Ranting Rodney and Lock-down Leigh talk about duck wars, the demise of The Archers, corona cure, belligerent police and the loss of one of the world’s Pretty Things.
#theArchers#BBC#coronavirus#police#protests#mallardducksinmepond
Every day, across the world, there are breakthroughs in the battle against parental alienation … but because they are isolated in family courts, behind closed doors or are left to become echoes in the distant corridors of power, it is difficult to pull them all together in one place.
However, that’s what the Preservation Society would like to do, put all the good and positive happenings in one place where people can go to find hope and comfort … and ways to fight their own cases.
Will you help us?
At the end of this article please – in the comments section – put your thoughts about how the fight is going and drop links to breakthrough stories.
Let’s inspire people across the world to keep the fight going by showing that punching at a brick wall will eventually bring it down.
We came across this story recently
“A young boy who believed his father was a ‘monster’ had refused to meet him out of fear.
But after three years of hell, the mother was exposed and ordered to pay her ex-partner 43,000 pounds in compensation.
According to a report from the court in Tel Aviv, the mother was determined to remove her ex from her son’s life by making serious false allegations about sexual abuse.
She fed the child with false information that made him petrified.
In what was described as an important ruling, Judge Erez Shani of the Tel Aviv Family Court said that judges across the world must use all the tools at their disposal, including levying significant fines and reducing visitation time, to prevent parents from falsely reporting violence and sexual abuse with the aim of causing parental alienation.
Parental alienation is considered a form of child abuse, whereby a child becomes estranged from a parent as the result of the psychological manipulation of another parent.
The child’s estrangement may manifest itself as fear, disrespect or hostility toward the parent, and may extend to additional relatives or parties.
The child’s estrangement is disproportionate to any acts or conduct attributable to the alienated parent.
For the past eight years, the father in the Tel Aviv Family Court case has been fighting the mother’s serious false allegations against him, which include portraying him to his son as an alcoholic and a dangerous paedophile.
Finally, after realizing that he had lost the war, because his brainwashed son had been refusing to see him for 3 years and there was no chance of a renewed relationship in the near future, the father filed a lawsuit demanding 300,000 shekel from his ex-wife.
The mother argued that closing the police files did not indicate that her complaints were false.
Judge Erez Shani called the mother’s behaviour outrageous. “When one parent strives to sever the relationship between the minor and the other parent without justification is not only contrary to the minor’s well-being, it is illegal,” he said.
The judge noted that the phenomenon of parents who accuse each other of sexual abuse and violence to cause parental alienation has become commonplace and is dubbed by legal professionals the “paedophile doctrine.”
He called on the courts to use all the tools at their disposal, includes significant fines and reduced visitations for the offending parent, to eliminate this form of child abuse.”
TAGS: #parentalalienation #parents #alienated #children #grandparents #familycourts #politicians #heartbreak #breakthrough
Yep, a tiny brain-dead bug has brought most of the world to its knees and apparently sent a chill through global economies causing markets to cough and splutter in a terrifying state of uncertainty and panic.
And yet corona virus is simply an invisible army of tiny spherical objects made up of particles in an envelope of cold white sticky fat surrounded by preposterously protruding proboscises.
Hmm, wait!
A little greasy fat thing with no ability to empathise with humanity, only there to perpetuate its own species?
Does that somehow remind you of a politician near you?
But not only has this selfish self-serving little virus stuck it to our financial institutions, it also given those dead-eyed politicians the chance to take away so many of our human rights – rights that throughout the centuries we fought rulers and despots to make our own.
The main right many of us have lost is the right to be with our loved ones.
How many of us have had that right taken away, eh?
Yes, in the 21s-century we have literally been ‘bug-gered’.
And now, we have been made a promise … lock-down is easing.
The way to ease lock-down is, of course, to make us continue to stay at home – many of us totally alone – for another three weeks at least.
However, the Government says it thinks the British public are doing rather well in this coronavirus crisis.
Thank you Government! How nice of you!
