A Song for Emma Goldman's Birthday. ( (27/6 -1869 – 14/5/1940)

" I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful things," so said Red Emma, without adjectives, who sought a way of being free, who would rather roses on her table, than diamonds on her neck. Edgar Hoover once described  her as the most dangerous woman in America. Who simply chose to cling on throughout her life to her deep ideals,a beautiful ideal for a better world. She told us " Ask for work, if they don't give you work, ask for bread . If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread."
Emma Goldman was born today on June 27, 1869, Kovno, Russian Empire. She became one of the most outspoken and well-known of American radicals,political organising lecturing and writing on anarchism, women’s rights and other political topics. Convinced that the political and economic organization of modern society was fundamentally unjust, she embraced anarchism for the vision it offered of liberty, harmony and true social justice. For decades, she struggled tirelessly against widespread inequality, repression and exploitation. She served prison terms for such activities as advising the unemployed to take bread if their pleas for food were not answered, for giving information in a lecture on birth control, and for opposing military conscription, this led to an eighteen-month imprisonment before the First World War In 1908 she was deprived of her U.S. citizenship. She emigrated to Russia and then to Europe, where she travelled and lectured in many countries.She came to Wales, Emma's itinerary of speaking dates during her stay in the UK shows that the most extensively toured area was the south Wales coalfield. During two weeks in 1925 she spoke to audiences from Swansea to the Rhondda, commenting in her letters that the coalfield was a "splendid field" to spread anarchist ideas.  She subsequently joined  the Spanish Revolution, backing the Spanish Anarchists, as they tried to restructure society, while battling fascist, Stalinist threats.
 As an orator Emma Goldman was fiery and brilliant, drawing crowds of thousands to hear her speak. She is known for her extraordinary energy and appetite for life. Many of us associate her with the quote: "If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution."which Emma Goldman herself saying herself she  never literally spoke those famous words. In her autobiography Living My Life (1931) she describes how she was once admonished for dancing at a party in New York and was told “that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway.” Goldman speaks furiously  the occasion here;
 “I became alive once more. At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal” I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it.” This episode was later paraphrased and transformed into the famous quote.
 Goldman’s biographer and feminist writer Alix Shulman explained that in  1973, he  befriended printer who asked him  for a quotation by Goldman for use on a t-shirt. Shulman sent him the passage from Goldman’s autobiography, but the printer rephrased the passage into “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution”. As Shulman recounts, the citation subsequently found its way onto millions of buttons, posters, T-shirts, bumper stickers, books and articles: I still think it's lovely when I wake to  know where the sentiment and quote that greets me in the bathroom actually derives from.
Today no rant from me I celebrate Emma Goldman's birthday who continues to inspire and be warmly remembered for the anarcho-feminist, anti-militarist and internationalistic contributions she made to the social revolutionary struggles in life. In troubling times, her words and deeds continue to inspire as we come together and believe in better days. Beyond the panic of our current predicaments and journeys  their our those who will keep on fighting for a fairer society, that continue to champion her pursuit of universal justice towards a more humane, fair and fulfilling world. Her dream lives on.
Here is a rather nice song by Anne Feeney simply called Emma Goldman. Enjoy.

