Thousands of Palestinians have been rallying at the Gaza-Israel border today to mark the first anniversary of the weekly 'Great March of Return'
protests, facing off against Israeli forces massed across the
perimeter.
The protests call for the lifting of a security blockade imposed by
Israel and Egypt, and for Palestinians to have the right to return to
land from which their families fled or were forced to flee during
Israel’s founding in 1948.
The Gaza Health Ministry said two Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli
forces near the border fence, during clashes that began on Friday. About 200 Gazans have been killed by Israeli troops since the protests
started, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.
Gaza's Health Ministry said Saturday ten people have sustained
injuries from live fire coming from Israeli troops, who also fired tear
gas as dozens of protesters approached the fence.
The territory's Hamas rulers are trying to restrain the rallies.The
militant group hopes a calmer demonstration would allow for the
implementation an Egyptian-brokered agreement with Israel to ease the
economic blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2007. But warnings to stay far back from the heavily fortified fence were not being heeded by all."We will move towards the borders even if we die," said Yusef Ziyada,
21, his face painted in the colours of the Palestinian flag.
"We are not leaving. We are returning to our land."
March 30 also marks “Land Day”, that Palestinians worldwide have commemorated Land Day since 1976, when Israeli security forces shot dead six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces during
demonstrations over government land confiscations in northern Israel in
1976.
The main Land Day march in Israel is planned for Saturday afternoon in
the northern city of Sakhnin, with additional marches and demonstrations
expected across the country, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza.
More than 2 million Palestinians are packed into the Gaza Strip, a
narrow coastal enclave where poverty and unemployment rates are high. The blockade is cited by humanitarian agencies as a key reason for impoverishment in Gaza. Lat year alone , about 200 Palestinians, including children, journalists, and the disabled, were killed at the border, most by Israeli live ammunition; 23,000 have been injured.
Israel’s use of lethal force has drawn censure from the United Nations
and rights groups. U.N. investigators said last week that Israeli forces
may be guilty of war crimes for using excessive force.
The protests mark nearly twelve years of a blockade that has made Gaza into what is often called the world's largest open air prison. They also come to invoke UN Resolution 194 their right to return in peace to their homes, from which they were expelled in 1948, when Israel was created.
The Palestinians have no choice but to protest, their spirit not broken, despite their suffering they continue to carry on undaunted. Lets continue to gie them the solidarity and respect they deserve.
Incredible dancers in the UK perform Dabke, the dance of Palestinian
resistance, in solidarity with the Palestinians on the frontline of the
Great Return March.
In the face of Israel's military attacks funded by complicit companies
like HSBC, the Palestinian people continue to resist and fight for their
fundamental rights.
Tell HSBC to end its complicity in Israeli war crimes: https://bit.ly/2GQnrtB
And take to the streets this Saturday in solidarity with the Palestinian
people, one year since the start of the Great Return March: https://bit.ly/2TYR2rJ
On March 30, 2018 evoking memories of the South African apartheid
regime’s massacre of peaceful protesters in Sharpeville in 1960,
Israel’s military committed a new massacre
against Palestinian civilians as they were peacefully commemorating
Palestinian Land Day, calling for an end to Israel’s brutal blockade of
Gaza and asserting the UN-stipulated right of return for Palestinian
refugees.
The Israeli military killed
at least 17 and injuring 1,400. Almost half of these were children.
While Israel routinely carries out mass killings of Palestinian
civilians in the Gaza strip, the massacre nonetheless stands out as a
particularly flagrant attack on non-violent demonstrators with no
conceivable pretext.
Last month, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) published a damning indictment of Israeli forces' conduct in suppressing the protests. According to the COI, Israeli soldiers have been
deliberately shooting civilians, killing and maiming protesters -
including children, as well as journalists and medics. The COI's findings were welcomed by human rights groups who last year
unsuccessfully challenged the army's rules of engagement and its
shooting policy in Israel's Supreme Court.
Land Day has been commemorated by Palestinians every year since 30 March 1976,
when Israeli military forces killed six Palestinian youth in mass
peaceful protests in the Galilee against Israel’s large scale policy of
confiscating their ancestral land to create exclusionary Jewish-only
colonial settlements.
The Palestinians call for Israeli authorities to lift their 11 year
illegal blockade on Gaza and allow Paletinian refugees to return to
their villages and towns has still not been met.These demands are supported by
international law as well as nearly every country in the world – with
the marked exception of Canada, the USA, and Israel. In addition, the
organizers of the march, which was supported by a wide cross-section of
Palestinian political organizations, repeatedly insisted upon the
non-violent nature of the march – claims supported by the observations of human rights workers
People of conscience across the world must continue to pressure international banks and investment funds, like HSBC to end their complicity in Israel’s human rights violations, support and show solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, and demand that Palestinians’
fundamental rights to exist, resist , freedom , justice and return are respected.
