Marc Ribot -" Bella Ciao (Goodbye Beautiful) " ( feat. Tom Waits )

Bella Ciao is an Italian folk ballad, with a robust, storied past, the author of the lyrics is unknown; but the music and spirit of the song is based on a folk song sung by rice-weeders on the River Po basin in the early part of the 20th century,the earliest written version is dated 1906 and comes from near Vercelli, Piedmont.
It was revised and re-written during Word WarII for the Italian anti-fascist resistance fighters, and it has since becomes used worldwide as an anti-fascist hymn of freedom and resistance.
The original Partisan version  sung in Italian can be found here:-

 Many Italian versions, including this modern rendition by the  Modena City Ramblers, have appeared over the years, while in addition to the original Italian, the song has been sung by revolutionaries and fighters the world over in numerous languages.including Arabic, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan, Chinese , Croatian, Danish, English, Esperanto, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Hebrew, Japanese, Persian, Kurdish, Norwegian, Occitan, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Syriac, You can read more about the songs  long history here http://riowang.blogspot.com/2008/12/bella-ciao.html
The following  beautiful version featuring Tom Waits with his grizzled inimitable voice, that puts real feeling into his reading of the song, is taken from Songs of Resistance 1948-2016, the new album by guitarist Marc Ribot, who describes it as a protest record adding, "Every movement which has won anyrhing has had songs."  “Tom brings a certain gravitas to everything he does,” says Ribot. “My Italian friends say he sounds exactly like an old ‘partigiano’ (resistance fighter)!”
The video below is directed by Jem Cohen and uses footage from anti-Trump demonstrations in Washington DC, that makes its parallels with modern life very explicit, the song is still so relevant for the world we are in today. Pairing Waits' vocals with footage of police and soldiers guarding barricades at anti-Trump protests.
This year. we have seen some of the biggest fascist demonstrations in decades, supported by the international Alt-right. The fight against these forces of fascism  must continue, as the flower of resistance still grows strong..
Songs of Resistance 1942-2018 comes out today  Sept. 14 via Anti-.

 Bella Ciao

One fine morning
I woke up early
(bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao)
One fine morning
I woke up early
to find the fascist at my door.

O, partisano,
please, take me with you
(bella ciao, bella ciao, goodbye beautiful)
O, partisano,
please take me with you,
I’m not afraid anymore.

And if I die
a partisano
(bella ciao, bella ciao, goodbye beautiful)
bury me upon my mountain
beneath the shadow of a flower.

So all the people,
the people passing
(bella ciao, bella ciao, goodbye beautiful)
So all the people, the people passing,
they say “O, what a beautiful flower!”

This is the flower of the partisan
(bella ciao, bella ciao, goodbye beautiful)
This is the flower of the partisan
who died for freedom.
This is the flower
of the partisan
who died for freedom.

The other 9/11

 

 Repost with additional information

On September 11, 2001 the USA experienced a great tragedy,I join people all over the world in remembering the lives lost on that day, and the hundreds of thousands more killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the other wars that followed.
Today though I also remember another 9/11, when on this day on September 11 1973, the democratically elected Government of Chile's socialist President Allende was brutally overthrown in a bloody, military coup led by fascist General Augusto Pinochet, friend of Margaret Thatcher. An American sponsored coup  that crushed a democratically elected government, which would lead  to years of repression, torture, forced disappearance, false imprisonment, fear, death and for many Chileans exile. Democracy would not return for 17 years with the Chilean people having to endure years of autocratic military rule.
In Chile in 1970 Salvador Allende won 36.6% of the vote and established his Popular Unity government in power much to the alarm of the United States government who feared his leftist government would slide into one party rule like Fidel Castro's Cuba. Allende's political platform was populist and he promised the nationalization of many sectors of the Chilean economy and the distribution of wealth to the country's poor. These plans, however, were not accepted in Washington, which saw Chile as the new “red menace”, a cancer to be eradicated and in a way to make it an example to anyone who dared to follow in its footsteps.The involvement of the CIA is proved by documents and files decrypted that confirm what we already knew: the coup had its legitimation from  President Nixon and the National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, the future Nobel Peace Prize.
Today in 1973 the Chilean military, under Pinochet's command, announced a coup and  Air Force planes  attacked the presidential palace. Within a few hours, the military had seized control of the government, and Allende and many of his ministers were left dead  in the presidential palace as the military unleashed a wave of brutal repression against the population and  the people's movements, ushering in almost two decades of right wing military rule under Pinochet. 

