Capitalism as religion - Walter Benjamin ( 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940)

Walter Benjamin  was born  on July 15, 1892 in Berlin. under the name of Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin.  He was a German Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, philosopher and renaissance man of letters, who wrote on topics ranging from art history and aesthetics to linguistics, politics, and psychedelic drugs, who is now considered to have been the most important German literary critic in the first half of the 20th century.He was influenced by the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, by Marxism, by German idealism  and by Jewish mysticism.

In his brief life, Benjamin developed many of the themes that now serve as an indispensable foundation  for literary and cultural criticism. "Criticism" he observed, "is a matter of correct distancing. It was at home in a world where prospectives and prospects counted and where it was still possible to adopt a standpoint. Now things press too urgently on human society." This could have been written yesterday, it was published in 1928.
Born into a  affluent  Jewish family in Germany in 1882.He was active in the German Youth Movement. He was horrified by World War One, and left the country  to  avoid  he  draft and to study in Switzerland, where he received his doctorate from the University of Bern in 1919. He had difficulty finding an academic job after he returned to Germany, but he continued to write in a wide range of fields, including art, translation, poetry, history and literature. 

He also considered himself to be a psychonaut, and carried out extensive experimentation with hashish and morphine. Given his background as a failed academic, he might have appeared unlikely to become an influential figure, but his critical ideals in the humanities, and skeptical vision of modernity, led him to become important not only in literary criticism but also Critical Theory.  

Sadly, all aspects of his life were shaped by the rise of Hitler, who came to power in Germany in 1933. Benjamin’s brother was arrested, and later died in a concentration camp. Benjamin then moved to Paris, where he became fascinated by they city’s covered streets in the nineteenth century, as a way to think about modernity and society. 

His friends warned him to leave Paris, but he waited too long. Some people have observed that Benjamin, although a great intellect in practical matters proved to be something of a bungler.

Because of his anti-fascist advocacy, the Gestapo requested Benjamin’s expatriation from Paris in February 1939. When France declared war on Germany, all Germans living in France were interned in camps. Benjamin was sent to the village of Nevers in Burgundy, but was released due to interventions by his friends.  Years before his friend had emigrated to Palestine, and sought to persuade Benjamin to follow him. But Benjamin did not flee Paris  and  continued to work  until the Germans were about to enter the city in June 1940,  and he was forced to flee Paris. .

His plans  were  to flee the Gestapo once and for all and  was planning  to  leave to   to the States from Portugal, crossing Spain, a neutral country during the war.  Yet, at that time the fascist dictator Francisco Franco had just won the Spanish Civil War and was leading a bloody regime while somehow cooperating with Hitler.  

On September 25, 1940, he and some other German anti-Nazis began an infamous day-long walk to cross the mountainous French-Spanish border, from Banyuls and aiming to reach Portbou, the first town in the other side of the border,  despite a heart condition and lack of visa or passport.

His health got worse during that effort – Lisa Fittko, one of his companions who used to help Germans cross the border, explained afterwards that Benjamin had to stop every ten minutes. 

The historical record indicates that he safely crossed the French–Spanish border and arrived at the coastal town of Portbou in Catalonia on 25 September 1940. 

The Franco government had cancelled all transit visas and ordered the Spanish police to return such persons to France, including the Jewish refugee group Benjamin had joined.They were told by the Spanish police that they would be deported back to France the next day, which would have thwarted Benjamin's plans to travel to the US.

He arrived in Portbou in the evening, but some Francoist Spain police officers told him and his group that they were not allowed to be in Spain and that they would be deported back to France the day after.  According to Angelus Novus foundation, which contributes to the memory of the writer, the orders for those police officers in Portbou had changed that day, and if they had crossed one day earlier, they would have been allowed to stay.  

Expecting repatriation to Nazi hands, in his hotel room,  he took his own life with an overdose of morphine, As much as an act of desperation, it was a last act of protest and anti-fascist resistance. He was only 48. The local doctor,  declared it a natural death  and  the official Portbou register records 26 September as his date of death. Ironically, he was then buried in a Catholic cemetery under the name Benjamin Walter   in a common grave  along with nameless refugees, homeless people, and unidentified bodies. 

The others in his party were allowed passage the next day, possibly because Benjamin's suicide had shocked the Spanish officials, and safely reached Lisbon on 30 September.n the night

His tragically short life became the subject of Jay Parini's novel Benjamin's Crossing. Charles Bernstein and Brian Ferneyhough wrote the opera Shadowtime based on his life.His dislocation and willful alienation, mark him as a kindred spirit to Kafka and Baudelaire.More than 70 years after his death his work continues to speak compellingly to the modern reader.
In the following excerpt from an unfinished essay, Capitalism as Religion  by Walter Benjamin written in 1921 and published in the Volume VI of his Collected Writings (in German). Here, Benjamin characterises capitalism not as something that resembles a religion, but as an actual religious cult,without mercy or truth, leading humanity to the house of despair.
Directly based on Max Weber's Protestant ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, but – in ways akin to Ernst Bloch or Erich Fromm – it transforms Weber's 'value-free' analysis into a ferocious anti capitalist argument, probably inspired by Gustav Landauer's romantic and libertarian socialism. The translation is by Chad Kautzer.
Beginning in the late middle ages and reaching its first plateau in the late eigthteenth century, the capitalist market began to assume an autonomous, god-like existence. Since then we have made fetishes out of commodities as we believe we can derive sensuous pleasure from their magical properties. We sacrifice our time, our families, our children our forests, our seas and our land on the altar of the market., the God that some owe their deepest allegiance.
Capitalism is a totalitarian system that engulfs the entire social and cultural structure at considerable cost to this fragile earth of ours. Under it's influence people plunder,kill, steal , ravage nations and wage wars. Capitalism isn't about  bringing you contentment, it's about making you feel discontentment and under the Tory Government they have already shown us that they want pure privatisation  through unfettered Capitalism. So those who already have, will increase their wealth and those who do not will struggle to live. The altar of greed is truly where they worship. Thanks Walter for reminding me.

Capitalism as religion - Walter Benjamin

“One can behold in capitalism a religion, that is to say, capitalism essentially serves to satisfy the same worries, anguish, and disquiet formerly answered by so-called religion. The proof of capitalism’s religious structure – as not only a religiously conditioned construction, as Weber thought, but as an essentially religious phenomenon – still today misleads one to a boundless, universal polemic. We cannot draw close the net in which we stand. A commanding view will, however, later become possible.

Three characteristics of the religious structure of capitalism are, however, recognizable at present. First, capitalism is a pure religious cult, perhaps the most extreme there ever was. Within it everything only has a meaning in direct relation to the cult: it knows no special dogma, no theology. From this standpoint, utilitarianism gains its religious coloring. The concretization of the cult connects with a second characteristic of capitalism: the permanent duration of the cult. Capitalism is the celebration of the cult sans rêve et sans merci.¹ Here there is no “weekday”, no day that would not be a holiday in the awful sense of exhibiting all sacred pomp – the extreme exertion of worship. Third, this is a cult that engenders blame. Capitalism is presumably the first case of a blaming, rather than repenting cult. Herein stands this religious system in the fall of a tremendous movement. An enormous feeling of guilt not itself knowing how to repent, grasps at the cult, not in order to repent for this guilt, but to make it universal, to hammer it into consciousness and finally and above all to include God himself in this guilt, in order to finally interest him in repentance. This [repentance] is thus not to be expected in the cult itself, nor in the reformation of this religion – which must hold on to something certain within it – nor yet in the denial of it. In the essence of this religious movement that is capitalism lies – bearing until the end, until the finally complete infusion of blame into God – the attainment of a world of despair still only hoped for. Therein lies the historical enormity of capitalism: religion is no longer the reform of being, but rather its obliteration. From this expansion of despair in the religious state of the world, healing is expected. God’s transcendence has fallen, but he is not dead. He is drawn into the fate of man. This passage of “planetary man” [Planeten Mensch] through the house of despair is, in the absolute loneliness of his path, the ethos Nietzsche describes. This man is the Übermensch, the first who knowingly begins to realize the capitalist religion. The fourth characteristic [of the religious structure of capitalism] is that its God must become concealed and may only be spoken of in the zenith of his culpability. The cult becomes celebrated before an immature deity, [while] every image, every idea of it injures the secret of its maturity.

