Gaza ceasefire deal reached by Israel and Hamas brings hope.

I welcome the news of a  prospective  ceasefire deal  between Israel and Hamas  which  Qatar announced announced late on Wednesday evening, It is of enormous relief but it has not yet been formally agreed, but I'm also saddened  that it's  tragically taken 15 months of mass murder and total devastation against  2.1 million Palestinian women, men and children in Gaza  to  get to  this  stage.

And while it brings much  needed hope.in  Gaza deaths  continue to  mount up  and  the deal is still  a very  fragile one, with  nothing to indicate any new level of trust between Israel and Hamas, but they have  at  least agreed  at the  moment to a deal which could halt the war in Gaza and see the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, the US and mediators Qatar have said,

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani said the agreement would come into effect on Sunday so long as it was approved by the Israeli cabinet.  

According to the agreement, Hamas will release 33 hostages in the first phase, spanning six weeks, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners. Implementation of the agreement will begin on Sunday, Jan. 19. The details of the second and third phases will be announced after the completion of the first phase of the agreement.

US President Joe Biden said it would "halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much needed-humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, and reunite the hostages with their families".  

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the deal's final details were still being worked on, but he thanked Biden for "promoting" it. Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya said it was the result of Palestinian "resilience". 

The deal will hopefully bring a desperately needed pause in Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip  and provide relief to  those  who  have endured  unimaginable  suffering. A genocide that has shattered  all  bounds  of  human decency, setting record  levels  of  brutality,crimes  against  humanity, with  the  most  children maimed  and killed, the  most healthcare  workers targeted, and the most hospitals destroyed in modern  history.,  

The world will now see the magnitude of Israel’s criminal and genocidal aggression. It will see the price of the collective failure to stop a genocide. More than 46,000 people have lost their lives and another 110,000 have been injured. Hospitals and schools in Gaza have been reduced to rubble. Families have been forced to face unbearable cold, hunger and despair. In just the past few days, 8 infants have died from the cold. 

For too long, children have witnessed horrors no child should have to see. Girls have been uniquely impacted by this crisis. When food is scarce, they are often last to eat. Many girls are using small pieces of tent fabric as a poor substitute for period products. And when schools finally reopen, girls are less likely to re-enroll.  

In  the  words of Stephen Flynn MP: "The collective punishment of the Palestinian people will not be forgotten by history.. "All those who sat silent, who encouraged, and who armed the extremists in the Israeli government will be judged by history too".

But this deal at least offers hope and an end to months of appalling violence. Despite news of a ceasefire, the danger is far from over. Children in Gaza are not safe yet. Famine is looming. Gaza is facing a catastrophic hunger crisis, with children dying of starvation, dehydration and disease. The youngest children have known nothing but hunger, fear, and destruction.

Now let the journey of healing begin, starting with allowing the burying of  the  dead, allowing the Palestinian people ro  attending  to rheir wounded, providing for basic human needs and rebuilding livelihoods. The world must not fail the Palestnian  people again.

This ceasefire deal must herald a  new era of justice and safety for Palestinians.While this ceasefire agreement is devastatingly overdue, with many tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who were needlessly killed in the months before a deal was reached, today is an historic day. I continue to  stand with the Palestinian in Gaza and across the world as they take to the streets to celebrate. 

Even on the last night and day before the announcement, around seventy people were killed and hundreds injured as Israel escalated its bombing. Among those murdered in the final hours before the deal was journalist Ahmed Hisham - the nephew of Khaled 'Grandpa' Nabhan who was killed in an Israeli bombing a year after his granddaughter Reem, as Israel continued until the last moment the targeted murder of more than two hundred Palestinian journalists reporting on its crimes:  

Now the people of Gaza and a watching world must wait to see whether Israel will break its decades-long habit and actually honour the deal but  it seems  the israeli occupation tragically, has already broken the ceasefire with a huge bombardment of Gaza City in the north of the Strip that is taking place now and has already  slaughtered at least 72 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, in continued bombing during what is supposed, under the 'ceasefire' announced last night, supposed to be a 'conflict pause' until the full supposed ceasefire comes into force on Sunday.  

Israel's intensified bombing  again targeting doctors and journalists as well as refugees huddled in tent camps- began almost the instant the so-called 'deal' was announced despite, or perhaps because of, Donald Trump's sick 'sweeteners' to the Netanyahu government to incentivise it to agree. This is the Israeli military norm. 

The long-awaited, urgently needed ceasefire/hostage deal has already slammed into the hard realities of domestic and international politics. Netanyahu has delayed a Cabinet vote on the deal, accusing Hamas of reneging on key components (a spokesperson for the terror group says it remains “committed” to the deal). 

The official ceasefire begins on Sunday, but the deal of which it is part says that a 'conflict pause' came into force as soon as the announcement was made - but rather than pause Israel is intensifying its bombing, a clear breach of the reported terms of the agreement. 

Leaked details of what Trump promised Israel in return for the agreement are already being reported in the Israeli media - and it includes the 'right' of Israel to break the deal and recommence bombing and military operations whenever it wishes. It seems to wish so from the outset, just as it did in Lebanon..

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  has  also released a statement denying that Israeli forces will withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor in the first phase of the #ceasefire agreement, adding that the IOF will remain in the corridor in phase A for the entire 42-day period.  "During Phase A, starting on the 16th day, negotiations will begin on ending the war. If Hamas does not agree to Israel’s demands for ending the war (achieving the war’s objectives), Israel will remain in the #Philadelphi Corridor on the 42nd day and, consequently, beyond the 50th day," the office said.  "In practical terms, Israel will remain in the Philadelphi Corridor until further notice," the statement concluded.. they’re probably afraid that journalists will enter Gaza if they leave that part

The people of Gaza deserve peace and full compensation for Israel's genocide, destruction and illegal occupation. None of them are in sight yet.

The ceasefire deal is a result of sustained pressure from people worldwide. A groundswell movement that has been led by Palestinians in Gaza, the diaspora, and powered by many millions of people, healthcare workers, aid workers and journalists.

For 15 cruel months, Palestinians have endured horror after horror. Civilians have paid the ultimate price , with their lives. Women, men and children have had their homes destroyed, displaced time and time again, starved as a weapon of war and denied medical care and aid. Over 46,000 Palestinians have been killed and according to the UN, 369 aid workers, 1,057 healthcare workers and 160 journalists have been killed despite their protection under international law. They are not, and should never be, a target. 

Now they must be protected and receive justice. Those responsible for atrocity crimes must be held to account and we must do everything within our power to end Israel’s impunity once and for all, end the brutal military occupation and the apartheid regime. Israel’s apartheid and illegal occupation of the Palestinian territory has been ongoing for 57-years and, even with this deal, will   sadly continue on with the UK’s support. The UK must stop supporting Israel’s leaders while they commit war crimes and illegally occupy Palestinian land. Take action to end UK complicity. Hopefully, this deal means that Israel will stop its bombardment of the Gaza Strip , but Gaza is in ruins.  A true ceasefire is when the occupation, apartheid and genocide that has been ongoing since 1948 ends in it’s entirety.

The international community must now ensure  the  following, lifesaving humanitarian aid enters Gaza immediately, the urgent rebuilding of medical and other essential infrastructure;  and an end to the illegal 18-year blockade on Gaza. At  the  same time access to independent human rights investigators  and an end to the brutal military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as ruled by the International Court of Justice.  

An end to the system of oppression and domination of apartheid,  and  Justice and accountability for victims of war crimes and genocide including the enforcement of ICC arrest warrants. Also the  immediate and unconditional release  of  health  care workers including  Dr Hussam Abu Safiya and ensure  their  protection as mandated  by  international  law, 

Until Israel ends its genocide, apartheid and illegal occupation of the Palestinian territory, the UK must stop arming, trading with and supporting Israel.  Palestinians urgently need unrestricted access to humanitarian aid, and support to rebuild Gaza , but there must also be justice and accountability for the war crimes committed against them. 

