On International Women’s Day solidarity with Yarl’s Wood hunger strikers

At the beginning of the 20th Century women across Europe and America were finding their voice.That wanted and demanded decent jobs, better pay, emancipation and the right to vote and hold public offices. It was out  of this air of dissatisfaction,  that International Women's Day was born. A day that today we can still recognise the oppression that still flourishes, caused by both capitalism and patriarchy. Still an unfortunate and undeniable reality for many women today. The fight for woman's  rights might look a little different today, but many are still facing discrimination and injustices across the globe.
In recent times, issues of woman's political and economic inequality have been joined by broader struggles against racism, war, violence, oppression, for  social justice. So today as I observe International Women's Day, I stand up for all women still trapped by injustices. I believe the women's struggle is a struggle for the freedom of all  people, recuperating the fair value of people over things. I recognise the practice and theory of mutual support that women have laid, that are the foundations of social change that we must keep building.
Today in particular  I acknowledge those who are among the most vulnerable in the present moment of time- the refugees. In the same month that we have celebrated the centenary of (some) women's suffrage in the UK, we should not forget over 100 women who have been on hunger strike since February 21 against the inhumane conditions at the Yarl's Wood detention centre and the government's practice of indefinite detention, and their lack of human rights.
"We feel it is our responsibility to call the Home Office out, and take action with our bodies too," the Freedom Fast Yarl's Wood campaigners said in a statement."It is outrageous that 100 years after some women got the vote, elected governments can still openly enforce these inhumane and racist measures."
Some of the demands include an end to charter flights, snatching people ftom their beds in the night, an end to menial work for £1 per hour and to stop detaining vulnerable people and victims of abuse. They are also asking for adequate healthcare and amnesty for people who have lived in Britain for more than 10 years.The hunger strikers demands are for a fair system and an end to the hostile environment policy towards people with legitimate reasons to remain in the UK.A full list of the strikers demands can be found here:-  https://detainedvoices.com/2018/02/25/the-strikers-demands/
Each year over 1,500 women who have sought asylum in the UK are detained  at this infamous detention centre which has been the site of numerous scandals. Most of the women detained there are survivors of rape, torture ,sexual and gender based violence and  other abuse. The UK is currently the only country in Europe with no time limit on detention. A practice opposed by Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the Green Party, Plaid Cymru and many other civic and political organisations. This barbaric policy has no place in a so called civilised society. https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/end-indefinite-detention.html
However the Home Office has failed to acknowledge their demands has since taken punitive action, including attempting to deport two hunger strike participants Florence and Opela Kgare on Saturday 3rd March, before there case was complete. This deportion attempt was halted thanks to pressure from the women's friends, the involvement of Labour MPs and the intervention of Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes.
Today activists from across Britain will be taking part in a 24 hour fast on International Women's Day in solidarity with the Yarl's Wood hunger strikers. Migrant's right campaigners have united with the friends of those in the detention centre to call for a Freedom Fast on this day. They have urged " all people of conscience" to join.We must support the protestors and their demands, and stand with them in denouncing the Uk's  inhumane and fundamentally wrong treatment of them.
This International Women's Day, I simply ask everyone to stand in solidarity with female refugees, whatever the stage of their journey, and keep building a society where women's human rights are respected and in which they are free from persecution. Important  steps are already being taken, but it is a long road ahead. Today celebrate the women who are walking it: migrants, asylum seekers, refugees and women in the wider community working together. On the centenary year of women's suffrage in the UK , lets not forget those women, whose voices are too often not heard.It is also  time to keep on calling for the  closure of Yarl's Wood detention centre.

Yemen concerns

'Currently Tory Prime Minister Theresa May  is welcoming vile and  misogynist Saudi Arabian tyrants with open arms, with the aim of selling them even more British weapons to commit war crimes in Yemen.
Mohammed bin Salman is starting a three-day visit to the UK amid protests planned against his country's role in Yemen.
Jeremy Corbyn has accused the government of "colluding" in war crimes by selling arms to Riyadh.
The 32 year old crown prince,who is seen by some as a modernising force in the Gulf State. He has already had lunch with the Queen and Duke of York, and is due to have dinner with the Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge.
The UK hopes to capitalise on the Saudi economy's opening up, but this decision has been met by protesters outside Downing Street against the killing of thousands of  Yemeni civilians in air strikes by a Saudi -led multinational coalition, backed by the UK and US, in what is is considered to be a forgotten war, where this crisis  grows daily, spawning an escalating, political, military and humanitarian crisis.
Also if  this Saudi Crown  Prince is truly a reformer, he must stop the execution of 18 young people for the'crime' of attending protests and put an end  to the shocking abuse of human rights.