If you're not around London, take action in your communities.Full list of events across the country here.
Pop music legend and avant-garde icon, 60's pop crooner, visionary Scott Walker has died at the age of 76. The news was announced by his label, 4AD on Monday morning. “For half a century, the
genius of the man born Noel Scott Engel has enriched the lives of
thousands”, reads a statement posted to the label’s website. “He has produced works that dare to explore human vulnerability and the godless darkness encircling it.” The cause of death it seems was cancer.
Radiohead’s Thom Yorke yesterday said the “kind, gentle outsider” would be much missed.
The poet Ian McMillan described his “unforgettable” voice as being like “a cathedral lit by a sunset”.
Walker was best-known for his work with blue-eyed soul trio The Walker
Brothers in the 1960s, but it was his late-career trilogy of challenging
art-rock albums that defined his reputation as one of avant-garde
music's most electrifying auteurs.
Walker was born Noel Scott Engel in Ohio on Jan. 9, 1943 and rose to fame in the United Kingdom as part of The Walker Brothers.Who were pretty much the '60s equivalent of a boy band, and for a while were bigger than The Beatles. (The group's members were unrelated, and none were born
with the name Walker.) With the help of Scott Walker's booming baritone,
the act topped the British charts
with covers of "Make It Easy On Yourself" (1965) and "The Sun Ain't
Gonna Shine (Anymore)" originally recorded by Frankie Valli.(1966), but the trio never achieved the
superstardom in the United States that they enjoyed overseas.
Hating the pace and hollowness of pop-star life, so much
that he called time on the band at their peak, having tried to escape it
all by using drugs, holing himself up in a monastery and attempting
suicide.
Scott said: “It was a very bad period. I thought everyone was trying to destroy my life. I had this idea that the press were people who misquoted me, fans
were the ones who would not stop ringing my phone, smashing my door and
making me move flats.”
Scott relied on Valium and sleeping pills to cope with his paranoia.
He dabbled with cocaine and tried marijuana but abandoned it because it
hurt his throat.
In August 1966 he tried to kill himself, but was saved when the
obsessive fans outside his apartment that he had been so desperate to
escape alerted the authorities. He later reflected: “Pressure wasn’t the
only reason.“Nobody has the right reasons. I don’t remember a thing.”
Later that year he escaped to Quarr Abbey, on the Isle of Wight. He
intended to spend ten days taking part in Gregorian chanting. But even a
monastery provided no escape.
He said: “We had obsessive fans and they discovered the monastery and they were ringing the bell the whole time.“We were plagued, and eventually I had to leave.”
The Walker Brothers split in 1967 but Scott went on to sell millions of
records as a solo act, even though the BBC banned his first single,
Jackie, for its references to drugs and “phoney virgins”.
Scott went solo releasing the first of four eponymously titled
solo albums: Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and Scott 4 — the latter released under his birth name.These records are rightly considered today to be masterpieces, that turned him ino a different sort of star—a cult icon revered by people
who crave lyrics of profound literacy and powerful, complicated
emotions, as he took on
darker and more experimental tones as Scott’s interests in Jacques
Brel, European art and cinema, formative drone music, Gregorian chanting
and themes of death, decadence and European culture and history grew.
By 1969’s ‘Scott 4’, his first entirely
self-penned album and released under his birth name, he was playing
chess with Death himself on the Bergman inspired ‘The Seventh Seal’ and
dedicating a track to the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Though he was popular enough to be granted his own TV show Scott by
this point, the album was a commercial disappointment, but is now
considered his masterstroke, cited as a major influence on David Bowie , Radiohead, Nick Cabe among others.
Failing to chart 'Scott 4' sent Scott spiralling into booze and depression. On the
orders of his record company he returned to making more commercial
records but became more disillusioned with the music industry.
He said: “I was acting in bad faith for many years during that time. I
was trying to hang on. I should have stopped. I should have said, ‘OK,
forget it’ and walked away. “I started going downhill, imbibing a little too much of everything.“I think I did temporarily go crazy, because I don’t remember the period at all very well.”
A loner, Scott insisted he was not a recluse, but a solitary type,
saying: “I like people but sometimes I can’t wait to get away and be on
my own again.”
In the late Seventies The Walker Brothers reformed and put out three more albums. But it was not long before Scott disappeared into obscurity again
after apparently becoming enraged by an out-of-tune trumpet while
performing with his band on a cabaret tour in Birmingham. He never sang
live again.
He released several albums, written by others, which failed to chart
and which he described as “middle-of-the-road dross”. Much of the next
few years was “sat in pubs watching guys play darts”.