Justice will only be achieved when Palestinians can live in dignity, with equal rights and justice with the occupation and system of apartheid dismantled.I  live  in  hope  that  all  this is achieved. Please take action to end the UK’s support – and call for accountability – for Israel’s crimes. 

End UK Support for Israel's War Crimes

https://secure.waronwant.org/page/162177/action/1?utm_campaign=E24_70_Y24AQ&utm_medium=WOW&utm_source=Email&ea.url.id=7785970

Light beyond darkness

Have felt broken at times

But am proud of my scars,

Reminders of battles fought

Times I've risen after falling down.

Sweet is the night  

Where peace lays it's head, 

Soft is the rhythm 

Of mother earths heartbeat.

As thoughts keep travelling

Under new year raindrops,

Keep dancing among shadows

While the world feels lost.

Drifting with emotions

Somehow staying strong,

Even when it feels tough

Find paths to move forward.

Swim among meandering waves

Following whispers on the wind,

Learning acts of simple resistance

Better ways of existence.

In times of grave injustice

Join defiant voices releasing outrage,

Allow tomorrow's vision to blossom

Truths torch to be lit from peak to peak.

Through shades of love and hate

Knowing which side to be on,

Palestine still bleeding torn apart

Make some room for healing.

Consciousness wakening perceptions 

Beyond emptiness, moving forwards,

Passions erupting, heightening senses

Floodgates opening again to explore.

Between the hell of loss

Joy must keep returning, 

Amongst all the darkness

There remains an undying light.

The kindness of solidarity 

When we see atrocitiy

Committed in perpetuity

Dreams glowing with certainty.

Under a billion stars blazing

Endless tireless trappings,

Finding unstoppable forces

Verses to try shape a better day,

As wildfires rage in Los Angeles, don't forget Gaza

It is with great sadness that I  hear  of the devastating  fires spreading  across LA, which first erupted Tuesday amid hurricane-force, dry Santa Ana winds in the area of North Piedra Morada Drive. It quickly swept through residential and commercial districts in this affluent coastal community,  leading to gridlock traffic. People evacuating on foot. Homes and vehicles on fire. This is terrifying. But it  is  happening  because their government couldn’t afford water for fire hydrants and firefighting planes, yet they managed to give billion of tax dollars to israel to kill innocent children in Gaza while  burning  Gaza to the ground, while.the Biden-Harris Administration announces announces $500,000,000 in Taxpayer  Funds for the Ukraine.

The wildfires have already being labelled the most destructive in LA history, having burned at least 27,000 acres of land and at least five people have been killed by the out-of-control fires so far, with more than 1,000 structures destroyed and at least 150,000 residents forced to flee their homes, where the average property price is at least $2 million.

More than 800 firefighting personnel, with the help of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, are battling the blaze. However, the same winds that fueled the fire have limited the use of aerial resources.  “Extreme fire behavior, including short and long-range spotting, continues to challenge firefighting efforts for the Palisades Fire,” CalFire said in a bulletin. “Winds gusts up to 60 MPH are expected to continue through Thursday, potentially aiding in further fire activity and suppression efforts'' https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/palisades-fire

While we watch  multi-million dollar estates of Hollywood stars, like Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Hamill and Paris Hilton. going  up  in flames, iconic landmarks like the Walk of Fame and the Hollywood Bowl perilously close to becoming ash  with Governor Gavin Newsom declaring a state of emergency as firefighters battle to save lives and heritage in the City of Angels, it seens California’s environmental policies  have  just came home to roost in the most expensive zip codes in America. 

Budget cuts to fire services, neglected brush management, and chronic under-investment in public infrastructure  have  helped creaee this climate disaster., highlighting the urgent need for stronger climate action to protect both lives and property.

What's not being said is the fact that the chaparral ecosystem of coastal LA needs fire to survive. A pyrophilic city requires regular burning to replenish itself. To simply clear its hills and valleys of dense suburbia would disrupt the fragile ecosystem. For centuries, indigenous people used periodic controlled fires to regulate the risk by removing flammable brush  But their fires were banned, homes were built in mountainous areas, and now we’re witnessing the result. 

Ir's also worth  mentioning that LA has released a proportionally larger amount of the CO2 that is driving global warming and increasing the frequency and intensity of wild fires than many other cities. 

As Wild Fires blaze across Los Angeles  and 100's of thousands are forced to flee their homes with massive amounts of destruction to the landscape and wildlife, The largest corporations in the US promised, quote, "Mother Nature still ain't got shit on me!"

While  this is happening  lets not forget that the scenes in California are the same scenes that have been inflicted on Gaza for over a year. After 13 months of relentless violence, Palestinians in Gaza have lost everything, the Gaza Strip  completely destroyed.Nearly two million people are displaced across Gaza, struggling to secure basic food and medicine. With many lacking even a tent or a tarpaulin for shelter, and most aid remains blocked from leaving crossing points due to insecurity, active hostilities and widespread destruction. 

In northern Gaza, conditions are especially desperate under an intensive Israeli siege. An estimated 100,000 people in North Gaza governorate are completely cut off from humanitarian aid, with the UN condemning ‘unlawful interference with humanitarian assistance’.Not a single LA celebrity spoke out about Gaza at one of their glitzy awards the other night. They at least got a chance to evacuate.

The same bureaucrats who allowed LA to burn are same ones who allowed Rafah to go up in flames. From LA to Gaza the world has burned and burned. If you’re sympathizing with thoses in California but silent on Gaza you will never get it. The issues of environmental justice go hand in hand with the issue of Palestinian liberation. 

Fires are always devastating, whether caused by nature or by humans who bomb and burn hospitals, refugee camps, and schools to kill children and women. After this fire, Hollywood will be rebuilt more beautifully, but in Gaza, the children who have lost their loved ones,brothers, sisters, and witnessed their homes being bombed will never receive such assistance.

When Palestinian's had their tents bombed and burned out and many innocents lost their lives, our news channels gave it a brief mention. The Los Angeles wildfires are rolling news .And that is where the difference lies.While most eyes are currently on Los Angeles, people have forgotten what’s happening in Gaza, where genocide continues and the world watches with apathy. This can’t continue.

Celebrating the life of Augustus John: The King of Bohemia (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961)

Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. Augustus Edwin John,  was  born in Tenby in south Pembrokeshire  on 4 January 1878  at 11,12 or 13 The Esplanade, now known as The Belgrave Hotel, , John was the younger son and third of four children. His father was Edwin William John, a Welsh solicitor; his mother, Augusta Smith, from a long line of Sussex master plumbers,[died young when he was six, but not before inculcating a love of drawing in both Augustus and his older sister Gwendolen Mary John. His father Edwin moved the family permanently to Tenby, 

The household  was  somewhat  intimidaring , - their Grandfather exhorted his grandchildren to " Talk! If you can't think of anything to say tell a lie!' and 'If you make a mistake make it with Authority!' - the John children were looked after by two aunts, Rose and Lily, who rode round the neighbourhood in a wicker pony trap known as 'the Hallelujah Chariot'.

The aunts held rank in the Salvation Army and variously followed the doctrines of the Quakers, Joanna Southcott and. Howell Harris.  Irtwas in the great outdoors and through art that Augustus could avoid the cloying Victorian atmosphere of home, where Edwin ruled with a strict air of the disciplinarian.  Here Augustus imagined himself a roaring Native American, adopted son of the Antelope Comanche nation with the beginnings of what he described as “an active interest in squaws.” 