And so the common man and woman of all ages in the UK, becomes an unsung hero.
Well, the preservation society applauds us all!
But there are two questions we should be shouting from our balconies, banging on about on social media and sending emails about, to anybody we can think of!
One – the incompetence we have had to deal with from our leaderless, rudderless, government while Boris was recuperating from the virus, not in his office – shock horror – but in his country home?
And the other is, why have we been treated with such condescension and disdain?
For instance, why are we constantly told we must stay at home, protect the NHS and protect lives? We are already doing that!
We are not idiots!
Then there is the determination to keep us in a dark place about when lock-down will end. If we aren’t disregarding the rules now, why would we if we knew what the near-ish future holds for us?
I am writing this sitting in the sun on the balcony of my loft apartment in Central Europe.
Remember, Slovakia where we live, is a country that came out of communist rule less than half a century ago … and yet looking at the UK, 2,000km away it looks like it is flying all the flags of a totalitarian state.
It looks like it is using the mushroom method of management to keep us locked up in our homes, more or less in the dark with the klaxon-clarion cries of “Stay in your homes! Protect and Survive!” ringing down the streets.
Here, in Poprad, the beer gardens are open serving the frothy stuff and food, the shops are open … yep, shoe shops, kitchenware emporiums, haberdashers, chemists, bicycle shops, clothes shops, flower shops, booze shops, book shops, record and CD shops, blue-ray shops … almost everything is open.
We are getting back to normal in this little central European enclave of 5m people..
But the question has to be … do we really want get back to what we had before?
That normal life of boom or bust, zero hours contracts, life for the young – the new hippies – couch surfing with massive student debts and not a cat in hell’s chance of settling down, owning a home, having babies and a nice car and two weeks in Benidorm?
Do we really want to go back to rock-bottom savings rates while banks brag that in the last three months in the UK alone, we – while living in the dark like moles in holes – have not been spending our dosh and our enforced savings have gone and swollen their coffers by 49bn UK pounds?
Well, is that what we want to go back to?
And then there have been major benefits caused by this virus that our politicians have been charging us through the nose for for decades ,,,
And that’s allowing our emphysemic world to breath again!
Surely, we have to accept that the destruction of our world is very simply socially driven by our perceived need to live in a relatively stable economy.
And we want to own things, mainly made out of plastic.
Looking at climate change… we have to understand the reasons we keep emitting greenhouse gases.
I read recently, I can’t remember exactly where, that tackling both coronavirus and climate change is much easier if we put a spoke in the wheel of economic activity.
As far as climate change is concerned it would mean us producing at lot less ‘things’.
We would have to re-evaluate how many ‘things’ we actually need.
But one thing is for certain we’d be using less energy and emitting fewer greenhouse gases.
So, we have to look at business – obviously businesses are there only to make a profit.
Coronavirus and climate change make this very difficult which means, because of them both, many of us will be out of work, not able to pay our mortgages and basically lose our homes if there is no benefits system left to support us.
Because of these things we are facing a world-wide economic depression.
And lock-down is bringing depression closer because it is meant to stop people going to work and spreading the disease.
Economist James Meadway wrote, the correct Covid-19 response isn’t a wartime economy – with massive upscaling of production. Rather, we need an “anti-wartime” economy and a massive scaling down of production.
And if we want to be more resilient to pandemics in the future (and to avoid the worst of climate change) we need a system capable of scaling back production in a way that doesn’t mean loss of livelihood.
So, what is the future for us?
Here are four potentials:
State capitalism is the dominant response we are seeing across the world right now.
But Barbarism is likely to be the future if we refuse to extend support to those who get locked out of markets by illness or unemployment.
More people will die.
Barbarism is ultimately an unstable state that ends in ruin.
State socialism means the nationalisation of hospitals and payments to workers are not made to protect markets, but to protect life itself.
All sounds really good here, but sadly this can lead to authoritarianism, exactly that which my adopted country as only recently escaped from.
