Sunday 28 July 2024

After the Rain


Soul  awakens
Beyond  dark nights 
A sweet beginning returns
Echoes of magnificance
From falling stars
The comfort of love
Sails on  down
Delivering mercy
Dissolving  tears
Allowing trysts return
Branches of  forgiveness
The welcoming  balms 
Of diffusion
Gloriously
Unbounded
Miraculously
Restoring 
Inner faith
Cancelling
Wild hallucinations
Mexican adventires
Dizzying distortions
Constant confusion
Swirling again 
In  certitude
Passionate 
Committment
Familiarity
Swimming
Transforming
Mindfulness
Focusing 
Renewing
Embacing
Cultivating
Pulsating
Seeds 
Pixelating
Thoughtfulness
Merciless
Reasoning
Freedom
Comforting
Passion 
Enduring
Arising
Healing 
Soothing
Rainbows
Circling
Delivering
Gias
Enduring 
Light

Saturday 20 July 2024

Never forget nor forgive the murder of Carlo Giuliani

 

20 Jul 2001 Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old Italian  working  class history student and activist, was shot in the face  at  point  blank  range and run over by police during protests against thet 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, in  Genoa  while  defending  his  community.
Making his the first death during an anti-globalization demonstration since the movement's rise from the 1999 Seattle WTO protests  and the student became icon for the left, who saw his murder as a state execution.
In the weeks before the summit, public demonstrations and leafleting were banned, and downtown residents had to pass through security checks daily. Italy also withdrew from the European Union’s Open Border Treaty, arresting and blacklisting many activists trying to enter the country. Authorities raided political squats, conducted “sweeps” of immigrants in Genoa, transported hundreds of inmates to make room for protestors, and declared that 200 extra body bags were ordered.
To protect the meeting of the G8 economic  powers which comprises of the heads of state of the most powerful nations in the world: Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Japan, Italy, Russia, and the United Kingdom. who  convene yearly to coordinate global economic policy, discuss geopolitical concerns, and pose for photos from the nuisance of interruption, Italian police deployed 14-foot high barricades of iron and concrete, bolted to the streets and walls of downtown Genoa. They dubbed the area inside the fences the “Red Zone.” Eighteen thousand Carabinieri (Italian paramilitary police), and unknown numbers of Guardia de Finanza, military, and foreign secret service were enlisted to ensure that no demonstrators breached the zone. 
 On July 19th, 50,000 people flooded the streets to demand the recognition of immigrant rights. The march was sponsored by the Genoa Social Forum (GSF), the main umbrella group organizing the weekend’s demonstrations. The event was colorful, spirited, and joyful.  Everyone present respected the immigrants’ wishes that tranquility be maintained to ensure police had no excuse to make arrests. Police still drove close by in armored personnel carriers, decked out in riot gear, and brandishing the latest in crowd control weaponry. Demonstrators exercised tactical self-control, and the march concluded as a grand success. 
On July 20th 2001 there was a palpable tension in the air of the historic port city of Genova in Northern Italy. July 20th was the “Day of Direct Action” against the G8. Clusters of protestors set out to either disrupt business as usual in Genoa, or attempt to breach the Red Zone itself  in  a  show  of  defiance. Pacifists, Greens, and others formed non-violent blockades just outside of the Red Zone. Meanwhile, the disruptive communist group Ya Basta, unionists, and the international Black Bloc separately tried to enter the Red Zone. As each group neared the Red Zone, they were beaten back by clubs, tear gas, and water cannons. Riot police unloaded hundreds of rounds of tear gas on demonstrators of all stripes, and appeared to be randomly charging and beating protestors, bystanders and journalists alike.  Consequently, street fights and rioting erupted all over the downtown area. From nearly all points of the city, plumes of smoke from burning cars, banks, and dumpsters were visible, and the sting of tear gas lay thick in the air.
Carlo Giuliani was one of the rebels in the crowd that day who fought back when the Italian and International police forces violently cracked down on the Global resistance movement. Eyewitness accounts by residents of Genova described the scene as a war zone and detailed how the military and police units savagely attacked anyone who was on the streets indiscriminately,  launching themselves at demonstrators, truncheons flying.  
One young man on his way to the beach was beaten to the ground by riot police in a cloud of tear gas. Old women and shopkeepers were attacked on their city streets just for being there. This was the New World Order showing its most ugly and violent of faces to send a signal to those of us who believe that another world is possible!, as George Bush, Silvio Berlusconi, Tony Blair and the others smirked over fine wines and a fancy lunch. 