At the age of seventeen he briefly attended the Tenby School of Art, then left Wales for London, studying at the Slade School of Art, University College London. He became the star pupil of drawing teacher Henry Tonks and even before his graduation he was considered the most talented draughtsman of his generation. His sister, Gwen was with him at the Slade and became an important artist in her own right.[

He and his sister Gwen were bound together by art, inspired by their artistic mother Augusta. He recalled “Gwen and I, full of curiosity, would approach as near as we dared, to watch the mystery of painting. Even at that early age we were vaguely aware of Art and Beauty.”  Their father Edwin was more bourgeois in attitude and shunned their art in favour of discipline and propriety.

Although he did not live permanently in Wales after 1894, he remained deeply attached to his native land, and supported the National Eisteddfod and Royal Cambrian Academy. He returned to Tenby periodically, being called back when his father felt as if he was dying. During these visits he would stay with author Richard Hughes in the castle at Laugharne, once saying, “My father is on his death bed but refuses to get into it.” In October 1959 Tenby bestowed the Freedom of the Borough on John, “in appreciation and acknowledgement of his distinguished service in the field of art”.  The Town and County News wrote that he looked “deeply moved and at times somewhat overcome by…an emotion he did not try to conceal.”

In the summer between terms studying in London two incidents happened that would have a large influence in John’s life - on a walking trip around Pembroke-shire he had his first encounter with Irish tinkers which would lead to a life long fascination with Romany culture and way of life. 

And in the summer of 1897 he suffered a severe accident hitting his head on a rock whilst diving into the sea, at Tenby this seemingly resulted in a radical change in character. He grew a beard, dressed as a Bohemian and  began  to drink  heavily. and  became known for his mood swings, his womanising and his artistic talent. 

His painting became more adventurous and his friend, Wyndham Lewis remarked that John had become a "great man of action into whose hands the fairies had placed a paintbrush instead of a sword"

 A charismatic  controversial  individual with  a possible bullying personality he made a great impression on the artists, critics and collectors around him  and  is considered to be the most talented artist of his generation, in 1898 he won the Slade Prize with Moses and the Brazen Serpent.

The early period of his work is characterised by his exceptional drawings, notably of contemporaries, including his wives and sisters, as well as portraits in oils influenced by the Old Masters, and an experimental series of etchings.

In the early years of the 20th Century John would make his reputation as an artist moving on the edges of a number of influential schools and salons of the time, exhibiting with the New English Art Club and the Camden School as well as being a regular visitor to Lady Gregory's Irish Salon at Coole Park. Critics by now were comparing his work with that of Matisse and Gaugin.  

Girl in a Blue Striped Coat (c. 1910), Augustus John.

His visits to north Wales with another Welsh artist, James Dickson Innes, between 1910 and 1913, revealed a rich talent for landscape painting, and brought to the fore a more modern impressionistic idiom, also to be seen in his paintings of the south of France, where he spent long periods in the 1920s. Through his sister Gwen, who joined him at the Slade in 1895, he came to know a group of outstanding women students, including Ursula Tyrwhitt, with whom he fell briefly in love, and Ida Nettleship, whom he married in 1901 on leaving Slade to avoid being seen to 'live in sin' .

John and his associates would frequent the Café Royal whenever their meagre student finances could afford - and John was a centre of attraction among the cosmopolitan crowd that gathered there. 

The café in the late 1890s was the haunt of artists, writers, circus people, magicians, aristocrats 'Celtic' gentlemen and politicos of numerous persuasions from anarchists of the Kropotkin school to Liberal capitalist 'Social Creditors'. 

Augustus John's  first child, David, was born in 1902 and   faced with the prospect of supporting a family John took a job as art instructor at Liverpool Art School which was attached to the University and it  was here  he  he met an older man, John Samson, university librarian and self-taught Romany scholar who taught him Romany.  and opened the young artist’s eyes to the richness of gypsy culture, language and lifestyle.nd embraced a Travellers’ lifestyle.

For the rest of his life John would search out gypsy encampments wherever he went - often travelling in his own set of horse drawn vans. He had his own repertoire of Romany songs and dances. Joining them round their camp fires at night, penetrating behind the veneer of romantic glamour, 

John saw the gypsies as having true freedom, not compromised by the advance of industrialised society, - the supreme anti-capitalists whose belongings were always burnt at death. In turn the gypsies accepted John as an honorary gypsy. 

After Liverpool the young John family moved back to London - marriage did not stop John's womanising - he met and fell hopelessly in love with one of his sisters models and friend Dorothy McNeil, he gave her the gypsy name, Dorelia, and she became his most important model and lifelong inspiration.. Ida liked Dorelia and a tumultuous ménage-a-trois was formed. Despite numerous other affairs Ida and Dorelia would be the anchors round which John’s world would revolve. 

Dorelia (1909), Augustus John. 

In March 1903 Augustus John and Gwen John had a joint exhibition at Carfax & Company. However, she worked very slowly and contributed only three pictures to her brother's forty-five. Their relationship was non-competitive and highly affectionate. 

Tragedy struck the John clan in 1907 when shortly after the birth of her 5th child Ida died. With two other children by Dorelia, John, hardly the perfect father, had to struggle with Ida's family over who should bring up the children. 

In August 1911 John and Dorelia rented Alderney Manor, a strange fortified pink bungalow built by an eccentric Frenchman in 60 acres of heath and woodland on the Newton to Ringwood road outside Parkstone, Dorset. The property, actually quite a large low house with gothic windows and a castellated parapet with additional cottages and a round walled garden was owned by Winston Churchill's Liberal aunt, Lady Wimborne, who was "pleased to have a clever artist as a tenant." 

The John entourage arrived in a colourful caravan of carts and wagons with children singing as they came down the drive. They set to, turning it into the very picture of a bohemian commune - the coach house was converted into a studio, the cottage converted to accommodate the seemingly endless stream of visitors, some invited, some who just dropped in and would stay for days, months, even years. 

Others stayed in the blue and yellow gypsy caravans dotted around the grounds and when numbers swelled for weekend parties, in gypsy tents or alfresco in the orchard. 

The children played a natural part in the community joining in with chores. And, between private tutors for the girls and school for the boys, they ran wild over the heathland and through the woods and bathed naked in the pond. 

The communal chaos was presided over by Dorelia in pre-Raphaelite robes looking as if she was constantly about to pose for a portrait, busy organising guests and making the house run smoothly, dressing everyone in handmade clothes ,helped by her sister Edie who ran the kitchen. 

Over the years they acquired all the trappings of a back to the land community; cows, a breeding herd of saddleback pigs, various donkeys, New Forest ponies, carthorses, miscellaneous cats and dogs, 12 hives of bees that stung everyone, a dovecote from which all the doves flew away and a 'biteful' monkey. 

Communal living did nothing to cramp John’s style,- the affairs continued, almost too numerous to mention , with Lady Ottoline Morrell, Mrs Strindberg, the actress Eileen Hawthorne and Mrs Fleming, Ian Fleming's mother, (a liaison which resulted in a daughter, Amaryliss, later an accomplished cellist.) John never seemed to deny any of his wayward offspring - taking some under his communal wing, paying maintenance to support others. 

At Alderney John would spend his time painting and sketching the children and guests,- taking part in afternoon jazz sessions , the tango was his speciality - and presiding over the many parties, bonfires and trips to local pubs. 

All the usual suspects from the Bohemian art scene would make their way down to Dorset; the Bloomsbury crowd; Brett, Carrington, Lytton-Strachey, Berty Russell, Wyndham Lewis.

Other more exotic characters would make it their home, amongst them Chilean painter Alvaro Guevara, wall paper designer Fanny Fletcher, Polish music doctor Jan Sliwinski and the Icelandic poet Haraldar Thorskinsson. 