Mixing it up with George Orwell post referendum

George Orwell was born this day in 1903. I wonder what he would make of us voting for Brexit,
In 1941, as the Luftwaffe rained bombs on London, the former Eric Blair reminisced in the essay “ England Your England "  about the period after World War I, when the returning English working classes “brought back a hatred of all Europeans, except the Germans, whose courage they admired.” . Orwell tended to use “England” as his catchall for the United Kingdom.:-
“In four years on French soil they did not even acquire a liking for wine,” Orwell wrote. “The insularity of the English, their refusal to take foreigners seriously, is a folly that has to be paid for very heavily from time to time.”
“But,” he continued, “it plays its part in the English mystique, and the intellectuals who have tried to break it down have generally done more harm than good. At bottom it is the same quality in the English character that repels the tourist and keeps out the invader.”
The same kind of mystique has been fully on view in the often-angry, sometimes-entertaining debate over Thursday’s referendum. British politicians who favor leaving the bloc have invoked Hitler, and the U.K.’s tabloids, long skeptical of the political bloc based in Brussels, have been typically vocal: “Who will speak for England?” the Daily Mail blared; “BeLeave in Britain,” said the Sun, which even reported the “Queen Backs Brexit,” a headline Britain’s Independent Press Standards Organization ruled as “significantly misleading ” given that the queen has stayed publicly neutral on the matter. I am sure he would comment on  the atmosphere in the aftermath of the referendum, the sulphurous whiff not just of inequality, but a kind of misshapen class war. After people not usually  inclined to vote, rebelled, the disenfranchised  a section of working class people who have been taken for granted and dispossessed and exploited for decades, whose industries have been eviscerated and who have been palmed off with a 'race to the bottom' culture. Cruelly, they were engaged by false promises and lies about how things are, and these are beginning to be exposed already by those who perpetrated them. Nevertheless, those people of the council estates who voted in such numbers as never before are now a force, one that has not been active for a long time and they are a key driver in the volatility of now. Those who are at present mounting their coup against Jeremy Corbyn a principled man, who seems to speak to many with with integrity and honesty calling  for social justice are exactly the same dull Blairites who have been part of mounting a slow coup against the council estates for a generation, the same unimaginative centrists who have nothing to offer those people and who seek to use a new force to empower their tired old politics. I hope they fail. in their orchestrated treachery. Resignations on the hour by the future  Blair tribute party self-indulgent games as  jobs are in new peril and just when we need  the Labour Party should be be uniting against the inevitable Tory party rampage to write their fanatical hard-right agenda into the very fabric of society. Anyway I hope a radical politics continues to prevails and in the coming year,I hope to see a radical, anti-racist, pro-working class, pro-diversity, internationalist politics carrying strength as we face the seismic changes to come. which will probably see us having a General Election. 
Anyway George Orwell,  wrote his masterful text  The Lion and the Unicorn in another time  when Europe was tearing itself apart, and the UK’s isolation was more a matter of righteous principle than political chaos. England, he said, “resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kowtowed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income....It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts...A family with the wrong members in control – that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.”
-- "The Lion and the Unicorn," 1941


http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/lionunicorn.html


Coming up for Air was written in 1939 while Orwell was in Morocco because of his tuberculosis. . The book is filled with nightmare visions of how it will be after the war; visions that would become Nineteen Eighty-Four.




"But it isn't the war that matters, it's the after-war. The world we're going down into, the kind of hate-world, slogan-world. The coloured shirts, the barbed wire, the rubber truncheons. The secret cells where the electric light burns night and day, and the detectives watching while you sleep. And the processions and the posters with enormous faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering for the Leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him, and all the time, underneath, they hate him so that they want to puke."
It is interesting to see that the atmosphere of Nineteen Eighty-Four was already described in 1939, and today it feels that we seem to be hurtling into a Orwellian nightmare of sorts.To paraphrase George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Leave campaigners started  off by saying all people are equal. And now they've got their  way and Britain has decided to leavee the EU, it will soon change to all people are equal - but some are more equal than others. Yes just like George Orwells time we are surrounded again by scary people, facing a very  scary uncertain future.I  hope we can continue however keep on building a future that is notv filled with fear hate and ignorance.
I will leave you in the hands of George , good evening/prynhawn da , - '

In a time of universal  deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Ingeborg Bachmann (25/6/27 - 17/10/74 ) - Five poems

Born in Klagenfurt, Carinthia, on the 25th of June 1927 Austrian poet and writer Ingeborg Bachmann , the first child of Mathias and Olga Bachmann (née Haas). Her father was a middle-school language teacher and later principal.  Ingeborg Bachmann saw Nazi troops march through her town when she was 12 years old, after the annexation of Austria. a traumatic experience in which she wrote “The pain came too early and was perhaps stronger than anything since. . . the monstrous brutality, one could feel it, the yelling, singing and marching, an attack, the first, of deathly anxiety.”  Like the poet Sylvia  Plath of “Daddy” and “Little Fugue,” this  Aryan poet came to despise her father (in Bachmann’s case a bona fide Fascist) and to identify with the Nazis’ Jewish victims.
During her lifetime Bachmann, was known first and foremost as a poet, but she ceased to write poetry in the 1960s and focused on prose. In these later works feminist themes came to the fore. Bachmann was a reclusive, but socially engaged writer. Most of the fifties and from 1965 onward, she lived in Rome. She studied law at the universities of Innsbruck, Graz, and Vienna, where she completed her doctoral dissertation on the philosopher Martin Heidegger in 1950. During this period she had a love affair with the poet Paul Celan.There close and personal intellectual relationship would endure until Celan's death in 1971.In September 1950 she will mention her first nervous breakdown and tell Celan that she is lost, desperate and embittered. She wrote: "I have such desire for a little comfort " and she entreats him: "Please try to be good to me and hold me tight!"

