The Life and Genius of Thelonius Monk (10/10/1917 - 17/2/1982)

Be bob legend and leader of the post war jazz revolution Thelonious Sphere Monk was born on the 10th of October 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of Thelonious and Barbara Monk, two years after his sister Marian. A brother, Thomas, was born a couple of years later. In his sixth year he was taken north from the racially oppressive Land of Cotton to relative freedom within the urban racism of the Big Apple settling on West 63rd Street in the San Juan Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, near the Hudson River. His father, Thelonious, Sr., joined the family three years later, but health considerations forced him to return to North Carolina. During his stay, however, he often played the harmonica, ‘Jew’s harp,” and piano, all of which probably influenced his son’s unyielding musical interests. Young Monk turned out to be a musical prodigy in addition to a good student and a fine athlete. He studied the trumpet briefly but began exploring the piano at age nine. Although he had some formal training and eavesdropped on his sister's piano lessons, he was essentially self-taught. By his early teens, he was playing rent parties, sitting in on organ and piano at a local Baptist church, and was reputed to have won several “amateur hour” competitions at the Apollo Theater. Monk attended Stuyvesant High School, but dropped out at the end of his sophomore year to pursue music and around 1935 took a job as a pianist for a traveling evangelist and faith healer.
Returning after two years, he formed his own quartet and played local bars and small clubs, until the spring of 1941, when drummer Kenny Clarke hired him as the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. Minton’s, legend has it, was where the “bebop revolution” began. The after-hours jam sessions at Minton’s, along with similar musical gatherings at Monroe’s Uptown House, Dan Wall’s Chili Shack, among others, attracted a new generation of musicians brimming with fresh ideas about harmony and rhythm, bringing Monk into close contact and collaboration with other leading exponents of bebop, including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Parker and later, Miles Davis, and Monk’s close friend and fellow pianist, Bud Powell.

Known as one of the first creators of modern jazz, Monk’s music was known for its humorous, almost playful, quality.Monk's style at the time was described as "hard-swinging," with the addition of runs in the style of Art Tatum. Monk's stated influences include Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and other early stride pianists His playing was percussive and sparse, often being described as “angular,” and he used complex and dissonant harmonies and unusual intervals and rhythms. 

He was also one of the most prolific composers in the history of jazz. Many of his compositions, which were generally written in the 12-bar blues or the 32-bar ballad form, became jazz standards. Among his best-known works are “Well, You Needn’t,” “I Mean You,” “Straight, No Chaser,” “Criss-Cross,” “Mysterioso,” “Epistrophy,” “Blue Monk,” and “ ’Round Midnight.”

Eccentric, enigmatic, extraordinary, no one in jazz has really played like Monk. His  idiosyncratic style utilized unexpected melodic twists, dissonant harmonies (which are pleasing to jazz players), erratic percussive phrases punctuated by unexpected hesitations and silences. Despite these unorthodox qualities, Duke Ellington is the only jazz composer who has been recorded more often than Monk, which is particularly remarkable as Ellington composed over 1,000 songs while Monk wrote about 70. Monk is one of only five jazz musicians to have been on the cover of Time (along with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck and Wynton Marsalis).

