Radiohead Don't Play Apartheid Israel

Radiohead are a band I have long admired,because of their awesome inspiring music along with their  social conscience,I have all their records and a poster in spare bedroom,their third album, “OK Computer” (1997), elevated the band to almost godlike status among my peers, and since then their work has been marked by an experimental streak and intelligence of spirit that  has set them apart from the mainstream, and  they have long been recognised as  being consistently among the most vociferous proponents for a variety of causes. Radiohead’s lead vocalist, Thom Yorke, maybe best known for his environmentalist work, but is also a very strong supporter of human rights and anti-war causes. He has been involved in Amnesty International causes as well as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
So I was shocked and disturbed and extremely disappointed  recently to have discovered that they  have reportedly signed on to give a performance this summer in Israel. The show will come at Park Hayarkon in Tel Aviv on July 19 and may have some political spin, as many bands have boycotted playing in Israel in protest of the country’s occupation of Palestinian land. I would have expected more from as astute progressive politically aware band.
I have recently discovered though that Radiohead have long had a strong connection with Israel, the first place where their iconic single Creep became a hit was Israel, and their first gig abroad was in the Roxanne club in Tel Aviv.Guitarist  Johnny Greenwood is also  married to celebrated Israeli artist named Sharona Katan and he recently released ‘Junun’, a collaborative album with Israeli composer/singer Shye Ben Tzur and he also has a house in Nahariya .

What I'd like to say to say to Radiohead is that  that we need to be breaking down walls, not propping them up. Israel has a long history of marginalisation persecution, imprisonment and assassination of indigenous Palestinian artists. While they plan to play on an Israeli stage, Palestinian artists languish in Israel's prisons, where they are subjected to systemic abuse and torture.Art is not separate from politics, even when basically each artist who has broken the cultural picket line to appear in Israel has made this claim. Look at any oppressive regime in human history and you see that art has always been part of each regime's public image. For Israel, high profile foreign artists appearing in supposedly 'liberal' Tel Aviv (originally established as a segregated colony for Zionist Jews only) is part of its strategies to polish its public image abroad. Radiohead has in the past made gigs to benefit for example Amnesty International. Now it plans to perform in what would be a benefit show in behalf of Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and brutal occupation. We must help to awaken their consciences, which seem at the moment to have fallen asleep.We must continue to speak out loudly and clearly about Israel's disgusting treatment of Palestinians,

One activist group called Artists For Palestine UK  has already called on fans to boycott the show:
"Tel Aviv's hipster vibe is a bubble on the surface of a very deep security state that drove out half the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948 and has no intention of letting their descendants back in," they wrote. "If you go to Tel Aviv, your presence will be used by the Israeli authorities to reassure their citizens that all's right with the world and nobody really cares that the Palestinians are suffering… Please don't go." 
For more than 70 years now Israel has been ethnically cleansing Palestine. with the denial of basic rights to millions of human beings combined with illegal land theft. In the eyes of international law.Apartheid is defined as "a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race. Or segregation on grounds other than race. Israel both segregates and discriminates by law on the basis of religion. It is therefor by definition an "apartheid state". So playing in Israel  would be akin to playing Sun City in the days of apartheid South Africa. I really hope that Radiohead respect the call for boycott and like other respected artists do not cross the Palestinian picket line. Many others after pressure from fans have been forced to have a change of heart.
In the meantime please consider signing the following petition by Jewish Voices for Peace, Radiohead Don't Play Apartheid Israel , it might make them to reconsider and come out of this with a bit of integrity.

https://www.change.org/p/radiohead-don-t-play-apartheid-israel

Here are two further links that might be of interest :-

https://www.facebook.com/Radiohead.Stand.Up.To.Apartheid/

https://www.facebook.com/Radiohead.Fans.Dont.Play.Israel?__mref=message_bubble  

Love cries

Screaming sky releases steaming tears
as old memories return to caress,
I am lost under the  heavy weight of absence
nostalgic for a beautiful scent,
a power that moves me greatly
I continue to crave  her presence,
a kindness that I can no longer touch
but keeps calling me through dreams,
offering protection and so much hope
somewhere else now, I guess,
but returns though to touch me deeply
to hold me and  comfort my tired old soul

A Love Song #ShowTheLove

.

