Saturday, June 27, 2009

Kof at Glastonbury



Representing URBEATZ from Liverpool at Glastonbury and son of a good buddy ……………….

Click on the link for his storming 25 minute set on the BBC Introducer’s Stage.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/glastonbury/2009/artists/kof/

Here is his intro on the Glastonbury site;

“In a scene renowned for aggressive lyrics and negative press, KOF is a diamond in the dirt. Fusing new school flair and old school flavour, KOF describes his conscious lyrics and big beats as 'mesh' music. His talents lay not only in his lyrical realism, but also in his soulful voice and melodic flow. He champions an open approach to music, with no boundaries, so you can understand why 1Xtra's Ace & Vis consider him "the future of UK music". KOF has already achieved consistent air play on BBC 1Xtra, Galaxy and Radio 1 and is currently working on his debut album, set for release in October 2009.”

Check out Kof’s website;

http://kofmusic.com/

Friday, June 26, 2009

Tunnel vision



In ancient Rome when the mob was getting anxious the nervous Emperor in his great palace on the Palatine Hill would lay on “Bread and Circuses” to placate the mob and stave off riots which might threaten his throne. So free food would be given out to the poor and bloody gladiatorial gore-fests would be staged at the Coliseum to entertain the restless mob. By the end of the Empire there was no substance left just Bread and Circuses. So what are we to make of the latest initiative on the London Underground against a background where line closures are beginning to bite hard? Want to go by Tube to the O2 this weekend? Forget it the Jubilee Line is COMPLETELY closed. Want to go to Heathrow Airport on the Piccadilly Line? You guessed it, it’s not a flyer! Want to go round the Circle Line? Sorry it’s not the Full Circle this weekend! Want to go to Amersham, Chesham or Watford on the Metropolitan Line? Forget it it’s better by bus, but not a disabled friendly bus as who takes phase 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act (since October 2006) seriously?


Heathrow is cut off this weekend

Against this background of widespread disruption and loss of service the London Evening Standard reports that drivers on the Piccadilly line are to operate on a higher plane by adding doses of philosophy to their daily announcements. Instead of simply apologising for delays while the service is regularised, operators can draw on the wisdom of Greek philosophers and political thinkers and the bon mots of Shakespeare to add variety to the day. All have been compiled by Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller in a passport-sized book which has been distributed to all the drivers and staff on the route. Well I wasted good money once going to see the Turner Prize so I wouldn’t take the fact that Jeremy Deller has won it as a positive reference!

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/03/joseph-beuys-and-me.html

They range from the uplifting (“Nothing is worth more than this day” from Johann von Goethe, the German writer) to the sobering (“Man is in a strict sense entirely animal” — French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal). The title of booklet is taken from Shakespeare's Coriolanus: “What is the City but the People?”

Mr Deller said: “I often wish announcements were more personal and reflected the realities and absurdities of living and working in a big city. I think the travelling public will enjoy some humour and unexpected insight during their journey.” London Underground hopes that by encouraging Tube staff to talk directly to customers with appropriate wit and wisdom, they will lift the moods of travellers.


Ja, Time is a variable on ze Tube

Transport for London is also handing over disused shop display cases at Piccadilly Circus for more art, including a bust of Jennifer Lopez, a floating starfish and a display of album covers.

How this entertainment on the Tube goes down with its Controller, that great classicist, The Emperor Boris is not known as he doesn’t appear to be a fan of public transport in practice? Boris Johnson's image as a bicycling, penny-pinching Mayor took a blow as it emerged that he had spent more than £4,500 of public money on taxis - with one bill alone topping £237. Indeed the difficulty of the approach of concentrating on Bread and Circuses and not substance was wonderfully illustrated last Monday week for an “Art on the Underground” special to celebrate 30 years of the Jubilee Line (the one which opened the year after the “Jubilee” and is closed this weekend) where free posters were being given out to customers as they experienced disrupted service on the err, eeerr, Jubilee Line!

Maybe the Emperor Boris needs to avert his gaze from his taxi receipts and stop the decline of his Empire?

Tunnel droppings – Here are some of the sayings which will either cheer you up or drive you insane on the Piccadilly Line. We apologise for this delay to your service, but to live is to dream...

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences: Robert G. Ingersoll.

Beauty will save the world: Fydor Dostoevsky.

Hell is other people: Jean-Paul Sartre.

To live is to dream: Friedrich Schiller.

Life is one long process of getting tired: Samuel Butler.

Without music, life would be a mistake: Friedrich Nietzsche.

The only man who can change his mind is a man who's got one: Seneca.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory: Friedrich Engels.

The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them: Benjamin Jowett


Taxi!

And to show how ingrained The Tube is in the heart of the Nation the former paper of record, The Times, published the following today in its Leader column, no less!

Underground wisdom

Some suggestions for tags from philosophers on the London Tube announcements.

“All cha-a-ange at Earls Court for Southfields -

We are merely the stars' tennis balls, stuck and bandied which way please them: John Webster.”

“Mi-i-i-nd the gap - ...

Through me lies the way to the Ninth Circle Line: through me the way to eternal grief: Abandon all hope, you who enter the Underground: Dante.”

“Escalator work is taking place at Bank ...

Facilis descensus Averno: but to make your way out again to the upper air, that's the sweat: Virgil.”

“This train will not stop at Archway ...

Hell is other people: Jean-Paul Sartre.”

“This is the Mornington Crescent train ...