At intervals John would leave for his studio in London or for a continental tour in search of gypsy camps or new lovers. 

 At the outbreak of the First World War John was perhaps the best-known artist in Britain. His friendship with Lord Beaverbrook enabled him to obtain a commission in the Canadian Army and he was given free rein to paint what he liked on the Western Front, but is only known to have completed one painting. He was also allowed to keep his facial hair and therefore became the only officer in the Allied forces, except for King George V, to have a beard. 

After two months in France, Lord Beaverbrook had to intervene to save John from a court-martial after he was arrested for taking part in a brawl.  John was sent  back to France but is only known to have completed one painting, Fraternity. 

John also attended the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 where he painted the portraits of several delegates. However, the commissioned group portrait of the main figures at the conference was never finished.

John spent extended periods of time in the south of France and the work he produced during these visits is more vibrant in colour. He was a prolific artist, producing a vast amount of work; favourite subjects included coastal landscapes, gypsies and his family

The years at Alderney were the peak of John's artistic career. By the 1920s Augustus John was the leading portrait painter in Britain, He was so popular that he appeared on the front of Time magazine in 1928 , the same year he was elected to be a Royal Academician.which  he resigned in 1938, but was reinstated in 1940, and was awarded the O.M. in 1942 for services to art,  and although his portraits were often controversial he was inundated with commissions.

 Everyone who was anyone seemingly wanted to have their portrait painted by the erstwhile King of Bohemia., as he had an almost psychological insight in his expression, in the  way  his portraits famously captured the true character and personality of each sitter.  Those who sat for him included Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Ottoline Morrell, T. E. Lawrence, Jacob Epstein, Wyndham Lewis, W. B. Yeats, William Nicholson, and Dylan Thomas.

Thomas Hardy on seeing his portrait painted by John in 1923 remarked "I don't know if that's how I look, but that's how I feel." Augustus John had met the octogenarian English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy through T.E. Lawrence,– Lawrence of Arabia in September 1923. In the following weeks he made several visits to Max Gate, the house that Hardy had designed and built for himself in Dorchester, Dorset, to work on this affectionate and admiring portrait.

The study in which Hardy is shown is that in which he wrote many of his most celebrated works, including Jude the Obscure (1895), In an article written for the monthly review Horizon in the 1940s, John recalled the harmonious relationship that developed between artist and writer:

 'An atmosphere of great sympathy and almost complete understanding at once established itself between us, though the veneration in which I held Hardy impeded to some extent the natural expression of my response to his quite lovable personality ...' 

John recorded in his memoirs that 'Hardy himself was, physically, not of monumental build, though he had a fine head'. Yet in the portrait the artist has done his best to endow the old man with a certain stature.

 We are made to gaze up at the novelist from a low viewpoint, a position that perhaps reflects the veneration John spoke of. The ‘fine head’ sits atop a pyramid of grey tweed, Hardy’s suit, which takes up half the canvas and suggests a robustness at odds with his old age. The enormous thumbs resting on the lapels of his jacket direct our gaze up to the face, with its wide, rheumy eyes, eyes that ignore us, that look out to the right, brows and lids raised as though the great man is pursuing a thought.

Thomas Hardy, 1923, by Augustus John,

 As well a portraits of friends, like Ottoline Morrell and W.B.Yeats, he painted Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald and Winston Churchill. Augustus John became increasingly successful as a portrait painter, so much so that his personal artistic interests could not develop fully. Hence many of his large figure compositions and imaginative pictures were left unfinished. 

A controversial portrait of Lord Leverhulme, the founder of Port Sunlight, was returned to John minus its head, the soap millionaire having been offended by the artist's depiction of him. 

The story goes that Leverhulme commissioned John to paint his portrait despite claiming that no one had ever really been able to capture his likeness and that he could not give much time for the sitting. 

When Leverhulme saw it, he complained that the eyes, nose and mouth were not a likeness. My favourite part of this story is that John offered his Lordship his palette and brushes for him to make the adjustments!  Despite his coolness towards the portrait, it was purchased. 

However, once in his possession, Lord Leverhulme did not wish it to be on display. He attempted to hide it away in his safe, but it was too large, so he cut the face off the painting and placed that under lock and key. The story now descends into farce, as, unwittingly, Leverhulme’s housekeeper packaged the damaged painting up and it was returned to Augustus John. If you look carefully, you can see the repair to the painting around the head of the sitter. 

The resultant outcry at this insult to John's artistic integrity reverberated around the globe. A 24 hour art strike was called in Paris involving not only artists, but also models and picture framers. In Italy a huge soap effigy of Leverhulme was ceremoniously burnt and in Hyde Park art school students marched in protest bearing aloft a giant headless torso. (The portrait was later 'stitched' back together and hangs in the Lady Leverhulme Gallery at Port Sunlight.)  

The Johns moved to Fryern Court, Fordingbridge - a 14th century friary turned farmhouse - in 1927. The house on the edge of the New Forest became a stopping-off point for artists travelling to the West Country from London and developed into more of an open house than bohemian commune.

 However, Bby  this time  one critic has claimed that "the painterly brilliance of his early work degenerated into flashiness and bombast, and the second half of his long career added little to his achievement."

 His biographer, Michael Holroyd, has argued: "From the late 1920s onwards John's talent went into a decline which, despite a number of journeys he made through Europe, Jamaica, and the United States seeking to revive it, was accelerated by his heavy drinking. The rebel artist had now moved from the roadside into London's West End where his work was irregularly exhibited from 1929 to 1961 at Dudley Tooth's gallery in Bruton Street."  John's 1937 portrait of Dylan Thomas is widely accepted as his last great painting. 

Even his granddaughter  Rebecca John, the leading authority on her grandfather, said in 2024, while praising his earlier work, that "most [paintings since the 1930s] should have been burned. My grandfather went down the drain from the 1930s onwards, drank too much, lost his judgment, and took every opportunity to earn money from portraits of society ladies and the wives of notable men".

 From March to May 1937, when John travelled to Jamaica, he experienced a renewed burst of motivation, creativity and a resurgence of his powers; John was on a quest to portray the emotional 'otherness' of people outside of the centre of European civilisation and its art. 

The Caribbean island was a great inspiration to John. He made many observant paintings of the women and hotel workers that he met there, including the Two Jamaican Girls. This is a celebrated example of John's renewed creative vitality. 

 Two Jamaican Girls - Augustus  John 

During the Caribbean visit, John also created a number of pencil-on-paper studies and sketches of Jamaican females. The Portrait of a Jamaican Woman has an overall closed impression, as the woman is depicted with a closed mouth and averted gaze, clutching clothing to her bosom. This work has a contained yet also an incomplete feel to it, as if John was unsure how to finish the portrait. 

Portrait of a Jamaican Woman c.1937

Although John was seen as a part of the 'establishment', his later art and lifestyle positioned him firmly outside of the centre of established society.  and iIn the less hectic lifestyle at Fryern where he entered the twilight of his artistic career John became increasingly interested in politics. He was active in the National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment and perhaps somewhat ironically supported the Voluntary Contraception League. 

He pestered MPs on behalf of gypsy and travellers' rights, and was honoured to be elected president of the Gypsy Law Society in 1936. 

Augustus John has often been cited as one of a few from the British artistic and intellectual milieu to have identified themselves with the anarchist movement. But Augustus John’s relationship with that movement was as ambivalent as his own life. 

His wildly bohemian life earned him the epithet of the King of Bohemia. His imposing height and carriage and his confident stride, his big black broad brimmed hat, his flowing beard and gold earrings, his great love and knowledge of the Gypsies, his many affairs with women and his unorthodox domestic life justified the title. 

