In Memoriam Kamal Boullata (1942 - 2019 ) Influential Palestinian artist and historian

Kamal Boullata influential Palestinian artist, historian, intellectual and writer who was acclaimed for his  intricate explorations of the concepts of exile, modernism and the emergence of Palestinian identity against colonial powers, has died in Berlin on August 6 at the age of 77. His death was first reported by the National, a publication about Middle Eastern culture based in the United Arab Emirates, on Tuesday.https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/art/prominent-palestinian-artist-kamal-boullata-dies-in-berlin-1.895390
Boullata was born in Jerusalem in 1942, growing up in the Christian Quarter and  his parents sent him to the workshop of painter Khalil Al-Halabi,who was well known for his paintings of icons, in the quarter where he lived, and it was with him that Boullata  would  learn the same process while studying the Arabic calligraphic and geometric aesthetics that would later influence his body of work. Following Israel’s occupation of the territory in 1967, he was exiled to Beirut and later traveled to Europe where he graduated from the Academia di Belle Arte in Rome and then to the United States, where he studied at the Corcoran Art Museum School in Washington, DC and used  this time to make significant contributions to the cause of Palestinian activism and the Arab American awakening that was occurring at the time.
In the 1970's and 1980's he was a member of the hurufiyya movement, where Arab artists experimentally brought together Arabic calligraphy and Modernism. Boulatta  was best known for his colourful, geometric silkscreen artworks  and his use of Kufic script, an early form of Arabic calligraphy, where he addressed the concepts of binaries and divided identity, often including  clear visual references to the decorative elements of the Dome of the Rock, a site he frequently visited as a child in Jerusalem, as well as the traditions of Palestinian embroidery.
His later works moved away from geometry towards an interest in depicting light and transparency. In the following  video interview with the online publication Electronic Intifada, Boullata says “perhaps it was the light of Jerusalem that I have been seeking to recapture all along”.

Kamal Boullatta on painting, exile and Jerusalem

In 1993, he received a Fullbright Fellowship to conduct field research on Islamic art in Morocco and Spain, and in 2001, he was awarded a Ford Foundation grant to research post-Byzantine painting and the origins of modern art in Palestine. Boullata  was a worldly figure who spent the last five decades of his life moving between the US (1968-1992 , Morocco, (1993-1996) and France,  (1997-2012) before settling in Berlin in 2012 when he was elected as a fellow of the Wissenschaftskollen zu Berlin, Institute for Advanced in Berlin.
His career was rich and varied, moving regularly between the worlds of writing and of painting. Throughout his life  he was known for his generosity to friends, human rights advocates, and causes. He was the author of  four groundbreaking books on Palestinian art, including Belonging and Globalisation: Critical Essays in Contemporary Art and Culture  (2008 ) and Palestinian Art:From 1850 to the Present (2009) in which he gave  the first insider's study of Palestinian art in English yet published, this scholarly analysis presented insights into the development of Palestinian art before and after the cataclysmic events of 1948 during which Palestinian society was uprooted and dispersed. Writer and Critic John Berger wrote in its preface: "Boullata takes the reader to the struggle of those visionary, obstinate Palestinian artists who create so that their anonymous heroic land with its ancestral olive trees  may survive."
He believed that Palestinian artists who sat idly by had failed to do their job properly, and he saw writing such histories as being integral to his practice. “I don’t think that you can lead a purely creative life or a purely political life,” Boullata said in a 2009 National interview. “Everything is interrelated, even if we are unaware of that fact. When artists in Gaza were under bombardment and looking after their families, they still kept on thinking about art.” https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/visual-memories-a-new-book-on-palestinian-artists-1.4
An individual with a brilliant mind Boullata also edited books on modern poetry and contemporary culture and his essays in English and Arabic have appeared in catalogues, anthologies, and academic journals.In 2003 he edited  If Only the Sea Could Sleep: Love Poems by Adonis. We Begin Here a collection of poems he co-edited was written in response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon,updated with new works rising from Israel's 2006 bombardment of its northern neighbor. These poems, covering a period of nearly 25 years, testified to the poets' spirit of resistance and support of the dignity, rights and humanity of the Palestinian and Lebanese people. 

 “The Palestinian cultural movement lost with the departure of Boullata a dedicated artist who will remain present in the history and future of Palestinian art as an expression of freedom, struggle and creativity and in the memory of Palestinian generations inspired by his works,” said the Palestinian Ministry of Culture in a eulogy statement.

“Boullata remained faithful to Palestine and its cause in its political and humanitarian dimensions. He defeated with his art the aura of darkness and death that the occupation is trying to consolidate and impose in Palestine,” it added.

Boullata’s works are well regarded around the world  and he has been exhibited in Europe, the US, France, and the Middle East and can be found in collections including the British Museum, London; the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; the New York Public Library; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; and Mathaf:  Museum of Modern Arab Art, Doha. Recent solo exhibitions include Addolcendo at Meem Gallery, Dubai (2017); ‘… And There Was Light’ at Berloni Gallery in London (2015); and Bilqis at Wiensowski & Harbord in Berlin (2013).

