George H.W. Bush: A tainted legacy

George H.W Bush, the 41st president of the United States, died on Friday at the age of 94
While several publications and media figures used his death to glorify his legacy, and sing his praises,  saying that he was a patriot, who  served  his country with honour and distinction in Office and during the Second World War. While the establishment celebrates the life of the former president and Americans line up to mourn their fallen leader, the facts that are being reported in the mainstream media are far different than the legacy he is leaving behind. Others are pointing to his dark human rights record and his responsibility  for war crimes. Many millions in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, will  have great cause to curse him, now that he has shuffled off this mortal coil.
Let us not forget that  as a member of the Reagan administration, he opposed sanctioning Apartheid South Africa. whilst the Willie Horton ad he used in his Presidential campaign is rightly seen as a precursor to Donald Trump’s race-baiting politics. And any full accounting of Bush’s legacy has to include his appalling record on LGBTQ issues. “Bush was as captive to the evangelical right on social issues—and thus a decidedly Republican president—as was his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, who cultivated religious conservatives as a potent political force and bowed to their anti-LGBTQ agenda as the AIDS epidemic mushroomed in the 1980s,” Michelangelo Signorile writes in the Huffington Post. On a host of issues—ranging from AIDS funding to the ban on gays in the military to collecting data on the prevalence of teen suicide among young gays—Bush sided against the LGBTQ community.
In 1988, Bush was elected president defeating Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. Within his first year in office Bush’s approval ratings began to slip due to his inability to deal with Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian leader he previously aided while serving as head of the CIA. Bush responded by deciding to invade Panama, and on December 20,1989 he deployed 25,000 troops to the tiny nation. Bush justified the invasion— code named operation just cause— on the grounds of national security. The president mislead the country by claiming Noriega had threatened the US, a claim which turned out to be untrue. After two weeks the conflict ended, resulting in the deaths of twenty American soldiers and as many as 2,000 Panamanians.
 Less than a year after the invasion of Panama, Bush once again found himself responding to another foreign policy debacle. On August 2, 1990 Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein began an invasion of nearby Kuwait. In response, President Bush and the American media used the testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah to justify US intervention in Kuwait. However, Nayirah was later discovered to be the daughter of a U.S. ambassador, who was being coaxed by military psychological operations specialists. Thirteen years before his son George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction to justify his invasion and occupation of Iraq, George H.W. Bush made his own set of false claims to justify the aerial bombardment of that same country, the end result being horrific civilian casualties.
Under George H.W. Bush, according to the New York Times, the United States dropped a staggering 88,500 tons of bombs on Kuwait and Iraq. Seventy percent of the bombs “missed” their targets, killing thousands of civilians.  The administration deliberately targeted civilians and essential infrastructure.from electricity-generating and water-treatment facilities to food-processing plants and flour mills. This was no accident. As Barton Gellman of the Washington Post reported in June 1991: “Some targets, especially late in the war, were bombed primarily to create postwar leverage over Iraq, not to influence the course of the conflict itself. Planners now say their intent was to destroy or damage valuable facilities that Baghdad could not repair without foreign assistance. … Because of these goals, damage to civilian structures and interests, invariably described by briefers during the war as ‘collateral’ and unintended, was sometimes neither.”
 By January 1992, Beth Osborne Daponte, a demographer with the U.S. Census Bureau, was estimating that Bush’s Gulf War had caused the deaths of 158,000 Iraqis, including 13,000 immediate civilian deaths and 70,000 deaths from the damage done to electricity and sewage treatment plants. Daponte’s numbers contradicted the Bush administration’s, and she was threatened by her superiors with dismissal for releasing “false information.”
In the aftermath of the Gulf War, Bush also used the United States' diplomatic clout to lead the United Nations to impose one of the most devastating sanctions regimes in history. Child mortality rates up to 1996 alone were half a million deaths and were justified by the Clinton administration's Madeleine Albright who said, "We think the price is worth it." Millions more Iraqis were affected by the sanctions that Bush instigated and laid the foundations for.
Eminent jurists, professional legal organizations, and human rights monitors  around the world have since declared that President George W. Bush  to be a war criminal for his overt and systematic violations of such international laws as the Geneva and Hague Conventions and such US law as the War Crimes Act, the Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws.Bush’s CIA disappeared countless people to secret detention  to be tortured.
 After leaving office in 1993, George H.W. Bush retired with his wife Barbara and built a home in a community near Houston, Texas.  Though retired, the former president would still face controversy.
 Last year, during the height of the #MeToo movement, at least five women claimed they were abused  by him. In an interview with Time Magazine, a woman named Roslyn Corrigan claimed Bush sexually assaulted her in 2003 when she was only 16-years-old. At least five more women have accused Bush of sexual assault, including an unnamed Michigan woman who came forward claiming the former president groped her in 1992 at a campaign event.
Bush leaves this world having evaded being arrested or prosecuted for the crimes that he was  responsible for. When media figures try to redeem him, or portray him as lovable-but-flawed, they ignore the actual record. In fact, Bush never atoned for his actions, on the contrary, he consistently defended his decision-making, and the illegal doctrine he espoused. George W. Bush intentionally offered false justifications for a war, that destroyed and devastated an entire country, causing thousands of  innocent deaths.A war that needn’t have been fought in the first place. Bush set the stage for a mess with which we are still  dealing with today.Any way you look at it, Bush  left the world worse off than it was. This is his damning  tainted legacy.