He certainly had a knowledge of the anarchist movement from the time he moved to London from his native Wales. As a student at the Slade in 1897 he took his sketchbook to the anarchist clubs in Fitzrovia where he encountered Louise Michel, Peter Kropotkin, and David Nicoll, ex-editor of Commonweal, among the British, French, German, Spanish, Italian and American anarchists to be found there. 

Later in Paris in 1898 he often ate at an anarchist restaurant where self service seemed to have been invented, and where “grubbily dressed girls” fetched their own food to avoid being waited upon. He read Kropotkin’s Memoirs of a Revolutionist just before arriving in Liverpool in 1901 and he temporarily named his son Ravachol after the anarchist bomber in 1902 before finally plumping for David. 

John elaborated his own beliefs in the Delphic Review, a magazine edited in Fordingbridge and through a number of radio broadcasts. He argued for the breakdown of Nation States into small autonomous, self-supporting, communities - `Gigantism is a disease,' he declared, pointing out that 'Classical Athens was hardly bigger than Fordingbridge.' 

His attacks were elegantly argued, even if they did appear somewhat eccentric. He launched an attack on hedges. `Hedges are miniature frontiers when serving as bulkheads, not windscreens. Hedges as bulkheads dividing up the Common Land should come down, for they represent and enclose stolen property. Frontiers are extended hedges, and divide the whole world into compartments as a result of aggression and legalised robbery. They too should disappear…' 

His long career as a portraitist for the establishment, when he painted royalty and millionaires was rather at odds with both his bohemianism and his professed republicanism and radicalism, something which he himself seems to have recognised and which caused him much personal anguish.  However he defended anarchist Herbert Read’s ‘courageous decision’ to take a knighthood in 1953, which caused a furore within the British anarchist movement. He himself accepted the Order of Merit in 1942, and he was criticised for this being at odds with his republicanism. 

He detested Spanish fascist General Franco and horrified by the rise of fascism across Europe he helped to form the Artists International Association along with the likes of Eric Gill, Henry Moore and Ben Nicolson. The association's aim was to establish an 'army of artists' to oppose the advance of 'philistine barbarism'. 

They organised a number of exhibitions 'Against Fascism & War'. John reserved a particular hatred for General Franco - and in the early years of WW2 he presented several of his pictures to war funds and , using his influence to free people like the anarchist Werner Droescher  and  a number of German and Austrian refugee artists interned by the British government,. 

In this period he joined the Voluntary Contraception League (considering the number of children he sired, better late than never!), the Committee of the National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, and he regularly campaigned on behalf of gypsies, in particular around police harassment of gypsies in Kent.

During the war years he also dabbled with the Greenshirts and the Social Credit Party but seems to have gravitated more and more to the anarchist movement after that time, attending anarchist meetings in London. and in I945 joined with Benjamin Britten, E. M. Forster, George Orwell, Herbert Read and Osbert Sitwell in sponsoring the Freedom Defence Committee `to defend those who are persecuted for exercising their rights to freedom of speech, writing and action'. 

This was an alternative to the National Council for Civil Liberties that had temporarily become a Communist Front organisation refusing to help anarchists. 

He never voted in his life as he said, and his dislike of politicians began to grow even more in the 50s.  He remarked that “Anarchism is the thing,” and communism, differentiating communism- “which surely lies at the basis of human society” - from its travesty in the USSR.  

By the end of the1940s he was publishing and broadcasting that national states were by definition bound to clash. All nationalities were composed of a haphazard conglomeration of tribes, but the State, originating in violence, must rely on force to impose an artificial uniform on this conglomeration, transmitting its laws and class privileges like a hereditary disease.

“The state must not be judged by human standards nor ever be personified as representing the quintessence of the soul of the people it manipulates. The state is immoral and accountable to nobody”.

Communities must be broken down into smaller groups. Hedges must be dug up - “hedges are miniature frontiers when serving as a bulkhead, not windscreens. Hedges as bulkheads dividing up the Common Land should come down, for they represent and enclose stolen property. Frontiers are extended hedges, and divide the whole world into compartments as a result of aggression and legalized robbery. They too should disappear… they give rise to the morbid form of Patriotism known as Chauvinism or Jingoism”.  

“Without frontiers, the State would wither and society change from a heavy pyramid to a fluid form of amoeba. Monstrous industrial towns, congested capital cities with their moats of oxygen-excluding suburbs would melt away and a multiplicity of local communities would appear, autonomous, self-supporting and federated.’gigantism is a disease”.

John and Dorelia lived out the last years of their lives at Fryern, interspersed with occasional trips abroad or up to London - where John would proceed, even into his eighties, to out-drink, out-party and out-flirt his considerably younger companions. 

He joined the Peace Pledge Union as a pacifist in the 1950s, and the Committee of 100. which was a British anti-war group  set up in 1960 with a hundred public signatories by Bertrand Russell (who resigned from the presidency of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in order to form this more militant group),Its supporters used and advocated nonviolent civil disobedience to achieve their aims. "....you may count on me to follow your lead,..... it is up to all those of us above the idiot line to protest as vigorously as possible." So wrote the 84 year old Augustus John to Bertrand Russell during the build up to the mass anti-nuclear demonstrations of 1961.

Recovering from an attack of thrombosis and suffering from what amounted to agoraphobia against doctor’s orders he joined the mass sit-down in Trafalgar Square on Sunday 17 September at the age of 83. The police had banned the demonstration, and on the day deployed 4,000, which included all their reserves.  888 people were arrested that day. 

Augustus  hiding himself, somewhat appropriately, inside the National Gallery until the demonstration started. At 5 o'clock he emerged, walked across the road to Trafalgar Square and sat down, joining the unprecedented numbers who had gathered to protest against the lunacy of atomic weapons - and declaring that he would " go to prison if necessary."

 Few there recognised the sick old man, but later when Bertrand Russell heard of John's attendance he described it as a "heroic gesture." A month later Augustus John died at Fryern Court,  from  heart  failure on  31 October 1961.

Today despite the ebb and flow of his reputation he is widely recognised as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. On his death in 1961 an obituary in The New York Times observed, 'He was regarded as the grand old man of British painting, and as one of the greatest in British history.' and his work is represented in many of the main galleries in the United Kingdom, from the Tate, the National Museums of Wales, the Bodleian, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, the Glynn Vivian and of course Tenby Museum and Art Gallery among many, many others across the country, while a bronze statue celebrating his life can be seen in Fordingbridge on the banks of the Avon near the Great Bridge.

For a Brand New Tomorrow

 

Photo by Vesa Pihanurmi 

Blwyddyn newydd dda /Happy New Year.. I'm going into this new year sober, not because of some new years resolution, but because my mental wellbeing needs it. Anyway enough about me, the New Year can stir up all kinds of complicated feelings, especially if you’re already having a hard time. Add in the pressure to celebrate and it can all just feel like too much. So if you need to reach out you can call the samaritans free on 116 123. 

For the entirety of 2024, Israel engaged in the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza. Tens of thousands of  children killed and the world decided they don’t matter. To those who were devastated by these innocent lives destroyed I wish a happy new year of courage and resilience.

With no end in sight to the genocide in Gaza. as we approach 2025 instead of a countdown for a happy new year, let's countdown for a permanent ceasefire and an end of the occupation. A free Palestine is not just a dream, it’s a promise written in the hearts of its people

Let's keep fighting for social justice, a profoundly different future, where the human rights of all will be fully realized, a future of life and of decent lives for all. Real transformative compassionate change is possible. There is no such thing as an ending, just a place where you leave the story. And it’s your story. Keep fighting for truth and integrity and don’t let the bastards grind you down. They can never ever beat you. Retain your humanity and compassion. 

