Solidarity with Palestinian Prisoners Day

Today marks the occasion of Palestine Prisoners Day. It will see the Palestinian prisoners movement launching the Karamah (Dignity strike). They hope to place the oppressive nature of the Israeli state under the spotlight once again. In a brave move, highlighting the strength of Palestinian resistance to occupation, 1600 will embark on an indefinite strike demanding their  basic rights as political detainess.
The Israeli state was created in May 1948, by a violent occupation of the land of the Palestinian people. This has been combined by a systematic policy of expulsion, persecution against the Palestinian people. Also since 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem as a result of the six-Day War, the West bank and the Gaza Strip, some 700,000 Palestinians have seen the daylight from behind  the walls of Israel's prisons, which works out at about 20% of the total population of the Palestinian authority. Israel seems to deny the Palestinians  their very existence, and their most basic rights: land, housing, education and health. In  the Palestinian authority practically every person has a relative or acquaintance that has spent or is spending time in an Israeli prison.  They are considered by the Palestinian people to be freedom fighters, whether they are members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad or any other Palestinian organisation.
The "courts" of the occupation are part and parcel of this denial of Palestinian existence. All forms of dissent are criminalised and there are thousands of Palestinian political prisoners. Also confessions allegedly obtained by duress are accepted as evidence, and Palestines in the Occupied Territories are subjected to Israeli military law, while Israel's ilgal settlers are governed by Israel Civil Law, a clear example of an aparthid system. And many would consider the Occupied Territories themselves as one giant prison camp.
 It is in this context that Palestinian political prisoners, including children, will atempt to break this silence, willing to die in order to highlight this daily reality of their lives. The majority of the 4,600 Palestinians have refused their meals today, while 1,200 of them promise to hunger strike indefinitely. Israel also still uses administrative detention, a legislation that dates back to British protectionl of the region. This procedure allows Israel to detain suspects indefinitely without charges being made against them, simply by repeating the implied 6 month periods of detention time after time.
Today is specially symbolic, because it is also the day that Israel release Khader Adnan, who himself spent 66 days on hunger strike.
They  have many from  the international community on their side, hopefully questioning the impunity of the Israeli state and their own governments involvement, sanding together and expressing their solidarity. Already their have been rallies worlwide to support them with detained activists from the 'Welcome to Palestine' flytilla  joining them on hunger strike in solidarity. Hopefully the issue of the Palestinian prisoners will be revived, and they are not simply forgotten, and Israels violations against them will continue to be exposed, personally I  support  their struggle  as part of a universal struggle for human rights, respect and dignity.

Testimony of Palestinian Prisoner - Dr Addul-Azi

Call for international support:

on Palestinian Prisoners Day

http://palsolidarity.org/2012/04/call-for-international-action-show-your-support-on-palestinian-prisoners-day/

Palestinians behind Bars: Prisoners without human rights

'THE RADICALISATION OF BRADLEY MANNING' - National Theatre Wales

12-28 April 2012

Bradley Manning events in Haverfordwest plus link to review of the play and more infomation about the case of Bradley Manning.

http://wiseupforbradleymanning.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/bradley-manning-events-in-haverfordwest-photo-report/

earlier post of mine.

http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/solidarity-with-bradley-manning.html

Free Bradley Manning.

Welcome to Palestine. The protest at Manchester airport against those banned from flying to Tel Aviv...

Carlo Carra ( 11/2/1881 - 13/4/66) -Leaving the Theatre/ Notturno A Piazza Beccario di Milano/ Funeral of the AnarchistGalli

Leaving the Theatre

Notturno A Piazza Beccario di Milano

                     
                                               Horseman of The Apocalypse

Funeral of the Anarchist Galli

Art is an important part of life. Friday was the anniversary of the death of Carlo Carra, the Italian Futurist painter, who tried to imbue his panting with movement and life.
At their best his pictures literally glow on the canvas,, he stated off in life as an anarchist, though unfortunately by the end of his life he had drifted far away from this pulse and had swapped it for an ideology of coldness and reactionary political views, but his art I can't really disagree with, and it is this that lives on.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( 21/10/1772 -25/7/1834) - A Sunset

Sometimes you wake up, and theirs nothing one can do, but grin and bear it, let the mind drift, expand, relax, wait. This morning, I felt the flame of indecision, it must have been the grass, but among the tangle of tendrils and foliage, I asked why does our world have to be so splintered, behind us a riot of protection.
Changing the subject  Samuel  Taylor Coleridge  like the other romantics, worshiped nature,and recognised poetry's capacity to describe the beauty of the natural world. Nearly all of Coleridge's poems express a respect for and delight in natural beauty. Close observations, great attention to detail, and precise descriptions demonstrate Coleridge's respect and delight with the 'immortal' joy of nature. I will end my musings with a poem from him that deftly illustrates this.

 A Sunset

Upon the mountain''s edge all light  resting,
There a brief while the globe of splendour sits
And seems a creature of the earth, but soon
More changeful than the moon,
To wane fantastic his great orb submits,
A distant hill of fire,  till sinking slowly
Even to a star at length he lessens wholly.