Petition here:-

https://act.reprieve.org.uk/page/content/saudiexecutions?source=ansa1

Here is a letter I managed to get published in my local paper Tivy-Side Advertiser yesterday expressing my concerns :-

THIS week the UK Government is rolling out the red carpet to Mohammad bin Salman the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, even as innocent children are being killed by the ongoing Saudi-led coalition bombing campaign in Yemen.
Since 2015 British weapons companies have made a staggering £6 billion from arms sales to Saudi Arabia the country leading the coalition bombing Yemen
At the same time, the British taxpayer is sending more than £200 million in life-saving aid to the Yemeni people.
As one of Saudi Arabia's key allies and arms suppliers, there is a risk that British bombs are being dropped on Yemeni children.
Thousands of innocent young lives have already been lost in airstrikes and explosions, and thousands more from hunger and preventable diseases like cholera and diphtheria.
Yemeni children are dying every day from preventable causes like hunger, disease and war.
It may be a far-away conflict, but I believe Britain has a moral obligation to help end the suffering.
I think our Government should stand up for Yemen's children and ensure food, medicine and fuel get into the country and that children are protected from bombs and bullets.

                                                                                                 Dave Rendle
                                                                                                 Teifi Terrace
                                                                                                    Cardigan

Alan Moore on Art and Magic

Comics legend Alan Moore, who has long been an inspiration is the the author of titles including Watchmen, The league of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta and From Hell.and the epic novel  Jerusalem . Not only being a prolific writer and visionary , he also happens to be a ceremonial magician and co-founded the Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels. Alan also sees an  inextricable link between magic and artistic creativity. Do we not all hold the keys to transformative power that lies within that has also has the power to change society for the benefit of all mankind.
Beyond general consensus, and ideas of conformity, we can find different rules to follow, actually alter the world around us., shape it and in the process create a better society. There is nothing more powerful than when our perceptions can change, collectively can actually impact on others and change awareness.Through art and creativity , we can connect to our senses , bodies and minds  and in the process this can enable us to spur thinking, engagement and even action, that has the possibility to motivate others into new ways of thinking. From the local to the global help us seek solutions to the challenges that face us all in the world today, a necessary persistence of the imagination that in this age of sceptical attitudes can actually alter and change consciousness and at same time, our trapped mindsets.

" Magic is a state of mind. It is often portrayed as very black and gothic, and that is because certain practitioners played that up for a sense of power and prestige. That is a diservice. Magic is very colorful. Of this. I am sure."

" I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing , sculpture, or any other form. is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness, and  that i why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman..."

-Alan Moore

Alan Moore on Magic

The Society of the Spectacle- Guy Debord / Poetry of the Spectacle

( a vastly updated blog post from 2015)


"The society whose modernisation has reached the stage of integrated spectacle is characterised by the combined effect of 5 principal factors; incessant technological renewal, integration of state and economy, generalised secrecy, unanswerable lies and eternal present - the spectator is simply supposed to know nothing and deserves nothing. Those who are watching to see what happens next will never act and such must be the spectator's condition ."

- Guy Debord.

