Blwyddyn newydd dda /Happy New Year.. I'm going into this new year sober, not because of some new years resolution, but because my mental wellbeing needs it. Anyway enough about me, the New Year can stir up all kinds of complicated feelings, especially if you’re already having a hard time. Add in the pressure to celebrate and it can all just feel like too much. So if you need to reach out you can call the samaritans free on 116 123.
For the entirety of 2024, Israel engaged in the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza. Tens of thousands of children killed and the world decided they don’t matter. To those who were devastated by these innocent lives destroyed I wish a happy new year of courage and resilience.
With no end in sight to the genocide in Gaza. as we approach 2025 instead of a countdown for a happy new year, let's countdown for a permanent ceasefire and an end of the occupation. A free Palestine is not just a dream, it’s a promise written in the hearts of its people
Let's keep fighting for social justice, a profoundly different future, where the human rights of all will be fully realized, a future of life and of decent lives for all. Real transformative compassionate change is possible. There is no such thing as an ending, just a place where you leave the story. And it’s your story. Keep fighting for truth and integrity and don’t let the bastards grind you down. They can never ever beat you. Retain your humanity and compassion.
The victims of war deserve our solidarity and support, whoever they are, and wherever they happen to be. We should not be fooled by the hypocritical statements of out political leaders.
May 2025 be a year of change for the better,brings justice, peace and enough that no one goes without love, healthcare, food, education, friends, or freedom to be themselves.We won't go untroubled all the time, but we can remember to be kind to one another. With love, peace and solidarity. ❤️
" So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore Is reachable from here.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya director of Kamal Adwan hospital, a brave man whose life’s work revolves around healing and saving lives, has been unjustly targeted and arrested by the Israeli army under false pretexts and detained by Israeli forces along with over 240 others who had taken shelter in the hospital, including medical staff, patients and the wounded. during a raid on the hospital on 27 December.
This was after Dr. Abu Safiya refusing to abandon his colleagues and patients and the displaced people at Kamal Adwan hospital, even after the Israeli occupation murdered his son, bombed his house and injured him.
Several medical staff were burned alive in fires ignited during the raid, while patients and medics were stripped of their clothing and forced to leave the hospital on foot.
According to the Israeli military, all activities will reportedly be transferred to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, which has effectively become the only major functioning hospital north of Gaza City.
Dr. Abu Safiya is a hero who for months has been the voice of Gaza’s decimated health sector, appealing for the protection of his hospital and working under inhumane conditions. He also refused a chance to leave the Strip and travel abroad, confirming that he will always abide by his humanitarian duty, even if it will lead to his murder or detention.
The raid, the latest in a series of attacks on healthcare facilities in North Gaza over the past two months, put Kamal Adwan, the last remaining major hospital in the area, out of service. Kamal Adwan hospital is now a site of crimes against humanity while 50,000 Palestinians in north Gaza are currently without healthcare.
Since the beginning of its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, Israel has detained hundreds of Palestinian healthcare workers from Gaza without charge or trial. Health workers have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment and been held in incommunicado detention,violating their fundamental rights. Hospitals and health workers are not legitimate targets; they are protected under international humanitarian law. None of this is acceptable.
Amnesty International has called on the international community, especially Israel’s allies, to act against these crimes against humanity. The organization emphasized the need for urgent and concrete steps to stop Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, underscoring the profound scars this situation is leaving on the conscience of humanity. “Hospitals and health workers are not targets. The international community must act to halt Israel’s attacks in Gaza and ensure justice is served.”
In the last photo of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya in just one image, we see both the power of Palestinian humanity and the moral weakness of all those complicit in genocide.We see him in his white lab coat walking unarmed through the wreckage of the Kamal Adwan hospital he ran , the last functioning one in northern Gaza, towards two tanks, their gun-barrels aimed at him before his arrest.
According to an eyewitness, Israeli soldiers flogged Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh with a street electrical cable (worse than a whip) According to a freed detainee, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh has been transferred to the notorious Sde Teiman prison, in Israel’s Negev desert where Palestinians have been Sodomized and tortured. Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh was executed in this same facility.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2024/05/prominent-gaza-doctor-adnan-al-bursh.html We must not allow Dr. Hussam to face same fate.
This current incident reflects the harsh reality of the occupation’s tactics criminalizing doctors, aid workers, and anyone who dares to stand for humanity under the guise of unfounded accusations.
In an attempt to justify atrocities at Adwan Hospital, the Israeli army put out a statement on Saturday confirming that they arrested Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya under the claim of being a “terrorist operative” and a ‘colonel in Hamas’ and claimed that the hospital was being used by Hamas as a “command andcontrol center.” The military did not provide any evidence to support the claims.
The absurdity of labeling this man likes this reveals the depth of propaganda used to justify these actions. It’s not just an attack on Dr. Hussam; it’s an attack on the very principles of humanity, medical ethics, and the sanctity of saving lives.
They even published a video showing themselves as ethical with him, after beating him, killing tens of thousands, and displacing them. Then they will do to him what they did to Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh. In the end, they will say, “Did you see? We treated him well and asked him how he was doing.” Shame on them.
This arrest is yet another example of the systemic oppression faced by Palestinians, where even hospitals and those who serve in them are not spared from the occupation’s brutality. Dr. Hussam’s courage, standing firm despite the risks, symbolizes the resilience of a people who refuse to give up their humanity in the face of injustice.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya embodies the spirit of resilience that flows through every vein of Palestine. His refusal to abandon his patients, his courage to stand unarmed against forces of destruction, echo the timeless story of a people who refuse to kneel.