The victims of war deserve our solidarity and support, whoever they are, and wherever they happen to be. We should not be fooled by the hypocritical statements of out political leaders. 

May 2025 be a year of change for the better,brings justice, peace  and enough that no one goes without love, healthcare, food, education, friends, or freedom to be themselves.We won't go untroubled all the time, but we can remember to be kind to one another. With love, peace and solidarity. ❤️ 

 " So hope for a great sea-change 

On the far side of revenge. 

Believe that a farther shore Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells." 

- Seamus Heaney

Free Dr Hussam Abu Safiya

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya  director of Kamal Adwan hospital, a brave man whose life’s  work revolves around healing and saving lives, has been unjustly targeted and arrested by the Israeli army under false pretexts and detained by Israeli  forces along with over  240 others who had taken shelter in the hospital, including medical staff, patients and the wounded. during a raid on the hospital on 27 December. 

This  was after Dr. Abu Safiya refusing to abandon his colleagues and patients and the displaced people at Kamal Adwan hospital, even after the Israeli occupation murdered his son, bombed his house and injured him.

Several medical staff were burned alive in fires ignited during the raid, while patients and medics were stripped of their clothing and forced to leave the hospital on foot. 

According to the Israeli military, all activities will reportedly be transferred to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, which has effectively become the only major functioning hospital north of Gaza City.

Dr. Abu Safiya  is a hero  who for  months has been the voice of Gaza’s decimated health sector, appealing for the protection of his hospital and working under inhumane conditions. He also refused a chance to leave the Strip and travel abroad, confirming that he will always abide by his humanitarian duty, even if it will lead to his murder or detention.

The raid, the latest in a series of attacks on healthcare facilities in North Gaza over the past two months, put Kamal Adwan, the last remaining major hospital in the area, out of service. Kamal Adwan hospital is now a site of crimes against humanity while 50,000 Palestinians in north Gaza are currently without healthcare.

Since the beginning of its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, Israel has detained hundreds of Palestinian healthcare workers from Gaza without charge or trial. Health workers have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment and been held in incommunicado detention,violating their fundamental rights. Hospitals and health workers are not legitimate targets; they are protected under international humanitarian law. None of  this is acceptable. 

Amnesty International  has called on the international community, especially Israel’s allies, to act against these crimes against humanity. The organization emphasized the need for urgent and concrete steps to stop Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, underscoring the profound scars this situation is leaving on the conscience of humanity. “Hospitals and health workers are not targets. The international community must act to halt Israel’s attacks in Gaza and ensure justice is served.”

In the last photo of  Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya in just one image, we see both the power of Palestinian humanity and the moral weakness of all those complicit in genocide.We see him in his white lab coat walking unarmed through the wreckage of the Kamal Adwan hospital he ran , the last functioning one in northern Gaza, towards two tanks, their gun-barrels aimed at him  before his arrest. 

According to an eyewitness, Israeli soldiers flogged Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh with a street electrical cable (worse than a whip)  According to a freed detainee, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh has been transferred to the notorious Sde Teiman prison, in Israel’s Negev desert where Palestinians have been Sodomized and tortured. Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh was executed in this same facility.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2024/05/prominent-gaza-doctor-adnan-al-bursh.html We must not allow Dr. Hussam to face same fate. 

This current incident reflects the harsh reality of the occupation’s tactics criminalizing doctors, aid workers, and anyone who dares to stand for humanity under the guise of unfounded accusations. 

In an attempt to justify atrocities at Adwan Hospital, the Israeli army put out a statement  on  Saturday confirming that they arrested Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya under the claim of being a “terrorist operative”  and a ‘colonel in Hamas’ and claimed that the hospital was being used by Hamas as a “command and control center.” The military did not provide any evidence to support the claims. 

The absurdity of labeling this  man likes this reveals the depth of propaganda used to justify these actions. It’s not just an attack on Dr. Hussam; it’s an attack on the very principles of humanity, medical ethics, and the sanctity of saving lives. 

They even published a video showing themselves as ethical with him, after beating him, killing tens of thousands, and displacing them. Then they will do to him what they did to Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh. In the end, they will say, “Did you see? We treated him well and asked him how he was doing.”  Shame on them.

This arrest is yet another example of the systemic oppression faced by Palestinians, where even hospitals and those who serve in them are not spared from the occupation’s brutality. Dr. Hussam’s courage, standing firm despite the risks, symbolizes the resilience of a people who refuse to give up their humanity in the face of injustice. 

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya embodies the spirit of resilience that flows through every vein of Palestine. His refusal to abandon his patients, his courage to stand unarmed against forces of destruction, echo the timeless story of a people who refuse to kneel. 

In Palestine every olive tree whispers defiance, and every stone is a witness to a legacy of sacrifice. The oppressor may destroy walls, take lives, and silence voices, but they cannot extinguish the spirit of a nation built on faith, dignity, and unwavering hope.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya now detained in illegal Israeli prisons, the world remains silent. His courage deserves action, not apathy. Keep asking. Keep his name trending. Sometimes a horror can be distilled into one face, one name. Write Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya's name.

An emergency rally is being held tonight (Monday 30 Dec) outside the US embassy in London to demand the immediate release of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya and other illegally-detained medics and patients from the now-destroyed Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. Reports indicate that at least some of the detainees have been tortured. 

Emergency Protests for Palestine  are  also  been  held  in other parts of the country including  these  ones on Tuesday  31 December at Haverfordwest, 1pm, Withybush Retail Park,  Swansea, 2pm, Barclays, Oxford St. Cardiff, 11pm, National Museum.

We must  demand from our  leaders that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all  other detained health workers must be released immediately and unconditionally.None  should  be harmed. Health workers are not a target, and impunity for Israel's destruction of Palestinian healthcare must end, and it's also  more than time to end all arms sales to Israel right  now. 

Israeli is an apartheid state engaged in genocide (as detailed by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among others). It has also been demonstrated that a disproportionate number of the dozens of thousands of civilians the IDF has intentionally killed are children and babies. 

The following image is from Jabalia after Palestinians were displaced from Kamal Adwan hospitals.  This is not humanity. This is not ‘defence’. This is not war. This is inhumane. This is terrorism. This is genocide. People everywhere of conscience must speak up against the  horrors  currently  unfolding. End the occupation. Free Palestine. .

Please sign  the  following  petition Israel Must Free Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. 

https://www.change.org/p/israel-must-free-dr-hussam-abu-safiya

 

Christmas Truce 1914

 

In 1914, during World War I, an event known as the "Christmas Truce" occurred on the Western Front. Despite the ongoing conflict, soldiers from opposing sides called a spontaneous ceasefire around Christmas.

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, about 5 months after the start of Word War I soldiers from the British, German, and French trenches laid down their weapons, emerged from their trenches, and ventured into no man's land—a space between the opposing lines. They exchanged gifts, sang carols, and even played football (soccer) matches in some areas. Choosing to spend Christmas time at peace with one another rather than continue to fight an already unpopular war.

It’s said to have started on the Western Front in Belgium, when the Germans started singing Silent Night from their trenches. Silent night was originally a German song, but was very recognizable to the Allies across No Man’s Land, a 250 yard expanse between the opposing trenches.  

The serene melody contrasted greatly with the No Man’s Land that it drifted over. Pictures of No Man’s Land show a haunting expanse of abandoned equipment and barbed wire. It was pockmarked with shell holes from artillery fire filled with water, and littered with bodies of men that were shot as they crawled through the mud to obtain information from their enemy. 

The Truce happened up and down the Western Front. Soldiers on both sides sang, in their native tongue, Christmas carols that were recognizable by Central and Allied troops. Graham Williams of the Fifth London Rifle Brigade recounted,  

“First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing – two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.”

