Monday, 16 May 2011

Violence erupts on Israel's borders

Israeli soldiers shot dead at least 12 people as Palestinians massed on the borders of Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to mark the 63rd anniversary of the creation of Israel.
Palestinians call it the Nakba, or catastrophe - the anniversary of the day Israel became a state and hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were forced out.
In Israel and the occupied territories, thousands of people joined protests which turned into clashes with police.
Scores were wounded and two people were killed in Gaza.
But the worst violence was on the borders with Lebanon and Syria, where Palestinian refugees marched to the border and tried to breach the fence into Israel.
Thousands entered the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed from Syria in 1967, but most were arrested or turned back.
The Lebanese army on the Lebanese frontier said 10 Palestinians died when Israeli forces shot at rock-throwing protesters to prevent them from entering the Jewish state.
Lebanese security sources said more than 100 people had been wounded in the shooting in the Lebanese border village of Maroun al-Ras.
The Israel army said the Lebanese army had also used live ammunition in an attempt to hold back the crowds rushing the border fence.
Israeli military spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovich has accused Syria of orchestrating the incursion in the Golan Heights.
"The Syrian regime is intentionally attempting to divert the world's attention away from their brutal crackdown on their own civilians to the incitement on Israel's northern border.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped the confrontations would not escalate.
"I've instructed the army to behave with maximum restraint," he said.
"We hope the calm and quiet will quickly return. But let nobody be misled, we are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty."
One man, Ahmad Abu Arab, says protesters have taken courage from the recent uprisings across the Middle East.
"For 63 years we've been under occupation," he said. "Everywhere else in the world people are finding their freedom, but not the Palestinians."
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said in a televised address to mark the anniversary that those killed were martyrs to the Palestinian cause.
"Their precious blood will not be wasted. It was spilt for the sake of our nation's freedom," he said.
Syrian media reports said Israeli gunfire killed two people after dozens of Palestinian refugees infiltrated the Golan Heights from Syria along a frontline that has been largely tranquil for decades.
The Syrian foreign ministry condemned what it called Israel's "criminal activities".
Tense border
On Israel's tense southern border with the Gaza Strip, Israeli gunfire wounded 82 demonstrators approaching the fence with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave, medical workers said.
In a separate incident, Israeli forces said they shot a man who was trying to plant a bomb near the border. A body was later found.
In Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial hub, a truck driven by an Arab Israeli slammed into vehicles and pedestrians, killing one man and injuring 17 people.
Police were trying to determine whether the incident was an accident or an attack. Witnesses said the driver, who was arrested, deliberately ran amok with his truck in traffic.
Jordanian police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists who gathered at a village on the border with Israel.
"The police pushed us out of the protest area and after using teargas started to chase us with batons," one said from Karama village.
A spokesman for Islamist Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, Sami Abu Zuhri, called it "a turning point in the Israeli-Arab conflict" that proved the Palestinian people and Arabs were committed to ending Israeli occupation.
Hezbollah condemned the "Israeli aggression on unarmed civilians in Maroun al-Ras and in the Golan, which constitutes a dangerous violation of human rights", said Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah at a pro-Palestinian protest in Maroun al-Ras.
"The resistance movement in Lebanon will continue to be an advocate of Palestinian national rights and calls on everyone to stand united in confronting Israeli occupation.
"What happened today in Maroun al-Ras and in the Golan is an embodiment of the will of the Palestinian people, who are committed to the right of return."
@'ABC'

X - Spot The Ball(s)

A taste of the future

Israel at 63: What part of Shut Up do you not understand?

Taliban on Twitter for Afghan Internet age

Video response to 'Kitty is a very BAD Mystic' by Billy Bragg

ioerror Jacob Appelbaum
The US empire is really on the decline and it shows. It's too bad that my country is being turned into an authoritarian surveillance state...

Sometimes I wonder if I'd be "better off" living outside of the US but what's worse? Foreign or domestic American policy? Sad truths there...
I am reminded of the phrase: "If not you, who? If not now, when?" Leaving is letting the bastards win. Fuck that noise; this is my country...