                                           Bachmann and Celan.

Often in her work she used  death as a motif and with reflections on the hidden forces of violence and oppression in society. She was appalled and yet fascinated by the fact that crimes against humans were being committed on such a large scale also outside of the boundaries of war. "Since long have I pondered the question of where fascism has its origin. It is not born with the first bombs, neither through the terror one can describe in every newspaper … its origin lies in the relations between a man and a woman, and I have tried to say … in this society there is permanently. "

Bachmann worked as a scriptwriter and editor for the radio station Rot-Weisz-Rot plays between 1951 and 1953. Her first collection of poetry, Die gestundete Zeit (1953), was awarded the Group 47 Prize.After meeting the German composer Hans Werner Henze in Niendorf, Bachmann moved to Italy, where she lived with Henze on the Island Ischia,  working on poems, essays and short stories as well as opera libretti in collaboration, which soon brought with them international fame and numerous awards. She also spent some time as a visiting scholar at Harvard University in the United States. While in Italy in 1954-1955, she wrote political columns under the pseudonym Ruth Keller for the Westdeutschen Allgemeinen Zeitung. In 1958 she met the Swiss writer Max Frisch in Paris; their relationship lasted until the early 1960s. Following the end of her relationship with him she suffered a nervous breakdown. It would have a big impact on her.

In 1961, Bachmann published her highly influential autobiographical work, The Thirtieth Year, which was awarded the Berlin Critics Prize and the Georg Buchner Prize in 1964. Her first published novel, Malina (1971), deals with a number of feminist issues. Malina, the protagonist of the novel, has a relationship with Ivan, a younger man of Hungarian descent. The relationship becomes psychologically complex as Malina has recurrent nightmares of her father as a Nazi who kills her in a gas chamber, nightmares that seem to contribute to the deterioration of her relationship with Ivan. Malina also confronts the theme of national memory and national identity in postwar Europe. The issues of ego and alter ego and with the subtle influence of the memory of genocide create a powerful combination. The novel was highly praised and remains an excellent representative work of German postmodernism.

From 1962 Bachmann lived  variously in Munich, Berlin, Zürich and Rome, breaking her somewhat reclusive lifestyle with her social and political activities. Bachmann was a member of a committee that opposed atomic weapons, and she signed a declaration against the Vietnam war.

At the age of 33, Bachmann was appointed to the newly created position as chair of poetics at the University of Frankfurt, where she lectured on poetry and the existential situation of the writer. She only published  few poems over a period of almost a decade. In mid-1960s she travelled in Egypt and Sudan. On the invitation of the literature critic and professor Hans Mayer she travelled in 1960 together with Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Walter Jens to the German Democratic Republic.
For her partly autobiographical work Das dreißigste Jahr Bachmann received in 1964 the Berlin Critics Prize. In the same year she also received the prestigious Georg Büchner Prize and was introduced into the West Berlin Academy of Arts. Four years later she was awarded the Austrian National Medal. In the spring of 1973 she gave a series of readings in Poland and visited the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau.
Bachmann's poetry showed the influence of classic antiquity, surrealism, and such diverse writers as Klopstock and Rilke. She often dealt with the difficulties of love, guilt, and mindless forces that can break frail human relationships. The tone of her poems, written in precise and formally elegant style, is mostly somber. Dark, powerful images refer to private anguished experiences, problems of identity, contemporary social events, and mythology. "Great Bear, come down, shaggy night, / cloud-coated beast with the old eyes, star eyes. / Through the thickets your paws break / shimmering with their claws, / star claws." (from Anrufung des Großen Bären) Often she had visions of future catastrophes: "Worse days are coming. / The time allotted for disavowals / Comes due the skyline. / Soon you will lace up your shoes / And drive the dogs back to the marshes." (from 'The Time Allotted')

After 1967 Bachmann almost stopped writing poetry and turned to prose  In her prose works Bachmann moved more on the social level, although her writing were highly introspective and used lyrical elements. Fascist threats, the interplay of ego and alter-ego, and women's experiences in a hostile, patriarchal society, were recurrent themes.
Bachmann died tragically in Rome on October 17, 1973, aged 47 three weeks after she had been badly burned in a fire in her apartment attributed to an unextinguished cigarette,combined with complications to her addiction to prescription drugs. The German tabloid BILD wrote of the news of her death: "She died, as if she had thought it up herself." In 'Curriculum vitae!
Since the publication of her collected poems in 1978 the characterization of Bachmann as a lost poet  has been increasingly challenged by a more politically charged view of social and literary concerns.She would become an inspiration to later feminist writers because her work probed the issues that defined the agenda of women writers. She is considered today one of the mot talented German - Austrian writers of the 20th century. I find her work profoundly moving, delicate that have over the years struck a chord within so on what would have been her birthday here's a few poems from her. Hope you enjoy as much as me.