Carlo Giuliani was young and idealistic and happy to add his voice and muscle to the growing international movement for a world that values human dignity and the integrity of our natural environment over corporate profits and capitalist plunder. His father Giuliano was a leader of the communist trade Union CGIL and he came from a family rooted in struggle for the rights of working people with a deep respect for real democracy and humanity,  and  was raised with knowledge of Gramsci, Marx, Malatesta, Sacco and Vanzetti.  
Photographs showed Giuliani,  23-years-old and  living in  a   squat in Genoa, throwing a fire extinguisher towards the van, a pistol firing a shot in return from the van, and Giuliani's body having been run over by the van, then saw police attacking people who went to his aid.
Charges against the officer were initially dropped without trial as a judge ruled that the ricocheted bullet was fired in self-defense, but the incident became a point of public scrutiny. Eight years after the incident, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Italian forces had acted within their limits, but awarded damages for the state's procedural handling of the case. Appeals upheld the ruling, and Giuliani's family later filed a civil suit. 
Carlo Giuliani was  not the only victim that day. There was a well coordinated, systematic and full fledged attack led by the Italian police forces to repress this demonstration at all costs. Later that evening two schools that were housing activists  from  the Genoa Social Forum (GSF), a coalition of activist groups that was using a local school as a convergence and media centre, and as accommodation for protesters  were raided by police forces who proceeded to torture and beat people that were sleeping on the floors. Three people were left in comas, one suffered brain damage and hundreds were injured. People reported being spat and urinated upon by the police, as well as repeatedly beaten in the G8’s first condoned use of torture, setting precedence for the terror wars in post 9-11 Afghanistan and Iraq.
The violence, however, couldn’t quash the spirit of solidarity and resistance that emerged from Genoa. That spirit continued into the following weeks, months, and years: in the campaign to free the activists who had been arrested in the raid on the GSF, and in the anti-war movement that was built following the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that provided the pretext for the US and its allies to launch the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
There has been nothing like the anti-G8 protests in Genoa. They were a high point in the struggle for global justice. A total of half a million people participated (subtracting any overlap) in the July 19 rally for immigrant rights, the July 20 day of civil disobedience, the awesome international march of July 21, the Italian-wide demonstrations against state violence a few days later and the 250 worldwide solidarity protests. 
Besides the massive numbers, there was also an increase in militancy and self-organisation. The protests were politically more radical than previous ones. There was a strong working-class component to the revolt, tens of thousands of workers attending, many not through official trade union contingents. All these factors made the protests a major escalation and consolidation of the anti-corporate and anti-capitalist movement.
The ending of Carlo Gialiani life was largely the determining factor that angers thousands of young people around the world that were seeing themselves in the face of the twenty-three year-old fighter. 
It is true that the Italian state did everything to wipe away Giulani’s rememberance and bury the massive crackdown that was enforced in Genove those three days in July 2001, nevertheless Giuliani was memorialized in music tributes and public monuments, and is remembered as a symbol of the 2001 G8 protests. The 2002 documentary Carlo Giuliani, Boy, recounts the incident.
There were no flowers at the non-religious ceremony for Carlo Gialiani  at a cemetery in Staglieno on the outskirts of Genoa. Giuliani's coffin was adorned with green ferns and draped with an AS Roma football club flag, of whom Giuliani was an ardent supporter.
Friends carried the coffin through a 500-strong crowd of mourners who broke into a minute-long applause, some shouting Giuliani's name and shaking their fists in despair. Giuliani, Carlo's father, addressed the crowd, saying: "In his short life, Carlo has given us many things. Let us try, in Carlo's name, to be united, to refuse violence.  "Carlo taught me you shouldn't judge a person by his crumpled t-shirt, ripped trousers, body piercings or dreadlocks because under those dreadlocks may be a head which thinks, a person hungry for justice," he added in a shaking voice. "Carlo, you'll always be in our heart," one mourner shouted as the coffin was lowered into the grave.  Friends read poetry at the graveside, which was attended by around 1,000 people, including left-wing local politicians, Never forget nor forgive. Rest in peace Carlo  or  discontent.