                                            Guy Debord

Guy Debord was born on December 28, 1931, in Paris, France, a witer and director who became a  leading figure of the French Situationist International In his fascinating book  first published in June 1967, the Society of the Spectacle , he argued that to succumbing to alienation caused by capitalism we have let our lives become colonised by an immersive experience.
" In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immene accumulation of spectacles," Debord's book begins, "Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation." The political consequence of this separation from shared felt experience is key to understanding both how we experience the world and how we can change it.
This spectacle has replaced social interaction and human needs. While this is superficially satisfying it makes us isolated and lonely individuals. It is still one of the greatest theoretical examinations of our social-cultural conditions describing  in pinpoint accuracy the dreadful corporate globalization sweeping the planet, The spectacle accompanies us throughout our lives via news propaganda, advertising and entertainment, and yes social media,alienating us from ourselves and our desires in order to facilitate the accumulation of capital..
For Debord the spectacle presented itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned, It's sole message is :"What appears is good; what is good appears," The passive acceptance it demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances. its manners of appearing without allowing any reply. Debord , warned us that mass media had replaced religion in offering repressive pseudo-enjoyment of the world. Real life has become subordinated to its mediated appearance. " The medium is the message" declared Marshall McLuhan around the same time. Few appreciated the significance of the statement back then, but now we bear witness to rapid changes in the way we relate to each other and our planet.
The text  https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/guy-debord-the-society-of-the-spectacle.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1r_mORBe5b6eH__t7_A8iSz9ppVP2IwVVcmiVuTrqulmA5SZAwDlvSH6Q was a primary influence not only on the near- revolution of May 1968 in Paris, but also on the ethos of London's underground press and certain aspects of punk ideology, The SI developed out of an earlier Left Bank mix of avant garde politics, influenced by Dada, Surrealism and Lettrism, carrying out programmes of provocation, graffiti and anti-party revolutionary outrage. The Situationists were concerned to articulate a 'theory of moments," propagating ideas of pleasure and depicting the personal as intrinsically political ("boredom is always counter revolutionary " sneered one of their mottoes.From 1962, the Situationists increasingly applied their critique not only in culture but to all aspects of capitalist society. Seeking to free us from the power of the spectacle in order to mount a credible challenge to capitalism, the Situationists introduced the tactic of detournement, an attempt to turn the  powers of the spectacle against itself.

Guy Debord emerged as the most important figure among their number: he had been involved in the Lettrist International, and had made several films, including Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952)  Inspired by the libertarian journal Socialisme on Barbarie, the Situationists rediscovered the history of the anarchist movement, particularly during the period of the First International, and drew inspiration from Spain, Kronstadt, and the Makhnovists. They described the USSR as a capitalist bureaucracy, and advocated workers' councils. But they were not entirely anarchist in orientation and retained elements of Marxism, especially through Henri Lefebvre's critique of the alienation of everyday life.
Debord dissolved the SI (proclaiming its victory over history) in 1972, their impact has been assured. Again today, we need to break with conventions, consensus, break out of our desolate paradigms, and learn to be free.
Sadly on November 30th 1994 aged 67, racked by depression, after a life of hard drinking , that had led to a diagnosis of peripheral neuritis, a debilitating and extremely painful condition whereby the body's nerve endings burn away in the isolated village of Champot high in the Auvergne, Guy Debord shot himself with a single bullet to the heart. He remains however one of the most important contemporary thinkers, with a capital place in the history of ideas from the second half pf the second half of the 20th century.
The following film La Societe du Spectacle (Society of the Spectacle) is a black and white 1973 film  based on his book. It was Debord's first  feature-length film. It uses found footage and detournement in a radical criticism of mass marketing and its role in the alienation of modern society.
The 88 minute film took a year to make and incorporates footage from feature films, industrial films, news footage. advertisements and still photographs. The films include The Battleship Potemkin, October, Chapeav, The New Babylon, The Shanghai Gesture, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Rio Grande, They Died with Their Boots On, Johnny Guitar and Mr Arkadin, as well as other Soviet films.
Events such as the murder of Lee Harvard Oswald (who assassinated U.S, President John F, Kennedy in 1963), the Spanish Civil War of 1936 -1939, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the Paris riots in May 1968 are represented, and people such as Mao Zedong, Richard Nixon and the Spanish anarchist Durutti.Throughout the film, there is a voiceover (of Debord) and inter-titles from The Society of the Spectacle  but also texts from the 1968 Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne, Machiavelli, Marx, Tocqueville, Emile Pouget, and Soloviev. Without citations, these quotes are hard to decipher, especially with the subtitles (which exist in the French version) but that is part of Debord's goal "to  problematize recept" (Greil and Sanborn) and force the viewer to be active. In addition , the words of some of the authors are detourned through deliberate misquoting.
In 1984, Debord withdrew his films from circulation, because of the negative press and the assassination of his friend  and patron Gerard Lebovici. Since Debord's suicide in 1994, Debord's wife Alice Becker-Ho  has been promoting Debord's film. A DVD box set titled  Guy Debord: Oeuvres cinematographiques completes came out in 2005 and contains Debord's seven film.
The cover of the film is derived  from a photo of Life magazine photographer J.R. Eyerman.
On November 28, 1952, at the Paramount Theatre(Oakland, California), took place  the premiere screening of film Bwana Devil, by Arch Oboler, the first full-length, color 3D (aka ' Natural Vision') motion picture. Eyerman took a series of photos of the audience wearing 3D glasses.
Life magazine used one of the photos as the cover of a brochure about the 146-1955 decade. The photo employed by Debord shows the audience in " a virtually trance-lie state of absorption, their faces grim, their lips pursed," however, in the one chosen bt Life, " the spectators are laughing, their expressions of hilarity conveying the pleasure of an uproarious active spectatorship "Cheers to Ubuweb http://www.ubu.com/film/debord.html

