On Libya

Oh just look! The papers say,
David Cameron leads the way,
in heading to the Middle East
to try and quell that fearsome beast.

But

what is it he's actually doing?
Who on earth could he be wooing?
And what ends is he pursuing?
While the fighting still is brewing?

Off he trots to pave the way
for the weapons men who pay,
to have their arms contracts renewed.
They are nothing if not shrewd.

So what message is he showing?
While atrocities are growing,
and a bloody wind is blowing,
and the people's blood is flowing,

dying from the tanks and bombers
as the arms trade pursues commerce.
For these choppers and these guns
are brought in from other lands.

British arms firms had their hand in
planes, that soldiers d'rather land in
other realms, than bomb those standing
in the squares for change demanding.

Not forgetting France and Russia,
and the others who sell Libya
all the weapons that it needs
to kill its people in the streets.

Now  the Colonel has grown madder,
and the genocide grows sadder.
Paths to peace are looking harder.
Their's the bloodiest intifada.

But the arms firms have no let up
in protecting contracts set up
when dictators ruled the day.
Turning blind eyes once they pay.

I just hope the tide is turning,
and the city soon stops burning.
But Gaddafi isnt learning.
Freedom is what they are yearning.


Amnesty: Stop global arms sales to Libya
Russian arms transfers to North Africa: Fuelling an arms race?
Daily Mail: It is not wrong to sell arms, says David Cameron as he defends sale of weapons to Middle East

Revolutionary Wave

A wind of change is blowing through the desert streets,
and with it many voices can be heard,
but many voices also have been silenced,
gun-downed in those self same squares where once they shopped for ornaments or fruit,
by those whose job was, apparently, to protect them.

In nearby alleys, where moonlit lovers once strolled,
lie bloody injured, tended for by strangers and friends.
Is blood the only currency for change?
Is that the only way to turn a system,
when too much power is focused in one place?

How longsome have these voices been unheard?
That speak up now amidst the sound of a dozen civil wars?
What little we knew of the anger against their own leaders?
Presidents that pay with people's lives to cling to power.
That bring forth the sons and daughters as soldiers,
to look down the barrel of a gun at their sisters and uncles and mothers and brothers.

What did we know a month ago of the fuel that feeds this flame?
of the people's righteous ire? The injustice each one felt?
The Teacher, the Lawyer, the Grocer, the Nurse.
What was their tale, their own personal story?
That launched them in their millions onto the streets.
United by the internet with a half a billion other voices,
to ride the revolutionary wave.

And where to, will this flame burn, as burn it must?
How long and how intense, and to what end?
We have no thought of what will follow after,
for better or for worse no one can say.
I just hope that transition is a short one,
and few let be the lives that will be lost.
20th Feb 2011