In Palestine every olive tree whispers defiance, and every stone is a witness to a legacy of sacrifice. The oppressor may destroy walls, take lives, and silence voices, but they cannot extinguish the spirit of a nation built on faith, dignity, and unwavering hope.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya now detained in illegal Israeli prisons, the world remains silent. His courage deserves action, not apathy. Keep asking. Keep his name trending. Sometimes a horror can be distilled into one face, one name. Write Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya's name.
An emergency rally is being held tonight (Monday 30 Dec) outside the US embassy in London to demand the immediate release of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya and other illegally-detained medics and patients from the now-destroyed Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. Reports indicate that at least some of the detainees have been tortured.
Emergency Protests for Palestine are also been held in other parts of the country including these ones on Tuesday 31 December at Haverfordwest, 1pm, Withybush Retail Park, Swansea, 2pm, Barclays, Oxford St. Cardiff, 11pm, National Museum.
We must demand from our leaders that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all other detained health workers must be released immediately and unconditionally.None should be harmed. Health workers are not a target, and impunity for Israel's destruction of Palestinian healthcare must end, and it's also more than time to end all arms sales to Israel right now.
Israeli is an apartheid state engaged in genocide (as detailed by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among others). It has also been demonstrated that a disproportionate number of the dozens of thousands of civilians the IDF has intentionally killed are children and babies.
The following image is from Jabalia after Palestinians were displaced from Kamal Adwan hospitals. This is not humanity. This is not ‘defence’. This is not war. This is inhumane. This is terrorism. This is genocide. People everywhere of conscience must speak up against the horrors currently unfolding. End the occupation. Free Palestine. .
Please sign the following petition Israel Must Free Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.
In 1914, during World War I, an event known as the "Christmas Truce" occurred on the Western Front. Despite the ongoing conflict, soldiers from opposing sides called a spontaneous ceasefire around Christmas.
On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, about 5 months after the start of Word War I soldiers from the British, German, and French trenches laid down their weapons, emerged from their trenches, and ventured into no man's land—a space between the opposing lines. They exchanged gifts, sang carols, and even played football (soccer) matches in some areas. Choosing to spend Christmas time at peace with one another rather than continue to fight an already unpopular war.
It’s said to have started on the Western Front in Belgium, when the Germans started singing SilentNight from their trenches. Silent night was originally a German song, but was very recognizable to the Allies across No Man’s Land, a 250 yard expanse between the opposing trenches.
The serene melody contrasted greatly with the No Man’s Land that it drifted over. Pictures of No Man’s Land show a haunting expanse of abandoned equipment and barbed wire. It was pockmarked with shell holes from artillery fire filled with water, and littered with bodies of men that were shot as they crawled through the mud to obtain information from their enemy.
The Truce happened up and down the Western Front. Soldiers on both sides sang, in their native tongue, Christmas carols that were recognizable by Central and Allied troops. Graham Williams of the Fifth London Rifle Brigade recounted,
“First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing – two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.”
As soldiers crept out of their trenches, they began to see German soldiers carrying Christmas trees, and realized that this was not a trick. They met on No Man’s Land, exchanging things like chocolate, brandy, and tobacco. They even played soccer together. Some soldiers even used this short-lived ceasefire for a more somber task: the retrieval of the bodies of fellow combatants who had fallen within the no-man’s land between the lines and also took time to bury their dead.
Strangely enough, it wasn’t in a bitter manner. Soldiers they had called their enemy only moments ago were helping with the burial. Soldiers were also surprised to meet enemy soldiers that could speak their own languages. They saw that these men didn’t want to be there as much as they didn’t want to be there. Soldiers on both sides saw the others as fathers and sons, just as they were.
The so-called Christmas Truce of 1914 came only five months after the outbreak of war in Europe and was one of the last examples of the outdated notion of chivalry between enemies in warfare. It was never repeated, future attempts at holiday ceasefires were quashed by officers' threats of disciplinary action, but it served as heartening proof, however brief, that beneath the brutal clash of weapons, the soldiers' essential humanity endured.
A story so sad because peace was not permitted to break out among the troops who were ordered to kill and die in a war brought about by politicians hundreds of miles away that would ultimately continue to kill about 10 million soldiers and about 7 million civilians.
However as the world teeters on the edge of new imperialist wars, the memory of how those ordinary soldiers that defied their armies still teaches us so many things. and acts as a powerful reminder that even in the midst of conflict, empathy and camaraderie could and can prevail and that human nature is not inherently bound to violence.
Amid waves of strife, this wish for a Christmas truce still echoes, and offers hope in these tumultuous times, lets not forget that there is no peace on earth, no goodwill or silent night to the Palestinian as more are killed in Israeli raids and airstrikes for the second consecutive year.
In Gaza, the occupied West Bank the typically festive season remains sombre,after Israel has killed at least 45,317 Palestinians and wounded over 107,713 since October 2023.
The war on the enclave having destroyed most of the territory’s infrastructure and forced the population into a deep humanitarian crisis, while a succession of international rights monitors have recently accused Israel of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people, with the result that the Palestinian community in the Gaza Strip our facing this Christmas season without celebrations, as displacement and life in tents have deprived them of their homes and the joy of the holidays, our calls for peace must persist.
Chico Mendes, Brazilian rubber worker activist, socialist, environmentalist and Indigenous rights advocate, and symbol of the global environment movement, was assassinated on 22 December 1988 for challenging those who were destroying the Amazon rain forest by slashing and burning.
For a man who didn't learn how to read or write until he was about 20 years old, Chico Mendes accomplished more in 44 years of life than many of us will in a full lifetime.His struggle went beyond simply protecting the Amazon rain forest. He also fought to defend the rights of rubber tappers and to end their oppression and save their homes.