I'm sure if Debord was alive today, he would almost certainly be extending his analysis of the spectacle to the Internet and social media. He would no doubt be horrified by social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, which monetize our friendships, opinions and emotions. It seems that our
internal thoughts and experience are now commodifiable assets. His viewpoint still bears an uncomfortable truth on our present day lives. One could say that our age is not so much the Society of the Spectacle, as it is the Society of immersion and manipulation, and many simply are so immersed they do not not realize it is happening.
Do we remain passive, carry on being manipulated, relying on the artificiality of  the spectacle,or  start thinking beyond it's confinement?The future is unwritten

Spectacle (Society of the Spectacle)

Poetry of the Spectacle

Here the SPECTACLE is captured and made to expose itself (if even for a brief moment) by turning its most beloved mystifying commodity, the computer, back onto itself to the benefit of language. It slowly dies a dramatic death of Lettritic convulsions.

SPECTACLE

In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived is now merely represented in the distance.

The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images. The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images.
The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual description produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized.

Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the goal of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society's unreality. In all its particular manifestations - news, propoganda, advertising, entertainment - the spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by the production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process.

The spectacle is both the meaning and the agenda of our particular socio-economic formation. It is the historical moment in which we are caught.

The spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned. Itssole message is: "What appears is good, what is good appears." The passive acceptance it demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply.

The first stage of the economy's domination of social life is brought about an evident degradation of being into having - human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from appearing -all "having" must derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances.

POETRY

The problem of language is at the heart of all the struggles between the forces striving to abolish the present alienation and those striving to maintain it. It is inseperable from the very terrain of those struggles. We live within language as within polluted air. Despite what humorists think, words do not play. Words work - on behalf of the dominant organization of life. Yet they are not completely automated: unfortunately for the theoreticians of information words are not in themselves "informationist", they contain forces that can upset the most careful calculations. Words coexist with power in relation analogous to that which proletarians have with power. Employed by it almost full time, exploited for every sense and nonsense that can be squeezed out of them, they still remain in some sense fundamentally alien to it.

Under the control of power, language always designates something other than authentic experience. It  is precisely for this reason that a total contestation is possible. The organization of language has fallen into such confusion that the communication imposed by power is exposing itsefl as an imposter and a dupery. An embryonic cybernetic power is vainly trying to put out language under the control of the machines it controls, in such a way that information would henceforth be the only possible communication. Even on this terrain resistances are beng manifested, electronic music could be seen as an attempt ( obviously limited and ambiguous) to reverse the domination by detourning machines to the benefit of language. But there is a much more general and radical opposition that is denouncing all unilateral "communication," in the old form of art as well as in the modern form of informationism. It calls for a communication that undermines all seperate power. Real communication dissolves the state.

Power lives of stolen goods. It creates nothing, it co- opts. If it determined the meaning of words, there would be no poetry but only useful "information."  Opposition would be unable to express itself in language; any refusal would be nonverbal, purely lettristic. What is poetry if not the revolutionary moment of language, inseperable as such from the revolutionary moments of history and the history of personal life?