Time is precious, but we can and we must continue to # ShowTheLove for all that we want to protect. Please take a minute to watch this stunning film from The Climate Coalition.
This is a love song like you've never heard before. Watch, and share. Sharing a short film may not feel like much, but this small act makes a huge difference. together we can protect the life we love from climate change.
A unique collaboration with Ridley Scott Associates, our powerful short film features a specially written poem by award winning writer Anthony Anaxagorou and is brought to life by Charles Dance, Miranda Richardson, David Gyasi and Jason Isaacs. With a specially produced soundtrack by Elbow, including choral arrangement by Phil Mitchell and vocals from the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir.
With love in our hearts lets hope we all start to appreciate this planet of ours and its beautiful nature.

Well done Ken Loach

Big ups Ken Loach. BAFTA award for outstanding British film. True Hero. Fantastic acceptance speech! It needs to be watched again and again ...big respect to him. His film that has  helped expose our Governments conscious state sponsored cruelty and absolute betrayal of people in need.
Scooping the prize, the veteran filmmaker criticised the “callous brutality” of the current Government and its attitude towards “the most vulnerable and the poorest people.” Not done there, Loach also brought up the government’s approach to the Syrian crisis, claiming the Tories’ disgraceful cruelty” now “extends to keeping out refugee children”.
Drawing hearty applause from the crowd, Loach also talked about the power of film - “they can entertain, they can terrify, they can take us to worlds of the imagination, they can make us laugh, and they can tell us about the world we live in” – and then issued a stern warning that worse times are to come: “in that world it’s getting darker, as we know, and in the struggle that’s coming between the rich and the powerful, the wealth and the privilege, and the big corporations, and the politicians who speak to them.”
Ironically Ken Loach's speech and Bafta win for I, Daniel Blake were completely ignored by BBC News, despite the programme following the ceremony in the schedule.The BBC is a disgrace ,a propaganda machine for the Establishment that we suckers,  are still forced to pay for.
While the eyes of the world are on Donald Trump we should not forget  that  the Conservatives, under the direction of Theresa May  carry on with their ideolological destruction of our society , and simply carry on regardless, with their mission of punishing the poor and those most vulnerable, we need to continue to stand up like  Ken  Loach and loudly say enough is enough.

EXHIBITION ON SCREEN I, Claude Monet

From award-winning director Phil Grabsky comes this fresh new look at arguably the world’s favourite artist – through his own words.Whose life and work I have long admired.
This new film tells his moving story, crafted from over 2,500 letters and featuring his most loved works of art,narrated by Henry Goodman, I, Claude Monet reveals  a  new insight into the man who not only painted the picture that gave birth to impressionism but who was perhaps the most influential and successful painter of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Claude Monet  (November 14, 1840 – December 5, 1926) was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise.
After his devoted companion  and first wife Camille Doncieux  died  he went to live with Ernest and Alice Hoschede and their six children. He grew closer to Alice, and the two eventually became romantically involved. Ernest spent much of his time in Paris, and he and Alice never divorced. Monet and Alice moved with their respective children in 1883 to Giverny, a place that would serve as a source of great inspiration for the artist and prove to be his final home. After Ernest's death, Monet and Alice married in 1892.
In 1911, Monet became depressed again  after after the death yet again  of  another beloved  companion  in this case Alice. Then in 1912, he developed cataracts in his right eye. This crushing news  led to a bout of depression, and thoughts of suicide  tell me about it, that kept him from painting  but ,Monet  found at least solace in his garden and purpose in his work and managed to at least  somehow to overcome his grief. Over the next decade, Monet worked on an unprecedented scale creating canvases roughly six and a half feet high and 14 feet wide. In 1916, he built a new studio to house the epic images of his water lilies, and, in 1918, to honor the Armistice of the First World War, he promised the paintings as a gift to the nation. He painted more than 40 panels for his Grandes Decorations, and, in the spring of 1925, he selected 22 of them to be installed in two oval rooms in Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris. He imagined the effect as being surrounded by the natural beauty of his  water garden soothing the nerves and calming the spirit.
Claude Monet died of  cancer on December 3, 1926, at the age of 86. He left instructions for a simple funeral, and the only tribute on his coffin was a sheaf of wheat. He had created his own legacy in painting the "restful sight of those still waters" that preserved the experience of his long and productive life, spent pursuing the fleeting impressions of nature through the testament of his brush.
Monet left a vast body of work to be admired and cherished.
Discover who Claude Monet really was, in this in this revealing new biography  that is in cinemas across the UK  from February 21st.

