Joel Emmanuel Hagglund (Joe Hill) born October 7, 1879 Gavle, Sweden,he emigrated to the United States in 1902, where he changed his name to Joseph Hillstrom. After several years as an itinerant worker - a 'hobo' he joined the IWW (the Industrial Workers of the World).A wobbly organiser, balladeer, he was also a man of pride, the flag that he proudly followed was one of international solidarity.
Union organiser, songwriter and member of the Industrial Workers of the World. He was murdered at the age of 36 by a US Government firing squad framed for a murder that may believed he did not commit. An innocent man condemned to death for his passion. Many historians have come to recognise it as one of the worst travesties of justice in American history. After a trial riddled with biased rulings and suppression of important defense evidence and other violations of judicial procedure, which was characteristic of many cases involving labour radicals.
Just prior to his execution. Hill had written to fellow International Worker of the World Bill Haywood saying. "Goodbye Bill. I die like a true rebel.Don't waste any time in mourning. Organise.
An estimated 30,000 people attended his funeral in an impressive singing demonstration under the banner ' In Memorium-Joe Hill - Murdered by the Capitalist Class. A rebel to the core, his voice still rings out loud, rightfully venerated and celebrated as a hero and martyr.He started the struggle that many continue to fight today.
Music and the IWW: the creation of working class counterculture
Detail from Cable Street Mural
I have made a point of annually remembering that on 4th October, 1936,
the people of the East End inflicted a massive defeat on Sir Oswald
Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. During this time Britain was facing very serious economic problems. Throughout
the mid 1930s, the BUF moved closer towards Hitler’s form of fascism
with Mosley himself saying that “fascism can and will win in Britain”.
The British fascists took on a more vehemently anti-Semitic stance,
describing Jews as “rats and vermin from whitechapel” and tried to blame
Jews
for the cause of the country's problems. Mosley’s blackshirts had been harassing the sizeable Jewish population
in the East End all through the 1930s. By 1936 anti-semitic assaults by
fascists were growing and windows of Jewish-owned businesses were
routinely smashed.Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ The notorious Daily Mail
headline is just one chilling indication of the very real threat Oswald
Mosley’s British Union of Fascists posed in the mid 1930s. On Sunday Oct. 4, 1936, Mosley planned to lead his Blackshirt supporters on a march
through the East End, following months of BUF meetings and leafleting in
the area designed to intimidate Jewish people and break up the East
End’s community solidarity. Despite a petition signed by 100,000 people,
the British government permitted the march to go ahead and designated
7,000 members of the police force to accompany it. They were not to be welcomed, instead they were
met by over 250,000 protestors, waving banners with slogans such as
'They shall not Pass'( no pasaron, famous republican slogan from the
Spanish Civil War) , 'No Nazis here' and 'East End Unite.' A mighty force had assembled prepared to defend their streets and neighbourhoods and their right to live in them. As the fascists assembled in Royal Mint Street, near the Tower, they
were attacked by large groups of workers. When the Metropolitan Police
tried to clear a path through Gardiner’s Corner, a blockade of tens of
thousands of people stood firm. Anti-fascists
blocked the route by barricading the street with rows of domestic
furniture and the fascists and the police who were defending them were
attacked with eggs, rotten fruit and the contents of chamber pots. Local
kids rolled marbles under police horses hooves. A mighty battle ensued,
leaving many injured and others arrested. Many years later it is remembered because it saw thousands of people,
from many walks of life, women, children, local jews, Irish groups,
communists, socialists, anarchists standing firm as one in an incredible
display of unity who worked together to prevent Mosley's fascists from
marching through a Jewish area in London.Together, they won a famous victory and put the skids under Britain’s first fascist mass movement.The fascists did not get to march and they did not
pass, and were left in humiliation so today we look back on this living
history in celebration and pride. Significantly, for some people
that were involved in the protest, Cable Street was the
road to Spain, and many would go on to volunteer as soldiers for the
Republicans there.The legend that was Cable Street became the
lasting inspiration for the continuing British fight against
the fascism that was spreading all across Europe and would eventually