Freudean theory also belongs to the priestly rule of this cult. It is thoroughly capitalistic in thought. The repressed, the sinful imagination, is, at bottom, still an illuminating analogy to capital – to which the hell of the unconscious pays interest.

This type of capitalist, religious thinking magnificently reconciles itself in Nietzsche’s philosophy. The thought of the Übermensch loses the apocalyptic “leap” not by changing its ways, atonement, purification, [or] penitence, but in the apparently continuous, but in the end, rupturing, discontinuous intensification. That is why intensification and evolution are incompatible in the sense of “non facit saltum.” The Übermensch is the one who without changing, arrived, who streaked through the heavens – historical man.

Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, without dogma. Capitalism itself developed parasitically on Christianity in the West – not in Calvinism alone, but also, as must be shown, in the remaining orthodox Christian movements – in such a way that, in the end, its history is essentially the history of its parasites, of capitalism. Compare the holy iconography of various religions on the one hand with the banknotes of various countries on the other: The spirit that speaks from the ornamentation of banknotes.

Christianity in the time of the Reformation did not encourage the emergence of capitalism, but rather changed itself into capitalism.”

¹ The translator suggests this should actually read “sans trêve et sans merci”

Walter Benjamin, 1921

Happy Birthday Woody Guthrie ( 14/7/ 1912 -3/10/1967) - Folk Revolutionary .

Today marks the  birthday of legendary left-winger, songwriter, poet of the people and musician Woody Guthrie. A man who celebrated the little guy, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised, whose songs openly took the side of the working class, poor and oppressed people.
Tragedy first struck when Woody was still a young child. His father was a land trader, and soon made enough money in oil-mad Okemah to build a nice six-room home for the family; yet shortly after the Guthries moved in, the house burned down. By then, the depression was already beginning to bite, and his father couldn't afford another one. For the next few years, the Guthries moved from house to house as their fortunes got worse; and as if the falling family fortunes weren't enough, human tragedy struck too. Woody's favourite sister, Clara, died after being horribly burned by the explosion of an oil stove.
 Not long after, this  Woody's mother suffering from Huntingtons disease was sent to a mental asylum where she later died. A saddened and a broken man, Woody's dad did his best to keep happiness alive in the broken family: he would sing to his children, but, remembered Woody, "I could tell by the sounds of his voice that he was not singing to make his own self feel good, but to try and make us kids feel better." Then the family home burned down for the second time.
A growing youth by then, Guthrie  overcame his own  personal hardship and tragedy and set of to seek  his fortune far from the sad memories of his childhood. Hitch-hiking across America with a guitar on his back and paintbrushes in his pocket, he made for  California, joining the crowds of Okies seeking a better life in the West. He mixed with the migrant farm workers, and learned their trade, singing about it in some of his finest "Dustbowl Ballads"; He became a spokesman for those Americans affected by the Great Depression and the dust storms. and sung out to sufferers of the Depression, the Dust Bowl era, and the second World War. He advocated the unions and scorned the corporations. But the formulas for writing the “people’s songs” didn’t rest in social justice alone; Guthrie’s wit, humor and home-spun vernacular attracted too and avoided pretension.
In the 1930s, Guthrie was among the many who climbed out of the western states’ disastrous Dustbowl; he brought with him original songs that catalogued the sights and emotions of the day: “So Long, Its Been Good to Know You”, “I’m Blowin’ Down This Old Dusty Road”, “Talking Dust Bowl Blues”, among many more. Once in California, Woody soon learned that it was no land of milk and honey. However, instead of toiling in fruit orchards, he became a radio performer, offering his old-timey and topical music to the southerners who’d migrated to the West Coast. While the station manager tried desperately to hold Woody to the country standards, somewhere in the mix was an original called “Mr. Tom Mooney is Free”. This 1939 composition told of the recently pardoned labor activist, a cause celebre in Left circles, who’d been wrongly imprisoned for 22 years. Very soon, he got a reputation as an outspoken defender of the poor and the exploited, and a well-armed enemy of those who exploited them. "I saw the hundreds of thousands of stranded, broke, hungry, idle, miserable people that lined the highways.... I heard these people sing in their jungle camps, and I sang songs I made up for them," he wrote.
Soon, Woody was renowned as a militant labor unionist, a champion of the public cause against private greed.In 1941, he was taken on by the Bonneville Power Administration, a state-run organisation, to help them win public approval for two vast dam projects on the Columbia River. The BPA project was hotly contested by the owners of private power companies, who did not want to lose their monopoly over the electricity supply in the region. Woody's collection of "Columbia River Songs" is a major contribution to the social history of the American West in the 1930s and early 40s, fixing in song and poetry the trials of a generation of rural Americans. In part thanks to Woody, the dams were built.
From his first song, “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Ya” which he wrote about a huge dust storm while living in Pampa, Texas, Woody Guthrie chronicled the changing world that he saw.
He could describe the deprivations of migrant workers but still insist that "pastures of plenty must always be free.” his songs touch on issues ranging from immigration (“Deportee”) see earlier post, about this song here, https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/the-continung-relevance-of-woody.html

to corrupt financial institutions (“The Jolly Banker”)

to the plight of the working class (“Union Maid”) — age-old problems that continue to dominate the modern news. He re-wrote some of his songs, lambasting the racist developer/landlord, Fred Trump, father of  president Donald J. Trump. A developer who made a fortune, not only through the construction of "public" housing projects but also through collecting the rents on them. Woody used his songs and other creative works as social commentary, promoting social justice issues such as treating all people fairly no matter what colour or economic status, political belief or place of origin.
The radicalism he brought into his songs was seldom forced; it was organically and seamlessly connected with a kind of humanistic appreciation of working people’s everyday struggles. He was, in his own words, “out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world.” songs that were made for you and me. Although he was unblinking in the face of suffering and injustice, he had a persistent streak of optimism. He seemed really to believe that music could change the world for the better, confidently writing on his guitar, “This machine kills fascists.” He was a radical, a revolutionary who believed if imperialists raised their ugly heads, it was time to battle them in bloody struggles. To the Fascists, he sent the ultimate warning:

“I’ll bomb their towns and bomb their cities
Sink their ships beneath the tides,
I’ll win this war, but till I do, babe,
I could not be satisfied.”

Guthrie’s ‘machine’ indeed ‘killed Fascists’. And he appealed to human reasoning through radical folk renditions that founded the landscape of protest music worldwide. And he never faltered from why he needed to sing what he did.

Woody Guthrie - Tear the fascists down.
 

Woody Guthrie - All you fascists Bound to lose. 

