Syrian Refugees - An Insiders View from the Camp

Syrian  refugees - An insiders view from the camp, come and Skype with a Worker from one of camps in Lebanon.
This  event is being put on by my local Amnesty International Group, Cardigan Amnesty Group here in West Wales. We are raising awareness about how Syrian  Refugees  are coping in Lebanon for Refugee week.
Wednesday 18th June 700pm.
Everyone welcome, Admission free,
Refreshments.
Come and join us.

30th Anniversary of the Battle for Orgreave

Today I remember the 30th anniversary  of one of the 20th Century's most brutal attacks by the state on its own citizens.The Battle of Orgreave, during the1984 Miners strike,which resulted in an all out military operation by Margeret Thatcher's Conservative cabinet.
On June 18th  1984, 6 to 7,000  miners and supporters gathered  to picket Orgreave  cokeworks  near Rotheram in South Yorkshire.
Police directed  pickets to an area of land which left them  hemmed in on three sides.Before this event the miners had been stoically out on strike for about 12 weeks, during which they had  been assaulted on picket lines, with individuals being handcuffed and beaten without  any cause or provocation.
At Orgreave  the miners after being herded together. were savagely attacked by Police cavalry  in full riot gear under the jurisdiction of Thatcher's Government attacking fleeing miners  with long swaying batons as Miners ran for safety. It saw the police  going berserk under state orders, repeatedly  attacking  individuals  wherever they sought refuge,  as they fled into a nearby Wheatfield and into the community of Orgreave, where the police  carried on their pursuit through the streets. A scene of ugliness, fear and menace, as  all concepts of Law and order that  the constabulary  were supposed to withhold abandoned all its basic principles.

At the end  the day  over 100 people were arrested, for no crime whatever, with many  more being injured along with  the Miners leader Arthur Scargill. Following Orgreave, the police  conducted a deliberate  and co-ordinated  attempt to frame arrested miners  for one of the most serious events  on the statute book - the offence of Riot. No police officer has ever been prosecuted or even disciplined for their role in the terrible events that occurred.

Today all the victims  of this bloody confrontation,are simply asking for an apology for the actions taken out against them. We should never forget, today  people will be honouring them at the Orgreave Mass Picnic & Festival taking place at  Catcliffe Recreation Ground.
The  miners 1984 was one of the longest and most brutal in British labour history. A community fighting for jobs and survival was wholly denigrated and depicted as violent by the majority of the media. The above film THE BATTLE FOR ORGREAVE puts the record straight, as miners recount their own history, their economic and political struggle over decades and the trial they endured for 48 days in Sheffield when charged with riot at Orgreave - facing life imprisonment.
Containing compelling testimonies, emotive cinematography, in depth analysis coupled with meticulous detail of the mass picket and the ensuing events of June 18 1984 at the Orgreave coking plant, the documentary also has unique footage of police violence - all these make this an historic and important document of our time.
See the film at the British Film Institute.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/
or purchase from journeyman Pictures at
http://www.journeyman.tv/
30 years later  many still seek some form of justice.

For  further details of the Orgreave Peace and Justice Campaign

I refer you to this excellent site

http://otjc.org.uk/

An earlier post on the 30th anniversary of the Miners Strike can be found here

http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/30th-anniversary-of-miners-strike-their.html

Enjoy the World Cup but consider the injustice of it all.

First things first, I confess I am not a fan of the so called beautiful game, but with massive protests breaking out daily against the World Cup in Brazil  because  of mass unemployment and severe poverty I can also understand why many indigenous youth  do not support the World Cup  currently being held in Brazil  and realise why the large scale opposition that is taking place has so much validity.
Many Brazilians see their government having wasted billions of their money on  this event, while their futures  offer little hope,  as billions of  pounds  of money, seems to have been wasted, instead of being  directed elsewhere on essential things like  healthcare and education.
A country rich in this  games history, afterall having won 5 World Cup titles, more than any other country, anticipating a win against their first game against Chile later, one would have thought  this event would have garnered some kind of favour, but at the end of the day the poorest people of Brazil  will not  not benefit, from this most  expensive World Cup to date . 
People of the World should consider the many people evicted, from their once proud homes and neighbourhoods to make way for this global corporate event, with street vendors  removed from their daily sufficiency.
If this occasion, draws attention to the underprivileged Brazilians,it will possibly be of some worth.
Daily protests are rising in numbers, and hopefully the World's stage will be able to witness  the people of Brazil speaking out against injustice with their increased  public displays of anger.
The world will  hear Jennifer Lopez sing 'We are One'  but  might also  understand  the the clear voices of opposition standing below,   risking  arrest for simply  displaying their outrage.
Any further  disruption to this  event I will completely understand, from the favelas and the streets that link, I will support their hungry resistance, with solidarity's breath.
Anyway message spread,  enjoy the World Cup, if you can.