engulf the planet in a terrible world war. We might like to think those days are
behind us, but
anti-semitism, racism and intolerance is on the rise. The far right is growing throughout Europe, on 13th October
the far-right racist Democratic Football Lads Alliance have organised a demonstration for bigots and Islamaphobes in London.In July 2018, 10,000 of them took to the streets, uniting racists from
UKIP to Generation Identity, where nazi salutes were casually raised . No longer a fringe group, the far right are
given airtime by the mainstream media, well funded and supported by
many in the political establishment. Across
Europe racist and fascist organisations are receiving growing support
at a level not seen since the 1930s. Tommy Robinson, ex EDL leader and
notorious fascist, who is being courted by UKIP, is a firm favourite of
the DFLA. Thugs linked to the group attacked RMT union members and
others, after a recent anti fascist march, in London. The far right, at
street level and electorally, use Islamophobia as a way of rebuilding
in Britain. The DFLA and their supporters want to come to London to
spread their racism and Islamophobia. Stand Up To Racism, supported by Unite
Against Fascism and Love Music Hate Racism will be resisting their race
hate. We are at a crucial moment in our time and cannot simply allow such forces to grow. We must continue to regenerate a broad based mass resistance to division and hate, to turn the tide on the rise of hate, oppose racism, Islamophobic scapegoating and Antisemitism. A national demonstration against these forces has been called for Noveber 1th , details for event can be found here.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1887445111550804/ The winds that blew across Cable Street still exist today , we must remain vigilant to this. We
should never forget the Battle of Cable Street. Teach your childrem
about it. Today and tomorrow we must still rally around the cry of No
Pasaran- They shall not pass. Everyone, who cares about the future of
our society, should come together, for the politics of unity not
division
The Tory's gathering again, leaving desperate voices forgotten with empty gestures, waving their promises and lies, clanking their chains, bringing their daily curses soundbites of shame, in these mad days of Brexit, continuing to misgovern, no sign of being strong and stable people sad for this country, as they manage to wreck it, homeless people dying on our streets, poor people starving food banks growing, benefit claimants living in fear, May robotically dances on stage, malfunctioning once again no dancing queen, just a self depreciating clown, after the laughter has died down, their creepy and scary Theresa, and chums, it's time for them to be gone.
There's so much conditioning, making us hate
that we become our own enemies at the gate,
beams of reason disappearing before us
colors of hope melting in the earth,
politicians burying consciousness
join in the revel, play with the devil,
bitter and biting, silently gloating
releasing fathomless depths of despair,
punishing people for simply being ill
with policies of cruelty that actually kill,
the ghosts of Grenfell still haunting the land
yet they continue building walls to divide,
louder and louder, the wind is raging
the air not yet full of resignation,
strong, courageous and resilient
we can overcome the monsters,
gentler aspects of humanity will reveal
to not allow ourselves to be draped in pain,
hopelessness will only hang around, if we feed it
blazing embers of defiance burn brightly too,
we can be saved, greet tomorrow's epiphany
the future unwritten, can cancel negativity.
The Tory conference has started today in Birmingham , running till
Wednesday 3 October,as they continue to sprout their message of a stronger, fairer United Kingdom, and their leader refuses to apologise for her hostile policies,displaying a clear lack of care for anyone, lets not forget that all Tory's are the same. Whatever period in time, they always leave us
with a diabolical legacy, while at the same time trying to
convince people that they have been doing a decent job.
Aided and abetted by their friends in the Daily Mail, the Telegraph,
the Express,the Times, the BBC and the Scum etc all misleading and parroting
the Tory's narratives and soundbites. Should we simply forget their ruthless, toxic and unjust policies.
Their constant assaults on the N.H.S, people on
welfare, the disadvantaged, the poor, people forced to use food banks, rising homelessness, benefit cuts, universal credit, combined with low pay, zero hour contracts, benefit cuts, the lack of affordable housing, not forgetting the windrush scandal and our public services cut to the bone and the ongoing mess that is Brexit, the list is endless, their cruel conscious ideological policies that have caused so many unnecessary deaths should not be simply forgotten.