There is more to life than increasing its speed: Mahatma Gandhi.”

“Ickenham, Hillingdon, UXBRIDGE ...

To travel hopefully is better than to arrive: Robert Louis Stevenson.”

“Move right down the train ...

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made: Kant”

“Let the passengers off first ...

Travel teaches toleration: Disraeli.”

“The northern exit at Notting Hill is closed until May 2020 for essential renovation work ...

What people travel for is a mystery: Thomas Babington Macaulay.”

“This train is now relocating from a Wimbledon to an Ealing Broadway train ...

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and, instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are: Dr Johnson.”

Crackle. Bang. SCREECH. Such words of the sages will be wasted on the foetid Underground air unless they improve the deafening and inaudible Victorian communication equipment.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Act for Iran Now!



Iran has cracked down on hundreds of thousands of protesters who have poured into the streets in an act of breathtaking defiance to protest the contested results of last week's presidential election. Let Iran know that the global community is monitoring their every move! TAKE ACTION:

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12454

The government of Iran swiftly kicked the machinery of repression into high gear over the last several days in response to the largest public demonstrations of opposition that country has seen in 3 decades. Iranian authorities have violently cracked down on the wave of protesters who have taken to the streets since June 13th in an act of breathtaking defiance to protest the contested results of Friday's presidential election.

Up to 1 million people poured into the streets last Saturday despite a ban on opposition protests. Basij (paramilitary) forces opened fire indiscriminately, killing at least one person and injuring several others. According to reports, as many as five students at Tehran University were shot dead over the weekend and another person was wounded when security agents opened fire on a demonstration. Motorcycle-mounted riot police have severely beaten large numbers of protestors with clubs and night sticks.

Authorities have detained 170 people since June 12, including the brother of former President Mohammad Khatami. Iranian authorities have taken aggressive measures to stifle dissent and stem the flow of information – both inside and outside of the country – about the widespread unrest. Help send a vital message today to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that we refuse to remain silent when authorities use bloody violence to crush dissent and deny Iranian citizens their freedom of speech and association:

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12454



Meanwhile, in England, the doctor who tried to save an Iranian protester as she bled to death on a street in Tehran has told the BBC of her final moments. Dr Arash Hejazi, who is studying at a university in the south of England, said he ran to Neda Agha-Soltan's aid after seeing she had been shot in the chest. Despite his attempts to stop the bleeding she died in less than a minute, he said. Video of Ms Soltan's death was posted on the internet and images of her have become a rallying point for Iranian opposition supporters around the world. Dr Hejazi also told how passers-by then seized an armed Basij militia volunteer who appeared to admit shooting Ms Soltan. Dr Hejazi said he had not slept for three nights following the incident, but he wanted to speak out so that her death was not in vain. He doubted that he would be able to return to Iran after talking openly about Ms Soltan's killing.

Iran protest leader Mir Hossein Mousavi says he holds those behind alleged "rigged" elections responsible for bloodshed during recent protests. In a defiant statement on his website, he called for future protests to be in a way which would not "create tension." He complained of "complete" restrictions on his access to people and a crackdown on his media group.

"I won't refrain from securing the rights of the Iranian people... because of personal interests and the fear of threats," Mr Mousavi said on the website of his newspaper, Kalameh. Those who violated the election process "stood beside the main instigators of the recent riots and shed people's blood on the ground", Mr Mousavi said, pledging to show how they were involved. Mr Mousavi, a former prime minister, spoke of the "recent pressures on me" that are "aimed at making me change my position regarding the annulment of the election". He described the clampdowns he and his staff were facing. "My access to people is completely restricted. Our two websites have many problems and Kalameh Sabz newspaper has been closed down and its editorial members have been arrested," said Mr Mousavi, who has not been seen in public for days. "These by no means contribute to improving the national atmosphere and will lead us towards a more violent atmosphere," he added.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Solidarity with Iranians



The Iranian leadership is falling into the same trap that their arch-enemy the Shah of Iran fell into in the 1970s. They are not listening to the people. After a meeting with Shah Reza Pahlavi, the US ambassador William Sullivan complained: "The king will not listen." Soon afterwards, the king had to leave the country, and Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in triumph. Khomeini's successor as Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claimed at Friday prayers at Tehran University that "foreign agents" were behind efforts to stage a velvet revolution. This appears to be a classic case of blaming the messenger.

I have no regard for the regime of the former Shah of Iran. As a student activist I opposed him and tried to highlight the injustices of his regime. I was particularly horrified that the Scout Movement, which I was involved with, planned to have its International Jamboree in Iran in 1979. I was criticised for using Private Eye’s epithet for the Shah, “The Sh#t of Iran” in opposing this event but this non-political organisation was hugely naive as the Shah’s son (Who nowadays lives in Potomac, Maryland and answers to “Mr. Pahlavi”) was honoury Chief Scout and the whole operation was to be propaganda for the dynasty.



Grandiosity became the Shah. He staged a pitiful rodeo down in Persepolis to honour his forebears – the Pahlavi dynasty was actually introduced as a British colonial project – to which the great and the good and Princess Anne came along. After months of violent protests, the Shah fled Tehran on 16 January 1979. He ended up in the US where he received treatment for lymphatic cancer, from which he died in 1980. His father, commander of the Persian Cossack Brigade, took power in 1925 and was a genuinely capable and modernising figure in the Ataturk mould but his dictatorial instincts got the better of him. In 1941, on the slimmest of pretexts, the Soviet Union and Britain occupied scrupulously neutral Iran and shamelessly used the countries oil resources for their own wartime benefit. Many don’t realise American troops also entered Iran to assist its allies in the war effort and operated the railway system.