The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush

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 George H.W. Bush - I don't care what the facts are.

Amnesty takes Christmas hamper of Israeli ‘stolen goods’ to Foreign Office

Source: Amnesty International –

‘All businesses should be following Airbnb’s example’ – Andy Slaughter

Amnesty International took  a Christmas hamper of Israeli “stolen goods” to the Foreign Office today.
The hamper  contained numerous food items – including red wine, olive oil, honey, mineral water, eggs, dates, peppers, oranges and avocados – all bearing spoof “Delicious but tainted” branding.

The goods all bore labels alluding to their tainted and illegal nature, with a bottle of wine declaring itself to be “100% stolen”, eggs labelled as from “free-range hens” but “probably rotten”, spring water that is “too good for the locals”, and Israeli settlement honey described as “a blend of honeys originating from stolen Palestinian land”.

The hamper hand-in was designed to draw attention to the fact that these goods are all currently being produced in Israel’s unlawful settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
Each year, hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of goods produced in the settlements are exported internationally, despite the fact that most countries around the world have officially condemned the settlements as illegal under international law. In the UK, imported settlement goods include oranges, dates, spring water and halva desserts.

The spoof Christmas hamper is part of Amnesty’s ongoing campaign calling on all governments around the world to ban the importation of Israeli settlement goods. All countries have a clear obligation to ensure respect for international humanitarian law and shouldn’t recognise or assist the illegal situation that Israel’s settlement policy has created.

Last week, the online travel company Airbnb announced it would withdraw some 200 listings for properties located in Israeli settlements in occupied territories in the West Bank. The company said the move recognised that the settlements “are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians”.

Amnesty’s tainted goods hamper was handed to Foreign Office officials along with a 50,000-strong petition from supporters of the campaign. The hand-in took place with MP Andy Slaughter, a prominent supporter of the ban Israeli settlement goods campaign within Parliament, and Kate Allen, Amnesty UK’s Director,  Andy Slaughter said:

“All businesses should be following Airbnb’s example and stop profiting from illegal trade with settlements. But it is the UK and other governments that need to enforce a ban. Otherwise they are complicit in breaching international law and giving comfort to the occupation and theft of Palestinian land.”

Kate Allen said:

‘All Israeli settlement goods are tainted goods. They’re tainted by the illegality of the settlements themselves and tainted by the discrimination and violence that has led to the creation of the settlements.

More than half a century of occupation

During the course of the 51-year occupation, more than 50,000 Palestinians have had their homes demolished, while some 600,000 Israeli settlers have moved into illegally-constructed settlements, many serviced by settler-only roads and guarded by a network of Israeli military checkpoints. In total, approximately 1,000 square kilometres of Palestinian land has been expropriated by settlers in the past half-century – approximately the size of Hong Kong.

https://twitter.com/NewsFromAmnesty/status/1068557830507122689

Rosa Parks act of resistance remembered.

On December 1, 1955, 42 year old Rosa Louise Parks, a black American seamstress was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing  to give up  her seat on  a bus to  a white man. Her act of civil disobedience, led to black  citizens boycotting the bus company for over a year, in what was to become known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which   was to continue for  over a year, setting up the seeds  of a social revolution, putting the effort to end segregation on a fast track.
Rosa became nationally recognized as the “mother of the modern day civil rights movement” in America. Her act of dignified defiance and courage triggered a wave of protest that reverberated throughout the United States.
Contrary to some reports, Parks wasn’t physically tired and was able to leave her seat. She refused, on principle, to surrender her seat because of her race, which was the law in Montgomery at the time.
She was also a long-time member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and  washighly respected in her community, and over the years, she had repeatedly disobeyed bus segregation regulations. Once, she even had been put off a bus for her defiance.
Rosa Louise McCauley spent the first years of her life on a small farm with her mother, grandparents and brother. She witnessed night rides by the Ku Klux Klan and listened in fear as lynchings occurred near her home. The family moved to Montgomery; Rosa went to school and became a seamstress. She married barber Raymond Parks in 1932, and the couple joined the Montgomery NAACP. When she inspired the bus boycott, Parks had been the secretary of the local NAACP for twelve years (1943-1956). Parks founded the Montgomery NAACP Youth Council in the early 1940s. Later, as secretary of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, she traveled throughout the state interviewing victims of discrimination and witnesses to lynchings.