Alexander Trocchi - A Life In Pieces

(BBC Scotland documentary that includes interviews with William S. Burroughs, Leonard Cohen and Terry Southern. Excerpt from Jamie Wadhawan's 'Cain's Film' lastly)

Man at leisure
Stewart Home:
Walk On Gilded Splinters: IN MEMORANDUM TO MEMORY 13 APRIL 1969. Alex Ttocchi's State of Revolt at the Arts Lab in London

The mid-sixties poetry extravaganza that posthumously became known as "Wholly Communion" after the film Peter Whitehead made about it is often viewed as acting as midwife to the emergent hippie culture in London. To some "Wholly Communion" was the last and greatest hurrah of the London beatnik scene, its fabulous death rattle, while for others it was the birth cry of psychedelia. Regardless of which view you take, for most of the seven thousand punters who trooped into the Albert Hall on 11 June 1965, "Wholly Communion" was a spectacular success. That said, the individual poetry readings were less inspiring than their ability to attract a huge crowd, since even the appearance of beat stalwart Allen Ginsberg was viewed as disappointing. More spectacularly, the British visionary poet and acidhead Harry Fainlight was singularly unable to complete a recital of his own work. Likewise, depending on which historical commentator is taken at their word, the British beat novelist and ungentlemanly junkie Alex Trocchi either succeeded admirably or failed miserably in his role as MC. Regardless, "Wholly Communion" is now a mythical event in the annals of the British counterculture, the first mass gathering of the tribes, and no recent history of London in the swinging sixties appears complete without its reverential invocation.

By way of contrast, the zombification of the British counterculture at the end of the sixties has for too long remained a taboo subject. Fittingly enough it was the "Wholly Communion" MC who acted as chief somnambulist at the London Arts Lab slumber party of Sunday 13 April 1969 that exposed the 'Age of Aquarius' as a complete non-starter. This, the apotheosis of post-hippie burn out, was promoted to an indifferent public as "Alex Trocchi's State Of Revolt". The evening featured among others Trocchi, William Burroughs, R. D. Laing and Davy Graham. What went down during the "State Of Revolt" wasn't as immediately horrific as the murder of Meredith Hunter at the Rolling Stones' Altamont concert, or as self-consciously staged as the "Death Of Hippie" happening organised by the San Francisco Diggers or the even the Manson murders; and it is precisely this that makes Trocchi's 1969 Covent Garden debacle such an iconic event. "The State Of Revolt" marks the onset of countercultural rigor mortis and this living death occurred not with a bang but a smacked out whimper. It is also a death with implications that we won't fully comprehend until the chatter of neo-critical production about the sixties ceases to mask the violent silence that lies at the core of that decade, and which will yet prove to be its most enduring legacy.

While smackheads failed to constitute a majority among those present at "The State Of Revolt", both punters and participants shuffled through the Arts Lab looking like re-animated corpses intent on eating living human brains. And I say that knowing my mother who was present had been a vegetarian, as well as a junkie, since the mid-sixties. Footage of this Arts Lab death ritual makes up a good portion of the documentary "Cain's Film" (1969) by director Jamie Wadhawan; and my mother Julia Callan-Thompson is visible in four separate audience shots. My mother was actually on the hippie trail in India from the beginning of 1968 until the summer of 1969, but she made at least one lightning trip back to Europe during her sojourn to the East. Both she and a number of her boyfriends were heavily involved in Trocchi's drug dealing, and this probably accounts for her presence in the audience at "The State Of Revolt". Although opium was readily available in India, heroin was harder to come by and so this more powerful sedative was highly prized by those my mother hung out with in Goa, all of whom returned to Europe strung out. They also had an omnivorous appetite for LSD.

I sent a copy of "Cain's Film" to native New Yorker Lynne Tillman because after arriving in Europe straight from Hunter College, she'd asked Jim Haynes if she could put on a lecture series at the Arts Lab and he not only agreed but immediately suggested it should feature Trocchi. Tillman, who went on to become America's greatest living novelist, quickly lost organisational control of the lecture to Trocchi who was determined to transform it into a junkie jamboree. Being new to London, Tillman knew virtually nothing about Trocchi at the time she first contacted him, and was unaware of his reputation as a dope fiend. On 28 February 2004, Lynne emailed the following observations about the DVD she'd received from me: "it's the weirdest thing to watch - and sad and I can't find the words - much of it was shot in the basement cinema after I had to move everyone downstairs out of Theatre 1 or 2 by 10pm to let the play go on, whatever it was…" The Tale Of Atlantis Rising was advertised in the underground press as taking place in the theatre spaces, while there was a screening of The Magnificent Ambersons in the cinema prior to it being overrun by Trocchi's horde of bloodsucking freaks. Tillman concluded this email by saying: "I remember many faces… if I watched it with Jim H(aynes)., he'd remember more names… several of the women are very familiar to me, none was a close friend - seeing Lynn Trocchi and the children was deeply upsetting - and seeing their apt. was so weird and sad and empty - one of the strangest experiences seeing a night and remembering and not..."

