Shadow boxing in a daily wasteland
Ruled by conglomerates and monopolies,
That steal and feed on our dreams
Wllfully with ideological mission.
Murdoch's laughable beacons of free press
Destroying wisdom, mocking aloud,
Relentless manipulators of truth
Scapegoating minorities, and refugees,
Spreading toxic words of poison
About those fleeing poverty and war,
Keeping the public enslaved, on a diet of lies
Propelling deceptive propaganda,,
Five billionaires own 80 % of the UK press
To serve their own right wing agendas,
Try to keep society divided
Fooling credulous victims of bias,
Slinging smears and mud on anyone
Who dare challenge the chicanery,
Others demand a revision of values
Wake up and choose to light a fuse,
As paradigm shifts perception
Rejecting now what they fear,
Time to overthrow the media oligarchs
Among rustling, leaves of change,
Creating a culture that feeds on empathy
Freedom triumphs and democracy awakens,
Sabra صابِرة is the Arabic word for patience, forbearance. It's also a Palestinian name for the prickly pear cactus that was used as hedgeing round village homes and gardens, as well as food in hard times.The name was adopted in Hebrew by early Jewish settlers in the land that became Israel, in 1948.It then became sobriquet for those hardy frontiersmen themselves - some content to co-exist with Arab neigbours, some more predatory.
One of the oldest known prepared foods in human history, hummus is claimed by multiple Middle Eastern nationalities.For Israelis, Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Turks and Iraqis, hummus is a culinary icon and a staple of their diet. Hummus has also become a global food commodity, manufactured and sold everywhere. The Sabra Hummus that can be found on the shelves of Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury's etc was founded in 1986 by Zohar Norman and Yehuda Pearl[9] as Sabra-Blue & White Foods.The company is now owned jointly between PepsiCo and the Strauss Group, a multinational corporation and Israel’s largest food and beverage company. While it may taste good, I personally love hummus, the Strauss Group materially supports and sends care packages to the Golani Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces, a fact that was once stated on the company’s website but has since been removed due to pressure from pro-Palestine groups. Even by the abysmal human rights standards of the IDF, the Golani Brigade is particularly brutal: since its inception, the Brigade has carried out countless human rights violations against Palestinians — particularly in Hebron and in the siege on Gaza (Operation Cast Lead) from 2008-2009 — including arbitrary murders, assaults, detentions, home invasions, and arrests of children.Their members have been known to use horrific imagery on t-shirts, such as a pregnant Palestinian woman in a sniper's cross-hairs, with the slogan “one shot, two kills”.
Furthermore, the Brigade’s role as an occupying force violates international law: Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and its 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem are all illegal according to the United Nations. Simply put, when you buy Sabra hummus you are supporting war and oppression. For many Palestinians, the Occupation is a painful and constant reality, in light of this the campaign to boycott Sabra is situated within a broader international movement to hold Israel accountable for human rights abuses and abolish its “three-tiered system of oppression: colonialism, occupation, and apartheid.” In 2005, Palestinian civil society called for the boycott of, divestment from, and sanctions of Israeli state institutions as a nonviolent strategy to pressure Israel to comply with international law and universal principles of human rights. Modeled after the successful South African anti-apartheid campaigns of the last century, the BDS movement aims to highlight the immoral and illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and to stigmatize the many human rights violations that continue to be an everyday reality for many Palestinians. Since 2005, dozens of companies, university student governments, workers’ unions, churches, and other organizations have publicly joined the BDS campaign by changing their institutional policy and practice to adhere to its goals, and to encourage boycotting products such as Sabra hummus and raise awareness of other companies like this that are complicit in Israel's continued human rights violations in Palestine. Boycotting brands is one of the easiest ways to convince retailers across the world to stop selling products from companies profiting from Israeli occupation.. A full list of what to boycott can be found here.
The connection between Sabra hummus and human rights abuses is not weak ; is is as plain as day. Support the boycott of Sabra hummus. There are other cheaper, more ethical alternatives. The movement worked with anti-apartheid South Africa it can work again today.
As a weapons system designed for the Cold War, the case for Trident is non-existent in 2020.
Nuclear weapons are wrong – strategically, morally and financially.