Chico Mendes was a man who loved life, his community and the place where he lived and worked. Francisco “Chico” Alves Mendes Filho was born on December 15, 1944 in Xapuri, Acre, in northwest Brazil. Chico had 17 siblings but poor health care allowed only 6 to survive; he was the oldest. As a child, Chico could not go to school since they were forbidden on Amazon rubber estates until 1970.
Rubber estate owners were afraid that tappers who went to school would learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic, and discover they were being exploited.
Rubber became increasingly important in the world economy from the end of the 19th century, especially after the invention of the pneumatic tyre, and Brazilian rubber manufacturers began to import labour into the Amazon basin to collect it.
The rubber tappers are an exploited group of workers, whose job is to “tap” liquid rubber from the “seringueira” trees in the Amazon rainforest. Rubber tapping or gathering the latex from a plant is a sustainable form of exploiting the wealth of the Amazon without harming the trees or environment. Nearly all of the world's natural rubber comes from Pará rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis.
Rubber tappers worked all year long, hoping to come out ahead, but of course they always remained in debt. Since they couldn't count, they couldn't tell whether they were being cheated. For example, when the tappers brought in the rubber to be weighed, the bosses would say it weighed less than it actually did.
When eventually confronted by the tappers about this, the bosses would answer that they were merely subtracting for the water and insects trapped in the rubber. Chico was descended from a rubber tapper family, including his grandfather and father.
By the age of eleven, Chico was as good as any other adult rubber tapper; he assumed this would be his job for life. But when he was 12 years old, he met a man who would change his life. This man was the communist Euclides Tavora “a cultivated, well‐educated soldier from a prominent family.who was in refuge in the rainforest on the border with Brazil and Bolivia. Tavora taught Chico how to read and writeand how to think.These first lessons were useful 10 years later.
The greatest lesson Tavora taught Chico was that rubber tappers could improve their lives by working together for change. He once told Chico, “You must get involved, you must join a union and use it to spread your ideas. Who knows, you might overthrow the system.”
With that and his newfound knowledgef socialism from his teacher, Chico Mendes began the union movement in Acre, and the leader of the local union of rubber tappers, active member of the growing Workers’ Party, and an advocate of “socialist ecology”,
Mendes was the sworn enemy of the landowners against whom he had fought and organised for workers’ rights all his life. What Chico learned with Távora has been decisive to the future not only to the rubber tappers, but of the “environmentalism of the poor” worldwide. The kind of environmentalism that seeks to defend a form of existence that requires the environment it depends upon.
Between 1964 and 1985, Brazil’s military government enacted policies that posed an existential threat both to the Amazon and to indigenous and rubber tapping communities, like Chico’s. Seeking to use the Amazon forest for economic development, the government opened the Amazon to purchase and destruction by cattle ranchers and international investors. Massive deforestation followed.
In response, Chico played a leading role in uniting rural rubber tapping unions, including in his home community of Xapuri, in campaigns to protect the rainforest and their way of life. As he said “At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”
Together with his fellow rubber-tappers, he founded the Rural Workers’ Union and the Xapuri Rubber Tappers Union.The organising of rubber tappers in Acre inspired others across Brazil, to begin organising nationally to defend the Amazon.
They advocated for peaceful resistance against deforestation, which involved union members putting their lives on the line through direct action. One of the rubber tappers’ most famous strategies were the ‘empates’ or barricades, in which rubber tappers and their allies would physically block the path of bulldozers and loggers at the frontiers of deforestation. A national council created in 1985 attracted rubber-tappers from across Brazil and brought their issues into the spotlight.
One of Chico Mendes’ most important achievements was the idea of extractive reserves.Mendes’s activism was characterized by his innovative approach to conservation, which intertwined human rights with environmental protection. One of Chico Mendes’ most important achievements was that he pioneered the concept of “extractive reserves,” areas where local communities could sustainably harvest forest products without damaging the ecosystem. This idea was revolutionary, suggesting that conservation did not mean excluding humans but rather working with them. In these areas, local people could sustainably harvest natural resources including rubber without fear of exploitation.
In 1980 he helped create the Forest Peoples Alliance, which called for the creation of these reserves as well as inclusive land use policies to benefit indigenous peoples and the wider ecosystem.
Chico married Ilzamar G. Bezerra Mendes and they had two children, Elenira was four and Sandino was two when their father died
Mendes’ radical activism made him a spokesperson for environmentalists all over Brazil. Chico Mendez received several international awards during his lifetime including a United Nations Environmental Program award in 1987 and a National Conservation Achievement Award in 1988.
Although celebrated by various environmental organisations for his efforts, Mendes’ activism made him many enemies among landowners. He constantly received death threats, but despite this he continued his work.
In1980, his comrade of struggles, Wilson Pinheiro, is murdered. To build a larger force, Chico Mendes took the initiative to unite the seringueiros and other workers who lived from the forest by extracting nuts and other products, with the indigenous communities and various peasant groups, founding the Peoples of the Forest Alliance.
For the first time, rubber-tappers and indigenous people, who so many times have fought each other in the past, united their forces against the common enemy. Chico Mendes defined with the following words the foundations of this alliance : “never again one of our comrades will spill the blood of the others, together we can protect the nature, the forest, which is where we all learned to live, to raise our children and to develop our capacities, in a way of thinking in harmony with nature, with the environment, and with all beings which live here.”
Chico Mendes was perfectly conscious of the ecological dimension of this struggle, which interested not only the peoples of the Amazon, but all the world population, which depends on the tropical forest, the green lung of the planet.