"What I saw, What I heard..." - Mark Williams MP reflecting on his visit to Israel and the reality of life for Palestinian Communities

 
"What I saw, What I heard..." is the title of an evening with Mark Williams MP on

Friday, 17th February at 7.30. - 9.30pm
in
Small World Theatre, Cardigan, 

when he will be reflecting on his recent visit as part of a Parliamentary delegation to the West Bank in Israel.

He met with the British Consul, the UN and many NGOs and unofficial organisations, saw illegal (under international law) Israeli settlements and the separation barrier ("the Wall") and the impact of forced evictions on Palestinian communities. He visited a refugee camp, and saw trials of Palestinian minors at the Military Court in Ofer. 

His visit made him look at things differently...

Kate Sherringer of West Wales Friends of Palestine (WWFP) who also visited recently and saw the kindergarten canopy in Rummanah paid for by WWFP will also say a few words. So PLEASE go along and spread the word - the evening is open to everyone, and there will be refreshments and time for discussion. 

The evening is being hosted by Cardigan and North Pembs. Amnesty International Group.

Brendan Behan ( 9/2/23 -20/3/64) - Irish Rebel heart

 

Brendan Francis Behan  was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both English and Irish. who was born on  the Second of February 1923 who became one of the most successful Irish dramatists of the 20th century and remains a firm literary favourite of mine. 

 He also happened to be a committed Irish Republican. He was born in inner city Dublin into an educated working class family. At the age of thirteen, he left school to become a house painter, like his father Stephen Behan, who had been active in the Irish War of Independence,who  read classic literature to the children at bedtime from diverse sources such as Zola, Galsworthy and Maupassant; while his mother Kathleen took them on literary tours of the city.This meant he was steeped in literature and patriotic ballads from a young age.

If Brendan Behan’s interest in literature came from his father, then his political beliefs were injected by his mother. She remained politically active all her life, and was a personal friend of the famed Irish republican Michael Collins, hero of Ireland’s 1919-1921 war of independence against Britain,who was assassinated. Brendan Behan wrote the following wonderful lament to Collins: “The Laughing Boy,” at the age of thirteen.

 
The laughing boy - Brendan Behan 

T'was on an August morning, all in the dawning hours,
I went to take the warming air, all in the Mouth of Flowers,

And there I saw a maiden, and mournful was her cry,
'Ah what will mend my broken heart, I've lost my Laughing Boy.

So strong, so wild, and brave he was, I'll mourn his loss too sore,
When thinking that I'll hear the laugh or springing step no more.

Ah, curse the times and sad the loss my heart to crucify,
That an Irish son with a rebel gun shot down my Laughing Boy.

Oh had he died by Pearse's side or in the GPO,
Killed by an English bullet from the rifle of the foe,
Or forcibly fed with Ashe lay dead in the dungeons of Mountjoy,

I'd have cried with pride for the way he died, my own dear Laughing Boy.
My princely love, can ageless love do more than tell to you,
Go raibh mile maith agat for all you tried to do,

For all you did, and would have done, my enemies to destroy,
I'll mourn your name and praise your fame, forever, my Laughing Boy.'
 