The NAACP realized it had the right person to work with, as it battled against the system of segregation in Montgomery. It also worked with another group of local leaders to stage a one-day boycott of passenger buses, when Parks went to court.The group expanded to include other people, chose a name, the Montgomery Improvement Association, and planned an extended boycott.

But the MIA also needed a public spokesman with leadership qualities to make their fight into a wide-ranging cause.Their pick was a little-known pastor who had recently arrived in Montgomery: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rosa was briefly jailed and paid a fine, but for many years would continue as an activist in the movement  for the rights of exploited people.Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the boycott,and ater losing  her tailoring job and receiving death threats.  Parks, along with her husband and mother, eventually decided to move to Detroit, where Parks’ brother resided.

In the years following her retirement, she traveled to lend her support to civil-rights events and causes and wrote an autobiography, “Rosa Parks: My Story.” She  remained an active member of the NAACP and became an administrative aide in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr.  a post she held until her 1988 retirement.. The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute Of Self-Development was established in 1987 to offer job training for black youth. In 1999, Parks received the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the highest honor a civilian can receive in the United States. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) also sponsors an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award. Her husband, brother and mother all died of cancer between 1977 and 1979.
When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol. At the time, she was only the 30th person accorded that honor. She was the first woman to receive the honor, and her coffin sat on the catafalque built for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln.
Parks's legacy lives on. In 2000, a library and museum in Montgomery were dedicated to Rosa Parks. The  Rosa Parks Museum https://www.troy.edu/rosaparks/ houses a replica of the bus that sparked the civil rights activists to boycott an important mode of transportation. The library and children's wing not only tell the story of Parks to its hundreds of visitors, but also those of Nixon, Gray, and Colvin. There is a "time travel" machine that transports the visitors from the 1800s to the Jim Crowe era and to 1950s Montgomery.

Let us remember her today, and acknowledge Rosa's act of quiet resistance, that still resonates down the corridors of time. She remains a symbol to all to remain free. It is worth noting that in the  same week President Obama honored Rosa Parks’ 100th birthday, Israel announced two newly segregated bus lines for Palestinian workers traveling to Israel from the West Bank. The “Palestinian only” buses were introduced after Israeli settlers complained that fellow Palestinian passengers posed a “security risk.”The timing of Israel’s announcement set the internet abuzz with moralizing references to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Jim Crow.
Let us also think  what would happen if a Palestinian Rosa Parks chose to sit on a segregated West Bank Bus, Palestinians in the present moment are unable  to travel freely in their own country - they even have to have permits to enter Jerusalem.
 "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust," Martin Luther King said  "All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority."
Like Rosa Parks before her,  Palestinians like Ahed Tamimi , among others are struggling against unjust laws, in their  case the injustice of a 50-year military occupation that denies Palestinians their land, right to travel and self-determination. Israel maintains an apartheid system of democracy for Israeli Jews - and discrimination against Israelis of colour - second-class citizenship for Israeli citizens of Arab descent, and dispossession and disenfranchisement for Palestinian Arabs in the territories.
We need more brave souls like Rosa Parks and Ahed Tamimi. It is possible for a single person to engage in an act of resistance against oppression to spark the seeds that can change the world.


Earlier post on the Montgomery Bus Protest can be read here.


http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/montgomery-bus-boycott.html


Rosa Parks - The Quiet Revolutionary

National Day of Action against Universal Credit

 #UniversalCredit causes serious financial hardship for claimants.
The government claim Universal Credit (UC) will make things better for claimants. But where it has already been rolled out it’s been plagued with problems that are pushing more people into #poverty.
It has caused tens of thousands of people to fall into debt, rent arrears, and to become reliant on food banks.
Despite huge flaws in the system the Tory government continue to push ahead with rolling out UC to more claimants.
Personally I do not believe it can be fixed, or modified it needs to be stopped and scrapped completely. It is crucial that we carry on campaigning against its implementation to defend those on the receiving end of brutal cuts and to push for the complete abolition of these policies that will hurt those who are already the most disadvantaged in our society who are merely being treated as collateral damage.
We must continue to resist these devastating policies, an end to this cruel austerity measure and give support to all those that currently need it. Remember no one is immune to becoming ill or losing their jobs.I will be tomorrow joining a demo in my home town of Cardigan, at 10. 30 outside the Guildhall, it is being introduced in Ceredigion this month.
lets make our voices be heard and tell the government that we wont simply stand back and let this happen. Many , more events will be happening across the country
Show your support — join an action near you.Stop this discredited failing Tory policy.

https://www.facebook.com/events/565842657200412/

A couple of related events

https://www.facebook.com/events/345366829599274/

https://www.facebook.com/events/2259882177376798/

My thoughts have been replaced by moving images...

I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.”

-George Duchamel, Scenes de la vie future (1930)

 A Situationist International detourned poster representing the society of the spectacle.