A pragmatic man of action, organizer and fighter, concerned with practical and concrete issues, literacy, the constitution of cooperatives, the search for viable economic alternatives, Chico was also a dreamer and an utopian, in the most noble and revolutionary meaning of the word.,
Trgically though, he was shot in 1988 in his home by a cattle rancher called Darly Alves Da Silva and became a martyr for the environmental cause. His death was a tragedy, but his life was an inspiration and his murder sparked international outrage and shone a light on the struggles faced by environmental activists around the world.
In 2012, environmental activists’ deaths around the world tripled, compared to 10 years before. In the past 10 years, over 900 environmental activists were killed around the world. As Franco Viteri, the president of the governing organization of the Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, said: “I want to say Chico Mendes’ fight is being waged everywhere. There are many Chico Mendeses in Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Unfortunately for the world, Chico Mendes only became well-known internationally after his assassination. But his contributions to the protection of the Amazon live on.
Chico Mendes legacy influenced the creation of extractive reserves across Brazil, which now cover over 24 million acres of rainforest. Mendes is remembered not only for his environmental contributions but also for his belief in the power of community-based conservation.
After his death the the Alliance of Forest Peoples was created to protect rubber tappers, rural workers, and indigenous peoples from encroachment on traditional lands.
The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve was created in the forest around Xapuri and Chico Mendez was officially recognised as Patron of the Brazilian Environment and the Chico Mendes Institute for Conservation of Biodiversity (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade), is named in his honour.
Thanks to Mendes’ committed lobbying work, the World Bank moved from endorsing rainforest exploitation to financing the reserves. Sadly, climate-change-denying President Jair Bolsonaro’s government from 2019 to 2023.undermined Mendes’ achievements by weakening protective legislation. They also encouraged cattle ranching, responsible for most deforestation in Brazil, undercutting the ban on subsidising operations which followed the murder.
As of 2019, the Chico Mendes Extraction Reserve had lost 7.5% of its forested area, and deforestation increased by over 200% in the first year of Bolsonaro’s presidency. Locals were also moving away from rubber tapping into the better-paid livestock industry, weakening worker’s unions.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected on 30 October 2022 and like Chico Mendes is a socialist and among his first acts in his new term in office, Lula issued decrees aimed at curbing mining in Indigenous reserves and deforestation in Amazonia and the Cerrado region. As Mongabay reported, he also created a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples as one step to fulfill a campaign plege “to combat 500years of inequality.”
The Mendes case has led to changes in Brazilian law and rain forest governance that cut the murder rate on the country’s farflung resource frontiers and reduced what had been a far more dramatic surge in forest destruction that anything in recent years.
The Brazilian Amazon experienced its smallest amount of yearly deforestation in nearly a decade, President Lula's government reported in November, in line with its promise to combat forest loss. Deforestation fell by 30.6 percent in the year-to-year period beginning in August 2023, according to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
During that time, 6,288 square kilometers (2,427 square miles) of forest were destroyed, which INPE Director Gilvan Oliveira said was "the lowest result in the last nine years."
Over the last century, the Amazon rainforest., which covers nearly 40 percent of South America has lost about 20 percent of its area to deforestation, due to the spread of agriculture and cattle ranching, logging and mining, and urban sprawl.
Lula has pledged to put a stop to illegal deforestation of the Amazon by 2030 but faces a string of vested interests. In addition to the Amazon, destruction of the Cerrado, the most species-rich savanna in the world, which is located in central Brazil, was reduced by 25.7 percent or 8,174 square kilometers, INPE reported. The two different biomes were recently hit by historic drought and the subsequent spread of wildfires.
Environment Minister Marina Silva welcomed the "significant drop" as a part of Brazil's push to reduce carbon emissions, just days before participating in the COP29 UN climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
But Brazilians still have two starkly different visions of what the vast Amazon region should be,with forest dwellers and environmentally-attuned urbanites siding with international conservationists, but many others seeing an undeveloped territory needing taming and exploitation.
But gains won long ago through peaceful resistance and blood, and now through Lula’s acts, remain fragile. As André Schröder reported for Mongabay in November, “Bolsonaro won in the majority of the 256 municipalities in the Arc of Deforestation, which accounts for about 75 percent of the deforestation in the Amazon, as well as in Novo Progresso, in Pará, where ranchers, loggers and land-grabbers orchestrated a significant burning of deforested areas in 2019.”
Although the current state of environmental protection in Brazil has improved, it is still rather dire,but this does not take away from Chico Mendes’ legacy. He brought global attention to the plight of the rainforest and its communities, and his tireless campaigning set a precedent for future environmental activism and legislation.
Chico Mendes, name remains synonymous with environmental activism and the struggle for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest,and he remains a beacon of inspiration decades after his tragic assassination.
Today, Chico Mendes is celebrated as a hero who fought valiantly against the exploitation of the Amazon.Murdered for his efforts, he embodies the struggles of the many people who fight to protect their homelands from exploitation. His life reminds us of the profound impact one individual can have on the world.
Mendes’s story is a call to action, urging current and future generations to continue the fight for a just and sustainable planet. However as in other areas of the world the environment remains under pressure and his legacy is under threat.
But because of his combination of socialism and ecology, agrarian reform and defense of the Amazonian forest, peasant and indigenous struggles, Chico Mendes’s fight continues to inspire new struggles, not only in Brazil, but in many other countries and continents.
