"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in"
(Leonard Cohen)
"Ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say"
(Michael Moorcock)
"Look for your own. Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings."
(Andre Gide)

"I want my place, my own place, my true place in the world, my proper sphere, my thing which Nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry, and which I have vainly sought all my life-time."
(Nathaniel Hawthorne)
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
(Franz Kafka)
"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated"
(John Donne)
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
(Robert J. Hanlon)
"Life is beautiful, but the world is hell"
(Harold Pinter)

Friday, November 27, 2009

Fight for Prisoners' Rights and Critically Support Striking Prison Officers!

I have two articles this week with a broadly 'crime and punishment' theme.

"It is a long-held maxim that you can gauge the nature of a society - measure its ‘civilisation quotient’ - by examining its penal system, particularly the way it treats its prisoners. Judged by this criterion, there can be no doubt that the UK stands condemned as a barbarous society, and furthermore as one which is steadily deteriorating to ever lower standards. In danger of becoming a giant island prison camp moored off the more enlightened European continent, the UK seems addicted to an ultimately self-defeating regime of punitive and cruel incarceration - lock ’em up and make ’em suffer". READ MORE:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/795/rehabilitation.php


"We oppose any demands of the Prison Officers Association that could only come at the expense of prisoners - like yet longer lock-up times or additional refinements to the means of oppression (bigger and harder batons/shields, use of water cannons or tear-gas, etc). But at the same time we will critically support those demands - as we would for rank and file police officers - that act to cohere intra-solidarity against the senior officers/wardens and thus help to undermine and eventually split the state machine. So, yes, we are definitely fully in favour of prison warders and members of the police force having the right to form and join trade unions and the right to go on strike. It is logically analogous to our demand that members of the armed forces also be given such rights". READ MORE:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/795/criticalsupport.php


Friday, November 20, 2009

Latest Issue of the Weekly Worker!

Throw your hats in the air, ladies & gentlemen - yes, the latest dazzling issue of the 'Weekly Worker', the weekly organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain (deep breath) Provisional Central Committee is upon us yet again. Not to immediately consume its entire contents in a single semi-feverish sitting is to officially consign you to the status of a Very Boring Person Indeed.


http://www.cpgb.org.uk/

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

My Hero!


A 10-year-old Arkansas boy, Will Phillips, has decided that he cannot in good conscience pledge allegiance to the flag as long as the country for which it stands refuses legal equality to its  gay & lesbian citizens. Good on you Will! (though of course he almost certainly have the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, etc, closely monitoring him for life as a Commie).
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/arkansas-10-year-old-won%E2%80%99t-pledge-allegianc

Friday, November 13, 2009

Get the Troops out of Afghanistan Now!



"EVERY YEAR on Remembrance Sunday the establishment and its media hypocritically pretend to be against war. As church leaders eulogise, wreaths are laid, solemn speeches given and heads are bowed towards the Cenotaph, the blood-stained past and crimes of British imperialism are written out of history. Dying and suffering hellishly, the millions butchered and sacrificed by the ruling class over the decades becomes obscenely transformed into a noble endeavour for peace and freedom.
This year, though, the ritual had particularly pertinent overtones, and for one simple reason - the ongoing disaster that is the war in Afghanistan, which has seen 230 British army fatalities since 2001. Indeed, you could even say that Remembrance Sunday was more like What Do We About The War in Afghanistan Day, as splits and divisions within the establishment become increasingly prominent and visible". READ MORE:
http://tinyurl.com/yfgwpp2

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Legalise ALL drugs now!


"We in the CPGB unequivocally call for the immediate legalisation of all drugs - not just cannabis or ecstasy. Openness, legality and full, uninhibited, debate provide the best conditions for the assessment of the relative dangers of this or that drug, habit, practice or pastime - and, where necessary, what would constitute the most effective course of treatment and rehabilitation: not stigmatisation or punitive measures.
Drinking a pint of beer or smoking a joint poses no inherent dangers - either to yourself or society as a whole. Any more than horse-riding or kite-flying. Hence for communists the crucial struggle is for the socialisation of drug-taking - whether it be alcohol, cannabis or ecstasy. In that way, ‘drugs’ can help us to live a full, rounded, joyful life - as opposed to diminishing or even destroying us". READ MORE:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/792/fatuous.php