The execution of Saddam Husein marks a milestone as we witness what seems to be the decline and death throes of Western Democracy in our lifetime.
The war in Iraq was fought for oil.
All that blood spilled in the sands of the Middle East to feed the greedy Western appetite for oil.
In Iraq Saddam Hussein did not receive a fair trial.
He was a murderous tyrant, but hanging was no justice.
Our political leaders in our so-called democracy started the murderous and illegal war in Iraq, and yet they prosper and remain unchallenged today.
When Tony Blair and George Bush stand trial for their crimes in Iraq, we hope they will face a fair trial that does not seek vengeance for the sake of vengeance.
In the words of the experienced American journalist Chris Hedges on the Iraq War :
We are losing the war. There has been a steady increase in the assaults carried out by the insurgents against coalition forces, from 20 to 120 a day in the past year. We are an isolated and reviled nation… If we do not confront our hubris and the lies told to justify the killing and the mass destruction carried out in our name in Iraq, if we do not grasp the moral corrosiveness of empire and occupation, if we continue to allow force and violence to be our form of communication, we will not so much destroy dictators like Saddam Hussein as become them.
We must not let force and violence be our form of communication, but instead look elsewhere for examples of real leadership such as Ghandi or Dr Martin Luther.
Remember to wear your Sunglasses in Aberdare this week for the Christmas Sales. There are bright red ’sale’ signs everywhere.
The garish signs enticing people to spend even more money adorn nearly every shop window in our humble little town in the Welsh Valleys.
The fifty per cent Boxing Day Sales started on Christmas Eve in Aberdare.
Aberdare is an eccentric town and so it’s no surprise to see that the Pound Shop in Canon Street are having a sale making many items… fifty pence. If they go any lower, they’ll be paying people to buy from them.
Let’s enjoy One last Christmas Carol for the year, to the tune of Jingle All The Way :
Chorus
Profits here, profits there, profits everywhere
Christmas time is funny we smell money in the air
Advertise, glamorize, fool you with a flair.
Let’s make sure that Christmas is a businesslike affair.
You’re eating up our lies and dashing to the stores
Then all our prices rise and how the money pours
If we don’t keep you drugged and watching your TV
You might see the hypocrisy then where would business be?
Chorus
We’ll tell you how to think and tell you what to try
What to eat and drink and how to live and die
And if our plan succeeds, when Christmas-time is nigh
Instead of seeking love and peace you’ll hunt for gifts to buy
Chorus
Many more Carols and ideas about Christmas at Buy Nothing Christmas
It has been a quiet, muted, almost sombre Christmas in Aberdare this year.
Local independent shops are feeling the pinch as there is less money to spend in the Aberdare economy.
One of the biggest employers in the Valley, Ferrari’s Bakery of Hirwaun, went into administration a few days before Christmas. They employ several hundred people in South Wales, many of them from the northernmost villages of the Cynon Valley.
But in Aberdare Town this week, there is still some Christmas Hwyl. In the photograph, Victor Hipkiss of John Street, Abercwmboi, has been raising money in Aberdare Town through the last few days of bitter cold. Victor was a loyal Aberdare Santa last year, and has been raising money for charity as santa for nine years. Today on Christmas Eve, and a Sunday, he was accompanied in Aberdare by Byron Jenkins of Tynte dressed as a Welsh Dragon. Both are raising money for the Ty Hafan Children’s Hospice in Wales.At Christmas 2006, we should remember there are many less fortunate than ourselves whether they be workers that face an uncertain future, or the children who face serious illness and require hospice care with Charities like Ty Hafan.
Nadolig Llawen, Merry Christmas.
Work continues this week around the clock tower at the site of the old Aberdare Boys’ School.
According to Colin Rees, the clock tower dates back to 1901, it was built five years after the school was built.