In 1989, shortly after Chico Mendes’ death, the National Council of Rubber Tappers in Rio Branco issued this “declaration of the peoples of the forest”, which can serve as Mendes’ epitaph:
“The traditional peoples who today trace on the Amazonian sky the rainbow of the Alliance of the Peoples of the Forest declare their wish to see their regions preserved. They know that the development of the potential of their people and of the regions they inhabit is to be found in the future economy of their communities, and must be preserved for the whole Brazilian nation as part of its identity and self-esteem. This Alliance of the Peoples of the Forest, bringing together Indians, rubber tappers, and riverbank communities, and founded here in Acre, embraces all efforts to protect and preserve this immense but fragile life-system that involves out forests, lakes, rivers and springs, the source of our wealth and the basis of our cultures and traditions.”
The best way to learn more about Chico is to listen to Chico himself. Here is Voice of the Amazon, a great documentary from Miranda Smith, that can be watched in English and with Spanish subtitles.
2024 has once again been a particularly cruel year, what with the appalling suffering and genocide taking place in Gaza. At times, the news cycle has been simply overwhelming.Thousands are dead, it's heartbreaking, demoralizing and devastating. Musing about the year in music feels hollow.
However as we consider these tumultuous times, lets be reminded about music’s ability to stir us, allowing us to forge further connections to ourselves and each other. Music reflects society and is often influenced by the political climate. Music can help us to get through the day and stop us falling completely into a pit of total depression and can help transform the heaviest of days.
However you spend or celebrate this time of year, power to the music and the people that make it. Lets try and support local music venues and appreciate their intrinsic value.Music and the places where it is performed can be balms that can brings us together as we face the challenges ahead. Am very fortunate to have a wonderful musical venue called the Cellar Bar based in my hometown of Aberteifi/Cardigan, which is always a pleasure to visit, and well worth a visit if you happen to be in the neighbourhood..
In a year of deep reflection, music stretched and relocated in often unpredictable ways. Bandcamp an artist-focussed platform continues to allow us to support our favorite musicians and labels that enrich our lives and is a good place to discover new music.
In no particular order here are my musical highlights of the year that I have really enjoyed which have managed to lift me, give me strength. The continued silence of Radiohead and Nick Cave in the face of ongoing genocide means none of their music shows up in my list. I urge people though to support numerous international artists and musicians who have united in support of Palestine, prioritizing their principles over potential career risks. Anyway here's to better days ahead, an end to genocide, and a free Palestine. Happy yule. Winter solstice. Heddwch/Peace :-
22. Merciless Accelerating Rhythms - Artists United for a Free Palestine - Various Artists
Based on anti-apartheid artist, leader and poet, June Jordan’s poem, “I Must Become A Menace to MyEnemies,” dedicated by Jordan to Agostinho Neto, former President of The People’s Republic of Angola, the album’s title “Merciless Accelerating Rhythms” encapsulates a form of political organizing beyond “walking politely on the pavements,” and emphasizes “becom[ing] the action of [our] fate,” acting in a form of “retaliation.”
Christmas lights, shimmering and sparkling The smell of food, enticing on tongue Another world lingers though A different reality resides In the corner of our eyes. Beyond the tragedy of hunger The waste of consumerism Austerity that daily bites.
For some now the air drips with sadness As the cold season blows again People on long and tiresome journeys
Drifting among thrift stores Food banks and charity shops As the sky above turns dark and grey Citizens left wanting, running on empty Struggling on, feeding on misery and decay.
Genocide and torture, fucking others lands
The horrors and massacres daily now unfurled
War crimes that can't be disputed
Political enablers, pouring petrol on the fire
Extreme weather, drowning coastlines
Sweet winter, dusted with calamity
Despite it all, Christmas songs play on
People find illusion to escape the bleakness.
Perhaps some small acts of kindness
will be sufficient to keep some gladness alight Against buffeting winds, strength can grow
Stop the endless bombing, a land dripping with blood Allow people of gaza to decorate hearts with hope Fill glasses full of compassion instead of fear With little things, perhaps time will heal
Abandon the past, infiltrate the future Share some sustenance of survival.
Irish American. revolutionary working class poet Lola Ridge was born Rose Emily Ridge on December. 12, 1873, in Dublin, Ireland.Her medical student father died when she was three, so her mother
emigrated to Australia, before moving on to Aotearoa/New Zealand when Lola was 13. Her mother
remarried in 1880 to a Scottish miner and the family lived in a
three-roomed shack on the Hokitikagold fields, among Maori and European
and Chinese immigrants.
At 22, Ridge married a gold-mine manager in Kanieri, Hokitika. Their
first son, born in 1896, died of bronchitis in infancy; their second,
Keith, was born in 1900. In 1901 and 1902, under the name 'Lola’, she
published her first poems, ‘A Deserted Diggings, Maoriland’ and ‘Driving
the Cattle Home’ in Bulletin and Otago Witness. This was a crossroads
moment, when she decided to break with social convention to become an
artist.
In 1903, she left her husband and took her son to her mother in
Sydney, where she studied art at the Académie Julienne and wrote her
first book, Verses. In 1907, her mother and stepfather both died, and
she left for San Francisco at the age of 34.
After making a name for
herself there, she moved on to New York City’s Greenwich Village,in 1908 after she left her son in an orphanage.The move to New York saw the birth of Lola Ridge, modernist poet,
utopian anarchist and labour activist, claiming to be ten years younger
than she was. To support herself, she worked as an illustrator, factory
worker, poet, and model.
She quickly became the center of the thriving radical scene and the modernist literary movement, contributing to and editing a number of “little” magazines. She was heavily involved
in various leftist causes, and her radical politics were easily
discernible in both her actions and her words.