All you fascists bound to lose  - Woody Guthrie

I’m gonna tell you fascists
You may be surprised
The people in this world
Are getting organized
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose

Race hatred cannot stop us
This one thing we know
Your poll tax and Jim Crow
And greed has got to go
You’re bound to lose

You fascists bound to lose.

All of you fascists bound to lose:
I said, all of you fascists bound to lose:
Yes sir, all of you fascists bound to lose:
You’re bound to lose! You fascists:
Bound to lose!

People of every color
Marching side to side
Marching ‘cross these fields
Where a million fascists dies
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose!

I’m going into this battle
And take my union gun
We’ll end this world of slavery
Before this battle’s won
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose!

Woody Guthrie is also remembered for “This Land is Your Land”, his anthem reclaiming America for ordinary people. It was his own contemptuous response to the success of “God Bless America. It is often considered the nation's second national anthem

Many of the things he concerns himself with in song in the late 1930s are still with us today and though its disconcerting to know we haven’t solved those things, at the same time it’s reassuring that Guthrie’s music is still there to shed light on these issues. During hard times, people who are struggling to find a emotional accessible moral philosophy that can give hope can still find it in the words of this poet of the people Woody Guthrie. He taught us that an artist must not be confined to the world of imagination alone. The battlefield is an unequal world and the war against injustice is absolutely on. Until that war is won, the artist must not be satisfied!
In the 1950s, Woody was one of the many artists and writers to fall victim to the McCarthyist witch-hunts for supposed "Communists". Publishers gave up publishing his collections, and his most famous songs, such as "This Land is My Land", were presented as "anonymous".
By the late 1940s, Guthrie's health was declining, and his behavior was becoming extremely erratic. It was finally determined that he was suffering  himself from Huntington's disease, this terrible genetic disorder inherited from his mother. Increasingly unable to control his muscles, an incurable victim of a slowly spreading paralysis he  was hospitalized at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Morris County, New Jersey, from 1956 to 1961, at Brooklyn State Hospital (now Kingsboro Psychiatric Center) in East Flat Bush until 1966, and finally at  Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens Village, New York, until his tragic death in 1967 aged only 55.
During the last years of his life, he lay in bed, a dying hero, forgotten by many but regularly visited by a small band of family and friends and acolytes, including a 19 year old Bob Dylan, many of whom were later to make sure that after his death, Woody would not be forgotten.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of young people was inspired by folk singers such as Guthrie. These "folk revivalists" became more politically aware in their music than those of the previous generation.  By the time of his death, his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to them through the likes of Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Ramblin Jack Elliot,
Thank you Woody Guthrie, a folk revolutionary who continues to inspire and strike a chord or two. His songs and time remain eternal.

Revolutionary Mind - Woody Guthrie

Night is here again, baby,
I'm stretched out on my bed
Seeing all kinds of crazy notions
Running through my head

I need a progressive woman;
I need an awfully liberal woman.
There ain’t no reactionary baby
Can ease my revolutionary mind.

One hand is on my pillow,
One hand is on my head,
I see a million nightmares
Tearing around inside my head;

I need a progressive woman
I need an awful liberal woman
I need a social conscious woman
To ease my revolutionary mind.

If I could only make you see, babe,
I ache and pain and bleed,
I know you’d come a runnin;
If you blistered both your feet.

I need a progressive woman
I need an awful liberal woman
I need a social conscious woman
To ease my revolutionary mind.

Slow Dance

We get torn and broken
In days of confusion,
As tears keep falling
In every passing season
Will you take my hand
Come take a slow dance,
To console, comfort and heal
Allow love to reveal,
Blended with emotion
Our eyes locked together,
Lips nearly touching
Breaking social distancing,
Feeling alive, beyond bitterness
While sun sets, and we kiss,
Remember time is short
Nothing lasts forever,
Lets gently move to music
Before the days are over,
Embracing tenderness
Instead of constant sorrow,
Holding hands, feeling warmth
Clinging on, to this source of passion.

Remembering Srebenica massacre 25 years on.

25 years ago Serb forces captured the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, and carried out Europe's worst worst atrocity on European soil since the  Second World War.. Around 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed there over several days. They had been forcibly separated from the women and children. The Bosnian Muslims had found shelter in Srebrenica during the Bosnian War because it was supposed to be under UN protection. On 16 April 1993, one year into a civil war that began when Bosnia sought independence from Yugoslavia, the  Security Council had passed Resolution 819 requiring all parties to treat Srebenica and its surroundings as a safe area which should be free from any armed attack or any other hostile act. 
However in July 1995, General Ratko Mladić and his Serbian paramilitary units overran and captured the town,  Dutch  UN peacekeeping forces were at the time accused of  failing to do enough to prevent the massacre.The Muslim men and boys were told by the Dutch peacekeepers they would be safe and handed over to the Bosnian Serb army. They never returned. The Netherlands  has since been found  partly liable for the deaths of 300 Muslims killed in the Srebrenica massacre, The Hague appeals court upheld a decision from 2014 that ordered the Dutch state to pay compensation to the victims families. In August 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) concluded that a crime of genocide was committed in Srebrenica. Ever since, the survivors and the victims’ families have been fighting to obtain justice and recognition. 
Srebrenica  happened during a war with seemingly few rules of engagement, bitter fighting, indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns, ethnic cleansing and systematic mass rape. Essentially a territorial conflict, one in which people of difference looked back on times of peaceful coexistence, however fragile, and forward to ethnic separation, exclusion and to living apart.
When the attackers overran Srebrenica on July 11 and took peacekeepers hostage, about 25,000 Bosniaks fled to the UN base at Potocari on the city's outskirts. They sought refuge despite the scorching heat and catastrophic hygienic conditions. A day later, the attackers began to assault, rape and kill them. On July 12 and 13, girls, women and elderly refugees were loaded onto buses and driven to regions under Bosniak control. After murdering thousands of Srebrenica’s Muslims, Serbs dumped their bodies in numerous mass graves scattered throughout eastern Bosnia, in an attempt to hide the crime. Body parts are still being found in mass graves and are being put together and identified through DNA analysis. Almost 7,000 of those killed have been found and identified. Newly identified victims are buried each year on 11 July, the anniversary of the day the killing began in 1995.
 Nine newly identified victims were buried at a flower-shaped cemetery near the town, where tall white tombstones mark the graves of 6,643 other victims. "After 25 years we succeeded in finding his mortal remains, so they can be laid to their final rest," said Fikret Pezic, who buried his father Hasan.
The remains of some 1,000 victims of the massacre in the eastern town during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war are still missing.
Thousands of visitors usually attend the commemoration service and funerals but this year only a small number of survivors would be allowed at the cemetery due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Dozens of world leaders, who were prevented by the coronavirus pandemic from attending the commemoration service in person, sent video messages Saturday in which they urged tolerance and reconciliation in Bosnia, a nation that remains deeply ethnically divided. They included Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prince Charles.
The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, paid tribute to the victims on Saturday. Johnson said in a video posted on Twitter: “I want to join with you once more in mourning the victims of those terrible events, and to stand with the families in their fight for justice.
“As in so many cases from this conflict which brought violence and destruction across the western Balkans, many families still do not know what happened to their loved ones. Many perpetrators have still not been held to account.
“And there are those who would prefer to forget or deny the enormity of what took place. We must not allow that to happen. We owe it to the victims and to future generations to remember Srebrenica and to ensure it never happens again.”
Raab said in a statement: “On the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, we remember the victims and the anguish of their families. During my time in The Hague between 2003 and 2006, pursuing those responsible for this dark chapter in European history, I was reminded daily of the heinous cruelty perpetrated against the innocent. The UK is determined to end impunity and help rebuild those countries affected – as our commitment to the ICC and UK investment and support for Bosnia demonstrates.”
Johnson, however, is facing calls from 30 MPs to apologise for comments he made in the Spectator in 1997 regarding the genocide. In a letter to the PM, the cross-party group led by Labour’s Tony Lloyd wrote: “In 1997, when you were a political columnist for the Spectator, you wrote an article challenging Bianca Jagger’s support for more direct intervention against the Serbian Army in the Bosnian war.“You wrote: ‘Alright, I say, the fate of Srebrenica was appalling. But they weren’t exactly angels, these Muslims.’ As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the atrocity, it is unthinkable that you would publicly attend national memorial events, without having apologised for such comments.”
Some international speakers also addressed the continued refusal by Serb leaders in Bosnia and neighboring Serbia to acknowledge the extent of the Srebrenica slaughter and the ongoing suffering of its survivors.
Judge Carmel Agius, president of the U.N. court that is completing war crimes trials stemming from the breakup of Yugoslavia, warned in his video message that the victims of the Srebrenica massacre “continue to be tormented by those who attempt to deny their lived experiences, and, thereby, their very existence.
Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic were both convicted of and sentenced for genocide in Srebrenica by a special U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. In all, the tribunal and courts in the Balkans have sentenced close to 50 Bosnian Serb wartime officials to more than 700 years in prison for the Srebrenica killings.
Bosnian Serbs, however, still celebrate Karadzic and Mladic as heroes. Some were even staging celebrations of “the 1995 liberation of Srebrenica” on the anniversary of the crime.
The Serbian Orthodox Church supported Mladic. Serbs celebrated the notorious  paramilitary commander Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as "Arkan," as a hero. Now, a quarter of a century after the slaughter of Srebrenica, most Serbian leaders and many citizens still refuse to recognize it as a genocide; streets, schools and student dorms in Serbia are named after the convicted war criminals Mladic and Karadzic; and many of the men who were directly or indirectly involved in the 1995 massacre hold key positions in the country's political and economic sphere.
In fact, Bosnian Serb political leaders have consistently prevented the country from adopting a law that would ban genocide denial, with the Serb member of Bosnia’s presidency, Milorad Dodik, even publicly describing the Srebrenica slaughter as a “fabricated myth.” 
Humanity has lived through the darkest of times, but few events have stained our collective history more than the Srebrenica genocide.Today we remember the victims, survivors and those still fighting for justice.The lesson from Srebrenica is that no society is invulnerable to prejudice and intolerance. We must all remain vigilant against these forces, and take positive action to build stronger, more resilient communities. We must continue to learn lessons from this tragic event, never forget and recognise the dangers of what can manifest when racism, prejudice,  religious-hatred and discrimination go unchallenged and ethnic divisions are exploited by political leaders. We must  reaffirm our commitment against all forms of hatred and prejudice which targets people because of their religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or beliefs
Here is a link to the official site of rememberance.:-