Society of the Spectacle Pt 1 &2

Here Debord's  1967 text is  remade into a contemporary context.
Also  includes Marshall McLuhan and John Berger

Made by Aska (check the credits for more)
Sound by the amazing Pippin Kenworthy

Pt 1

Pt 2

                                                   
                                Put the mirror to the moment  make yourself aware 
                                Facilitate, reconcile, get a new idea  
                                The pulsating spectacle, is not easy to forget 
                                Today randomly ordinarily, perception shifts
                                When the prism cracks, get yourself a new silhouette
                                Unharness camarardie, viva situationniste! 
                                    .
                                                                              

Pethau Bychain Dewi Sant - Bob Delyn a'r Ebillion (geiriau / lyrics)

Today as has become traditional I mark St David's Day/ Dydd Dewi Sant. Saint David is the patron saint of Wales. This day was chosen to  commemorate St David's death on this day around 589 AD. It has been celebrated as a national day within Wales since the 18th century.
I love my country,  but avoid the nationalism,  I prefer the  mystical  deep streams.
So here I offer you this beautiful song from Bob Delyn a'r Ebillion called Pethau Bychain Dewi Sant ( St David's Little Things) from the album Dore .Happy St David's Day/ Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus.  Heddwch/peace

Pwy oedd Dewi Sant. Who was St David?
Dewi Sant oedd nawdd sant Cymru. Yn ol straeon amdano, bu fyw  am dros 100 mlynedd a bu farw ar Dydd Mawrth, y cyntaf o Fawrth  (Gwyl Dewi Sant heddiw). Ei eiriau i'w ddilynwyr oedd mewn pregeth ar y dydd Sul blaenoral. Meddai Byddwch yn llawen, a cadewch eich ffydd ac eich cred. Gwnewch y pethau bychain mewn bywyd yt ydych wedi fy ngweld i yn ei wneud. Fe gerddaf i y llwybr y troediodd ein cyndeidiau.

It is claimed that David lived for over 100 years, and he died on a Tuesday 1 March (now St David's Day) His last words to his followers were in a sermon on the previous Sunday. Rhygyfarch transcribes these as ' Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. Do the little things that you have seen me do and  heard about. I will walk the path  that our fathers have trod before us.' 'Do the little things in life' ( Gwnewch y  pethau bychain mewn bywyd) is today a very well known phrase in Welsh.

Geiriau

Pethau bychain Dewi Sant
nid swn tan ond swn tant.
Nid derw mawr ond adar mân,
nid haul a lleuad ond gwreichion tân.

Ond o, dyna chi strach, trio cael hyd i sach
 i gadw'r holl bethau bach.

 Pethau bychain Dewi Sant,
 y ll'godan ond nid yr eliffant.
 A darnau'r gwlith nid dwr y moroedd,
 ond yn y briga', stwr y mae.

 Ond o, dyna chi strach, trio cael hyd i sach
 i gadw'r holl bethau bach.

 Pethau bychain Dewi Sant,
swn 'yn traed ni yn y nant.
Yr hada' yn disgyn yma a thraw,
a'r tamad, y tamad ola' o wenith yn dy law.

Ond o, dyna chi strach,
trio cael hyd i sach i gadw'r holl bethau bach.

Map y byd yn llyfr y plant,
pethau bychain Dewi Sant.

Y pellter sydd rhwng dant a dant ar ol nawdeg naw a chant
 pethau bychain Dewi Sant.

Ond o, dyna chi strach,
 trio cael hyd i sach i gadw'r holl bethau bach.

English Translation Lyrics:

St David's little things,
not the sound of fire
but the sound of chords.
Not a large oak but small birds,
not the sun and moon but the sparks of fire.

But oh, what a hassle it is to try and find a sack
to keep all of the little things.

St David's little things,

the mouse but not the eliphant.

And the dew drops, not the water of the seas,
but in the branches, uproar is found

But oh, what a hassle it is to try and find
a sack to keep all of the little things.

St David's little things,
the sound of our footsteps in the stream.
The seeds fall here and there,
and the scrap, the last scrap of wheat in your palm.

But oh, what a hassle it is to try and find a sack
to keep all of the little things.

The world's atlas in a children's book,
St David's little things.

The distance between a tooth and a tooth between ninety nine and a hundred - St David's little things. But oh, what a hassle it is to try and find
a sack to keep all of the little things.