The efforts to preserve parts of the school site by former pupils was laudable, but it seemed almost inevitable that they would fail as it would be going against the grain of how things work. Nothing is sacred or too special in a capitalist society. Marx puts it eloquently in Communist Manifesto thus :
Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social relations, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier times. All fixed, fast-frozen relationships, with their train of venerable ideas and opinions are swept away, all new-formed ones become obsolete before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and men at last are forced to face with sober senses the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men
The clock tower, the clock itself and the various buildings have little or no value as part of Aberdare’s architectural heritage, in a capitalist system. Why ? Because the ‘here and now’, the ‘today’ is most important in capitalism. People forget that capitalism is a revolutionary system where standing still is not an option.
American writer Marshall Berman characterises the way people and things are swept aside in his book All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (The Experience Of Modernity) (Verso, London, 1991)
“In this [modern bourgeois] world, stability can only mean entropy, slow death, while our sense of progress and growth is our only way of knowing for sure that we are alive. To say that our society is falling apart is only to say that it is alive and well… Modern men and women must learn to yearn for change: not merely to be open to changes in their personal and social lives, but positively to demand them, actively to seek them and carry them through. They must learn not to long nostalgically for the “fixed, fast-frozen relationships” of the real or fantasized past, but to delight in mobility, to thrive on renewal, to look forward to future developments in their conditions of life and their relations with their fellow men. – Berman pp. 95-96”
In the capitalist system, the destruction of local architectural sites of interest represents expansion, development, growth, progress even. Likewise (to use another recent example) in the capitalist system, destroying a variety of wildlife habitats, simplifying (or polluting) the environment, and imposing massive social costs on society by erecting a few wind turbines is growth, an investment and (in the Alice in Wonderland world of Cardiff Bay) environmental progress.
Capitalism has a grammar or a set of rules that make it work. Economist and historian Doug Dowd refers to the “needs” of capitalism :
The three prime needs of capitalism are (1) the need for expansion, (2) the need for exploitation, and (3) the need for rule by what amounts to an oligarchy.
The story of destruction at the old Aberdare Boys’ School reflects the needs of bourgeois capitalism. There are many more untold stories of destruction. Everyone has a story to tell. “Nothing lasts forever” the capitalist might quip. And the respondent aware of the grammar of capitalism should reply “yes of course, you too”.
A few weeks ago a large metal-framed box appeared in Trecynon, adjacent to the Doctor’s Surgery (see photograph). Staff at Park Surgery and the Local Health Trust claim that this is temporary office space whilst builders extend the Surgery. This was an unconvincing explanation and therefore we decided to investigate further…
The scene of enquiry was observed for a number of days, watched by some one disguised as a variety of local flora (privet hedge, bramble bush etc). No human being was seen going in or out of this metal … ‘office’. None of the local residents questioned saw the metallic structure being erected. It seemed to appear overnight… therein lies a clue to the origin of this structure. It wasn’t put there by humans, it simply fell from the sky.
The photo above has been rotated to illustrate our theory. What does this box remind you of ? It looks very similar to a giant computer case. We believe that this could be a piece of alien consumer electronics, and perhaps a discarded ipod-type device from outer space. Our investigation will remain open. The truth is out there some where in Aberdare.
The Aberdare Blog ‘limousine’ took at least half an hour to de-frost this morning.
It’s brrrrrr….. blinking cold in Aberdare today, near freezing temperatures for most of the day.
We spent a few hours brainstorming for a suitable image and phrase to describe the weather this week, and we came up with “a witch’s tit” and a snapshot of the Aberdare Blog-mobile windscreen.
Dear Reader, we spare no expenses in the quest to bring you only the very best from Aberdare.
Heed the whispered warnings of ghosts, listen to their advice and co-operate with them. They tell us about the past and foretell our future.
In the photograph there is a misty view across the Cynon Valley, from Cwmbach looking down the hill near St Margaret’s Church, towards Aberaman and Aberdare. The photographer has failed to capture a ghost, so instead offers to sketch some notes.
