Self Medicating During the Fall

Tom Moore

While drone cams pan obscene discrete
Panoramic views of razor wielding clown carnage
Safe Family Entertainment made raw meat

And the moral of this tale so awfully told
By some meathead reporter accosted
By the logos, the egos, the questions cold

Is that the medium flows but in one direction
While the money is drained outward
Into the pockets of our misconception

Stitched up in history all riddled with lies
Soaked in poison and honey and gold
Led to believe we control our lives

So in the teeth of a future less hopeful be
Than the ice cliff crashing
Cold into the sea

China: Some Facts

The Chinese Cake, 1898 downloaded from PBS LearningMedia, http://www.pbslearningmedia.org.
Rights to use this asset do not expire.
Asset Copyright ©2015

Liberation School is offering some much needed education on the recent history of China; watch before they are deemed unsuitable by the Propaganda Machine:

Class 1: 1800-1919: From Imperial China to the Century of Humiliation

Class 2: 1919-1949: National liberation through class struggle

Class 3: 1949-1979: The twin tasks of the revolution

Class 4: Is China capitalist? On China’s socialist market economy and quest towards socialism

Class 5: China and the Global South: Internationalism and multilateralism amidst US aggression

"Tracing the decline of the ancient imperial order in China under the combined attacks of Western imperialism and domestic rebellion in the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries. China was the most prosperous and sophisticated state in the world through the end of the 18th century, but the Industrial Revolution gave Britain and, later, other Western powers, both new economic power and new military capacities. Britain sold massive amounts of opium to China, then fought a war to open the country to “free trade” when China tried to control the drug dealers. The collapse of China’s domestic economy led to major rebellions, and efforts at reform of the Qing state faltered. When the last imperial dynasty was overthrown in 1911, a period of turmoil followed as Chinese people sought new paths to save their country from imperialist domination and to create a more just and equitable society."

Last Waiver of Rights

Drowning Hand ~ Eric Drooker

The chalk cliffs wave white flags of surrender to the drowning man
The green and pleasant interior teems with pureblood warriors
Who angrily type newfound words of war
Virtuously signal their reasonable compliance
With the passive aggressive decrees of their elected dictators
Baby knows her parents’ woes and wonders at her own stormy future
The weather front heads in dark from all directions
A deluge that will drown all doubters and deniers
The patchwork man deserts the podium and raises another glass to sundown
On his ancestral plot the sheep are left to rot
While the wolves seek greater slaughter

Fables from a Forgotten Place: The Commuters

Tim Walker

Picture this:
The camera frames a view of grassy verge, unkempt in these days of shortage, then pans to the entrance of Utopia Mansions. Our viewpoint now dollies through the doorway, passes the letterbox grid to the left and ascends the single flight of stairs to the narrow landing of doors numbered quite sensibly 1 through to 10. Doors to the right, railing and open air to the left.
We move forward now, down past Apts 1… 2… past apt 10 to where the landing ends in a solid brick wall, stop and slow pan left to reveal the majesty of the Factory that rises like some burnt gunmetal beetle from the centre of our little town.
It is said that no one is ever further than 50m from a Factory entrance, dotted as they are in their own horizontal grid of doors that when opened reveal for many, the downward running escalators leading to the tunnels that feed the workers to their subterranean entrances.
Back at our apartment block, Dog Jones, at the advent of the day, opens the door to Apt 1 and steps out onto the landing. Reaching into his pocket for his keys, he lowers his bag in order to lock the door for the day.
The door to Apt 2 ejects Big Jim Boon, once again too late to avoid the open door of Apt 1 that invariably blocks his daily egress from the landing. Sally Bon Farah exits Apt 3 and greets Big Jim with a shy smile.
“Good morning” says he and turns to glare at the polished brass 1 screwed at eyelevel on the blue door.
The occupants of Apt 4 through to Apt 10 spill out into the queue already formed by the Dog Jones’ inability to find his keys in his pockets; him now dodging back into Apt 1 to look for them there, leaving open the door that yet impedes 90% of the floor from arriving on time at their workstations within the factory.
This happens every day with slight variations in timing but with the end result always a traffic jam.

Protest:
“Can you make an effort to be a little more efficient in your execution of your morning routine”
Says Big Jim Boon to Dog Jones around the barrier of the open door to Apt 1.
“Yeah” says Sally Bon Farah.
“Yeah” says Fergal Finnigan from Apt 4.
Dog Jones hears nothing bar the aspirational speech playing in his earphones; the one entitled Vertical Productivity Elevation.
Helga Tornado, who lives in Apt 10 had, weeks earlier, decided to set her alarm for 30 minutes later than the company recommended wake-up time (CRWT) thereby avoiding have to spend those 30 minutes on the landing waiting for the jam to clear. But then, according to her mother, Helga had always been pragmatic.
Meanwhile Tom Patcher, Apt 7, who, according to all sources, has always been a passive-aggressive ball of class-based anxiety, leans out of his door and, after apologising to Margo from At 8, adds his voice to the chorus of Yeah’s.