Brexit Bill threatens UK Human Rights warns Amnesty International

According to Amnesty International  the current EU withdrawal bill will "substantially reduce human rights in the UK" and members of the British public " don't even know", it has warned in its latest annual report, The State of the World's Human Rights : https://www.amnesty.org.uk/report-world-human-rights-2017
Amnesty's 409 page report on human rights around the world says the decision to convert the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights into domestic law via the withdrawal bill means British citizens  will be stripped of protection.The Charter is important because it protects fundamental  issues that are important to us all, such as dignity, workers rights, equality, fair trials, free speech, children, LGBTI, disabled people and more. It provides a stronger defense of fundamental rights because it overides acts of Parliament when there is a conflict over basic rights, thus making it a much stronger legal defense when combating violations of human rights.
The Government has decided  not to convert  the Charter into UK legislation after Brexit,https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/678333/Factsheet_6_-_Charter_of_fundamental_rights.pdf  claiming that  human rights will not be jeapordised by Brexit, saying that protections in the EU charter will  still be protected by domestic law, contending that the citizens of the UK are protected through the democratic process, assuming that the ability to elect Members of Parliament is an adequate assurance that our representatives will protect their basic rights. It seems foolish, however, to found an entire group's basic protection solely on the goodwill and moral compass of the government. I personally do not trust their word one bit. The end result being that we will all now face a lower protection of our human rights. Lets not forget that we have been warned, after all our human rights are the basic freedoms that all human beings should be guaranteed.
Kate Allen, Amnesty International's UK  director, said :" You don't have to be pro or anti Brexit to see that without reform the EU Withdrawal Bill is set to substantially reduce rights in the UK.
" Under cover of Brexit the Government is planning to strip the British public of protections, - and people don't even know their hard won rights are under threat."
We should all be very concerned. After all the current government has long had a poor relationship with human rights, having previously wanted to abolish the Human Rights Act and now wants to remove the Charter as well. They should not be allowed to continue with their plans unchallenged.
The report also warned that the Governments drive to secure new trade deals has seen UK ministers and officials " soft pedalling" with regimes who have poor human rights records. Also highlighting recent UK trade delegations to Saudi Arabia,  and  USA, that have shown an "unwillingness to speak publicly about human rights overseas."
The UK is set to quit the EU on 29 March 2019, at 11 pm.Theresa May has said previously that her vision of Brexit will be one that focuses on "the good we can do together in the world as a global Britain." However, any Brexit that ends up, prioritising and promoting  arms sale and building ever closer relationships with human rights abusers is one that will only contribute  further to war, conflict and the further erosion of freedom for people across the globe.
Brexit was just one of many topics  mentioned in their annual report, Amnesty's report  also criticized world leaders for promoting "hate and division to further  their own political ends, suggesting that in the 70th year since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights protections are under serious threat, with authoritarian leaders seeking to narrow  or withdraw them"
The group also highlighted the work of activists and protest movements around the world inspired by what it called regressive policies.

Shape Shifting

Music flows like water
Between shadows and light,
As books are read for therapy
And love returns, carried deep inside,
The alphabet of trees, offers comfort
Some sculptured imagination,
Releases language of truth
Memories of everlasting breath,
In the politics of free fall
Magic remains undiminished,
Takes us back to where we had begun
From outside, rearranges,
Shape shifting, through corridors of time
Allows us to keep on pursuing brightness,
Swallows every thought, beyond constant fear
In a world of confusion, revives tongue,
Communicating to the lonely
Shouting rebellion to those who listen.

Why do we keep offering deference to the Royal family in the 21st Century.

For me the Royal family represents inequality and conservatism, a dynasty that has no place in the modern world. Just look at the above photo, it represents everything that's wrong with the monarchy. The sense of entitlement on one side. the unquestioning deference on the other.
Far from uniting the country, the monarchy's role is seen by many people to be illegitimate and offensive, and simply entrenches hereditary pivilege at the heart of public life. While our government patronisisingly preaches democracy to the rest of the world, they still preside over an undemocratic system at home with an unelected head of state .
With their vestiges of privilege, the royal family continues  to  award themselves medals, appoint themselves to top military ranks that they simply they do not deserve. Allow themselves to be nominated as patrons of charities , degrading the real efforts of those who have really made general contributions. At a time when Britain  is going through a time of national economic and social stress due to Brexit , austerity, incoming roll out of Universal Credit and so on. The Conservative Government currently imposing a draconian, financially crippling sanction on jobseekers because they dont want to pay out any money to those who are unfortunately out of work, while the Royals get there houses refurbished  at tax payers espense, while many people cannot afford to heat their homes or put enough nutritional meals on their tables.
While so many far more importanst issues face us everyday, this continuing fawning to members of the Royal family and their hangers on,I simply find embarrassing. At a time of inequality, when public services, public sector jobs, wages, attacks on the most vulnerable among us continues, in the  most savage round of austerity meaures ever seen in modern times,  how the hell can some people still be proud of this patronage ridden monarchy is beyond my imagination. It certainly reinforces my feelings that some people are born better than others. It's the piacle of the class system which has held or socirty back for so long, enforcing the idea of an elite rling class.
Their nauseating displays of riches, power and privilege ,is simply an affront to human decency.I believe in a society, where we can all look into one another's eyes as equals , whatever our purpose or position in life. This continuing deference to them is simply offensive, and it has its consequnces. Since  you and I, and every taxpayer across the land will have to fork out tens, if not hundreds of thosands  of pounds for the Queens son's forthcoming marriage. The Royals  have claimed that they will be paying, but the truth is, that on May 19 it is the taxpayer who who will be lanfed the enormous bill. I don't believe thiw is ok, they need to pick up the bill. So on this note would urge you to join more than ten thosand people in signing the following petition calling on MPs to make sure the royals pay for their own wedding.https://www.republic.org.uk/petition/royal-wedding
Here's to a better, more egalitarian world, yes a brighter monarchy, confine these pointless ornaments to the dustbins of history

