Thursday 30 March 2023

On Palestinian Land Day: Remembering that the Palestinian right of return refuses to be Forgotten. .

 
Today, 30th March, is Yorn al Ard//Land Day in Palestine one of the most important days marking  Palestinian resistance  to Israeli occupation and apartheid.
Land Day is held on the anniversary of March 30, 1976,when Palestinian villages and cities across the country witnessed mass demonstrations against the states plans to expropriate 2,000 hectares of land in and around the Arab villages of Araba and Sakhnin as a part of a plan to "Judaise the Galilee".Israel's Galilee region. In coordination with the military, some 4,000 police officers were  dispatched to quell the unrest. At the end of the day, six Palestinian citizens of Israel were brutally killed, and over one hundred injured by state security forces.
The Day of the land - or Land Day marked the first mass mobilization of Palestinians within Israel against internal colonialism and land theft. It also signalled the failure of Israel to subjugate Palestinians who remained in their towns and villages, after around 700,000 of them were either expelled or forced to flee battles or massacres committed by Zionist armed groups in 1948.It's commemoration is a reaffirmation that the Palestinians who remained in the area on which Israel was declared in 1948, are an inseperable part of the Palestinian people and their struggle.
This important day in Palestinian history commemorates the Palestinians sense of belonging to a people, to a cause and a country, to stand united against racial oppression and rules of apartheid,and the discriminatory practices of the Israeli government, giving continual potency to the Palestinians cause , its quest for justice and Palestinian rights, and its resistance to injustice,who never cease to fight for their land while holding passionately to their history and identity. It is the right of return, recognised in the United Nations Resolution 194, that drives Palestinians to continue with the commemoration of Land Day - regardless of their geographical location. and reveals Palestinians’ unyielding commitment to every single inch of their native land.
The day is celebrate annually by Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and further afield in refugee camps and among the Palestinian diaspora worldwide, with demonstrations, marches and by planting olive and fruit trees, in honor of Indigenous sumud (resilience). 
Sumud  is the concept most frequently employed to describe the daily reality experienced by Palestinians in the occupied territories and those caught up in the ongoing diaspora, translates as steadfastness and refers to a form of everyday resistance, and describes a stubborn insistence on continuing with life despite all obstacles.
 Land Day is typically met with violent Israeli repression, yet  this movement gained a renewed surge in 2018 when thousands of Palestinians — families, people of all ages, and genders — commemorated Land Day by peacefully walking towards the border areas along the Gaza Strip. They dubbed this the Great March of Return and originally intended to highlight the sacrifices of those who resisted and continue to resist land acquisition; it was also a protest against Israel’s 10-year long siege of Gaza. 
It was land that motived them to start this largely non-violent protest which was met with Israeli fire and snipers. Israel claimed the lives of hundreds of Palestinians at the Great March of Return, and thousands more lives before and since then. But it is beyond doubt, that Israel has failed to erase the love in the hearts of all Palestinians for their land.
Since the Great March of Return, Palestinians in Gaza have held weekly marches towards a security fence put up by Israel. They mainly attempt to break the siege around their territory and demand their land back as well.
On March 29, 2002, at the height of the Second Intifada, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, a devastating military assault that killed nearly 500 Palestinians, wounded over 1400, and left over 17,000 Palestinians homeless.  Though these events all happened years apart, they serve as a great representation of the realities of ongoing Israeli settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing, occupation, and apartheid today.
Today many of the Land Day protests  against the theft of their lands focus on the Negev region, since much of the land that has been marked for appropriation in the Galilee has already been confiscated. The Palestinian Bedouin citizens of Israel also now face the appropriation of 800,000 dunams of the Negev by the Israeli state.The housing situation for the Bedouin remains dire. Settlements that house 160,000 people are deemed "illegal" by Israel, and risk demolition. The issue of land allocation and housing for Palestinian citizens of Israel has now reached crisis point.
Land seizures remain an essential part of Israeli policy that can be seen regularly applied in area ‘C’ within the West Bank, that is under the full Israeli control. As a result of such measures, and the continued attacks on these lands, and inaccessibility to basic services provided to the people living there, most of the Palestinians have been forced to leave the area that is now considered de facto annexed to the occupying state of Israel who  has squeezed the Palestinian population, of some 5.3 million, to live in less that 9% of Mandate Palestine. 
Land Day remains poignantly relevant as Israel continues to confiscate land, expand their colonies, and  build their illegal settlements in flagrant violation of all international conventions, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law.
Land day  has come to symbolise the struggle of the Palestinian people for their legitimate rights to their own land, homes and property; indeed, their legitimate right to their homeland and for its people to  proudly declare that they are one from the River to the Sea.
As we commemorate the Palestinian Land Day, let us continue to  strongly condemn Israel’s apartheid regime and policies that has  consistently displaced Palestinians from their native lands, simultaneously destroying their ecosystems It is also worth noting that while some 10 million Palestinians live in refugee camps struggling and demanding to return to their land since they were displaced starting in 1948 with the Nakba,
This Land Day, Palestinians across the board are resisting ethnic cleansing from al-Walaja, Jerusalem, to Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills, to Al-Naqab desert in what is known as Israel today, to the Jordan Valley, to Gaza, and beyond and call for long-overdue sanctions on apartheid Israel.
On Palestinian Land Day we can express our solidarity through our deep commitment to continue working towards ending the prevailing violations and work towards bringing about a just peace. Against a backdrop of Israeli forces, murdering over 90 Palestinians. amd wounding over 2.000 so far this year, with land theft, ethnic cleansing, home demolitions and settlement expansion increasing at an alarming rate,settler  organisations  have been further emboldened by a new Israeli government that is worrying even more right wing than its predecessors that threatens even more annexations. creating conditions that will make like for the  Palestinian's more unbearable than it is now.
On this important day in the Palestinian struggle for liberation,as they renew their commitment to the struggle for freedom. justice and  return, our strength must be drawn from their resistance and steadfastness/that has not ceased since 1976 against those that seek to sever the connection they have to their land.
The day of the land reminds us that the Palestinian right of return enshrined in international law is inextricably linked to the right of existence that refuses to be forgotten. The Palestinian  people have suffered enough and their collective pain must not be allowed to continue.
The international community must  take firm and principled actions to promote the human rights and dignity of the Palestinians.and their access and use  of their land and Properties,and defend the rights of the Palestinian People and hold Israel accountable to its obligations under international humanitarian Law. 
I would like to draw attention to the Keep Hope Alive – Olive Tree Campaign, that  helpa Palestinian farmers, access, maintain and save their land. Olive trees and harvests have an exceptionally important place in Palestinian culture, especially in villages where farming is the main source of income for Palestinian families. Palestinians and especially farmers have always looked at olive trees as a national symbol that should be kept and protected as it speaks of the thousands of years of their history in Palestine. This special importance has been expressed in the Palestinian culture, through oral history, songs, and poetry.
The Land Day strike  inspired the following  two poems, the first by Tawfiq Zayyad, ,and then another strong poem by the pen  of Mahmoud Darwish that continues to resonate across the Palestinian generations.

Here we will stay - Tawfiq Zayyad ( 7/5/ 29 - 5/7/ 94)

In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee,
we shall remain
like a wall upon your chest,
and in your throat
like a shrad of glass,
a cactus thron,
and in your eyes
a sandstorm.
We shall remain
a wall upon your chest,
clean dishes in your restaurants,
serve drinks in your bars,
sweep the floors of your kitchens
to snatch a bite for our children
from your blue fangs.
Here we shall stay,
sing our songs,
take to the angry streets,
fill prisons with dignity.
In Lidda, in Ramla, in the galilee,
we shall remain,
guard the shade of the fig
and olive trees,
ferment rebellion in our children
as yeast in the dough.

