Sarat's Pad, home of PANTHER

Dill: “Is this what’s called a propaganda war, Dad?”
Mitch: “No, I should not say that.  This is what’s called wiping excrement off the sole of one’s boot.”  Sarat: Dill

Okey-dokey, chaps and chapesses, consider it wiped.

• People are free. One of the things they are free to do is make money.
• The power of capital may be an evil.  So may the power of communism.
• Unchecked, unaccountable power is the enemy
• Power corrupts not only its holders but those over whom it is exercised, making them driven by fear, distorting their capacity to be normal human beings exercising their hearts and minds to the fullest, turning them into zombies to whom only Might is Right.
• The only legitimate use of power is to keep it from those who most yearn for it. 
• Free speech, transparency and individual sovereignty block the path to Auschwitz and the Gulag Archipelago equally.  They are all that block that road.
• These principles are no longer upheld in this country, by government, by vocal and influential lobbyists, by a proportion of intimidated citizens who wish to drag others down to their level.
• This is no longer a free country.
• There have been and are concerted assaults on the capacity of people to stand on their own two feet.  These have been and are intended to keep people infantile, dependent, whining, afraid and to instil hatred of liberty. 
• The rot is too deeply entrenched to be resolved other than by revolution.
• That revolution may be, and I hope that it is, Velvet, as carried through by Vaclav Havel, but revolution there has to be.

If you don't know the movie, Ninotchka was an uptight anal little comrade who was sent to Paris on a mission and loosened up.  Neither I nor my family was ever uptight or anal, representing as we did and do a British Left, home of the iconoclast, of a hundred disparate notions on everything.  One could also call it Alice in Trotland.  Alice in Trotland, you will see, is vulnerable.  Comrade Alice, however, finds much on which to munch.  It should be inserted into the Trot manual that, before you start to knock around a supposed stupid upper-class Tory tart who doesn't know her arse from her elbow, you should take the precaution of checking that she's not a daughter (niece to be exact - my uncle was in the International Brigades) of the Communist Party. 

“I’m just a guy,” said Cat, not that other Cat of Bronx renown, but the Chief Illuminatus himself, the mastermind behind the masterminds. He blew a smoke-ring to prove it.
 “Just call me Britannia,” said Britannia. “Darling, I just want you to meet some other guys. A house-party, darling. Terribly comme il faut.”
 This is not necessarily the best way to address Americans, even Anglo-Americans, but even cold hard men of steel can be suckers for girls with green eyes.
 “Anyone I know?” asked Cat.
 “Bring your friends!”
 “I have friends?”
 “I have friends. Some of them are in the SAS. Some of them are in the stately homes of England. Some of them are in the TUC. Some on them are on sink estates. Some of them are on the streets. There are many people who do not like what is happening to this country.”
 “But they’re not – but they weren’t – together, huh? Divide and rule!”
 “Exactly.”
 “What is happening in this country?”
 “It’s free space. They are trying to eradicate it. Who stands if England fall?”
 “That is not a good question to ask an American.”
 “You’re not a real American.”
 “God save the Queen! The minutiae?”
 “After.”
 “Do I know the names of your friends?”
 “Some of them. I expect so.”   The Matter of Britain

Just call me the girl in the red dress, the one who does not do cowards, liars, thieves, traitors and slime of any kind - the sanctimonious, the self-righteous, the control-freak, the hypocrite, the fawner, the crawler, the slave. 

Lunatics who cannot see the rest of the human races as equals, but only as property at their disposal, who think no-one else may have a mind of his or her own, may express his or her own thoughts, not those the nutcases think to 'allow', are boring. 

I will not tolerate the destruction of liberty.  The flag I raise is flaming scarlet.  I have no interest in accommodation or appeasement.  I do not do kneeling. I do not do cowering.  Labour was not founded on tugging forelocks and deference to entrenched power.

The original Sarat's Pad is here, a piece of fiction which probably says all that needs to be said about speaking one's mind to those with power, alternative versions of history and one or two other salient issues - nationalism, workers' democracy...