 

 

Bush and Blair: The fatal attraction that killed 1m Iraqis

Written  by Heathcotte Williams

Voice and editing by Alan Cox

Babylon Royal

http://bit.Iy/1I1teKn

Rick Mayall ( 7/3/58 -9/6/14) - Don't Fear Death R.I.P

Real crap news and sad to hear  that comic genius Rik Mayall had died suddenly yesterday, I fondly   remember his celebrated characters in sitcoms like the  Young Ones, Blackadder , the New Statesman, the Comic strips on Channel 4 , lest forget  his alter ego Kevin Turvey, and off course the inevitable Bottom. An early inspirations to my own  anarchic impulses, even though his portrayal  in the Young Ones was off a pompous, cowardice, halfwit... I still remember fondly it's sheer brilliance.
His eyes bulging, silly and chaotic, and always a little rude, stupid  with outbreaks of sheer violence, guess  that's why we loved him, his command of physical comedy was simply amazing, a true shining light.
He along  with his comic  writing partner, Adrian Edmondson, along with others  like Alexai Sayle, Dawn French and Jenniffer Saunders, amongst others injected an energy  into the British comedy scene of  1980's, which was to be known  as 'alternative comedy'.
He seemed to have disappeared for awhile after a vehicle accident left him in a coma back  in  1998, but he survived, however he was left with in epilepsy.
However he  returned to the stage, and  starred in a few films..... but the peoples poet Rik of the Young Ones is now dead and I will miss his work, I will still hate fascists and will still snort on about the evil of Thatcher and her cohorts.
He has left us far to early, but left us with this contribution   to a black comedy aired last August on Channel 4, called  'don't fear death' screened as part of Channel 4's Random Acts series... it adds  that 'death is your passport to complete and utter freedom. No pulse, no responsibility. Carpe mortem - seize death'.
I end with some personal favourites from Rick's career. R.I.P

Don't Fear Death

Rick Mayall as Kevin Turvey

Rick Mayall - Poetry

Alan Bastard on Healthcare

Alan Bastard Conference Speech

15 Top Moments of Rick Mayall as Rik in the Young Ones

The Young Ones - The Peoples poet

Who the **** is Katie Hopkins

Who the **** is Katie Hopkins.
In reality a person of increased insensitivity, a caustic piece of venom, the only job she does is the theatre of cruelty that she has embraced. A husband stealing, failed Apprentice Contestant turned media rent-a- mouth, spewing forth all sorts of bigoted nonsense as she tries to drown out common sense with her coarsing voice releasing  her demented breath as her swivel eyes turn.
I too can use my voice, to attack, but what difference does she make either, this acid tongued bore, who on all accounts does not seem to have a bit of decency or dignity in her soul that continues to release rather fascist tendencies .
 Unlike her I genuinely feel sorry for her victims,  who are all are open to her radar, sick children, immigrants the unemployed, the late Trade Union leader Bob Crow who she insulted only minutes after his passing, the poor and the vulnerable, societies marginalised, yesterday coming out in favour of spikes embedded in spikes to deter rough sleepers. She uses her voice and her cloak of privilege, to be employed by the lowest of all our rapid tabloid journals the Sun. There never seems to be an ounce of remorse, as she carries on blaming her victims.
In the news again recently as she speaks out against people in long term unemployment, suggesting that they are issued with special unemployed persons uniforms, writing on Twitter " Time we issued  an unemployed person uniform. She is a real nasty piece of work, whose only gainful employment is to sprout her controversial views. Guess I'm a direct opposite to all she stands for, but unlike her I will admit when I'm wrong, she however will never offer an apology and carry on regardless.
We live supposedly in a free and tolerant country I guess,  so we are entitled to our differing views, but surely in this  melting pot of a world, the world is emptier, when especially  we still have room for the likes of Katie Hopkins, I wish her no real harm, but the world would surely be a happier place, if she disappeared  from our earshot and our T.V screens.
Rant over..... I will carry on  dreaming  of a fairer, equal world, that really cares about people, a future full of bright possibility, where our diversity's is celebrated, the voiceless too are aloud to speak and  bacterial division and scorn is not  spread.