A Kind of Loss

Used together: seasons, books, a piece of music.
The keys, teacups, bread basket, sheet and a bed.
A hope chest of words, of gestures, brought back, used, used up.
A household order maintained. Said. Done. And always a head was there.
I've fallen in love with winter, with a Viennese septet, wiht summer.
With Village maps, a mountain nest, a beach and a bed.
Kept a calender cult, declared promises irrevocable,
bowed before something, was pious to a nothing

(-to a folded newspaper, cold ashes, the scribbled piece of paper),
fearless in religion, for our bed was the church.

From my lake view arose my inexhaustible painting.
From my balcony I greeted entire peoples, my neighbors.
By the chimney fire, in safety, my hair took on its deepest hue.
The ringing at the door was the alarm for my joy.

It's not you I've lost,
but the world.

Translated from the German by Mark Anderson

To the Sun - Ingeborg Bachmann

 More beautiful than the remarkable moon and her noble light,
More beautiful than the stars, the famous medals of the night,
More beautiful than the fiery entrance a comet makes,
And called to a part far more splendid than any other planet's
Because daily your life and my life depend on it, is the sun.

Beautiful sun that rises, his work not forgotten,
And completes it, most beautifully in summer, when a day
Evaporates on the coast, and effortlessly mirrored the sails
Pass through your sight, till you tire and cut short the last.

Without the sun even art takes the veil again,
You cease to appear to me, and the sea and the sand,
Lashed by shadows, take refuge under my eyelids.

Beautiful light, that keeps us warm, preserves us, marvellously makes sure
That I see again and that I see you again!

Nothing more beautiful under the sun than to be under the sun . . .

Nothing more beautiful than to see the stick in water and the bird above,
Pondering his flight, and, below, the fishes in shoals,

Coloured, moulded, brought into the world with a mission of light,
And to see the radius, the square of a field, my landscape's thousand angles

and the dress you have put on. And your dress, bell-shaped and blue!
Beautiful blue, in which peacocks walk and bow,

Blue of far places, the zones of joy with weathers that suit my mood,
Blue chance on the horizon! and my enchanted eyes
Dilate again and blink and burn themselves sore.

Beautiful sun, to whom dust owes great admiration yet,
Not for the moon, therefore, and not for the stars, and not
Because night shows off with comets, trying to fool me,
But for your sake, and endlessly soon, and for you above all

I shall lament the inevitable loss of my sight.

I step outside myself - Ingeborg Bachmann

 I step outside
myself, out of my eyes,
hands, mouth, outside
of myself I
step, a bundle
of goodness and godliness
that must make good
this devilry
that has happened.

I know no better world  

 Who knows of a better world should step forward.
Alone, no longer out of bravery, not wiping away this saliva,
this saliva worn upon the cheek
as if to a coronation, as if redeemed, whether at communion
or among comrades. The weak rabbit,
the rat, and those fallen there, all of them,
no longer alone, but as one, though still afraid,
the dream of returning home
in the dream of armament, in the dream
of returning home.

Stay

Now the journey is ending,
the wind is losing heart.
Into your hands it’s falling,
a rickety house of cards.
The cards are backed with pictures
displaying all the world.
You’ve stacked up all the images
and shuffled them with words.
And how profound the playing
that once again begins!
Stay, the card you’re drawing
is the only world you’ll win.