After the war the Soviet Union had nurtured an Iranian communist party and encouraged separatist movements in Northern Iran. They did not leave Iran until the end of 1946 in what was to be the first stress point of the Cold War. The Shah’s son was made leader in his father’s place but at the encouragement of the USA and Britain (who are now concerned about democracy in Iran) he subverted the constitution. Crucially, the Iranian revolution had a messianic leader in Ayatollah Khomeini who was a visible alternative to the Shah, a leader whose claims to legitimacy were compromised even before he came to the throne. The Iranian revolution might well have failed in the early days when Khomeini's courts feared a counter-coup, which was the reason for all the firing squads. They had not forgotten how the CIA and MI6 destroyed Mohammed Mossadeq's democratically elected government in a coup in 1953. Operation Ajax, the Americans called it (the British chose the more prosaic Operation Boot).

There was not much mercy in the Iranian revolution: all the courts did was sentence men to death. But then there hadn't been much mercy before the revolution, when the Shah's imperial guard, the Javidan, or "immortals", slaughtered the crowds. The notorious Savak security service had a well earned reputation for brutality, torture and summary executions, many families were told their loved ones hanged themselves in prison.



Nonetheless the Islamic Republic imposed its doctrines with particular brutality systematically liquidating its allies in the struggle against the Shah hanging thousands, especially women, so that the trees looked like they had roosting bats from a distance. Hundreds of thousands fled into exile. The West’s response was to bankroll Saddam Hussein in the terrible Iran / Iraq war (1980-1988) where the West’s salesmen, including Donald Rumsfeld, sold Iraq the gas and other materials to commit war crimes on the Iranian people. Casualty figures are highly uncertain, though estimates suggest more than one and a half million war and war-related casualties -- perhaps as many as a million people died, many more were wounded, and millions were made refugees. Iran acknowledged that nearly 300,000 people died in the war; estimates of the Iraqi dead range from 160,000 to 240,000. Iraq suffered an estimated 375,000 casualties, the equivalent of 5.6 million for a population the size of the United States. Another 60,000 were taken prisoner by the Iranians. Iran's losses may have included more than 1 million people killed or maimed. It should also be remembered, despite subsequent events in Iraq and Iran’s subsequent bluster that militarily Iran lost the conflict. This and the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner taking off on a scheduled flight from a civilian airport by the US Navy is why Iranians won’t lose any sleep at America’s crocodile tears for the dead of Tehran.

The Ayatollah Khomeini died on 03 June 1989. The Assembly of Experts - an elected body of senior clerics - chose the outgoing president of the republic, Ali Khamenei, to be his successor as national religious leader in what proved to be a smooth transition. In August 1989, Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the speaker of the National Assembly, was elected President by an overwhelming majority. The new clerical regime gave Iranian national interests primacy over Islamic doctrine. However, today Iran and its people are not well served by the leadership of the Islamic Republic who are definitely second stringers.



Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a minor cleric promoted rapidly by Ayatollah Khomeini when he realised his health was failing. Like Reza Pahlavi’s son he is not anywhere near the match of his predecessor. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was an obscure councillor who became Mayor of Tehran because of his links to Islamists. He spent his term in gesture politics towards the poor and rolling back diversity and increasing social control in the city and its institutions. His rise to power and landslide victory in 2005 surprised the international community, which anticipated a win for the incumbent president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Since then, Mr Ahmadinejad has developed a reputation internationally for his fiery rhetoric and verbal attacks on the West. Meanwhile Iranians have gone backwards economically and socially in a country which even Ruhollah Khomeini described as a “slum”, a very literal description of South Tehran despite years of Ahmadinejad.


Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The Islamic Republic has sneered at the way the “weak” Shah rolled over to popular protest and is programmed with Iran's Revolutionary Guards and the thuggish Basij militiamen wielding clubs determined to intimidate, mutilate and kill peaceful protestors or “terrorists” as they have been labelled in the Newspeak of the Islamic Republic. It is clear that the Iranian regime had its post-election repression organised in advance. They knew the election was to be rigged, there are no independent observers, no tally sheets, no independence at the election count. Indeed it may be not the first rigging as Ahmadinejad was the surprise winner of the 2005 election with roughly the same share of the vote? If Ayatollah Ali Khamenei believes as he said at Friday prayers that the election couldn’t be rigged as Islam is the religion of truth let him open up the ballot boxes, election registers and tally sheets to inspection. Surely, especially in Islam, truth cries out to be heard?

The fact of the matter is that Persia is a great nation and its people are a great people, rich in language, literature and culture long before the West. They are “Iran” literally the Aryan Nation, after Egypt the world’s first superpower and the home of the Zoroaster, recognised by Islam as “People of the Book” whose prophet was first to proclaim belief in “The One God”, - thus spake Zarathusa. But the truth is that there is little hint of this greatness in the lives of ordinary Iranians who have been badly served by the stupidity of their rulers for a very long time.

There is a velvet rebellion taking place. It is not a revolution yet - but it could evolve into one if the Supreme Leader and his associates do not listen to the people. Dozens of peaceful, young Iranians are saying they want change. Sixty percent of the population are under 30 years old. They have no memory of the Islamic revolution in 1979. Many of them use the internet and watch satellite TV. Their window on the wider world is irreversibly open. Many of them simply want peaceful change - and in particular an end to the strict laws that govern personal behaviour in Iran.