The Last Invasion of Britain - Fishguard 1797

Many remember the name of Hastings as the site of the last invasion of mainland Britain by Norman forces in 1066, but many forget the less successful  French attempt at invasion, which took place in Fishguard,West Wales  on this day in 1797 and  was the last time a hostile foreign force landed on British soil, and is therefore often referred to as “the last invasion of Britain”.

Irish revolutionary leader Wolfe Tone had received support from France to help end British rule in Ireland. Part of this plan was to organise French invasions of Britain to divert and weaken the British forces, with the overall aim of sending a much larger force to Ireland to overthrow the British there.

So on February 18th, 1797, a collection of 1400 French mercenaries and bailed convicts, led by an Irish-American named Colonel Tate set sail from Camaret .

Tate’s orders were to raid Bristol. He was ‘to bring as much chaos and confusion to the heart of Britain as was possible; to recommend and facilitate a rising of the British poor against the government; but whenever and wherever possible, to wage war against the castle, not the cottage.’

Once Bristol had been sacked, they were to march on Liverpool and do the same there. The original expectation had been that they would then traverse the country from west to east and link up with the force that was supposed to have taken Newcastle. All the while, it was assumed, their numbers would grow as the rebellious poor flocked to join them.Tate's orders had been to land near Bristol, England's second largest city at the time, and destroy it, then to cross over into Wales and march north into Chester and Liverpool. 

From the outset though things did not go according to plan. Wind conditions made it impossible for the four French warships to land anywhere near Bristol, so Tate decided to set course to here in Cardigan Bay instead, hoping the Welsh would join their revolt against English rule and join their Revolutionary cause.

 The French force was conveyed in four ships: two frigates La Vengeance and La Resistance, a corvette La Constance and a lugger Le Vatour. The commander was Commodore Jean Joseph Castagnier, and his log gives details of the voyage.

 There were several sightings of the fleet as they made their journey. The ships had been seen on their journey off Lundy Island by the master of a sloop, and he reported the sighting to Samuel Hancorne, the collector of the port of Swansea. He duly reported to the Duke of Portland on 22 February that the master of the sloop St Ives had seen the French ships.

On Wednesday February 22nd, the French warships sailed into Fishguard Bay. Upon landing, the French invasion force seem to have run out of enthusiasm,  which could have been a result of having to survive for years on prison rations, and on all accounts were more interested in the rich food and fine wine of the locals, and after a looting spree many were simply too drunk to do anything.Having angered the Welsh locals by seizing their food and wine, they quickly assembled an army of volunteer militia, army reservists, and sailors to fight the invasion, this attempted insurrection. And  after two days  the invasion had collapsed. Tate's forces surrendering to a local militia force led by Lord Cawdor on Febuary 25, 1797, with the French  being disarmed, and being marched of to imprisonment to nearby Haverfordwest .It is said the treaty was signed in the building that is now the Royal Oak pub.

It is interesting to note  that the surrender agreement drawn up by Tate' officers referred to the British coming at them "with troops of the line to the number of several thousand."No such troops were anywhere near Fishguard , at the time, however hundreds of local Welsh women dressed in their traditional scarlet tunics and tall black felts had come too witness  fighting between the French and the local men of the militia, and under the influence of too much wine, these women could easily have been mistaken for British army Redcoats.

