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April 29, 2005
The Ballad of the Halifax Slasher
Those of you who made it to the launch of SAJ2 last week will have heard Tim Chapman, author of "The Haunts of the Halifax Slasher" in the new Journal, read out this poem. Here it is again for those who couldn't make it, or were there and couldn't hear it!
The Ballad of the Halifax Slasher
a found poem by Tim Chapman, adapted from headlines in the Halifax Daily Courier and Guardian,17 November - 5 December 1938
Girls' struggle with assailant in dark local lane.
Theory of hatchet or mallet.
Head wounds which required stitches;
Brutal attack at Ripponden.
Police all-night patrol of district.
Womenfolk's uneasiness.
Mystery of night attack
on young woman in Halifax street.
Wrist wound from sharp instrument;
Put her arm up to ward off blow.
Incident near gas lamp.
£10 police reward for arrest
of Halifax Slasher.
Attack on man last night;
Caretaker's hand and head cut.
School of Art guarded by police;
Precautions taken for safety.
Two Slashers at work in district?
Time factor in last night's attacks:
Three at Halifax and one at Elland.
Special plans of police.
Halifax Slasher strikes
in darkness of early morning.
Police increase reward to £25.
Who is shielding the terror man?
Identity must be guessed
by someone.
Thin attendance at prize distribution;
Discord of Slasher affects music event.
Scotland Yard called in to help;
County, Bradford, Huddersfield
police co-operating.
Two more attacks on women last evening;
The first victim slashed again.
The Slasher: latest!
Danger of violence to innocent persons.
Hand over any suspects to the police.
Part of the cordon.
Outside the police station.
She went prepared.
With armlets and staff.
Elland mackintosh clue:
Owner traced by county police.
Halifax lull after Scotland Yard help;
No arrest yet made.
A Hull reflex:
Slasher scare affects fish shop trade.
No slashing attack yesterday - official.
Chief constable on misleading reports:
All incidents not associated with Slasher.
Protection for voters at tonight's polls.
Carry on Halifax!
The slashing scare is over.
Police chief's emphatic statement:
Never any real danger
to general public.
Court sequel expected tomorrow.
Elland man's alleged statement:
"I cut myself."
Remarkable evidence in mischief charge.
Halifax back to normal;
Public laughs off Slasher scare.
Is reward still open?
Posted by Mark at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)
SAJ Paypal problems fixed
Thanks to all of you who have ordered SAJ2 via the web site. There have been some problems with the Paypal ordering service over the past few days, compounded by computer problems – a dead screen which has made coding, and spelling, more or less impossible! – at SA HQ.
I've now fixed the Paypal issue, so hopefully the ordering process should be a smooth one once again.
Copies of SAJ2 will be making their way into select London book shops early next week, with a wider rollout to follow. If you live outside of London, please ask for SAJ at your local independent book seller.
Thanks
Mark
Posted by Mark at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2005
Savants of the sea engulfed by politics
By Tom Vater
Photographs by Aroon Thaewchatturat
"I was taking 12 tourists to a coral reef. Suddenly the water level dropped. I shouted for everyone to get on board. I knew something was really wrong. I raced across the bay, when suddenly, the water dropped to nothing, spinning the boat madly until it was stuck in the sand, on the bottom of the ocean, but there was no ocean. I told the tourists to run, and then the water came back."
- Sarang, a Moken sea gypsy
KO SURIN, Thailand - The Moken sea gypsies, a small indigenous fishing community in Thailand, relied on their deep knowledge of the sea to save the lives of tourists and locals when the giant tsunami that devastated coastal communities in South Asia swept across their islands. Yet the Moken are facing stark choices in the aftermath of the catastrophe, with the Thai government now pursuing them to consider citizenship.
The Moken, animist, nomadic boat dwellers, have been sailing the Andaman Sea for centuries. They make their homes among the nearly 800 islands scattered along the sea off Myanmar. The Moken are ethnically separate from people in Thailand or Myanmar, with their own culture, language and way of living....
