Hawkwind - the Right to Decide

Hideously pixellated but a wonderful song. It first appeared on 1992's Electric Teepee. THe video appeared on the bonus DVD that accompanied last year's Take me to your Leader. Now go out and buy shed loads of Hawkwind!

Music for a streaming cold part 2

Queen Elvis - Robyn Hitchcock

"See that man who mows the lawn? He'll hang in drag before the dawn. Some are made and some are born to be Queen Elvis....."

Recorded live in 1989. Now go out and buy shed loads of his stuff!

Music for a streaming cold part 1

The tobacco industry happy to kill its customers?

Plans to force tobacco firms to make 'safer' cigarettes that are less likely to start fires are under threat thanks to intense lobbying from the industry. The Tobacco Manufacturers Association has mounted a campaign to undermine proposed European Union regulations that would make it compulsory for British firms to produce a form of cigarette which safety campaigners say would save lives.

According to Canadian scientists, 'reduced ignition propensity cigarettes' can cut cigarette-related fire deaths by 68 per cent a year. The cigarettes, which burn faster than ordinary ones if they are not inhaled, have been considered a success since they were introduced in the United States two years ago.

The European tobacco lobby believes the switch to the new cigarettes, which use paper rolled differently from normal ones, will prove expensive and is attempting to delay their introduction. At a meeting with government ministers on 5 October, the association delivered a briefing for ministers designed to refute the arguments made for the new kind of cigarette. The document has also been presented to EU officials who will meet to discuss the issue this week and have the power to make the proposals law. Anti-smoking groups are concerned that a number of member states will be influenced by the tobacco lobby and will reject the plans.

'These cigarettes are good news,' said Matt Wrack, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union. 'Cigarettes not put out properly cause one in 10 house fires and are responsible for one in three deaths from fire.’ A report by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister suggested that if the UK had conformed in 2003 to the highest standards of the safer cigarettes the number of smoking-related fires would have been reduced by nearly two thirds. This would have resulted in 2,544 fewer fires, 168 fewer fatalities and 886 fewer non-fatal casualties over the year.

I suppose one should not be surprised by the tobacco industry given that at least one firm considered putting etorphine (elephant juice) in cigarettes to make them more addictive. On the other hand perhaps they are doing a great public service to their customers by burning some of them to death before they can die of cancer…..


Tobacco Cigarettes

Field of Remembrance Westminster Abbey

from the RAF Bomber Command section of the Field of Remembrance

Every year just before Remembrance Sunday, the grounds of Westminster Abbey are opened up to create a field of remembrance for servicemen and women who died in the two world wars and in post war conflicts, including Iraq. There is no celebration here, no glorification of war just a tribute to those who died.


I have no idea who John Bailey was except that he served in the Royal Munster Fusiliers and died in 1916. My grandfather also served in the Munsters - that he was taken prisoner right at the start of the bloody, brutal war almost certainly ensured his survival.

My father served in the RAF during WWII (as regular readers will know all too well!). Almost half of all bomber crews died. My father was fortunate to come through the WWII with only minor injuries.


British Legion

Armistice Day Field Remembrance

The Living Monument to Ken Saro Wiwa

These photographs were taken today at the unveiling of the living monument to Ken Saro Wiwa. It is on display outside the Guardian offices on Farringdon Road until 24 November, after which it will be on a tour of British cities for the next two years. If you are in London I would recommend you take the time to see it


Nigerian-born sculptor Sokari Douglas Camp, used the image of a rickety vehicle as it has has many resonances - as a pollutant, a carrier of supplies and information, and as a metaphor for Saro-Wiwa's activism. For me it is a superb sculpture which is a fitting tribute to a great man.

Around the bus is an inscription "I accuse the oil companies of practicing genocide afainst the Ogoni"

The artist, Sokari Douglas Camp

Ken Wiwa, son of Saro-Wiwa's son

Remember Saro-wiwa


ken SaroWiwa memorial

Bebe

Bebe on an unusually sunny day for November. This week's entry for the Friday Ark and Carnival of the Cats


cats

Ken Saro Wiwa – a living monument

From today’s Guardian

Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian novelist, journalist and activits who spearheaded a massive campaign against oil corporations and the Nigerian government, accusing both of waging an ecological war against the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta. In 1994, Saro-Wiwa was arrested and accused of incitement to murder. Eighteen months later, following a show trial condemned by human rights organisations, he and eight other leaders of the Movement For the Survival of the Ogoni People were executed by hanging, an act that propelled the story on to the front pages of newspapers worldwide.