The military and secret police began rounding up thousands of  people loyal to President Allende.Many disappeared" into army-run, CIA-supported torture centers, never to be heard from again.Over 20,000 people  are  established to have been killed during Pinochet's reign  of terror. and 60,000 tortured,  hundreds of Allendes supporters alone were gunned down in Santiago Soccer stadium, so  today in Chile  this event is still marked  with anger, people taking to the streets and displaying it, Chileans still having to deal  with the devastating legacy of life  under a fascist regime.
Today on  this tragic anniversary, it is time to remember again, a time in our  history that still holds daily reverence to most Chileans lives,and for much of Latin America, and for the  many democratic reformers and carriers of solidarity's message worldwide.
In Florida in June,2016 a jury  found a former Chilean army officer liable for the murder of folk singer and activist Víctor Jara in 1973. Jara was tortured and shot more than 40 times in the days after the U.S.-backed coup. The verdict against Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nuñez marked what The Guardian newspaper called "one of the biggest and most significant legal human rights victories against a foreign war criminal in a US courtroom." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/27/victor-jara-pedro-pablo-barrientos-nunez-killing-chile  Speaking on the steps of the Florida courthouse, on , Jara’s widow Joan Jara Turner said at  the time, "What we were trying to do for more than 40 years, for Víctor, has today come true."
Since then in a form of justice eight retired Chilean military officers have been sentenced to 15 years in prison for Victor's murder.This hero of the people whose life and music has been celebrated ever since. 

Yet  no US presidential apology, has ever been made for what was unleashed on the workers, students and ordinary people of Chile on this day. So today as America  remembers  their own  9/11 lets not forget the other injustice that they helped cause.

I am  sadly reminded that years after the world watched as planes hijacked by terrorists  crashed into the World Trade Center ( that caused a further millions deaths, also creating millions of refugees, malnutrition, birth defects and other health disasters on generations of children  in Iraq and other war zones), the harrowing  cycle of violence never ended. 

My only hope now is that we continue to express true sorrow, whilst collectively recognising the terrible legacy of these two  9/11's. Let us chart a more just and peaceful path forward. Lets hope the forces of truth and reconciliation long continue to be fostered and that  all victims are  rightfully remembered. 

Victor Jara - Venceremos
 

http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/40th-anniversary-of-chilean-coup.html

The Battle of Stockton, 1933

Today I commemorate the Battle of Stockton when over 2000 anti-fascist  demonstrators drove out of this town members of the British Union of fascists.
In the 1930's Oswald Mosley's party saw deprived areas experiencing mass unemployment and acute poverty, their planned march was an early attempt to rally support and recruits in depressed areas. Stockton  was an ideal town for the BUF to target as it was  particularly hard hit  by the 1930 Great Depression.In Germany, similar towns had fallen under the sway of the Nazis so the BUF had expected to be greeted with a warm welcome.

In Stockton, the first attempts by the local BUF Branch to begin organised street propaganda and open air soapbox meetings had hit determined opposition from local leftwingers. The footsoldiers of this opposition was supplied by members of the local Branch of the National Unemployed Workers Movement, with the active support of both local supporters and members of the Labour Party and the relatively small Teesside Communist Party.

