Halloween

Halloween marks the way to the season

Of remembrance: let the dead be recalled

To mark how too frequently peace has stalled,

For which there’s one fundamental reason,

The persistence of capital in its

Voracious pursuit of profit, heedless

Of the inhuman cost, of the needless

Near countless lives lost. The market sits

In impersonal judgement as to where lies,

Not a moral, but the fiscal value,

Wherever barbarism’s breaking through,

No matter which blood drenched flag it flies.

Leaving the haunted, those who always lose,

To appear almost live on rolling news.

D. A.

Your Party…Not Mine

On a gloomy Autumnal Saturday,

The red revolution in its latest

Incarnation, trying its very best

To look credible, made its ponderous way

To the bandstand in a Huddersfield park.

Bearing aloft flimsy flags and placards

Proclaiming this new party, hopeful words

Unable to dispel what is the stark

Reality, Lenin’s inheritors

Still misrepresenting socialism,

Soon to be riven by split and schism,

Another grouplet the voter ignores.

But, even if they don’t suffer that fate,

At best they’ll move capital to the state.

D. A.

Shouting Down

Clamorous cacophony of discontent:

Public outrage finds some collective voice,

Finds its feet, finds its demagogic choice

Of blame bearer, but then does not relent

To draw breath, reflect, perhaps consider

How another view might well be taken,

One more profound, one that might awaken

Perception, challenge the highest bidder

For visceral thought to think again

About those parties who’re in contention,

Laying claim to popular dissention,

Offering their quack final solution.

While anger and shouting are in season,

They’re muting the measured voice of reason.

D. A.

Wading Through the Motions

The great, the good, the faithful, gathering

In conference halls, to bask in oration,

Of how they’re going to save the nation

Via three or four days of blathering,

As well as much waving of flags of course:

They will have the answers, once they find them.

Now all their past mistakes are behind them,

Not that they have any cause for remorse.

Immigration? Free Trade or Protection?

All the threadbare old arguments elide

As markets, not politicians, decide,

No matter who might win an election.

Leaders speak! Delegates go home again,

While ills of capitalism remain.

D. A.

They & We

THEY are belligerent, perfidious.

Whereas, WE are civilised, trustworthy,

Favouring an open society,

Which is why THEY connive to confound us,

Fashioning munitions, missiles and drones

To advance their ambitious aggression,

Engineering international tension;

Hostility’s the marrow in their bones.

It’s only to keep our borders secure

WE maintain peace with military might,

Only slaughter when WE decide it’s right

To do so, certain our motives are pure.

But, who are THEY? Who WE? It’s surely clear

There’ll be neither once borders disappear.

D. A.

History Classes

History is a chronicle of change,

Incessant, of both advance and delay.

Rome wasn’t built, nor was it lost, in a day:

Became, then went, once kings could arrange

Affairs, until their castles also fell

When commerce and capital promoted

Themselves and the world became devoted

To their interest. Although it might feel

The way things are must always remain so,

The few usurping the wealth made by many,

With vital human needs needing money

To be satisfied. Yet all this can go

Should the majority say, ‘It’s ended!’

Capitalism can be transcended.

D. A.

The continuing horror in and around Gaza defies reason. An initial terror countered by a greater, protracted one. Eventually there’ll be an end, but what will the death tally be, hostages and civilians? It will by then be the peace of the graveyard. Life being eked out amongst the ruins by those who survive.

Political leaders of states looking on have belatedly decided to act, by reviving the two states solution. This involves recognition of the state of Palestine, to the chagrin of Israel’s government.

Surely the fundamental problem is the existence of nation states, each ruthlessly pursuing its own interests, ultimately at the expense of others. In a world driven, and riven, by competition, it is difficult to see how the formal recognition of another state profoundly changes anything.

Existence for two states, Russia and Ukraine, patently has not ensured peace between them. Israel and Palestine may develop accords, but just as likely become embroiled in further conflicts of competing interests, presuming recognition ends the present bellicosity.

Palestine action

Is resetting battle lines

No state solution

D. A.

If truth is the first casualty of war, hypocrisy is its staunch ally.

On Thursday, 17th September, a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and the release of all hostages by Hamas, was voted on by the 15 members.

Although fourteen were in favour, it was vetoed by the 15th, the USA. As one of the five permanent members, America has this longstanding, if democratically dubious, privilege. This is the same state that frequently condemns Russia for its targeting civilians, by military action, in Ukraine.

One of the other five members of that elite group, Russia, must have voted in favour of the resolution. The very same Russia undertaking ballistic aggression against its own neighbour even as it was casting that vote.

The presidents of both countries can undoubtedly concoct self-justifying excuses for the inexcusable. If civilians are being subjected to terror attacks, it surely means those prosecuting those attacks, or facilitating them, are, by definition terrorists.

However, it is also hypocritical to single out these states and their leaders while, at the same time, continuing to lend even tacit support to the notion of the nation. Russia and America are not unique in their belligerent involvements.

Competition is in the nature of capitalism, so it cannot be surprising that capitalist nation states are constantly seeking advantage at the expense of each other. Warfare is the inevitable merciless expression of this competition.

It will continue to be so for as long as nation states and capitalism are allowed to exist. No matter what UN votes are held, successfully or frustrated. The only antidote to war and long term solutions for Gaza, Ukraine et al, is socialism.

Voting for peace means

Treating pain, not the disease

Veto capitals

D. A.   

Uniting the Kingdom, by George

Fearful laidly wyrm, gruesome millipede

Of grotesque proportions. Its poisonous

Venom paralyses reason in case

Some humane diversion just might succeed

In making it pause for thought and realise

Its determined course, the slippery slope

It’s slithering down, is one without hope,

A pathway of misdirection and lies.

Leaders look down from swish crystal towers,

Concealing their contempt for this creature,

Certain tomorrow’s headlines will feature

Their agendas, strengthening their powers.

Meanwhile the rough beast, having been reborn,

Slouches towards Paris, Berlin and London.

D. A.

What do meat, drugs and refugees have in common?

All three are subject to being smuggled into Britain (and elsewhere no doubt). The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA) recently reported the quantity of illicit meat discovered on its way through Dover had risen from 13 tonnes between January and April 2023 to 70 tonnes for the same period in 2025.

The twin concern is that foot and mouth disease could easily be imported this way, and lack of quality control threatens public health via human consumption.

Both drugs and (especially at the moment) refugees being smuggled is a frequent media item.

The real common denominator is, of course, profit. Smuggling is an entrepreneurial activity, economically motivated. Illegality is merely an obstacle to be circumvented. It is a capitalist enterprise centred on financial return on dealing in commodities.

People are readily reduced to being commodities by dint of becoming refugees seeking non-legal routes to asylum.

National borders serve to provide a context for exploitation.

By sea or by air

Lines drawn on maps prove nothing

Crossed by bottom lines

 D. A.