In New York by 1908, she became Emma Goldman's confidante. By then Ridge had become the chief organizer of
anarchists at the Ferrer Center in Manhattan, a task which honed her
progressive New Zealand radicalism into a love of Kropotkin-style
anarchy. She heard passionate speeches by the most prominent
free-thinkers and immigrants in the country and organized classes in
everything from Esperanto to music appreciation. When describing.what
America had to offer the immigrant, Ridge wrote: “On my board are bitter
apples/And honey served on thorns.” She felt very deeply about the
stinting of its promised freedom."
In 1916 she supported the cause of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings,
convicted (and much later pardoned) after having been framed as "usual
suspects" for the Preparedness Day Bombing; and she was arrested in the 1920s for protesting against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti (Italian
anarchists who were charged with a bank robbery in which two guards were
killed, convicted in a ludicrous trial and sentenced to death. A
worldwide campaign and a full confession by the real robber failed to
prevent this sentence being carried out. who didn't get a fair deal from a highly prejudiced court at a
time of terrorism hysteria - one critic compared the chances
of an Italian getting a fair trial in Boston to a black person getting
one in the American South).In 1916 she supported the cause of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings,
convicted (and much later pardoned) outside the Massachusetts State House, after facing down a rearing police horse
She published poems
in Emma Goldman’s radical journal Mother Earth and in The New Republic. Some of these poems were collected in The Ghetto and Other Poems (1918), a vivid collection of works evoking the brutal life of the working classes of New York City.The title poem celebrates the Jewish immigrants of the Lower East Side.
Rooted in early 20th-century New York City, The Ghetto and other Poems anticipates
much of what was to emerge amongst the “objectivists,” apparent in
Ridge’s focus on the working poor and their intrinsic role in the
composition and machinations of the city. Everywhere the city, its
people, and their conditions are conjoined, as in “Faces” where “A late
snow beats/ with cold white fists upon the tenements.” The conditions
and exploitation of the working poor engaged with in this book carry an
intense consciousness of the ongoing Great War and its implications, a
tone that tempers every atmosphere in the collection :
Ridge soon began publishing poems in other journals, including the Dial, Poetry, and the Literary Digest.
She became involved in a circle of poets that included William Carlos
Williams, Marianne Moore, and Waldo Frank, and she worked as associate
editor of the journal Others.
Ridge was an anarchist concerned with the larger political picture but
concerned as well with intimate life. Well ahead of her time, she
supported the rights of women, laborers, blacks, Jews, immigrants, and
homosexuals (she identified and was identified as bisexual). She
advocated individual liberty as well as social justice.
A year after the publication of The Ghetto and Other Poems,
Ridge gave a speech in Chicago entitled “Women and the Creative Will,” in
which she argued that sexually constructed gender roles hindered female
identity development. This was at least a decade before such ideas were
popular, even among women’s rights advocates, making her a model for us
today as we struggle in a world beset by ever more sophisticated
versions of the sexist, racist, heterosexist, and xenophobic threats
that face each new generation.
Ridge worked on an expanded version of her speech for years until
Viking, her publisher, told her it wouldn’t sell. The title poem of her
second book, Sun-up and Other Poems, which was a huge success is told in the voice of a
bad girl who beats her doll, bites her nurse, wonders “if God has
spoiled Jimmy” after he exposes himself, and intimates that her
imaginary friend is her bisexual half.
She
modelled a practice of engagement in her personal life by actively
participating in rallies and protests against injustice with ferocious spirit, and living in
poverty in solidarity with the poor, giving her work an authenticity
worth investigating.
Solo and broke in the next decade, she traveled to Baghdad and Mexico
– and took a lover at sixty-one. Her five books of poetry contain poems
about lynching, execution, race riots, and imprisonment. Her writing is vigorous and electric, and of great power and intensity.,
“Anything that burns you” was the advice she gave English critic
Alice Hunt Bartlett when she asked what poets should be writing in 1925.
“I write about something that I feel intensely. How can you help writing about something you feel intensely?”
Always an active social protester, Ridge participated in protests, marches, and pickets with ferocious spirit.She was very committed in her beliefs, leading a life of poverty even though she didn’t have to. Her writing is vigorous and electric, her Red Flag
(1927) was a collection of poems celebrating the Russian Revolution.
Ridge’s strongly emotional, almost mystical work became somewhat out of
fashion as radical social realism gave way to modernist avant-garde in
the art world.
Her later collections included Firehead (1930) a long poetic allegory on the execution of the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, and Dance of Fire (1935), the latter written after her trip to Mexico on a Guggenheim Fellowship.Her reputation as a poet developed, and she was twice awarded the
Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry (1935, 1936) and was awarded a
Guggenheim Poetry Fellowship (1935).
Throughout her life, Ridge grappled with a variety of ills, ranging from
an eating disorder and moments of severe economic insecurity, to the
threat of political repression during the 1919 – 1920 Palmer raids on
leftists and anarchists, and what may have been a nervous breakdown. She
weathered them all,until she died in Brooklyn, NYC, of pulmonary tuberculosis on March 19th 1941 aged 67. Shortly before her death she wrote, “Nice is the one adjective in the world that is laughable applied to any single thing I have ever written.”
The New York Times declared her “one of America’s best poets”
when she died, and in their obituary describe her as “one of the leading contemporary poets” who “found in the meeting of many races in America the hope of a new world " but her interest in radicalism, feminism, and
experimental poetry wrote her out of literary history,possibly in part due to the inhospitality of mid-twentieth century America towards socialists and communists,. but she remains a trailblazer for women, poetry, and human rights who was far ahead of her time.