 
Earlier post can be found here :- 

 https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/ingeborg-bachmann-25626-171074-every-day.html

Black Friday

I woke up this morning devastated.Since then it's all felt weird and out of sync as I seek to understand and contemplate how  a climate of  fear has beaten that of hope , fiction has beaten fact and our country has been catapulted into the unknown and .deeply regretting  that the  people of Britain have been deceived and manipulated into believing that Brexit will bring about relief from the grinding austerity that is destroying lives and communities. This is the wonders of democracy, that before  the gloaters get carried away  voted 51.9% voted for Leave; 48.1% for Remain.But only 37.5% of the electorate secured the result for Leave. We should remember the 62.5% who did not show their support.for Brexit who will also now have to suffer the consequences.A hollow victory for Murdoch and money men hiding in the shadows .
Yep I'm not very happy, had Noman effing Tebbit on the TV earlier  telling us all to  calm down, but how can oh we, when we have woken to such a fractured country and it seems their are many out there gloating in this situation, taken in by the likes of farage and co, time now to heal, but how, .... as Donald Trump arrives happy as a *** of **** this master of division, and the forces of racism and far right nationalism already bleeting... yes tears have been rolling down my cheeks this morning, a feeling of great shame, so Cameron has resigned whoop whoop, are we supposed to thank him now, after all it was him who engineered all this shit,and his mates in the Bullingham Club still happy as larry, and time to make room for Boris, and poor old Jeremy Corbyn will probably be ousted now, the media will seize their chance and any hope of the Labour Party  to become a party that tries to push for progressive radical change will be lost  as the forces of the right sneakily emerge to take advantage as they certainly will.. Unless their membership stays on course, decide to find someone else geared up for the fight ahead, or  bravely carry on regardless, with principle prepared to continue the fight for social justice,fairness, not just for the  privileged few.
In the meantime lets get ourselves ready for loss of wages, loss of jobs, loss of NHS, loss of Rights and Laws that protected us,the many vital rights at work in the UK that were derived from EU law, guaranteeing things like paid leave entitlements, protections from being forced to work excessive hours, discrimination protections and rights for working mums to be that might now be lost.and will see even more loss of services and even more assets sold of to line their own pockets, get yourselves prepared  for more austerity and other brutal changes that are going to come at us  inn a blink of the eye. But it could now see now Scotland pushing for independence, a vote on Northern Ireland leaving the union to form a unified Ireland, a general election in the UK, a Labour Leadership election and a Conservative Leadership election and .then perhaps Wales too,  might take time to reflect . UKIP  will now though need a name change as the idea of a United Kingdom ceases to exist anymore in this fractured divided country.
Rant nearly over,  though a tad bitter I remain forever an optimist  theirs still glimmers of hope among these days of uncertainty, so here's to those that keep trying to build a better world based on equality and humanity. to another future, a  moment of time that feels safer than now, a place that for many that no longer seems to exist. hope too that the trust of  neighbors can be regained  friends ,who can remind us every day that we have more in common than that which divides us and that a better world is possible..
Hey ho iechyd da, pob lwc x

Jo Cox friend of Palestine

The British Labor Party MP Jo Cox, who was brutally  killed last Thursday in broad daylight, on the streets of Birstall, a West Yorkshire village in her constituency on June 16th was a devoted compassionate friend of Palestine, refugees and immigrants,champion for the less fortunate; for the socially ostracised, for women; and for diversity.who dedicated her life to helping lives of people on the other side of the world, for human rights and advocated for the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. She often spoke against Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian children and called on Israel to end its practice of detaining young underage Palestinians. Mrs. Cox - whose 42nd birthday would have been today frequently advocated for the rights of Palestinians' to self determination and for enforcing international human right law to protect the rights of young Palestinian children -both in her charity work and as an MP.She said in February that moves by they that moves by the Conservative government to use legal threats to curtail the boycott of Israel were “a gross attack on democratic freedoms. It is our right to boycott unethical companies.”
Jo was a true humanitarian. Who used her own voice to give the voiceless a strong, powerful voice and used hers  to hold governments to their humanitarian obligations a huge loss, the Palestinian people have lost a true friend and defender of their rights.long may we remember her.
In the following link she speaks on the arrest detention and treatment of children in occupied Palestinian territories :-.

http://www.jocox.org.uk/2016/01/07/jo-cox-on-the-arrest-detention-and-treatment-of-children-in-occupied-palestinian-territories/ 

"Parliament held an urgent and thought provoking debate this week about the way in which children are arrested, detained and treated in the occupied Palestinian territories, writes Jo Cox.

Westminster Hall, the overspill venue for backbenchers to hold debates when time pressures on the main Chamber won’t allow, was jammed with MPs keen to contribute and listen to what was a fascinating, deeply troubling discussion.