Unrest:
There came, after some many days, the voices of dissent from behind:
“Oi, get a fucking move on up there”
“You’re making us all late”
“They deducted an hour from my wage last week because of you Mr. Lah-di-dah, Mr. № One”
Mister Number One was, of course, oblivious to all but the “how to manage people” seminars that he has taken to playing through his earphones every morning on the way to work. Clever Dog Jones, proud of his efficient use of time, was indeed oblivious to his negative impact on the world.

Revolution:
There came a day when Big Jim Boon - a gentle man in the eyes of his peers and indeed in the (unrequited) loving eyes of Sally Bon Farah – there came a day when he was moved to action.
Big Jim Boon, our bronze bulged hero causes on the eve of the following shift, a weighty volume 8 of the Encyclopaedia Apoplexy to be wedge against the outward arcing door of Apt 1 Utopia Mansions.

Resolution:
Come the morning shift alarm, now set to 7:30 (since none can see any reason for appearing any earlier than the precedent already set) Helga Tornado exits Apt 10 at her usual time and, as instructed by our hero, raps on the door of Apt 9 as she passes.
The very recently rapped door to Apt 9 swings open to expel our flamboyant accountant, who in passing, rattles her lacquered fingernails on the door to Apt 8. Margo knocks on Tom’s door in passing.
Tom knocks Apt 6’s flaking door, still sporting here in May, a festive Xmas wreath.
Brad, our threadbare but still well stitched designer gets Fergal Finnigan out the door of Apt 5 to jiggle the handle of Apt 4 which in turn expels the obsequious Ray to greet Sally Bon Farah, ever an early entrant to witness the exit of our big hero Jim Boon who, after curling an arm around Sally’s waist, flips the encyclopaedia to one side, releasing the door to Apt 1 which has been shouldered repeatedly (but without success) since 7:00 by the managerial, but hapless, Dog Jones.

The Millennium Bug was a Virus

(or how they stole the Dome)

Jim Burns

Tony Blair’s voice echoes from the interior of the 12-legged alien that so recently (and at such cost) arrived here on the northern bulge of the Greenwich peninsula.
History rewritten (if they can do it, so can we) tells us that this is the millennial edition of the Labour party’s annual conference, and Tony is feeling very pleased with himself, he is (after all) the king of the future; the master of millennium marketing; the killer of the Labour Party’s social conscience; He is the Conservative Party’s own 007 sent deep into enemy terriTory to seize the helm of the evil communist empire.
Seen from above, it can be ascertained that the Alien is rather more complex than the mere hemispherical spider: that the dome is merely a circular single eye on a one-legged octopus that occupies the entire peninsular from northern eye to southern Charlton hem – all forming an ecosystem which requires a daily ration of human activity for sustenance. To such ends, along its eastern shore are housed the occupants of its residential cells; consumer feeders themselves led to the gut, where nutrients are supplied (at a cost) to retail vats via the A2 intravenous tube.
Consumer corpuscles are transported to and, spent, whisked away from the dome interior; that mythical Thatcherian marketplace that defines the alien’s prime function. Tony’s backers are more than a little pleased with his role in transporting (in a mere 6 years) the possession of the bought alien into the bloodied hands of the English machine. Yes, Tony’s feeling very pleased with himself, he believes himself to be the architect of this triumph, this great leap into immortality.
It’s unclear whether he is aware that the true architect of this millennial financial triumph is John Major, for it was he who passed the resolutions that allowed the alien to materialise. The alien will later be sold (for the sum of £1) to a rich multinational who, after some financial distraction and manipulation of the alien’s interior, will pass its body on to be ravished by the country’s recently privatised national telephone company at whose directorship sits none other than… the mild mannered ex-Prime Minister himself (stroking a white Persian cat).
But that’s all in the future; it’s the Millennium and Tony’s preparing for his own (self-choreographed) ascent to godhead and it’s going to be a world-changer, a blood sacrifice that will wipe millions of lives from the surface of this pathetic planet and bring it to its knees before the writhing and all-consuming capitalist behemoth octopus.
But hey, none of this ever really happened; how could it? Not here under the warm mentorship of government; here after the Brexit sunset that has left us to the Covid-19 night.