Walker returned to other
writers' songs for an eight-year stretch, resulting in four forgettable
cover albums. But in 1978, Walker penned four of the songs on the
regrouped Walker Brothers' final album, Night Flights, a noisy,
avant take on the disco sound of the day. One of his credits on the
album, an eerie track called "The Electrician," distinctly foreshadowed
where Walker would wander on future recordings.
It was another
eight years before Walker emerged again,interest in Walker’s output was renewed thanks to the Julian Cope-curated compilation Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker, released in 1981. Three years later, Walker returned with Climate of the Hunter, an avant-garde collection of fragmented and trance-like compositions lacking either titles or easily identifiable melodies.Though the album was again a commercial dud, Climate of the Hunter set the stage for Walker’s immense talents to be fully appreciated.
This album featured an assortment of studio musicians who — according to Walker in the documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man— recorded
their parts without knowing the melodies, to ensure that there was "no
chance of everyone swinging together." Unlike most of Walker's
recordings from the previous 15 years, Hunter was critically acclaimed.
It would 11 more years before Walker completed his metamorphosis from
pop crooner to avant-garde godfather. That would come on 1995's Tilt,
a work of art that features bleak, atmospheric orchestrations, with touches of minimalist experimental music and industrial music. Tying it all together
was Walker's inimitable voice, which he pushed to awkward, operatic
heights. Tilt was a harrowing listen, but its uncompromising singularity attracted experimental music fans of all types.
Again, it would be 11 years before Walker would release new music when 2006's The Drift was released on 4AD, Walker again sent shockwaves through the avant-garde community. While Tilt was, in part, adored for its misdirection, The Drift was celebrated
for its execution. As the second part of Walker's late-career trilogy,
it took his ornate orchestration to new depths; every second of its
nearly 70-minute runtime felt intentional and intricate.
Scott, who never listened to his own records, explained that he
“needed an undercurrent of violence and that came into my head” and
added: “There’s darkness in everything I do.”
Even Scott believed his penultimate album, 2012’s Bish Bosch, was not one to listen to for hours on end. “No! No! You’ll end up dead if you do that,” he told one reviewer.
Walker then surprised many fans with Soused, a collaboration with experimental doom-metal droners Sunn O))), in 2014. Consisting of five songs, each circa ten minutes in length. Each
consisting of Walker’s abstract, Beckett-like incantations. Each
consisting of sweeping monolithic guitar drones. Truly incredible channeling stuff,peerlessly deep and complex .
In his final years he produced Pulp’s final album, We Love Life, in
2001, was celebrated with a Proms concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall
in 2017 and, last year, composed the score for the Brady
Corbet-directed film Vox Lux, a musical drama
starring Natalie Portman.
Much of his time, though, was spent out of the public gaze with
long-term partner Beverly or doting on his granddaughter Emmi-Lee. He lived in Chiswick, West London, until his death.
He said: “I’m an outsider, for sure. That suits me fine. Solitude is like a drug for me. I crave it.” Speaking to The Guardian in 2018,
Walker predicted that even his most far-afield work would eventually
find an appreciative audience. "I'll be six feet under — but they will."
An absolute Musical genius, enigmatic, existential and intellectual. From teen idol to avantgarde recluse , no one quite had a career like him. The music world currently mourns this uniquely challenging artist, whose seismic influence on popular culture will long be felt. So long Scott Walker.Rest in Peace.
The Sun Ain't Gnna Shine Anymore - Walker Brothers
The International Committee of Solidarity in Defence of Lula and Democracy in Brazil ( Portugese: Comitê Internacional de Solidariedade a Lula e à Democracia no Brasil), also known as the Free Lula Movement (Portuguese: Movimento Lula Livre), is a political and social movement composed of several Brazilian entities that advocates the release of the ex- Brazilian President Lula from prison. Lula has long proved a divisive figure , but the summary imprisonment has sounded the alarm
for many people – even those who might not agree with his politics –
about a danger to the fabric of Brazil’s democracy. How did a rising
global power with a vibrant democracy plummet into a political abyss?
Luís Inácio Lula da Silva was the
most influential trade union leader in Brazil in the 1970s, and the most
important leader of the ‘new unions’ emerging under the military
dictatorship. These combative unions were centred in the consumer goods
industries, state-owned enterprises and the civil service. Between the late 1970s and early
1980s, Lula led some of the largest and most influential workers’
strikes in Brazilian history. He was also the leading founder of the
Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) in the early 1980s, spending several years
as party president. But, despite media hype at the time, Lula was never
a ‘socialist’ of any description. He was always a social democrat, and a
negotiator: he is impressively good at reaching agreement across
economic and political divides, and this quality was essential in his
political trajectory.