Israel is the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes children in military court and the differences between how Israeli children and Palestinian children are treated are stark. For example, an Israeli child subject to civil court proceedings has to have access to a lawyer within 48 hours. Yet a Palestinian child can be left without legal guidance for as long as 90 days. This, and many other disparities, underline the existence of a two tier justice system operating in the West Bank. One where Israeli children are subject to the rule of law; Palestinian children are not. This disparity of treatment, along with the estimate that 59,000 Palestinian children detained by the Israeli military since 1967 are likely to have been physically abused in one way or another, is deeply disturbing. It is also a clear and fundamental abuse of basic human rights and international law, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

There are a number of very worrying trends that impact upon these Palestinian children and during the debate I raised the issue that 65 per cent of children report being arrested in what are often ‘terrifying’ night raids by the Israeli military.

Night raids cause a huge amount of distress to children and their families. UNICEF have powerfully argued that “all arrests of children should be conducted during daylight, notwithstanding exceptional and grave situations.” A short lived Israeli pilot scheme, unconvincingly implemented, involved issuing summonses in place of night-time arrests. But these were increasingly served after midnight defeating the intended purpose.

Personal accounts provide an insight to what children are subjected to – they are often arrested in the middle of the night by armed soldiers, their hands are bound, they are blindfolded and taken away on the floor of a military vehicle. There are also reports of them being subjected to physical and verbal abuse throughout.

Another worrying trend is that almost three quarters of children detained report not being informed of their right to silence, the fundamental right afforded anyone arrested on suspicion of a crime. This is to stop the risk of self-incrimination, a particular concern for vulnerable children.  One case documented by the organisation Military Court Watch shockingly reported that a Palestinian child was told by one interrogator that he had the right to silence while a second told him he would be raped if he did not confess.

Thirdly, the issue of transferring detainees en masse from occupied territory is a very serious issue, and is, in fact, a war crime. Yet monthly data released by the Israeli Prison Service shows that almost half of the detained Palestinian children from the West Bank are transferred to prisons inside Israel.

This is a breach of the Geneva Convention. The added human impact is that these unlawful transfers mean families struggle to visit their children often over many months.

Estimates put the number of Palestinians detained since 1967 at 850,0000. Of these almost 100,000 are children. Between 500 and 700 children are prosecuted each year, with stone throwing the most common charge. This often brings with it a sentence of between 10 and 20 years.

And worst of all the number of children involved is increasing. As of last month the number of children in detention was up to 470 – over a 200% increase since last September.

These abuses have been going on for nearly 50 years. As my colleague Sarah Champion MP, who sponsored the debate, said – this situation requires decisive action to ensure we meet our international legal obligations."