Yet, despite peoples long-standing opposition to their obscene presence, MPs inside the House of Commons
decided the UK will renew its nuclear deterrent system writing a
blank cheque to base another generation of nuclear weapons in Scotland’s
waters.
But CND believe Britain should not possess a weapon whose only
purpose is to threaten the whole of humanity. Each warhead has 8 times
the explosive power of the bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of
Hiroshima in 1945. That bomb alone vaporised human flesh within a half
mile radius and fatally burned thousands miles from the epicentre.of mass
destruction. Instead of the billions of pounds squandered the cost could be
better spent on infrastructure, education, combating climate change and helping fund the NHS without threatening the lives of othersBritain, let's not forget is a signatory to the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, and gas made an unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination of its nuclear arsenal, but the decision to replace Trrident would run counter to our Treaty commitments, cost billions of pounds, escalate, rather than secure, Britain's real security.
As MPs return to parliament tomorrow. Let's make sure that the first
thing they have think about is the existential threats of nuclear
weapons and climate change.
Write to your MP to raise concerns about the existential threats of climate change and nuclear war
Nuclear annihilation and climate catastrophe are the two biggest
threats to human existence. This has been confirmed by the atomic
scientists that maintain the Doomsday Clock: this year its hands were
set at 100 seconds to midnight.
Britain should be a world-leader in tackling climate change, but also in the disarming of nuclear weapons, urgent action is needed, as the risk of disaster has never been greater. Urgent action is needed but our government continues to prioritise war and weapons over the future of our planet. Write to your MP to raise concerns about the existential threats of climate change and nuclear war.
Urge your MP to put pressure on the government to step up the response
to the climate emergency, to stop Trident replacement and to sign the
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The Captain Swing riots occurred in England during 1830-31 following years of war, high taxes and low wages, farm labourers, especially in the south and east of England, finally snapped These farm labourers had faced progressive impoverishment and unemployment over the previous fifty years due to the widespread introduction of the threshing machine and the policy of enclosing fields, Labourers were often desperate for food and resorted to poaching to try and feed their families with the result that there was a dramatic increase in the crime rate, Various other matters bought matters to a head in 1830, first the Census showed that the population was increasing, secondly the threshing machine produced widespread loss of employment during the winter months, and at the same time the harvest was poor and there was persistently bad weather.
No longer were thousands of men needed to tend the crops, a few would suffice. The anger of the rioters was directed at three targets that were seen as the prime source of their misery: the Tithe system, the Poor Law guardians, and the rich tenant farmers who had been progressively lowering wages while introducing agricultural machinery With fewer jobs, lower wages and no prospects of things improving for these workers the threshing machine was the final straw, the object that was to place them on the brink of starvation. The Swing Rioters smashed the threshing machines and threatened farmers who had them.was due to modern threshing machines being introduced into agriculture, the result of which was low wages paid by farmers which led to the starvation of farm workers where many died as a result of not earning money to buy food for themselves and their families.
Between 1770 and 1830 ,in the Enclosure Acts of rural England no less than a million acres (24,000 km2) of common land were enclosed by rich landowners depriving the common people of ancient rights to use common ground.For centuries this common land had been used by the poor of the countryside to graze their animals and grow their own produce. This land was now divided up among the large local landowners, leaving the landless farm workers dependent upon working for their richer neighbours for a cash wage.
After the Napoleonic wars in 1815 grain prices plummeted. Many farm workers were thrown out of work and at home they faced poverty and the prospect of the workhouse. Farmers would pay their workers as little as possible, knowing that the parish fund would top up wages. Echoes of working tax credits of today.
Another burden was the tithe demanded by the Church of England of a 10th of the harvest to pay the parson a generous wage and the Swing movement demanded a large reduction in these taxes. In parliament Lord Carnarvon had said that ‘The English labourer was reduced to a plight more abject than that of any race in Europe’ Generally the lot of an agricultural labourer was a pretty miserable one.
Social tensions increased and the labourers naturally rose up, demanding a minimum wage, the end of rural unemployment, tithe and rent reductions. and an end to the threshing machine which destroyed their winter employment. They reinforced their demands with rick-burning, the destruction of the threshing machines and cattle-maiming among other things. The major landowners were concerned for their own farms and due to their influence were able to get military assistance in putting down the riots.