His loss is a huge loss to the thousands of people he inspired across the world and to Palestinian culture, because he did so much in his work and his writings to situate Palestine art  in the full context of Palestinians lived experiences. He will be remembered foremost as one of Palestines great modernist artist, a creator of vibrant Arabic abstract art, as well as being a scholar of the history of Palestinian art,whose legacy will live on as a result of the rich contribution he has given to humanity,  He is survived by his wife  Lily Farhoud. Kamal Boullatta  may his creative soul rest in peace.

"Today, memory continues to be the connective tissue through which Palestinian identity is asserted and it is the fuel that replenishes the history of their cultural resistance." -- Kamal Boulatta

Kamal Boullata

Lessons from Hiroshima and Nagasaki

74 years ago  on 6th August 1945 am.the United States dropped  an atomic bomb called ' Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan which is estimated to have killed 100,000 to 180,000 people out of a population of 350,000. Then three days later, a second  atomic bomb  called "Fat Man" was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing between 50,000 and 100,000 people.
.Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely civilian towns, meaning there wasn't a strong military reason to drop the atomic bombs over those particular cities. No one was excluded from the horrors of the atomic bomb, a "destroyer of worlds" burnt hotter than the sun. Some people were vaporised upon impact, while others suffered burns and radiation poisoning that would kill them days, weeks or even months later. Others were crushed by debris, burned by unimaginable heat or suffocated by the lack of oxygen. Many survivors suffered from leukemia and other cancers like thyroid and lung cancer at higher rates than those not exposed to the bombs. Mothers were more likely to  lose their children during pregnancy or shortly after birth. Children exposed to radiation were more likely to have learning disabilities and impaired growth.
Those that did manage to survive  would be traumatised for the rest of their lives. Hibakusha is a term widely used in Japan, that refers to the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it translates as 'explosion effected  Survivor of Light. These survivors speak of the deep, unabating grief they felt in the days, months and decades since the attack  They have described the shame of being a survivor , many were unable to marry, find jobs, or live any sort of normal life. They have said that many Hibakusha never speak of the day, instead choosing to suffer in silence. They told what it was like to be suddenly alone in middle age, to lose their parents, spouses, children, and livelihoods in a single instant. In memory of them, we should make sure that the  misery and devastation caused by nuclear weapons is never forgotten.
Even if Japan was not fully innocent, the people of Japan did not deserve to pay the price for their nations wrongdoing, and there was absolutely no moral justification in obliterating these two cities and killing its inhabitants in what was clearly a crime against humanity and murder on an epic scale. Hiroshima and Nagasaki held no strategic importance. Japan were an enemy on the brink of failure an members of the country's top leadership were involved in peace negotiations. Many believe that these two atrocities were a result of  geopolitical posturing at its most barbaric, announcing  in a catastrophic  display of military capability, of inhumane intention showing America's willingness to use doomsday weapons on civilian populations.The bombings serving as warnings and the fist act of the Cold War against its imperialist rival Russia. A message to the Russians of the power of destruction and technological military capability that the US had managed to develop.Three days later U.S president Harry Truman exulted ; "This is the greatest thing in history! " and gloated that " we are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely."
Then the photos began to emerge, haunting images of burned children with their skin hanging off, of bodies charred and there was Sadaki Sasaki and the 1,000 origami peace cranes she folded before her death at 12 from leukemia ten years after the bomb was dropped on her hometown of Hiroshima. The bombs dropped were  of a indiscriminate and cruel character beyond comparison  with weapons and projectiles of the past. Despite all  this Truman never regretted his decision. .
Today as the world commemorates the lives that were lost and the unacceptable devastation caused to people and planet, we still have so much to learn from this picture of indescribable human suffering. Lets not forget that in our our current dangerous  times, many world leaders remain recklessly committed to their nuclear  arsenals. There are an estimated 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world at the present time with over 90% held by USA and Russia, but also by the UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and lately North Korea. This is more than enough to wipe out most of the human race and most other life and in scrapping the landmark intermediate-Range nuclear arms control pact, like the  US president Donald Trump has done on August 2d, the threat of nuclear war has been dangerously heightened.
As the safety and security of people across the globe hangs by a thread, and today we mourn the hundreds and thousands of lives lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki now is the time for us to redouble our efforts to ensure that such an atrocity does not happen again and on this poignant anniversary, we must reaffirm our determination to campaign for a world without nuclear weapons, whilst remembering the resilience of ordinary people in the years after the war and the movements of ordinary people against war, who try to make this world more peaceful and harmonious place for us all. Across the world today for Hiroshima Day and on August 9 Nagasaki Day there will be many Lanterns for Peace Ceremonies to commemorate these two events, where many will echo the call of the Hibakusha, that such a tragic thing must never happen again.

