku
written by worldfamous
masters of modern haikuschmaiku
so i will sit
on the damp grass
on my fat arse
and read it.)
I could be waving a polkadot flag and creating revolutions of clownish mayhem, throwing flour bombs at the smugly complacent and confabulating the hypocritical but because you asked so nicely I will just sit here on this damp grass staring blankly into a mute mirror and practise the pornography of the self.
“Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.” Abbie Hoffman
Saw Wai
January 26, 2008 at 10:19 am | Posted in writing | 4 CommentsTags: poetry, revolution, writing
Saw Wai, hero poet. If they are putting us in jail then we must still have some power.
Saw Wai is a Burmese poet jailed this week for hiding a cryptic message about the insane Burmese military dictatorship in a love poem.
Saw Wai !
Here is the article in The BBC with a copy of the poem in the original language.
And here is the Save Burma Website where you can get involved.
The Puzzle Box
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