Conflict - Carlo Giuliani


Lynched - Carlo Giuliani


Thursday 11 July 2024

Remembering Srebenica massacre 29 years on.


 29 years ago Serb forces captured the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, and carried out Europe's worst worst atrocity on European soil since the  Holocaust.Second World War. Around 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed there over several days and their bodies dumped in mass graves. It didn’t come out of nowhere: In the three years leading up to the genocide, an estimated 100,000 people were killed, 80% of whom were Bosniaks, one of three ethnic groups who called the fledgling state of Bosnia and Herzegovina home.
The Bosnian Muslims had found shelter in Srebrenica during the Bosnian War because it was supposed to be under UN protection. On 16 April 1993, one year into a civil war that began when Bosnia sought independence from Yugoslavia, the  Security Council had passed Resolution 819 requiring all parties to treat Srebenica and its surroundings as a safe area which should be free from any armed attack or any other hostile act. 
However in July 1995, General Ratko Mladić and his Serbian paramilitary units overran and captured the town,  Dutch  UN peacekeeping forces were at the time accused of  failing to do enough to prevent the massacre.The Muslim men and boys were told by the Dutch peacekeepers they would be safe and handed over to the Bosnian Serb army. They never returned. The Netherlands  has since been found  partly liable for the deaths of 300 Muslims killed in the Srebrenica massacre, The Hague appeals court upheld a decision from 2014 that ordered the Dutch state to pay compensation to the victims families. In August 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) concluded that a crime of genocide was committed in Srebrenica. Ever since, the survivors and the victims’ families have been fighting to obtain justice and recognition. 
Srebrenica  happened during a war with seemingly few rules of engagement, bitter fighting, indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns, ethnic cleansing and systematic mass rape. Essentially a territorial conflict, one in which people of difference looked back on times of peaceful coexistence, however fragile, and forward to ethnic separation, exclusion and to living apart.
When the attackers overran Srebrenica on July 11 and took peacekeepers hostage, about 25,000 Bosniaks fled to the UN base at Potocari on the city's outskirts. They sought refuge despite the scorching heat and catastrophic hygienic conditions. A day later, the attackers began to assault, rape and kill them. On July 12 and 13, girls, women and elderly refugees were loaded onto buses and driven to regions under Bosniak control. After murdering thousands of Srebrenica’s Muslims, Serbs dumped their bodies in numerous mass graves scattered throughout eastern Bosnia, in an attempt to hide the crime. Body parts are still being found in mass graves and are being put together and identified through DNA analysis. Almost 7,000 of those killed have been found and identified. Newly identified victims are buried each year on 11 July, the anniversary of the day the killing began in 1995.The remains of 14 more victims of the massacre - including a 17-year-old boy - were due to be buried at a memorial cemetery in Potocari today, just outside the town.
The remains of some 1,000 victims of the massacre in the eastern town during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war are still missing.
Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic were both convicted of and sentenced for genocide in Srebrenica by a special U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. In all, the tribunal and courts in the Balkans have sentenced close to 50 Bosnian Serb wartime officials to more than 700 years in prison for the Srebrenica killings.
Bosnian Serbs, however, still celebrate Karadzic and Mladic as heroes. Some were even staging celebrations of “the 1995 liberation of Srebrenica” on the anniversary of the crime.
The Serbian Orthodox Church supported Mladic. Serbs celebrated the notorious  paramilitary commander Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as "Arkan," as a hero. Now, a quarter of a century after the slaughter of Srebrenica, most Serbian leaders and many citizens still refuse to recognize it as a genocide; streets, schools and student dorms in Serbia are named after the convicted war criminals Mladic and Karadzic; and many of the men who were directly or indirectly involved in the 1995 massacre hold key positions in the country's political and economic sphere.
In fact, Bosnian Serb political leaders have consistently prevented the country from adopting a law that would ban genocide denial, with the Serb member of Bosnia’s presidency, Milorad Dodik, even publicly describing the Srebrenica slaughter as a “fabricated myth.” 
Thousands gathered in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica today to commemorate the 29th anniversary of the massacre which comes under the shadow of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has drawn a number of parallels from activists and commentators.  The remains of 14 more victims of the massacre - including a 17-year-old boy - were due to be buried at a memorial cemetery in Potocari on Thursday, just outside the town.
Among those taking part in the commemorations in Potocari was Palestinian journalist Motaz Azaiza, who escaped from Gaza in January along with some family members. “I want to thank the people who raised the flags of Palestine alongside the flags of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I wasn't born when all this happened in Srebrenica," the photojournalist told reporters at the ceremony.  “Since I was little, I listened to what happened here, through the news, through friends. The people here have great support from the people of Palestine and I thank you for your solidarity."  'Never again' 
A number of campaigners and politicians, including Benjamina Karic, the mayor of Sarajevo, have drawn direct comparisons between Srebrenica and Gaza.  The Bosnian genocide has also been referred to in relation to the ongoing war in Sudan, where non-Arab civilians in Darfur have been the victims of massacres perpetrated by the paramilitary. 
Today we remember the victims, survivors and those still fighting for justice.It should be studied by all today. And in solemn memory of the Srebrenica massacre, we must reflect on the tragedies that echo through history.A ghastly, tragic, murderous reminder that a genocide began while the world watched. And we did nothing. As we remember the past, we cannot ignore the heartbreaking parallels unfolding in Gaza and do nothing.
As we commemorate the 29th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide reminding us of the horrors that racism can inflict, Gaza enters its 9th month under Israeli bombardment and a new genocide unfolds. Nearly 38,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, with another 87,000 injured.
Just as Bosnians were dehumanized and systematically killed, so too are Palestinians today. As we witness the ongoing genocide in Gaza, we must unite for peace and justice and keep talking about Palestine. History must not repeat itself.
Srebrenica: We will never forget !
Palestine : We will never give up!
Stop the genocide!