On this day on Sunday 10th September 1933, the blackshirts arrived at Thornaby Town Hall and marched in formation over Victoria Bridge and into Stockton town centre. They were heading for the market cross in Stockton High Street, with the view of galvanising support and encouraging locals to join their ranks.
But as their leader, Captain Vincent Collier, tried to speak from the steps of the Market Cross, outside the grand town hall, he and his fellow fascists  numbering around 100 were met with a wave of resistance, their leaders voice was  drowned out and spat at, greeted by more than two thousand local people who had been waiting for them.
As sticks and stones rained down on the fascists  and fighting between the BUF  and the people of Stockton ensued, as  the Northern Echo and other local press. reported at the time the use of weapons being wielded by both sides. Wooden staves and pickaxe handles, and more lethally, potatoes into which razor blades had been studded to be thrown at the fascists.The end result being that the fascists were forced to flee and driven out of town, and never returned.

No arrests were made but a number of the Fascists were injured, some so seriously they required treatment in local hospitals. The Battle of Stockton was over; the Fascists were denied their ‘Conquest of the streets”. Losing credibility and their wealthy backers the BUF declined into a violent, London-based grouping of thugs and misfits. 
Local people had nor been to slow to see the analogies between what had happened on the streets of Stockton and what was occurring in the towns and cities of Germany. The Stockton  events had occurred after all had occurred a mere eight months after Hitler had seized the German Chancerllorship, and at the same time as the trial and execution of the hapless Van Lubbe, the man accused of starting the Reichstag fire, an event which conveniently allowed Hitler to put into law draconian emergency decrees which effectively  turned Germany into a armed dictatorship, and fascist state.
Stockton was by no means unique in attracting the attention of fascist forces during the pre-war years. But unlike the now legendary Battle of Cable Street in London https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2015/10/they-shall-not-pass-battle-for-cable.htm 
which took place 3 years later it is now largely forgotten. But as fascism and fascists, and their forces of darkness are  still unfortunately with us, and are on the rise, let us proudly remember the people of Stockton  who stopped them in their paths. Together united we can repel them again. We will continue what our Grandfathers did, a fight that has never finished. They shall not pass / No Pasaran..

The Young 'uns -  The Battle of Stockton

.

Attica Prison Uprising,1971 and its legacy

From Sept, 9 to Sept 13, 1971 ,people watched riveted as nearly 1,300 men stood together in America's most dramatic prison uprising, for better conditions at the Attica Correctional  Facility in upstate New York. The men were fed on little to nothing, were given only one roll of toilet paper a month, endured beatings, racial epithets, and barbaric medical treatment, and suffered th trauma of being thrown into a cell and kept there for days, naked, as punishment. The Attica uprising was historic because these men spoke directly to the public, and by doing so, they powerfully sent out a message that serving time did not make someone less of a human being,

Coming less than two weeks after the killing of imprisoned black revolutionary George Jackson and inmates at Attica Prison, attempted  to free a fellow inmate from his cell, after reports, that he was being tortured.. and after  the inmates had tried to get their concerns addressed through proper and official channels, their frustration, after being ignored on a number of issues ranging from substantial medical care, inadequate food and clothing, insufferable heat and the abusive and racially discriminatory treatment they received from their guards, (They had written to at least one state senator and sent numerous letters to the Department of Corrections) exploded and the prisoners revolted and took over the prison, taking a number of hostages at the time.