The Duchamel quote above was also used in Walter Benjamin's book Illuminations [1968]. It refers to people who have their own thoughts replaced by those introduced by mass media.
The idea of détourning existing comics with often ironic sayings came about in the 60s Pop Art movement but was also used by French Situationists in the late 60s.
The Situationist International was formed in 1957 as a merger between the international movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, headed by Asger Jorn and the Lettrist International headed by Guy Debord.
The Situationists were highly politicised at a time when it was fashionable for avant-gardes to separate from social revolt.
Guy Debord’s (1931–1994) best-known work, La société du spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle) (1967),https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-society-of-spectacle-guy-debord.html is a polemical and prescient indictment of our image-saturated consumer culture. The book examines the “Spectacle,” Debord’s term for the everyday manifestation of capitalist-driven phenomena; advertising, television, film, and celebrity.
Debord defines the spectacle as the “autocratic reign of the market economy.” Though the term “mass media” is often used to describe the spectacle’s form, Debord derides its neutrality. “Rather than talk of the spectacle, people often prefer to use the term ‘media,’” he writes, “and by this they mean to describe a mere instrument, a kind of public service.” Instead, Debord describes the spectacle as capitalism’s instrument for distracting and pacifying the masses. The spectacle takes on many more forms today than it did during Debord’s lifetime. It can be found on every screen that you look at. It is the advertisements plastered on the subway and the pop-up ads that appear in your browser. It is the lists telling you “10 things you need to know about ‘x.’” The spectacle reduces reality to an endless supply of commodifiable fragments. For Debord, this constituted an unacceptable “degradation” of our lives.
We all like to think we’re in control of our perceptions and decisions. but every day we are unconsciously being .manipulated.  Because we’re human, the very things that make us human in the first place, like empathy, emotion, and exhaustion to name a few, give those who are unscrupulous, desperate, or egotistical an edge when it comes to distorting our thoughts and judgments, especially by governments.
And in certain ways the problem is getting worse. Information overload is one reason we’ve grown more vulnerable to manipulation. Research .suggests that we receive five times more information now than we did 30 years ago, and daily we are bombarded. This is the Spectacle that Debord  warned us about. Hitler himself said, “By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.” We must discriminately keep awake and aware. Be careful and beware. Be weary  of your thoughts being replaced and dominated by moving images, that dull and passify you, best to stay awake, with your life in your own hands, move away from the spectacle that seeks to control you.

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is observed by the United Nations on 29 November each year, in accordance with mandates given by the General Assembly in its resolutions 32/40 B of 2 December 1977, 34/65 D of 12 December 1979, 56/34 of 3 December 2001, and other relevant resolutions.
Special commemorative activities are organized by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat, in consultation with the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
The date of 29 November was chosen because of its meaning and significance to the Palestinian people. On that day in 1947, the General Assembly adopted resolution 181(II), which came to be known as the Partition Resolution. That resolution provided for the establishment in Palestine of a “Jewish State” and an “Arab State”, with Jerusalem as a corpus separatum under a special international regime. Of the two States to be created under this resolution, only one, Israel, has so far come into being.
 This United Nations decision unleashed a catastrophe whose reverberations Palestinians continue to experience until today. Three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs—who were the majority of the population of historic Palestine, fled for their lives after experiencing or learning of massacrs by Zionist paramilitary organizations, or were expelled from their homes during the ensuing Arab-Israeli war of 1948. By the 1949 armistice, the original partition lines had shifted violently so that Israel’s footprint became much larger than envisioned by the roposed partition plan, itt was accorded 55 percent by the plan, but sized and additional 25% of Palestinian territory. At present, the drastically reduced Palestinian land continues to be occupied by the Israeli military and Jerusalem is occupied and divided with Israel controlling and limiting access to religious sites. Palestinians originally displaced during the Nakba (the Arabic word for Catastrophe—what the Palestinians call the 1948 war when they lost their homeland) are still prevented from exercising the right to return to their homes in what is now Israel. And contrary to the resolution (and to the Fouth Geneva Convention )     Israel has  continued to expropriate additional vast tracts of Palestinian territory for its own use and especially for the building and transfer of its own Israeli citizens to illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
The Palestinian people, who now number more than 8 million, live primarily in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, including East Jerusalem, part of which is now administered by the Palestinian Authority; in Israel; in neighbouring Arab States; and in refugee camps in the region.
The International Day of Solidarity has traditionally provided an opportunity for the international community to focus its attention on the fact that the question of Palestine is still unresolved and that the Palestinian people is yet to attain its inalienable rights as defined by the General Assembly, namely, the right to self-determination without external interference, the right to national independence and sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property from which they had been displaced.
This year’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People takes place at a time of turmoil, trouble and torment. The decades-long Palestinian struggle for self-determination, independence and a life of dignity faces numerous obstacles, including: continued military occupation of Palestinian territory; ongoing violence and incitement; continued settlement construction and expansion; deep uncertainties about the peace process; and deteriorating humanitarian and economic conditions, particularly in Gaza. The prolonged Palestinian struggle against dispossession and the fragmentation of the State of Palestine has resulted in the aggressive displacement of many Palestinians seeking refuge mainly in the Middle East. In the past decades, civilians have been denied their dignity and fundamental rights to free movement, education, healthcare and even the right to life.They have had their land, livelihood, and lives taken away. They have been killed for resisting the illegal occupation of their homes and their country. They have been denied their independence.
With each passing day, the number of Palestinians in need of humanitarian assistance increases. It has therefore become clear that the conflict between Palestinian and Israel feeds into the wider regional dynamics by having a negative effect on peace, economic development, socio-political progression and security throughout the entire region.
We should  remain concerned and condemn the continued illegal settlement expansion by Israel which constitute a contravention of international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. The ongoing Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories is a fundamental obstacle to a return to negotiations and a grave threat to the very existence of a future Palestinian state as well as a safe and secure Israel.  We should also call for the effective and immediate implementation of resolution 2334 (2016), which reaffirms that Israeli illegal settlements have no legal validity.
Many  believe  that the only way to bring about lasting peace in the Middle East is to have a two state solution for Palestine and Israel based on the international recognition and independence of the State of Palestine, based on the 04 June 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, functioning within recognized and secure borders and living side-by-side in peace with Israel and its other neighbours as endorsed in the Quartet Roadmap the Madrid Principles, the Arab Peace Initiative and the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.
So today lets reiterate our solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination, as well as support for a free and sovereign State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and an end to the illegal  occupation of the Palestinians land, .towards  building a future of peace, justice, security and dignity for  the Palestinians.

