I AM WITH HIM!

Harold Pinter

 I rarely find that some one can say something that sums up my thoughts & feelings better than I could. In this case this English eccentric Mr Arty Farty himself, Harold Pinter, managed to do just that. So at the risk of being called lazy I am going to put in a poem & extracts of his Noble Prize speech, given a few weeks ago, in Stockholm. The vision & clarity of his speech is something we could all do with each & everyday of our lives. Just so we can maintain that we are indeed the most intellectually advanced on this planet & can do better.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
K. Savage
24.12.2005

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

... "As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed"...

... I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.' It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

...How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought."

This section of the speech is what Mr Pinter would have written as a speech for the current President of the United States, as speech writer. Mr Pinter actually mentioned George Bush himself. But I do not necessarily distinguish between any of the US presidents. This current one is doing Iraq, yet the other ones took care of the Native Americans, African Americans, Vietnam, the 40 year old Middle East, Chile & so on & on. In other words it is the system & its basic foundations that needs to be addressed & considered.

"God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

HAROLD PINTER

The full text of this lecture & Mr Pinter's Website can be found via these links. 
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/index.shtml

ONE WEEK IN MY TOWN: LONDON TOWN

From top - Janis?Joss Stone, trying to represent. As fluffy as a feather duster. This shit here is good grass. One band, One Love. The original do gooder

  This is the city famous for its theatre. As all things theatrical London managed to provide & be the centre of drama.

Just 6 days ago I was at Hyde Park, witnessing a world event in entertainment. Live 8, at Hyde Park was the main setting for a serious of simultaneous concerts across the civilised world. The objectives & the aims were to get our leaders to listen & take note of the plight & reality of African Poverty. All in one beautiful summer day in central London. Organised & inspired by our very own Irish do gooder, Sir Bob Geldof. It would have been great if we could have seen a couple of flying pigs & whilst we are at it, how about Maggie Thatcher having a romantic diner with Arthur Scargill, the famous militant head of the Miners Union. But instead we got a great day out, a show full of insincere, overt, unnecessarily rich & mostly untalented fuckers who jump on any band wagon to sell a few more copies of their shit. I fail to see how Snoop Dog can represent or give a shit about a single child or human being. Surely they must have heard what he is spitting about on his numerous Albums . Drugs, bitches & Ho s!! Snoop is just a dumb idiot who will pretty much do anything if you give him a load f cash or a good blow job. The affairs of world or Africa are really beyond this mans brains. Snoop Dog is light entertainment & nothing more. The insult continued by the aging media manipulator extraordinaire. Madonna. She managed to encircle herself with a bunch of cute African kids & sang her stuff holding the hands of saved by Geldof Ethiopian proof. The good looking Ethiopian girl who was featured on the Live Aid videos (20 years ago) as dying & now a grown woman/mum holding Madonna s hands on stage in Hyde Park. Again I was witness to a pathetic & shameful display of pure insincerity on & off stage. The merchandisers were selling shirts saying, THIS SHIRT WILL MAKE HISTORY, cost £25.00. Eergh??? I do not fucking think so. Reason: I know the companies involved & their shit is merchandising & nothing but. But it is worth remembering that only £5.00 will provide enough basics for a family for a week in Africa!! The only way out was to actually get drunk to numb my brain from their bullshit & do the day out thing with my girl friend, A-type. Joss Stone sang like a true supa star & innocently made some convincing comments. The other Supa Novae were Mariah Carey who was just brilliant, followed by Pink Floyd, the original gods of Prog Rock, concept albums, LSD & all things rock & roll. The significant thing was the presence of Roger Waters in the band. These guys had a major barny & it was great to see the moody dark one on stage with the rest of the old fuckers. They made no comments nor spoke a word. Simply played their shit & fucked off!! Respect for that alone.

From top - You must like me again, because I hate The Donkey. A proper Tory Fucker! Trust. Where exactly is the East End? East End can be nice, but later.

From top - There is going to be a Donkey here soon. Be careful the anarchists are coming. You fucking anarchist

London Town.

The whole of Monday & Tuesday was dominated by our bid for the 2012 Olympics. Paris seemed to have it in the bag. They gloating from my French neighbour had already begun. Chirac even said that no one would want to come here, because we can not cook. Dude, we don t need to cook. That s what restaurants are for & we got the best of them in the world. Name the dish & I will take you to the place. London managed to win the Olympics bid, mainly through Tony Blair s efforts of one to one lobbying in Singapore. Nice one Tony! Wee may still forgive you for the errors of your past 2 years. So On Wednesday morning we get the blinding news that East London is going to be revamped made appealing for the 2012 Olympics. Wicked! I am still dubious about East London. It needs so much money & PR to get revamped. But hey if we get the Olympic money in then it will certainly help. Property prices in the vicinity went up by some 40%!! Whoa hoooo!

Thursday morning it was time to get serious. The main items on the agenda were African debt/poverty & climate change. The G-8 shit was well under way & an understandably exhausted Tony Blair was in Glen Eagles, Scotland, to host & head the proceedings. The Anarchists were representing & the media ready to exploit & twist the truth yet again. Before leaving home I saw George Bush, here-on-after called The Donkey, addressing the early morning press conference with Tony Blair standing next to him & again trying to figure out what the fuck & how the fuck does this man function. The Donkey was as puzzled as a donkey can be. The questions were not prepared for him, like they normally are back home & he could do nothing other than look like a stupid donkey. Tony was definitely beginning to look good again! The only person in the world who can exert any form of pressure on The Donkey to keep The Donkey from drifting too much. But this was ever so short lived. As I am riding through my town, London Town, I noticed a few sirens, more than usual number of people outside tube stations & a fucked up jam. My girl friend, A-Type, is providing me with constant commentary about the traffic & how we are weaving through it. I am riding & cussing at the Mayor & his 8 quid a day congestion charge, which looked as if it is not working. Totally unaware. Then I noticed 4 ambulances screaming after one another!! This did not seem like a regular Thursday morning to work. In fact, it turned out to be a particularly sad day for me & my Town, London Town.