As soldiers crept out of their trenches, they began to see German soldiers carrying Christmas trees, and realized that this was not a trick. They met on No Man’s Land, exchanging things like chocolate, brandy, and tobacco. They even played soccer together. Some soldiers even used this short-lived ceasefire for a more somber task: the retrieval of the bodies of fellow combatants who had fallen within the no-man’s land between the lines and also took time to bury their dead. 

Strangely enough, it wasn’t in a bitter manner. Soldiers they had called their enemy only moments ago were helping with the burial. Soldiers were also surprised to meet enemy soldiers that could speak their own languages. They saw that these men didn’t want to be there as much as they didn’t want to be there. Soldiers on both sides saw the others as fathers and sons, just as they were.  

The so-called Christmas Truce of 1914 came only five months after the outbreak of war in Europe and was one of the last examples of the outdated notion of chivalry between enemies in warfare. It was never repeated, future attempts at holiday ceasefires were quashed by officers' threats of disciplinary action, but it served as heartening proof, however brief, that beneath the brutal clash of weapons, the soldiers' essential humanity endured. 

A story so sad  because peace  was not permitted to break out among the troops who were ordered  to kill and die in a war brought about by politicians hundreds of miles away that would ultimately  continue to kill about 10 million soldiers and about 7 million civilians.

However as the world teeters on the edge of new imperialist wars, the memory of how those ordinary soldiers  that defied their armies still teaches us so many things. and acts as a powerful reminder that even in the midst of conflict, empathy and camaraderie could and can prevail and that human nature is not inherently bound to violence.

Amid waves of strife, this wish for a Christmas truce still echoes, and offers hope in these tumultuous times, lets  not  forget that there is   no peace on earth, no goodwill or silent night to the Palestinian as more are  killed in Israeli raids and  airstrikes for  the second consecutive year.

In Gaza, the occupied West Bank the typically festive season  remains sombre,after Israel has killed at least 45,317 Palestinians and wounded over 107,713 since October 2023.

The war on the enclave having  destroyed most of the territory’s infrastructure and forced the population into a deep humanitarian crisis, while a succession of international rights monitors have recently accused Israel of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people, with the result that the Palestinian community in the Gaza Strip our  facing this Christmas season without celebrations, as displacement and life in tents have deprived them of their homes and the joy of the holidays, our  calls for peace must  persist. 

Remembering the life and legacy of Socialist, environmentalist and Indigenous rights advocate Chico Mendes (15 December 1944 – 22 December 1988)

Chico Mendes, Brazilian rubber worker activist, socialist, environmentalist and Indigenous rights advocate, and symbol of the global environment movement, was assassinated on  22 December 1988 for challenging those who were destroying the Amazon rain forest by slashing and burning.

For a man who didn't learn how to read or write until he was about 20 years old, Chico Mendes accomplished more in 44 years of life than many of us will in a full lifetime.His struggle went beyond simply protecting the Amazon rain forest. He also fought to defend the rights of rubber tappers and to end their oppression and save their homes.

Chico Mendes was a man who loved life, his community and the place where he lived and worked.  Francisco “Chico” Alves Mendes Filho was born on December 15, 1944 in Xapuri, Acre, in northwest Brazil. Chico had 17 siblings but poor health care allowed only 6 to survive; he was the oldest. As a child, Chico could not go to school since they were forbidden on Amazon rubber estates until 1970. 

Rubber estate owners were afraid that tappers who went to school would learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic, and discover they were being exploited. 

Rubber became increasingly important in the world economy from the end of the 19th century, especially after the invention of the pneumatic tyre, and Brazilian rubber manufacturers began to import labour into the Amazon basin to collect it.

The rubber tappers are an exploited group of workers, whose job is to “tap” liquid rubber from the “seringueira” trees in the Amazon rainforest. Rubber tapping or gathering the latex from a plant is a sustainable form of exploiting the wealth of the Amazon without harming the trees or environment. Nearly all of the world's natural rubber comes from Pará rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis. 

Rubber tappers worked all year long, hoping to come out ahead, but of course they always remained in debt. Since they couldn't count, they couldn't tell whether they were being cheated. For example, when the tappers brought in the rubber to be weighed, the bosses would say it weighed less than it actually did. 

When eventually confronted by the tappers about this, the bosses would answer that they were merely subtracting for the water and insects trapped in the rubber. Chico was descended from a rubber tapper family, including his grandfather and father. 

By the age of eleven, Chico was as good as any other adult rubber tapper; he assumed this would be his job for life. But when he was 12 years old, he met a man who would change his life. This man was the communist Euclides Tavora  “a cultivated, well‐educated soldier from a prominent family.who was in refuge in the rainforest on the border with Brazil and Bolivia. Tavora taught Chico how to read and writeand how to think.These first lessons were useful 10 years later. 

The greatest lesson Tavora taught Chico was that rubber tappers could improve their lives by working together for change. He once told Chico, “You must get involved, you must join a union and use it to spread your ideas. Who knows, you might overthrow the system.” 

With that and his newfound knowledgef socialism from his teacher, Chico Mendes began the union movement in Acre, and the leader of the local union of rubber tappers, active member of the growing Workers’ Party, and an advocate of “socialist ecology”, 

Mendes was the sworn enemy of the landowners against whom he had fought and organised for workers’ rights all his life. What Chico learned with Távora has been decisive to the future not only to the rubber tappers, but of the “environmentalism of the poor” worldwide. The kind of environmentalism that seeks to defend a form of existence that requires the environment it depends upon. 

Between 1964 and 1985, Brazil’s military government enacted policies that posed an existential threat both to the Amazon and to indigenous and rubber tapping communities, like Chico’s. Seeking to use the Amazon forest for economic development, the government opened the Amazon to purchase and destruction by cattle ranchers and international investors. Massive deforestation followed.

In response, Chico played a leading role in uniting rural rubber tapping unions, including in his home community of Xapuri, in campaigns to protect the rainforest and their way of life. As he said “At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”

Together with his fellow rubber-tappers, he founded the Rural Workers’ Union and the Xapuri Rubber Tappers Union.The organising of rubber tappers in Acre inspired others across Brazil, to begin organising nationally to defend the Amazon.

They advocated for peaceful resistance against deforestation, which involved union members putting their lives on the line through direct action. One of the rubber tappers’ most famous strategies were the ‘empates’ or barricades, in which rubber tappers and their allies would physically block the path of bulldozers and loggers at the frontiers of deforestation. A national council created in 1985 attracted rubber-tappers from across Brazil and brought their issues into the spotlight.  

One of Chico Mendes’ most important achievements was the idea of extractive reserves.Mendes’s activism was characterized by his innovative approach to conservation, which intertwined human rights with environmental protection. One of Chico Mendes’ most important achievements was that he pioneered the concept of “extractive reserves,” areas where local communities could sustainably harvest forest products without damaging the ecosystem. This idea was revolutionary, suggesting that conservation did not mean excluding humans but rather working with them. In these areas, local people could sustainably harvest natural resources including rubber without fear of exploitation.

In 1980 he helped create the Forest Peoples Alliance, which called for the creation of these reserves as well as inclusive land use policies to benefit indigenous peoples and the wider ecosystem. 

Chico married Ilzamar G. Bezerra Mendes and they had two children, Elenira was four and Sandino was two when their father died

Mendes’ radical activism made him a spokesperson for environmentalists all over Brazil. Chico Mendez received several international awards during his lifetime including a United Nations Environmental Program award in 1987 and a National Conservation Achievement Award in 1988.

Although celebrated by various environmental organisations for his efforts, Mendes’ activism made him many enemies among landowners. He constantly received death threats, but despite this he continued his work.