To our Land - Mahmoud Darwish

To our land,
and it is the one near the word of god,
a ceiling of clouds
To our land,
and it is the one far from the adjectives of nouns,
the map of absence
To our land,
and it is the one tiny as a sesame seed,
a heavenly horizon ... and a hidden chasm
To our land
and it is the one poor as a grouses wings
holy books . . . and an identity wound
To our land,
and it is the one surrounded with torn hills,
the ambush of a new past
To our land, and it is a prize of war,
the freedom to die from longing and burning
and our land, in its bloodied night
is jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far
and illuminates whats outside it . . .
As for us , inside,
we suffocate more !

Translated by Fady Joudah




Sad Farewell to Paul "Lily Savage" O'Grady.



A sad farewell to the much loved British television presenter, actor, and comedian Paul "Lily Savage" O'Grady who has passed at the age of 67  “unexpectedly but peacefully” on Tuesday evening which was confirmed by his husband Andre Portasio Ourtia.
Born in Birkenhead in 1955 on the Wirral, to a working-class Irish immigrant family/ In 2015, he told a reporter that despite his wealth, he still felt “very much” working-class, saying, “I know that probably sounds strange. Mentally, I still am. I’m still thinking, have I got the rent for Friday?”
His mother’s maiden name was Savage, which inspired his act. So did other female relatives and clients he met during his early career as a social worker. He performed as Lily in a solo show that ran for eight years at South London’s famed Royal Vauxhall Tavern and became renowned for speaking out about LGBT rights, notably the Aids crisis, police harassment and Section 28. He combined warm compassion with outrageously spiky wit – a rare combination that stood him in good stead throughout a glittering, eclectic career.
 Rather than dressing in Hollywood-style super-glam like most drag acts of the era, O’Grady consciously made Lily a streetwise everywoman. “I gave her cheap clothes, visible roots, a tattoo and a lovebite,” he later recalled on Michael Parkinson’s chat show. “Her heels were scuffed and she had holes in her tights. She was a divorced ex-prostitute with two children and a fondness for booze and drugs. Next thing I knew, she was on primetime telly. What happened there?”
O'Grady took his deliciously naughty foul mouthed Lily from pubs to peak time television. All in an age when homophobia was the ‘norm’! He helped break those barriers down, as an activist  while lending his  voice  to those to scared to come out.
After  O’Grady killed off Savage in 2005, claiming Lily had “seen the light, taken the veil and packed herself off to a convent in France”. Thereafter he took centre stage as himself. As the host of the Paul O’Grady Show and Paul O’Grady Live he could be just as caustic as Savage.
In 2010 he provoked complaints to Ofcom for attacking the new coalition government during Paul O’Grady Live. “Do you know what got my back up?” he told his ITV audience. “Those Tories hooping and hollering when they heard about the cuts. Gonna scrap the pensions – yeah! – no more wheelchairs – yeah! ... I bet when they were children they laughed at Bambi when the mother got shot.”
In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, O’Grady stated that he was “ashamed” of the state of the country under the Tories, particularly in regards to the underfunding of the National Health Service (NHS). He also expressed his belief that the austerity measures implemented by the government had caused unnecessary hardship for many people.aul O'Grady never compromis
O’Grady also criticised the Conservative Party’s stance on issues such as Brexit, climate change and LGBTQ+ rights. In a 2017 interview with The Independent, he accused the Tories of “destroying the country” and said that he would “rather eat a wasp” than vote for them.
In 2019, O’Grady made headlines after he accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson of being a “buffoon” and a “complete and utter disgrace”, after Johnson made comments about Muslim women wearing burqas. O’Grady also accused the Conservative Party of deliberately stoking racial tensions for political gain.
While some criticized O’Grady for his political activism, many of his fans applauded him as a national treasure for using his platform to speak out on issues he was passionate about. O’Grady’s comments on the Tories are just one example of his willingness to use his voice to effect change and hold those in power to account. accountable, proving .to be more effective in opposition to the viciously cruel Tories than the brown nosed subservient Starmer and his treacherous Blairtes ever could.
An iconic trailblazer,passionate campaigner and  fantastically funny observer of real life who laughed with us cried with us and offered support to those who had no voices at all, he remains a national treasure admired by many because he never compromised  his beliefs for anyone, while breaking down  barriers for gay rights and mainstream acceptance.
He should be remembered as a fiercely defiant gay man whose  righteous fury against the establishment should remain a battle cry for us all.  My thoughts go out to his loved ones, his family and his friends,.
Rest in Peace Paul "Lily Savage"  O'Grady.

Thursday 23 March 2023

Marking Revolutionary Freedom Fighter Bhagat Singh's Death Anniversary.

 


