wee beautiful pict

new fascism in the Uk, brewed from: dead roots, rotten christianity and fag ends of the british empire

Lionheart - and others like him are brewing up! Their brew up has been going on for a while now - a new way of making fascism connectable among the british public - and they reckon they have cracked it: present it as a kind of christian revival.

They are the thin end of an underground wedge in Britain - similar to a certain 1930s fascist movement proved to be across europe.  And like the cheerleaders of this earlier movement, new adherents in the 00s are learning the old magic of weaving: national mythic roots + modern colonial christianity + social justice, into a methodology that is coherent and intelligent.. enough anyway, to distill into an integrated SOLUTION. 

while liberals and fundamentalists are huffing and toughing it out in the boxing ring of 'creationism' - these guys are planning to buy the boxing ring

Now, this turns it into a toxic strain of fascism which is far more immune to attack than it was in late 20thC.  As their photo suggests: it can't be dismissed merely as jingoism, thuggism and racism.  It has taken time to get here: but it has finally refound the ingredients again and woven it's new story with it. And, while liberals and fundamentalists are huffing and toughing it out in the boxing ring of 'creationism' - these guys are planning to buy the boxing ring.

Where are the counter voices and storytellers in the popular public space?: TV radio, news;  where are the sane voices with stories at Britains grassroots, estates and streets and shop corners - that carry the BEST of the christian story can be lived out here in these hidden places - and draw from the best of our juicy roots/myths & see globalisation as an opportunity for justice- into a health drink of all 3 rather than take the worst from these 3 ingredients and mix them into a brew consisting of: religious narcissism, scapegoat mechanism and the royal velvet glove of empire... mmm yummy! get that down yer!!! 

..........it's awfy silent! why?

Neither christian fundamentalism (because it shares its love of empire's velvet glove) nor christian liberalism (because it has mistakenly broken covenant with working class/poor/land by swallowing the myth of separation as a 'middle class') seems to have the resources here in the uk to stand up and testify to a robust alternative in public space at the moment -

and be heard by people of work, poverty and land

not as a movement anyway! 

Only wee stories from the grassroots can crack empires!

So let us call out God's hidden army of post-liberals (bruegemann meets walter wink meets bonhoeffer meets ethel macdonald, the glaswegian anti-fascist working-class lass who became voice of anarchist barcelona) people with jesus' cahoneys (;-) who have a story tae tell AT BRITAIN'S ROOTS!  

To be encouraged to get out there and with imagination and humour tell their story, with comedy set to fun, and disrupters set to stun!

There are thousands of people at the roots of this country working away loving and caring and healing and wrestling their back yards into health and covenanted to the streets of their cities like these all over the uk.

This public space is theirs too, in these daily mediated publics of tv radio and news- where now are their stories -let them come forth, like milk and honey up out of the cracks of britain's ground..

Like the story of David and Goliath; only wee stories from the grassroots can crack empires - and bring down bullies, and unmask the religious garb of power, and release a good dose of fresh humanising healing air into public space; a space increasingly suffocating in a fog of very crap stories about God, land and people.

Brits need courage to stand up to new empires in a new age, not brew up old ones from previous one -bravehearts to break down old walls, not lionhearts constructing new ones.

Boycott Scotland? I'm McSpartacus (re-edit 2)

The author of www.boycottscotland.com - which encourages 

U.S. citizens to do everything short of haggis and

shortbread burnings on the Whitehouse lawn, in response

to the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, may not have expected such a blistering 

response.  But the masked boycotter has stung something in scotland.  

Well, stung enough to unleash a stream of caledonian-style 'reposte' 

among it's twitter constituency anyway. 

From the witty:

 'aye, does that mean yer goin tae stop using yer TV's, bridges, 

tarmac, phones' 

to the devastating:

'ooh let me see now: US torturing =good, Scots compassion =bad' 

to the playful: 

'nae mair munching oan yer freedom fries and supersized burgers at 

mac'donalds’

to classics such as: 

‘..daft c**nts n bawbags and ...we'll boycott yer fat mamma’   

(for more hilarious examples: search #boycottscotland on twitter).

The most celebrated reposte came out of Glasgow in the form

of a website www.boycottscotland.co.uk, by local web developer

Aaron Bassett.   It apes the original in it's introduction and

 then skillfully morphs parody into absurdity- and is now, 

currently on a retweet roll, as I write this.   

 what can we learn from this I wonder?

global meltdown: what's in 'your' urban saint survival toolkit?

Feature Post: In this Scotland's 'Year of homecoming'  I'm using me blog to look at what's a happening around a scotland coming out of the mists of an auld world - a world where christianity was in bed with empire - into raging economic meltdown (thaw?).  Can this christianity be rehabilitated in time? it has a crackin story! can it be unfrozen from its entombment to stand before world empires in its robes of comedy and humanity?  

To kick off, here are 3 things we lost under the snow that are erupting all over the world right as acts of defiance and tools of resistance to empire in a global age:   1. outrageous prayer, 2.  gift-economy and 3. imaginative comic non-violent guerilla action... ring any bells with an ancient near east movement sparked off by a young activist called Jesus and brutally put down by the empire of their day?  check it oot!..

global meltdown: abyss opening or heaven coming down?

A series of ecological, economic and political shocks are rocking the world.    

Although the current crises are dreadful - they may be waking many up to the fact that 'empire' (economic or otherwise) may not be an inevitable 'way' of securing our future as we used to think - and that this reality shock could open up some amazing possibilites.