It is not my intention to rant or to offend. But to be honest, what else could we expect. We have known & been told that the threat of a terror attack in London was real & close. We declared war, illegally, on Afghanistan & then Iraq, because The Donkey was vexed. We have conquered both countries quite effectively & quickly. We listened to The Donkey & pay for this each day, in lives, taxes & world credibility. No sane person on this planet agrees nor accepts the position. We can not begin to talk to Arabs & Muslims about international rule of law & order when we are busy breaking the same laws. To be specific, the 40 year old resolutions for Israel to with draw from occupied territories are but one set of examples. The Neo Nazi concrete wall to create & get away with the new concentration camp around Jerusalem compounded by the killing of 100,000 Iraqis in one year is another. Add the poverty issues, forced economic slavery through various projects in Africa & we will have ourselves the most deadly enemies. Oh yes this is the price we have to pay when we follow The Donkey. Each & every day we are forced to hear The Donkey tell us about the war. THE WAR ON TERROR. Given that The Donkey has chosen the word WAR, then it makes sense that they will do their best to bring their rubbish to my Town, London Town. My words to The Donkey & any one who is stupid enough to continue following his lead is this: your WAR ON TERROR is clearly failing. It failed in New York, it failed in Madrid & now in my Town, London Town. Only an idiot would still insist on following the same policy. The simple solution is to change policy. The Spanish did so, by voting their government out & withdrawing the troops from Iraq. We can do this. Quiet easily & start leading by example. United States of America has managed to reduce itself to being lead by The Donkey; the rest of the world does not need to take part in the charade anymore. USA is basically politically, morally & economically bankrupt. Let them be & learn history the hard way.

Our emergency services teams were representing & working flat out to deal with the mass carnage. We can only thank them & be proud of them. My heart goes to the families of all those people who died. These were innocent individuals trying to get to work on Public Transport. They all have mums, dads, brothers, sisters & cousins, just like me & you & just like those in Africa, Iraq or Palestine. Life is precious what ever the colour, creed or religion. We are intelligent enough to defend & fight for life. So my message to the terrorist would be a straight forward fuck you. Because I live in a city that is tough, resilient, tolerant & beautiful. You can only paralyse us temporarily. We are not Americans. We are Londoners & this is our town: London Town.

K. Savage
8th July 2005

YOU IS THE JEDI!!

The island of Kandolhudhoo in the Maldives

  The images that have been streaming across the world media in the past week have truly left me lost for words & in disbelief.

This time it was a tragedy that we had no control over. It was not self imposed. A true human tragedy caused by nature.

The world response has been a human response. Where individuals like me & you seem to have finally clicked & doing things for ourselves. We no longer seem to need for our representatives to act on our behalf to send aid. If that was the case then the British government s initial offer of £15 million towards the fund would be pitifully inadequate. The Americans politicians had to do their holiday break thing before even going in front of a single camera. They were too busy bitching with the UN. Because Kofi said the Iraq war was illegal & did not pretend or look the other way this time round. But instead we have all shown that as human beings/species we sympathise & have a great deal more compassion. Currently the British public has donated over £80 million. Unlike governmental pledges, this is mostly current & ready to use funds. The government pledge stuff goes in to a few months, sometimes years, before anyone even gets to see the damn money. As a result we have, without even realising, managed to embarrass the hell out of the whole lot of them. The initial pledge was increased to £30 million then £50 million. My/our money comes from our own pockets & bank accounts. Theirs from our taxes. The reluctance & feet dragging is remarkably perplexing when it comes to life. Because I do not see this approach when they want to kill in my/our name. The funds seem to be there. £3.00 million a rocket & we fire 50 of them on the first night alone. We all know how much their stupid war has actually cost & yet they still find more money to finance it.

Apparently the G8, with Britain as the new head, is now discussing the possibilities of waiving or suspending some of the debts for the suffering countries. But if we get really pedantic & start examining these debts in the majority of the cases we will find that the debts have arisen as a result of Western interests only. Namely, growing crops that are only suitable for the West but actually controlling the purchase price. A nation does not live on pineapples alone! My advice to Gordon Brown would be a simple one. Cancel the whole debt altogether. To allow the region time to get some strength. It is point less to suspend current repayments only for them pay you more interest ( grow more pineapples) later. Be real & cancel the damn thing altogether.

As for the media & the way they actually report things. Hmmmm!! The reputable Sunday paper seemed so concerned with the how many Brits, Swedes or American tourists lost their lives that gave it the prominent front page space. To me life is life & always precious. But things have to be kept in the correct context. Particularly, when you are reporting a possible 200,000 fatality in the adjacent column on the same page. But then again, we have had a tendency of pricing life differently in the past. I guess this is just another bad habit. The press, like our governments will also need to learn & understand much more. Because we can make them look stupid too.

For once in a long long time I am happy to be a human being & not a chimp. In this instance we have shown care & compassion. So despite the unexpected tax bill I am proud to donate 2% of our sales from all 3 stores & online sales to World Food Programme for the whole of January 2005. WFP is an organisation within the United Nations who are active in the field & have the experience & expertise of working in difficult conditions. You can also donate direct if you wish via their website: www.wfp.org .

If I had more I would give more & probably on the first plane out there. Just like John Farringdon (from Manchester) or the British Sri Lankan GPs who dropped everything to see what & how they can help. The Jedi population is growing at last.

K. Savage
Jan 2005