He built the largest
party of the masses in the country, he ran and lost three presidential
elections, and he challenged the discrimination, the powerful upper
class and the media, to become, in October 2002, the first worker
elected president of Brazil. In eight years in office, he proved it was
possible to change the destiny of the country.
Lula was favourite to win Brazil's 2018 presidential election but was barred from
running by the country’s top electoral court, due to a controversial
corruption conviction, which people say was just a means of keeping
him from returning to power.in a move condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee. This was the outcome of an unprecedented judicial persecution already lasting four years: the most egregious case of lawfare
in the world today. The affair is thought to have contributed to the
sudden death of Lula’s wife Marisa. His bank accounts, savings and
pensions have been blocked, rendering him destitute. Yet, no allegation
has been proven, and this ruling comes courtesy of a judge overtly
aligned with a right-wing party and with close contacts with the US
Department of Justice, who also played the roles of prosecutor and jury
The result was the election of Jair Bolsonaro, an ultra-militaristic,
right-wing, religious extremist who has pledged to continue imposing
neoliberal economic policies that impact Brazil’s working class and poor
while encouraging hatred and violence against LGBTQI people, Black
people, poor, social movements and dissidents in general.Threatening civil liberties, the rights of minorities and Brazil’s fragile
democracy. These dark forces are preventing Brazil from being a truly
democratic country.
On January 24, 2018, an appeals court in Porto Alegre, Brazil
confirmed a previous ruling against Lula of the Workers’ Party,
sentencing him to over 12 years in jail.
On April 4, the Supreme Court rejected the habeas corpus presented by Lula’s defense.
The habeas corpus would have permitted Lula to remain free while he
appealed his criminal conviction. The following day, Sérgio Moro, the
federal judge heading the Lava Jato investigation and the soon-to-be
Minister of Justice in the Bolsonaro presidency, gave Lula until 5 p.m.
of the next day to present himself to the Federal Police of Curitiba, a
city in the south of Brazil, to begin his sentence. The declaration of the judge caused an uproar both within Brazil and internationally. Major international media organizations denounced the decision as a sign of the decay of Brazilian democracy.
For many he is considered to be a political prisoner whose continuing detention tarnishes Brazilian democracy. Persecuted
and imprisoned by the Brazilian elite he remains a symbol for progressive forces in Brazil. He is backed by the Brazilian
trade union movement he used to lead and the Workers’ Party he helped to
found.His supporters also include numerous MPs, cultural figures, alongside foreign leftist leaders, such as Michelle Bachelet from Chile and François Hollande from France, as well as the Bolivian leader Evo Morales and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.
Please help this important campaign by adding your name here: https://brazilsolidarity.eaction.online/freeLula
Lawrence Ferlinghetti heretic, civil libertarian, painter, poet, political activist and countercultural icon, celebrates his 100th birthday today, a living legend who in 1953, founded the City Lights bookstore. Ferlinghetti's mission for City Lights was aligned with his
socialist politics: to break poetry out of its stuffy academic cage and
make it accessible to all.
A prominent voice
of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, he has written
poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration
and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues. His work
counters the literary elites definition of art and the artists role in
the world. Though imbued with the commonplace, his poetry cannot be
simply described as polemic or personal protest, for it stands out for his
craftmanship, thematics and grounding in tradition. Born in Yonkers,
New York in 1919 , an activist whose beats still goes on, still brave
enough and daring to challenge people's beliefs.His life has seen him act as a
catalyst for numerous literary careers and for the Beat movement itself,
publishing the early work of Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder etc.
Ferlinghetti’s own verse came to national, and later international attention, with his first self-published poetry book, “Pictures of the Gone World” (1955), which was followed by “Coney Island of the Mind” (1958). a voice fresh and optimistic, even as he denounced consumerism, capitalism and the deadening effects of conformity. Making poetry accessible to all, with his lucid views he has long
watered my senses. His bookstore long now has been an iconic literary
institution that has embodied social change and literary freedom. A
truly remarkable person, Ferlinghetti urges poets and writers to “create works capable of
answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning
sounds apocalyptic… you can conquer the conquerors with words.”
Fame first came to Ferlinghetti when he and City Lights clerk
Shigeyoshi Murao were arrested and put on trial in 1957 for publishing
Allen Ginsberg’s “controversial Howl and Other Poems , drawing attention to te issues of free speech. In a landmark decision, Judge Clayton W. Horn
ruled that the Beat poet’s work was not obscene.Since then, Ferlinghetti’s activist voice has not
softened. When speaking about President Trump, he is unequivocal: “Trump
is an evil man,” he says. “He’s so dangerous. I think you’ve got to
take this man seriously. I think he’s out to destroy democracy.”