They want to be able to sing and dance. They wonder why the Iranian leadership continue to ban such expressions of human joy - a ban very similar to the rules imposed on Afghanistan during the Taliban regime.


Neda Salehi Agha Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman shot dead during Saturday’s demonstrations in Tehran



At least 10 people were killed in Tehran on Saturday as police clashed with "terrorists" in protests over a disputed poll, Iranian state TV says. State media also said family members of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - a powerful opponent of the re-elected president - were arrested during the protests. Defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has condemned "mass arrests" of supporters, Reuters news agency says.

Let us do what we can to support the Iranian people in their desire to live free lives, to be true to themselves and be free from doctrinaire and repressive government. One small gesture is if you're on Twitter, set your location to Tehran & your time zone to GMT +3.30. Iranian security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/time zone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut down Iranians' access to the internet.

Cut & Paste & Pass it on.

Otherwise I am reminded of the quote from my townsman Edward Fitzgerald’s translation (or more probably re-writing) of the words of the Persian Astronomer and Poet, Omar Khayyam;

“When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.”

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Stonehenge Solstice



Record numbers of people descended on Stonehenge this morning to mark the summer solstice. Despite the sun not making an appearance in an overcast sky, around 36,500 people enjoyed a carnival atmosphere at the ancient stone circle on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire. An eccentric mix of Morris dancers, pagans dressed in their traditional robes and musicians playing guitars and drums gathered alongside visitors from across the world. The event to mark the dawn of the longest day in the Northern Hemisphere has grown in popularity since a four-mile exclusion zone around the site was lifted nine years ago.

The good weather and the fact that the solstice fell over a weekend drew in the crowds from around 7pm last night. As the sun rose at 4.58am a cheer went up from those gathered at the stone circle. Bleary-eyed revellers wrapped in blankets, ponchos, cloaks and bin liners gathered at Heel Stone, the pillar at the edge of the prehistoric monument, to welcome the sunrise. English Heritage and Wiltshire police had anticipated the biggest turnout yet and had drafted in extra officers to patrol the site and to clamp down on anti-social behaviour and drugs.



Restrictions were placed on the amount of alcohol people could bring in, with security checks at the main entrance. But the event was a peaceful one with just 25 arrests overnight for minor public disorder and drug-related offences, a Wiltshire police spokesman said. Sam Edwards, from Wiltshire police, said: "We are very pleased everything went to plan. The atmosphere has been very good, especially around the stones. "Most people have been very co-operative with us and very understanding of the reasons for our presence.

An all-night party on a smaller scale took place a few miles from Stonehenge at the Avebury stone circle. Druid Jim Saunders, 33, from Reading, is a member of the Aes Dana Grove order. He said: "The significance of Stonehenge on the solstice to me is to do my best to educate as many people as possible in our culture. We carried out the Awen ritual in the circle by chanting to raise the energy and ask for peace and healing. There were 16 druids here today but only three of us made it into the circle. It is nice to see a lot of people here because there is no better place to learn about our culture and history. But it is upsetting to see so much litter, and some people can be disrespectful." He added: "Hopefully from the people we have spoken to today we can plant a seed of knowledge that will grow."



“As the sun spirals its longest dance,
Cleanse us
As nature shows bounty and fertility
Bless us
Let all things live with loving intent
And to fulfil their truest destiny “


Wiccan blessing for Summer

Solstice, Midsummer or Litha means a stopping or standing still of the sun. It is the longest day of the year and the time when the sun is at its maximum elevation. This date has had spiritual significance for thousands of years as humans have been amazed by the great power of the sun. The Celts celebrated with bonfires that would add to the sun's energy, Christians placed the feast of St John the Baptist towards the end of June and it is also the festival of Li, the Chinese Goddess of light.

For the Egyptians, the sun represented light, warmth, and growth. This made sun deities very important to Egyptians, and it is no coincidence that the sun came to be the ruler of all. In his myths, the sun was either seen as the body or eye of Ra.

Like other religious groups, Pagans are in awe of the incredible strength of the sun and the divine powers that create life. For Pagans this spoke in the Wheel of the Year is a significant point. The Goddess took over the earth from the horned God at the beginning of spring and she is now at the height of her power and fertility. For some Pagans the Summer Solstice marks the marriage of the God and Goddess and see their union as the force that creates the harvest's fruits.


Hypogeum, Malta

This is a time to celebrate growth and life but for Pagans, who see balance in the world and are deeply aware of the ongoing shifting of the seasons it is also time to acknowledge that the sun will now begin to decline once more towards winter. When celebrating midsummer Pagans draw on diverse traditions. In England thousands of Pagans and non-Pagans go to places of ancient religious sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury to see the sun rising on the first morning of summer.



New findings at Stonehenge suggest its stones were erected much earlier than thought, challenging the site's conventional history. A new excavation puts the stones' arrival at 3000 BC - almost 500 years earlier than originally thought - and suggests it was mainly a burial site. The latest results are from a dig by the Stonehenge Riverside Project. It is in conflict with recent research dating construction to 2300 BC and suggesting it was a healing centre. The 2300 BC date was arrived at by carbon dating and was the major finding from an excavation inside the henge by professors Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright who said:

"These stones were very closely associated with the remains of the dead. There were cremation burials from inside the holes holding the stones and also the areas around them." The archaeologists suggest that very early in Stonehenge's history there were 56 Welsh bluestones standing in a ring - 87m (285ft) across.