In1980, his comrade of struggles, Wilson Pinheiro, is murdered. To build a larger force, Chico Mendes took the initiative to unite the seringueiros and other workers who lived from the forest by extracting nuts and other products, with the indigenous communities and various peasant groups, founding the Peoples of the Forest Alliance. 

For the first time,  rubber-tappers and indigenous people,  who so many times have fought each other in the past,  united their forces against the common enemy. Chico Mendes defined with the following words the foundations of this alliance :  “never again one of our comrades will spill the blood of the others,  together we can protect the nature,  the forest,  which is where we all learned to live, to raise our children and to develop our capacities,  in a way of thinking in harmony with nature,  with the environment,  and with all  beings which live here.” 

Chico Mendes was perfectly conscious of the ecological dimension of this struggle,  which interested not only the peoples of the Amazon, but all the world population,  which depends on the tropical forest,  the green lung of the planet. 

A pragmatic man of action, organizer and fighter, concerned with practical and concrete issues, literacy, the constitution of cooperatives, the search for viable economic alternatives, Chico was also a dreamer and an utopian,  in the most noble and revolutionary meaning of the word.,

Trgically though, he was shot in 1988 in his home by a  cattle  rancher called Darly Alves Da Silva and  became  a martyr for  the  environmental  cause. His death was a tragedy, but his life was an inspiration  and his murder sparked international outrage and shone a light on the struggles faced by environmental activists around the world. 

Since 1988, the year Chico was murdered, over a thousand land activists have been murdered in Brazil, alone. A Global Witness investigation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/15/surge-deaths-environmental-activists-global-witness-report found that there has been a major surge in deaths tied to environmental activism within the past decade, worldwide. 

In 2012, environmental activists’ deaths around the world tripled, compared to 10 years before. In the past 10 years, over 900 environmental activists were killed around the world. As Franco Viteri, the president of the governing organization of the Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, said: “I want to say Chico Mendes’ fight is being waged everywhere. There are many Chico Mendeses in Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Unfortunately for the world, Chico Mendes only became well-known internationally after his assassination. But his contributions to the protection of the Amazon live on. 

Chico Mendes legacy influenced the creation of extractive reserves across Brazil, which now cover over 24 million acres of rainforest. Mendes is remembered not only for his environmental contributions but also for his belief in the power of community-based conservation.

After his death the the Alliance of Forest Peoples was created to protect rubber tappers, rural workers, and indigenous peoples from encroachment on traditional lands. 

The  Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve was created in the forest around Xapuri and Chico Mendez was officially recognised as Patron of the Brazilian Environment and the Chico Mendes Institute for Conservation of Biodiversity (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade), is named in his honour. 

Thanks to Mendes’ committed lobbying work, the World Bank moved from endorsing rainforest exploitation to financing the reserves. Sadly, climate-change-denying President Jair Bolsonaro’s government from 2019 to 2023.undermined Mendes’ achievements by weakening protective legislation. They also  encouraged cattle ranching, responsible for most deforestation in Brazil, undercutting the ban on subsidising operations which followed the murder. 

As of 2019, the Chico Mendes Extraction Reserve had lost 7.5% of its forested area, and deforestation increased by over 200% in the first year of Bolsonaro’s presidency. Locals were also moving away from rubber tapping into the better-paid livestock industry, weakening worker’s unions. 

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected on 30 October 2022 and like Chico Mendes is a socialist and among his first acts in his new term in office, Lula issued decrees aimed at curbing mining in Indigenous reserves and deforestation in Amazonia and the Cerrado region. As Mongabay reported, he also created a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples as one step to fulfill a campaign plege “to combat 500 years of inequality.” 

The Mendes case has led to changes in Brazilian law and rain forest governance that cut the murder rate on the country’s farflung resource frontiers and reduced what had been a far more dramatic surge in forest destruction that anything in recent years. 

The Brazilian Amazon experienced its smallest amount of yearly deforestation in nearly a decade, President Lula's government reported in  November, in line with its promise to combat forest loss.  Deforestation fell by 30.6 percent in the year-to-year period beginning in August 2023, according to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). 

During that time, 6,288 square kilometers (2,427 square miles) of forest were destroyed, which INPE Director Gilvan Oliveira said was "the lowest result in the last nine years."  

Over the last century, the Amazon rainforest., which covers nearly 40 percent of South America  has lost about 20 percent of its area to deforestation, due to the spread of agriculture and cattle ranching, logging and mining, and urban sprawl. 

Lula has pledged to put a stop to illegal deforestation of the Amazon by 2030 but faces a string of vested interests. In addition to the Amazon, destruction of the Cerrado, the most species-rich savanna in the world, which is located in central Brazil, was reduced by 25.7 percent or 8,174 square kilometers, INPE reported. The two different biomes were recently hit by historic drought and the subsequent spread of wildfires.

 Environment Minister Marina Silva welcomed the "significant drop" as a part of Brazil's push to reduce carbon emissions, just days before participating in the COP29 UN climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.

But Brazilians still have two starkly different visions of what the vast Amazon region should be,with forest dwellers and environmentally-attuned urbanites siding with international conservationists, but many others seeing an undeveloped territory needing taming and exploitation.

But gains won long ago through peaceful resistance and blood, and now through Lula’s acts, remain fragile. As André Schröder reported for Mongabay in November, “Bolsonaro won in the majority of the 256 municipalities in the Arc of Deforestation, which accounts for about 75 percent of the deforestation in the Amazon, as well as in Novo Progresso, in Pará, where ranchers, loggers and land-grabbers orchestrated a significant burning of deforested areas in 2019.” 

 Economic realities in the Amazon still favor ranching over rubber, as a recent Associated Press story datelined in Mendes’s home town attests. The story charts the allure of livestock even within the protected reserve named for Mendes. https://apnews.com/article/technology-world-news-forests-brazil-plants-e65f887c18e82ce1a0dd07ae491b5497

Although the current state of environmental protection in Brazil has improved, it is still rather  dire,but this does not take away from Chico Mendes’ legacy. He brought global attention to the plight of the rainforest and its communities, and his tireless campaigning set a precedent for future environmental activism and legislation.

Chico Mendes, name remains synonymous with environmental activism and the struggle for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest,and he remains a beacon of inspiration decades after his tragic assassination.

Today, Chico Mendes is celebrated as a hero who fought valiantly against the exploitation of the Amazon.Murdered for his efforts, he embodies the struggles of the many people who fight to protect their homelands from exploitation. His life reminds us of the profound impact one individual can have on the world. 

Mendes’s story is a call to action, urging current and future generations to continue the fight for a just and sustainable planet. However as in other areas of the world the environment remains under pressure and his legacy is under threat.

But because of his combination of socialism and ecology, agrarian reform and defense of the Amazonian forest,  peasant and indigenous struggles, Chico Mendes’s fight continues to inspire new struggles, not only in Brazil, but in many other countries and continents.

In 1989, shortly after Chico Mendes’ death, the National Council of Rubber Tappers in Rio Branco issued this “declaration of the peoples of the forest”, which can serve as Mendes’ epitaph: 

 “The traditional peoples who today trace on the Amazonian sky the rainbow of the Alliance of the Peoples of the Forest declare their wish to see their regions preserved. They know that the development of the potential of their people and of the regions they inhabit is to be found in the future economy of their communities, and must be preserved for the whole Brazilian nation as part of its identity and self-esteem. This Alliance of the Peoples of the Forest, bringing together Indians, rubber tappers, and riverbank communities, and founded here in Acre, embraces all efforts to protect and preserve this immense but fragile life-system that involves out forests, lakes, rivers and springs, the source of our wealth and the basis of our cultures and traditions.”

The best way to learn more about Chico is to listen to Chico himself. Here is Voice of the Amazon, a  great documentary from Miranda Smith, that can be watched in English and with Spanish subtitles.