Friday 28 April 2023
Unparalleled Dimensions
Wednesday 26 April 2023
Marking the Horrific Anniversary of the Bombing of Geurnica
Guernica- Pablo Ruiz Picasso
During the Spanish Civil War on the afternoon and early evening of Monday, April 26th, 1937, the German and Italian fascist air forces destroyed the sacred city of Basque People, Guernica in a raid lasting three hours. The war crime was ordered by the Spanish nationalist military leadership and carried out by the Congor Legion of the German luftwaffe and the Italian Aviazone Legionairre. Designed to kill or main as many civilians as possible, Operation Rugen was deliberately chosen for a Monday afternoon when the weekly town market would be at its most crowded. Guernica, in the Basque country where revolutionary sentiment among workers was deep, was defenceless from the bombers, which could fly as low as 600 feet.
Guernica was effectively wiped of the map. From a population of 5,000 some 1,700 residents were killed and a further 800 injured. Three quarters of the buildings were raised to the ground. Farms four miles away were flattened.
The savage and barbarous attack was a deliberate attempt to terrorise and intimidate the workers of Republican Spain. Spanish nationalist general Emilio Mola had spoken of destroying the industry of Barcelona and Bilbao in order to cleanse the country. In other words, the Nationalists would endeavour to destroy the industrial proletariat. As the historian Paul Preston wrote in Spanish Holocaust, the Nationalist forces had launched a scorched earth policy during their rapid advance through Spain, most notably in Badajoz, where many hundreds of revolutionary workers were machine gunned to death in the city's bullring.
The fascist government of Berlin and Rome were only to glad to assist Franco in his 'cleansing' of the Spanish population, as both a geo-political necessity and as a test for their military command, new military technology and fighting forces. At his trial for war crimes at Nuremberg, the leading Nazi Hermann Goering would tell the tribunal that he had urged Hitler to send German forces to stem socialism in the Iberian theatre and to test out the Luftwaffe.We should never forget.
The warrior holds in his right hand a broken sword, a symbol of defeat. In it, a hidden flower can also be found. It represents the renewal of life, which would be a neccesary but tough and not so clear period for the victims.
The mythological figure of the Minotour, half bull half human, perfectly reflects the struggle between the human and the bestial side of the war.
Regarding the people depicted in the painting, the protagonism of one women stands out. In spite Picasso was married to one woman and expecting a child from another one, When Picasso painted Guernica, he was maintaining a relationship with the French artist Dora Maar, whose face appears holding a candle in the painting, reflecting with this the little light that illuminated the life of Picasso in that tragic moment. As an allusion to his sentimental situation, they also appear in the picture.
Dora photographed the entire creation process leaving by doing it a very important document for the history of Art.
After Guernica , George Steers eyewitness account in The Times described what he saw as 'without mercy, with system', words that remain tragically pertinent to the bloody legacy of carpet bombing in conflicts ever since. Conflicts that continue across the world, that allow humanity to descend into darkness.Guernica represnted the first instance of a new kind of war. The Blitz followed it, then Dresden and the fireboming of Tokyo. Then Hiroshima, followed by the saturation bombing of Vietnam, on to the tragedies of Afghanistan, Iraq, Temen, Somalia, Syria, Palestine, Ukraine etc.
Lovely world of cottages
Of the night and fields
Faces good in firelight good in frost
Reusing the night the wound and blows
Faces good for everything
Now the void fixes you
Your death will serve as a warning
Death the heart turned over
They made you pay your bread
Sky earth water sleep
And the misery of your life.
Guernica - A.S Knowland
Irun- Badajoz - Malaga - and then Guernica
So that the swastika and the eagle
might spring from the blood-red soil,
bombs were sown into the earth at Guernica,
whose only harvest was a calculated slaughter.
Lest freedom should wave between the grasses
and the corn its proud emblem, or love
be allowed to tread its native fields,
Fascism was sent to destroy the innocent,
and, goose-stepping to the exaggerated waving
of the two-faced flag, to save Spain.
But though the soil be saturated with blood
as a very efficient fertiliser, the furrow
of the ghastly Fasces shall remain barren.
