O Andaime
O tempo que eu hei sonhado
Quantos anos foi de vida!
Ah, quanto do meu passado
Foi só a vida mentida
De um futuro imaginado!
Aqui à beira do rio
Sossego sem ter razão.
Este seu correr vazio
Figura, anónimo e frio,
A vida vivida em vão.
A 'sp'rança que pouco alcança!
Que desejo vale o ensejo?
E uma bola de criança
Sobe mais que a minha 'sp'rança.
Rola mais que o meu desejo.
Ondas do rio, tão leves
Que não sois ondas sequer,
Horas, dias, anos, breves
passam - verduras ou neves
Que o mesmo sol faz morrer.
Gastei tudo que não tinha.
Sou mais velho do que sou.
A ilusão, que me mantinha,
Só no palco era rainha:
Despiu-se, e o reino acabou.
Leve som das águas lentas,
Gulosas da margem ida,
Que lembranças sonolentas
De esperanças nevoentas!
Que sonhos o sonho e a vida!
Que fiz de mim? Encontrei-me
Quando estava já perdido.
Impaciente deixei-me
Como a um louco que teime
No que lhe foi desmentido.
Som morto das águas mansas
Que correm por ter que ser,
Leva não só as lembranças,
Mas as mortas esperanças -
Mortas, porque hão-de morrer.
Sou já o morto futuro.
Só um sonho me liga a mim -
O sonho atrasado e obscuro
Do que eu devera ser - muro
Do meu deserto jardim.
Ondas passadas, levai-me
para o olvido do mar!
Ao que não serei legai-me,
Que cerquei com um andaime
A casa por fabricar.
Scaffolding
How many years have I
frittered away, dreaming!
How much of my life was
But the living lie of
Some imagined future!
Here, standing at the river's edge,
Strangely, I feel at peace
Watching its ceaseless pointless flow,
Cold and nameless, it represents
A life lived in vain.
How little do hopes achieve!
Much better to seize the moment!
Even a small child's ball bounces
Higher than all my hopes.
It rolls further than any of my wishes.
The ripples of the river, so slight
They are hardly ripples at all,
Hours, days, years, quickly pass by,
The green shoots and the snows; all is
Consumed by the burning Sun.
I spent all that I never had.
I am older than my years.
The fantasy that sustained me -
The queen upon my stage;
Standing naked, her reign is over.
The gentle murmur of slow waters,
Reaching out for the bank passed by,
Carrying dreamlike memories
Of hazy hopes!
Life and dreams, only a dream!
Whatever became of me? I found myself
When I was already lost.
Instantly I recoiled from myself
Like a madman who is afraid to see
The reality of his own insanity.
Dead sound of gentle waters
Flowing because flowing is their destiny,
Take with you not only my memories,
But my dead hopes too!
Dead because they must die!
I am the future dead,
Only a dream connects me to myself -
A dark and dragging dream
Of what I might have been -
A wall in my deserted garden.
Rippling waters of the past take me away
To the sea's soft oblivion!
Join me forever to what I never will be,
I who surrounded with scaffolding
The house that I never built.
Sunday, 21 April 2013
Saturday, 20 April 2013
God Is Love - Sundays With John Ball
The Bible teaches us that God is Love.
We know that God is kind, that God is just, that God is faithful, that God is the Creator of all things, but above all things God is Love.
We can spend a life time contemplating the many ways that God is Love. Indeed Mother Julian of Norwich and many others have done so. Like Luther, we may ask how is it best to act in Love, through contemplation like Mary, or through active service like Martha?
We can spend many a happy hour in prayerful thought upon the greatness and the wideness and the depths and the heights of God's Love. By doing so the greatest of the saints learn thankfulness and how the least of the saints, poor sinners such as me, are less wicked than they would have been if we had not been claimed by God as His own.
To live without God is to live without Love, to walk a lonely mile in a barren land, buffeted by the winds of fury and self-righteousness.
But to walk along with God's Love holding us up when we stumble, picking us up when we fall, dusting us down when we bruise our knees, is to live in faith, not fear.
Oh, the poor wretched heathen! He walks along burdened by his obligations, his condemnation, his own self -loathing.
But we look at Jesus Christ and we see His life of perfect Love!
We see how God's Love for mankind is unconditional, as true love truly is.