Continue reading

(My BIG thanx to Stewart Home and Marc Campbell!)

(REpost)

In the late 70's/early 80's I was a fairly frequent visitor to Bernard Stone's 'Turret Bookshop' in Covent Garden and one day Jeff Nuttall was also there and I started talking to him about his book 'Bomb Culture'. In the course of the conversation I mentioned Alex Trocchi to him and was told that he was still alive and living in Holland Park and could be found sometimes in a pub whose name I have now forgotten.
(I must admit I thought that he had died years before.)

I had first read 'Cain's Book' while still in Glasgow and even went up to the Mitchell Library one dayto see what I could find out about him and there was nothing there. Very strange as Trocchi was responsible through his magazine 'Merlin' (published in Paris between 1952 - 55) of publishing Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet and Eugene Ionesco amongst others in English for the first time.

At this time 'Cains Book' could be picked up pretty easily as could 'Young Adam' and you could visit his publisher John Calder's offices and pick up some of his other books. But as far as getting his Olympia Press 'pornography' well...I do remember Pat Kearney trying to sell me a copy of one of them for a very expensive price (though nothing like the price he sold his collection to Princeton University for here).

Anyway I remember heading up to Kensington one day and in the pub in question I met (The Rt. Hon.) George Rodney, definitely a 'shady' character but he pointed out that I was sitting under a cartoon of Trocchi on the pub's wall and that Trocchi himself would be in soon.

At this time I had an idea to do an interview with him (I had vague plans of putting a magazine together) and to this end I had already spoken with Kathy Acker about Trocchi's influence on her work, but like many things at this time in my life it got put on the back burner.

Truth be told my life was just spinning out of control and I decided to piss off somewhere.
(Anywhere as long as it wasn't the UK!)

At my last night party (29th April 1984) in London my good friend Mike came and told me that Trocchi had died a couple of weeks previously.

I ended up in Amsterdam knowing one person there and was immediately given a barge to live on (Trocchi readers will recognise the symbolism) and within a couple of weeks I had met Olaf Stoop and he gave me copies of everything that Trocchi had written including a 1954 Olympia Press 'Young Adam'. (I say 'gave' but he actually charged me 100 guilders which is practically the same thing.)

I also met Hansmartin Tromp on one of my first days in Amsterdam who had just conducted an interview with Trocchi (for H.P.) and he also gave me a copy of the transcript as well as some 10X8 photos of Trocchi.

I also picked up a signed copy of 'Helen & Desire' (inscribed for Richard Neville) and some of the original 'sigma' mimeographs as well as the first chapter of 'The Long Book' (featuring 'The Sexistensialist') that was published in Dan Richter's 'Residu' magazine.

Considering how few people knew of him way back then it is heartening to have seen the resurgence of interest in him and his work particularly in the last few years.

(As an aside when I was working at a record shop in Kentish Town ('Honky Tonk') in about 1981 I put up in the window a photostat of an article on Trocchi from a very early edition of 'Time Out' and it was amazing how many people said that they didn't know the writer but that they were interested in his ideas.)

Finally there is a really good BBC Scotland documentary (see above) on Alex Trocchi called 'A Life In Pieces' made by Tim Niel and Allan Campbell who were also responsible for the book of the same name. (Mention must also go to 'The Edinburgh Review' (who published a special Trocchi edition) and Andrew Murray Scott (who had worked for Trocchi towards the end of his life) who published a biography and a Trocchi 'reader' and this perhaps started the ball rolling which allowed the bankrolling of the film of 'Young Adam' which starred Tilda Swinton and Ewan McGregor.)

UPDATE:

About a year ago a(n ex) friend mislaid/liberated my first edition copy of the Olympia Press version of Young Adam that was quite different to the later version by 'virtue' of the fact that it had been padded out with 'salacious extras' to appeal to Girodias's 'DB' customers of the time.