We have to get rid of them by any means necessary, because the devil
comes in many shapes and sizes, and I believe it is truly at home in the
Conservative Party, a demonic party, if there ever was one As Theresa May continues to blister on in her usual fashion of delusion , laughing at us all, we simply cannot afford to tolerate her or her Government anymore , we would all be better served with a government that actually supports peoples
needs, based on ideas of social justice and fairness, mutual aid and
sustainability. Theresa May and co are so divided and out of control they are no longer fit to govern, we need a general election now, their time is up , they have to go as soon as possible.
Autumn is waking as a friend drifts to sleep and trees shed their tears in the distance the sound of a harmonica soaring in the sky by the side of a silvery moon another star is born all flames become light blazing, burning bright.
Alan Moore is famous for his groundbreaking work in comics: Watchmen (1986–’87) which fundamentally transformed mainstream comic literature in the 1980s, and many of Moore’s other titles — V for Vendetta (1988–’89), Batman: The Killing Joke (1988), From Hell (1989–’96), and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
(1999–) — have become cultural landmarks. Moore detests the corporate
franchising of his work, however, and after finishing his occult series Promethea in 2005, he largely moved away from illustrated storytelling, spending the subsequent decade crafting Jerusalem,
a massive prose narrative (“longer than the Bible,” Moore quips)
divided into three volumes, which was released in 2016 by Liverlight
Publishing.
Out
now comes a beautiful paperback edition of Alan Moore's Jerusalem, in which he pens a grandiose tome about his
hometown of Northampton, employing an extremely wide variety of styles,
including a poem and a play, channeling both the
ecstatic visions of William Blake and the theoretical physics of Albert
Einstein .
Combining elements of historical and
suprnatural fiction and drawing on a range of writing styles, the author
describes it as a work of "genetic mythology". Fierce in its imagining and stupefying in
its scope, Jerusalem is the tale of everything, told from a vanished
gutter. In these pages lurk
demons from the second-century Book of Tobit and angels with golden
blood who reduce fate to a snooker tournament. Vagrants, prostitutes,
and ghosts rub shoulders with Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Beckett, James
Joyce’s tragic daughter Lucia, and Buffalo Bill, among many others.
There is a conversation in the thunderstruck dome of St. Paul’s
Cathedral, childbirth on the cobblestones of Lambeth Walk, an estranged
couple sitting all night on the cold steps of a Gothic church front, and
an infant choking on a cough drop for eleven chapters. An art
exhibition is in preparation, and above the world a naked old man and a
beautiful dead baby race along the Attics of the Breath toward the heat
death of the universe. An opulent working class mythology for those without a
pot to piss in, through the labyrinthine streets and pages of Jerusalem
tread ghosts that sing of wealth, poverty, and our threadbare millennium. in these pages spin a metatextual ritual that aspires to overturn the fundamental economic mythology built into the social fabric of late capitalism. In an era when the working classes are portrayed as hopeless victims or
demonised as thugs and idiots, while all the while being urged on to
greater extremes of racism and xenophobia by the popular media, Jerusalem rejects the portrayal of limited horizons and the glamorisation of poverty that Moore sees in TV shows like Shameless in favour of a work that grants dignity and profundity to life at the bottom of the economic shitheap,
Yet another masterpiece from my favourite visionary, who continues to plant seeds in us, so we may grow and understand. beyond the dark satanic mills of our ordinary oppressed existences, we are all already living in the shining, eternal city of Jerusalem. Alan Moore is one
of the few Writers capable of illuminating the exterior/interior of our Lives, for that I am truly grateful, this book by the way. is much easier than Ulysses and funnier too, though must add when I originally read got lost a bit, but that is often the way with me. Seek this tome out nevertheless, I strongly recommend.