Remain

This referendum is about the type of country we want to live in. Been pondering about this for awhile but in past week my mind has firmly been made up
I'm objectively against the concept of the EU. The current leadership in Brussels is dominated by political forces that seek to erode the social gains won in the past. Their is the issue of trade deals like TTIP that would hardwire privatisation and deregulation into our political system.Many of the member states remain wedded to austerity economics and have imposed their destructive policies on the people of southern Europe. I was disgusted by the way it imposed oppressive austerity measures  on the people of Greece and Spain, and it is after all another corporate superstate, hugely undemocratic and unrepresentative,decisions affecting every man, woman and child on the continent are being made in ways it is increasingly difficult to understand and some profoundly reactionary interests dominate the EU institutions, aligned with big business and elite interests, the EU is in dire need of reform and more democracy,  it's all a bit of a mess quite frankly. The anti capitalist argument against the EU has a good case  yet at the same time the the EU does an awful lot of protections like workers rights, maternity leave, human rights and environmental safeguards,  health and safety legislation, holidays, regular breaks etc. Things I don't trust the UK to keep up with. Certainly not under Cameron. And do you really trust the likes of Farage and Johnson  when it comes to workplace rights and human rights.In fact, many of the worst EU policies, like TTIP, are precisely the ones that the UK government is most supportive of and would retain, emulate or even expand if Brexit were to occur.
Ideally we wouldn't be at the mercy of the EU or the UK government but whilst they still have such a strong say on the lives of normal people I will always choose the lesser of the evils. At the end of the day whoever we vote for the powerful always seem to get what they want. I will not be voting for the EU, per say but Brexit I don't think is the answer.
What has really consolidated my view is what has been going on recently. The campaign terrain has been marked out by the right wing eurosceptic Tories and by their outriders in UKIP. The British electorate has been told in increasingly strident terms that British “national sovereignty” is at stake.Another, slightly less subtle, message is also being delivered. Unless “Britain” rejects continued membership of the EU, the ethnic and cultural integrity of the nation will be threatened—the argument goes. The UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, has warned us of the dangers of waking up and finding Romanians have moved in next door. The implications, we will be told, are clear: for as long as the country is part of the EU, “the swamping” of the indigenous British population by alien migrants from the other EU countries cannot be halted. The noxiously chauvinist tone that has ­characterised so much of the debate about immigration invariably takes on an openly racist colour particularly when applied to the Roma people from EU states in Central and Eastern Europe.
The Leave campaign have created such a mood of toxicity in the country that resembles the one in Germany when Hitler won his first election. It has increasingly taken on a dangerous edge, warped poisonous and hysterical. It is horrifying to think where Britain will be heading if the Leave win. Every day I thank my lucky stars that I live where I do. I can't imagine how it must feel to be a refugee. To feel rejected and unwanted with no home to go to. I want to live in a country where people truly care about other human beings and who can show compassion. I want us to work together with our neighbours for the good of all people. 
There can be no doubt that if Britain leaves the EU many European regulations restricting working hours and other employment and social reforms will be scrapped. The anti-EU right also demands a rolling back of the powers of both the EU Court of Justice (ECJ) and—more urgently—of the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR). The British Tory establishment has been outraged by some of the rulings of the ECHR in particular,for instance to give prisoners in jail the same voting rights they have elsewhere in the EU. Even more objectionable to the Tories have been ECHR rulings to protect the human rights of immigrants at risk of being deported by the UK. The ECHR is itself outside the remit of the European Union. But the ECJ is bound by the overarching decisions of the ECHR when ruling on matters of specifically EU law. The Tories want a “British” convention on human rights to replace the European convention. Anyone doubting this would deliver a serious blow to civil liberties and human rights in Britain is not living in the real world.
It is possible that the vote on Thursday could produce a democratic fracture in UK politics. It is not the most likely scenario but it is possible. The only thing we know for sure is that after Thursday the winner will have been a member the Bullingdon club. Staying in however we can keep on pushing for change and reform working steadily in solidarity with our European friends as part of a  Europe-wide movement against austerity, racism and xenophobia, not left alone and isolated from our European neighbours.
The above reasons are  why I am voting to remain. We have far to much to lose.
 SHARE this if you believe Britain is at our best when we’re outward-looking, inclusive and we stand together.

Halfway there ( a poem for the summer solstice)

      

                  
                        ( in time of rising hate, fear and division, a moment of contemplation)
                                                          happy summer solstice   

Surging through veils,
to enhance, to heal,
recharge, renew, reveal,
time to celebrate,
through spirit, mind, and heart,
the turning of the seasonal wheel,
under the influence,
of a full strawberry moon,
swirl in peace for awhile,
solitary or in company,
kiss goodbye to the last shades of spring,
pay homage to forces of nature we trust,
as earth's darkness returns to light,
and summertime is reborn.