Four people, one guard and three prisoners, were killed in the early hours of the uprising. Then, for the next four days, a group of leaders  emerged out of the initial chaos to try and attempt to negotiate a peaceful surrender with state officials, while demanding amnesty for actions conducted during the uprising, as well as access to classes, religious freedom, and fairer disciplinary practices.
Then  on the rainy morning of 13 September, 1971, after negotiations for more humane treatment of prisoners  had broken down and the desperate prisoners had threatened their unharmed hostages, at the order of Governor Nelson Rockerfeller to retake the prison, tear gas was dropped into the yard and New York State  troopers randomly opened fire non-stop for two minutes into the smoke.Less than an a quarter of an hour after the assault on Attica had begun, the prison was bathed in blood. Thirty-nine people were killed in the disastrous assault, including 29 prisoners and 10 prison guards, and wounding 89.
At the time of the uprising, there were 2,400 inmates living in a facility built for 1,600. Though over 60 percent of inmates were Black and Latino the prison was completely run by white guards and employees, many of whom were openly racist. Attica on many accounts was a hellhole. The largest industry in a forsaken and impoverished upstate town, it was a place where urban blacks were locked up in bathroom-size cells only to be allowed one shower per week and one roll of toilet paper each month. Their mail was heavily censored to cut out anything involving prisons and prisoners’ rights. The medical neglect within the facility was criminal. Guards often pitted inmates against each other to incite racial violence.Inmates also labored for 40 cents a day, assembling mattresses, shoes and license plates.
The level of unity that developed among prisoners was nearly unprecedented. There were four days of negotiations, until then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered state police to take back control of the prison by brutal force. When the uprising was over, at least 39 people were dead, hundreds were left maimed and wounded and the prisoners left were subjected to extreme brutality and torture. Those who were considered leaders, the prisoner negotiators, spokesmen and security men, were singled out for prolonged abuse. The example of the Attica prisoners uniting and standing up for their rights and dignity in the face of such intense repression inspired and electrified  people around the world.
The Attica prison uprising was by no means an isolated or spontaneous clash. It came as a revolutionary mood swept through Black and Latino communities and other progressive sectors of the population in the United States.By September 1971, the Civil Rights movement had transformed itself into a movement for national liberation among the Black, Puerto Rican and Chicano populations.Starting in 1964, rebellions swept urban areas throughout the United States. Major insurrections took place in Rochester, Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and other cities. When Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered in 1968 more than 120 cities went up in flames as young people battled police, National Guard units and state troopers.Revolutionary organizations like the Black Panther Party and Young Lords Party were militantly organizing in urban communities. Millions of people were protesting the Vietnam War and joining the women’s and LGBT liberation movements.
This revolutionary mood in the community sank deep roots within the prisoner population too. The Attica prisoners were reading revolutionary newspapers. They were studying Marx and Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, and Franz Fanon and reading socialist, communist and revolutionary nationalist newspapers.Prisoners were staging uprisings all over the country, not just in Attica, New York. The rebellions were extensions of the national liberation struggles happening all over the United States.
In the aftermath of the bloody raid authorities said that the inmates had killed the slain hostages by slitting their throats. However, autopsies later revealed this to be false, and in fact all 10 hostages had been shot dead by police. In the bloody aftermath ,it turned into a manhunt: the enraged correction officers and troopers sought out those whom they thought of as ringleaders and executed them. Several of the dead among the leaders were seen alive well after the prison had been retaken. Some were shot as many as twelve times, at close range. Even the thirty-nine dead did not end the violence, as the guards forced the inmates to strip naked and then tortured them for most of the rest of the day and night. Any prisoner who troopers or CO’s considered to be a leader was chalked across the back with a large white X. As each one was made to run a gantlet of clubs, the officers would call out, “You want your amnesty? Well, come and get it.” The vengeful officers played Russian roulette with the inmates, and then forced them to drink the guards’ urine. One inmate, Frank (Big Black) Smith, who had been visible in the uprising, lay wounded on a table for many hours, made to clutch a football beneath his chin, and warned that if it dropped he would be killed. When he was released, he collapsed and the guards battered him repeatedly in the groin and anal region as he pleaded for mercy. In the week after its conclusion, police engaged in brutal reprisals against the prisoners, forcing them to run a gauntlet of nightsticks and crawl naked across broken glass, among other tortures. The many injured inmates received substandard medical treatment, if any.
The attempted cover-up increased public condemnation of the raid and prompted a Congresional investigation. In January 2000, New York State settled a 26-year-old class-action lawsuit filed by the Attica inmates against prison and state officials. For their suffering during the raid and the weeks following, the former and current inmates accepted $8 million.
The post Attic uprising years instead of leading to reform led to an even more punitive justice policy whichhas had very real social, political and economic consequences. First of all,tougher laws put in place led to extraordinarily high rates of incarcernation since 1971.Back then there were several hundred thousand in prison, today there are now well over  two million bhind bars,.
Not only does the US have the world’s largest incarcerated population  it also harbors at state level some of the harshest felony disenfranchisement laws in the world.Prisoners  have also stated  that under the 13th Amendment which abolished racial slavery, at the same time it allowed human beings to be worked for free or next to nothing as long as they were prisoners. Prisoners see the current system of prison slavery to thus be a continuation of racial slavery, which is a system that generates billions of dollars in profits each year for major corporations in key industries such as fossil fuels, fast food, banking, and the US military.
One would think that slavery should not be legal under any circumstances and prisons should be staffed well-enough to ensure that inmates are not killed and sexually violated on a regular basis, surely these should not be controversial sentiments in the 21st-century. Many years after the Attica uprising the  cruel mass incarceration system in the USA that is still inherently merciless  must continue to be exposed. and shone a light upon.