One of the women who is said to be the hero of the hour went by the name of "Jemima Fawr" (Jemima the Great) 47 year old Jemima Nicholas,  who was a local cobbler. She single handedly with nothing more than a  pitchfork in hand rounded up twelve Frenchmen, and locked them inside the local St Mary's Church.

 

She would become a Welsh heroine and was awarded a pension of £50 for the rest of her life. After her death a memorial was raised to her, the lady who confronted the French invader armed only with a pitchfork.

 

There is little doubt that French boldness in Wales jolted Whitehall into realising that further attempts to invade Ireland were only a matter of time.

Wolfe Tone eventually got ashore in October 1798, but only after the rebellion had been bloodily crushed, a small French force had been defeated in September at Ballinamuck, and another flotilla had come to grief off Donegal. Tone’s arrival was as a prisoner of the Royal Navy. He was tried, condemned to death, and committed suicide. 

William Tate and several of his officer were eventually imprisoned on the Royal Oak, a prison hulk in Portsmouth harbour.  (They were released in a prisoner exchange in 1797 and returned to France.  The last record of Tate is of his returning to the United States in 1809 – hch)  In the inn of the same name in Fishguard there are several relics of the invasion, including a musket taken from a drunken French soldier, a French officer’s water bottle, and the table – now converted into a settle-type bench – on which the terms of surrender were signed.  There are also several paintings of 1797-style military personnel gathered outside the inn, even though records indicate that Cawdor’s headquarters was a private house at the time.

As the wars against France stretched on, Napoleon himself made his own plans to invade the UK, plans that were only dashed by his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

For the bicentenary in 1997, the Fishguard Arts Society made a tapestry on the model of the one in Bayeux. With scintillating detail and remarkable wit, the embroidery – thirty metres long and stitched by more than seventy local women – interweaves the stories told by the locals with those of the invaders.

http://www.fishguardartssociety.org.uk/The%20Last%20Invasion%20Tapestry.html  

Also for the bicentenary in 1997, Fishguard held a full-blown reenactment. Yvonne Fox, a local woman, played the role of heroic Jemima and did so until her death in 2010. Fishguard continues to  commemorate the invasion  to this day

Bibliography:

Phil Carradice, The Last Invasion, Village Publishing 1992

Pamela Horn, History of the French Invasion of Fishguard, 1797, Presell Printers, Fishguard 1980

Commander E H Stuart-Jones, The Last Invasion of Britain, University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1947

David Williams, A History of Modern Wales, John Murray, London 1950

 

International Mother Language Day

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Languages, with their complex implications for identity, communication, social integration, education and development are of great importance for people and planet. Yet due to globaliation, they are increasingly under threat. When languages fade, so does the world's rich tapestry of cultural diversity. Opportunities, traditions, memory, unique modes of thinking and expression, valuable resources, become lost.
Languages,like people are subsequently in a constant battle for survival. It is believed there are about 6000 languages that are spoken in the world of which 3000 are listed as endangered by UNESCO with 10 languages becoming extinct every year. Only a few hundred languages have genuinely been given a place in education systems and the public domain, and less than a hundred are used in the digital world.
Consequently International Mother Language is held every year on February 21 since the year 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism/. The day to celebrate this bond was originally chosen by the United Nations in 1999 to celebrate four students who were shot and killed in 1952 by Pakistani police for protesting the right to use their own language, Bengali.
This bond between individuals and their languages, one that if broken is  forgotten for generations the UN recognises as a human right. Also with the rise of populist nationalism the threat of walls andsuspcion of integration , we should also worry what this means for migrant and Indigenous languages. After all language is a salient index of culture, and so any assault on cultural diversity is also an an assault on linguistic diversity.
Languages serves as powerful instrument of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage. So all moves to promote the dissemation of mother tonques will serve not only to encourage linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world, but alse serves to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialgue.
International Mother Language Day is also a good opportunity to remind ourselves that children of migrants and Indigenous people have an international right to speak, grow up with, and celebrate their own heritage languages, wherever they reside. Languages enriches society, economic mobility and at end of the day is what makes us human.
For further information visit the UNESCO website http://www.unesco.org/new/en/international-mother-language-day/  or visit the UN's International Mother Language Day web pages.http://www.un.org/en/events/motherlanguageday/
Heddwch/peace.