Harry Leslie Smith - R.I.P (25/ 2/1923 - 28/11/2018)

Heartbroken to hear of Harry Leslie Smith's passing at the age of 95. He was a brilliant polemicist and author, an inspiring activist, for social justice and peace a loving father, and much much more. A shining light among the darkness of our times., one of the giants whose shoulders we all stand on. We should all carry his fighting spirit forwards. Rest in Power
The socialist campaigner rose to fame with a speech praising the NHS and had devoted his last years to visiting refugee hotspots. He was also a supporter of Palestinian rights, and of the right to non-violent resistance in the form of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)
The Labour campaigner was taken ill in Canada following a fall earlier this month, and his son John had been keeping followers updated on his popular Twitter account.

"At 3:39 this morning, my dad Harry Leslie Smith died. I am an orphan," he wrote.

Mr Smith, who was in the RAF during WWII and lived through the Great Depression, had become a vocal advocate for socialist policies, arguing neo-liberal forces had degraded the welfare state built during his lifetime.
 Nicknamed the "world's oldest rebel", he rose to prominence after making an impassined speech in support of the NHS at Labour's 2014 conference, calling his childhood, before public healthcare, a "barbarous time" and criticising government austerity.
Mr Smith had devoted the latter years of his life to visiting refugee hotspots around the world, documenting the suffering caused by displacement in the hope that his age and following could create a "rallying cry" for action.
Born in 1923 in Barnsley, Yorkshire, he grew up in poverty after his coal miner father became unemployed, watching his sister die at the age of ten, and turned to writing in later life after working as a carpet trader in Toronto.
He described his book Harry's Last Stand as a "rallying call", telling the younger generation of the need for a "social safety network" giving all the right to good housing, further education, healthcare, a living wage and dignified old age.
"I am not a historian. But at 91 I am history, and I fear its repetition," he said.
Mr Smith's son tweeted that he would "follow in his footsteps" and "endeavour to finish his projects", including publishing some of his father's later writing.
#Istandharry

https://twitter.com/Harryslaststand

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/28/harry-leslie-smith-dies-aged-95

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2018/11/meet-harry-leslie-smith-worlds-oldest.html

Hymn to Gaia ( A poem inspired by the Extinction Rebellion )

Sand art, Poppit Sands, West Wales, 24/11/18

Hymn to Gaia

Rebellion is like a flower
it starts with a bud then spreads,
so necessary in the times we live
as the planet burns, firing catastrophe,
sea levels rising the world getting hotter
fossil fuels damaging the ozone layer,
the scientists keep saying it's going to get worse
it's all too much, such a fracking disgrace,
everyone needs fresh water and air to survive
but daily polluted by capitalist industrial complex,
in this age of destruction, hear the earth groaning
writhing and screaming from deep below our feet,
times is running out, but it's not to late to save her
together wild and free, lets protect mother nature,
on  bruised land, become rainbows of defiance
with cunning, tenaciousness, hands of resilience,
existence is resistance, carrying the scent of change
to invest in the future of the planet, we must rearrange,
with common goals, with so much desire to protect
it's our last chance to stop the damage, the willful neglect,
gaia  needs defending,with all our love, and all of our care
with action, stop the eco-system from being stripped bare.