Newgrange, Ireland

What is common is a gap in our understanding of the peoples and cultures behind such Neolithic remains such as the remarkable collection of 46 tumuli (passage graves) around Newgrange in Ireland and the oldest and greatest Neolithic remains in Europe on the Island of Malta including at Gigantija on the island of Gozo the world’s oldest stone building.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/02/neolithic-malta.html

If there is one place you should see above all others when in Ireland it is the amazing place called Newgrange, a UNESCO World Heritage site which is older than the pyramids of Egypt. This is a truly special and unique place on the Island of Ireland, no more special than yesterday, 21st December, the Winter Solstice, the shortest and darkest day of the year. To ancient cultures this represented the turning of the year, the point after which the days lengthened and hope could be sustained of the rebirth of the land in spring and the fertility of summer and the bounty of the harvest to come.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/12/in-darkest-mid-winter.html

Saturnalia is the Roman Mid-Winter Feast which Christianity supplanted with Xmas.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/12/bona-saturnalia.html


Gigantija Temple, Malta

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

A Survival Guide for Decent Folk



An anonymous policeman blogger who has targeted the force and Government ministers was unmasked today after the High Court ruled against keeping his identity secret. Refusing a temporary injunction to prevent a newspaper from identifying the serving detective constable - who goes by the name of Night Jack - Justice Eady said that "blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity".

For over a year, police detective 'Jack Night' chronicled his working life in an unnamed UK town on his remarkably frank blog Night Jack. His scathing and revealing posts on the reality of policing in Britain have won him an Orwell Prize. Now his ID has been exposed and he has received a written warning from his Force.



Today, the blogger was named as Richard Horton, 45, who serves with Lancashire Constabulary. Mr. Justice Eady also ruled that any right of privacy on the part of the blogger would be likely to be outweighed by a countervailing public interest in revealing that a particular police officer had been making such contributions. Mr Horton's counsel, Hugh Tomlinson QC, submitted that there was a public interest in preserving the anonymity of bloggers.


Richard Horton

The Judge ruled that the mere fact that Night Jack wished to remain anonymous did not mean either that he had a reasonable expectation of doing so. He added: "Those who wish to hold forth to the public by this means often take steps to disguise their authorship, but it is in my judgment a significantly further step to argue, if others are able to deduce their identity, that they should be restrained by law from revealing it." He said that Night Jack's blog mostly dealt with his police work and his opinions on a number of social and political issues relating to the police and the administration of justice.

Well I found his Blog compelling and every time Police complain of their hands being tied by “Bureaucracy” I remind myself that no too long ago their word was law when given in evidence in Court. So much so that a former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Denning, said it was better that Irish defendants should go to jail than he should concede their Appeal on evidence otherwise he would open up “an appalling vista” of Police corruption. Well due to the good work of West Midlands Police and Surrey Constabulary in the Birmingham 6 and Guilford 4 cases this appalling vista was well and truly opened up and the Police threw away public trust.



Indeed the recent comments by Suffolk’s Chief Constable that he would hold public order defendants in cells for 24 hours even though they had no intention of charging them shows the Police willingness to go to the edge of legality and beyond and use detention in Police cells to pressurise and intimidate defendants. I know of a complainant who was pressurised to pursue a complaint she wanted to withdraw by an ambitious newly promoted Police Sergeant and told that they would deliberately arrest and keep the other party in Police Cells over a weekend to ensure they would “crack.”



So I think Night Jack has done a public service with his Blog and in the interest of Blogging Freedom (Freedom FROM the Press) I reprint in full his Blog on A Survival Guide for decent folk, which uncannily echoes the Police Federation’s own advice to Police Officers facing internal investigation “Do not co-operate, say nothing, ring the Federation’s Solicitor, complain.”

Night Jack’s Blog has now been taken down on Wordpress.

www.nightjack.wordpress.com

A survival guide for decent folk.

In these days of us increasingly having to deal with law abiding folk who have fallen foul of the “entitled poor” and those who have learned how to use us to score points and exact revenge, I thought it would be a good idea to give out a bit of general guidance for those law abiding types who find themselves under suspicion or under arrest. It works for the bad guys so make it work for you.

Complain First

Always get your complaint in first, even if it is you who started it and you who were in the wrong. If things have gone awry and you suspect the cops are going to be called, get your retaliation in first. Ring the cops and allege for all you are worth. If you can work a racist or homophobic slant into it so much the better.



Make a counter allegation

Regardless of the facts, never let the other side be blameless. If they beat you to the phone, ring anyway and make a counter allegation against them. Again racism or homophobia are your friends. If you are not from a visible minority ethnic culture, may I suggest that that the phrase “You gay bastard” or similar is always useful. In extremis allege sexual assault. It gives us something to bargain with when getting the other person to drop their complaint on a quid-pro-quo basis.

Never explain to the Police

If the Police arrive to lock you up, say nothing. You are a decent person and you may think that reasoning with the Police will help. “If I can only explain, they will realise it is all a horrible mistake and go away”. Wrong. We do want to talk to you on tape in an interview room but that comes later. All you are doing by trying to explain is digging yourself further in. We call that stuff a significant statement and we love it. Decent folk can’t help themselves.