"A master storyteller taking the voices of the dead as his own'" - Neil Gaiman
"He
saw, as through a fog, the grave mistake he'd made. He'd been so anxious
for success and validation that he'd come to think you weren't really a
writer unless you were a succesful one. He knew, in this unprecedeted
patch of clarity, that the idea was nonsense. Look at William Blake,
ignored and without recognition until years after his death, regarded as a
lunatic or fool by his conpeporaries. Yet Benedict felt sure that
Blake, in his three-score-and-ten, had never a moments doubt that he was a
true artist. Ben's own problem, looked at in this new and brutal light, was a simple failure of nerve."-Alan Moore, Jerusalem
Shouldn’t you know if you’re going to book a room in an illegal Israeli settlement? Apparently, Booking.com doesn’t think so.
Days ago Booking.com, bowing to pressure from pro-Israel activists, started describing all of Jerusalem as a "city in Israel"- literally erasing Palestinian East Jerusalem. It's not clear why the online travel reservation servixe made the call to change its description of Jerusalem, given that East Jerusalem is regarded as occupied territory under international law and global consensus is that the eastern part of the holy city is the capital of Palestine. Israel’s control over the eastern part, which the Jewish state annexed
in the 1980s, is disputed and seen as illegal by many countries and
international organizations, including the European Union and the United
Nations, and to reject Israel’s decision to settle its citizens there. Despite the international community, rejecting Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, it still continues to be occupied.
Through recent settlement activity, Israel continues to reinforce
existing settlements and the separation of East Jerusalem from the rest
of the West Bank and is exacerbating the territorial fragmentation of
the West Bank. Settlements are illegal under international law as reaffirmed by UN
Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016), The developments on the ground
make the prospect of a two-state solution increasingly unattainable.
It is also worth noting that though Palestinians in East Jerusalem are required to pay taxes like any other
inhabitant of the city, but do not receive the same services that others
do. The Jerusalem Municipality deliberately avoids significantly
investing in infrastructure and services in the Palestinian
neighborhoods – including roads, pavements, water and sewage systems,
schools and cultural institutions. This policy affects almost every
aspect of Palestinians’ lives in East Jerusalem.
The willigness of the global brand to wade into a global row with such alacrity is likely to raise eyebrows. Founded in the Netherlands in 1996, Booking,com is said to offer more than 28 million reported listings in more than 138,000 destinations in 229 countries and territories worldwide. More than 1.5 million room nights are reserved daily on the platform, according to the firm.
Booking.com’s CEO Gillian Tans is a proud progressive
female leader, famous for her openness — so if we put her personal reputation on the line we can get Booking.com must tell the truth: that East Jerusalem
is occupied territory.
In response to media reports, Booking.com downplayed the change, showing they don't really understand how painful it is for Palestinian families to watch their history get erased one website at a time.
But this isn't just about websites, it's about a concerted cultural campaign that starts with pro-Israel, right wing extremists,extends to Trump moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and continues when mainstream companies like Booking.com get on board with erasing Palestinians connection to their homeland.
We need to make Booking.com a line in the sand - anns CEO Gillian Tans is our best shot to getthem to tell the truth about Israeli occupation. Join CODEPINK, Jewish Voices for Peace and others in sending a message to Gillian Tans. Add your name below and share with everyone you know. Cheers.
Sad to hear that one half of much loved Cockney music duo Chas and Dave, singer Chas Hodges has died aged 74.It was announced earlier today in a tweet from the musical duo's twitter account. The band posted online: "It is with tremendous sadness that we announce the passing of our very own Chas Hodges, "Despite receiving successful treatment for oesophageal cancer recently, Chas suffered organ failure and passed away peacefully in the early hours of this morning." https://twitter.com/chas_dave/status/1043470431783710720
A message on the groups website added:"We would like to thank our fans or their fantastic support and goodwill at this difficult time."