He's grown "frail and nearly blind," writes Chloe Veltman at The Guardian in an interview with the poet this month, "but his mind is still on fire." Ferlinghetti “has not mellowed,” says Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, "at all." but he's still got the edge, still got so much force.His innovative
poetics incorporating slang, pop cultural references wry humour continue to
examine the human condition.
Ferlinghetti who has recenly released his latest book Little Boy, is a consistently spirited and astute observer, spiking his
vital, frank accounts with cultural, political, and personal insights
both funny and stinging in language that is jazzy and lyrical. Soulfully open to
the world and all its sorrows and wonders, Ferlinghetti affirms, in
every line, the power of literature and art as essential navigational
tools. Happy birthday Lawrence Ferlinghett, whose voice is still vital as ever, a giant who long will inspire.
Poet as Fisherman - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
As I grow older I percieve
Life has its tail in its mouth
and other poets other painters
are no longer any kind of competition
Its the sky that's the challenge
the sky that still needs deciphering
even as astronomers strain to hear it
with their huge electric ears
the sky that whispers to us constantly
the final secrets of the universe
the sky that breathes in and out
as if it were the inside of a mouth
of the cosmos
the sky that is the land's edge also
and the sea's edge also
the sky with its many voices and no god
the sky that engulfs a sea of sound
and echoes it back to us
as in a wave against a seawall
Whole poems whole dictionaries
rolled up in a thunderclap
And every sunset an action painting
and every cloud a book of shadows
through which wildly fly
the vowels of birds about to cry
And the sky is clear to the fisherman
even if overcast
He sees it for what it is :
a mirror of the sea
about to fall on him
in his wood boat on the dark horizon
We have to think of him as the poet
forever face to face with old reality
where no birds fly before a storm
And he knows what's coming down
before the dawn
and he's his own best lookout
listening for the sound of the universe
and singing out his sightings
of the land of the living.
The World is A Beautiful Place - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
Catchy jingles, striking slogans and subliminal commands
Cook up the tailor baked insidious mixture,
Guilefully iced with fairy fingertips
Cunningly crafted to engender the bite,
Cultivating tastes and erasing senses
Resetting fashion and exploiting the impressionable,
Crippling the mind with fabricated dreams
Epitomising the dysfunctional corporate culture.
Relentless blitz campaigns infiltrate young minds
Wafting of empty catchpenny blurb,
Magnetising and harvesting incipient souls
Channeling conception of lifelong habits,
Casting the spell of deluded grandeur,
Emblazing emblems and velvet voices,
Pull at the fraying parental purse strings,
Planting the seeds of the anticipatory crop.
As unscrupulous measures invite comparison
And polarizing attitudes sever relationships,
Advocating change and facilitating division
Endorsing the social class perimeters.
Glorifying the rich, shunning the poor
Harbouring hate and compromising principles,
Breeding contempt and empowering crime
Stimulating suicides and signing death warrants.
The spectre of materialism courts capitalism
Reinforcing elitism and widening the gap,
The opulent empires triumph and prosper
Home to rapacious fat cats and parsimonious millionaires,
Embroiled in a mission of propelling persuasion
Shooting sugar coated spears at the statistical melange,
Bagging vulnerable victims with wily schemes
Prey of the coercive stimulus of obsequious ladder climbers.
(Spring Equinox Greetings,we llive in sad times but life can renew, this old poem bought back afresh)
I have prayed for miracles
That simply do not exist,
Perception tested, rearranged
Obscured by realities mist,
In the morning tinged with sadness
Tickling blossoms return to nurture,
The air, bright clear and glorious
Plough all depths of possibility, Old spirits return, needing to inspect
Sit beside me once more and investigate,
Call my name as birds sing
Spring guiding lifeblood of existence,
Resurrecting in subtlest way
While daffodils dance, and snowdrops bow
Nature alive again, with scented treasure,
Love resonating with every sound
Touched with truth, that needs no eye,
In Camouflaged ripples of time
Trees whisper secrets of surrender,
darkness dwindles, hope releases
Under open sky, dreams tapestry unfurls,
Pagan life forces of crescendo
Lift us forwards to tomorrow.
In 2013 the courageous Amrican activist. human rights heroine and US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning was
given a 35-year prison sentence after she had leaked more than 700,000
confidential US State Department and Pentagon documents, videos and
diplomatic cables about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to
WikiLeaks. Mannings leak of military data was driven, she has said by 'love of country and a sense of duty for others;'
In the documents that would become known as the Iraq War Logs and the
Afghanistan War Logs, Manning exposed the military's standing orders to
ignore the many allegations of physical and sexual abuse and torture of
detainees perpetrated by the Iraqi Security Forces. She exposed
contractors trafficking children in Afghanistan, and many instances in
both countries where large numbers of civilian casualties went
conveniently unreported between 2004 and 2009.