In many places hay ricks were set alight, in some places the protests took on non-violent forms such as church boycotts and walk outs. In Wroughton in Wiltshire the protest amounted to people smoking pipes in the cemetery as a means of getting their point across.
As well as the attacks on the threshing machines the protesters reinforced their demands with wage and tithe riots and by the destruction of objects of their oppression, such as workhouses and agricultural tithe barns During these riots many threshing machines were either dismantled or destroyed entirely.
On the night of August 28 in 1830 in Kent, England a threshing machine was destroyed by angry labourers - the start of the Swing rebellion. Typically a farmer would receive an anonymous note often signed by "Captain Swing", with the intention of creating fear, telling him that unless he destroyed his threshing machine then his barns, haystacks and house would be burned down, and if they did not cave in, mobs would attack the farms, set them a flame and smash the machines., as a reprisal for the injustices that were felt.
One
letter read, "We don't want to do any mischief, but we want that poor
children when they go to bed should have a belly full of taties instead
of crying with half a belly full." Another warned: "This is to acquaint
you that if your threshing machines are not destroyed by you directly,
we shall commence our labors. Signed on behalf of the whole. Swing."
Scrawled warnings such as "Revenge for thee is on the wing, from thy
determined Captain Swing" suggested an organization that was not really
there. Captain Swing did not exist, but he came to represent the moral
fury of the crowds of impoverished, determined laborers.
Attacks
concentrated on prosperous farmers who could afford threshing machines,
which were expensive and frequently broke down. Farmers with less land
who could not afford the machines probably were not unhappy to see
attacks on their wealthier neighbors. In some places, the smashing of
threshing machines were just part of a movement that included arson
threats (a potent arm of the poorest of the poor) aimed at increasing
wages. The movement generated its own momentum and in some places paper
mills were attacked also.
By the third week of October, over one hundred threshing machines had been destroyed in East Kent. There was no centralised organising committee but such was the deep seated feeling of oppression that as news of the troubles spread, there was no shortage of local volunteers to lead or "Captain" his fellow workers. Night after night fires started by roving mobs lit up the countryside. For many farmers, danger and destruction was a matter of when, not if. Understandably, farmers were frightened by the initial wave of attacks and generally gave in to the demands of the rioting farm workers.This only made the rioters bolder.
Captain Swing Cartoon
Image Source British Museum
Farm workers now started confronting farmers asking for higher wages and other improvements to their conditions. Rectors were told to lower tithes by armed gangs. Often their demands were met.
There are many stories of confrontations from all over the county. One at Halnaker near Chichester ended peacefully when the Duke of Richmond told the mob that they should return home and talk later. Another such confrontation in Lancing ended up less happily with the local landowner taking a severe beating.
The riots continued sporadically until 1831 when those arrested were sent or trial. The recriminations were savage and harsh, In Hampshire, the Duke of Wellington established a special commission to deal with rioters and they imposed very severe punishments in order to make an example of the offenders.
On the 18th December the commission met in Great Hall and of the 300 prisoners, 95 were formally sentenced to death (ultimately 6 had the sentence confirmed although 4 were reprieved and only two men were ultimately executed), 68 rioters were sent to prison and a further 69 were transported. Public opinion was shocked by severity of these sentences, transportation could be for up to 14 years and many of the men never returned to England. In 1835 Lord John Russell pardoned most of the rioters although by then it was too late for many of them.
While there was never any evidence of an organised attempt to overthrow
the government, the Captain Swing Riots were the first large-scale demonstration of agricultural labourers' strength, an expression of their fear and anger by the poorest people in the land.who saw their meagre way of life threatened by new technology. Agitation continued, especially after the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. There were no agricultural trade unions because jobs and therefore homes were at stake.Some of the landowners were actually sympathetic to the plight of the poor, and raised wages or offered more employment but in general nothing changed until the advent of prosperity in the mid 1850's when manufacturing started to provide employment and draw the population away from rural areas.
The 'Swing' riots did influence the passing of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act and the 1836 Tithe Commutation Act, but wages and conditions did not improve overall or a long time to come. But the Captain Swing Riots served to encourage a wider demand for political reform culminating in a huge step forward for democracy in Britain with the advent of the Representation of the People Act 1832. This act increased the electorate from about 500,000 to 813,000 by allowing almost one in five adult males to vote but still no women. Demonised at the time as thugs and enemies to progress the Captain Swing protestors had justifiable grievances and were in fact only protesting for a fairer and more prosperous Britain.