The mood of this site is changing all the time.  Its core does not change.  That core is rejection of those who assume rights over the hearts, minds and bodies of others.  Right now that mood is a declaration of total war on the enemies of liberty.

The narrow, the vindictive, the ignorant, the irrational, the leaden, the fascist, the evil  do not stop me exploring reality, consciousness, quantum theory, love, gender, Marx and indeed anything else, exploring what it is to be human.  The Anile Heir - Sarat - is the primary vehicle in which I do these things, the story of a brash young Fidubi radical who happens to be the heir to the throne of the Republic of Kadun, currently ruled by the Cult of Death, a juicy mixture of conservative religion, Nazism and Stalinism.

“It cannot be a question,” said Mitch, “of changing just one thing or indeed of many persons working separately.  All of us have tried that, the unions, my grandfather setting up hospitals.  It makes not one whit of difference to the whole. There are lines you do not cross.  Many people live decent lives.  So long as they do not challenge the indecent.  Not least the assistance of people like me enables some semblance of civilization to prevail in the country.  In the cities people are buried alive!  They think  that tomb is poverty and lack of education.  I say that tomb is there if you are me.  I just get to stand upright.  There is a granite slab above our heads and its name is infrastructure. You make people better and you send them home to damp rat-infested tenements.  You shorten their working-hours but they can barely afford to eat, let alone engage in what the south called leisure-time activities.  And the food is crap anyhow.  I hold there is that which is not negotiable, over which there is no choice.  What Fidubi landlord asserts his right to let property unfit for habitation?  Everything must change, what and how people think, whether they respect all people. Entrenched power shifts only with revolution, preferably a revolution in thinking. The Anile Heir 2

There is a time to mourn, a time to scream, a time to weep.  All these things I owe my darling Maya.  Most of all I owe the refusal of defeat.  They have changed nothing.  They have won nothing.   Death does not sit on the Anile throne!  To the offal responsible for today’s devastation, to the vermin in the City who back them, to the snivelling animals who cower before them, I say, you can create nothing, but only destroy.  Today you leave a trail of wrecked and broken lives.  That you call a victory.  Thus you show the world your impotence. You cannot win.  You will never win.  This I pledge to Kadun.  This I pledge to Maya.

Mitch caught at the airport by the meedjah raised his hand in salute.
“We do not do cowering.”
“You yourself have suffered terrible loss.  How is Sarat feeling?”
It’s like robots, thought Karula.  They are not bad people.  They have no self-awareness. 

Sarat arrived back and stared at the  flowers carpeting the people-space,   

Sarat: 'this most terrible of days'

I originate firmly on the other side of the tracks;  my ancestors were socialist before there was a Labour Party.  The family is 'Labour-posh': we came up on the Left-hand side, via public service, having brains in the days when Labour thought people with brains should be cultivated not destroyed.

The one word on my scarlet standard is 'reality'.  Our government assaults reality.  The stupid must be considered the intelligent, the illiterate gifted writers, the nutcase whose imaginary overlord demands the beating up of women or the murder of apostates must be treated with reverence.  Several generations now have been taught they need not tolerate criticism of themsevles, their behaviour, their limited abilities.  that no-one may offend them and their ridiculous beliefs which exist only in their heads.  The result of this is the hegemony of the stupid, the hysterical, the delusional, to whom the rest of us must submit. They are the death of boldness, reason, originality, beauty, goodness, truth and love; all decency, all morality must submit to the thug for whom only Might is Right. 

They expect me to kneel, bow my head, accept the collar around my neck, promise Master I shall burn my own book because I understand it's wrong to say anything he doesn't like.  Should I also ask how many other books he would like burned? 