Here is a link to the official site of rememberance.:-

http://www.srebrenica.org.uk/


Tuesday 9 July 2024

Remembering the life of Revolutionary French singer-songwriter and anti-militarist Gaston Mardochée Brunswick aka Montéhus (9 July 1872 –31 December 1952)

 

Gaston Mardochée Brunswick, French singer-songwriter,  revolutionary socialist  and anti-militarist  better known by his pseudonym Montéhus, was  born  on July 9, 1872 shortly  after the Paris Commune  of  1871 https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2021/03/150th-anniversary-of-paris-commune.html. . The eldest of 22 children born to a working-class Jewish family in Paris, he was the son of a Communard, and  shoemaker  named Abraham Brunschwig, and he was committed to left-wing politics throughout his life.
Montéhus was raised in a post-Commune context, which accounts for his commitment to left-wing politics. The "Revolutionary jingoist" as he liked to present himself, he was close to the "wretched of the Earth" spoken of by Eugène Pottier in L'Internationale
He began to sing in public at the age of 12, in 1884, a decade before the beginning of the Dreyfus Affair.Montéhus published his first song (Au camarade du 153ème) in 1897. He adopted his pseudonym then to avoid the anti-Semitism then rampant in French society (his concerts were often interrupted by racist violence). 
As he began his military service, the Dreyfus affair broke out which was  the political crisis, beginning in 1894 and continuing through 1906, in France during the Third Republic. The controversy centred on the question of the guilt or innocence of army captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been convicted of treason for allegedly selling military secrets to the Germans in December 1894. At first the public supported the conviction; it was willing to believe in the guilt of Dreyfus, who was Jewish. Much of the early publicity surrounding the case came from anti-Semitic groups (especially the newspaper La Libre Parole, edited by Édouard Drumontan anti-Dreyfusard , nationalist and anti-Semite), to whom Dreyfus symbolized the supposed disloyalty of French Jews.
Initially a moderate socialist, he became virulently anti-militarist and libertarian in outlook close to the positions of Gustave Hervé and his newspaper La Guerre Sociale  .After a brief stint in Chalon-sur-Saône, where he was defeated in an election,the anti-militarist settled in Paris in 1902.On 5 March 1902, he is initiated into Freemasonry at ″l'Union de Belleville″ lodge in Paris.  
In the second half of the 19th century, song was central to popular culture. Books, which are expensive , are not easily accessible to proletarians  and when it has a strong political dimension, the song can be a real propaganda tool, Montéhus was one of the champions of the Red Revolt. 
Author of hundreds of songs, the best known of which, such as: Gloire au 17e ( 1907) and La Grève des Mères (1910), were taken up by revolutionary Paris. In Paris he was hired at Les Ambassadeurs, where his repertoire were often interrupted by the reactionary anti-Semites of Édouard Drumontan or by the police (because of their subversive content), and Édouard Drumontan  would  get  his men  to distribute leaflets against  "the Jewish Brunswick"  who  "belched infamies at the leaders of the French army", and provoke fights.  
The courageous singer, who had to emigrate to the concerts of the suburbs to find an audience likely to hear his vengeful verses. There, his success was resounding. The people, who admirably understood the artist's rancor for having felt the same outrages and the same disgusts, did not spare him their applause.  In the press, only one newspaper clearly defended him. It was L' Aurore , under the signature of Urbain Gohier .
Here is what Gohier wrote on February 9, 1902: An artist has emerged who devotes himself with great ardor to singing pity, fraternity, hatred of war, the suffering of the soldier, the horror of the barracks. His name is Montéhus. And after speaking out against the nationalist bands who organized a violent obstruction to prevent him from performing, Gohier continued:  Small, thin, pale, the artist sings or says these things with all his nerves. Ten years ago, the crowd applauded Le Père la Victoire , En revenant de la R'vue , and all the nonsense of nationalism. Today, it applauds Montéhus.  
A contemporary of Jean-Baptiste Clément, Eugène Pottier, Jules Jouy, Pierre Dupont and Gaston Couté, Montéhus like them used his songs as propaganda tool for socialist and anarchist dissent, with his  lively catchy songs, he  used his artistic talents to advocate for social justice and workers' rights. He became a prominent figure in the French socialist movement, using his music to spread revolutionary ideas and inspire the working class to fight for better living and working conditions.  
Montéhus was a staunch critic of the capitalist system and the inequalities it perpetuated, using his music to express solidarity with workers and call for a more just and egalitarian society. His songs often reflected the harsh realities faced by the working class, highlighting issues such as poverty, exploitation, and oppression. With his powerful lyrics and rousing melodies, Montéhus became a voice for the marginalized and downtrodden, galvanizing support for the labor movement and socialist causes. 
In addition to his musical contributions, Montéhus was also actively involved in politics, participating in protests, demonstrations, and strikes. He used his platform as a popular musician to raise awareness about social and political injustices, advocating for systemic change and challenging the status quo. .  opposing war, capitalist exploitation, prostitution, poverty, religious hypocrisy, and even income tax in his lyrics. 
He also defended the cause of women in a remarkable way.  In 1905, Montéhus created a song that caused a real scandal within French society. Anticipating the First World War by a few years, the song La grève des mères (The Mothers' Strike) was intended to be a denunciation of war, of youth serving as cannon fodder and encouraged mothers – like the Lysistratas of fertility – to no longer give sons to sacrifice to the executioners.  
This goualante will be so badly received, not by critics but by censors, that a judge will declare that La grève des mères is a pro abortion song .Montéhus will therefore appear before the courts for inciting abortion  and will be sentenced to two months in prison – a sentence later converted into a heavy fine that  he  had to pay. But the reactionaries did not stop there La grève des Mères was  banned from public performance on 5 October. 