Bruce Lee - Philosopher, Poet ( November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973)

Bruce Lee whose given name was Lee Jun-fan, was born on  November 27, 1940,in San Francisco's Chinatown in the hour and year of the Dragon,  Lee died tragically at the extremely young age of 32  But in the 32 years that Bruce Lee walked this earth, he left his mark on not just America, where he was born, but also the rest of the world.His presence continues to be felt in fields ranging from film to academia, martial arts to racial equality.
 Lee was raised in a bi-religious household. His mother was a Catholic and his father an opera singer fro Hong Kong was a Buddhist who had moved with his family in the United States in 1939, in search of a new beginning. During his short but active life, he appeared in numerous films, contributing to the change of the way in which Americans perceived Asians, and became widely considered by critics, media and other martial artists to be one of the most influential martial artists of all time, and a pop culture icon of the 20th century.
Despite the pop simplicity of Lee’s image, emblazoned across a million posters and T-shirts, there is almost nothing about the man that is easy to summarise. His life took a twisty route through childhood dramas in Hong Kong, short-lived television shows in America, periods of great hyperactivity and of terrible inactivity, until it arrived at The Big Boss (1971) and the action films that brought him immense fame. Bruce Lee, meaning “strong one” in Gaelic, moved back in Hong Kong at the age of one, where he spent his teenage years and expressed his love for acting. He appeared in 20 films as a child, learned dancing, but also entered a street fighting gang in 1953, where he revealed his martial arts skills and also started learning kung-fu to perfect his technique.
In 1958, Bruce defeated the three time amateur boxing champion, Gary Elms in the Hong Kong Inter-school amateur boxing Championship and managed to get into trouble with the police in the following year, for a violent street fight. He flew to America to pursue a higher education, although it is believed that his mother made the decision and sent him to live with their relatives outside Seattle in order to keep him away from the bad environment he was involved in.
He graduated in Edison, Washington, and chose a major in philosophy at the University of Washington. Although of an artistic nature, Bruce focused on his main love, martial arts and got a job teaching Wing Chun to his fellow students. In 1964, he started out his own martial arts courses and also found his partner, Linda Emery, whom he married.
Shortly after, Lee moved to California, where he opened two schools and taught a martial arts technique called Jeet Kune Do. During that same time, a controversial fight with Wong Jack Man, an expert in special fighting techniques in Chinatown boosted Bruce’s popularity. Blamed for teaching martial arts to non-Chinese, Bruce confronted Wong and won after three minutes, revealing his efficient tactic and expertise.
Bruce Lee started his acting career by starring in the television series The Green Hornet, aired from 1966 to 1967, where he portrayed Kato, the hornet’s loyal sidekick. Although, Bruce’s theatrical appearance was much more complex than those of other Asian actors at that time and was based on real and fine fighting technique, certain stereotypes and producer’s wish for him to embody them, made him to move back to Hong Kong with his wife and two children, in 1971.
Back home, Bruce launched his own production company, Concord Pictures and starred in movies, turned box office hits in Hong Kong, such as The Chinese Connection or Fists of Fury. Although the productions had poor critics in America, Bruce Lee became a movie star in Asia and was determined to conquer the American public as well. He is noted for his roles in five feature-length films: Lo Wei’s The Big Boss (1971) and Fist of Fury (1972); Way of the Dragon (1972), directed and written by Lee; Warner Brothers’ Enter the Dragon (1973) and The Game of Death (1973), both directed by Robert Clouse. Bruce Lee was the first actor to bridge East and West. He was from Hong Kong and the U.S. He understood how to speak to both audiences in a way that no one else ever had. Enter the Dragon was the first film co-produced in Hong Kong and Hollywood. This meant Asian landscapes and characters weren’t constructed by American filmmakers. More importantly, Chinese filmmakers had some control over how they appeared on screen. (Compare that to some of the decade’s more problematic depictions of Asian people, particularly films about the Vietnam War.) Part of Lee’s ability to break out across racial and cultural divides had to do with the universal nature of the themes in his movies.
Beyond martial arts, Bruce Lee also had a personal, more philosophical life to himself.He claimed that martial arts was only an extension of his philosophies in life, and claimed that any type of knowledge will ultimately lead to self knowledge. Lee also had an avid love of reading and had an extensive library of over 2,500 books. A self proclaimed  atheist, Lee claimed that he did or believe in God and that he had no firm religious beliefs at all. His philosophies loosely mirrored Buddhism and Taoism.  Lee's most intently philosophical work may have been the series of letters he wrote to himself under the heading "In My Own Process" in 1973. The piece underwent nine drafts but was never finished, and is a first-hand look at Lee's thought process during a tumultuous time in his life. In 2017, it was shared for the first time on Brain Pickings with special permission from Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee, and the Bruce Lee Foundation. In fact, philosophy was so essential to Bruce’s life that he went on strike for two weeks when producers temporarily cut most of the philosophical dialogue from Enter the Dragon.
He also happened to be a fantastic poet, of such beauty and depth. Lee started writing poetry when he moved from Hong Kong to the U.S. at age 18. He wrote poetry to express his feelings of contemplativeness, love, melancholy, and oneness with nature. The poetry was a way to process and understand his own feelings. Bruce also wrote poems and letters to his wife Linda expressing love and gratefulness for her. Linda  has said  that she can still feel the warmth of his love through his writing. Bruce Lee was a masculine man of action who also had a very integrated feminine side. He was always cultivating both Yin and Yang, that were also at the core of his fighting style. His poetry carries the tone of dark, brooding poets such as Robert Frost. He utilised the  use of free form poetry, and displayed it powerfully.Within  his poetry resides his philosophy of martial arts and life itself. His most famous quote sums up his feelings regarding fighting and his poetry itself.  "Empty your mind," he said. "Be formless; shapeless, like water. Now, if you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle; you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." His poetry was originally jotted down on handwritten pieces of paper and later publihed by John Little after being released by his wife in the book, Bruce Lee: Artist of life. The book contains 21 original poems found within Lee's personal archive. The poems, Little writes, "are, by American standards, rather dark -- reflecting the deeper, less exposed recesses of the human psyche... Many seem to express a returning sentiment of the fleeting nature of life, love and the passion of human longing .
Lee died under suspicious conditions on July 20 1973, at only 32. The autopsy revealed a strange brain edema, caused by a reaction to a painkiller he had taken for his back pain. To this day, his death is wrapped in mystery and the exact cause is yet to be known. His legacy lives on in his films and words. Here are a few examples of his wonderful poetry.Enjoy.