The planted swastika, the eagle grafted
on natural stock shall wither and remain sere;
for no uniformed force shall marshall the sap
thrilling to thrust buds into blossoms, or quicken
the dead ends of the blighted branches;
but the soil shall be set against an alien crop
and the seed be blasted in the planting.
But strength lies in the strength of the roots.
They shall not pass to ruin Spain!
Reprinted from
Spanish Civil War Verse (1980)
Further Reading:-
The Spanish Civil War - Hugh Thomas
Penguin (1965)
They Shall Not Pass:
The Spanish People at War
-Richard Kissh (1974)
Guernica: The history and art of:-
Guernica - Paul Eluard - P Picasso - Victory at Guernica
Music: Richard Wagner and Herbert Von Karajan
Monday 24 April 2023
Rana Plaza - ten years on
Saturday 22 April 2023
Earth Day 2023 : Invest in our planet
Sunday 16 April 2023
Inner Voice
Thursday 13 April 2023
Marking the Amritsar Massacre.
Tuesday 11 April 2023
Remembering Tom Hurndall , Peace Activist (27 November 1981 – 13 January 2004)
Saturday 8 April 2023
International Roma Day
Today is International Roma Day.which celebrates and recognises, the rich history, culture, language of their communities. International Romani Day has its roots in the first significant international meeting of Roma representatives, which was held in Chelsfield, United Kingdom, near London from April 7 to 12, 1971, organised by the World Council of Churches and the Government of India. The Congress was attended by 23 representatives from nine nations, including the former Czechoslovakia, Finland, Norway,France, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Spain and the former Yugoslavia. There were also individuals from Belgium, Canada, India and the United States, and they formed a political agenda with the intent to achieve emancipation and equality for the Roma.
Roma persecution by the Nazi regime began in 1933 and during the 1936 Olympic Games, the Roma and Sinti were forcibly relocated to a camp on the outskirts and were not allowed to leave unless they had a job. Their property was confiscated and sold; they were never compensated. Between 1933 and 1945, more than 400,000 people were forcibly sterilised by the Nazis, including thousands of Roma and Sinti, In the late 1930s, the first deportations of Roma to concentration camps began. While the yellow star worn by the Jewish victims of the Holocaust is best known, the Roma had their own symbols, brown or black triangles, symbolising their ethnicity and their inherent ‘anti-social’ status.
Friday 7 April 2023
Hands off Al-Aqsa, and Hands off Palestine.
On Tuesday the 4th and Wednesday the 5th of April, the world watched idly as videos and reports emerged across the internet of Palestinians being beaten, brutalised and forcibly raided inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the middle of their prayers firing rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas at Palestinian worshippers. These events left at least 12 Palestinians injured, and over 400 were arrested on the first night. Following the raid, Israeli violence spread across the west bank. Dozens have been hurt by inhaling poisonous gas fired by Israeli forces, and a settler in occupied East Jerusalem shot a Palestinian child. .
Not only are the Palestinian people forbidden from entering their holy mosque but fanatic Jews also routinely violate the sanctity of the place under protection of the Israeli police. Since annexing the holy city more than half a century ago, Israel did whatever it could to prove that Al-Aqsa Mosque stood on remains of the so-called Temple. But Israel failed to discover anything that could prove this assumption. Failing in this attempt, the Israeli government began executing an old scheme to divide the place among Jews and Muslims as it did with the other holy mosque in Hebron.
Noticeably, the Israeli government has recently escalated its provocations.
Sensing that these Israeli measures will further aggravate the current situation in the Middle East, many countries have urged Israel to restrain its settlers and allow the Palestinians free access to the Noble Sanctuary. Despite international calls, Israel is not doing anything to calm the situation.
According to the Geneva Convention and UN Security Council’s resolutions, these territories are occupied territories that should be returned back to their lawful owners.
But Israel has never acceded to any international resolution because it enjoys protection from punishment by the US and British. Availing itself of the present chaos in the Middle East, the Israeli government has recently increased its provocations against the Palestinian people — Christians and Muslims — and their holy places