http://www.srebrenica.org.uk/

Scavenging Among The Wreckage

This is not a love song, though by end might turn into one
There's  a virus on the loose,and the pubs are opening,
Incredulously our Prime minister blames the dead for dying
While at same time wants us all to applaud for capitalism,
He is a cowardly man, so downright bloody irresponsible
Just a horrible obnoxious blobbish chaotic tentacle,
Many of us have been left with a heavy dose of cynicism
On grey gloomy days, still conjuring up another horizon,
Thinking of refugees stuck in camps with no sanitation
People in poverty, the homeless. sadly long forgotten,
The oppressed of the world seeking liberation
Casualties of war, disease and globalisation,
Revolutions of heart and mind keep revealing
Searching for common sense, safety nets of protection,
Building a brand new world together, beyond subjection
Through united disaffection, time now for insurrection;
Lets not clap for financiers or bankers of humiliation
Time to chase them through our streets of suffocation,
Until no one is struggling to feed themselves in babylon
And we stop the system  destroying the world we live in,
With compassion on lips  our hopes carry on swirling
Arms entwined, keep looking for tomorrow's intoxication,
Struggling past hostile environment's path of destruction
Attached to kisses bright, future delivering happy ending.

Frida Kahlo (6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954) - Revolutionary Icon

Legendary artist and one of Mexico's greatest artists, was born. Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico City,Mexico. Her work included themes of feminism, colonialism and Indigenous resistance: "I’m more and more convinced it’s only through communism that we can become human"
Frida grew up at a time when Mexico was in the throes of a revolution, seeking to find its own identity. Frida always claimed to be born on 1910, the year of the outbreak of the Mexican revolution, so that people could directly associate her with the modern Mexico.The political revolution against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz was the spark that set in motion a deeper social revolution, in particular a peasant uprising under the leadership of Emiliano Zapata and a popular rebellion in the north led by Pancho Villa. In Baja California, the anarchist Flores Magon brothers attempted to drive forward a militant workers struggle.
The rebels in part rejected a European-style cultural template as the ideal, in favour of promoting indigenous Mexican culture. The political fervour and reclaiming of a more authentic national identity not only informed and inspired Kahlo´s own political perspective but, in turn, would have a major influence on her later artworks, After nine and a half years of conflict, the revolution resulted in a dramatic shift in Mexican politics and culture. The ousting of the ruling elite paved the way for a new constitution, which in turn resulted in radical land reforms, equal pay laws for women, and the introduction of socialist currents to the country’s political landscape and by the time the turmoil ended, the Mexican people embraced a heritage of mixed cultures – European, Indian and Spanish, to name just a few.
Kahlo's  Jewish  father, Wilhelm (also called Guillermo), was a German photographer who had immigrated to Mexico where he met and married her mother Matilde ( of Spanish and indigenous P’urhépecha descent ). She had two older sisters, Matilde and Adriana, and her younger sister, Cristina, was born the year after Kahlo.At  the agee of six, Kahlo suffered from polio, leaving her with a withered right leg and a lifelong limp.
 In 1922, a 14 year old Kahlo enrolled at the prestigious Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National Preparatory School) in Mexico City, an elite high school. Of 2,000 enrolled students, Frida was only one of 35 young women admitted, a testament to her talent. She studied biology with hopes of becoming a doctor and became trilingual in Spanish, English and German, and also became known for her jovial spirit and her love of colorful, traditional clothes and jewelry. .
Frida became a member of “Los Cachuchas”, a campus-based radical group named after the style of caps they wore in rebellion against the dress code of the period. The group voraciously read Lenin, Marx, Hegel, Kant, Russian literature and Mexican fiction. Frida, who considered herself a “daughter of the [Mexican] Revolution” (1910-1920) had profound and heated debates with her peers who came from the most elite families in the country.
Frida was a lifelong socialist and Marxist-Leninist. By the age of 16, she had joined the youth group of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM). In 1928, in her early 20s, Frida joined the PCM even though it had become outlawed (1925-1935).  Frida was an active organizer in the party. She wrote and gave speeches, attended meetings and led union rallies.
After being expelled in 1929 for politically supporting the Left Opposition within the Soviet Communist Party, Frida would rejoin the PCM in 1948. She campaigned for peace against the U.S.-initiated Cold War, which had begun with the nuclear incineration of Japanese civilians, and aimed at opposing the Soviet Union, the worldwide communist movement and all colonized peoples struggling for independence. As a member of the party Frida collected signatures for the Stockholm Appeal, a 1950 peace initiative anchored by the Soviet Union promoting nuclear disarmament and opposing the first-strike “nuclear diplomacy” of the United States.Some  273,470,566 signatures were gathered worldwide.
On September 17, 1925, Kahlo and Alejandro Gómez Arias, a school friend with whom she was romantically involved, were traveling together on a bus when the vehicle collided with a streetcar. As a result of the collision, Kahlo was impaled by a steel handrail, which went into her hip and came out the other side. She suffered several serious injuries as a result, including fractures in her spine and pelvis. After staying at the Red Cross Hospital in Mexico City for several weeks, Kahlo returned home to recuperate further. She began painting during her recovery and finished her first self-portrait the following year, which she gave to Gómez Arias.
Kahlo took a progressive approach to gender and sexuality, rejecting  the social norms of the time concerning romantic and sexual relationships as well as gender expression and identity.She took part in wrestling and boxing, activities which were considered to be unsuitable for girls at the time. She embraced her Mexican identity and natural beauty; celebrating her upper lip hair and her marvellous unibrow – which became a symbol of her identity through her self-portraits. She once wrote in her diary: “Of my face, I like my eyebrows and eyes”. Clearly, such an image does not conform to a patriarchal society’s image of a woman who has perfectly shaped eyebrows and definitely no moustache.
Another particularly artistic element of Frida’s personal life was her distinctive and extravagant clothing,very different from the Mexican women of that time whose attire consisted of pearls, suits, and hats. Frida’s fashion consisted of gay, Mexican tradition clothes, she adorned herself with clips, bows, ribbons, jewellery, scarves and costumes, and such dressing became an entrenched part of her identity. She sometimes also painted her dresses herself. Hence, she never bowed down to the required attire for “cultured” women in Mexico at that point of time. She challenged patriarchy in her own way, and in wrapping herself in traditional Tehuana clothing, an homage to her mother’s birthplace, thus Frida’s figure became a reference to her indigenous roots and her quest to personify them. Women today have been conditioned in a manner whereby they project themselves in the manner demanded from them by society. Frida, even then, refused to do so. She set her own standards. She valued and celebrated characteristics that patriarchal society has labelled unfeminine and ugly. And so, she was a feminist.
Frida Kahlo also took a liberated approach to love and was openly bisexual. She had affairs with both men and women throughout her life and during her long and complex marriage to fellow artist, and famed  Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.They first met in 1922 when he went to work on a project at her high school. Kahlo often watched as Rivera created a mural called The Creation in the school’s lecture hall. According to some reports, she told a friend that she would someday have Rivera’s baby.
Kahlo reconnected with Rivera in 1928 marrying in 1929. He encouraged her artwork, and the two began a relationship. During their early years together, Kahlo often followed Rivera based on where the commissions that Rivera received were.