"Oh Captain Swing,
he'll come in the night
To set all your buildings and crops alight
And smash your machines with all his might
That dastardly Captain Swing!"
Further reading :- Captain Swing - Eric Hobsbawn , 1969 Pictured: one of the letters
Captain Swing - Robb Johnson, live Tolpuddle, 2010
The Manic Street Preachers released If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next from their massive selling fifth album ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’on this day in 1998 which managed to reach No 1.The Song is a beautiful and meaningful one about the Spanish Civil War and the Welshmen who joined the International Brigades to Spain in the 1930s to fight against General Francisco Franco's fascist forces: roughly 200 welshmen went to join the fight, with 33 losing their lives.
All four members of the original band were born and raised in Blackwood,
a Rhymney Valley community in South Wales. The 1984-5 miners’ strike
had marked their childhood. The cover design for the CD featured a group
photograph of the Welsh fighters, members of the ‘volunteers for
liberty’, taken before the battle of Ebro in July 1938.
Welsh Volunteers of the XV International Brigade before the Ebro
offensive, 1938 – photo from the South Wales Coalfield Collection at
Swansea University
The song lyrics
include not only a repeat of the words on the poster in the chorus but
also quote the remark allegedly made by one of the Welsh volunteers Tom Thomas from, Bedllinog when
asked if he wanted to fight in Spain: ‘If I can shoot rabbits then I
can shoot Fascists.’( as quoted in Miners Against Fascism by Hywel Francis, ) and refers to the young idealists who swapped shooting rabbits in the country side for shooting fascists in the battlefields of Spain.
Another line "I've walked Las Ramblas but not with real intent" brings to mind the account ofGeorgee Orwell's first hand account of the war "Homage to Catalonia! and of fighting on the Ramnblas.
The response in Wales was largely provided by the South Wales Miners'
Federation and the Communist Party and eventually supported by a broad
coalition including the Labour Party, Liberals, some Welsh writers,
academics and teachers.
One of the first to recognise the growing
threat of fascism was Labour MP Aneurin Bevan who, as early as 1933,
formed an anti-fascist workers militia - the Tredegar Workers' Freedom
Group.
The 200-or-so Welsh men who volunteered to fight in Spain represented
the largest regional industrial grouping within the British Battalion
of the International Brigades; only one Welshman fought for the fascist
forces led by General Franco.
They were Communist or Labour in
sympathy, largely from the central valleys of the Rhondda, Cynon and
Taff although there were also volunteers from the north Wales coalfield,
the coastal towns of the south and rural areas.
Some became
famous in later life as trade union leaders, notably Will Paynter and
Tom Jones, known subsequently as Twm Sbaen throughout the labour
movement.
The title of the song comes from a harrowing recruiting poster created and released by the newly formed
Propaganda Ministry of the Spanish Republican government in November
1936 that showed images of carnage caused by Francos's
Nationalists..Possibly the most famous poster from the Spanish Civil War in Britain, the broader European
threat is once more a salient theme in Madrid: The ‘Military’ Practice of the Rebels. Circulated
in Britain and France, this poster also directly confronts the audience with the dangers of European fascism and total warfare. The subtitle, ‘If you tolerate this your children will be
next’, as used as title for the Manic's song addresses the viewer with a call to arms, this threat to the children of Britain reinforced
by the death of a Spanish girl. The bombers in the background fly in formation to the top left
of the poster, or to the northwest of Spain, towards British shores. The planes are, however,
not the central focus of this poster. The image of child ‘4–21: 35’, once more taken from
¡Asesinos!, may at first look not to be dead; she is ‘facing’ the camera, almost looking out. On
closer examination, the reality of the image and its implications with regards to this new form
of warfare are realised by the viewer.
This photograph provides the ‘ce n’est pas ça’ of that which has been lost and is now absent,
through the inability of the dead girl to return the look of the viewer. The text, though,
reiterates ‘reality’ or ‘thereness’ – the ‘ça’ of the situation cannot be ignored, this is happening
– and adds the secondary messages of propaganda of agitation: a call to arms in order to
protect the basic needs of the people, in this instance, security.
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. What the world did or refrained from doing had terrible consequences.