Mutual aid adopts the protection of life as the guiding principle of our economy. However, in this scenario, the state does not take a defining role. Rather, individuals and small groups begin to organise support and care within their communities. It becomes unwieldy and difficult to control.
Then there is dystopia … state capitalism descended in to barbarism.
Watch the rash of films over the last three decades.
Yet, there is fresh air of future wafting by all our face-masked noses … air pollution over China and Europe improved in the last few weeks..
Over China, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) spotted a significant decrease in pollution between January and February.
Satellite imagery showed a reduction in nitrogen dioxide – caused by cars, power plants and industrial facilities.
The agencies compared the change before the lock-down in Wuhan on 23 January and during the quarantine between 10-25 February, and found concentrations of the gas had fallen significantly. The reduction was first noticed in Wuhan but eventually across the country.
According to calculations done by Stanford University scientist Marshall Burke, the reduction in air pollution may have helped save the lives of 77,000 people in China under the age of five, and over 70.
And we cannot just ignore this … we need to get rid of both enemies of all our states. We must not ignore the fact that the brainless little virus is actually starting to do that for us all by default.
However, if we do ignore this, state capitalism will step back triumphantly and the whole horror story will start all over again.
Anyway, like most people across the world, I’ve been well behaved.
And funnily enough I’m getting used to it.
As Jeremy Clarkeson said recently; “I used to love going to the pub, but now I’m thinking, ‘Why drink standing up when I can stay at home and drink sitting down?’
He also said: “it was my 60th birthday and all year I’d been planning a party to celebrate. In the end though, I spent a day in the sunshine with my children and I could not have been happier.”
Well now, there hangs a tale and a lesson to be learned about how things can change.
TAGS: #coronavirus, #Covid 19, #UK, #Boris, #Captain Tom, #NHS, #politics, #economy, #world, #global, #finance, #Jeremy Clarkeson, #Clarkeson
Yep, is that time of the week again for Leigh and Rodney to send a Postcard to the world from Portugal and Central Europe … Postcard is fast, furious and funny! Any problems with the vid below are due to improvements being made to send AirTV Interational to the next level!
#television #opinion #journalism #broadcasting #coronavirus #news #themedia #5amiscool #5amthenewmidnight
Well, the Los Angeles Times has asked the question – is a new Bob Dylan album on the way?
And yes there is! It’s called Rough and Rowdy Ways and comes out on June 19th.
Most thought the album was going to be called False Prophet – but that is the new single! Listen here:
The ‘cover’ is based on a macabre, Victorian-style hangman and top-hatted skeleton image on his official twitter account.
The eccentric bard of cool’s Twitter account posted a scary illustration of the skeleton with a needle in its hand …
… the skeleton he’s in the vein, so to speak.
The image looks like a pulp novel from the ’50s with the skeleton’s shadow being a corpse-dangling.
The words False Prophet presides over the image. But the tweet asks a cryptic question: “What are you lookin’ at — there’s nothing to see.”
The idea that Dylan’s new studio album was on its way is backed by the recent surprise releases of two new songs.
The first, a 17-minute song, Murder Most Foul.
The second, a melancholy ballad I Contain Multitudes, features Dylan sighing “I got a tell-tale heart like Mr. Poe / Got skeletons in the walls of people you know,” he sings. “I drink to the truth / And the things we said / I’ll drink to the man who shares your bed.”
Well, one way or the other the travelling troubadour is making waves across the world, not really seen since the 60s and the 70s!
So, fingers crossed and another lockdown breakthrough for ol’ Bob?
