Guantanamo Bay

Is not just still open, but fifteen men are captive there,
caught in the legal limbo that the US has set for them
one of them have been captive for nearly twenty five years.

The first category: Approved for release

Muieen Abd al-Sattar

Guled Hassan Dourad

Ishmael Ali Bakushmael

The second catgory: Not charged, not cleared

Abu Zubaydah (24 years in prison)

Abu Faraj al-Libi

Mohamed Rahim

The third catgory: Charged or Convicted in Military Commission

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Ramzi bin al-Shibh

Walid bin Attash

Mustapha al-Hawsawi

Amar al-Baluchi

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

Riduan Isamuddin 

Ali Hamza al-Bahlul

Abd al-hadi al-Iraqi

To comprehend how Guantamo Bay started,
and why it is still open, please left click here
to hear the first part of a three part podcast.   

From Democratic To Imperial Measure

One of many books that helped me mature
in the 1980s was 'Money, Sex, and Power',
by Richard Foster, a book about their opposites:
the choices that come from managing (relative) poverty,
chastity, and obedience to the powers that be,
which together give society and the individual
the widest choice for greatest nunber of people. 

For a long while it made a lot of sense to me.

Forty years on from what taught me more
how to make my way through the world,
I have seen this sage advice turned inside out.

Politics has gone from democratic to imperial,
the men who have the most have to have more
-to the point where no-one is allowed to count it.
Power is held more absolutely, money is controlled
by fewer and fewer corporations, the lies that sell sex
make it not worth taking at anything like face value. 

For those with the most, whatever they have
whether money, sex or power, enough is never enough.
Least of all when they combine into one big addiction
fueled by denial, broadcast across th4e world
as if such a depth of vice was actually a virtue.

The Biggest Rogue Is The One We Are Last To Recognise

The world is full of leaders
who when their enemies fail
blame the enemies for their failure,
as if the leader has either done nothing,
or had done nothing to cause the downfall
of another. Their leadership was omniscient
-proof of how perfect they always were. 

Such partisan presentations of leadership
and power are now so routine and protected
from all media enquiry about what makes
the leadership tick, they make being a sceptic
a necessary sign for showing intelligence.

There the allies of the surviving enemies
prove stronger when they act together,
in league with each other, against the leader
who cannot recognise how rogue he's become.   

Change And Choice With Jeanette Winterson

'Don't you ever think of going back?' Silly question.
There are threads that help you find your way back,
and there are threads that intend to bring you back.

Mind turns to the pull, it's hard to pull away.
I'm always thinking of going back.
When Lot's wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pillar of salt.
Pillars hold things up, and salt keeps things clean,
but it's a poor exchange for losing your self.

People do go back, but they don't survive,
because two realities are claiming them
at the same time. Such things are too much. 

You can salt your heart, or kill your heart,
or you can choose between two realities.
There is much pain here.

Some people think you can have your cake and eat it.
The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what's left.
Going back after a long time will make you mad,
because the people you left behind do not like
to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did,
accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.”

Keeping House Of Commons Rules

One of the motives for owning property
for people who rent and find they dislike it,
is what they dislike is not choosing who rents
the space alongside them. They think....
'When I buy where I live then I will keep
my neighbours at a distance that suits me.',
as if money by itself could cover for a will
that lacks the power to change how we live.
But willpower gets a person only so far
in choosing who they keep a distance from
and the distance at which to keep them.

Nowadays I find the people I need to keep
my distance from, and set it firm, are family.
I don't own property like they do, I knew how much 
they were disappointed with how they made me,
where all that was left was cover up how it happened.

That distance I now keep from my family
is much farther than the physical distance
between the front benches in House of Commons
-two swords distance. 

The distance I now keep from family
is more like distance between the values
each side of The House of Commons keeps
-universes, multiverses, farther apart.   

Modern Living

is all style and no life, an art form
that is accessorised by its makers
-who change the name of the product 
to sell it, before the public fully grasp
what the change is about, the manufacrtured life,
and change the names again to stay ahead
of their manufactrured competitors...

Caught In The Echo

Infinite scroll is nothing new,
though presently Youtube
are its greatest champions.

Commercial television first got there
sixty years ago. I remember my dad
being so impressed by the schedules
that he refused to let the set turned off,
or even acccept a change of channel.
Whatever was on when he was home
was right by him, even the adverts.

He screened us and reality out of his life
in the house, until he could get to the pub.
There his chosen family were the people he drank with.

I don't know how I survived those times,
particularly when the entertainment
was some alpha male being so alpha,
that nothing else around him mattered.

That was when the content of the screen
taught me what 'rhetorical' meant. Part of me
still feels caught in the echo of such self importance.