Britain and France helped Franco indirectly and Germany and Italy
directly. Later came Russia. No country (Except for Mexico perhpas) took
side with the legitime government. What happened next was WWII and we
all know how that went. So if you tolerate this your children will be
next (And in fact they were).
Lets not forget all those who were killed serving with the International
Brigades who nobly fought bravely in a spirit of solidarity, and
political and moral awareness to try and save us from fascism's threat
that still sadly lingers and haunts us today.The dark shadow cast by
the Spanish Civil war, still matters, and the wound inflicted on Spain
still within living memory for many has yet to close.
Thia powerful song serves to remind us that we
must continue to resist oppressive forces and fascism, with our shout of no
pasaran and remember to stand for something , otherwise you will fall for anything.
If you tolerate this your children will be next. - Manic Street Preachers
The future teaches you to be alone
The present to be afraid and cold
"So if I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists"
Bullets for your brain today
But we'll forget it all again
Monuments put from pen to paper
Turns me into a gutless wonder
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
Will be next, will be next, will be next
Gravity keeps my head down
Or is it maybe shame
At being so young and being so vain
Holes in your head today
But I'm a pacifist
I've walked La Ramblas but not with real intent
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
Will be next, will be next, will be next, yeah will be next
And on the street tonight
An old man plays with newspaper cuttings of his glory days
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
Will be next, will be next, will be next
Music - (noun):The glue that's holding this chaos together. A universal language recognised by all sentient beings.
Music releases comfort, cancels out the dark, non sectarian, flies
over walls, liberating minds with pulse of freedom, when life is crap
can soothe.Releasing satori breath, without cancelling anger. At home I
still play my old records, that take me to uncontrolled steeples
heights, punk, jazz and blues, some reggae and soul,psychedelic
adventurers, world music cosmanauts, celtic flowers spinning with
benediction. Waves of now in deep communication.
Entrapping time, drowning misunderstanding,
in magical perfume, atoms of infinity. supplicants of memory, returning
me to,gardens of youth. Round and round, paint the sky, with saluted
cadence, discharging smiles, floods of necessity, time capsules of
electricity, cicada's voice rumbles on, ringing out loud, doubling
horizon, opening windows of perception, rhythms endless stream,
resurrecting and carrying.
Transistors of heart's beat, that feed my faith,among pastures of
endurity, tides that release our dancing feet, floating on rivers of
delight. Oceans of sound,melding endlessly in gracious flight, releasing
the blossom of chords and notes, enough to sustain and warm as
melodies and songs continue to explode on tonque.
Music can
collectively unite us all Where war has raged, people need everything
to return to life: food, water, shelter, clothing, medicine. But more
than anything, people need hope. To reconcile, people need empathy. To
heal, people need connection and community.
Music creates empathy,
builds connection, can convey important messages and ideals that people
can truly listen to, that gives hope allowing people to come together
and become powerful forces for change. The music of change is blowing
through all Continents. Soak it in.
Ray Bradbury, known for his
imaginative and evocative tales of Martian
lands and sinister carnival characters, was born 100 years ago today.In his lifetime Bradbury wrote hundreds of stories, a number of screenplays, and over two dozen novels,of subtle genius including The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine,andI sing the body electric. earning Bradbury a place within the canon of modern Western literature. Long have I been an admirer of his work. Here is a link to a piece I wrote several years ago when I heard about his death , :-https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/ray-bradbury-220828-5612-rip-something.html A beautiful, writer, of gentle, probing, persuasive thought best known as a science fiction author, Ray Bradbury’s writing was
courageous and visionary, combining poignant social criticism..
His novel Farenheit 451, which came out in 1953 at the height of the “Red Scare” period most memorably exemplified by Senator
Joseph McCarthy’s vicious, witch hunt against supposed communists
and communist sympathizers which included attempts to remove suspect books from
public libraries. This was also the period of the Hollywood blacklist, with
many actors, directors, and screenwriters being banned from working on
Hollywood films or television. Although Bradbury has said that the book-burnings
in Fahrenheit 451 were inspired by the
1933 Nazi book-burnings, he was much more likely inspired by the censorship
that accompanied the Red Scare of his own era. Set in a bleak, dystopian
future,where we find Guy Montag, the main protoganist, a fireman,whose main focus isn’t to fight fires, but to start them. In order to control information and its dissemination, the government
has banned books. Anyone found in possession of them is subject to
having their house burned to the ground by the fire department.