Yet, throughout the world, there are many who claim to know God, but who are in fact idolaters. They simply follow some man made regulations. They dress these regulations in a robe and burn some incense and they call themselves holy. The false prophets come not merely to judge, but to condemn. They believe they can work themselves into God's favour by laying burdens upon the people. They stand proudly over the bodies of the people they have crushed.
But God is Love, and Jesus Christ came to set the people free.
If anyone tells you otherwise they are a liar.
We know that God is kind, that God is just, that God is faithful, that God is the Creator of all things, but above all things God is Love.
We can spend a life time contemplating the many ways that God is Love. Indeed Mother Julian of Norwich and many others have done so. Like Luther, we may ask how is it best to act in Love, through contemplation like Mary, or through active service like Martha?
We can spend many a happy hour in prayerful thought upon the greatness and the wideness and the depths and the heights of God's Love. By doing so the greatest of the saints learn thankfulness and how the least of the saints, poor sinners such as me, are less wicked than they would have been if we had not been claimed by God as His own.
To live without God is to live without Love, to walk a lonely mile in a barren land, buffeted by the winds of fury and self-righteousness.
But to walk along with God's Love holding us up when we stumble, picking us up when we fall, dusting us down when we bruise our knees, is to live in faith, not fear.
Oh, the poor wretched heathen! He walks along burdened by his obligations, his condemnation, his own self -loathing.
But we look at Jesus Christ and we see His life of perfect Love!
We see how God's Love for mankind is unconditional, as true love truly is.
Yet, throughout the world, there are many who claim to know God, but who are in fact idolaters. They simply follow some man made regulations. They dress these regulations in a robe and burn some incense and they call themselves holy. The false prophets come not merely to judge, but to condemn. They believe they can work themselves into God's favour by laying burdens upon the people. They stand proudly over the bodies of the people they have crushed.
But God is Love, and Jesus Christ came to set the people free.
If anyone tells you otherwise they are a liar.
Friday, 19 April 2013
Vincenzo Vinciguerra quotes
Vincenzo Vinciguerra is an Italian neo-Fascist terrorist currently serving a life sentence for murder.
From 1984, 'With the massacre of Peteano, and with all those that have followed, the knowledge should now be clear that there existed a real live structure, occult and hidden, with the capacity of giving a strategic direction to the outrages....lies within the state itself....There exists in Italy a secret force parallel to the armed forces, composed of civilians and military men, in an anti-Soviet capacity, that is to organize a resistance on Italian soil against a Russian army.... A secret organization, a super-organization with a network of communications, arms and explosives, and men trained to use them... A super-organization, which lacking a Soviet military invasion which might not happen, took up the task, on NATO's behalf, of preventing a slip to the left in the political balance of the country. This they did, with the assistance of the official secret services and the political and military forces.'
From 1990, 'The terrorist line was followed by camouflaged people, people belonging to the security apparatus, or linked to the state apparatus through rapport or collaboration. I say that every single outrage that followed from 1969 fitted into a single organized matrix....'
From 2001: 'You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game.... The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings that remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.'
From 1984, 'With the massacre of Peteano, and with all those that have followed, the knowledge should now be clear that there existed a real live structure, occult and hidden, with the capacity of giving a strategic direction to the outrages....lies within the state itself....There exists in Italy a secret force parallel to the armed forces, composed of civilians and military men, in an anti-Soviet capacity, that is to organize a resistance on Italian soil against a Russian army.... A secret organization, a super-organization with a network of communications, arms and explosives, and men trained to use them... A super-organization, which lacking a Soviet military invasion which might not happen, took up the task, on NATO's behalf, of preventing a slip to the left in the political balance of the country. This they did, with the assistance of the official secret services and the political and military forces.'
From 1990, 'The terrorist line was followed by camouflaged people, people belonging to the security apparatus, or linked to the state apparatus through rapport or collaboration. I say that every single outrage that followed from 1969 fitted into a single organized matrix....'
From 2001: 'You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game.... The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings that remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.'
Thursday, 18 April 2013
What's The Point?
As I was walking in the woods today I met a lady I know, walking alone.
She told me about her sons, and scarcely mentioned her husband as, the women, they so rarely do.
They all seem to think their old man useless.
They believe their husbands to be uniquely useless, that they've been uniquely unlucky.
The lady told me how young people are mentally ill.
She teaches them. When we were young, she told me, the disabled were physically disabled, but now the young have their heads all screwed up.
The youngsters suspect that they are unnecessary.