Behan's uncle Peadar Kearney wrote the Irish national anthem A Soldier’s Song. His brother, Dominic Behan, was also a renowned songwriter most famous for the song The Patriot Game, while another sibling, Brian Behan, was a prominent radical political activist and public speaker, actor, author and playwright. ’.
 In 1937, the family moved to a new local authority housing scheme in Crumlin, Dublin. Here he became a member of Fianna Eireann, the youth wing of the IRA at the age of 14 and published his first poems and prose in the organization's magazine Fianna: the Voice of Young Ireland.He eventually joined the IRA at sixteen
In 1939 he was arrested in Liverpool with a suitcase full of explosives after an unauthorised mission to blow up the docks. He was sentenced to three years in Borstal Prison (Kent) and did not return to Ireland until 1941. In 1942, he was tried for the attempted murder of two gardai while at a commemoration ceremony for Wolfe Tone, the father of Irish Republicanism and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. He was sent to Mountjoy Prison and later to the Curragh Internment Camp. He was released in 1946 as part of a general amnesty of republican prisoners.  His prison experiences were central to his future writing career. He wrote about these years in his autobiographical novel 'Borstal Boy'. and “Confessions of an Irish Rebel.”  Aside from a short prison sentence that he received in 1947 for his part in trying to break a fellow republican out from a Manchester jail, he effectively left the IRA, though he remained great friends with the future Chief-Of-Staff Cathal Goulding.
While in Mountjoy Prison he wrote his first play, The Landlady, and also began to write short stories and other prose. Some of this work was published in The Bell, the leading Irish literary magazine of the time. He also learned Irish in prison and, after his release in 1946, he spent some time in the Gaeltacht areas of Galway and Kerry, where he started writing poetry in Irish. By the early 1950s he was earning a living as a writer for radio and newspapers and had gained a reputation as something of a character on the streets and in literary circles in Dublin known for his sharp wit and his gift as a raconteur.
His major breakthrough came in 1954 when his play The Quare Fellow, which was based on his experiences in jail, Set in an Irish prison in the 1950s on the day before and the morning of an execution, The Quare Fellow uses music, wit and a keen observation of human behaviour to explore the question of capital punishment. the play ran for six months in the Pike Theatre, Dublin. This was followed by a run at the Theatre Royal, Stafford East, in a production by Joan Littlewood, before moving to the West End, before a trumph on Broadway bought  international fame to the author. In 1957, his Irish language play, An Giall (The Hostage) opened in the Damer Theatre and his autobiographical novel, The Borstal Boy, was published. He was now established as one of the leading Irish writers of his generation.
He found fame difficult to deal with however. He had long been a heavy drinker (describing himself, on one occasion, as "a drinker with a writing problem",) and became known for his drinking as much as for his undoubted literary talents ,this combination resulted in a series of notoriously drunken public appearances, both on stage and television. Behan got notorious publicity after appearing drunk on Malcolm Muggeridge’s Panorama programme on the BBC in 1956. Most of what he said was incoherent, other than a crude remarking about needing “to take a leak”
.Behan was obviously drunk too when he went on Edward R Morrow’s television show Small World on November 8, 1959. He was yanked off the show at the halfway point. He tended to attract attention anywhere he went. On arriving in Spain, he was asked what he would most like to see in the country. “Franco’s funeral,” he replied. Making a spectacle added to his notoriety, because it was what people had come to expect.  “One drink is too many for me,” Behan once lamented, “and a thousand not enough.” and "I only drink on two occasions-when I’m thirsty and when I’m not  “.