In 1944 Monk made his first studio recordings with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet. Hawkins was among the first prominent jazz musicians to promote Monk, and Monk later returned the favor by inviting Hawkins to join him on the 1957 session with John Coltrane. Monk made his first recordings as leader for Blue Note in 1947 (later anthologised on Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1) which showcased his talents as a composer of original melodies for improvisation. Monk married Nellie Smith the same year, and in 1949 the couple had a son, T.S. Monk, who later became a jazz drummer. A daughter, Barbara (affectionately known as Boo-Boo), was born in 1953.
Harsh, ill-informed criticism limited Monk’s opportunities to work, opportunities he desperately needed especially after his marriage, and the birth of his son, Thelonious, Jr., in 1949. Monk found work where he could, but he never compromised his musical vision. His already precarious financial situation took a turn for the worse in August of 1951, when he was falsely arrested for narcotics possession, essentially taking the rap for his friend Bud Powell. Monk refused to testify against his friend, so the police confiscated his New York City Cabaret Card. Without the all-important cabaret card he was unable to play in any New York venue where liquor was served, and this severely restricted his ability to perform for several crucial years. Monk spent most of the early and mid-1950s composing, recording, and performing at theaters and out-of-town gigs, composed new music, and made several trio and ensemble records under the Prestige Label (1952-1954), cutting several under-recognized, but highly significant albums, including collaborations with saxophonist Sonny Rollins and drummer Art Blakey. In 1954, Monk participated in the famed Christmas Eve sessions which produced the albums Bags' Groove and Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants by Miles Davis. Davis found Monk's idiosyncratic accompaniment style difficult to improvise over and asked him to lay out (not accompany), which almost brought them to blows. However, in Miles Davis' autobiography Miles, Davis claims that the anger and tension between Monk and himself never took place and that the claims of blows being exchanged were "rumors" and a "misunderstanding."
In 1954, Monk paid his first visit to Europe, performing and recording in Paris. It was here that he first met Baroness Pannonica "Nica" de Koenigswarter, a member of the Rothschild banking family of England and a patroness of several New York City jazz musicians. She would be a close friend for the rest of Monk's life.
In 1958, Monk and de Koenigswarter were detained by police in Wilmington, Delaware. When Monk refused to answer the policemen's questions or cooperate with them, they beat him with a blackjack. Though the police were authorized to search the vehicle and found narcotics in suitcases held in the trunk of the Baroness's car, Judge Christie of the Delaware Superior Court ruled that the unlawful detention of the pair, and the beating of Monk, rendered the consent to the search void as given under duress. State v. De Koenigswarter, 177 A.2d 344 (Del. Super. 1962). Monk was represented by Theophilus Nix, the second African-American member of the Delaware Bar Association.
In 1955, Monk signed with a new label, Riverside, and recorded several outstanding LP’s which garnered critical attention, notably Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington, The Unique Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners, Monk’s Music and his second solo album, Thelonious Monk Alone.