Abrupt, as Spirits vanish, he is sunk!
A soul-like breeze possesses all the wood.
The boughs, the sprays have stood
As motionless as stands the ancient trunk!
But every leaf through all the forest flutters
And deep the cavern of the fountain mutters.

Sara Teasdale (8/8/1884 - 29/1/33) There Will Come Soft Rains

American, Poet...... her work was much influenced by the poetry of Chrisina Rossetti. She spent a lot pf her short life in ill health, and despite several men falling in love with her, she died after an overdose of sleeping pills.
The following poem is from her 1920 collection, 'Flame and Shadow'  which inspired and featured in a famous short story of the same name by the Science Fiction writer, Ray Bradbury. Bradbury published his story in the 'Martian Chronicles' in 1951,  with the title 'August 2026: There Will Be Soft Rains' written in an era, like today when many people were concerned about the devastaing effects of nuclear weapons, the story depicts a world in which human beings have been destroyed by nuclear force. A cationary tale that followed the recent bombings in Agust 1945, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

There Will Come Soft Rains.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild-plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Russian animated film, from 1987
based on Ray Bradbury's story
-Budet Leskovy Dozhd
Director - Nazim Tylyakhozayev

Gray Tree , 1911 - Piet Mondrion

Mumia Abu-Jamal - first interview since escaping death row

Earlier post from me

http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/mumia-abu-jamal-another-nameless.html

Jubilee! Is somebody taking the Mickey??..

They're closing  our libraries, taking apart our N.H.S, taxing our elderly, causing fuel panic, giving bungs to the police, snooping on our e.mails and phone calls, attack the poor and generally stealing the future from our kids, and they expect us to throw a party for some old parasite. They really are taking the Mickey !!!
More wonderful stuff over here.
http://anarchistmedia.wordpress.com/

Thom Gunn (b.29/08/25 - 20/04/04 - Considering the Snail.

Thom Gunn, I like his stuff a lot, we share a birthday.
Borm in Britan, after moving to America, he became associated with San Francisco and the excesses of American bohemianism and all its primal urges. He wrote about violence and rebellion, love and decline, a life spent living on the edge, walking on the wild side. In his poems, as in his life he liked to take risks..... a life of studied abandon, he became known as a gay poet, who wrote in both traditional poetic forms and free verse, about the dispossessed, the marginalised where themes of love and lust interwined. Yet his themes also included the ordinary, the mundane,  and was particularly good when tackling the 'sniff of the real'. One of lifes bright things,  sadly departed, another one of those poets that I keep on returning to.
The following poem I find beautiful, delicate in its flow.
Enjoy.


Considering the Snail

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth's dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts, I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail's fury? All
I think is that if later
I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
umagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.

Reprinted from
Collected Poems
Faber and Faber 1993

Ever get the feeling they're taking the piss?

Yep..... we're all in it together these days. Don't panic carry on regardless! But lets face it, it's the poorest who seem to be getting hit the hardest, while 5 million pensioners were being robbed of their pensions, did not see Millibandy or Cleggy causing to much of a fuss.
All part of the same heierarchy that seems to want to tell us what to consume and when to consume it, what to think and where to think it, what to dream and when to dream it, giving alienation new and dreadful dimensions. And as for the worker who is actually conscious of being alienated, of being exploited, who dares on insisting on their right to strike , well not under the Labour Party,  the Conservatives or the Liberals  you wont..
All the mainstream parties have to offer is the absurdity  of living under capitalism, same old social layers, that treat people as disposable fodder.
Guess theirs a lot of anger in the air at the moment, but room for optimism too, a need for change, it was demonstrated in Bradford last week, the people are fed up with the same old same olds. At the moment, unfortunately I think its going to get a whole lot worse before it starts getting any better, and Cameon and his ilk keep on playing the  blame game,  but  blaming the victims instead of the financial institutions who caused this economic crisis in the first place. And if you happen to be mentally ill, do not for God sake go out dancing,  your not allowed to look as if your actually having a good time, they'll stop your benefits, their aim to keep us afraid. Well some of us aren't anymore, simply tired and had enough.
Oh look at the politicians on parade, hey love the olympics, fawn at the Queen, support pointless wars, well a lot of us don't support any of that little lot, clearly in a time of austerity, if you scrapped that little lot their would be a huge amount of money to spend, on things of far more importance. Their answers to  put up the price of cheap lager, and the price of Moet and Chandon Champagne remains unaffected, kill of our N.H.S, privatise essential services.. All in it together, I think not.
Soon I hope their complaceny will be shaken, the potential for an awakening is thir, we have to say no to apathy......we have to rage, against their machine, be resiliant,  keep saying no to their capitalist domination, escape from their status quo........ show them all the contempt they deserve, so as Eostre approaches, time to take stock..... we must not let them  crush our expectations, we must remain free to dream, I really believe that their common thread can be defeated by a common united opposition. So Happy Eostore all...
Solidarity hey its such a lovely word....... a change is imperative,  a faith in a future not based on their old formulas. The future could be very beautiful or it could continue as it is......  why do Milliband, Cameron and Clegg all seem to operate from the same thread, because all of them are afraid of the  latent power of us all, they need one another in order to control us, and hey it does not need to be this
way

George Formby - It turned out nice again