The official Twitter account for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, of whom Hdges was a huge fan, posted ;Everyone at the Clun is deeply saddened to hear of one of our own, Chas Hodges."Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this difficult time,"
Born Charles Nicholas Hodges in 1943, Chas will be forever remembered for his work with David Victor Peacock, better known as Dave.Hodges' career kicked of the 1960's working alongside legendary producer Joe Meek, while working as a musician he backed Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent. Hodges also played bass with a short lived band called the Outlaws , who were once supported by the Beatles, who he stuck up a long friendship with. Hodges also worked with the highly respected Cliff Bennet and the Rebel Rousers , he also had sessions with Ritchie Blackmore, and joined Albert Lee's band Heads ,Hands and Feet, plus a short lived stint with the Rockers, who featured Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott, the Move's Roy Wood and Status Quo drummer John Coghlan.
Chas and Dave formed in 1975, known for their distinctive 'rockney' style, which blended early rock and roll with elements of cockney musical hall humour, pub singalong and boogie woogie piano.In the tradition of the Kinks and the Small Faces and around the same time as Ian Dury and Squeeze, they wrote exceptionally witty songs about life in London, performed with a strong affection for all.,so tied to its place, singing about the working classes of the city. After supporting Led Zeppelin at Knebworth in 1979, they went on to enjoy a run of hits in the late seventies and early eighties with songs like Gertcha,'Rabbit, The Sideboard Song,'Ain't No Pleasing You and'Snooper Loopy. They became known and loved because they knew how to give audiences a good time, gaining an enthusiastic cult following with both young and old.
They disbanded in 2009 following the retirement of Dave Peacock after his wife Sue's death.
However in 2010 Chas and Dave announced their return to live circuit with much critical acclaim. The duo released their first album of new material in over three decades this year, ' A 'liitle Bit of Us' included a track that addressed Chas's cancer diagnosis. The band was forced to cancel a number of dates back in August of this year to his illness. In a statement at the time Hodges stoically said:"In my time as a musician/entertainer.I would say the most depressing thing to do is to have to cancel a gig or gigs."
Already the internet is awash with tributes to him, on all accounts a gentleman who was admired and loved in equal measure. Over the years, some saw Chas and Dave as a bit of a novelty act, but Chas Hodges was one of the most talented musicians this country has ever produced, my record collection is better to have them within it. An absolute legend, so long for now Chas ,R,I,P your songs will continue to brighten up many a darkened days,..
The Tory's double standards have long been plain to see. Strong and stable they certainly are not. Forced to backtrack time and time again. No wonder commentators have dubbed Theresa May the Queen of U-Turns. She and her party are completely lacking any credibility or moral fibre, but keep continuing to cause so much wreckage and damage to our country, with their sheer incompetance.
Now after farting around for over years, wasting everyone's time with ludicrous plans regarding Brexit, she has again been put on the spot after delivering yet another pointless speech on the progress,or lack of it with negotiations.Thursdays gathering of European leaders in Salzburg was supposed to help bridge outstanding differences and pave the way for a potential deal by the middle of November, but ended in humiliation for May as they rebuffed her plans.In an ambush that blindsided British officials, the EU council president, Donald Tusk dismissed and demolished her Chequers proposals as unworkable after a private meeting of national leaders. He later openly mocked her on Instagram, with a satirical post referring to the EU's rejections of her plans to "cherry pick" parts of the European single market. He was joined by the French president Emmanuel Macron, who dismissed the entire Brexit project as being pursued by "liars".
It really though came as no surprise that her plans were rejected.Michel Barnier, the blocs chief Brexit negotiator, has said on numerous occassions this summer that its core proposals, the UK effectively stays in the single market for goods and collects EU tariffs on Brussel's behalf was never going to be accepted.
This rejection has now triggered a crisis in government of her own making, and as she ratchets up her language on the issue, in a form of futile defiance she really does us no favours, with many believing that May has outlived her usefulness, as her domestic 'credibility' is seen to be so badly damaged, her subsequent statement attracted widespread attention, partially for being "pathetic, painful and petulant''. If she really believes she has the country with her, and has its best interests in mind, then she should call a General election. Blaming the EU will no longer work for her.We so need to bring her down as soon as possible, she and her party have no clue how to extricate themselves from this mess, while continuing to screw the country.Yep Theresa May, it's time for her to go, I certainly will not be shedding any tears for her.
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