From 1930 to 1933, Frida lived in the United States, which she dubbed “Gringolandia.”
The experience was transformative. Frida was living in the United States at the height of the Great Depression and Jim Crow apartheid. In 1931, while living in San Francisco, Frida spurned racist anti-Asian and white-supremacist social conventions, spending her free time in Chinatown, where most of the San Francisco Chinese community lived, and long before Chinatown became a popular tourist attraction., and while living in Detroit between 1931 and 1932, Frida became indignant by the city’s widespread poverty, hunger and blatant racism, which she characterized as “absolutely medieval.”
In a letter home during this time, Frida summarized what she saw, “High society here turns me off and I feel a bit of rage against all these rich guys here, since I have seen thousands of people in the most terrible misery, without anything to eat and with no place to sleep, that is what most impressed me here, it is terrifying to see the rich having parties day and night while thousands and thousands of people are dying of hunger.”
By 1933, Frida and her husband Diego Rivera were in New York City. In another letter home she wrote about Fifth Avenue, where the “filthy rich” reside: “There is so much misery at the same time, that it seems incredible that people can endure such class differences, and accept such a form of life, since thousands and thousands of people are starving of hunger while on the other hand, millionaires throw away millions on stupidities.”
Kahlo and Rivera’s time in New York City in 1933 was surrounded by controversy. Commissioned by Neson Rockerfeller, Rivera created a mural entitled Man at the Crossroads in the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center. Rockefeller halted the work on the project after Rivera included a portrait of communist leader Vladimir Lenin in the mural, which was later painted over. Months after this incident, the couple returned to Mexico and went to live in San Angel, Mexico.
Her “Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States” (1932). The painting vividly represents the psychological cultural crossroad upon which Frida Kahlo viewed herself during her first years living abroad in the United States with Diego Rivera after being recently married. The artist portrays herself at the borderline between the industrial, prosperous, yet mechanical and polluted cityscape of the United States. The America cityscape is contrasted with the agricultural and historic richness of the Mexican landscape, yet stricken with poverty. Kahlo stands in the middle of the two landscapes wearing a modern dress while holding a Mexican flag in her hand. It is noteworthy that the American flag is different in scale to the Mexican one, arguably symbolizing the prosperity of the United States in comparison to that of her homeland. Nevertheless, the Mexican flag though smaller in proportion is depicted as being personally held by the artist. The scene represents her never-ending love for her homeland.

 
 Frida Kahlo, Self-portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States, 1932,

Never a traditional union,Kahlo and Rivera kept separate, but adjoining homes and studios in San Angel. It is well known that while she professed a deep love and affection for Diego, Frida also accepted Diego’s love on his terms, even when it was deeply painful for her (which it often was). She was saddened by his many infidelities, including an affair with her sister Cristina. In response to this familial betrayal, Kahlo cut off most of her trademark long dark hair. Desperately wanting to have a child, she again experienced heartbreak when she miscarried in 1934. While her artworks focused on her inner experiences, in her relationship with Diego, Frida ceased to be the subject of love and instead became its object, thus reproducing the patriarchal captivity of women. Added to this romantic captivity was the restriction her disabilities placed on her physical freedom.
During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Frida played a vital role in fighting for the rights of Spanish Republican refugees seeking asylum in Mexico. In 1936, Frida, along with other socialist organizers, founded a solidarity committee that fundraised money for the Spanish Republicans fighting against fascism. In this committee, Frida was responsible for helping refugees find places to stay and ensuring that they were able to secure employment.
Kahlo and Rivera went through periods of separation, but they joined together to help exiled Soviet communist Leon Trotsky and his wife Natalia in 1937. They managed to persuade the leftist government of President Lázaro Cárdenas to grant Trotsky and his wife, asylum in Mexico and invited the couple to stay with them in La Casa Azul.,Frida Kahlo’s family home. Nonetheless, Rivera’s discovery that Trotsky and Kahlo were having an affair, one of many infidelities that marked the couple’s troubled marriage, forced Trotsky to seek refuge elsewhere.
Upon moving out of Casa Azul, at the request of his wife, Trotsky left behind a self-portrait that Kahlo had painted for his fifty-eighth birthday. In the painting, Kahlo presents herself in a stately and seductive manner, holding a paper that reads “To Leon Trotsky, with all my love, I dedicate this painting on the 7^th of November 1937. Frida Kahlo in San Ángel, Mexico.” The Russian couple eventually managed to find a  residence not far from Casa Azul, but in May 1940 a failed attempt on Trotsky’s life was carried out by the Soviet agent Iosif Grigulevich and the muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, who remained loyal to the Mexican Communist Party after Rivera’s departure. Nonetheless, the second attempt, this time executed by the Spanish agent Ramón Mercader in August of the same year, was successful. Leon Trotsky died in Mexico City on August 21^st, 1940. Despite the death of Trotsky and the ever-widening schism in the international communist movement, Kahlo remained dedicated to her revolutionary ideals for the rest of her life.
Kahlo divorced Rivera in 1939, but they did not stay divorced for long, remarrying in 1940. The couple continued to lead largely separate lives,both becoming involved with other people over the years.
While she never considered herself a surrealist, Kahlo befriended one of the primary figures in that artistic and literary movement, Andre Breton, in 1938..https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/09/andre-breton-1921896-28966.html That same year, she had a major exhibition at a New York City gallery, selling about half of the 25 paintings shown there. Kahlo also received two commissions, including one from famed magazine editor Clare Boothe Luce, as a result of the show.
 In 1939, Kahlo went to live in Paris for a time. There she exhibited some of her paintings and developed significeent friendships with such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso..
Kahlo received a commission from the Mexican government for five portraits of important Mexican women in 1941, but she was unable to finish the project. She lost her beloved father that year and continued to suffer from chronic health problems. Despite her personal challenges, her work continued to grow in popularity and was included in numerous group shows around this time.
Lots of her works were painted laying in the bed. Drawing on personal experiences, her miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's works are often characterized by portrayals of pain that she otherwise hid from the world.Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds.