After being ruled by the British for almost 200 years, India got its independence on August 15, 1947, after years of revolts, struggle and freedom battles that entailed blood, sweat and sacrifices of numerous sons and daughters of the soil. Many names were recorded in the archives, many more were not. However, the country pays tribute to all those who martyred in the freedom struggle by observing Shaheed Diwas. or Martyrs’ Day is celebrated in India on seven different  occasions in a year. One of these occasion is on March 23 which marks the death anniversaries of revolutionary freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru and their story of sacrifice is now considered to be one of the most inspirational chapters of the Indian freedom movement which has continued to inspire generations many years laters to fight for their rights. ..
Bhagat Singh who would become popularly known as Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat was born on September 28, 1907, in Banga village of Lyallpur district ,western Punjab, India  which is now in Pakistan to Kishan Singh and Vidyavati. At the time of his birth, his father Kishan Singh, uncles Ajit and Swaran Singh were in jail for demonstrations against the Colonization Bill implemented in 1906. His uncle, Sardar Ajit Singh, was a proponent of the movement and established the Indian Patriots' Association.
 Bhagat Singh attended Dayanand Anglo Vedic High School, which was operated by Arva Samai (a reform sect of modern Hinduism), and then National College, both located in Lahore.
Bhagat Singh’s  Sikh family was politically active and were advocates of independence. His father and his uncles Ajit Singh and Schwann Singh were active in progressive politics, taking part in the agitation around the Canal Colonization Bill in 1907, and later the Ghadar Movement of 1914–1915. The presence of such revolutionary people at home had a profound impact on Bhagat Singh.
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 at Armistar when he was only 12  after a large peaceful crowd had gathered to protest against the arrest of pro-Indian independence leaders Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr. Satya Pal. in which in response to the public gathering, the British Brigadier-General R. E. H. Dyer surrounded the Bagh with his soldiers and ordered his troops to open fire on the nationalist meeting brutally killing hundreds  and  the violence against unarmed Akali protestors at Nankana Sahib  in 1921 also all left a huge impact on the young Bhagat Singh and as a result of decided to join the freedom struggle in the fight against colonialism
He joined the non-violence movement of Mahatma Gandhi.but felt disillusioned with Gandhi's idea of non-violence as the latter called off the non-cooperation movement which was started after the Jallianwala Bagh incident. and as he was attracted to Marxist ideologies and also influenced by Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
In 1923, he joined the National College in Lahore, founded two years earlier by Lala Lajpat Rai in response to Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement, which urged Indian students to shun schools and colleges subsidized by the British Indian government.
The following year Singh became a member of the Hindustan Republican Association, a revolutionary organization that believed in armed struggle against British colonial rule in India that was  started by Sachindranath Sanyal a year earlier. The main organizer of the Association was Chandra Shekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh became very close to him.
Initially, Bhagat Singh’s activities were limited to writing corrosive articles against the British Government, printing and distributing pamphlets outlining principles of a violent uprising, aimed at overthrowing the Government. Considering his influence on the youth, and his association with the Akali movement, he became a person of interest for the government.The police arrested him in a bombing case that took place in 1926 in Lahore. He was released 5 months later on a 60,000 rupees bond. 
In 1926, he founded the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, an organization that aimed to encourage revolution against British rule by rallying the peasants and workers.
He made contact with the ‘Workers and Peasants Party’ which brought out the monthly magazine Kirti in Punjabi. For the next year, Bhagat Singh worked on the editorial board of Kirti.
In 1928, he established the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) along with Sukhdev Thapar, Chandrashekhar Azad and others. However after Azad was shot dead in 1930.the HSRA collapsed.
Singh popularised the slogan "Inqilab Zindabad". which can be translated as “Long Live Revolution”  that became  one of the most famous slogans during the Indian freedom struggle. It was used by Shahid-e-Azam Bhagat Singh throughout his speeches and writings.The slogan was originally coined by the Urdu poet and Indian freedom fighter Maulana Hasrat Mohani in 1921. 
In October, 1928, the British government of India appointed the Simon Commission to enquire into the possibility of granting India the chance to rule itself. That this Commission had no Indian representative made it the focus of popular attack in Lahore. Lajpat Rai was at the head of a peaceful demonstration that was asking the Simon Commission to go back to England.
Despite the non-violent nature of the demonstration, the Superintendent of Police, James A Scott, ordered the police to use batons to disperse the protesters.and Lala Lajpat Rai sustained fatal injuries during the clash.The revolutionaries although great critics of Lajpat Rai and his politics, were determined to avenge his death. The Assistant Superintendent of Police, J.P. Saunders who is believed to have hit Lala Lajpat Rai directly, was assassinated by Bhagat Singh, and his associates Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru..
On the next day in Lahore, there were public notices put up in the name of the Indian Socialist Democratic Army. One such notice declared, 'We regret having killed a human being but this man was a part of that unmerciful and unjust system that must be destroyed... Sometimes it is important to shed blood for a Revolution. The Revolution we envisage is one where the exploitation of man by man will finish... Inquilab Zindabad.'
The murder was condemned as a retrograde action by Mahatma Gandhi, but Jawaharlal Nehru  later wrote:
Bhagat Singh did not become popular because of his act of terrorism but because he seemed to vindicate, for the moment, the honor of Lala Lajpat Rai, and through him of the nation. He became a symbol, the act was forgotten, the symbol remained, and within a few months each town and village of Punjab, and to a lesser extent in the rest of northern India, resounded with his name. Innumerable songs grew about him and the popularity that the man achieved was something amazing.”
In March 1928, the government introduced the Public Safely Bill in the Legislative Assembly. The Indian members rejected the Bill and in 1929, the Viceroy attempted to pass it as an ordinance. The Naujawan Bharat Sabha passed resolutions opposing this and the Trade Dispute Bill and it finally decided to intervene directly. On 8th April, 1929, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt threw a small explosive in the Assembly and stayed in the visitors' gallery till they were arrested. On 7th May, Bhagat Singh's trial began and in the statement made in court on 6th June, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt, representing the HSRA declared, 'we dropped the bomb on the floor of the Assembly Chamber to register our protest on behalf of those who had no other means left to give expression to their heart-rending agony. Our sole purpose was to make the deaf hear and to give the heedless a timely warning... from under the seeming stillness of the sea of humanity, a veritable storm is about to break out
On the 12th June, Bhagat Singh whose revolutionary ideas were becoming immensely popular during the freedom struggle, and seen as a threat by the empire, was sentenced to transportation in the Assembly Bomb case.
Singh considered  himself a political prisoner along with others, noted the discrimination between the European and the Indian prisoners. The political prisoners demanded equality in food standards, clothing, toiletries, and other hygienic necessities, as well as access to books and a daily newspaper.
 Singh along with other prisoners underwent a hunger strike. Failed attempts were made to break the strike by the government. With the nationwide popularity of the hunger strike, the government decided to advance the Lahore Conspiracy Case and Singh was transported to Bostal Jail in Lahore and the trial needless to say, which was one-sided started on 10 July 1929 and ended on the 7th of October, 1930 with a death sentence which was widely opposed and many attempts were made to challenge the decision.
When Bhagat Singh’s mother went to visit him in jail, he was believed to be laughing loudly. Everyone around him was shocked. Most of them considered that he was close to death. Reports suggest that the revolutionary leader was smiling  when he was was hanged along with his comrades Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru on March 23, 1931, at the age of 23 and it is said that the trio proceeded quite cheerfully towards the gallows while chanting their favourite slogans like “Inquilab Zindabad” and “Down with British Imperialism”. Singh and his peers were cremated at Hussainiwala on the banks of Sutlej River.
Despite his short life, Bhagat Singh's death had the effect that he desired and he inspired thousands of youths to assist the reminder of the Indian Independence movement. After his hanging, youths in regions around Northern India rioted in protest against the British Raj and also against the indifference of the congress. To this day he is revered by many as a symbol of resistance to British colonialism in India, and his example continues to inspire new generations of activists worldwide.  
Apart from being a freedom fighter,participating in various acts of resistance against British rule in India. Bhagat Singh was also a great speaker, reader, writer and journalist.for Punjabi and Urdu language newspapers. He was moulded and guided by not only the political situation in India but also by the situation in Asia, Europe and America. The Russian revolution and Marxist writings and literature on the Soviet Union captured his imagination when he was in his teens. By the time he was 20, Bhagat Singh had devoured books on the theories of socialism, economics and revolution in European countries.
According to historian J.N. Sanyal, Bhagat Singh was an extremely well-read man and his special sphere of study was socialism and the economic experiment in Russia under the Bolshevik regime that  greatly interested him.But he was equally alive to the importance of national language and literature in bringing about an awakening and national integration among the masses.
Although he often quoted from the writings of Guru Gobind Singh, Swami Ram Tirath and Swami Vivekananda, Bhagat Singh was totally against using religion for political ends. He believed that the failure of earlier revolutionaries lay in their divided loyalty to their nation and their religion.An atheist as well as being a socialist, Bhagat Singh was also attracted to communist and anarchist causes.
He wrote a series of articles on anarchism, wanting to fight against mainstream misconceptions of the word in the Punjabi periodical Kirti  and explainrd his interest in anarchist ideology and express his concern over misunderstanding of the concept of anarchism among the public. Singh tried to eradicate the misconception among people about anarchism. He wrote, “The people are scared of the word anarchism. The word anarchism has been abused so much that even in India revolutionaries have been called anarchist to make them unpopular.” As anarchism means absence of ruler and abolition of state, not absence of order, Singh explained, “I think in India the idea of universal brotherhood, the Sanskrit sentence vasudhaiva kutumbakam etc., has the same meaning.” He wrote about the growth of anarchism,”the first man to explicitly propagate the theory of Anarchism was Proudhon and that is why he is called the founder of Anarchism. After him a Russian, Bakunin, worked hard to spread the doctrine. He was followed by Prince Kropotkin etc.
Singh explained anarchism by writing :
The ultimate goal of Anarchism is complete independence, according to which no one will be obsessed with God or religion, nor will anybody be crazy for money or other worldly desires. There will be no chains on the body or control by the state. This means that they want to eliminate: the Church, God and Religion; the state; Private property.
In ‘To Young Political Workers,’ his last testament before his death, he called for a “socialist order” and a reconstruction of society on a “new, i.e, Marxist basis.” He considered the government “a weapon in the hand of the ruling class”, which is reflected in his belief that Gandhian philosophy only meant the “replacement of one set of exploiters for another.
Bhagat Singh is often admired and celebrated for his dedication to the cause of liberation. However his socialist, communist and anarchist beliefs were suppressed by the successive governments in Independent India, who saw a revolutionary who had the potential to inspire, unite and motivate the growing population of a spectrum of activists all over India, in direct response to the fast-spreading divisiveness and intolerance in the country, often patronised by the groups and organizations professing a right-wing fascist ideology.
Writing the introduction to Bhagat Singh’s remarkable essay Why I am an Atheist in 1979,the late Bipan Chandra described the Marxist leaning of Bhagat Singh and his associates in the following way; “Bhagat Singh was not only one of India’s greatest freedom fighters and revolutionary socialists, but also one of its early Marxist thinkers and ideologues. Unfortunately, this last aspect is relatively unknown with the result that all sorts of reactionaries, obscurantists and communalists have been wrongly and dishonestly trying to utilise for their own politics and ideologies the name and fame of Bhagat Singh and his comrades such as Chandra Shekhar Azad.”
Bhagat Singh’s dreams of a new social order live on, not just in his writings, but also reflected in the hearts of every activist, protester, and dissenting citizen.The fight for freedom,revolution, Inquilabmay have changed in meaning, but it is far from over. Bhagat Singh remains  one of the most influential, revolutionary figures in the Indian history and continues to serve as a tremendous source of inspiration for every generation.
The inspiration that Bhagat Singh still ignites within the soul of Indians can be felt in the popularity of the films and theatrical adaptations on his life. Several films like “Shaheed” (1965) and “The Legend of Bhagat Singh” (2002) were made on the life of 23-year old revolutionary. Popular songs like the “Mohe rang de basanti chola” and “Sarfaroshiki Tamanna” associated with Bhagat Singh are still relevant in inspiring patriotic emotions in the Indians. Numerous books, articles and papers have been written about his life, ideologies and legacy. 
Today is marked as Bhagat Singh Jayanti and is celebrated all over India to remember his courageous sacrifice that ignited the spark of patriotism among countless people. To commemorate Shaheed Diwas, people observe a two-minute silence to remember these three freedom fighters and all the other martyrs who laid down their lives for the nation. revisit their work in art and history, from singing songs that defined their time, to reading the lessons passed down by Bhagat Singh in his essays  and diaries.
The President, the Vice-President, and the Prime Minister of India pay tribute to these great freedom fighters at their respective memorials in Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tributes to revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on Martyrs’ Day on Thursday. Modi tweeted, "India will always remember the sacrifice of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru. These are greats who made an unparalleled contribution to our freedom struggle."
There is also a tradition of organizing processions, marches and rallies on this day in various parts of the country and schools and colleges hold special programs to commemorate the occasion. The day is a reminder to the people of India about the value of freedom and the sacrifices made by the freedom fighters for the country..