Hands off Alexander Trocchi!

sigma: A Tactical Blueprint

A Revolutionary Proposal: Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds

Man at work

Bonus: Davy Graham excerpt from 'Cain's Film'

Postscript:

My lil'sister actually managed to get her hands of one of the BBC mastercopies of 'Life In Pieces' which I still have in storage but if anyone has full versions of Wadhawan's 'Cain's Film' and 'Marijuana Marijuana' to share would they please get in touch.

Thanx!

David Cameron's adviser says health reform is a chance to make big profits

Health secretary Andrew Lansley is likely to be placed under further pressure by the comments of Mark Britnell to private equity investors. Photograph: David Jones/PA

A senior adviser to David Cameron says the NHS could be improved by charging patients and will be transformed into a "state insurance provider, not a state deliverer" of care.
Mark Britnell, who was appointed to a "kitchen cabinet" advising the prime minister on reforming the NHS, told a conference of executives from the private sector that future reforms would show "no mercy" to the NHS and offer a "big opportunity" to the for-profit sector.
The revelations come on the eve of an important speech by the prime minister on the future of the NHS, during which he is expected to try to allay widespread fears that the reforms proposed in health secretary Andrew Lansley's health and social care bill would lead to privatisation.
It has been suggested that Cameron may even announce an extension to the "pause" in the progress of the bill until after the party conference season, amid growing tensions on the issue within the coalition government.
Nick Clegg, has insisted that the Liberal Democrats will not support any reforms that allow the "profit motive to drive a coach and horses through the NHS". Backbench Tory MPs, however, have called for the government to stick to the reforms and open the provision of services to the private sector. Britnell's comments will inevitably raise the temperature of the debate.
Britnell, a former director of commissioning for the NHS, who is now head of health at the accountancy giant KPMG, was invited to join a group of senior health policy experts, described by the respected Health Studies Journal as a "kitchen cabinet", in Downing Street earlier this month. The group, which includes former NHS executives and the former Department of Health permanent secretary Lord Crisp, was assembled by Cameron's new special adviser on health, Paul Bate.
In unguarded comments at a conference in New York organised by the private equity company Apax, Britnell claimed that the next two years in the UK would provide a "big opportunity" for the for-profit sector, and that the NHS would ultimately end up as a financier of care similar to an insurance company rather than a provider of hospitals and staff.
According to a glossy brochure summarising the conference held last October, Britnell told his audience: "GPs will have to aggregate purchasing power and there will be a big opportunity for those companies that can facilitate this process … In future, the NHS will be a state insurance provider, not a state deliverer." He added: "The NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years." Writing in the Health Studies Journal, Britnell also suggested that the NHS would be better served by breaking with the mantra that all services should be free at the point of delivery by allowing co-payment, where patients share the costs of care and drugs.
"It appears that countries that have a mixed blend of public and private provision, co-payment and social insurance are possibly more capable of providing resilient healthcare systems."
The shadow health secretary, John Healey, said: "This revelation comes direct from Cameron's inner circle and gives the game away on the government's NHS plans. It confirms the Tories' true purpose is to set up a free-market NHS and open up all parts of the health service to private companies."
In a move that will pile more pressure on Lansley, the Department of Health last week released the latest Mori poll on satisfaction levels with the NHS. It shows that 66% of people questioned believed the NHS was the best health service in the world, while 37% of the public expected services to deteriorate following the reforms. However, nearly three-quarters said that they knew "not very much" or "nothing at all" about changes that the government plans to make.
Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, demanded a rethink of the halt on funding for the General Lifestyle Survey, which is run by the Office for National Statistics. Scholar said: "If government is planning a major reform of the NHS, people will want to know if it is worse afterwards or not. These statistics are very important in reaching a rational view."
Labour sources said that the only explanation for the cuts in funding was that the government expected a hostile reaction to the reforms that do proceed and ministers were "planning how best to keep that from view".
Downing Street tried to distance itself from Britnell. A No 10 spokesman said: "We will never privatise the NHS. We remain committed to the principle of an NHS funded from general taxation and based on need not ability to pay. Mark Britnell is not the prime minister's health adviser. We are listening to the views of experts, patients and staff on how to improve our plans to strengthen the NHS."
Daniel Boffey and Toby Helm @'The Guardian'
(GB2011)

blakehounshell
Now IDF saying only a few dozen crossed the border, not hundreds or thousands haaretz.com/news/diplomacy…

21 dead and a couple of hundred injured...