The Two Frida's 1939

Frida also used her body as a canvas, endlessly rewriting her experiences of illness and recovery, repeatedly translating her feelings, emotions, suffering and ideals into color and art. The chronic pain she experienced was part of life just like any other feeling and emotion. “Pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence,” she once wrote in a diary. There are of course many more themes in her work. Motherhood, political participation, bisexuality and gender representation also feature heavily in her practice,a patchwork of experiences that, woven together, make up the woman and extraordinary life of Frida Kahlo.

The Broken Column 1944

Kahlo’s health issues became nearly all-consuming in 1950. After being diagnosed with gangrene in her right foot, Kahlo spent nine months in hospital and had several operations during this time. She continued to paint and support political causes despite having limited mobility. In 1953, part of Kahlo’s right leg was amputated to stop the spread of gangrene.
n 1953, Kahlo received her first solo exhibition in Mexico. While bedridden at the time, Kahlo did not miss out on the exhibition’s opening. Arriving by ambulance, Kahlo spent the evening talking and celebrating with the event’s attendees from the comfort of a four-poster bed set up in the gallery just for her.
Deeply depressed, Kahlo was hospitalized again in April 1954 because of poor health. She returned to the hospital two months later with bronchial pneumonia. No matter her physical condition, Kahlo did not let that stand in the way of her political activism. Eleven days before her death, Frida participated, in a wheelchair and against her doctor’s orders – in a July 2 protest against the United States’ intervention in Guatemala. Over 10,000 people in Mexico took to the streets to denounce the CIA-led coup of Guatemala’s democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz, whom the United States had decided was a communist and therefore must go.
The centerpiece of Arbenz’s program was land reform that distributed uncultivated land to landless farmers. This, as well as his unwelcome attitude toward multinational corporations, the expansion of social and labor rights and his “tolerance of communists” made him a marked man. The United States installed a new government headed by Gen. Castillo Armas who celebrated by torturing and killing thousands of suspected communists, and overseeing decades of bloody repression.These events would radicalize a young doctor from Argentina, Ernesto Guevara, who was in Guatemala at the time of the CIA coup.Both Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Frida Kahlo share the struggle of having their intellectual ideologies subdued to popular culture.
In her final days, Kahlo painted her last political work, Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick. Suffering from constant pain, declining health, and the impediments of heavy medications, Kahlo depicts Marx as a god-like being who is about to take her to heaven while at the same time punish the unjust forces of capitalism and imperialism. Knowing that she is about to die, Kahlo strips her top to reveal the leather corset that had been supporting her broken back since the bus accident and drops her crutches to grasp not a Bible but a little red book—the Communist Manifesto. Serving to remind us that  long before Kahlo became a global commodity, she was a communist.

Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick. 

Frida died on July 13, 1954 at her beloved Blue House.The official cause of death was given as pulmonary embolism, although some suspected that she died from overdose that may or may not have been accidental.  The last words in her diary read ' I hope exit is joyful and I hope never to come back.'Hundreds escorted her coffin draped with the flag of the Mexican Communist Party to the ceremony where a rousing  chorus of the International was.sang.
Kahlo a woman who defied the confines of gender under capitalist society, as a Mexican, as a survivor of great personal trauma and disability, knew only too well the meaning of the struggle to be free, and live her life on her own unrestricted terms, an ideal she saw as embodied in Marxism. Her political beliefs, in addition to her art, her country and her lifelong endurance, defined the artist. Over 50 years after her death, this enigmatic trail-blazing artists approach to life, love and art,, characterized by a deep sense of independence, rebellion, sensuality and passion. has inspired generations around the world  because  of the revolutionary  way in which she lived. Reproductions of her artwork can be found on mouse pads, furniture and clocks. In 2001, the U.S. Postal Service placed her image on a 34-cent stamp, making her the first Hispanic woman to receive such an honor. Kahlo’s life  has been featured throughout multiple documentaries, Hollywood movies, prints, postcards,and other memorabilia. and she was the subject of a 2002 film entitled Frida, starring Salma Havek as the artist and Alfred Molina as Rivera. Directed by Julie Taymor, the film was nominated for six Academy Awards and won for Best Makeup and Original Score. Among her numerous biographies I would suggest "FRIDA. A Biography of Frida Kahlo" by Hayden Herrera.
The family home where Kahlo was born and grew up, later referred to as the Blue House or Casa Azul, was opened as a museum in 1958. Located in Coyoacán, Mexico City,
Happy birthday to one of the most quintessential Latin American artists whose revolutionary assertions in favor of feminism, nationalism and cultural identity resonate with us today. Lets remember her as a revolutionary politically  committed artist and standard-bearer for women's inner strength and for courage in the face of adversity who was above all true to her convictions, beyond her great art, hated fascism and wanted to overthrow capitalism, whose work continues to show that we cannot avoid pain, but can mold it into something more beautiful.

As we clap to celebrate 72nd anniversary of the NHS lets not forget those that seek to dismantle it.

Nye Bevans legacy came into the world 72 years ago this morning, when he opened Park Hospital in Manchester at a time of rationing and shortages, when we were nearly bankrupt, a jewel  that the war generation left us with, a proud legacy, for us to all to continue to share.For the first-time doctors, nurses, opticians, dentists and pharmacists all worked under one organisation, free at the point of use. A healthcare service which is available to everyone for free is what separates us from the US. It offered for the first time a free healthcare system for all, and has since  played a vital role in caring for all aspects of our nations health. It has been the envy of the world ever since. My own father served it well for nigh on 40 years. Remember we paid for it, so it is owned by us, it is our precious commodity, it must survive, we must tear the vultures hands from it.
It wouldn’t be possible to run a 7-day NHS, caring for millions of people day-in-day-out without the hard work and dedication of its staff. Despite all the adversity that’s thrown at them: poor pay, bursary cuts, hospital parking fines and staff shortages to name a few; they continue to become stronger and relentlessly deliver fantastic healthcare to the nation. Recent events  have  highlighted the strength, professionalism , dedication and bravery of our healthcare staff. It is truly inspiring to see how amazing the staff handled the recent pandemic and it was a testament to every healthcare worker  throughout the UK. They are a credit to our nation and we couldn’t be more proud. The NHS is a shining example of how a caring society can create   good and safe care based on social solidarity. making such a great contribution towards social and health equality.Over the last few months the NHS has stepped up in ways never seen before, to work out how to deliver services differently following lockdown, recruit tens of thousands more staff, returners and volunteers and even build hospitals to respond to the Covid-19 global pandemic.