Last year, to mark the 10th anniversary of Saro-Wiwa's execution, Platform, together with Amnesty International, the Arts Council and Greenpeace, launched a competition, asking artists to come up with proposals for a Saro-Wiwa memorial. The winner was Nigerian-born sculptor Sokari Douglas Camp, whose "mobile memorial" takes the form of a giant bus, made out of steel and loaded with oil barrels. From tomorrow, it will be parked outside the Guardian's offices in London, before embarking on a UK tour

The idea of a travelling memorial was conceived as an antidote to the notion of fixed, figurative monuments. The memorial is also large enough to serve as a miniature venue for film screenings and exhibitions. For Camp, the image of a rickety vehicle has many resonances - as a pollutant, a carrier of supplies and information, and as a metaphor for Saro-Wiwa's activism."I think transport is an important feature in environmental debate," she says. "The poorer world is always trying to catch up with the west in transporting goods. I wanted a spectacle of some kind, one of those vehicles, stacked precariously with all the goods they can carry. It will be fantastic to see it in a London street."

Camp has strong personal memories of Saro-Wiwa's campaign against the oil companies and its tragic conclusion. "We watched it all fall apart on TV with the rest of the world," she says. "I want people to know just how bad things are in the Delta, and if this structure can educate people that western society uses some areas of the world as dustbins, I think it will help".

The memorial will be unveiled tomorrow and will stay until November 24. The Guardian's Newsroom is also hosting a film and discussion programme to mark the unveiling.

The uneling is part of a day of activities to commemorate Saro Wiwa. I cannot attend the others but I hope to be at the unveiling. If so I will post Photographs

Remember Saro-wiwa


ken SaroWiwa memorial

What next, Kapital the Movie?

Despite the lack of plot, romantic interest or any juicy murders (okay there are plenty in its name but none in the book itself) a German theatre group has brought Kapital to the stage.

With the purpose of turning catchy topics such as "the production of absolute surplus value" into a crowd puller, eight people - selected from among those who have read the book from cover to cover - tell their own stories, creating a theatrical collage where Marx forms the common thread.

The play, Kapital: Volume One, is the brainchild of Rimini Protokoll, a collective of young German directors who have made a name for themselves in "documentary theatre". In Kapital, the participants make up a diverse bunch. There is a staunch Marxist who rails against Coca-Cola and the evils of consumer society, a socialist singer from the former communist east Germany, and a blind call-centre worker who dreams of going on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

In an unusual take on audience participation, every theatregoer gets a bound book - Volume 23 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels. Reading the complete volume aloud, with analysis to work out what is being said, would mean a theatre audience having to sit and watch for an entire year. But the Rimini Protokoll directors have kept their version to the more manageable length of one evening. The collective says, however, that every performance is different, reflecting the spontaneity of a play that was rehearsed for only three weeks.

Rimini Protokoll have had recent sellout shows, such as Blaiberg und Sweetheart 19, which included former heart transplant patients alongside people who had sought love on lonely hearts websites. After its Düsseldorf run the play will be shown in Berlin, Frankfurt and Zurich. There is no news of a West End slot (mercifully)

Kapital Karl Marx theatre

Quark, strangeness and charm - Hawkwind (my avatar in action)

I know I have posted this video before but it was taken off youtube (and probably will be again. This, sadly, is the only piece of footage available on the internet of Robert Calvert (my avatar) in action.


Hawkwind robert Calvert

Why Jams o Donnell?

Why not? Actually I was inspired to chose the name Jams O’ Donnell because of an episode in Flann O Brien’s wonderful satire on the hard life that is the lot of the Gaels, An Beal Bocht – aka the Poor Mouth. In it the main character Bonaparte O’ Coonassa, is at his first day at school:

We all gathered in the schoolhouse. We all sat on benches, without a word or a sound for fear of the master. He cast his venomous eyes ever the room and they alighted on me where they stopped. By jove! I did not find his look pleasant while these two eyes were sifting me. After a while he directed a long yellow finger at me and said: “Phwat is yer nam?”

I did not understand what he said nor any other type of speech which is practised in foreign parts because I had only Gaelic as a mode of expression and as a protection against the difficulties of life. I could only stare at him, dumb with fear. I then saw a great fit of rage come over him and gradually increase exactly like a rain-cloud. I looked around timidly at the other boys. I heard a whisper at my back: “Your name he wants!”

My heart leaped with joy at this assistance and I was grateful to him who prompted me. I looked politely at the master and replied to him: “Bonaparte, son of Michelangelo, son of Peter, son of Owen, son of Thomas's Sarah, grand-daughter of John's Mary, grand-daughter of James, son of Dermot…”

Before I had uttered or half-uttered my name, a rabid bark issued from the master and he beckoned to me with his finger. By the time I had reached him, he had an oar in his grasp. Anger had come over him in a flood-tide at this stage and he had a businesslike grip of the oar in his two hands. He drew it over his shoulder and brought it down hard upon me with a swish of air, dealing me a destructive blow on the skull. I fainted from that blow but before I became totally unconscious I heard him scream:

“Yer nam, said he, is Jams O'Donnell!”

So there you have it. I hope you sleep easier with this knowledge in your head. It’s like will never be there again….

Poor Mouth Flann O'Brien