Remember/ Cofio Penyberth

                 DJ Williams (Left) Lewis Valentine (Centre) and Saunders Lewis (Right)

On  day 8 September 1936, in what is now recognised as one of the most defining moments in modern Welsh history, 3 respected  middle aged men, pillars of their local community, a Baptist  minister, a University lecturer and school teacher took part in the symbolic burning of a RAF aerodrome at Penyberth, near Pwlhelli in Gwynedd, North Wales.
The Fire represented the final act in an unsuccessful eighteen months battle to prevent the building of an RAF bombing school on a site of particular importance in Welsh literary culture, the site of a culturally significant farmhouse affiliated with centuries of patrons of Welsh language poetry, and also a way-station for pilgrims to Bardsey Island.
The UK government settled on Llŷn as the site for its new bombing school after similar locations in Northumberland and Dorset were met with protests.Opposition to the presence of the bombing school in Penyberth was widespread at the time, with many objecting on pacifist  and environmental grounds, however, UK Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused to hear the case against the bombing school in Wales, despite a deputation representing half a million Welsh protesters. Protest against the bombing school was summed up by Saunders Lewis when he wrote that the UK government was intent upon turning one of the 'essential homes of Welsh culture, idiom and literature' into a place for promoting a barbaric method of warfare.For Saunders Lewis, D.J.Williams and Lewis Valentine, the bombing school represented the oppression of the English over the Welsh and the imposition of English warmongering and violence on the peaceful Welsh countryside.
The three men after deliberately torching the buildings, then calmly presented themselves calmly at Pwllheli police station to tell the confused police officer on duty at the time, what they had done and .  to accept responsibility. for their actions.They were subsequently put on trial at Caernarfon on 13 October 1936. At that time (and up until the “Welsh Language Act” of 1967), a Welsh person had no right to give their testimony in Welsh in a court in Wales. Ever since the “Laws in Wales” acts of 1535-1542, English had been made the only language of legal proceedings in Wales. The only exception allowed to this rule was if one could prove that one’s English was inadequate. All three wished to give their testimonies in Welsh, but Lewis Valentine was the only one allowed to do so, as no evidence could be provided that he was anything like fluent enough in English.
As for the other two, Saunders Lewis had a degree in English from Liverpool University (the city where he was born and brought up); and D.J. Williams also had a degree in English from Aberystwyth (University of Wales, Aberystwyth), and had done post-graduate studies at Jesus College, Oxford! Additionally, at the time of the trial, Saunders Lewis was lecturing in English, and D.J. Williams teaching English at Fishguard Grammar School. Not surprisingly, their English was deemed to be good enough, and they were not allowed to testify in their own language.
The largely sympathetic jury however were unable to reach a decision or find them guilty and the trial was transferred to the Old Bailey in London,  this decision to move the case to London, and the judge’s scornful treatment of the case at the Old Bailey angered many in Wales, but despite this  the three men were sentenced to nine months in prison.They served 8 months in prison at Wormwood Scrubs. Saunders Lewis was, controversially, dismissed from his job at Swansea University before he had been found guilty of the crime. He was subsequently hired as a lecturer of English at Cardiff University.
Following their release from prison on 27 August 1937, Lewis, Williams and Valentine were greeted at Caernarfon pavilion to a hero's welcome by a crowd of around 15,000.  Such displays of support were seen across Wales, demonstrating the impact the event had on contemporaries, particularly the Welsh-speaking community.
RAF Penrhos survives today  as a single strip civilian airfield and is today the site of the annual Wakestock music festival and home to the Penrhos home for Polish  refugees, one of the last remaining WW2 displaced persons camp, but this incident  is known in the Welsh language as Llosgi'r ysgol fomio (The bombing school burning) or Tân yn Llŷn (Fire in Llŷn), and has since  attained iconic status in Welsh nationalist circles.Today, Penyberth ranks alongside Tryweryn https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2015/10/cofiwch-dryweryn-remember-tryweryn.html in its significance in the fight for the Welsh language. The stance of Lewis, Valentine and Williams was an inspiration to Welsh language campaigners for decades and their continued efforts to advance Wales and the Welsh and  made them three of Wales’ most notable political activists. Dafydd Glyn Jones wrote of the fire that it was "the first time in five centuries that Wales struck back at England with a measure of violence... To the Welsh people, who had long ceased to believe that they had it in them, it was a profound shock."
Saunders Lewis went on to broadcast the famous ‘Tynged yr Iaith’ speech in 1962, https://morris.cymru/testun/saunders-lewis-fate-of-the-language.html giving rise to the formation of the Welsh Language Society which campaigns for the rights of the Welsh language to this day.