Consequently every week of the pandemic, we have seen our communities showing their love and appreciation for the NHS and carers by turning out week after week to clap for the NHS during the difficult weeks of lockdown, the NHS 72^nd anniversary therefore is the ideal opportunity to say thank again.
Everybody across the country is being encouraged to come together on the birthday of the NHS, Sunday July 5, to thank not only NHS staff but all key workers, good neighbours and all those helping others through the coronavirus pandemic.
The NHS has been working with the newly founded /Together coalition to build a national moment to thank everyone who has helped them – and one that aims to reinforce the social connections we will need to get through the next stage of the crisis.
In a joint letter published (Wednesday June 10) dozens of individuals and groups have voiced their support for making Sunday July 5 a day to bring people together to connect with neighbours and their  communities, to say thank you to all those who are helping us through the Covid-19 crisis. It is hoped that the applause, which is planned for 5pm, will become an annual tradition.

NHS chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said he hopes the public will use the anniversary as an opportunity to “say a heartfelt thank you” to hospital staff.
Sir Simon said “This year has been the most challenging in NHS history, with staff displaying extraordinary dedication, skill and compassion to care for the 100,000 patients with Covid-19 who needed specialist hospital treatment and many others besides.
“During this testing time our nurses, doctors, physios, pharmacists and countless more colleagues were sustained by the support of the public, not least through the weekly applause for key workers.
“No health service, not even the NHS, could have coped alone with this coronavirus pandemic.”
Chief executive for NHS Wales Dr Andrew Goodall said Clap for Carers was “very much embraced” in Wales, and he is “delighted” to support it.

As we say thank you, it is important that the human toll of Covid-19 is not forgotten or lost. Therefore, the anniversary is also an opportunity to remember and reflect on their lives of those we have lost to this devastating virus; a chance for the nation to come together and pay our respects.

Immediately after the clapping, people will be encouraged to stay outside to show their thanks/appreciation to their neighbours or get in touch with someone who is lonely, isolated or shielding, to let them know they are supported..
Despite all this the Tory's still seek to dismantle it,  keen to exploit the renewed crisis to break up the NHS to their ‘friends’ and ‘cronies’ in the private sector, Privatisation, outsourcing and fragmentation of the NHS have all  contributed to the deadly PPE scandal and the inability to adequately respond to the pandemic. Two weeks ago, the government tried to prematurely terminate the contracts of student nurses who opted to work for NHS for six months and provide assistance during the pandemic. It was only after a massive public outcry, and a petition of more than 182,000 people, that the government agreed to honour the contracts. They were forced into a similar U-turn over waiving Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) for NHS workers from overseas, but reports show that non-EU workers are still being forced to pay.
In a speech on Tuesday promising a “New Deal,” Johnson pledged just £1.5 billion for hospital maintenance and construction—less than one quarter of the £6.5 billion maintenance backlog faced by UK hospitals. Now the NHS is to be plunged into a worse catastrophe than ever before by Johnson’s premature ending of the lockdown and drive to reopen the economy.The opening of factories, schools, and beaches, has already led to a surge in infections in towns and cities throughout the UK, including London, that has already necessitated a local lockdown in Leicester.A second phase of the pandemic will have devastating consequences,
 We should not forget Nye Bevan's words who said ' It will last as long as their are folk with enough faith to fight for it. We  cannot reach the day again where people make a profit out of our sickness. On its birthday we should also join the call for the government to build on the huge public support shown for the NHS during the pandemic by giving health workers across the UK an early substantial pay rise  for their continuing commitment. especially during the coronavirus crisis in 2020, which has seen NHS and Social Care workers  called upon to work on the frontline to keep us safe. They have often had to work without proper resources and PPE, within an already failing system. Many have been forced to sacrifice their lives. In the UK we have now reached the frightening number of excess deaths linked to coronavirus of 64,000 (up to 28 May 2020), the second-highest death toll in the world.
The NHS deserves better, we all deserve better. For those who love the NHS we have to stand up and be counted and keep demanding a.fully funded NHS that meets the needs of all. If we fail to do this all our clapping will just be a hollow gesture, we can't applaud away NHS cuts, we owe it our lives. And if the Tory government cared about the NHS, they wouldn't have run it down for tens years, and  the horrible sight of Boris Johnson clapping outside No10 was like seeing a man applauding the dog he has been kicking to death.The NHS is supposed to meet the needs of everyone, free at the point of use, if Johnson's government really wanted to celebrate its birthday they would end the pivatisation  that is killing this ethos. Happy 72nd birthday NHS our national treasure, thanks to everyone who devotes their livelihood to keeping us safe and healthy, we will keep fighting for you.

‘What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?’ by Frederick Douglass

July 4 is a federal holiday in the US, observed to celebrate the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and freedom from British rule. For this reason, July 4 is also commonly known as Independence Day. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, and has become an important date in the calendar for patriotic Americans who honour the birth, and  history and values of the United States.

Dear people of USA as you celebrate 'your' 4th July, 'independence' and supposed liberties and freedom. Please do not forget that the USA was built on genocide, theft of land, deceit, slavery and white supremacy.These are undeniable truths for anyone who accurately knows its history.Your 4th of  July is a hypocricy not only to yourselves but to millions around the world.Your government supports and aids the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

The USA still occupies and takes away the freedoms and Independence of many countries whilst killing their people in the name of 'fake wars', and continues to be  complicit in ongoing atrocities across the world, whilst  incarcenating innocent people in your torture camp, Guantanamo Bay - the list goes on.
Whilst some of you celebrate this mockery please also remember the following quote.

' Native Americans perhaps have least to to celebrate after centuries of extermination, persecution, denial, and isolation in poverty on reservations.' - S Lendmen

As a result their cultures are willfully denigrated. Their legacy includes betrayal, treaties made and broken, lands stolen . rights denied, and themselves criminally ignored to this day. For them, justice delayed was never gotten, giving them no reason to celebrate, nor America's growing impoverished millions on their own and out of luck in an increasingly uncaring society, focused solely on serving privilege, not on popular needs.
So many others are also denied, persecuted, vilified and gravely harmed in today's America, from Latino immigrants to Muslims, because of their faith and ethnicity it gives Washington convenient enemies to incite fear to wage wars for power, profit, and plunder at a time America's only enemies are manufactured, not real.