“They may kill me, but they cannot kill my ideas. They can crush my body, but they will not be able to crush my spirit.”
 
"Revolution is an inalienable right of mankind. Freedom is an imperishable birthright of all. Labour is the real sustainer of society"
 
- Shaheed Bhagat Singh

Tuesday 21 March 2023

Lowkey - Free Assange (Acoustic Version) featuring Mai Khalil and The Grime Violinist

 

This powerful track from British rapper and activist Lowkey a.k.a  Kareem Dennis. featuring Mai Khalil and The Grime Violinist called  Free Assange has been released as part of States of Violence, a collaboration between a/political https://a-political.org/ WikiLeaks https://wikileaks.org/ and the Wau Holland Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wau_Holland_Foundation on the 20th anniversary since George Bush and Tony Blair launched their criminal invasion of Iraq, leading to the death of more than a million people, that also saw the Iraq state smashed into smithereens. 
It sent shockwaves reverberating around the wider region, greatly strengthening the terrorism it professed to be combatting. A month before the war on February 15rg. eight million people on five continents, me included, 1.5 million of them in London took to the streets and marched against the coming invasion. We were ignored and sadly the masters of war around the world today remain as arrogant and belligerent as they were two decades ago.
Wikileaks the whistleblowing news site that was  founded in 2006 alongside courageous journalist Julian Assange were at the forefront of the many information leaks that helped expose the morally, despicable and illegal activities committed by governments and corporations at the time of the Iraq war. and now in 2023 WikiLeaks is partnering with the London-based arts organisation a/political and the freedom of information organisation Wau Holland Foundation to present an exhibition this month which will include a physical copy of some of the top secret US diplomatic cables it leaked in 2010.
The leak, widely known as “cablegate”, began on 28 November 2010 when Wikileaks began releasing 250,000 diplomatic cables gathered from US embassies around the world, including logs from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which exposed human rights abuses. Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange was shortly after arrested on espionage charges in London and remains in Belmarsh Prison facing extradition to the US where he could receive 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act.
Titled States of Violence, the aim of the London show (24 March-8 April) is to “unite the people who support both Wikileaks and Julian Assange”, according to Joseph Farrell, a Wikileaks ambassador, and Chloe Schlosberg, an art consultant at the Wau Holland Foundation.
Describing Wikileaks as “a persecuted organisation”, Farrell and Schlosberg say: “Julian Assange is sitting in a maximum security prison for publishing the truth about war and government corruption. As a result we understand more than most what it means to live and work under insidious and secretive states of violence."
They add: “We have had great success with rallies and demonstrations in support of Julian and here we are creating the chance that allows people to reflect and consider the gravitas of what both Julian and the organisation have been through in the last 16 years.”
States of Violence brings together artists, agitators and icons such as Ai Weiwei, Dread Scott and The Vivienne Foundation to unveil and oppose techniques of government oppression, from war and torture to police brutality and surveillance. The world’s most outspoken individuals turn the spotlight on global power structures, releasing material which lays bare the darkest truths of our contemporary reality. This is presented alongside “SECRET+NOFORN” (2022), a body of work by the Institute for Dissent & Datalove, which comprises the highest classification of cables, SECRET and NOFORN (meaning no foreign nationals), from the 2010 WikiLeaks Cablegate publication of U.S. diplomatic cables. It is the largest-ever physical publication of top secret government cables, never before available in the UK in hardcopy.
The video above https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hytO-oSzdD8 features a clip from 'Collateral Murder' released by WikiLeaks on the 5th of April 2010. It shows a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
Next month marks 4 years since Julian Assange, a man who committed his life to transparency was buried in Belmarsh supermax prison for lifting the lid on numerous war crimes and human rights abuses, while as Lowkey has pointed out ' war criminals like Bush and Blair are free, delicately humanised, solemnly listened to, and even revered, while Julian  who published information about their crimes, is cursed, spied on, imprisoned, and ignored.'
And let us not forget that all these years later too many of the pundits who cheered on the carnage two decades ago continue to stink out the opinion pieces of national newspapers.
The Iraq War was an unnecessary conflict, launched on the basis of flawed intelligence, secret diplomacy and with no sound legal basis, 20 years has not diminished the horror of the Iraq War,and it's only because of Mr Assange and WikiLeaks that the world knows of some of the shocking war crimes committed by the United States in Iraq, and for the US to be pursuing him the way they are is simply unconscionable, and it is long past time that those responsible were held to account.
Is it not now hypocritical that Western leaders are calling currently calling for Vladimir Putin, a  U.S ally I will remind you in the early years of the so called war on terror- to face trial for war crimes but those others mentioned continue to evade justice for their own crimes. 
Thank you  Lowkey  for speaking truth to power with your beautiful and empowering words, and for reminding us that we must free Julian Assange  before it is too late and that it really shouldn't  be the case that : 
' The poor get bullets and the bombers get medals
Contracts for the rich and a cell for the rebels.'

Saturday 18 March 2023

Vive la Commune! Marking the Anniversary of the Paris Commune.