Monk turned a page with his 1956 album, Brilliant Corners, which is usually considered to be his first true masterpiece. The album's title track made a splash with its innovative, technically demanding, and extremely complex sound, which had to be edited together from many separate takes. With the release of two more Riverside masterworks, Thelonious Himself and Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane, Monk finally received the acclaim he deserved, and his career began to soar.
In 1957, the Thelonious Monk Quartet, which included John Coltrane, began performing regularly at the Five Spot in New York. Enjoying huge success, they went on to tour the United States and even make some appearances in Europe. By 1962, Monk was so popular that he was given a contract with Columbia Records, a decidedly more mainstream label than Riverside. During the 1960s, Monk scored notable successes with albums such as Criss- Cross, Monk’s Dream, It’s Monk Time, Straight No Chaser, and Underground. But as Columbia/CBS records pursued a younger, rock-oriented audience, Monk and other jazz musicians ceased to be a priority for the label. Monk’s final recording with Columbia was a big band session with Oliver Nelson’s Orchestra in November of 1968, which turned out to be both an artistic and commercial failure. Columbia’s disinterest and Monk’s deteriorating health kept the pianist out of the studio.The years that followed included several overseas tours, but by the early 1970s, Monk was ready to retire from the limelight.
His style  was not universally appreciated poet with the poet and jazz critic Philip Larkin dismissing Monk as 'the elephant on the keyboard'. Monk's manner was idiosyncratic and eccentric. Visually, he was renowned for his distinctive style in suits, hats and sunglasses, plus his goatee beard. He was also noted for the fact that at times, while the other musicians in the band continued playing, he would stop, stand up from the keyboard and dance for a few moments before returning to the piano. Monk's style was so different that he didn't have many imitators; but he had many musicians that were influenced by him, and were interpreters of his music.
The documentary film Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988) attributes Monk's quirky behaviour to mental illness. In the film, Monk's son, T.S. Monk, says that his father sometimes did not recognize him, and he reports that Monk was hospitalized on several occasions due to an unspecified mental illness that worsened in the late 1960s. No reports or diagnoses were ever publicized, but Monk would often become excited for two or three days, pace for days after that, after which he would withdraw and stop speaking. Physicians recommended electro convulsive therapy as a treatment option for Monk's illness, but his family would not allow it; antipsychotics and lithium were prescribed instead. Other theories abound: Leslie Gourse, author of the book Straight, No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk (1997), reports that at least one of Monk's psychiatrists failed to find evidence of manic depression or schizophrenia. Others blamed Monk's behavior on intentional and inadvertent drug use: Monk was also unknowingly administered LSD, and may have taken peyote with Timothy Leary. Another physician maintains that Monk was misdiagnosed and given drugs during his hospital stay that may have caused brain damage.Jazz musicians have always been vulnerable, depending, as so many of them do, on drink and drugs to make their ordeals temporarily bearable. Monk was mo exception. However, it is often the case with creative people that along with some level of madness comes genius and wisdom.
Like his music, Monk’s views on religion were also unorthodox. As a teenager, as mentioned earlier he played the organ for a traveling evangelist, but it appears he was an agnostic who held no religious beliefs of his own. Biographer Robin D. G. Kelly writes that “Monk clearly was not a true believer,” and that “most people who knew Monk remember that he rarely attended church and did not speak about religion in the most flattering terms.” His niece Charlotte said “he was never into religion. Religion was not his thing. . . . He never went to church or any of that. And his kids, he never took them to church. He said they had to have their own mind about things.” When the journalist Valerie Wilmer asked him, “Do you believe in God?”, Monk replied, “I don’t know nothing. Do you?” But Monk was tolerant of religion, and although ambivalent himself, he sometimes accompanied his mother on the piano as she sang her beloved hymns while dying of cancer.
Monk also had long periods of not talking to anybody. He spent the final seven years of his life, until his death in 1982 in near total silence, not speaking or playing a note to anyone  in Baroness de Koenigswarter's apartment in Weehawken. On February 5, 1982, he suffered a stroke and never regained consciousness; twelve days later, on February 17th, he died. He is buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Since his death, his music has been rediscovered by a wider audience and he is now counted alongside the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and others as a major figure in the history of jazz. Whatever Thelonious was to the media, it's clear what his legacy will be to jazz music: that of a true originator.Today Thelonious Monk is widely accepted as a genuine master of American music. His compositions constitute the core of jazz repertory and are performed by artists from many different genres. His recordings both live and in the studio continue to inspire jazz musicians, and many of his albums, remain essential listening, that have bought me great comfort over the years, transcendental and beautiful. He has since  been the subject of award winning documentaries, biographies and scholarly studies, prime time television tributes, and he even has an Institute created in his name.A true original there's only one Monk, he  probably said it best when he insisted that a "genius is one who is most like himself."  In 1993, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2006, Monk was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. His place in the jazz pantheon is secure. A link to this wonderful artist can be found here:- https://monkinstitute.org/
And below are some personal favourites from him.

Thelonius Monk - This is my story , This is my song

Thelonious Monk - Epistrophy

 Thelonious Monk -  Hackensack, `1965 

Thelonious Monk - Body and Soul

Thelonious Monk - Monk's Dream 

Thelonious Monk - Misterioso

Thelonious Monk - Everything happens to me

 Thelonious Monk Quartet - Round Midnight

On World Mental Health Day 2018 :End the stigmatisation, Stop and scrap Universal Credit