Roma Holocaust Memorial Day

Roma  Holocaust Memorial Day is held every year on August 2, to remember the murder of hundreds of thousands of Romani by the Nazis during Word War II. Roma communities also mark May 16, 1944, when, as survivors remember, the inmates successfully resisted the SS’s first attempt to clear the camp .
No official figures exactly exist, but it is estimated that between 220,000 and 500,000 Romani and Sinti,from Central Europe were killed during the war, the Nazis and their allies killed about 25 percent of Europe's entire Roma (a.k.a. Gypsy) population, accounting for half their total population at  the time. This genocide, known in the Romani language, as Porajimas which can translate as “destruction.” It's remembered as the worst event in their peoples' history. Other Romani people in the Balkans prefer to use the term 'samudaripen,' translating as “mass killing,” but there's still no general consensus in the community regarding how to call this tragedy, sometimes even borrowing the word 'holokausto.'
Roma persecution by the Nazi regime began in 1933 and during the 1936 Olympic Games, the Roma and Sinti were forcibly relocated to a camp on the outskirts and were not allowed to leave unless they had a job. Their property was confiscated and sold; they were never compensated. Between 1933 and 1945, more than 400,000 people were forcibly sterilised by the Nazis, including thousands of Roma and Sinti, In the late 1930s, the first deportations of Roma to concentration camps began. While the yellow star worn by the Jewish victims of the Holocaust is best known, the Roma had their own symbols, brown or black triangles, symbolising their ethnicity and their inherent ‘anti-social’ status.
In May 1944, the Nazis started to plan the “Final Solution” for the “Gypsy Family Camp” in Auschwitz. The initial date for the liquidation of the “Gypsy camp” was planned for the 16^th of May. The prisoners of the camp were ordered to stay in the barracks and surrounded by 60 SS men. When the SS men tried to force the prisoners out of the barracks they faced a rebellion of Roma men, women and children, armed with nothing more but sticks, tools and stones, and eventually the SS had to withdraw. The resistance of Roma prisoners gave them only a few additional months of life.
The Nazi also feared that an insurrection could spread to other parts of the camp and they planned the “Final Solution” on August 2nd. On orders from SS leader Heinrich Himmler, a ban on leaving the barracks was imposed on the evening of August 2 in the “Gypsy Camp”. Despite resistance by the Roma, 2,897 men, women, and children were loaded on trucks, taken to gas chamber V, and exterminated. Their bodies were burned in pits next to the crematorium. After the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945 only 4 Roma remained alive.
Auschwitz remains a powerful symbolic point of reference for European Roma , as it does, of course for global memory of the Holocaust. But even before this horrific moment in history the Roma were vilified, and maligned across Europe, an ethnic group originating in the northern Indian subcontinent before making their way to Europe most likely in the 14th century, the Roma had always been a migratory people who often faced local persecution wherever they ended up. And in the subsequent years since the Holocaust, their pain and suffering has been forgotten and diluted, wiped from the pages of history books while the same myths that were used to put them in camps in the first place persist into the 21st century. Widely accepted “facts” about Roma criminality and anti-social behaviour are today central to any conversation about the Roma community, despite a broad lack of understanding for the realities involved. The genocide of the Roma and the Sinti by the Nazis remains for many the "Forgotten Holocaust "
Surely  it is  time we should reject the notion that only the group with the highest number of victims deserves acknowledgement for their suffering.What matters most, in any case, is not the anomalies or the differences in the numbers, but the fact that both Jews and Gypsies were deemed “parasitic alien races” and targeted for racial extermination.It is certainly time for full recognition of the Roma and Sinti victims of the Nazis. Just as Jews have Yom HaShoah, the Roma and Sinti have now their own commemoration  to fully recognize Gypsy victims of the Holocaust. Today organizations representing  the Roma and Sinti community will gather today at Auschwitz and other sites for education and remembrance.
We should not forget either,  that those who passed through the gates of Auschwitz were only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Romani victims of the genocidal policies of the Nazis and their allies. In occupied Poland, Serbia and the Soviet Union, they were hunted down by the same Wehrmacht units and death squads that massacred Jews. In Romania, some 25,000 were deported to “colonies” east of the Dniester river (Transnistria); nearly half of them did not survive the brutal conditions there.
After World War II, German society even denied for decades they had been persecuted and it took until 1979 for the German government to commence reparations and until 2011 for the killings to receive an official day of remembrance.However to this day the families of the victims of the Roma Holocaust still struggle for compensation and equal rights, while at same time institutional and rhetorical anti-Gypsyism is sadly becoming politically respectable in parts of Europe again. They face extreme unemployment and poverty. They have poor education outcomes, language and literacy barriers. They are segregated and discriminated against at every turn, but people are willing to turn a blind eye to all of that because it’s not happening to them.The need for continued memorialization of the fate of the Roma and Sinti population of Europe has never been more important.
Not just today we should pay tribute to the memory of the Roma victims of the Holocaust, making sure this tragedy is never repeated . It is  also a stark reminder of our shared responsibility and duty as fellow humans to reaffirm our unwavering commitment to counter antigypsyism, antisemitism, racism,discrimination and stand guard  against hatred and indifference and other forms of intolerance. Also in remembering the genocide is an important step towards securing respect and civil rights for Europe’s Sinti and Roma. a path to stop the racism against the Roma that has never stopped  for them and the pain that is still inflicted on their community that affects them so deeply.