 

On this day March 18th, 1871, artisans and communists, labourers and anarchists took over the city of Paris and established the Paris Commune, rising up against a despised and detested government and proclaimed the city an independent municipality belonging to itself. The workers of Paris, joined by mutinous National Guardsmen, seized the city and set about reorganising society in their own interests based on workers' councils. 
This heroic radical experiment in socialist self government may have  lasted only 72 days before being violently being crushed in a brutal massacre that established France's Third republic. but the rebellion would shake the foundations of European society to the core,building a commune where they would directly and collectively manage their society through new institutions and voluntary associations of their own creation. It would mark the first major experience in history of men and women. picking up arms in a proletarian revolution to  create a socialist society, and taking charge of their own destiny. Celebrated as an episode in which the have-nots wrested power, albeit briefly, from the haves, the Commune is remembered as a golden “What if?”
Paris was, at the time, the second largest city in the world after London, and had a population of over 1.8 million by 1870. It was the political centre of the world, and there had been revolutions or overthrows of governments in France in 1830 and 1848, and many insurrectionary incidents in the years that followed. Leading up to 1870, Napoleon III was in power and his government amounted to a police state, which kept down workers. But France was also the largest section of the First International, or the International Workingmen’s Association, of which Marx and Engels were early influential members.
The Paris Commune came into being in the context of the Franco-Prussian war, Napoleon went to war because his repression at home had not succeeded in stopping strikes or the growth of the International.  He needed a foreign distraction to pull the country behind him, and chose a war with Prussia over the issue of who would ascend to the vacant Spanish throne.  The main reason he lost this war was because he and the rest of the ruling class were terrified of recruiting and arming a mass army, of giving guns to the workers. As Adolphe Thiers (who would later become the President) said, “it is not safe to place a gun on the shoulders of every socialist.
The war against Prussia began in July 1870 and within two months, Napoleon and some several thousand French troops were captured. Immediately afterwards, crowds of Parisians invaded the Legislative Assembly and the City Hall and declared a new, republican government on September 4, 1870.  Everyone, except royalists and the defenders of the old empire, was thrilled that the Napoleonic dictatorship was gone. The Parisian deputies to the Legislative Assembly formed a provisional government. Many hoped that an armistice with Prussia would be reached immediately. When this did not happen, Parisians turned to the task of preparing the city to resist. In September 1870, the Prussian siege of Paris began. At the end of January 1871, the Government of National Defence accepted Bismarck’s armistice terms and surrendered the city to the Prussians.
The French held elections for a National Assembly, which in turn selected the elderly and extremely conservative statesman Adolphe Thiers to lead the government. Appalled at the government’s capitulation to Bismarck’s terms and angered that the Prussian troops who had starved and bombarded Paris were to be allowed to humiliate the city with a triumphal march, the Parisians grew daily more suspicious of the government’s motives. Working class neighbourhoods barricaded themselves. Cannons that had been left in the zone to be occupied by the Prussians were dragged by hand to the hills of Paris for safekeeping.
The French Government of Thiers decided that unpaid back rents had to be paid up, which was impossible because there was no money due to mass unemployment.  The government also said that all debts incurred during the war had to be paid, and then the government stopped paying the National Guard. It suppressed radical newspapers.  It sentenced the working class leaders Auguste Blanqui and Gustave Flourens to death in absentia. And it moved the capital of the country from Paris to Versailles, the historic centre of French royalty.
The Versailles government wanted to disarm the National Guard. The government’s army went to Montmarte, a working class neighbourhood, to remove the cannons. The National Guard became aware of this attempt and one of the Communards who led the resistance was Louise Michel. Michel described the situation in Montmartre:  “It was an ocean of humanity, but there was not death, because the women threw themselves on the cannon, and the soldiers refused to turn on the crowd.” Later that day, two senior French military officials were killed by their own soldiers. 
As Val Morel of the Central Committee of the National Guard, said “This fighter had dreams for fifty years and now he was living his dream, and seeing businessmen humbled, begging for an audience. At last.”
By March, there was a situation of dual power, with the National Guard in Paris, and the ruling class government moved outside Paris, to Versailles.Even though the National Guard at one time had been bourgeois, it had become working class in makeup. The wealthy had left Paris during the winter, leaving the workers armed in the National Guard.
The Commune emerged on March 18, 1871, out of material conditions that drove the masses into action. First, the siege of Paris cut off the city from the rest of world (except by air balloon), and there was total economic collapse. Secondly, the winter added to a food and heat crisis. The government did not ration food so the wealthy did just fine—eating the animals in the zoo, horses, cats, dogs and rats—while the masses starved. Thirdly, while the government talked about defending the country, it preferred surrendering to Prussia than giving power to its workers. It had set up the National Guard, essentially a citizens militia, and lots of unemployed workers joined up. Now there was a mass, organized, and armed working class.
The ruling class was now more terrified of its own working class citizens than it was of the Prussians. And for good reasons. The National Guard was democratized: officers were elected, there were instant recall provisions, and there was no extraordinary pay for senior officers. This became the basis for the workers’ democracy the Commune tried to develop. So there was working class unity, democratic control, and centralization to take on the ruling class. This was something brand new, a mass and democratic movement from below to create a new society.
A large fraction of the National Guard were proletarians, and rejected to wear the official uniform. While there was a general discontent with the unconditional surrender of the French army and nationalist calls to continue the war or revenge Prussia for the defeat were widespread, the First International had gained significant influence especially within the working class of Paris, as well. This combined the general frustration within the population due to the lost war and the devastating siege with a general urge for profound social change due to arising class consciousness. Accordingly, already within the last month of the war, some attempts of uprising were undertaken with popular demands like the civil control of the military and elections of a commune.
The central government, not unaware of the revolutionary potential of an armed Paris, secretly sent troops into the city in the night of March 17th/18th in order to bring the cannons of the National Guard under the control of the central army. However, the attempt was soon revealed and the people of Paris quickly rushed to defend their cannons. Only a few shots were fired before the soldiers defected to the crowd that had surrounded them. On March 18th, authorities of the central government started to flee from the city, followed by a general retreat of the French Army which left the National Guard in control of the city. The republican tricolor was replaced with the red flag. The Paris Commune was born.
The National Guard Central Committee, arrondissement mayors, and Parisian deputies instituted self-rule for Paris, announced city-wide elections and tried to negotiate with the government in Versailles to reach a peaceful solution to the crisis. On March 28th the Paris Commune officially came into existence. The newly elected municipal council was inaugurated at the city hall, or Hotel de Ville, and began to undo the decrees of the National Assembly.
The Paris Commune  was  the high point  in the surge  of the workers movement also expressed in the First International  founded in 1867. Ideologically charged, with lots of division, the backlash following the defeat of the Commune, also broke up the International in 1872, which would see it splitting into  two factions; Marxist and Anarchist. The leading  figures  on the two sides were Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin.
Both Marx and Bakunin supported and hailed the Commune - unlike some English trade unionists in the International, who recoiled in horror. Bakunin and his followers would use the word 'commune' a  lot saying  that the state could  be immediately abolished by transforming society into a federation of free communes. The Paris  Commune  reflected anarchist ideas of community control, workers associations and confederations, and surprisingly at the time Karl Marx strongly embraced the Commune, writing at the time he said " Working men's Paris, with  its commune,  will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. It's martyr's are enshrined in the great heart of  the working class."
Since then the Paris Commune has been thus variously described as either Anarchist or Socialist depending on the ideology of the commentator.  It still fills me with much cause for celebration and inspiration. Along with the establishment of a state of, by, and for the working class, the Commune’s claim to greatness is the remarkable range of measures it passed. Rent payments were deferred, as were debt obligations for a period of three years, with no accrual of interest; goods held in the government pawnshop were released to their owners; the separation of church and state was declared, with the government no longer funding church operations and all religious emblems removed from classrooms; the standing army was abolished, replaced by the National Guard, with its officers elected by its members; the guillotine was publicly burned; all elected members of the Commune’s council were made revocable, with their wages limited to those of a worker; factories closed down by their owners during the siege and Commune were to be turned into cooperative enterprises under worker control; and night work for bakers was banned. The Vendome Column, the symbol of Napoleonic military glory, was torn down, its demolition organized by Gustave Courbet.
From March 18 to 28 May the two million  residents of Paris ran their city as an autonomous commune, establishing 43 worker co-operatives,  and advocated for a federation  of revolutionary communes across France, establishing an 8 hour day,and began to regulate workers wages and contracts, abolishing fines for workers, giving them compensation, this was truly a government who put the interest of workers first . It also aimed to make education free, opening up culture for the people, formerly the sole property of the wealthy, opening reading rooms in hospitals to make life pleasant for those sick. Paris was filled with life, ideas and enthusiasm , though their city was  under siege, attempts made to starve  and break the will of the people surrounded by a hostile army. 
The Commune also opened the way for the emancipation of women, allowing them a greater role in politics than they had previously enjoyed. The name of Louise Michel, who headed a vigilance committee and organized an ambulance service, is the best known of the female Communards, but there were others of note. The most important organization was the Union of Women for the Defense of Paris and the Care of the Wounded, co-founded by the Russian emigré Elisabeth Dmitrieff, who also fought at the barricades in the final days of the Commune and later fled to Switzerland. Women weren’t granted the vote or the right to sit on the Commune, but they played a key role at the barricades and were involved in the fight from its first day. The Communards famously set fire to many of Paris’ most famous and important buildings, the arson attributed to roving bands of revolutionary women known as Les Petroleuses.
Peter Kropotkin later enthused "Under  the name of the Paris Commune,  a new idea was born, to become a starting point for future revolutions.' But many others thoughts that the Paris Commune did not go far enough . 
Anyway the French government was not going to tolerate this radicalism in its capital, and finally the French army  marched from Versailles, but retaking the city would prove to be difficult, the communards would hold out for several weeks. The revolutionaries had built 600 barricades around the city which had to be cleared one by one. The French army finally entered Paris on May 21 and crushed the movement by May 28. Paris burned and was drowned in blood , the  estimate of Parisian civilians killed usually tally's to be around 20,000, many died on the barricades. The leaders of the Commune might have had faults  but for all their mistakes , they chose to fight to the end alongside  the other workers.  At the Père Lachaise Cemetery the French army lined up and executed 147 Commune members.
In reckoning with the French state’s actions concerning the Commune, it is important to also highlight that even after the mass executions had ended, a further 9,000 Communards were sentenced to either imprisonment or exile. In the forts along the French Atlantic Coast, but above all in the penal colony on New Caledonia—known as the “dry guillotine”—Communard resistance fighters died in great numbers, before an amnesty declared in 1880 permitted survivors to return to their homeland.
The amnesty, however, was no rehabilitation; the sentences received by the Communards retained their legal validity, and to this day French authorities have staunchly refused efforts to have them revoked. This means that the Communards retain the status of political criminals. The intent here is clear: to delegitimize the Paris Commune. In this sense, the depiction of the aforementioned events published in an 1881 issue of the German magazine Der Sozialdemokrat to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Commune’s defeat remains as apt as ever. A sea of blood separating two worlds; on the one side, those who struggled for a different and better world, and on the other, those who sought to preserve the old order
 There is a wall at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, known as “Le Mur des Fédérés” It was there that the last fighters of the Paris Commune were shot To the  left, the wall became the symbol of the people’s struggle for their liberty and ideals and a reminder  of the ferocity of the government's reprisals. In keeping with their anti-bourgeois principles the former Communards rejected the grandiosity of monuments land wished only for a simple plaque to mark the wall where the mass executions had taken place. However, fearful of encouraging future insurrection, the authorities attempted to sell off the plots associated with the common grave and banned any mention of the events on individual or collective monuments within the cemetery.  Many leaders of the French Communist Party, especially those involved in the French resistance, are also  buried nearby. 
Jules Jouy, a chansonnier from Montmartre wrote:

"Tombe sans croix et sans chapelle, sans lys d'or, sans vitraux d'azur, quand le peuple en parle, il l'appelle le Mur.”

"Tomb without a cross or chapel, or golden lilies, or sky blue church windows, when the people talk about it, they call it The Wall."

The memory of the Commune remained engraved in the people's memory, especially within the workers’ movement which regenerated itself in a few years time. However  following  the Commune, worker’s protests were not authorized in the streets of Paris until roughly 1910. For anarchists and socialists commemorative ceremonies at the Wall of the Communards assumed the same role that the funerals of opposition figures had during the Restoration. The first march to the Wall took place on 23 May 1880, two months after the partial amnesty for former exiled and deported communards, which came into effect in March 1879, and just before the general amnesty of July 1880. It would be coordinated principally by the (Guesdist) Workers’ Party via its associated relays such as the Socialist Committee for Aid to the Pardoned and Unpardoned (Comité socialiste d’aide aux amnistiés et non-amnistiés) and the Federated Syndical Workers’ Union of Workers of the Seine and the Socialist Press (Union fédérative ouvrière et l’Union syndicale des travailleurs de la Seine et la presse socialiste) which included the publications L’Égalité and Le Prolétaire.: 25,000 people, a symbolic "immortal" red rose in their buttonholes, stood up against police forces. From that time on, this "ascent to the Wall", punctuated French labour force political history. Every year since 1880, the organizations of the French left have held a demonstration in this symbolic place during the last week of May. 
 The “Wall” has, little by little, become established as the open-air domus ecclesia of a secular and revolutionary left. This secular space has become a new space of sacralization around which those who still believe in and hope for the coming of a more just and egalitarian society and for the completion of the work left unfinished by the revolts of March 1871, come to rest, to reassemble, and to recharge.
Unlike the masculine crowds of street protests that often ended in insurrection, these are respectful family affairs that included women and children. Their orderly nature was later invoked to convince the authorities to grant permits to political parties so that growing worker’s movements might march in the streets of the capital. The modern protest march, now an institution of Parisian life, can be said to have in part been born within the walls of Père Lachaise, where innovations of funerary practice and funerary architecture first allowed for personal and collective commemoration.
Ironically Strangely, Adolphe Theirs is also buried in the cemetery. He was the French President who presided over the execution. and the man most widely associated with the Communes brutal suppression. In May 1971, 100 years after the Commune and just three years after the 1968 protests that had rocked both the capital and the Fifth Republic, commemorators once again lined the streets. Some individuals tried to blow up the tomb of Adolphe Thiers. And in May 2019 thousands of gilet haunes poured out onto the streets and into Père Lachaise  to commemorate the Commune and its stand against the French State. Many leaders of the French Communist Party, especially those involved in the French resistance, are also  buried nearby. 

Ce que nous demandons à l’Avenir.

Ce que nous voulons de Lui.

C’est la Justice.

Ce n’est pas la Vengeance.”
 

 Victor Hugo (Inscription on the Communards’ Wall)

What we ask of the future

What we want from it 

Is justice

Not vengeance
 
Every year the tens of thousands, of French people, but also people from all over the world, who visit this exalted place of memory of the labour movement, either coming alone  or in demonstrations, with red flags or flowers, they  sometimes sing an old love song, which became the song of the Communards: “Le Temps des Cerises”. We do not pay homage to a man, a hero or a great thinker, but to a crowd of anonymous people who we refuse to forget.