Even old guys get depressed thinking about being so unnecessary. Villages and families are things of the past.
And what's the fun of rowing your boat all on your own?
What is the point in trying?
They take our money in taxes and give it back in benefits.
They are making war on us.
They want to destroy our families.
They want to enslave us.
They want to destroy the gift of love between man and woman.
They want to destroy everything that once gave social support and meaning to people's lives.
Depression is the result of powerlessness.
Anorexia, self harm, addiction, dark dark nights, the result of our pointlessness.
When our power is expropriated we become sick.
The boys and girls are prevented from forming a family and they become anxious.
In the Suspect Society we are all anxious.
We become depressed when we have no power.
We forget to breed.
She told me about her sons, and scarcely mentioned her husband as, the women, they so rarely do.
They all seem to think their old man useless.
They believe their husbands to be uniquely useless, that they've been uniquely unlucky.
The lady told me how young people are mentally ill.
She teaches them. When we were young, she told me, the disabled were physically disabled, but now the young have their heads all screwed up.
The youngsters suspect that they are unnecessary.
Even old guys get depressed thinking about being so unnecessary. Villages and families are things of the past.
And what's the fun of rowing your boat all on your own?
What is the point in trying?
They take our money in taxes and give it back in benefits.
They are making war on us.
They want to destroy our families.
They want to enslave us.
They want to destroy the gift of love between man and woman.
They want to destroy everything that once gave social support and meaning to people's lives.
Depression is the result of powerlessness.
Anorexia, self harm, addiction, dark dark nights, the result of our pointlessness.
When our power is expropriated we become sick.
The boys and girls are prevented from forming a family and they become anxious.
In the Suspect Society we are all anxious.
We become depressed when we have no power.
We forget to breed.
These Four Walls That Surround Me
Aye, things have changed over the last six hundred years - and not always for the best!
One thing I don't like these days is all the enclosures you see everywhere. The hills are like wastelands, populated by sheep. The woolly little buggers are all over the place!
The people have been driven from the land!
Property is the thing these days. The whole earth is divided up into property. Even now, in parts of Africa, the earth is being divided up into property and sold off.
In England, the eighteenth century was the big time for property creation. Here in my little town the Commons were divided up and sold off in the 1790s.
When a poor man was kept from the land, then what was he supposed to live off? How was he supposed to keep his woman warm? How was he supposed to feed his children?
Once upon a time the whole earth belonged to the poor man. Then he was driven from the land to manage the best he could in the towns, to feed the new machines with his labour and with his children's stunted bodies, to huddle in his cramped industrial hovel, to starve and shiver, pressed together with his neighbour, forbidden from living on the land because the land ‘belonged’ to Mr. Somebody.
And if he ‘stole’ Mr. Somebody’s property the poor man would be hanged or deported.
The poor man emigrated. He would go to America or Australia to farm the land where the Red Man and the Aborigine had roamed free, like his own ancestors had roamed free in the forests of England.
Now, here in the twenty first century, you all live in little boxes, as if you are scared of the vastness of the earth.
When you travel, you travel as spectators. You might as well stay at home and watch your screen.
Your world is the four walls of your ‘home’, the four walls of your car that takes you to the four walls of your workplace.
In your ‘homes’ you look at a screen that limits the four walls of your mind.
All those years ago we wrapped the earth around us and she kept us safe and warm with her breath and her song.
How pitiful you are, naked and alone, landless and cold, distanced from God’s creation.
One thing I don't like these days is all the enclosures you see everywhere. The hills are like wastelands, populated by sheep. The woolly little buggers are all over the place!
The people have been driven from the land!
Property is the thing these days. The whole earth is divided up into property. Even now, in parts of Africa, the earth is being divided up into property and sold off.
In England, the eighteenth century was the big time for property creation. Here in my little town the Commons were divided up and sold off in the 1790s.
When a poor man was kept from the land, then what was he supposed to live off? How was he supposed to keep his woman warm? How was he supposed to feed his children?
Once upon a time the whole earth belonged to the poor man. Then he was driven from the land to manage the best he could in the towns, to feed the new machines with his labour and with his children's stunted bodies, to huddle in his cramped industrial hovel, to starve and shiver, pressed together with his neighbour, forbidden from living on the land because the land ‘belonged’ to Mr. Somebody.
And if he ‘stole’ Mr. Somebody’s property the poor man would be hanged or deported.