Today marks World Mental Health Day, a day that provides campaigners with the opportunity to raise awareness and advocacy against social stigma that people with mental health issues daily experience.
Mental illness is now recognised as one of the biggest causes of individual distress and misery in our society, comparable to poverty and unemployment. One in four adults in the UK today has been diagnosed with a mental illness, that can have a profound impact on the lives of tens of millions of people in the UK, and thus affect their ability to sustain relationships, work, or just get through the day. What greater indictment of a system could there be.
The issues of mental health and mental illness are complicated. Yes  there is persuasive evidence that human biology plays an important role in determining each person’s likelihood of contending with particular mental health conditions, but experiences of social isolation, inequality, feelings of alienation and dissociation, and even the basic assumptions and ideology of materialism and neoliberalism itself are seen today to be significant drivers too.
Sadly despite the efforts of many, the subject of mental illness remains a taboo subject, the fact is that many in our communities suffer from a wide of different problems like clinical depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, ADHD, schizophrenia, anxiety, mania and drug and alcohol problems. Many of us are left to face our problems in silence and isolation, while experiencing daily life as a battle, having  to choose  between societies consensus ways of dealing with things, medication, psychotherapy, counselling etc etc, or simply learning to forget.
Emotionally, our heads are only just above water. I personally have a black dog that  calls regularly, that  I unfortunately  have no control  over, it just happens. Combined with anxiety, can suddenly feel  fear, and all those turbulent  unexplained feelings that drives one to self destruction,.In extreme circumstance  can also  get so angst ridden that I cannot leave my house, let alone phone a GP to seek help, because I fear I will be judged and blamed somehow, embarrassed and ashamed for something I have no control over. With a tendency to affix blame and leave me  feeling even more unworthy. I'm getting there but still have a long way to go. I have learnt techniques to  help, but realize  using liquid courage, certainly does not help, though that does not stop me ,especially when out and about in public.
Enough about me, among the most menacing barriers to the social progress we need around mental health. are the profound levels of guilt, shame and stigma that surround these issues.Those who suffer are often, like me, ashamed to speak of it. Those who are lucky enough to be free of mental illness are terrified of it. When it comes to mental illness, we still don't quite get how it all works. Our treatments, while sometimes effective, often are not. And the symptoms, involving a fundamental breakdown of our perceived reality, are existentially terrifying. There is something almost random about physical illness, in how it comes upon us, a physical illness can strike anyone. But  mental illness  that could also strike any of us, without warning should be equally recognised.
Combined  with  simple fear, mental illness brings out a judgmental streak that would be unthinkably grotesque when applied to physical illness. Imagine telling someone with a broken leg to "snap out of it." Imagine that a death by cancer was accompanied by the same smug head shaking. Mental illness is so qualitatively different that we feel it permissible to be judgmental. We might even go so far as to blame the sufferer. Because of the  stigma involved  it often leaves people much sicker. 
We live under a system of blame that somehow makes the emotional and psychological difficulties we encounter seem to be our own fault. People left feeling ashamed that they need medication, seeing this as revealing some constitutional weakness. Afraid about needing therapy, thinking that they should be able to solve their problems on their own.  Individuals actually fail to seek any treatment, because mental health care is seen as something that only the most dramatically unstable person would turn to. It is estimated that only about a quarter of people with a mental health problem in the UK receive ongoing treatment, leaving the majority of people grappling with mental health issues on their own, seeking help or information, and dependent on the informal support of family, friends or colleagues.
Those who live with mental illness are among the most stigmatised groups in society. We are challenged doubly. On one hand with the struggle of our symptoms that result from our illnesses and then by the stereotypes and prejudice that results from peoples misconceptions about mental illness. Many  are robbed of opportunities that help define  a quality life,  jobs, safe housing, health care and affiliation with a diverse group of people, and are left feeling almost invisible and on our own. Prejudice leads to discrimination and so on.
 It should not  be the case that some of us have to suffer in silence from anxiety and depression, we should be ok to say we don't feel ok. When some of us actually seek some assistance, we get doubted and pushed away. All this plays a part in making us feeling worse and keep us down. There is growing concern that our Governments policies are actually fuelling the current  mental health crisis. Budget cuts to mental health services combined with no genuine support are driving  many people to the edge. As a result many people  are currently left isolated, facing long waiting lists for mental health therapies and diagnostic assessments