Perhaps the most notorious of the releases was a US military
video that WikiLeaks titled 'Collateral Murder'.
It showed the indiscriminate slaying of up to eighteen people in
Baghdad on 12 July, 2007. The footage, taken from an Apache helicopter
gun-sight, showed the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters journalist
and his rescuers. A second Reuters staff member, employed as a driver
and camera assistant, was also killed. Two young children, whose father
was among those killed, were seriously wounded.
The video, together with the transcript of army exchanges during the indiscriminate US killings, shocked many around the world:
Let's shoot.
Light 'em all up.
Come on, fire!
Keep shoot, keep shoot. [keep shooting]
keep shoot.
keep shoot.
[...]
Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards.
Nice.
Were it not for Chelsea Manning’s courageous disclosures, certain U.S.
military atrocities might have been kept secret. She brought to light secret U.S. drone strikes carried out in Yemen, as well
as the fact that Egypt's State Security Investigation Service, a wing
of the police force which has committed obscene human rights violations,
received training from the FBI. Her revelations were
also key to exposing U.S. approval of the 2009 coup against the elected
government in Honduras and U.S. dealings with dictators and oligarchs
across the Middle East, which helped spark the Arab Spring rebellions.
Prior to her arrest in 2010, Chelsea Manning wrote: “I want people to
see the truth, regardless of who they are. Because without information,
you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”
Manning, who’s now 31, spent a substantial amount of time in solitary confinement before her trial, in addition to years in prison afterward. She
publicly came out as transgender just after she was sentenced, and she
struggled with mental health while behind bars, resulting at one point
in another week of solitary confinement. While in prison, Manning twice attempted to commit
suicide.She was released in
2017, after her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama, two
days before he left office following sustained pressure from activists.
In a move her defenders called "an outrageous government overreach and absolutely inhumane, on 8 March – International Women's Day – Manning was
once again jailed after she refused to testify against WikiLeaks, and
its founder Julian Assange, before a grand jury in Virginia, and was incarcerated in the Alexandria, VA federal detention center. Her imprisonment can extend through the term of the Grand Jury, possibly
18 months, and the U.S. courts could allow formation of future Grand
Juries, potentially jailing her again.
'I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury.'Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions
only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated
ethical objections to the grand jury system.'I will not participate in a secret process that I
morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and
persecute activists for protected political speech.'
Chelsea Manning is widely considered to be an American hero for risking her own freedom to
expose war crimes committed by the United States military in Iraq. Many compare her with Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon
Papers exposing U.S. government lies about the Viet Nam War. Ellsberg
calls Manning a patriot:
"She’s a very patriotic person. I know no
one more patriotic, actually, willing to risk and even give her own
freedom, her own life, in order to preserve our constitutional freedoms
and the Constitution. I admired her then. I admire her now. And right
now she’s refusing to take part in basically a conspiracy against press
freedom in this country, led by the president of the United States and
the secretary of state."
In an interview
last week with Dennis Bernstein on Radio KPFA, John Pilger described
the significance, and injustice, of the recent jailing of Chelsea
Manning. The irony of her being imprisoned on International Women's Day
was first noted, then Pilger pointed to the shameful silence from the
women's movement, and other human rights activists:
'Where are they [human rights activists] on Chelsea
Manning? Why were there only ten people outside the Court House? Where
is Amnesty International? Where are the women's groups? Where are the
LGBT groups? Where are the Pride people? Why aren't they massing in
support of Chelsea Manning? Instead I see Chelsea Manning's story
relegated in a sort of, "Oh well, that's almost inevitable this is going
to happen." But this [...] is the most significant act of principle; an
inspiration to all decent people; to democrats, to people who believe
in justice. So where are the groups who have been very loud in their
condemnation – rightly - of Donald Trump? Where are they? Why are we not
hearing from them?'
The U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia is fooling itself if it
thinks locking up Manning will compel her to testify. She has bravely made it clear
that she has no interest in testifying in such a secretive setting. Her
only offense is an unwillingness to cooperate with the same government
that locked her up for exposing the kinds of horrors its military forces
perpetrated in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chelsea Manning is a political prisoner
who is being used as an example, her imprisonment is cruel, punitive, criminal and totally
unjustifiable. The White House wants to set a precedent for jailing
whistle-blowers and journalists who publish information critical of the
military and state apparatus. Even now, after her original sentence
has been commuted, the state continues to pursue her and demands that
she testify in secret hearings about events that she has already gone on
the public record about . We must demand the
immediate and unconditional release of Chelsea Manning. There will always be a welcome for here in Wales.
the Marx Grave Trust, has asked all members of the public to respect the tomb of Karl Marx at Highgate Cemetary, London as a place of commemoration and family grave.