The poor man emigrated. He would go to America or Australia to farm the land where the Red Man and the Aborigine had roamed free, like his own ancestors had roamed free in the forests of England.
Now, here in the twenty first century, you all live in little boxes, as if you are scared of the vastness of the earth.
When you travel, you travel as spectators. You might as well stay at home and watch your screen.
Your world is the four walls of your ‘home’, the four walls of your car that takes you to the four walls of your workplace.
In your ‘homes’ you look at a screen that limits the four walls of your mind.
All those years ago we wrapped the earth around us and she kept us safe and warm with her breath and her song.
How pitiful you are, naked and alone, landless and cold, distanced from God’s creation.
Tuesday, 16 April 2013
Kulak and Feminist Icon
R.P. says: On her own terms Margaret Thatcher was a failure. She neither rolled back the frontiers of the state, nor created a property owning democracy. Those who surrounded her were happy for her to espouse these ambitions, but they had no intention of letting her realize them.
Neither did she galvanize the British economy after allowing the old industries to die away. The provincial centres of capital and power were moribund. The City preferred to invest in privatized monopolies. North Sea Oil paid not for reconstruction, but for the dole.
In foreign policy the ideas she proclaimed had a small role in the liberation of Eastern Europe. The word Freedom was forever on her lips. In that respect she was an inspiration to ordinary people who were oppressed by bureaucrats in many countries, and for that alone she deserves our respect.
Mary Malone writes: Margaret Thatcher was one of the few women in the history of the world to have made an impact on her own account. Until the moment that she became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, there had only ever been one woman Prime Minister on her own account - Golda Meir, who had been Prime Minister of Israel.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike was the widow of the previous Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.
Indira Gandhi was Nehru's daughter.
And if we look at other women, Queen Elizabeth II is the daughter of a man who was king, as was Queen Elizabeth I.
Eva Peron shagged the boss.
Lady Di was a breeding mare.
Apart from Theresa May there have been no other leading Conservative women politicians.
The first woman elected to the U.K. Parliament was Countess Markievicz. The first woman to tale her seat as an M.P. was Lady Astor.
During Margaret Thatcher's time as an M.P., before she became Prime Minister, there were two prominent women Labour politicians, Barbara Castle, the daughter of a middle ranking tax collector, a member of the state loving managerial class, and Shirley Williams, the daughter of Vera Brittain, whose family owned a large paper mill in Staffordshire. Like most prominent Labour women, they had a few bob, though not as much as Harriet Harman, the niece of an earl, or Margaret Hodge (who used to fly the red flag over Islington Town Hall) who is mega rich on account of her family's steel trading business.
Compare these to Margaret Thatcher, whose father came from a shoe making family, learnt the trade of grocer, managed to open two shops, whose family was brought up in the flat above one of them.
Unlike most of the above, she grew up without servants.
Margaret Thatcher was a kulak who got above her station.
But above all, she was a woman, a woman who did it herself.
Neither did she galvanize the British economy after allowing the old industries to die away. The provincial centres of capital and power were moribund. The City preferred to invest in privatized monopolies. North Sea Oil paid not for reconstruction, but for the dole.
In foreign policy the ideas she proclaimed had a small role in the liberation of Eastern Europe. The word Freedom was forever on her lips. In that respect she was an inspiration to ordinary people who were oppressed by bureaucrats in many countries, and for that alone she deserves our respect.
Mary Malone writes: Margaret Thatcher was one of the few women in the history of the world to have made an impact on her own account. Until the moment that she became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, there had only ever been one woman Prime Minister on her own account - Golda Meir, who had been Prime Minister of Israel.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike was the widow of the previous Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.
Indira Gandhi was Nehru's daughter.
And if we look at other women, Queen Elizabeth II is the daughter of a man who was king, as was Queen Elizabeth I.
Eva Peron shagged the boss.
Lady Di was a breeding mare.
Apart from Theresa May there have been no other leading Conservative women politicians.
The first woman elected to the U.K. Parliament was Countess Markievicz. The first woman to tale her seat as an M.P. was Lady Astor.
During Margaret Thatcher's time as an M.P., before she became Prime Minister, there were two prominent women Labour politicians, Barbara Castle, the daughter of a middle ranking tax collector, a member of the state loving managerial class, and Shirley Williams, the daughter of Vera Brittain, whose family owned a large paper mill in Staffordshire. Like most prominent Labour women, they had a few bob, though not as much as Harriet Harman, the niece of an earl, or Margaret Hodge (who used to fly the red flag over Islington Town Hall) who is mega rich on account of her family's steel trading business.