Frank Stanford (1/8/48- 3/6/78 ) :- Neglected Poet of raw emotion

Prolific American poet Frank Stanford was born in Mississippi on August 1 in 1948, he was taken out of a Mississippi orphanage and was adopted by Dorthy Gildart, who was single. In 1950 his mother adopted a daughter Bettina Ruth, and in 1952, his mother married Albert Frankin, a much older civil engineer contractor in Memphis., Tennessee, where the family relocated, and Albert adopted Frank and his younger sister. Until his death eight years later, Stanford raised the young boy as his own. When he was 21, Frank discovered that his mother had adopted him he had always believed, or been led to believe, that she was his birth mother. His birth parents are unknown. The orphanage from which a single mother adopted him burst into flames, destroying his record.
 Standford spent summers in labor camps run by his father, and worked side by side with African Americans building levees on the Mississippi River, absorbing his co-workers’ vivid storytelling, their music and their fatalistic point of view. Asked once what he had learned from his co-workers, he said simply: “how shitty white people were to them.”
In 1964, Stanford entered Subiaco Abbey and Academy near Paris, Arkansas, a boys' prep-school run by Benedictine monks who provided a rigorous liberal arts and physical fitness curriculum. After graduating, he entered the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in the fall of 1966, pursuing a civil engineering degree as his stepfather had done at the same institution some fifty years earlier. In January 1969, the spring semester of his sophomore year, Stanford changed his field of study to English and was allowed to enroll in the graduate poetry-writing workshop, an uncommon occurrence.
Stanford‘s personal life  though was rather tumultuous, after leaving University without a degree in 1971,he married  Linda Mercin , but the marriage ended within a year. In 1973 he married a second time to painter Ginny Crouch. They had no children.His preoccupation with his loss of identity and his perpetual quest for identifying origins, manifested across his poetry. His subject was mostly childhood, and particularly the childhood spent growing up in a Southern community at a time when the South was on the brink of tumultuous change. He writes of childhood memories viewed through an adult lens, memories recalled with a grasp that is fond and loving but also understanding and at times shocking. Much of his poetry is about growing up in the 1950s South. His language soaked in a Southern vernacular and deeply American.Long poems set with recurring characters in an imaginary landscape drawn from his childhood in the Ozark mountains and full of wild embellishment.
Stanford was a writer unlike any other American poet of his time. He was heavily influenced by French and Latin American Surrealism, and he was dubbed "a swamprat Rimbaud" by the poet Lorenzo Thomas and "one of the great voices of death" by Franz Wright.Stanford consistently took two of the most ancient poetical themes, love and death, and infused them  with a freshness with his language and imagery. His poems remain haunting,primal, otherworldly and powerful to read, full of raw emotion and passion, and despite the preoccupation with death are strangely beautiful.
 On June 3, 1978, Stanford  walked into his home in Fayetteville, Ark., to be confronted by his wife, painter Ginny Stanford, and his mistress, poet C.D. Wright about his sexual liaisons. There were at least half a dozen other women at the time.After confesing his infidelity to his wife, he had suffered from depression and threatened suicide on previous occasions, he stepped into the bedroom and shot himself with a .22 pistol. He is buried at Saint Benedict's Cemetry near Subiaco Abbey.
 Stanford wrote ten books of poetry, eight volumes in the last seen years of his life, which is pretty impressive for anyone, his books include The Singing Knives, Ladies from Hell, Arkansas Bench Stone  and The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I love you, a mostly unpunctuated poem that is more than 16,000 lines long.
He published prolifically and was acknowledged as one of  the most talented and uniquely  inventive poets of his generation, however after his death, with his literary estate split, a rift between his widow and his mistress left the majority of his work inaccessible to all  but determined seekers. But in the years following his death  there have been a number of posthumous collections, and though a underappreciated and neglected  artist, who has been almost entirely absent from poetry anthologies he has certainly developed a cult following,  and now with his books being republished, it has meant that  his legacy, in recent years, has at least continued to  grow and for him to be at last  recognised  as an undeniable force in contemporary American poetry. He cared about the lost and forgotten , the poor and afraid. And he bought them into his poems. where their despair and hoplessness could shine clearly. His poems should be a wake up call for all of us, and long shall they not be forgotten either.His grand imagination has flared in the imagination of a new generation of readers and writers and he has since been written about in at least two folk songs - the Indigo Girls' "Three Hits" and Lucinda Williams' beautiful song "Pineola" who was a close family friend of Stanford who was a staple in the Williams household in the 1970s.

The Light  the Dead See - Frank Standford

There are many people who come back
After the doctor has smoothed the sheet
Around their body
And left the room to make his call.

They die but they live.

They are called the dead who lived through their deaths,
And among my people
They are considered wise and honest.

They float out of their bodies
And light on the ceiling like a moth,
Watching the efforts of everyone around them.