The tomb site and the Marx Grave Trust were established with the active support of Karl Marx's great grandsons.
The present monument commemorates the final resting place not only of Karl Marx, but also his wife Jenny von Westphalen, together with their daughter, Eleanor Marx, a prominent political and trade iunion activist, Harry Longuet, the grandson of Karl and Jenny Marx and Helena Demuth, their house-hold manager and the political confidante of both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
It is a Grade 1 listed structures of “exceptional interest.”
The Trust, which is the legal owner of the tomb and monument, is
currently in close consultation with Highgate Cemetery over the
necessary professional repairs to restore the monument, following recent
damage caused by vandalism. It is also discussing issues of
conservation and security with the Cemetery.
In an assault, reported to police on February 4, the grave’s
marble plaque was repeatedly smashed with a hammer, damaging it beyond
repair. A second attack on the night of February 15 saw the entire
monument daubed
in bright redpaint on the grave of Highgate Cemetery's most famous resident. "It will never be the same again, and will wear tose battle scars for the future," said Ian Dugavell of the friends of Highgate Cemetary Trust of the damage to the plaque https://highgatecemetery.org/about/the-friends “Senseless, stupid, Ignorant,” the cemetery said. “Whatever you think
about Marx’s legacy, this is not the way to make the point.”
The graffiti covered inscriptions of Marx’s final words of The Communist Manifesto, “Workers of all lands unite,” and the most famous of Karl Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach,
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The
point however is to change it.” The contrast between Marx’s messages of
hope and the violent smears that covered them could not be more jarring.
“It will never be the
same again, and will bear those battle scars for the future,” said Ian
Dungavell, chief executive of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, of
the plaque.
Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/news/karl-marx-grave-london-highgate-cemetery-vandalised-hammer/
“It will never be the
same again, and will bear those battle scars for the future,” said Ian
Dungavell, chief executive of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, of
the plaque.
Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/news/karl-marx-grave-london-highgate-cemetery-vandalised-hammer/
The shameful attack on Marx’s grave in a far right targetted ideological assault coincided with fascist attacks on the graves of socialist
leaders in Spain and on Holocaust memorials and Jewish cemeteries in
France, Poland, Lithuania and Greece. In Manchester, a Jewish cemetery
was targeted on February 8, with fascist hoodlums smashing gravestones,
windows and wash basins.
The monument has been attacked previously, most notably during the
1970s, when vandals damaged the face of the bust
and attempted to put a bomb inside it to destroy it. No arrests have been made over the attacks.
As Mark Neocleous points out in his research on
the interconnections between fascism and death. According to Neocleous,
the fascist fears that their dead enemies are not properly dead, but
“undead.” This means that the dead can — in some mystical sense — come
back to life.
Grave desecration, as Mark Neocleous argues, is integral to fascist
terrorism. According to Jewish law, “treating a corpse disrespectfully
implies a belief that death is final and irreversible.” In other words,
treating the dead disrespectfully gives no hope for their resurrection.
Fascists desecrated Jewish graves because it wasn’t enough that those
interred were biologically dead; grave desecration meant that the
fascists did not think they were dead enough. As Neocleous puts it,
“Unable to actually engage in this struggle in the world of the undead,
the fascist is forced to the next best thing: attack the grave.”
These attacks against Marx’s grave are meant to prevent
Marx from coming back to life — not literally, of course, but in the
figurative resurrection of a socialist movement. As Walter Benjamin once put it, not even the dead are safe from fascism; in this case, not even Marx’s grave is safe.
For fascists, Marx’s grave does not represent the site of someone
dead, but of something threatening to reemerge. Marxism represents the
eternal enemy of the fascist imagination; Marx is not dead, but undead.
They fear that Marx is still influencing world history from beyond the
grave. Worse, they fear that the socialist movement is resurrecting Marx
from the oblivion of the past.
If capitalism is one day overthrown and humanity moves from its
pre-history towards real history, then Marx will be more than a ghost;
he will be immortalized.
Defacing a beautiful monument in this destructive manner will not change the power of his words. His overwhelming legacy refuses to die. Marx's intellectual influence still so strong,his ideas and thinking have become fundamentals of modern economics and sociology. Marx’s legacy is pervasive, complex, and often polarizing. But the
epitaph carved in gold letters into his grey marble tombstone in the hearts and minds of many cannot simply be erased. His grave remains a pilgrimage site for followers from around the world attracting thousands of people each year. and his ideas still play an important role in shaping political and cultural discourses in the UK and abroad.