Montéhus - La grève des mères




In 1907 he sang Gloire au 17ème which highlighted the action of soldiers from the 17th line  Infantry regiment who, having been ordered to shoot winegrowers on a demonstration of wine growers in Béziers during the winegrowers' revolt  refused to fire  and  then mutinied and fraternized with the revolters.The Revolt of the Languedoc winegrowers was a mass movement in 1907 in Languedoc and the Pyrénées-Orientales of France that was repressed by the government of Georges Clemenceau. It was caused by a serious crisis in winemaking at the start of the 20th century. The movement was also called the "paupers revolt" of the Midi.

Montéhus - Gloire au 17ème


In 1912, he wrote The song of the young guards,( Le chant des jeunes gardes ) commissioned by the  French Section of the Workers' International ( Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière, SFIO) of  which  he was  a member  for its youth movement, sung by generations of young socialists and young communists, and still considered the anthem of the National Union of Students of France (Union nationale des étudiants de France or UNEF). The French Section of the Workers' International ( Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière, SFIO) was a political party in France that was founded in 1905 and succeeded in 1969 by the modern-day Socialist Party.

Le chant des jeunes gardes (1936)


During Lenin's exile in France  from 1909 to  1912, Montéhus became friendly with him and sang at some of his gatherings.
Montéhus' pacifism  however faded when the Great War broke out (1914)  he  became a staunch supporter of  the war  effort following Gustave Hervé's turn, applauding and patriotism he joined the Sacred Union (Union Sacrée) and the fight against the German invader and became a war cabaret singer, tasked with remobilizing soldiers on leave and civilians, and fighting against defeatism, always at the rear, far from the front.He composed numerous patriotic songs, which earned him the Croix de Guerre in 1918. He  sang : 

We sing the Marseillaise 
For in these terrible days  
We leave the International 
For the final victory  
We will sing it when we return  

If this visceral patriotism was shared by many socialists, like many of them too, he returned to it after the war, when the horrors of the fighting were reported to him. Discredited among the working people for having defended what made them die in mass graves, touched by the death of several of his friends, members of his audience, he wrote one of his most famous songs, La butte rouge (to music by Georges Krier), a song which tells not, as is wrongly considered, of the fighting on the Butte Montmartre during the Commune, but rather of the fighting on the Butte de Berzieux, in the Marne.The class struggle is making a comeback: 

What she drank, good blood, this earth  
Blood of workers and blood of peasants,
Because the bandits who are the cause of wars 
Never die, we only kill the innocent  

Playing much more on the register of emotion than the rest of his repertoire, it also translates the loss of pre-war illusions, the end of lightness and the heavy character of the tragic return of History. Thus, the last verse gives: 

The red hill is its name, the baptism took place one morning 
Where all who climbed rolled into the ravine  
Today there are vineyards, grapes grow there
 But I see crosses bearing the names of friends.  


The song would  be covered by many artists, from Francis Marty to Zebda, including Yves Montand and Claude Vinci!
When he considered joining the Communist Party in 1922, as the French Communist Party did not accept Freemasons, he preferred to remain faithful to his lodge,  but Montéhus returned at the time of the Popular Front, and rejoinined the SFIO and wrote songs to mobilize workers and sing his support for the new government. At the age of 64, Montéhus was once again in the spotlight with "  Le decor va change", "Vas-Y Léon! ", "Le Cri des grévistes", "L'Espoir d' un gueux" , songs in which he supported the Popular Front and Léon Blum the first Socialist (and the first Jewish) premier of France, who presided  over the Popular Front coalition government in 1936–37.