The voices and the images of the living
Fade away.

A roar sucks them under
The wheels of a darkness without pain.
Off in the distance
There is someone
Like a signalman swinging a lantern.

The light grows, a white flower.
It becomes very intense, like music.

They see the faces of those they loved,
The truly dead who speak kindly.
They see their father sitting in a field.
The harvest is over and his cane chair is mended.
There is a towel around his neck,
The odor of bay rum.
Then they see their mother
Standing behind him with a pair of shears.
The wind is blowing.
She is cutting his hair.

The dead have told these stories
To the living.

 Time Forks Perpetually toward Innumerable Futures in Your Enemy - Frank Stanford

I am going to die.

Friends who made good,
Friends who did not,
I am going
Down into the Egypt of your sex,
The lands of your mystery and death.

Do you still want me
To find you
Somebody to love?

I cruise through the delta of your love,
Paradise on Sunday,
Cold as ice on Monday.
A hundred pounds of it on the tongs,
A butterfly at the center.

Going home I cross the bridge
And throw a bottle out the window,
Hit all my friends in the head.

The crickets under the straw
Like old folks spitting in a paper sack.

Now my life the Sphinx
Laid by slaves,
My death the promised land.

A light rain falling, a split tongue
And sad eyes, no lie,
I’ve got you by the tongue.

I park my Cadillac outside your temple of madness.
You are worshipped there.

Look at your face, swollen from sleep.
Are you waiting for me
To unwind you from your last clothes,
Do you want me
To bury my long ship in your heart?

Your lineage like gravesites for the stars,
Way stations for great dreamers.

There is a six foot rattlesnake
Asleep in the birdhouse.
Are you taking crumbs to the warblers tonight?

Death is an isthmus, you can get there on foot.
But love had made its island.

What of the young?
I hunt them down,
Good winds in the desert,
Blue eggs in the junipers.

You - Frank Stanford

Sometimes in our sleep we touch

The body of another woman

And we wake up

And we know the first nights

With summer visitors

In the three storied house of our childhood.

Whatever we remember,

The darkest hair being brushed

In front of the darkest mirror

In the darkest room.

Frank Stanford, What About This:Collected Poems of Frank Stanford, Port Townsend; Copper Canyon Press, 2015

Pineola - Lucinda Williams

Britains richest man: Frack off !