A Plaque at the site of the arson of the bombing school in Penyberth today

Drifting Blues

.
All days politicians spread the blues
Like mocking crows  throwing their taunts,
Hard times are growing, what are we going to do
On every circle of futility, are we born to lose?
Do we try keep on living, as blues mess up mind
Souls in trouble, gotta stop it, try and be kind,
Down the road we go, the moon still shines brightly
But in everyday vista ,the blues arrives nightly,
All around  it's crooked grin descends
Spreading its tentacles on the wind,
Allowing fine wines to become rotten
Voices to become lonely and forgotten,
Way down here on this animal farm
It's time to escape, and try ramble on,
Find some smiles of kindness, another riff
As birds head south, in search of warm drift,
We can find spaces, to try drive  away the shit
With time, we can turn again into rainbows.

National Read a Book Day

Today marks National Read a Book Day, designated for taking a little time out, dusting of that book you've been meaning to read for ages, and diving right in. Personally I love a good book, everyday is read a book day. but sometimes life gets to distracting, especially now that I'm addicted to the bloody internet.
Research has shown though that reading can have several health and social benefits. frequent readers tend to have lower stress levels than non-readers. (though that is not flipping true in my case). Well read people though tend to be more empathetic and aware of societal ills and differences, and reading is said to be good at improving critical thinking. (Which has assisted me, a lot because I can be an argumentative so and so.)
However harsh and dark the world can be at times, books can provide insights, at the same time freeing minds to engage with contradictory consciousness, without a predetermined end, reading books can be an incredibly enriching experiences, teaching us, moving us, taking us into worlds of the unknown and adventure, they also have the capacity to enrich us, heal us and change our lives forever.
Incidentally the Japanese word tsundoku refers to the act of piling up books without reading them. Have we not all been guilty from one time or other of buying multiple books and letting them pile up without ever getting around to reading them, I do it all the time. A way you could mark National Read a Book Day, is if you have a pile of  books that you know your not going to get around to looking at, simply give them away to your friends, or take them to your local charity shop so others can  appreciate them and have a good read too.
Reading is not just about pleasure, books have the power to touch us profoundly, to open our eyes to injustices, and sometimes even act as a catalyst for social change. If you simply have not the time today,to pick up a fine book and read, keep looking at the breathing living world all around you, and for goodness' sake keep on questioning.
Here are 10 books I'd recommend you read that have helped shape my own world;-