Vas-y Léon (1936)



Silenced by Vichy,  he managed to avoid being sent to a concentration camp, but was forced to wear the yellow star until the Liberation of France. He wrote the Chant des Gaullistes in 1944. In 1947 he  was decorated  with the Legion of Honor by the President of the Council Paul Ramadier , He died almost forgotten from the  collective memory, five  years  later  supported  only  by  his  family on 31 December 1952 and was cremated at Père-Lachaise.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-communards-wall-at-pere-lachaise.html where  his ashes remain.
Mireille Osmin, federal secretary of the Seine, described him as "more of a libertarian than a socialist, more of a rebel than a revolutionary." Montéhus was a reflection of the socialism of his time. Willingly republican while denouncing the bourgeois Republic, a man of deep conviction and a political pen always quick to analyze reality in the light of the class struggle and the misery in which the people were plunged, pacifist as much as patriot, nicknamed the revolutionary patriot, he was one of those artists who, placing himself in the background, sang by putting himself in the place of others and effaced himself before their work. 
The author of La grève des mères sadly remains somewhat forgotten today, despite the renewed interest in committed song, of which he was certainly one of the precursors.Despite facing censorship and persecution from the authorities, Montéhus remained steadfast in his commitment to advocating for a more equitable and just society, leaving a lasting legacy as a symbol of resistance and solidarity in French political history.

Wednesday 3 July 2024

. Vote for Palestine

 


A message for anyone who thinks it’s “not worth” voting on Thursday. I  tend   to  agree .  our  democracy is  a  sham Westmonster  is broken  a total farce. but whatever we do, we're  going to end up with a new MP on Friday. Either a friend of Palestine and a friend of the people, or a friend of Israel and Keir Starmer. On July 4th,  if you actually decide  too vote, vote for pro Palestine candidates,  for  humanity.
For nearly 9 months, we have protested, campaigned, lobbied and boycotted to stop the genocide in Gaza. Despite over 37,000 Palestinians killed by Israel; the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and Defence Minister alongside Hamas leaders, for crimes against humanity; and a “plausible” case of genocide under investigation by the ICJ, parliament has consistently failed to reflect widespread public support for peace and Palestinian rights.
 News from the ground in Gaza only gets more horrifying as Israel’s genocide continues, fully funded, supported, and coordinated with the US, Germany, UK's  support.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the rest of Occupied Palestine, systematic invasions, abductions, and general violence against Palestinians continue to rise.
Now, is   the time to Prioritise Palestine at the General Electionm if your MP refused tto vote for a ceasefire in Gaza  back  in  November  when they had the opportunity to do so, they do not deserve your vote.
The same people, Labour and Tory ,who support more austerity, that literally kills thousands in this country, are the very same people who support war and the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Starmer's Labour and the Tories have continued to defend the Israeli government’s brutality and collective punishment of the Palestinians, despite massive protests demanding an end to Israeli state terror. 
Don’t march for Palestine if you’re voting for parties at the general election that enable the genocide of our brothers and sister there ,t’s not complicated.  and  don't vote for bloody dystopian genocidal liars.
Thanks  however to Damian Albarn and all the other artists using their platforms to support Palestine. When you vote on Thursday make sure it's for a candidate who does the same. Use your vote wisely folks. Vote for a immediate Ceasefire  in Gaza  and to end apartheid  and  the occupation, and for human rights and  equality for all. For real hope, real change  wherever you live. Remember  no one is free until Palestine is free.The liberation of Palestinians is essential to dismantling oppressive systems world wide. My vote will go to whoever has the strongest position on Palestine.
You can find out where your candidates stand by going  to  the  following  links :

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