Rain

Rain,
Black clouds,
Fallen blossoms and pale moon,
The hurried flight of birds
The arrival of lonely autumn
The time for us to part.

The clouds above are floating across the sky
Swiftly, swiftly passing,
Or blending together.

Much has been said, yet we have not
Come to the end of our feelings.
Long must be this parting, and
Remember, remember that all
My thoughts have always been of you.

The good time will probably never come back again.
In a moment---our parting will be over.
When days are short and dull nights long

Read this poem I leave you, read it
When the silence of the world possesses you,
Or when you are fretted with disquiet.
Long must be this parting, and
Remember, remember that all
My thoughts have always been of you.

All streams flowing East or West

All streams flowing East or West
Must flow into the sea;
The current from the middle land
Sweeps by the lonely island.

Gold and silver pebbles mingle,
Seaweed and kelp interlace.
Streams born from mountain snows
Grow to swelling wave.

The full-blown arc of quew moves
In race against the grey
Caps of white like beats of heart
Are pulled within the wave.

The wave from mountain peaks becomes
Hammer to sculpture rocks,
To leave chiseled shapes and polished surfaces.
From boulder to rock to sand.
And with the final thrust the sun
Throws wave upon the shore
The jellyfish in weariness
Nestles in a pool.

Night Rain

Sadness broods
over the world
I fear to walk in my garden,
lest I see
a pair of butterflies
disporting in the sun
among the flowers.

The Dying Sun
 

The dying sun lies sadly in the far horizon.

The autumn wind blows mercilessly;

The yellow leaves fall.

From the mountain peak,

Two streams parted unwillingly,

One to the West, one to the East.

The sun will rise again in the morning.

The leaves will be green again in spring.

But must we be like the mountain stream,

Never to meet again?

Though The Night Was Made For Loving

Though the night was made for loving,

And the day returns too soon.

And so the time flies hopefully

Although she’s far away.

Other thoughts may come and go,

But the thought of you,

Remains deeply in my heart.