Admit Nothing

To do anything more than lock you up for a few hours we need to prove a case. The easiest route to that is your admission. Without it, our case may be a lot weaker, maybe not enough to charge you with. In any case, it is always worth finding out exactly how damning the evidence is before you fall on your sword. So don’t do the decent and honourable thing and admit what you have done. Don’t even deny it or try to give your side of the story. Just say nothing.



Keep your mouth shut

Say as little as possible to us. At the custody office desk a Sergeant will ask you some questions. It is safe to answer these. For the rest, say nothing.

Claim Suicidal Thoughts

A debatable one this. Claiming to be thinking about topping yourself has several benefits. If you can keep it up, it might just bump up any compensation payable later. On the other hand you may find yourself in a paper suit with someone watching your every move.

Always, always, always have a solicitor

Duh. No brainer this one. Unless you know 100% for sure that your mate the solicitor does criminal law and is good at it, ask for the Duty Solicitor. They do criminal law and they are good at it. Then listen to what the solicitor says and do it. Their job is to get you off without the Cops laying a glove on you if at all possible. It is what they get paid for. They are free to you. There is no down side. Now decent folks think it makes them look like they have something to hide if they ask for a solicitor. Irrelevant. Going into an interview without a solicitor is like taking a walk in Tottenham with a Rolex. Bad things are very likely to happen to you.



Actively complain about every officer and everything they do

Did they cuff you when they brought you in? Were they rude to you? Did they racially or homophobically abuse you? Didn’t get fed? Cell too cold? You are decent folk who don’t want to make a fuss but trust me, it pays to whinge and no matter how trivial and / or poorly founded your complaint there are people who will uncritically listen to you and try and prove the complaint on your behalf. Some of them are even police officers.

Show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it

You think that if you are a difficult, unpleasant, sneering, unco-operative and rude things will go badly for you and you will be in more trouble. No sirree Bob. It seems that in fact the worse you are, the easier things will go for you if, horror of horrors, you do end up convicted. Remember to fake a drink problem if you haven’t developed one as a result of dealing with us already. Magistrates and Judges do seem to like the idea that you are basically good but the naughty alcohol made you do it. They treat you better. Crazy I know but true.

So there you go, basically anything you try and do because you are decent and straightforward hurts you badly. Act like an habitual, professional, lifestyle criminal and chances are you will walk away relatively unscathed. Copy the bad guys; it’s what they do for a living.

Monday, June 15, 2009

James Joyce and Me


Dublin and Anna Livia Plurabella

Today, in my hometown of Dublin, hundreds of people gather to celebrate Bloomsday, the annual event dedicated to the lead character in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Bloomsday re-enacts the epic journey through the capital undertaken by Leopold Bloom on June 16th 1904. The name derives from the protagonist of Joyce's Ulysses, and 16th. June was the date of Joyce's first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, when they walked to the Dublin village of Ringsend and onto Sandymount Strand. Nora Barnacle is the great constant of Joyce’s life, a chambermaid from Galway, who remained his rock, teacher, and a portable Ireland throughout their lives in exile. Indeed if you walk down Dublin’s Nassau Street at the side of Trinity College you will see in winter (when the leaves are off the trees) on the gable wall of the building where the college wall ends the outline of a sign for “Finns Hotel”, the long closed hotel where Joyce’s inamorta worked. The narrator of Joyce’s Ulysses, Leopold Bloom is the non-practising son of a Hungarian Jew (Blum) and Dublin is viewed on this single day through his outsiders eyes in a narrative modelled on the structure of Homer’s Odyssey.

Ulysses deals with the opulence of personal thought and while we are ushered into its characters private worlds with ease, we know little about their exteriors. The narrative parallels Homer’s Odyssey, but an in-depth knowledge of The Odyssey is not necessary for enjoyment of Ulysses. Throughout the novel, the reader is permitted to become wholly familiar with the inner workings of Leopold’s mind, but not given enough information about his physical appearance to form a clear mental picture of him. Much of the narrative is a richly textured commentary on society and Ireland and much is prophetic. Consider;

"– That’s your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the earth. The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary chamber on the face of God’s earth and their land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs and cottonball barons. That’s the great empire they boast about of drudges and whipped serfs.
– On which the sun never rises, says Joe.
– And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The unfortunate yahoos believe it."


We are told Bloom is quiet and decent, a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips. He has a pale intellectual face in which are set two dark large lidded, superbly expressive eyes.

The story of a haunting sorrow is written on his face and his friends say that there’s a touch of the artist about old Bloom, he is isolated from the city he observes, from his religion and most tellingly, from his wife. A safe, moustached man who has his good points and slips off when the fun gets too hot. Another significant figure winding his way through the streets of Dublin in Ulysses is Stephen Dedalus, whom we first meet in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen is an arrogant young intellectual whom Bloom takes under his wing. He acts as a father figure to the young Stephen who fulfils the role to some extent of son for Bloom whose own son died in infancy.


Senator David Norris surrounded by Mollies!

Bloom’s wife Molly in Ulysses is equated with Penelope in The Odyssey and the last chapter of the book is dedicated solely to her meanderings and musings. It is one of the most renowned pieces of writing in Ulysses and is famous for its celebration of this voluptuous, sensuous, opulent, abundant, independent, lush, and blooming woman. Molly Bloom's soliloquy at the end of the James Joyce's Ulysses is recognised as one of the most famous female narratives in modern literature. It has been used as the basis of songs, re-appeared in movies, quoted in other literary works and in terms of its effect on Irish culture was, as the award-winning writer Eavan Boland puts it, "a liberating signpost to this country's future". Sensuous, compelling and at times hugely funny, this soliloquy is the only time in Joyce's seminal novel where Molly's voice is heard. In it, we hear the otherwise silent character bare her soul on life, love, sex and loneliness.