Few today may have heard of Ridge, but her impact on America society cannot
be denied, a poet whose work brought
real, tangible change. Ridge’s poem about Sacco and Vanzetti, for
instance, was duplicated by the thousands, passed hand-to-hand among
activists, and would help free the labor activist Tom Mooney from unjust
incarceration.and she remains significant for the courage with which she addressed social
issues in her writing and for her pivotal position among the modernist
and women writers of twentieth-century America. I would strongly recommend the book Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet, by Terese Svoboda, Schaffner Press, 2016. for a further insight into this revolutionary poet's life.
Dream - Lola Ridge
I have a dream to fill the golden sheath of a remembered day…. (Air heavy and massed and blue as the vapor of opium… domes fired in sulphurous mist… sea quiescent as a gray seal… and the emerging sun spurting up gold over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay….) But the day is an up-turned cup and its sun a junk of red iron guttering in sluggish-green water – where shall I pour my dream?
Freedom- Lola Ridge
Let men be free! All violence is but the agony Of caged things fighting blindly for the right To be and breathe and burn their little hour. Bare spirits—not debight In smooth-set garments of philosophy; But near earth forces, elemental, crude, Scarce knowing their invicible, rude power; Within the close of their primeval servitude Half comatose.
Who, ravening for their depleted dower Of so much sun and air and warmth and food, And the same right to procreate and love As the beasts have and the birds, Strike wild—not having words To parry with—at the cold force above.
Let men be free! Hate is the price Of servitude, paid covertly; and vice But the unclean recoil of tortured flesh Whipped through the centuries within a mesh Spun out of priestly art. Oh men, arise, be free!—Who breaks one bar Of tyranny in this so bitter star Has cleansed its bitterness in part.
To the Others - Lola Ridge
I see you, refulgent ones, Burning so steadily Like big white arc lights… There are so many of you. I like to watch you weaving— Altogether and with precision Each his ray— Your tracery of light, Making a shining way about America.
I note your infinite reactions— In glassware And sequin And puddles And bits of jet— And here and there a diamond…
But you do not yet see me, Who am a torch blown along the wind, Flickering to a spark But never out.
Secrets- Lola Ridge
Secrets
infesting my half-sleep…
did you enter my wound from another wound
brushing mine in a crowd…
or did I snare you on my sharper edges
as a bird flying through cobwebbed trees at sun-up
carries off spiders on its wings?
Secrets,
running over my soul without sound,
only when dawn comes tip-toeing
ushered by a suave wind,
and dreams disintegrate
like breath shapes in frosty air,
I shall overhear you, bare-foot,
scatting off into the darkness….
I shall know you, secrets
by the litter you have left
and by your bloody foot-prints.
Submerged - Lola Ridge
I have known only my own shallows— Safe, plumbed places, Where I was wont to preen myself.
But for the abyss I wanted a plank beneath And horizons...
I was afraid of the silence And the slipping toe-hold...
Oh, could I now dive Into the unexplored deeps of me— Delve and bring up and give All that is submerged, encased, unfolded, That is yet the best.
Reveille - Lola Ridge
Come forth, you workers!
Let the fires go cold—
Let the iron spill out, out of the troughs—
Let the iron run wild Like a red bramble on the floors—
76 years ago today, on December 10 1948, the UN formally adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights .Conceived after the horrors of the Second World War, this document was the first of its kind to enshrine the rights and freedoms of all human beings into international law.
The Declaration set out, for the first time in history, those fundamental human rights that Governments all over the world undertook to respect, protect and promote. .In 1950, the Assembly passed resolution 423 (V), inviting all States and interested organizations to observe 10 December of each year as Human Rights Day.
And ever since that auspicious day it has stood as the first major stride forward in ensuring that the rights of every human across the globe are protected. From the most basic human needs such as food, shelter, and water, all the way up to access to free and uncensored information, such has been the goals and ambitions laid out that day.
The Declaration proclaims a simple, yet powerful idea :
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights," "They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."
These rights are the birthright of all people: it does not matter, what country we live in and even who we are. Because we are human, we have these rights; and Governments are bound to protect them. They are not a reward for good behaviour, nor they are optional or the privilege of a few- they are inalienable entitlements of all people, at all times- regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. And because they are universal, they are also matters of legitimate concern; and standing up for them is a responsibility that binds us all.
It is the most translated document in the world, available in more than 500 languages. When the General Assembly adopted the Declaration, with 48 states in favor and eight abstentions, it was proclaimed as a "common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations", towards which individuals and societies should "strive by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance".
Although the Declaration with its broad range of political, civil, social, cultural and economic rights is not a binding document, it inspired more than 60 human rights instruments which together constitute an international standard of human rights. It has helped shape human rights all over the world.
Today the general consent of all United Nations Member States on the basic Human Rights laid down in the Declaration makes it even stronger and emphasizes the relevance of Human Rights in our daily lives.The High Commissioner for Human Rights, as the main United Nations rights official, plays a major role in coordinating efforts for the yearly observation of Human Rights Day.
Sadly in 2024, powerful nations call upon human rights to justify sanctions, coups and wars, while ignoring, or even systematically violating, human rights of the powerless when it serves their political purpose. Critical voices are under attack and the backlash against human rights is growing. Legitimate protests are curbed, repression is rising, and public space is shrinking.The principles of the UDHR are constantly under threat. Right now, people around the world are being oppressed, silenced and abused, and their human rights violated, Today ons Human Rights the world allows the state of Israel to lock 2.2 million people into a strip of land less than a third the size of London and bomb them at will.
Human Rights Day reminds us that there is much to be done around the world to protect those who cannot voice or respond to perpetrated discrimination and violence caused by governments, vigilantes, and individual actors. In many instances, those who seek to divide people for subjective means and for totalitarian reasons do so around the globe without fear of retribution. Violence, or the threat of violence, perpetrated because of differences in a host of physical and demographic contrasts and dissimilarities is a blight on our collective humanity now and a danger for our human future.