Anti-Homeless spikes in Central London

Rolls  of steel studs have recently been placed at the Picadilly Circus Branch in Central London of Tesco and  outside a block of luxury flats in to try to prevent homeless people sleeping out.What kind of country are we living in.

Let us remember that until a couple of  hundred years ago four fifths of this country ( and even a larger proportion elsewhere) was common land to be used by everyone as they saw fit. Now there's   hardly a square  inch of horizontal surface  that doesn't seem to have been  taken by some greedy so and so's. When some people say property is theft, this is  literally what they mean.
Because of the Tory Governments policies rough sleepers have risen sharply across the country  with a massive 75% rise in London. People are daily struggling due to a lack  of housing, cuts to benefits and cuts to homeless services, that are  supposed to be their to help  people rebuild their lives,  and the government  continues to spend billions of pounds on  war and spying, while the vulnerable  are hidden out of sight. People at the end of the day being treated less than vermin.
We are daily systematically being  robbed blind by ...and the worst is yet to  come. It should be enough to shame us all.

Denise Levertov (24/10/23 -20/12/97) - Writing in the Dark

 

 

It's not difficult
Anway it's necessary.
Wait till morning, and you'll forget.
And who knows if morning will come.

Fumble for the light, and you'll be
stark awake, but the vision
will be fading, slipping
out of reach.

You must have paper at hand,
a felt-tip pen - ballpoints don't always flow,
pencil points tend to break. There's nothing
shameful in that much prudence: those are your tools.

Never mind about crossing your t's, dotting your i's -
but take care not to cover
one word with the next. Practice will reveal
how one hand instinctively comes to the aid of the other
to keep each line
clear of the next.

Keep writing in the dark:
a record of the night, or
words that pulled you from depths of unknowing,
worrds that flew through your mind, strange birds
crying their urgency with human voices.

or opened
as flowers of a tree that blooms
only once in a lifetime:

words that may have the power
to make the sun rise again.

Denise Levertov was born in Illford, Essex, England. Her father, raised a Hassidic Jew, had converted to Christianity while attending University in Germany. Her mother was Welsh, and read aloud such authors as Charles Dickens, Joseph Corad and Leo Tolstoy. Denise Levertov was educated completely at home and she claimed to have decided write at the age of five.She was to become a committed protestor too, an anti-war activist, feminist and anarchist fellow travellor, following her own passionate  impulses. After settling in America in 1948, she was also to become known as one of America's foremost contemporary poets.

Protest G4S AGM London 5 Jun 2014

Protests to shareholders at the G4S AGM held yesterday at the Excel Centre in London aganst this companies complicity in Israel's war crimes and against the  British Governments  continued use of G4S domestically in Britain in spite  of its corrupt and incompetent record here at home and  in addition  notwithstanding its illegal collaboration in war crimes. Protesters were violently removed  as they defended human rights against this immoral company..

25th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre

25 years ago in 1989, a mass of  students and workers occupied Bejings Tiananmen Square, and began the largest political protest in the history of Communist China. Driven  by  the hope for a better future, they were simply  calling for freedom of the press and for some government accountability, and the imminent problems of corruption,  among other goals. Six weeks of demonstrations ended  with a night of bloodshed on  June 3rd. Resulting on this day with over 2,000 of protestors being killed, Brave, innocent, individual souls, shotdown and massacred. It also resulted in 10's of thousands being arrested.The Chinese Government acting under martial law, deployed 200,000 troops to brutally supress this movement. Long prison sentences were given out, one  of which was for 17 years for throwing paint at a portrait of Mao Zedong. There has been talk  of students  gathering on the ground today but tanks are already on the streets. We should take a minute and think about those sacrifices and all those who died,  so that their actions  have not been in vain. Sadly brutal suppression and censorship has continued to this day, that  condemns the Chinese nation and its people to a future without freedom.
And today many activists are still being  ruthlessly persecuted by the Chinese Authorities, and the climate of free expression remains stifling,  with scores of writers still being silenced, also many social media sites are still banned.
We must continue to support all those that fight  against state  oppression and censorship and never forget the tragic  legacy of Tinanamen Square that continues to haunt us.