“These people are such crap!” said Dill.
Mitch looked about to burst with fatherly pride  Sarat: Dill, Jaizal and a couple of videos

Qine:  Right, lads, a number of you have said nice things about democracy but I want to say that's not enough and you prove it.  It doesn't matter a hoot to the likes of you how a country's run.  Big capitalists, rich. Company has a bad year, men laid off.  I'm not disputing - I'd be a fool to dispute - you have a nice little democracy, there's unemployment pay, there's sickness, housing, nobody starves, nobody's thrown on the street, and it's all set at proper levels.  What an unemployed working man gets a week in Zur, riches in Azt, keep a family for a month.  But the directors aren't touched, are they, the owners.  And who decides, maybe things are looking up, maybe we can 'afford' to give folk their work back?  I've run this by folk  in the south and they say, maybe they've got better paid jobs elsewhere, maybe they've started their own businesses, and there's a lot there, some I agree with, some not.  Supposing the job a man's lost is near his home and he has to travel more to get to another one.  That's a valid point, but then again he's still at the mercy of the bosses, he can't have things how he wants, and not everyone's got the get up and go to start up on his own.  I say a man has a right to a decent job with a fair day's pay, without having to cross the country for it, and I hope no-one disputes there's work enough to be done in Kadun, if only there were those who'd pay for it. Of course there's no profit in public health..
So what I'm talking about here is democracy for the workers, putting things in their hands to do what needs to be done.  I have to agree with the point Mitch made earlier - though maybe he learned it from me at that.  Those of us who live in Kadun do have a habit of seeing things differently.  I don't think Zur needs its drainage seeing to!  So where does that get us

It is entirely possible to have a State funeral without God.

Sarat walked through the House of Silence and took the stand.  Mel took the stand in Zur, Cho in Maona-pri.  Sarat will speak for us all.

Star turn.  Culmination.

Dear people, I thank you.  I shall not say in my worst dreams I never imagined but of course the reality.  Some have called us heedless, foolhardy.  We pay then for our folly?  We do not skulk, cringe before Death the Great Master – “ The contempt in his voice was palpable.   “And so some will say is this devastation we experience, is this ceremonial we conduct, not in obedience, obeisance to Death.”  Oh Sarat, breathed Mitch.  “We are human.  To be human is to love.  We grieve because we love, but love must conquer our grief, our fear...Death has no power over us. 

“‘They came, the skull-faces, but we laughed.’  This Narulis wrote in his Journal – “  When a very large number of people gasp, it makes a noise, however quietly they try to do it.  Sarat continued.  This I say to you today.  They cannot destroy laughter.  Today we feel far from it, I perhaps most of all, but all sorrow must pass. 

Sarat: 'this most terrible of days'

The one with green fronds is the heir.  Then the Cult released its video and Mitch’s madness was forgotten.  Everyone with half a brain knew the exact taunt.  Are you still laughing, Sarat?  Sarat embracing Maya who turned into Death at his touch.  Sarat placing Death on the Anile Throne and kissing his hand.  Sarat making love to Death. 

Not completely surprisingly, no-one wanted to show it to him.
“They have produced something past obscene,” said Faun.  “We don’t think you should see it, but you must see it.”
Sarat watched it.  Sarat said absolutely nothing. 
At length, he said, “Thank you.”  It was rather clearly a dismissal.
If I have any sense, thought Faun, I take my leave.  I never had any sense.
“So?”  Bloody stupid thing to say.
“Back to the cutting-room?”

A second video duly appeared.  The Anile throne shimmered in ethereal light.  Death approached it clearly wounded, repelled by the light, but nonetheless sat and crumbled to dust.  Sarat appeared with a small vacuum cleaner and sucked up the crumbs, grumbling to himself about having to clean up the mess other people leave behind them.  He sat and remarked, with a good deal of satisfaction, “This is my chair.”  But suddenly he was surrounded by a pack of Deaths, all leering and generally trying to be terrifying.  He settled back in the chair, yawned, and turned the vacuum cleaner on them.  Their black robes blew up over their skulls and they groped blindly and tried to pull them down over their bony knees.  Sarat laughed and adjusted the controls, sucked them all into oblivion. 

Sarat: Dill, Jaizal and a couple of videos

Yup, I'm still laughing at the puke.