FALSE PROPHET
Another day that don’t end
Another ship goin’ out
Another day of anger, bitterness, and doubt
I know how it happened
I saw it begin
I opened my heart to the world and the world came in
Hello Mary Lou
Hello Miss Pearl
My fleet-footed guides from the underworld
No stars in the sky shine brighter than you
You girls mean business and I do too
Well I’m the enemy of treason
Enemy of strife
Enemy of the unlived meaningless life
I ain’t no false prophet
I just know what I know
I go where only the lonely can go
I’m first among equals
Second to none
Last of the best
You can bury the rest
Bury ’em naked with their silver and gold
Put them six feet under and pray for their souls
What are you lookin’ at
There’s nothing to see
Just a cool breeze that’s encircling me
Let’s go for a walk in the garden
So far and so wide
We can sit in the shade by the fountain-side
I search the world over
For the Holy Grail
I sing songs of love
I sing songs of betrayal
Don’t care what I drink
Don’t care what I eat
I climbed the mountains of swords on my bare feet
You don’t know me darlin’
You never would guess
I’m nothing like my ghostly appearance would suggest
I ain’t no false prophet
I just said what I said
I’m just here to bring vengeance on somebody’s head
Put out your hand
There’s nothing to hold
Open your mouth
I’ll stuff it with gold
Oh you poor devil look up if you will
The city of God is there on the hill
Hello stranger
A long goodbye
You ruled the land
But so do I
You lost your mule
You got a poison brain
I’ll marry you to a ball and chain
You know darlin’
The kind of life that I live
When your smile meets my smile something’s got to give
I ain’t no false prophet
No I’m nobody’s bride
Can’t remember when I was born
And I forgot when I died
#Bob #dylan #newalbum #skeletonheisinthevein #roughandrowdy #new album #today #tomorrow #skeleton #nudes #sparkle #flash #anne #frank #indiana #jones #fast #cars #fast #food
Well, the Los Angeles Times has asked the question – is a new Bob Dylan album on the way?
And yes there is! It’s called Rough and Rowdy Ways and comes out on June 19th.
Most thought the album was going to be called False Prophet – but that is the new single! Listen here:
The ‘cover’ is based on a macabre, Victorian-style hangman and top-hatted skeleton image on his official twitter account.
The eccentric bard of cool’s Twitter account posted a scary illustration of the skeleton with a needle in its hand …
… the skeleton he’s in the vein, so to speak.
The image looks like a pulp novel from the ’50s with the skeleton’s shadow being a corpse-dangling.
The words False Prophet presides over the image. But the tweet asks a cryptic question: “What are you lookin’ at — there’s nothing to see.”
The idea that Dylan’s new studio album was on its way is backed by the recent surprise releases of two new songs.
The first, a 17-minute song, Murder Most Foul.
The second, a melancholy ballad I Contain Multitudes, features Dylan sighing “I got a tell-tale heart like Mr. Poe / Got skeletons in the walls of people you know,” he sings. “I drink to the truth / And the things we said / I’ll drink to the man who shares your bed.”
Well, one way or the other the travelling troubadour is making waves across the world, not really seen since the 60s and the 70s!
So, fingers crossed and another lockdown breakthrough for ol’ Bob?
#Bob #dylan #newalbum #skeletonheisinthevein #roughandrowdy #new album #today #tomorrow #skeleton #nudes #sparkle #flash #anne #frank #indiana #jones #fast #cars #fast #food
Michael McClure, beat poet and eventual friend to Bob Dylan, said this a while ago in an interview with Rolling Stone: “In December 1965, when we had been bombing Vietnam for eight months, Dylan read Poisoned Wheat, a long anti-war poem of mine.
“Later I gave the copy to a girl who wanted Bob’s fingerprints.”
Sadly, Michael McClure is no longer with us. He died at the age of 87, a good age for a man who rocked and rolled with the best.
Beat poet, playwright, novelist, and documentary film-maker Michael McClure was born in Marysville, Kansas. He gave his first poetry reading in 1955 with Allen Ginsberg.
McClure was the author of many collections of poetry, including Persian Pony (2017), Mephistos and Other Poems (2016), Of Indigo and Saffron (2011), Mysteriosos and Other Poems (2010), Rebel Lions (1991), and The New Book/A Book of Torture (1961).
He performed his poetry with musical collaborators, including composer Terry Riley, and recorded several CDs with Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek.