Bloomsday performers outside Davy Byrne's

Today’s Bloomsday is a spirited celebration among culture-lovers in Dublin and the festival, organised by a foundation that commemorates the writer, now runs for a week. It is traditional to dress up and go out around Dublin on Bloomsday, visiting the locations featured in the book and taking part in readings, walks and activities associated with Ulysses. Pehaps the most famous of these is the James Joyce Tower and Museum in a Martello tower in Sandycove, Dublin, where James Joyce spent six nights in 1904. The tower was leased from the British War Office by Joyce's university friend Oliver St. John Gogarty, with the purpose of "Hellenising" Ireland. Joyce left after an incident in which Gogarty fired a gun in his direction. The opening scenes of Ulysses are set the morning after this incident. Gogarty is immortalised as "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan" (the opening words of the novel).

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/09/martello-towers.html


Tower No. 11, James Joyce Tower, Sandycove, Co. Dublin.

Bloomsday 2009 got underway last Monday and ends today with a number of events taking place in the city centre and south Dublin. Among the events taking place today are theatrical readings by Senator David Norris, performances from the musical Himself and Nora , a Joycean bike ride and a number of walking tours throughout the city. The day begins with the annual Bloomsday breakfast in the James Joyce Centre on North Great George's Street in Dublin. For many visitors, Dublin is Joyce and on Bloomsday there is a range of cultural activities including Ulysses readings and dramatisations, pub crawls and general merriment, much of it hosted by the James Joyce Centre. Enthusiasts often dress in Edwardian costume to celebrate Bloomsday, and retrace Bloom's route around Dublin via landmarks such as Davy Byrne's pub, where Bloom enjoyed a glass of Burgundy and a Gorgonzola sandwich. Hard-core devotees have even been known to hold marathon readings of the entire novel, some lasting up to 36 hours.

However, the Celtic Sage’s favourite work is also Joyce's most accessible, the compendium of short stories “Dubliners”. Completed when its author was just 25 years old, Dubliners skilfully portrays both turn-of-the-century Dublin and Joyce's surroundings in Continental Europe. Joyce's Dublin was one of politics and intrigue, of religious devotion and disaffection; a city in which the pressures and ties of family and society were never far from mind. Dubliners features Joyce's alma mater, Belvedere College; The Gresham Hotel, setting for the climactic scene in “The Dead”; the site of Nelson's Column and many others which form a map of the city.

Bloomsday, Joyce Centre, North Great George's Street

Joyce’s intention in writing Dubliners, in his own words was to write a chapter of the moral history of his country, and he chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to him to be the centre of paralysis. He tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. Dubliners is a collection of vignettes of Dublin life at the end of the 19th Century written, by Joyce’s own admission, for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness. ‘The Sisters’, ‘An Encounter’ and ‘Araby’ are stories from childhood. ‘Eveline’, ‘After the Race’, ‘Two Gallants’ and ‘The Boarding House’ are stories from adolescence. ‘A Little Cloud’, ‘Counterparts’, ‘Clay’ and ‘A Painful Case’ are all stories concerned with mature life. Stories from public life are ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’, ‘A Mother and Grace’.



"The Dead" is the last story in the collection and probably Joyce’s greatest. It stands alone and, as the title would indicate, is concerned with death. There is a clear structure to Dubliners for as the stories develop there is a clear progression from youth to middle age and finally, to death. Its stories are arranged in an order reflecting the development of a child into a grown man. The first three stories are told from the point of view of a young boy, the next three from the point of view of an adolescent, and so on. In each of the stories there is a narrator or protagonist who reaches a moment of personal epiphany, a moment of painful personal revelation and self awareness.

"The Dead" is the longest story in the collection and widely considered to be one of the greatest short stories in the English language. It was also, fittingly, the last movie made by the great director John Huston and featured his daughter Angelica who went to school with friends of mine in Loughrea, Co. Galway. The story centres on Gabriel Conroy on the night of the Morkan sisters' annual dance and dinner in the first week of January, 1904, perhaps the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6) Typical of the stories in Dubliners, "The Dead" develops toward a moment of painful self-awareness; Joyce described this as an epiphany. The narrative generally concentrates on Gabriel's insecurities, his social awkwardness, and the defensive way he copes with his discomfort. The story culminates at the point when Gabriel discovers that, through years of marriage, there was much he never knew of his wife's past. His later thoughts reveal this attachment to the past when he envisions snow as “general all over Ireland.” In every corner of the country, snow touches both the dead and the living, uniting them in frozen paralysis. However, Gabriel’s thoughts in the final lines of Dubliners suggest that the living might in fact be able to free themselves and live unfettered by deadening routines and the past. Even in January, snow is unusual in Ireland and cannot last forever.






John Huston's 1987 movie of "The Dead" - ".. snow is unusual in Ireland ..."