World Refugee Day

 
Today the world commemorates the strength, courage and resilence of millions of refugees. World Refugee Day was first marked in 2001.Tens of thousands of people around the world take time to recognize and applaud the contribution of those forced to flee.The annual commemoration is marked by a variety of events in over 100 countries, involving government officials, aid workers, celebrities, civilians and the forcibly displaced themselves.Never before have the immediate needs of vulnerable children and their families been so great. Some 20 million refugees half of whom are children, have been forced to flee violence, poverty and persecution from places such as Syria, Somalia, South Sudan and Central African Republic taking perilous sea voyages over the Mediterranean. According to the International Organisation for Migration, over 20,000 migrants have died in their attempts to reach or stay in Europe since 2000, and according to the United Nations, only one per cent have been resettled. It is imperative that they should be given help, protection and long term solutions.
Together, we should be creating an outpouring of compassion and show individual refugees that they are welcome here.but the persecution of refiugees continues, whipped up by forces of racism spreading fear and misinformation about security and terrorism.The EU Referendum campaign has sadly contributed to this unleashing some of the most heinious manifestations of racism we have seen in generations. Those on the far right across Europe are eager to use the crisis to further scapegoat immigrants.Last week UKIP leader Nigel Farage had the audacity to stand in front of a poster chillingly reminiscent of nazi propoganda depicting long queues of refugees heading for Europe. Earlier he stated that violence would be the 'next step ' when people felt that nothing could be done about immigration through democratic means.
It should be pointed out that despite whatever one thinks of the European Union it is a leading global donor of aid. It gives more than one billion euros a year for humanitarian assistance to support those forced to flee their homes. This funding is vital, providing access to shelter, food, healthcare, sanitation, education and other essential services. A necessary humanitarian response to one of the worst crisis's since the Second World War. In the circumstances, it could be argued and more than justified that they contribute even more. The EU is morally, and indeed legally, obliged to share some of the refugee burden
In light of this as continuing tragedy unfolds, some of the countries most able to help are shutting their gates to people seeking asylum. Borders are closing, pushbacks are increasing, and hostility is rising. Avenues for legitimate escape are fading away.Since the beginnings of civilization, we have treated refugees as deserving of our protection. Whatever our differences, we have to recognise our fundamental human obligation to shelter those fleeing from war and persecution. It is time to stop hiding behind misleading words. Richer nations must acknowledge refugees for the victims they are, fleeing from wars they were unable to prevent or stop.History has shown that doing the right thing for victims of war and persecution engenders goodwill and prosperity for generations. And it fosters stability in the long run.
The world needs to renew its commitment now to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its principles that made us strong.To offer safe harbor, both in our own countries and in the epicentres of the crises, and to help refugees restore their lives.In this context it is sad to report  that on Saturday 18 June 2016, the Convoy to Calais was refused entry to France. Over 250 vehicles carrying many tonnes of much needed aid for refugees in the 'Jungle Camp' stuffed full of desperately needed aid; food, sleeping bags, tents, clothes; love were turned away at the border by the French authorities. The reasons given for refusing the convoy entry were spurious, including the 'State of Emergency', football hooliganism and the threat of terrorist attack. None of these had any connection with this humanitarian mission.While two lorries and a handful of cars and vans managed to get through, less than half of the aid collected was delivered.
The organisers of the Convoy to Calais made it clear to the French authorities that there was no intention to cause any disruption or hold any kind of demonstration or protest, when in France.This was a convoy delivering aid and solidarity to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet who governments across Europe are trying to forget. A truly shameful state of affairs, a dangerous reaction, short-sighted and morally wrong.
Today and tomorrow we must continue to stand up for refugees.We must remember that arms trade helps exacerbate the crisis,plus poverty and inequality, war and conflict, we need to build bridges not more obstacles and borders.
In the meantime please consider signing the following petition :-

 https://t.co/8emWi22DWc


Aziza Brahim performs refugee Blues

Amnestea

.

Please Come for tea and Cake! this Sunday 19th June 2016 2.00–5.00pm  
Raise some money for Amnesty International's human rights work.

Merlin’s Lair, 
Capel Iwan, 
Newcastle Emlyn 
SA38 9LS                   

Everyone welcome - Croeso i  Pawb

*Relax to Live Music by L’Attitude  *Bookstall  *Plant Sale *Jewellery Sale 
Come whatever the weather, always a lovely event, friendly and hospitable.

Amnesty is non-political and does not accept money from Government, however the Government will double any money we raise (from the International Aid Budget).

We are raising money for an Amnesty project in Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone where Amnesty is working to help local communities to organise themselves to stop child marriage (girls as young as 10 forced to marry old men) and FGM, 

32 years anniversary of the battle of Orgreave

On this day in 1984, the battle of Orgreave took place when striking miners faced off against thousands of police under the jurisdiction of Margaret Thatcher as they attempted to blockade the Orgreave coking plant. The police showed the lengths they would go to break the strike with violent attacks, mass arrests and deliberate but fortunately unsuccessful attempts to fabricate evidence and frame miners. The insult was added to by the BBC reversing footage of miners defending themselves from police attacks to try and make out that the police were attacked first. 
It was one of the most brutal attacks by the state on its own citizens of the last 20th Century.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.

 The  miners strike of 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. 32 years later  many still seek some form of justice.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 the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) are calling on supporters to join them in a march and rally for truth and justice  at 5pm at The Old Bridge, Orgreave Lane, Sheffield S13 9NE. Supporters are encouraged to commemorate the day when 95 miners were arrested and wrongfully charged and many others were violently assaulted and wounded by a police force charging on horseback and wielding truncheons.
The huge demand for a public inquiry  since  the Hillborough  verdict  should help  to expose the real truth of what happened on that day, achieve justice and make it easier for both the mining community and the police to move on

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

The following is a pamphlet by a striking anarchist miner :-

https://libcom.org/history/tell-us-lies-about-miners-dave-douglass