Prime Minister Maggie May herself  once described the shortfalls in mental health services on her first day in Downing Street  "as one of the burning injustices in our country" Despite these gestures she and the Tories have not delivered on their promise to give mental health the same priority as physical health. They have  offered  no extra funding whilst systematically raiding mental health budgets over the last eight years. There are now over 6,000 fewer mental health nurses than in 2010. The number of psychiatrists employed by the NHS has fallen by  four percent since 2014 , with a 10 percent drop in those who specialise in children's mental health and a similar drop in those working with older adults. Eight years of Tory Government have left those with mental health problems without the support they need.
Currently people with mental health problems are becoming “tangled up” in the bureaucracy and flaws of the government’s new universal credit benefit system,claimants facing considerable hardship and considerable deterioration in their mental health because of universal credit. Sophie Corlett, director of external relations for the mental health charity Mind, has said “They struggle with the process, but they end up tangled in the process and unable to dig their way out of it."“They struggle with the online application, they struggle with the conditionality that comes while you wait for your work capability assessment (WCA), they struggle with waiting for their first payment and if they are able to get an advance payment they struggle to pay that back.”A key concern, she has also said , was the period between the start of a universal credit claim and the WCA, during which claimants can be forced to carry out the usual 30-plus hours of jobsearch activity while waiting to be assessed for their “fitness for work”
Carrying out this jobsearch activity is a huge barrier for many people with mental health problems, who are often not even well enough to visit their own jobcentre. Under the sanctions system, benefit recipients have part of their payments temporarily stopped if they fail to meet strict work-related conditions, such as failing to attend a work placement, or being a few minutes late for a jobcentre appointment. People with complex needs are thus forced into a process which is long, complicated and cruel, which does not recognise their personal abilities, vulnerabilities and difficult circumstances.
With the upcoming roll out of Universal Credit, this will only make matters worse. especially for those of us living with mental health issues. Universal Credit is not fit for purpose, it needs  to be stopped and scrapped now, We  simply can't trust May and co on mental health.Their toxic policies helping to exasperate the mental health crisis in our country. If this does not actually make you angry then you have  become conditioned and devoid of feeling, and they simply have you under control.
We need to break the silence around mental health.Too often mental health is swept under the carpet and ignored , because of the stigma and taboo surrounding it, so we have to keep battling to destroy the negative attitudes and stereotypes that is directed towards people with mental health issues, and to keep challenging policies that heed  individuals recovery.
On World Mental Health Day I think its important to stress that the proportion of the population that will  experience  episodes of acute emotional distress is extremely high. It  should not be shameful to say that one is suffering from mental illness, no less than to announce that one is asthmatic or has breast cancer.Talking about these issues, breaking the silence, can also be a source of liberation, so we should keep fighting for the best mental health care to be the  natural right of all, because engaging in the struggle toward such a society can be a source of hope for many. In the meantime I will  personally try to keep  surviving, and hope that one day mental health  becomes  a genuine Government priority that  really helps reduce peoples pain and suffering.
I will end this post by saying, that I believe today should  act like a catalyst for Work and Pensions secretary Esther McVey to scrap the controversial Universal Credit Welfare system and replace it with something that takes into account peoples needs and strengths.
Meanwhile If you need to talk to someone, the NHS mental health helpline page includes organisations you can call for help, such as Anxiety UK and Bipolar UK. or call The Samaritans on 116 123.And if you need help with your application for Universal Credit contact your local CAB https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/

Paul Robeson - Joe Hill

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

https://libcom.org/history/music-iww-creation-working-class-counterculture-terland

Remember the Battle of Cable Street : No pasaran !

                                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

Men they couldn't hang - Ghosts of Cable Street

On the edge of reason ( for Theresa May)

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.

From despair to hope

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 above poem can also be found here :- 

https://iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/from-despair-to-hope-by-dave-rendle/

Divided and out of control, time to kick the Tories out.

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.

Newtown Neurotics - Kick out the Tories

For Charlie Sharp, poet, musician, artist, R.I.P

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 - Jerusalem

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.


Get it here :  amzn.to/2CX9toI

"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 

Link to earlier posts of mine on Alan Moore :-

 https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2018/03/alan-moore-on-art-and-magic.html

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2013/11/happy-60th-alan-moore-181113-dont-let.html?m=0
 

Booking.com :Erased Palestinians

  .

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.

https://secure.everyaction.com/ntXPlQJufkShJrAzW_fruA2