Residents in the south Yorkshire village of Woodsett are currently raising money to oppose shale gas exploration proposals by US petrochemical giant Ineos, largely owned by the UK’s richest man, and Brexiteer the billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
Ratcliffe  has described shale gas as a “saviour“ of the UK economy. He is known for his aggressive pursuit of industrial assets in the UK, including the Grangemouth petrochemical plant and refinery, Forties pipeline, and fracking licenses. [2], [3], [4], [5] Ratcliffe confessed to moving his operations to the tax-haven of Geneva, Switzerland, with some parts of INEOS’ business now returned to the UK.He forced the closure of the Grangemouth refinery in 2013 after a dispute with trade unions over working conditions and pension payments.
 Ratcliffe wrote a comment piece for the Daily Telegraph reflecting on the Grangemouth industrial dispute, in which he says of trade unions:“It is misplaced for unions in Britain to think that we are the enemy. We are not. It is not necessary, nor appropriate, to sow dissent and misrepresent employees or constantly to threaten industrial action. "
Ineos does not restrict themselves to getting up the noses of their workers They have also taken out a national injunction against protestors, making it a highly risky business even to stand outside an Ineos plant brandishing a cardboard Frack Off sign.
Ineos currently has a UK petroleum exploration and development licence (PEDL) for a field outside Woodsetts, which allows it to pursue a range of oil and gas exploration activities, subject to necessary drilling and development consents and planning permission.
Matthew Wilkinson, from Woodsetts Against Fracking, said houses in Berne Square backed on to Ineos’s site: “It would be clearly visible from their homes. You could throw a ball and probably get very close to the well pad.”
A few weeks ago Ineos submitted an application to erect a 270-metre-long fence as an “acoustic sound barrier” to shield the estate, which has already been dubbed the “Great Wall of Ineos”.
Wilkinson said the fence would make residents feel trapped. “If somebody sticks a huge wall up outside your house, which it pretty much is, you’re going to feel enclosed.
“The ‘Great Wall of Ineos’ will act like nothing more than a prison wall to the most vulnerable people in our village, obscuring their views, reducing their light and causing stress.”
The Conservative government is in favour of fracking and has made it difficult for local councils to deny planning permission to energy firms hoping to frack for shale gas. To turn down a fracking application, councillors must cite concerns over traffic, noise or environmental impact, rather than an ideological objection to the process of fracking. Councillors in Rotherham have so far though twice refused planning permission for the well, citing concerns mentioned above .Denying Ineos for the second time in September .councillors voiced concern about the proximity to Berne Square, which provides housing for people who are elderly or ill.
Fracking is the process of extracting gas or oil from rocks trapped thousands of metres underground, by drilling into the rocks and breaking them up with water and chemicals at high pressure.Those in favour of fracking say that we are addicted to fossil fuel and should  not make a fuss about the consequences, that fracking will increase jobs, reduce energy bills and reduce reliance on imported oil and gas. Those against say, this is not about consumer demand, it’s about profits  and our reliance on fossil fuels is short sighted, the practice is terrible for the environment and the number of jobs generated has been grossly over exaggerated and the Government should focus on renewable energy.
Sir Jim, has dismissed many of the concerns about fracking, calling many protest groups ' ignorant' and criticising the Government for listening to a "noisy miniscule  minority and insisting his company has made significant breakthroughs  on expanding the recycling of plastic.
However support for shale gas has sunk to a new low, as cracks appear in the industry.In a government survey on energy, published last Thursday, 6 February, public support for fracking has sunk to a record low. The survey, carried out quarterly for the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, found that 13% supported fracking while 35% opposed fracking. The government survey also revealed 77% of people want renewable energy; the most common reason being the loss or destruction of the natural environment, followed by the risk of earthquakes and tremors. Fracking also presents  immediate risks to human health and contamination of drinking water by toxic chemicals released during the fracking process. This combined with respiratory problems that flare up in the vicinity around fracking sites, from wheezing and coughing and breathlessness, to potentially life-threatening issues like asthma. Further, there are serious issues with noise, stress, and sleep deprivation, leading to rises in incidence of heart disease, depression, and even linked to learning difficulties in children. As a result many are calling for fracking to be banned once and for all.
Ineos has repeatedly come under fire for its carbon footprint, which it has historically refused to disclose, while some have suggested the group may be one of Britain's largest polluters.“It seems reasonable to assume that Ineos' emissions amount to millions, if not tens of millions of CO2 every year,” a Christian Aid spokesman said.“Yet despite the company's vast scale, it manages to keep an extremely low profile, releasing only snippets of information about its emissions of greenhouse gases.
Documents released under a freedom of information act request revealed Ineos was also leading a push to use Brexit as an opportunity to exempt the chemical sector entirely from climate change policy costs, The Guardian reported.
Protestors recently targeted  the chemical giant at the cycling Tour de Yorkshire after Ineos became the sponsor of a British cycling team, that had previously been called Team Sky, and follows a £110m investment with Olympian sailor Ben Ainsle in the American Cup Yacht race, which  many believe simply amounts to a form of greenwashing, in an attempt to deflect criticism of the company's  damaging environmental record and polluting activities by backing high profile eco friendly causes. Environmental  groups have been quick to link Ratcliffe's spending to wider controversies about his business interests, from concerns about the real impact of fracking to the over extension of the plastics  market. Craig Bennett, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, has described the acceptance of Ineos sponsorship as "wholly inappropriate"..
The villagers of Woodsett are fighting back in what campaigners are describing as a case of “David v Goliath”.and have crowdfunded £10,000 to pay a lawyer to help them oppose the application by Ineos to carry out test core drilling on a field just outside their village. They have recently recieved fresh hope as Ineos' planning appeal for drilling has been delayed until 2020. I would urge people to  support them in their fight against climate criminals Ineos , as they destroy our environment and fuel climate change in their thirst for profit.

 Crowdjustice website for Woodsetts Against Fracking

Martin Luther King, Jr. - We've learned to fly the air like birds...

On August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  took the stand and began his famous “I have a dream speech” with the following words:

 “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.”

By the time King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, he had left us all with his universal message of peace, freedom , justice and the dignity of being human. His words many years later continue to touch, move and inspire and are so relevant to the times we  currently live in. Dr. King’s vision went far beyond garnering equal rights for his own racial group. His experience of oppression and suffering led him to identify with all who suffer from systems and structures that exclude them. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Dr. King used the metaphor of a “World House” to remind us that we all inhabit the same fragile planet and that the way we live together will either make the house more habitable or destroy it altogether. He went on to say

 "Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau: ‘Improved means to an unimproved end.’ This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual ‘lag’ must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul."

Our survival depends on solving these problems", King said, adding that "The solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony."

 Let our quest for peace and justice long continue,

.https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/lecture/

Defusing the timebomb ( for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson)

Some say he's all but won
for others a fly in the ointment
causing ripples of despair
as choruses of desperation
search for some way out of here
in the face of incredulous days
no room for jubilation
as idiocracy given keys of power.

There's a difference between
austerity and robbery
the undemocratic process
that is not shown on the news
where they carpet bomb us with bullshit,
regurgitated soundbites that do not calm
do not expose the truth for all to see
that exist in the shadows of our being.

As divisions cracks are fostered
a snake charmer releases bag of tricks
time to shape new spectacles
end illusion, ignite passionate fire
create a new parliament for the people
built on circuits of love
where veracity in the end
will be what is left standing.

The hungry and those hardest hit
the broken and abandoned
with nothing left to lose.
will take on the mantle of power
no longer needing to run or beg
cancelling out abominations
the mists of their tomorrows
glimmering with hope.

https://iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com/2019/07/24/defusing-the-timebomb-by-dave-rendle/         
                                   

Boris Johnson as British Prime minister !!