Compare these to Margaret Thatcher, whose father came from a shoe making family, learnt the trade of grocer, managed to open two shops, whose family was brought up in the flat above one of them.
Unlike most of the above, she grew up without servants.
Margaret Thatcher was a kulak who got above her station.
But above all, she was a woman, a woman who did it herself.
The Transfer Of Wealth
The continuing debt crisis that appears to threaten our government is puzzling at first glance. After all, the government ran up its debt during the good times.In the 2000s house prices rocketed due to cheap credit, planning controls and the colonisation of our country by immigrants. (More bodies on the ground equals more economic activity equals more tax receipts)
This led to a bubble in house prices, which meant that many young people struggled to afford their own home.
The subsequent actions by our government since 2008 makes no sense if you consider the ‘economy’ to be a matter of equal concern to us all, that the aim of the 'economy' is to make us all richer. And if you view capitalism as the same thing as free trade you must be sorely bemused. And the actions of the state must appear strange to those who love Big Mother.
The state on the one hand, and the economy of private wealth on the other, is in reality a two headed monster called the Hierarchy; - and its servants are the managerial class, the officer class.
Capitalism is not about the creation of wealth, but about the transfer of wealth from the powerless to the powerful.
The debt crisis and the growth of the supervisory state is the culmination of the Thatcherite Counter Revolution, when Authority acted when it feared that its power was slipping away.
In the seventies the world was not getting poorer, but the centres of power were getting weaker. Throughout Africa, America and Europe existing military bureaucratic power structures were feeling shaky.
Mrs. Thatcher was not good friends with General Pinochet because she was in favour of free trade. She proclaimed competition, but she supported domination.
In England, the eighties boom only encompassed the south east of the country. Creative accountancy was mistaken for wealth creation, and debt was mistaken for wealth.
The political power of manufacturing and industry was destroyed.
Now the peasants stagger under the weight of high taxes and debt.
Interest rates remain low to service government debt, but, not unreasonably, banks do not want to offer loans to small companies. Unlike government, small companies cannot raise taxes or print money.
Savings and wages are chipped away each year, transferring our wealth to the powerful.
Capitalism is the state. It is the monarch’s head on your pound coin. The debt servitude of the people is caused by taxation, as it always has been.
You are the enemy of the bureaucracy, you are the suspect.
The debt crisis is not a crisis of the capitalist system, it is not a crisis of the state. It is the triumph of the bureaucrats.
This led to a bubble in house prices, which meant that many young people struggled to afford their own home.
The subsequent actions by our government since 2008 makes no sense if you consider the ‘economy’ to be a matter of equal concern to us all, that the aim of the 'economy' is to make us all richer. And if you view capitalism as the same thing as free trade you must be sorely bemused. And the actions of the state must appear strange to those who love Big Mother.
The state on the one hand, and the economy of private wealth on the other, is in reality a two headed monster called the Hierarchy; - and its servants are the managerial class, the officer class.
Capitalism is not about the creation of wealth, but about the transfer of wealth from the powerless to the powerful.
The debt crisis and the growth of the supervisory state is the culmination of the Thatcherite Counter Revolution, when Authority acted when it feared that its power was slipping away.
In the seventies the world was not getting poorer, but the centres of power were getting weaker. Throughout Africa, America and Europe existing military bureaucratic power structures were feeling shaky.
Mrs. Thatcher was not good friends with General Pinochet because she was in favour of free trade. She proclaimed competition, but she supported domination.
In England, the eighties boom only encompassed the south east of the country. Creative accountancy was mistaken for wealth creation, and debt was mistaken for wealth.
The political power of manufacturing and industry was destroyed.
Now the peasants stagger under the weight of high taxes and debt.
Interest rates remain low to service government debt, but, not unreasonably, banks do not want to offer loans to small companies. Unlike government, small companies cannot raise taxes or print money.
Savings and wages are chipped away each year, transferring our wealth to the powerful.
Capitalism is the state. It is the monarch’s head on your pound coin. The debt servitude of the people is caused by taxation, as it always has been.
You are the enemy of the bureaucracy, you are the suspect.
The debt crisis is not a crisis of the capitalist system, it is not a crisis of the state. It is the triumph of the bureaucrats.
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