The first person to play a Dylan album for him, he said, was the poet David Meltzer. “It was Dylan’s first album, and I heard it shortly after it came out in March or April of 1962. I could not understand what David heard in the album. In high school I knew people at the University of Chicago and in New York City who were singing like that — just some hillbilly-intellectual music that I’d gotten bored with earlier. In retrospect, Dylan must have shown a direct creative thrust without the “Art” self-consciousness of other singers.
“In 1965 everyone had been after me to listen to Dylan carefully — to sit down and listen to the words and the music. I absolutely did not want to hear Dylan. I imagined, without admitting it to myself, that Dylan was a threat to poetry — or to my poetry. I sensed that a new mode of poetry, or rebirth of an old one, might replace my mode. In the long run, rock lyrics have sensitized many people to words and brought them to discover poetry.”
Dylan gave him an autoharp early in 1966, he said “It sat on the mantelpiece for six weeks before I picked it up and strummed it. A black and magical autoharp. Afraid of music, I had always felt totally unmusical — except in appreciation. Bob had asked me what instrument I’d like to play (I was writing song lyrics). I said autoharp out of the clear blue though I had no picture of what an autoharp looked like. There must have been people playing them on farms in my Kansas childhood.
Michael McClure, was 87 when he died.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that he died in Oakland, California, after suffering a stroke last year.
A then 22-year-old McClure helped organize the famous Six Gallery beat poetry reading on Oct. 7, 1955, and later read at the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park that launched the Summer of Love in 1967 and at The Band’s “Last Waltz” concert at Winterland in 1976.
“Without the roar of McClure, there would have been no ’60s,” actor Dennis Hopper once said.
TAGS: #Dylan #1965 #Micheal McClure #Beats #Ginsberg #Citylights #Shebelongstome #autoharp #poetry
Another light at the end of the corona tunnel in our ‘small-town’ city at the foot of the High Tatras Mountains in Slovakia…
And this time it is a bar-room light!
Yes our spiritual home is back in business… Nebra, a kooky, little bizarrely decorated bar near the city station which mixes dramatic cocktails capable of blowing your head and your socks off at the same time!
As one of only handful of British exiles in lock-down in this part of the world, the easing of the tension of virus panic-control comes at the right time… being kept away from Poprad’s bars and having to drink at home was definitely turning us into alcoholics!
This is the next phase of re-starting economic life in Slovakia – the re-opening outdoor tourist attractions, restaurants with outdoor seating, and cafés.
The ban on civilian flights to Slovak airports has been prolonged to at least May 14 – more beer for us then!
At the same time though, millions across Europe are returning to a semblance of our former lives.
However, not everybody is happy at this new lease of life, Italian business people for instance are wondering how they’ll survive as restrictions are eased but not fully lifted.
Students are heading back to socially-distanced schools in Germany, but barber shops are facing huge demand for corrective haircuts. Belgians can once again use public transport,and small shops are reopening in Greece and Portugal.
The Italian government said that to fully reopen stores, bars and restaurants it must slow the reproduction rate of the coronavirus to 0.5, meaning that each infected Italian is infecting less than one other person. Currently the figure is around 0.6-0.7 nationally.
Meanwhile, in the UK it is being suggested that workplaces should operate new shift patterns that would see staff in work four days followed by 10 days working from home, a new report recommends.
The study by Imperial College London chemical biologist Professor Keith Willison for the Adam Smith Institute would split workforces into two groups that never overlap.
Sadly, Researchers at Johns Hopkins University say at least 3,656,644 people have been infected since the outbreak began, while at least 256,736 are known to have died.
TAGS: lock-down, bars, Poprad, Slovakia, Germany, France. Spain, Portugal
Welcome back to Postcard from AirTV International where journalist and broadcaster Leigh G Banks and telly guru Rodney Hearth take a look at corona virus myths and facts – they ask why do the banks get richer as we get poorer in a crisis – and is the world really on the edge of financial collapse?
If you enjoyed this debate go to https://www.airtv.international/ for more of Leigh and Rodney and other challenging news, views, music, ideas and theories.
#finance #global finance #corona crash #virus of society #new beginning