Human Rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person in the world, from birth until death. They apply regardless of where you are from, what you believe or how you choose to live your life. They should never be taken away, these basic rights are based on values such as dignity, fairness, equality, respect and independence. But human rights are not just abstract concepts, they are defined and protected by law.
The aim of of Human Rights Day is to raise awareness around the world of our inalienable rights – rights to basic needs such as water, food, shelter and decent working conditions. In the UK we are protected by the Human Rights Act 1998, that sets out the fundamental rights and freedoms that everyone in the UK is entitled to. But we have seen it threatened by successive governments. They don’t like having their authority questioned and their power challenged.
Meanwhile in other countries, especially developing countries, the laws are not in place to protect people and to ensure that their basic needs are met.
For millions of people, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is still just a dream. Many people around the world are still denied the most basic of human rights on a daily basis. Women’s rights are still repeatedly denied and marginalised throughout the globe, despite 76 years of the milestone declaration on human rights. Confronted with widespread gender-based violence, hate and discrimination, women’s well-being and ability to live full and active lives in society are being seriously challenged.
This year the theme for Human Rights Day is “Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now,”
"Human rights have a tangible positive impact and offer practical solutions. By embracing the full power of human rights as the path to the future we want, the world can become more peaceful and equal," the UN said announcing the theme.
A call to acknowledge the importance and relevance of human rights in our everyday lives. We have an opportunity to change perceptions by speaking up against hate speech, correcting misinformation, and countering disinformation. Now is the moment to rally together and breathe new life into the global movement for human rights.
This year’s focus encourages people to come together to address pressing issues such as inequality, discrimination, and the need for justice and dignity for all. The theme inspires us to create a world where everyone’s rights are respected, regardless of race, gender, religion, or economic status.
Equality is a concept that’s hard to pin down, yet at its core, we can agree that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and in rights. No matter of religion, race, colour, sex, language, sexual orientation, age, or status. These characteristics are mere surface differences. Reducing inequality requires tackling discrimination and biases deeply engrained in our society.
As we commemorate Human Rights Day, lets reflect on how we can contribute to this global effort. Whether through advocacy, education, or simply standing up against injustice in our communities, every action counts. Together, we can make a difference and move closer to a world where human rights are truly universal.
Human rights are not just lofty ideals. They are practical tools that empower individuals and communities. Let’s use this day to inspire change and to remind ourselves of the power we hold to create a more just and equitable world for all. “Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now” is not just a theme—it’s a call to action for each of us to play our part in protecting and promoting human rights today and for the future.
Racism, xenophobia and intolerance are still problems prevalent in all societies, and discriminatory practices are widespread, particularly regarding the targeting of migrants and refugees. including in rich countries where men, women and children who have committed no crime are often held in detention for prolonged periods. They are frequently discriminated against by landlords, employers and state-run authorities, and stereotyped and vilified by some political parties, media organizations and members of the public.
Many other groups face discrimination to a greater or lesser degree. Some of them are easily definable such as persons with disabilities, stateless people, gays and lesbians, members of particular castes and the elderly. Others may span several different groups and find themselves discriminated against on several different levels as a result.
Those who are not discriminated against often find it hard to comprehend the suffering and humiliation that discrimination imposes on their fellow individual human beings. Nor do they always understand the deeply corrosive effect it has on society at large.
Nearly a billion people do not have enough food to eat, and even in wealthier countries like the UK and the US where there is an increasing growth in food banks. Poverty is a leading factor in the failure to protect the economic and social rights of many individuals around the world. For the half of the world population living on less than $2.50 a day, human rights lack any practical meaning.
For this Human Rights Day we must continue to stand with all people targeted for giving expression to the vision and values embodied in the declaration. Every day must be Human Rights Day, as every person in the world is entitled to the full and indivisible range of human rights every day of his or her life.Global human rights are not selective in their value or meaning, nor are they limited to a day or time of year. Until all people have access to these human rights we must stand up, advocate for, and insist that more must be done.
The right to security, the right to dignity, the right to be free from violence , the right to be free from displacement, the right Right to access to adequate food, water, sanitation, clothing, housing, The rights denied to Palestinians in Gaza are not privileges. Human Rights Day should serve as a reminder to act for those lacking basic rights each and everyday.
It’s important to acknowledge that human rights, have rarely been gifted to us through benevolent leaders. Rather, they have been won after long fought battles and collective struggle. We need to recognize and pay tribute to human rights defenders the world over, putting their lives on the line for others, our voice must be their voice.
As thousands of struggles have proved, human rights are a vital lever in the quest for equality and social justice. If governments will no longer protect human rights it will be up to us, the people to keep on fighting for them and ensure our human right are always upheld.
Lets work to achieve a better life for all. And more importantly, to continue to take a stand for people whose human rights are still not being met across the globe, find a way to use our voices for those who may not have an opportunity to advocate for themselves. At the same time strengthening international law and justice in order to end impunity, and bring to justice those guilty of violations of human rights and offer protection to their victims.
Today is an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of human rights in rebuilding the world we want, the need for global solidarity as well as our interconnectedness and shared humanity. A future of cooperation among citizens, peoples and between nations. It is a a prerequisite for a more peaceful future where disputes are solved through negotiation and diplomacy.
Stand up against injustices when you see them. Support organisations and engage in conversations that foster understanding and respect. Human rights are everyone’s business. Each of us has a role in promoting and protecting them. By doing so, we contribute to a world where everyone can live with dignity and freedom.
"If your neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor, "- Desmond Tutu