 

The cemetery is built on a gently sloping hill side in Paris in the 20th arrondissement on the eastern side of the city. To walk through it is almost to visit the last 200 years of French history. The pathways are cobbled and elegantly maintained. It is like walking along a stretch of peaceful country lanes, a place where time seems to stand still. Vive la Commune.


The annual Memorial Meeting Near the Wall of the Communards in the Cemetary of Père Lachaise 

Painting by Ilya Repin

After its demise, the Commune became all things to all people on the left; for some, the first socialist state, for others, anarchism in action. For Friedrich Engels, as he wrote in his postscript to Marx’s The Civil War in France, it was the “dictatorship of the proletariat” that he and Marx and the First International had long called for. It was, in reality, not just the first revolution of its kind, but in many ways the last, above all a product and prisoner of France’s particular conditions and history. The measures implemented by the Commune, a form of government that, like so much else about its foundations, harked back to the French Revolution, would be echoed through the decades, inspiring movements around the world and playing an essential role in the rise of the left. But if Engels is right and the Paris Commune was the embodiment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, many of those who later invoked their ideas ultimately betrayed them..Engels’s description was championed by Marx and later by Lenin who, in the months leading up to the Russian Revolution, called for the creation of “a state of the Paris commune type.”
As Walter Benjamin said in his theses “On the Concept of History” (1940), the struggle for emancipation is waged not only in the name of the future but also in the name of the defeated generations; the memory of enslaved ancestors and their struggles is one of the great sources of moral and political inspiration for revolutionary thought and action. The Paris Commune is therefore part of what Benjamin calls “the tradition of the oppressed”, that is to say, of those privileged (“messianic”) moments in history when the lower classes have succeeded, for a while, in breaking the continuity of history, the continuity of oppression; short - too short - periods of freedom, emancipation and justice which will, each time, serve as benchmarks and examples for new battles.
Since then  both Communists, left wing societies,  socialists, anarchists and others have seen the Commune as a model for a  prefiguration of a liberated society, with a political system based on participatory democracy from the grass roots up Inarguably, the Commune triumphed as an ideal for the Left, creating a set of radical possibilities. It endures not only as a historical event, but also as a sketch open to multiple interpretations. Its historical content provides a map suggesting various routes to egalitarianism, while ‘the idea of the Commune’ presents an open vessel, sufficiently ample to hold differing and shifting equitable ideals.
Just as Lenin saw the October revolution in the tradition of the Paris Commune as he proved by euphorically counting every day up to the historical 73 day mark of resistance of the Commune, this remarkable legacy has acted as an exemplary model for all victorious revolutions that followed and  has been continued in the resistance of Sur in Bakur (North-Kurdistan) as well as with the revolution in Syria and Rojava (West-Kurdistan). It is a story of possibility not failure, evidence that points to the seeds of building an alternative society, that unites a spring of peoples, resisting together., and committed to continue building up the practical alternative we want to live. 
Many aspects of this first attempt at social emancipation of the oppressed retain an astonishing relevance and should be reflected on by the new generations. Without the memory of the past and its struggles there will be no fight for the utopia of the future.The people of Paris began the fight for a new world, I guess it's up to us to finish the task.The sun that rose over Paris on the 18th of March 1871 is eternal. The dream stays alive.
Today the anniversary is being observed amidst a powerful upsurge of class struggle in France, Paris again in flames due to people protesting against their capitalist oppressors, and globally a wave of protests and strikes, that imparts to this historic day intense contemporary relevance .How appropriate that all this is going on during the anniversary of the start of the Paris Uprising.
The spirit of the Commune is wonderfully captured in the song “The International” written by Communard Eugene Pottier. Ir has been a standard of the socialist movement since the late nineteenth century, when the Second International adopted it as its official anthem.Sung in languages around the world even today, the lyrics, continue to inspire:


Debout, les damnés de la terre / Arise, damned of the earth
Debout, les forçats de la faim / Arise, prisoners of hunger
La raison tonne en son cratère, / Reason thunders in its volcano
C’est l’éruption de la fin / This is the eruption of the end
Du passé faisons table rase, / Lets make a clean slate of the past
Foule esclave, debout, debout, / Enslaved masses, arise, arise
Le monde va changer de base / The world is is going to change its foundation
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout / We are nothing, we will be all

Chorus:

C’est la lutte finale / This is the final struggle
Groupons-nous, et demain, / Group together, and tomorrow
L’Internationale, / The Internationale
Sera le genre humain. / Will be the human race
Il n’est pas de sauveurs suprêmes, / There are no supreme saviors
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun, / Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune
Producteurs sauvons-nous nous-mêmes / Producers, let us save ourselves
Décrétons le salut commun / Decree the common salvation
Pour que le voleur rende gorge, / So that the thief expires
Pour tirer l’esprit du cachot, / To free the spirit from its cell
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge, / Let us fan the forge ourselves
Battons le fer tant qu’il est chaud / Strike while the iron’s hot

Chorus

L’État comprime et la loi triche, / The State oppresses and the law cheats
L’impôt saigne le malheureux; / Tax bleeds the unfortunate
Nul devoir ne s’impose au riche, / No duty is imposed on the rich
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux. / The right of the poor is an empty phrase
C’est assez languir en tutelle, / Enough languishing in custody
L’égalité veut d’autres lois: / Equality wants other laws
«Pas de droits sans devoirs, dit-elle, / No rights without duties she says
Égaux, pas de devoirs sans droits!» / Equally, no duties without rights

Chorus

Hideux dans leur apothéose, / Hideous in their apotheosis
Les rois de la mine et du rail, / The kings of the mine and the rail
Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose, / Have they ever done anything
Que dévaliser le travail? / Than steal work?
Dans les coffres-forts de la bande, / Inside the strong-boxes of the gangs
Ce qu’il a créé s’est fondu. / What work has created is melted
En décrétant qu’on le lui rende, / By ordering that they give it back
Le peuple ne veut que son dû. / The people only want their due

Chorus

Les Rois nous saoulaient de fumées, / The kings made us drunk with fumes
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans / Peace among us, war to the tyrants
Appliquons la grève aux armées, / Let the armies go on strike
Crosse en l’air et rompons les rangs / Stocks in the air, and break ranks
S’ils s’obstinent, ces cannibales, / If these cannibals insist
A faire de nous des héros, / On making heroes of us
Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles / They will know soon enough that our bullets
Sont pour nos propres généraux. / Are for our own generals

Chorus

Ouvriers, Paysans, nous sommes / Workers, peasants, we are
Le grand parti des travailleurs; / The great party of laborers
La terre n’appartient qu’aux hommes, / The earth belongs only to men
L’oisif ira loger ailleurs. / The idle will go reside elsewhere
Combien de nos chairs se repaissent / How much of our flesh have they consumed
Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours, / But if these ravens, these vultures
Un de ces matins disparaissent, / Disappear one of these days
Le soleil brillera toujours / The sun will shine forever
Chorus
 
If socialism wasn’t born of the Commune, it is from the Commune that dates that portion of international revolution that no longer wants to give battle in a city in order to be surrounded and crushed, but which instead wants, at the head of the proletarians of each and every country, to attack national and international reaction and put an end to the capitalist regime.” —Edouard Vaillant, a member of the Paris Commune.

" History has no like example of a like greatness... to these Parisians storming heaven" - Karl Marx.
 
Long live the memory of  the Paris Commune / Vive la Commune!

Further reading :- 

History of the Paris Commune - Lissagary

Voltarine de Cleyre on the Paris Commune

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voltairine-de-cleyre-the-paris-commune?v=1575118490

The Paris Commune: Revolution and counter revolution in Paris 1870 -1871

https://libcom.org/history/paris-commune-revolution-counterrevolution-paris-1870-1871



                                Communards at the barricades.