The German revolutionary socialist, author of “Das Kapital” and
co-author of the “Communist Manifesto”, although was German born, he had to
flee Germany and settle in London, living there from 1849 until his death in 1883.On Saturday, March 17, 1883 Marx was laid to rest in Highgate
Cemetery, in the same grave in which his wife had been buried fifteen months
earlier.
At the graveside Gottlieb Lemke laid two wreaths with red
ribbons on the coffin in the name of the editorial board and dispatching
service of the Sozialdemokrat and in the name of the London Communist Workers'
Educational Society. Frederick Engels then made the following speech in English:
"On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the
greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely
two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully
gone to sleep-but forever.
"An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant
proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death
of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty
spirit will soon enough make itself felt.
"Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature,
so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple
fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must
first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue
politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of
the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree
of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch
form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions,
art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been
evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained,
instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.
"But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of
motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production and the
bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery
of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve
which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist
critics, had been groping in the dark.
"Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy
the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every
single field which Marx investigated -- and he investigated very many fields,
none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics,
he made independent discoveries.
"Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man.
Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However
great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical
science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible
to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery
involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry and in historical
development in general. For example, he followed closely the development
of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those
of Marcel Deprez.
"For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission
in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist
society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being,
to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was
the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious
of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he
fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival.
His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorw?rts!
(1844), Br?sseler Deutsche Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and in addition
to these a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris,
Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great
International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement
of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing
else.
"And, consequently, Marx was the best-hated and most calumniated
man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported
him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic,
vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed
aside as though it were cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme
necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions
of revolutionary fellow-workers -- from the mines of Siberia to California,
in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that though
he may have had many opponents he had hardly one personal enemy.
"His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work!"
My heart is heavy with grief today with the devastating heatbreaking news that an Alt-right terrorist attack in New Zealand’s Christchurch has left 49 people
dead and at least 48 wounded. The attacks occurred at two locations: Al
Noor Mosque and Linwood Mosque, which are approximately three miles
apart.
Another set of lives, and families, tragically destroyed by an ideology of visceral
hatred. The depravity of the killer is only underlined by the fact that
he live-streamed the attack.
According to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, 41 people have
been killed at Al Noor and another 7 perished at Linwood Mosque, another
died at Christchurch Hospital, while dozens of victims are being
treated for gunshot wounds at various local hospitals.
The New
Zealand Police are reporting that four people, three men, and one woman,
have been taken into custody in connection with the attacks. None of
the suspects were on security watch lists but all hold extremist views.
One of the gunmen posted live footage on social media of the attack as
it unfolded. It appears that the camera was strapped to his head.
The individual who posted the videos online tried to cloak himself in the
façade of normality, describing himself as “just a ordinary White man.”
In fact, he was a self-confessed “eco-fascist”. He praises Oswald
Mosley and the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Breivik, who killed 77
people in 2011.
Shortly before the attack he, like his hero Breivik, posted a document
online that used stock phrases from the alt-right to justify the
murders. He talked of “white genocide” and cited spurious statistics
about birth rates to explain away the savagery of his actions. As if
anything could justify such mass murder. The document is called the
“Great Replacement”, a phrase widely used in Generation Identity circles, a network close to British far right figures such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson).
Hope not Hate chif executive Nick Knowles, said the killers motives were clear:
“The bloody terrorist attack in Christchurch was carried out by a
far-right activist who has published a manifesto explaining why he did
it. It is full of praise for other anti-Muslim activists and ideas. This
is where the ideologies of visceral hatred end up.
“The terrorist’s manifesto uses the stock phrases of the alt-right to
justify murder, talking of ‘white genocide’ and citing spurious
statistics about birth rates to explain away the savagery they have
inflicted on people simply engaged in practising their faith…
“The attacker’s manifesto specifically says he wanted to ‘incite violence [and] retaliation’ against Muslims.”
Violence, terrorism and murder are part and parcel of his rationale.
Through his murders, he wanted to “mobilise a race war and revolution.” https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/
Mike
Bush, New Zealand’s police commissioner, has warned people to stay away
from mosques this Friday and for mosques to close their doors until
further notice, according to the New York Times.
The country has been placed on its highest security threat level.
In these dark sad times we must offer our full assitance to the Muslim community, condemning this abhorent crime srongly. This attack is a sobering reminder that the threat of far right political and religious violence is real and that we must remain vigilant against it.We must with our friends continually stand united in solidarity against the scourge of hate and intolerance and challenge the racism and policies that feeds these attacks.