This week following a month long contest will see a group  of 160,000 largely old white male lunatics,who are likely to have voted for the Brexit party in the EU elections electing  one Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson to be the oafish new British Prime Minister on behalf of vested interests and his quest to destroy democratic values. It is such a cheery thought to wake up to and is certainly an odd way for a country to choose its next prime minister and seems like a sick joke, and certainly gives us all room for concern..
Although Johnson's image is carefully constructed, to give him the appearance of a harmless, amiable, loveable  buffoon, his life of privilege is real, as a product of Britain's most famous private school, Eton College which marks  him, by most peoples definition, a member of the gilded elite. An individual with a chaotic private life, gross incompetance and ineptitude, as seen in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe,who also has a habit of bending facts,who has lied through life, has lied his way though politics, with an egomania beyond control, such a nasty piece of work who will stop at nothing, from racist crass offensive rabble rousing to promising the moon on a stick, in order to get what he wants. A man who should not be trusted to open the Downing Street door, let alone given the keys, he is simply not fit for office, the mind truly boggles at the thought of this prospect.
Yet there are still those that fall for the idea that this self-serving chancer  is a  liberal despite his embrace of nationalism and targeting of Islamic women, with his toxic rhetoric,while appeasing Americas very own racist President,  who in terms of policy in the depressing leadership campaign has seen him pushing for tax cuts to the rich, he pledged to increase the threshold for paying the 40% rate from £50,000 to £80,000, coercing a large swathe of the Tory membership who will be voting for him, at a cost of 9 billion a year. He said in declaring his canditature, "We should be cutting corporation tax and other business taxes."
Even the Financial Times  felt obliged to editoralise that such policies were  "irresponsible" at a time of growing social discontent."Surveys show that after a near decade of austerity most Britons would rather the government raised taxes and spent the proceeds on better services than cut them further."Johnson also talked of desiring unity having done so much to widen division by leading this country blindly into its current morass. Johnson is also seeking to ensure closer ties with the US, with the promise of of a new free trade deal with Washington  post Brexit, under conditions in which the major EU powers are at odds with US imperialism over policies of trade war and confrontation with China, Russia and Iran, that can only intensify divisions between the UK and Brussels. Under his tenure it would also see the scrapping of environmental regulations, the ever deeper erosion of workers rights and a political climate in which racism, homophobia and every reactionary prejudice can be freely expressed. At end of the day its just a political game of power to Johnson, one that could blow up in his face, and that could seriously backfire on him and the rest of his acolytes.
Because Johnson is such a polarizing figure in UK politics that for many voters, they  don't just dislike Johnson but absolutely loathe him. For all his charm, it wears decidedly thin, with his long history of causing offence whenever he happens to opens his mouth.
Chosen by a tiny, unrepresentative minority, he will certainly have no mandate from the people for his racist, hard right policies.,Yet we could see that Boris becomes the shortest serving Conservative prime minister, because he might not even have a majority by the time he is announced as the next PM, and if there is a general election later this  year with the UK still not having left the UK and Brexit remains unsolved, polls are predicting a Tory bloodbath, as people come to their senses with the nation  booting Johnson and the rest of the Torys out of power, and confining them to the dustbins of electoral history, where they truly deserve to reside. I can only live in hope.

Earlier thoughts

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2019/06/boris-johnson-not-clown-but-intolerant.html

Living utopia (Vivir la utopia) - Unique documentary on Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution (1936)

On a day like this, 83 years ago, a sequence of events occurred , that would lead to the Spanish Revolution . A moment in time that has come to represent the defining struggle of the age: a clash between not just between the opposing political ideologies of socialism and fascism, but between civilization and barbarism, good and evil.
 In 1931 with the proclamation of a Republic a Socialist-Republican Government was formed in Spain, which had the support of many revolutionary forces active in Spain.It had a commitment to the seperation of the church and the state, and a commitment to international peace, modern systems of education, land reform, and more equal roles for both men and women. By 1936 the Spanish Republic had recently been revived by the election of a moderately liberal government after 5 years of tension and retrenchment. A new popular front alliance of all anti-fascist parties had swept the country the previous year.
However on the night of 18th July, 1936 the army mutinied with their generals  and launched a coup against the people. They bought in foreign legionairres and colonial troops and under General Franco proclaimed a military takeover. A bitter struggle had begun.
Executions without trial were common place, Franco had the support of the aristocracy,the army, the landlords, the bankers, and the Church hierararchy and a clique of corrupt politicians went over to the conspirators the rest backed the Republic.The left wing of the popular front was determined to resist the Generals and resolved to distribute arms and weapons to newly formed militias. By the morning of 19th July truckloads of rifles from  the Ministry of War were on their way to the headquarters of the Socialist and Anarchist trade unions for distribution to their members. A few weeks later  a government emerged more than capable of defending the Republic against the Generals. It was the first Republican Government to have full Socialist, Communist and Anarchist support. However Franco had both Italian and German fascist support, with both their finance and intervention. The fascists defended a common view of the past, while the republican coalition though, had widely different visions of the future.