                                           Painting by Diego Riviera



Friday 17 March 2023

Springs Great Escape



Rising again with mind ablaze
Tangential thoughts running wild,
It was time to walk through sunshine
Through fields of flourishing flowers. 
Off the leash, carefree and abandoned
Reflecting on wonders surfacing embrace,
Discarding cogitation that kept me wired
Allowed  mother natures caress to deliver her warmth,
Followed rippling stream, enabled darkness to recede
Found glimmers of hope to inhale, inner hunger to feed,
Beyond the fractures of polarity, the gift of serenity
States of karmic energy, releasing again hilarity,
Springs kiss releasing, igniting and liberating
Dissolving into skin. recharging and emanating, 
While all around the sound of birds chirping
Singing their sweet song, while light flooded senses,
As if prayers had been answered as harmony restored
There comes at times a glorious awakening.

Wednesday 15 March 2023

Stand up to Racism, Refugees are Welcome Here.

 

 
Everybody has the rights to a refugee status. It is a human right. There is no such thing as an illegal refugee.Home Secretary Suella Braverman is turning Britain into a Fascist state. It is how it started in Nazi Germany with their forced emigration for the Reich's Jews, and the use of nationalist rhetoric to justify policies of exclusion , in breach of international law and human rights which seems to many people to be tragically occuring again today.The plight of refugees desperate to reach safe havens is very similar to the plight of refugees fleeing Nazi occupied Europe only to be pushed back.
Fascist organisations like Patriotic Alternative are actually quoting Braverman's incendiary, inflammatory language. describing desperate, vulnerable refugees " an invasion of our southern coast" as a slogan to mobilise and build support for their vile fascist agenda.
Regarding the abhorent illegal Immigration Bill. The bill applies to everyone who arrives in the UK - by whatever means - without immigration leave as of 7 March 2023 (as well as some family members who arrived in the UK before that date), which means that all those arriving in the UK irregularly would be banned from claiming asylum and they would be subject to detention and deportation.
This is an incredibly cruel position for the Government to adopt, and there is no evidence that the bill would act as a deterrence to those wishing to cross the Channel in unsafe vessels as its provisions do not target people smugglers, but rather asylum seekers and refugees. It is deeply concerning that an impact assessment for the bill is yet to be produced. 
Perhaps most appalling is the fact the Home Secretary has included a statement in the Bill suggesting it may be incompatible with Convention Rights. This statement and the bill’s disapplication of section 3 of the Human Rights Act foreshadow a likely conflict between the Government and the European Court of Human Rights. The UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency) rightly describes the bill as amounting to “an asylum ban – extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in the United Kingdom for those who arrive irregularly, no matter how genuine and compelling their claim may be, and with no consideration of their individual circumstances.”  
In the event, the Illegal Immigration bill was  disgustingly passed at its Second Reading by 312 (ayes) votes to 250 (noes).  The Government’s abhorrent Bill has cast a dark shadow over many people. especially the refugees who are seeking a safe life here in the UK. 
In times like this it can be hard to see any positives, but there has been one: the solidarity shown by Gary Lineker, and other football pundits and commentators who have stood up for their beliefs. It’s also been incredibly heartwarming and inspiring to see the massive public outcry in support of Gary Lineker after he stood up against the anti-refugee legislation and the good numbers that protested outside Parliament on Monday illustrate just how widespread opposition on this issue is..Solidarity comes in all sizes, and we can all play our part in standing against hate and fear.
Together, we can create an outpouring of compassion and show individual refugees that they are welcome here We should support the rights and dignity of all those  escaping persecution, war,  fleeing in fear, escaping danger, in search of safety, a better future. It is essential that we offer a safe haven for desperate refugees, offering them protection and dignity.
However the persecution of refugees continues, whipped up by forces of racism those on the far right which includes our cruel Government who are using fear and misinformation  to further scapegoat immigrants and refugees..
It's not nearly remarked on enough that prominent among the xenophobes are individuals of migrant/refugee background who project on to others the unintegratable part of their own selves: see Patel (Uganda-Asian), Farage (Huguenot), Trump (German), Sarkozy (Hungarian),
It is worth noting that  there are 65.6 million displaced people around the world. As continuing tragedy unfolds, some of the countries most able to help are shutting their gates to people seeking asylum. Borders are closing, pushbacks are increasing, and hostility is rising. Avenues for legitimate escape are fading away.
Remember migration is a normal activity and migrants must not be demonised but welcomed.Since the beginnings of civilization, we have treated refugees as deserving of our protection. Whatever our differences, we have to recognise our fundamental human obligation to shelter those fleeing from war and persecution. It is time to stop hiding behind misleading words. Richer nations must acknowledge refugees for the victims they are, fleeing from wars they were unable to prevent or stop. History has shown that doing the right thing for victims of war and persecution engenders goodwill and prosperity for generations. And it fosters stability in the long run.
Those who leave everything behind for the purpose of living in peace need our support and solidarity. Today and tomorrow we must continue to stand up for refugees. We must remember that arms trade helps exacerbate the crisis, plus  poverty and inequality, war and conflict, we need to build bridges not more obstacles and borders. Refugees have suffered unimaginable loss, and yet they are filled with the strength to triumph over adversity. The refugee crisis is a human crisis. Their story is our story. We are all human,and together, we can build a better world.We all have an important role in ensuring that refugees have the support they need. When we work together, we can help even more people feel safe from conflict, stay healthy and forge ahead to a better, stronger future. 
 I support free movement and equal rights for all.  We should support the rights and dignity  of those  escaping persecution, war,  fleeing in fear, escaping danger, in search of safety, a better future. It is  essential that we offer a safe have for desperate refugees, offering them protection and dignity,  
As part of a global day of anti-racist demonstrations,I will be marching in solidarity alongside Stand up to Racism and the Trade Union Congress this Saturday in Cardiff.This is a pivotal moment for all of us who stand up for the rights of refugees. With a wave of far-right protests targeting hotels accommodating asylum seekers following the disgraceful riot outside the hotel in Knowsley last month, and the Government’s recently published bill that will ban refugees from claiming asylum in the UK, your support is needed more than ever. 
There has never been a more important time to take a stand and loudly say that refugees are welcome here and stand up against the forces of bigotry, racism and hate. Because all that it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to stand by and do nothing.It is not refugees – or other targets of the Tories’ reactionary so-called ‘war on woke’ such as trans people, BAME communities and disabled people – that are to blame for the ever-deepening cost-of-living emergency but the Government who have overseen over a decade of ideologically-driven austerity that has decimated communities.
When Lee Anderson has declared that a “mix of culture wars and trans debate” will be at the heart of the next Tory election campaign, it is clear that we need to stand up to this reactionary agenda now more than ever.
This government’s scapegoating agenda is all about divide-and-rule, but the majority of people today are against racism, and we can mobilise this majority to both roll back the Tory’s attacks and stop the far-right in their tracks. Now is the time to stand for human rights, unity and solidarity – racism can, and must, be defeated.• 
Please join us in Cardiff on Saturday if you can. If you are in Scotland or England please do attend the demonstrations in Glasgow and London.You can sign-up and see more information here.
Imagine a world free of borders, it's easy if you try, the sky has none, there is only one world. no borders are necessary.No human is illegal.We must say no to the Refugee Ban Bill and yes to to solidarity.

Denounced - persecuted - exiled - dispersed - 

Refused - sectioned - detained - certified -

Wherever they seek shelter

They should be able to call home

Having escaped dark shadows

Having travelled through great adversity

Seeking safe harbour,

All should be given warm welcome

Asylum not stigmatisation

Protection not shame

Dignity not criminalisation

Breathe again, beyond pain and grief
 
No Borders are necessary