Read the rest at Asia Times Online
Posted by Mark at 04:46 PM | Comments (0)
SAJ2 launch
Thanks to all of you who made it to the SAJ2 launch on Friday last. It was a veritable maelstrom of great people, sights and sounds. Photos of the night by Cathy Ward are up here. If anyone has any more, please let me know.
There was live music from Disinformation vs The Tone Generators (featuring members of Stella Maris Drone Orchestra & Morgen und Nite), accompanying the short film Avebury, by Nic Kemp. A blissful acoustic improv freakout was provided by Little Wet Horse, while Tim Chapman read his cutup composition The Ballad of the Halifax Slasher, comprised of newspaper headlines about the incident.
There were screenings of Maya Deren's Divine Horsemen (voodoo ceremonies from Haiti, 1947-51) and Bill Morrison's Decasia, though the most questions were asked about the 1963 Russian fantasy Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors. A screening of this and some other Russian fantasy films from the period may be arranged at the Horse Hospital for a future date.
Strange sounds were provided throughout the night by Kosmische DJs Leo Avanti, Jim Backhaus and Pete Woodhead.
A big thanks to the Horse Hospital for hosting it, and to everyone who stopped by,
Mark
Posted by Mark at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2005
Satanic publisher busted!
Agh, they've got one of us!!!
From the (London) Metro, 21 Apr 2005, via Rachel Carthy:
MOLDOVA: Police discovered human remains and a Satanic altar when they raided the home of the richest man in the country. Officers made the grisly find after a tip-off that Valeriu Zelineschi had an illegal stash of weapons at his mansion in the capital city, Chisinau. Instead, they discovered symbols used in devil worship, human bones and what they called 'a sort of laboratory'.
Police said: 'During questioning, Zelineschi told us that he was Satan's messenger chosen to announce his arrival on Earth, and demands he be addressed as The Master of the Dark.' The multi-millionaire made his fortune from newspaper publishing.
Posted by Mark at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2005
Wet ones
If there's one person I trust to keep me informed of what matters to young people today - as well as sundry other matters of a more ecclesiastical nature - it has to be Blather's Barry Kavanagh.
Here he informs us of the latest youth music scene that's wiping the Grime from inner city streets. Hey, even Kate Moose is doing it.
Get wet over at Blather
Posted by Mark at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)
More from Lapland
More from Dave Walsh in Lapland
"Spooky and bizarre movies from the Finnish night. We're calling it 'The Nellim Noise Project'."
Greenpeace Sami Forest Project
Posted by Mark at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)
SMDO take Dalston
Ambientdoomkrautraga merchants Stella Maris Drone Orchestra take their sound on a gruelling two day tour of Dalston:
Thursday 28 April - Supporting Cul de Sac at Bardens (at 38-44 Stoke Newington Road, London N16 7XJ)
Friday 29 April - Klinker with Andy Diagram
(at the Sussex Pub, 107A Culford Rd, London N1)
More info at the band's web site where you can also download some sample tracks.
Posted by Mark at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2005
THOUSANDS OF "SATANIC SAINTS" TO BE SHOT
From Mark Valentine
The Government has ordered the killing of at least one in ten British cormorants, in defiance of its own scientists’ advice, to appease anglers and fish farms who say the dark bird is stealing too much of their quarry. Amongst the arguments advanced by anglers for the cull were that "in the Bible, cormorants are described as an abomination, so we have God on our side!" and "the cormorant does not respect fishing club boundaries".
The cormorant, black, sleek and sharp-winged, has long been seen as sinister and free-spirited, and identified with the occult. Milton’s Satan, in Paradise Lost, is depicted as a cormorant when he perches upon the Tree of Life to contemplate Eden. Pagan author Llewelyn Powys was a keen votary of the bird, and in his Glory of Life (1938) memorably evoked a colony upon the Dorset shore: "The damp white cliffs above the deserted sea-washed beaches are set with small images, images of satanic saints, each in its Parian niche...cormorants roosting, cormorants dozing in the twilight, cormorants dreaming of diving feats through dark waters in the wake of white flickering fish..."