The building in which James Joyce set the short story, The Dead, is along the south quays of the River Liffey at 15, Usher’s Island and has been preserved. In The Dead there are frequent references to the depleted schismatic state of Irish nationalism after the death of the great Irish Parliamentarian Charles Stewart Parnell who was forced out of office by the Catholic Church and his opponents over his relationship with a married woman, Kitty O’Shea. There are frequent references in his later stories to “Ivy Day” (Ivy Day in the Committe Room) which is the 6th October and is commemorated as the anniversary of Parnell’s death and is also somebody else’s birthday! The other short story in Dubliners I particularly relate to is “Araby.” It opens in North Richmond Street which is described in the opening paragraph;


NORTH RICHMOND STREET being blind

NORTH RICHMOND STREET being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.


17 North Richmond Street

North Richmond Street is where I grew up as a child, the surrounding streets were my playground and the inner city district of Summerhill was my world until I was nearly five. We lived at No. 15 North Richmond Street and two doors up, looking down the street to the “blind” end on the right hand side is No. 17 where the Joyce family lived for a while. His father was impecunious and the family moved downwards through Dublin from one rented address to another, each one less respectable than the last.

"Araby" is one of fifteen short stories that together make up Joyce's collection, Dubliners. "Araby" is the last story of the first set, and is told through the confused thoughts and dreams of the young male protagonist. Joyce uses this familiarity with the narrator's feelings to evoke in the reader a response similar to the boy's epiphany at the climax of the story. As in many stories of adolescence, the protagonist of "Araby" suffers both isolation and alienation. He never shares his feelings concerning Mangan's sister with anyone. He isolates himself from his friends, who seem terribly young to him once his crush begins, and from his family, who seem caught up in their own world. “Araby” is a tale of sexual awakening where the unrequited love of the young protagonist is set against his excitement at going to the Araby Bazaar (An event held in Dublin in 1894) only to be crushed with disappointment that this event which promised an insight into an exotic world was virtually over and largely in darkness when he arrived. It is an anti-climatic tale of journeys begun with great anticipation which come full circle and lead nowhere, and through it and all the stories in Dubliners there is Joyce’s “scrupulous meanness” sketching the mundanity of everyday existence.

Araby Bazaar Handbill 1894

The great irony is James Joyce didn't like Dublin. He made no secret of the fact, but he never wrote of anywhere else and his writing is filled with the city. From his early work, Dubliners, to his last novel, Finnegan's Wake, Joyce shows a type of obsession with the city of his birth and childhood. It was a very different city from today’s Dublin. It was a city of gaslight, horse-drawn carriages, out-door plumbing and unpaved streets. Poverty permeated the city and the once magnificent Georgian areas were declining into slums. Although in voluntary exile abroad, Joyce could accurately paint a picture of Dublin in detail that would be difficult to achieve for someone walking its streets and taking notes every day.

The novel that shows this most clearly is, of course, his famous work, Ulysses. Joyce once said of this novel:

"I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book."

His achievement may come short of being able to rebuild Dublin brick by brick but it is possible to trace Leopold Bloom's 18 mile perambulation around the city in the exact timing of the character - that is how accurate Joyce's calculations were. And this is exactly what many people do every year on the 16th of June. So enjoy a glass of Burgundy and a Gorgonzola sandwich and a supper of inner organs of Beast and Fowl and enjoy an ironic Bloomsday.

James Joyce and Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare & Co., Paris

James Joyce (1882–1941) broke with his native Ireland and with late Victorian conventions to shape a new life for himself and a new literature for his time. His early life was unsettled. Moving to the European continent in 1904, he wavered among careers, considering medicine, law, banking, classical singing, wool merchandising, and managing a theatre troupe, in between stints of writing and language tutoring, as he worked on his early short stories, poems, and finally novels. Until he came to the attention of vigorous advocates and patrons such as Ezra Pound and Harriet Weaver, his finances were in chaos, and the combination of financial pressures and World War I drove him to move around from Pola to Trieste to Zurich, bringing his young family with him.


Statue of James Joyce, North Earl St., Dublin

From 1917 onward, he was also increasingly troubled with major eye problems, and his eyesight deteriorated even as the breadth of his literary vision expanded. His daughter Lucia was diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia and his son Giorgio was dissolute, reminding Joyce uncomfortably of his own father. He returned to Zürich in late 1940, fleeing the Nazi occupation of France. On 11 January 1941, he underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer. While he at first improved, he relapsed the following day, and despite several transfusions, fell into a coma. He died on 13 January 1941 and is buried in the Fluntern Cemetery within sight and earshot of Zürich zoo. Although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, neither attended Joyce's funeral, and the Irish government subsequently declined Nora Joyce’s offer to permit the repatriation of Joyce's remains. No doubt DeValera's diplomats were there to maintain relations with Herr Hitler's government and didn't want to be seen to be decent to this immoral writer. When Hitler died DeValera called on the German Ambassador to give his condolences (the only Head of Government to do so and after the war his first foreign trip was to see his soulmates Salazar and Franco) - very moral was our DeValera. Nora Joyce died 10 years later and is buried beside him as is his son Giorgio who died in 1976.


James Joyce 1904

In the midst of his instabilities, or perhaps partly because of them, Joyce shaped an entirely new literary style. He focused on small incidents and moments in the lives of ordinary people, and yet he made those moments both universally appealing and profound. He elevated the stream-of-consciousness technique to a new art form. Joyce’s work did much to define modern literature. And try as he might in exile to escape Ireland and Dublin he never left them and they never left him. But like Leopold Bloom he always observed them from the vantage point of an outsider.