In Cwmbach the first Co-Operative Society in Wales was formed in 1860. On this little Welsh hill there was a magnificent Co-Operative store that lay at the heart of a vibrant Welsh community ‘growing-up’ in the era of industrialisation.
Borrow a Welsh Mam today
Read the rest of this page »
Aberdare’s Mysterious One Legged Builder strikes again.
A tonne of rubbish dumped near the site of the old Chicken Factory at the lower end of Trecynon, in Cynon Valley.
The One Legged Builder leaves something at the scene of each environmental crime.
Crime psychologists claim this is the One Legged Builder’s ’signature’ or calling card.
The One Legged Builder started his crime spree by dropping the odd wooly sock, but has gained confidence in recent attacks and started leaving a welly or work-boot (see photo), along with wheelbarrows full of building waste… some times even dumping the wheelbarrow!
Bryn Pica the local municipal dump in Cynon Valley is located two miles away at the top of Llwydcoed, however, builders are charged for tipping their commercial waste there and the One Legged Builder prefers to dump and let society pay.
In a statement today, local detectives advise members of the public not to approach the One Legged Builder claiming “He is hopping mad. Although he may only have one leg, we do not think he is armless.”
Nearly fifty years ago John Kenneth Galbraith published his book The Affluent Society (1958) about the haves and have-nots of modern capitalist society.
The postcard on the left with images from Cwmbach is a reminder of the differences between the haves and have-nots.
Affluent Society was a book about contrasts in the economy. In Aberdare, the gulf between rich and poor has been transformed into a grotesque chasm in the past three decades of hyper-capitalism under Thatcher and Tony Blair, her ideological heir.
. Read the rest of this page »
Aberdare is to become the Elvis capital of Wales this Friday.
Dave Smith, winner of The Best Welsh Elvis 2005 at Porthcawl Elvis Festival, will be performing live at The Little Theatre, Aberdare on Friday 8th December.
The first show is from 6PM – 8PM and second is 9PM – 11PM.
Tickets are £12.50 adults, £10.00 kids and senior citizens.
Dave will be backed by friends from Merthyr’s finest band, the Paul Black Graceland Band, with the legendary Juan Lozano making a guest appearance on guitar and backing vocals.
Manager Steve Thomas confirmed that Dave Smith has a full head of hair and does not speak Welsh, so our own local King of Comedy Geraint Benney is not about to be de-throned.
Aberdare throbs with installation Art exhibitions.
The Arts Council should take more interest in the Valleys.
A free installation art exhibition was held recently in Whitcombe Street, Aberdare, at the back of Woolworths and nearby Croci’s Cafe.
The name of the exhibition was ‘Labourer fills Skip… Brick by Brick’.
The Artist in question wished to remain anonymous. He spent around two days preparing his exhibit which lasted but a few fleeting hours.
An inspiring exhibition.
Madonna makes a rare visit to Aberdare for a concert at Rock Grounds…
Statue; pink baby with sunglasses; Rhodri Morgan asleep; Lenin; Aberdare Skate Park; Keith Flint sketch; Aberdare National Park Kenya; Ken Livingstone & Arthur Scargill; Max Boyce… Boycezone; Bird with Sunflower; Blue Piggy; Smile; Tit poking your eye; Daft expression; Geraint Benney King of Comedy; Beer, beer, beer, beer, and beery shots; Buy Nothing Day; Liz; Vandana Shiva; Aberdare Africa sign and elephant shot; Teeth; Smile; Expression; Curvy statue; Doug Dowd; Marx and Engels…
but what does all this mean ?
A typing error by a journalist at the Bombay Leader newspaper has sparked mass rioting at the Indian city’s travel agents with fights breaking out over air flights to visit Aberdare this weekend.
A news story was printed claiming that “Ann Clwyd MP will be unveiling her bust at Rock Grounds Aberdare“.
The Bombay journalist tried to translate the news story that Ann Clwyd MP will be unveiling a bust of Keir Hardie the very first Labour MP at Rock Grounds Aberdare on Saturday 2nd December 2006.