1. The Ragged Trousered Pilanthropist  - Robert Tressell

2. Homage to Catatonia - George Orwell

3. News from Nowhere and other writings - William Morris

4. Towards Democracy - Edward Carpenter

5. The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa

6. The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin

7.Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman

8. Mother Jones Speaks. edited by Philip Foner

9. Thus were there faces ;Selected Stories - Silvina Ocampa

10. Emma Goldman - Living my Life

After Labour accepts IHRA definition

Now that the IHRA definition is accepted, after ignoring direct appeals from Palestinan civic society to do so, caving in to pressure from the right of the party, after being amplified by smears from the right wing press, do not think for one moment the attacks now on Corbyn and Labour will stop.
The reaction of the establishment media and pro-Israel groups also shows how pointless the exercise was. "Oh he's adopted it but added a statement about free speech, which means he's really an antisemite." What a bloody merry go round, what a charade.
At the end of the day any form of racism stinks and Israel's apartheid Nation State Law is a very rotten one. Palestinian lives still matter too. The Tories and their lapdogs are not on the right side of history, the people who continue to stand against injustice are though. Sadly  a party that starts abandoning its principles, renouncing free speech, which will silence justified criticism of Israel, subsequently playing right into the hands of its enemies, that it should be attacking, is going to fail, and it is the interests of the poor and the vulnerable in our society that will be hurt the most. A party that can lead the fight for ongoing struggles for justice, freedom and equality, organising against all oppression and racism, for the many not the few, is one however that can offer again a ray of hope.

Meteors falling from the sky

Lana Del Rey's cancellation on Saturday of her performance at Israel's Meteor Festival has elicited many and varied responses with pressure now being applied on other musicians on social media to refrain from playing at the festival in Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan at the end of the week on land that is inaccessible to millions of Palestinians.
Already  up to 15 international bands  have joined her, and cancelled.their reversal marks a setback for Israel, which aims to prevent politics from infiltrating the arts.The campaign for Boycott, Divestment. Sanctions movement (BDS) urges businesses,artists and universities to sever ties with Israel. It says it is a nonviolent way to promote the Palestinian cause, signifying a meaningful contribution to the Palestinians struggle for freedom, justice and equality. There is a long history of artists  either cancelling performances in Israel or publicly joining the cultural boycott, vowing not to play music, accept awards, or attend events in the country until the colonial oppression and human rights abuses of Palestinians  in the West Bank and Gaza comes to and end and  continue to respect the Palestinians non-violent picket line.
The pressure exerted  by the BDS movement seems to be working, so a heartfelt thanks to all who have respected the boycott, their cancellation is a major blow and rejection of the Israeli governments efforts to use art and culture to whitewash and beautify its military occupation and apartheid system.
Forty years ago festival organisers, all over the world stood with South Africans struggling against apartheid, endorsing the BDS campaign against South Africa, now more than ever, we are morally obliged to stand  with the oppressed Palestinian people.

https://secure.everyaction.com/ZZpV3y6jZEy55WkfkjftmA2?ms=PACBI

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-all-the-artists-who-have-pulled-out-of-israel-s-meteor-festival-1.6436242?utm_campaign=General&utm_medium=web_push&utm_source=P

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28/6/1712 -2/7/78) - Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

The following powerful opening lines  are from the social contract, the brilliant political treatise  by Jean Jacques Rousseau, which the author and philosopher wrote in exile from his home, in Geneva , that went on to inspire the French Revolution.
In it he wrote  that man is naturally good, but becomes corrupted by the pernicious influence  of human society and institutions. He preached that mankind  could be improved  by returning to nature and living a natural life of peace with his neighbors and himself. Mankind must learn to break the chains that attach themselves to our lives. A beautiful idea that we should pay more than lip service to. We have to value the concepts of freedom, equality and community.Like Rousseau tree centuries ago, we in the 21st have to look for and identify the common good that will enable our society to revive democracy,solidarity and the art of living  together.

" MAN was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater than they. How did this transformation come about? I do not know. How can it be made legitimate? That question I believe I can answer.
If I were to consider only force and the effects of force, I should say: 'So long as a people is constrained to obey, and obeys, it does well;  but as soon as it can shake off the yoke,  and shakes it off, it does better; for since it regains its freedom by the same right as that which removed it, a people is either justified  in taking back its freedom, or there is no justifying those who took it away.' But the social order is a sacred right which serves as a basis for all other rights. And as it is not a natural right, it must be founded on covenants. The problem is to determine what those covenants are. "