                                                   Frederick Douglas

 Frederick Douglas  (1817-1895) was one of the best known and most influential African American leaders of the 1800s. He was born a slave in Maryland but managed to escape to the North in 1838.
He traveled to Massachusetts and settled in New Bedford, working as a laborer to support himself. In 1841, he attended a convention of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society and quickly came to the attention of its members, eventually becoming a leading figure in the New England antislavery movement.
In 1845, Douglass published his autobiography, "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave." With the revelation that he was an escaped slave, Douglass became fearful of possible re-enslavement and fled to Great Britain and stayed there for two years, giving lectures in support of the antislavery movement in America. With the assistance of English Quakers, Douglass raised enough money to buy his own his freedom and in 1847 he returned to America as a free man.
He settled in Rochester, New York, where he published The North Star, an abolitionist newspaper. He directed the local underground railroad which smuggled escaped
On July, 5, 1852,  the leading citizens of Rochester asked Douglass to give a speech as part of their Fourth of July celebrations. Douglass accepted their invitation.
In his speech, however, Douglass delivered a scathing attack on the hypocrisy of a nation celebrating freedom and independence with speeches, parades and platitudes, while, within its borders, nearly four million humans were being kept as slaves. With biting oratory, in what became known as 'What to the Slave is 4th of July' speech he told his audience,  

"Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation (Babylon) whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"
To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.
My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.
Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery -- the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate - I will not excuse." I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.
What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are called upon to prove that we are men?
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No - I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may - I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."

Frederick Douglass - July 5, 1852

 He delivered “The Slaveholders’ Rebellion” a decade later, on July 4, 1862, during the Civil War. Douglass denounced the ways supporters of enslavement twisted the Declaration of Independence to support their beliefs. He noted the deadly impact on not just the primary targets—the enslaved—but other marginalized people as well:

"Instead of treating it, as it was intended to be treated, as a full and comprehensive declaration of the equal and sacred rights of mankind, our contemptible Negro-hating and slaveholding critics have endeavored to turn it into absurdity by treating it as a declaration of the equality of man in his physical proportions and mental endowments. This gross and scandalous perversion of the true intents of meaning of the declaration did not long stand alone. It was soon followed by the heartless dogma, that the rights declared in that instrument did not apply to any but White men. The slave power at last succeeded, in getting this doctrine proclaimed from the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was there decided that “all men” only means some men, and those White men. And all this in face of the fact, that White people only form one fifth of the whole human family—and that some who pass for White are nearly as Black as your humble speaker. While all this was going on, lawyers, priests and politicians were at work upon national prejudice against the colored man. They raised the cry and put it into the mouth of the ignorant, and vulgar and narrow minded, that “this is the White man’s country,” and other cries which readily catch the ear of the crowd. This popular method of dealing with an oppressed people has, while crushing the Blacks, corrupted and demoralized the Whites…. Slavery, that was before the Missouri Compromise couchant, on its knees, asking meekly to be let alone within its own limits to die, became in a few years after rampant, throttling free speech, fighting friendly Indians, annexing Texas, warring with Mexico, kindling with malicious hand the fires of war and bloodshed on the virgin soil of Kansas, and finally threatening to pull down the pillars of the Republic, if you Northern men should dare vote in accordance with your constitutional and political convictions. "
On this day lets reflect on the lives of people who built this land of the free, while still fighting for their own freedom, let it be an opportunity to reflect on the complicated origins of this country. This is the date on which a very imperfect people commenced the journey to form a more perfect union based on the truth that all human beings are created equal. However, from the moment Europeans set foot on this hemisphere, the ideal of freedom for all has not materialized. The historical reality is that people of color have had their freedoms eroded in a litany of ways including slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynching, segregation, evictions, and mass incarceration.

For many, the Fourth of July remains a hollow statement, a shallow symbol of a freedom that is only a mirage for many. It remains a festivity with no substance, a celebration with no soul.Nonetheless, the ideal remains. Hope can be found in the Black Lives Matter Movement that progress toward the ideal is possible. The Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd's death finally gave millions of Americans renewed language to discuss the messy reality of a nation that remains in the grips of structural racism, white supremacy and a racial caste system that continues to ensure that Black babies, from birth to death, lead a life  of greater risk and less prosperity than White ones.

It is our duty to support our Black siblings in demanding an end to racist state violence, police brutality, and mass incarceration. We vigorously recommit ourselves to working in solidarity with Black racial justice movements to dismantle white supremacy and create a world where Black Lives Matter.

Danny Glover reads Frederick Douglas's  Fourth of July Speech

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July ? Descendants read Frederick Douglass' Speech

( Thanks to Jo)

Herman Hesse (2/7/1877 - 9/8/62) - The Poet

Hermann Hesse,German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. best-known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi), each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self knowledge and spirituality,  was born on 2 July 1877 in the Black Forest town of Calw in Württemberg, Germany

Both of Hesse's parents served in India at a mission under the auspices of the Basel Mission, a Protestant Christian missionary society.In 1891, his parents sent him to a Protestant monastery near Maulbronn, but he was unable to bear the Christian education and fled just a few months later. Hesse knew exactly what he wanted to become - "a poet or nothing at all."

 His journey to writing was in itself an odyssey. After trying out many different schools, he became so depressed at the age of 15 that he tried to take his own life. He finally ended up working in a workshop, then for a clock tower maker and in bookstores. His search for identity and the difficult process of discovering oneself were topics that Hesse addressed in his later novels. His stories were scattered with references to his own experiences, analyses of himself, and poetic avowals. Forever questioning he searched for a religious doctrine that  that was not militant or missionary, but open to other lifestyles.
After fleeing his home country of Germany and settling in Italian-speaking Switzerland he supported German refugees, including Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, as they fled the Nazi regime. It was during the war that he wrote his last great work, "The Glass Bead Game," which won him the 1946 Nobel Prize for Literature..
He developed a moral distaste for the Western industrial capitalist civilisation which allowed, and indeed encouraged, abominations such as wars .He made the connection explicit when he declared the wretched state of the world was down to “two mental disorders: the megalomania of technology and the megalomania of nationalism”, adding that resistance to these two phenomena was today “the most important test and justification of the human spirit” He wrote to one reader: “I don’t believe in our politics, our way of thinking, believing, amusing ourselves; I don’t share a single one of the ideals of our age”.His work is infused with a sense of deep alienation from contemporary society and of yearning for another existence. He wrote to one reader: “I don’t believe in our politics, our way of thinking, believing, amusing ourselves; I don’t share a single one of the ideals of our age
In December 1961, Hermann Hesse fell ill with a flu from which he had difficulty recovering. He had been suffering from leukaemia for some time without knowing it; at the Bellinzona hospital he was treated with blood transfusions. Hesse died of a stroke in his sleep on the night of August 9, 1962, at at his home in Swiss Montagnola aged 85. His words continuing to inspire.humanity across the world.

Herman Hesse - The Poet

Only on me, the lonely one,
The unending stars of the night shine,
The stone fountain whispers its magic song,
To me alone, to me the lonely one
The colorful shadows of the wandering clouds
Move like dreams over the open countryside.
Neither house nor farmland,
Neither forest nor hunting privilege is given to me,
What is mine belongs to no one,
The plunging brook behind the veil of the woods,
The frightening sea,
The bird whir of children at play,
The weeping and singing, lonely in the evening, of a man secretly in love.
The temples of the gods are mine also, and mine
the aristocratic groves of the past.
And no less, the luminous
Vault of heaven in the future is my home:
Often in full flight of longing my soul storms upward,
To gaze on the future of blessed men,
Love, overcoming the law, love from people to people.
I find them all again, nobly transformed:
Farmer, king, tradesman, busy sailors,
Shepherd and gardener, all of them
Gratefully celebrate the festival of the future world.
Only the poet is missing,
The lonely one who looks on,
The bearer of human longing, the pale image
Of whom the future, the fulfillment of the world
Has no further need. Many garlands
Wilt on his grave,
But no one remembers him.