Under the announcement, sneaked out last week, at least 1,800 and up to 3,000 of the cormorants, normally protected by wildlife laws, can be shot each year: the total population is currently only 17,000. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is strongly opposed to the move, and believes more humane deterrents against cormorants around inland fishing sites have not been properly tried.
If you’d like to defend one of Britain’s ancient totemic birds, write to Fisheries Minister Ben Bradshaw to object, and invoke Freedom of Information laws to demand to see why he over-ruled his own scientific advisers and ordered the mass shooting (nothing to do with anglers’ votes, presumably...).
Footnotes
The RSPB concerns are summarised briefly here
Contact Ben Bradshaw here
The anglers’ arguments are set out here here, together with pictures of dead cormorants.
Posted by Mark at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2005
Greenpeace under sonic attack in Lapland!!
From Dave Walsh
April 16, 2005
Dangerous Doings From Metsähallitus' "Anti-Terror-Info-Camp"
A few days ago, we mentioned that members of Metsähallitus "Anti-Terror-Info Center" has started using air-raid sirens to keep our activists from sleeping. Their behaviour even extended to waving flaming crucifixes at us in the small hours of the night. Every night a variety of horns, whistles and sirens are blasted, in an effort to keep us awake. A car stereo has been used to play one song over and over again, at a high volume, and every night they bang an old steel oil-drum with sticks or a crowbar.
Last night - the night of Friday-Saturday - it got even worse. A forestry-machine (a combined harvester and log transporter) was driven right into the Forest Rescue Station area, right beside the famous red Greenpeace kota (tent) and the living containers.
Posted by Mark at 02:38 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2005
Friday 22 April: Strange Attractor Journal TWO
Posted by Mark at 08:06 AM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2005
Man From Uranus micro-tour: 23 April 2005
The Man From Uranus, with guests Adrian Bronson (cello, keyboards and electronics) and Mark Pilkington (fx, mixer and Mountvernotron) will be hurtling through London at the speed of analogue sound on Saturnday 23 April 2005.
MFU play three gigs of wild and hairy synthodelic psych-jazz, all mixed up with psychotropic film and tape loops:
6pm: East Room of the Tate Moderne (Admission Free): Free tickets for the MFU show at the Tate can be reserved by calling Tate ticketing.0207 887 3959. And you must be 15-24 to come.
11pm: 291 Gallery, Hackney (Admission £12 [phew])
1am-3am: Rave in North London (Admission £5) directions to be announced nearer the time)
Posted by Mark at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2005
The Sohemian Society: 'Nobs, Snobs and Toms'
The Sohemians present
John Branston, SAJ2 contributor and friend of notorious postwar black-marketeer and Soho 'pay-to-see' strip-joint owner, the late Michael Nelson, relates the choicest escapades from Mickey's kiss-and-tell 'Captain Blossom' memoirs. Also recollections of Soho prostitution and drinking dens and scandalous first hand literary anecdotes recalling the 'Horizon' years and pre-war Soho haunts of the 1920s. (Map of interwar 'Black Mile' clubland distributed as a souvenir.)
Thursday 21 April, from 7pm
At: The Wheatsheaf Public House
25 Rathbone Place, North Soho
London W1
close to Charlotte Street and Oxford Street
nearest tube: Tottenham Court Road
Entrance: £5 (students:half price)
Posted by Mark at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2005
MFU: All my Friends are Dead de-tour
And watch out for a whirlwind mini-tour of London on 23 April: Three gigs featuring Man From Uranus with guests Adrian Bronson and Mark Pilkington. More to follow...
Posted by Mark at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)