But the people rose, millions of people around the world felt passionately that rapidly advancing fascism must be halted in Spain; and more than 35,000 volunteers from dozens of other countries went to help defend the Spanish Republic, forces of red and black fought back united against fascism. In the countryside, peasants took control of the land, redistributing large estates and, in many places, collectivizing the land and setting up communes and a civil war  was waged, the workers immediately set up barricades and within hours the rising had been defeated. Arms were seized and given to workers who were dispatched to other areas to prevent risings. Madrid was also saved because of the heroism and initiative of the workers. Hearing of what had happened in Barcelona they had stormed the main army base in the city. Workers' militias were established. Workplaces were taken over and for ten months after July 1936, the people held power. Taking over the factories and the running of the whole of society. They organised workers’ committees  in enterprises and streets. They believed that they had power and fought to defend and extend it.The revolution that Spain was experiencing did not go unnoticed by visitors. George Orwell, who arrived to fight as a volunteer in a column raised by the POUM, a dissident Marxist party allied to the anarchists, describes his impressions upon reaching Barcelona:

"This was the first time that I found myself in a city where the working class was in control... The anarchists were virtually in control of Catalonia and the revolution was striding ahead... Activities of a servile nature had disappeared. No one said 'Senor' or 'Don', nor even 'usted'. Everybody was called 'comrade' and 'tu'; and said 'Salud!' instead of 'buenos dias'.

Barcelona was the nerve centre of the revolution in urban Spain. With the CNT and the FAI at the head of the antifascist militias committee, Catalonia underwent one of the most radical transformations in its history, affecting every aspect of its political, social and economic life. 80% of firms had been collectivised and all services were being run by the workers themselves. These changes were to be legalised by the Generalidad in October 1936.

But in a series of tragic events  they were sadly defeated aided by the British government who had agreed to a policy of 'non-intervention'  along with the help of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It was a brutal conflict that polarised Spain, pitting the Left against the Right, the anti-clericals against the Church, the unions against the landed classes and the Republicans against the Monarchists. It was a bloody war which saw, in the space of just three years, the murder and execution of 350,000 people, not forgetting all those who died from malnutrition, starvation, and war-engendered disease. It was also a conflict that became internationalised, becoming a battleground for the forces of Fascism and Communism as Europe itself geared up for war.
By April 1939, all of Spain was under fascist control and Franco declared a victory .Solidifying his power with a brutal dictatorship by oppressing and systematically killing any political opposition. General Franco's military regime remained in power until his death in 1975 depriving  Spain of freedom for several decades afterwards, the wound inflicted still resonates.
Over 40,000 other selfless men and women fought side by side for the ideas of liberty and social justice, solidarity and mutual aid from 53 different nationalities. Rallying to the republican cause.
For many it was not just a war to defeat the fascists it was the beginning of a new society. A revolution in fact, unfortunately revolutions do not succeed when the people are divided. There are many lessons to be learnt from this struggle, a struggle that continues to do this day.
The film above "Vivir la Utopia" (Living Utopia) is a unique 1997 feature-length documentary by Juan Gamero (Spanish with English subtitles) which chronicles the origins and evolution of the Spanish anarchist movement and its important role during the Spanish Revolution (1936-1939). The largest anarchist community of its kind in Europe at the time, millions of peasants and urban workers successfully established a society based on equality, mutual aid, participatory democracy and self-organization – all without a central state or government. This fascinating yet largely unknown non hierarchical sociopolitical experiment was eventually destroyed by forces from inside and outside the country. Featuring rare archival footage and interviews with surviving participants, Living Utopia is considered to be one of the most important documentaries on the subject and what it lacks in high-brow cinematic quality it makes up for with the passion of the people whose story it tells. By telling the stories of these social pioneers, the film emphasizes on the social changes and the political developments that have resulted in the rise of Franco and the Spanish Civil War. Extensive interviews with the old laborers and anarchist members are beautifully combined with black and white footage from the era of the revolution. Many years later people  are still looking for another world, a living utopia, Emma Goldman  once said  'To the daring belongs the future... when we run out of dreams, we die... .

Summer of Love

In conditions of splendour across the land
finding passion, following its hungry shout,
soaring through the trees and breeze
as we play hide and seek
under the fiery sun
sharing our love
for woman, spirit, man.

Climbing fissions of desire
beyond the cruelty of life
under the influence, defying gravity
seeking hands of human friendship
that resurrect lifes limbo
drawn to positive forces
painting pictures anew.

Under turpentine clouds
sizzling and shimmering
lifting us to a future
where we can keep seeking
the same water of  life
kissed by the sun
feeling the warmth of its embrace.

Swimming among tides of change
sunshine taking us to horizons of love
flowing with  devotion
allowing dreams to expand
unleashing awakening yearnings
as evening releases harmony
a blanket of stars to catch our breath.