He was diagnosed with diabetes in the 1960's and his favourite drink of sherry and champagne certainly did not aid him, his health consequently suffered terribly, with diabetic comas and seizures occurring with frightening regularity aggravated by his alcoholism. He found it difficult to write. When the Guinness company commissioned him to write a slogan for them, he sat around for months, drank all the free beer they sent him, and came up with the slogan 'Guinness makes you drunk'.While his faculties may have dimmed a little, and towards the end became the caricature of the drunken Irishman, publicans flinging him out of their premises, his intellect,wit and passion always managed to shine through.and he remained an Irish Republican and a socialist.
He died in the Meath Hospital, Dublin 1964  aged  only 41, his last words were ' Thank you Sister, and may all your sons be bishops'. He was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery where he received a Republican funeral.The IRA, which Behan had once invited to 'shoot him in absentia', accorded him an honour guard, although they waited until the officials from the State funeral had left before firing the traditional farewell salute over his grave. En route to the graveyard, thousands lined the streets.
His wife the painter Beatrice french-Salkeld, his most stabilising influence gave birth to their only child, a daughter, later the same year. His gravestone features the inscription 'Breándan Ó Beacháin File Fiáin Fearúil Feadánach' which roughly translates as 'Brendan Behan, wild, manly poet and piper'.
His legacy remains one of tolerance and respect for the humanity in others, and of caring and concern for the plight of those who are victims of history, not its makers. As he once said, 'I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer'  and 'They took away our land, our language and our religion, but they could never harness our tongues.'

.His wit and humor still shines through in the books that he wrote and his stories about the human condition still engage and fortunately the oeuvre Behan managed to produce will be around for years to come. Cheers Brendan Behan.

Brendan Behan sings his brother Dominic's song ; The Auld Triangle
 

Peter Kropotkin (9/12/1843-8/2/21) - On Mutual Aid

On 8 Feb 1921 Peter Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist prince,and famous proponent of anarchist-communism, died of pneumonia in Russia. He took part in revolutionary groups in four countries and was one of a handful of prominent theoreticians of liberty over the last two centuries.
His viewpoint is firmly rooted  in the anarcho-Communist camp and can be summarised briefly in classical terms  "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.'
Most of his thinking on the nature of society was formed when he was observing the behaviour of animals in Siberia. While assigned to a Siberian regiment of the Russian military, Kropotkin did innovative and original work on geography and geologyand stages of animal behaviour. His experiences in Siberia also led him away from a confidence in the ability of the state to do anything useful for people.
His experiences also laid  the foundations of Mutual Aid  probably his most famous work, which was also written as a specific responce to Thomas Henry Huxley's The Struggle for Existence in Human Society , from 1888.
What follows is a wonderful passage from Kropotkin's seminal work which remains as relevant today as to when it was originally written :-

" It is not love to my neighbour - whom I often do not know at all - which induces me to seize a pail of water and rush towards his house when I see it on fire, it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and sociability which moves me . . . . It is not love, and not even sympathy which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolve; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their day together in autumn. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy - an instict that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the foce they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in  social life . . . .
  Love, sympathy and self-sacrifice certainly play an immense part in the progressive development of our moral feelings. But it is not Love  and not even sympathy upon which Society is based in mankind. It is the  conscience - be it only at the stage of an instict - of human solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of . . . the close dependency of every one's happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity, which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual an equal to his own."

Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, 1902
,,

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower- Dylan Thomas ( 27/10/14 - 9/11/53)

It is a month today that I lost Jane, my soul has been raining hard,memories of better days,but my faithful departed  is still flying around,fluttering from tree to tree,ever so free,I forever dream of her, and her gorgeous smile ignites,and as spring returns  I still feel her presence. Here is a poem from the mercurial hand of the late great  Dylan Thomas that we both appreciated .

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

 1934

Still Searching

( another  one for Jane, my muse , 9/5/60 - 8/1/17,nearly a month gone)

I shall continue to search the stars for you 
Beyond every torrid bed of tears,
Leaping from the darkness
Towards your magnificent light,
I will follow you always
No matter where, no matter how,
Because I saw your love in your eyes for me
Over time you gave so much encouragement,
That I will never forget, never surrender
Forever grateful for the joys you bought,
Alcohol is nice , but it is you that is most intoxicating
I am drunk now with my thoughts of you,
But your presence stops me falling over
As spring returns releasing all its colors and scents,
Your gift of inspiration , thankfully keeps on giving.