Sunday 14 September 2008

All You Need Is Love



Paul McCartney has been threatened with 'sacrifice operatives' if he performs in a concert in Israel as part of that country's 60th anniversary celebrations.


The threat was made by Omar Bakri Muhammad, an Islamist militant leader and activist:






http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/61355/We-ll-kill-Sir-Paul-if-he-plays-Israel


This story reminded me of a poem I read for the first time recently, by W.H. Auden. Auden is better known for writing Funeral Blues, the poem later used in the movie Four Weddings & A Funeral ("Stop All The Clocks....").

Auden wrote this piece in August 1968 (actually the poem's title), and refers to the communist invasion of Czechoslovakia that month, but it could easily have been written about Bakri:

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.

About a subjugated plain,
Among it's desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.

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