Music: A Vehicle for Social Change

Music has long been a vehicle for social change. An integral part of human nature, music has the potential to connect and unite people. Music can bring people together in safe and inclusive communities, and musicians can lend their voices on behalf of the voiceless. Artists as diverse as Billie Holiday, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Gil Scot Heron,Aretha Franklin, Fela Kuti, Robert Wyatt,  Lowkey, David Roviks, Youssour N’Dour, Jerry Dammers,  P J Harvey, Le Trio Joubran, M.I.A, the Clash. and Roy Bailey ( who I posted about yesterday) have all used their access to audiences to speak out on social injustices around them.
Their creativity has inspired people to think differently about the world,and the combination of the right lyrics, rhythm and instruments can build a group identity, stir strong emotions, engage audiences and with a level of influence and reach in society to convene and  amass people to take action.Some have even risked their careers to stand up for what they believe in. From the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement to Black Lives Matter, musicians have heralded major political movements that have helped change the world with their art.The civil rights movement had a number of borrowed songs from civil war era spirituals that both motivated and unified its audiences. A classic examples being 'This Little Light of Mine.' A more literal example in its lyrical content would be Sam Cooke's '  A Change is Gonna Come ' along with others who wrote anti-war and protest songs that gave a voice to the dissenters.
The great Fela Kuti used his music as a weapon to be wielded against tyranny, with much potency, singing against tyranny and social injustice, and through his music took sides with the downtrodden.
Jerry Dammers while in  the Special AKA  recorded the anthemic ' Free Nelson Mandela 'which established itself as a worldwide anthem for the growing demand of the jailed African National Congress leader to be be released by the apartheid South African authorities. Not someone either to shy away from making political statements Patti Smith  has used her music to as a means of political activism, condemning war and human rights abuses. On a more uplifting note, her song 'People have the Power' is a powerful reminder to not sit passively but rather work to create the world we want to live in. Recently the uprisings collectively known as the Arab Spring saw music take on on a major role in galvanising the masses and stoking public anger.In the UK, musicians continue to speak out about injustice, Stormzy's electrifying takedown at the Brits awards recently of Theresa May and her lack of support for Grenfell.
Music is a form of artistic expression that uses  a universal language that we can all understand, that as well as breaking down barriers, borders, transcending nationality or religion, it  can also educate. As a cultural right  it can also help to promote human rights, whether they be civil, political,economic or social.
K’naan, the Somalian rapper behind the World Cup theme song “Wavin’ Flag,” has not only released music raising awareness of the violent Civil War in Somalia, but also performed at humanitarian benefit concerts, both in America and abroad, and has recently returned to his war-torn homeland to do even more good.
Le Trio Joubran – the Palestinian masters of the oud through their mesmerizing music, have been hey honouring the struggles and oppression of indigenous peoples not only in the Middle East but around the world and especially affirm that their music should be a part of the struggle of the Palestinian people for recognition and liberation.
Music can  be used to provoke and  empower people to become bold enough to fight against forces much greater than themselves.Music can have a huge influence on what we think and how we view the world, especially now that it is so easily accessible and transferable via social networking and Youtube. Unlike so many great promoters of peace, social justice and equality, many musicians are blessed with the fact that millions of people already are listening to their songs. With that much influence, it only seems logical that they would choose to write about something worthwhile.
The ongoing censorship of some musicians is evidence of the power of  music to affect social change and the real threat that oppressive regimes feel when artists speak out. Some musicians have been met by state sanctioned violence and even murder. Pussy Riot's Punk Prayer saw them arrested and sent to remote gulag-like prison authorities, and creative expression through music can still be met with jail time in many places in the world.The band Young Fathers was recently censored for supporting Palestinian rights. But more  than an attack on self-expression, censorship and persecution are attacks on the power of music to connect and create communities.
Musicians Without Borders works with musicians around the world to build nonviolent, inclusive communities. And stands with musicians around the world for human rights and social justice— through music. It is a global network organization that uses music for peacebuilding and social change. Using music as a tool to build connections, foster empathy and shape communities. Studies have shown that music is a powerful tool that can influence behavior, shape culture and strengthen social bonds. Musicians Without Borders uses music as a means to address the needs of societies divided and affected by conflict.
Since 1999, Musicians without Borders has been using the power of music for peace-building, connecting people, empowering musicians as social activists, and training local youth as change-makers. Long-term commitment allows the participants the time to develop skills and talents, process grief and loss, and build bridges of reconciliation in societies divided by recent or ongoing conflict.
On May 4, 1999, Laura Hassler conducted a memorial concert in her hometown in the Netherlands. At the height of the Kosova War, Laura had decided to extend the traditional Dutch remembrance of the second world war to those suffering and dying in the wars raging in Europe at that very moment. The performers dedicated their program of traditional Balkan songs– lullabies, love songs, songs of hope and mourning– to ordinary people everywhere, longing for the same things yet always caught between the firing lines.
Moved by the concert’s message, the musicians began talking about using the connecting power of music not only to express the tragedy of war, but also to do something about it. That summer, they visited Kosovo refugees in the Netherlands, singing and playing songs people knew and loved, making music with the children, providing musicians who had lost their instruments with replacements.
A few months later, the group was in Sarajevo, Bosnia, performing and running music workshops with children in a refugee camp. In January 2000, they registered as a charitable foundation, under the name Musicians Without Borders. Laura coordinated a small office, gradually reaching out to peace and human rights organizations and building a network of musicians, while raising funds and support for a new, innovative approach to peace building through music.
Where war has raged, people need everything to return to life: food, water, shelter, clothing, medicine. But more than anything, people need hope. To reconcile, people need empathy. To heal, people need connection and community. Music creates empathy, builds connection, can convey important messages and ideals that people can truly listen  to, that gives hope  allowing people to come together and  become  powerful forces for change. The  music of change is blowing through all Continents.

Learn more at: Musicians Without Borders
 
https://www.musicianswithoutborders.org/

https://en-gb.facebook.com/MusicianswithoutBorders/


Musicians Without Borders : War Divides Music Connects

Patti Smith - People Have The Power

Carry The Earth ( featuring Roger Waters) - Le Trio Joubran

Fela kuti - Sorrow, Tears and Blood

Aretha Franklin - A Change Is Gonna Come 

"Music is above the law. Music can get through the cracks and infiltrate places where other things just can go" - Peter Wallenberg