In his world, where television
rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires
rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of
commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are
hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his
actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred,
who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an
eccentric young neighbor one Clarisse McClennan , who introduces him to a past where
people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world
through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of
television.
When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly
disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.He become disillusioned with the societal distractions his
wife had engaged in and
becomes fascinated with the people who hide and defend the books he is
ordered to destroy. As such, he begins secretly hoarding books from the
houses he is sent to destroy.Towards the end, Montag is befriended by individuals
who have been labeled outcasts for their love of books and knowledge.
Montag is speaking with one of them, named Granger, who delivers the following message :
"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said.
A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of
shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way
so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at
that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't
matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the
way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after
you take your hands away.It
doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something
from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you
after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just
cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The
lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener
will be there a lifetime....
- Ray Bradbury - Farenheit 451.
This end signified a turning point from hoplessness to hope, but the message of the book still powerfully acts today as a warning, teaching us not to accept what we are
told is right or wrong as governments around the globe today continue today to suppress knowledge and the free flow of information. We must keep on clinging to the freedom to read, the freedom of ideas, and the freedom of communication.
The gardeners to be remembered, leaving their marks of unfettered imagination, seeds of the future to be forever cherished and treasured. Everyone must leave something behind! Happy birthday, Ray Bradbury.
Palestinian rights campaigners will gather across Britain on
Saturday to protest against this country’s complicity in arming Israel.
The day of action comes on the sixth anniversary of Israel’s 51-day
bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which killed 2,200 people — nearly a
quarter of them children.
Israeli forces attacked densely populated civilian areas, destroying
18,000 residential units and leaving over 100,000 Palestinians homeless.
Despite widespread condemnation of Israel’s
deliberate and systematic targeting of the civilian population of Gaza,
including by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International, Britain continues to arm Israel. According to Campaign against Arms Trade (CAAT) between 2014 and 2018,
the UK issued individual licenses for £364 million worth of military
equipment and technology for export to Israel, as well as 20 open
licenses, allowing unlimited deliveries over a 3-5 year period. In
addition, the UK continues to purchase high-tech weaponry from Israel,
advertised as battle-tested on the Palestinian people. As Israel
continues to murder Palestinians with impunity, Palestinian civil
society has called for effective action to hold Israel to account,
including for a two-way arms embargo now.
But the chain of complicity
runs deeper than the government. As revealed by research that shows both UK
universities and local government pension funds invest in companies
complicit in Israel’s war crimes, including companies that supply
weapons to Israel.
In addition, financial institutions such as HSBC
invest and provide financial services worth millions to companies that
supply Israel with weapons. Including BAE Systems and Raytheon. Weapons
with both BAE and Raytheon components were used in 2014. All institutions have a moral duty to end their complicity now. They must all #StopArmingIsrael
Meanwhile, the latest Israeli military offensive has now been
pounding Gaza with air strikes and artillery for more than 10 days.Israel uses military force to maintain its oppression of
Palestinians. It targets people with tear gas grenades, rubber-coated
bullets and live ammunition, and carries out mass arrests, house
demolitions and extrajudicial executions. This brutality lies at the
heart of Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian rights, amounting
to serious breaches of international law, and even war crimes. Gaza officials are currently warning of disruptions to Gaza's only power plant , leaving residents with just a few hours of electricity per day after Israel cut fuel supplies to Gaza's only power plant.
Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Norma Turner said: “Today,
we are calling on people to not just demonstrate but head straight for
those most complicit in these crimes, especially the arms factories and
offices of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons-maker, which makes
the majority of the drones that kill so many Palestinians.
“Companies like Elbit shouldn’t be profiting, they should be punished
and banished, given the murder and injury their weapons are being used
for.”
Adie Mormech of Manchester Palestine Action warned that Israel is
using Gaza as a laboratory for the development of its weapons.
He said: “Just like for the fight against apartheid South Africa, we
must stand in the way of such a grotesque industry that thrives on the
devastation, loss and trauma that people like the Palestinians face
every single day.” A full list of demonstrations can be found here: palestinecampaign.org/events/stop-arming-israel-national-day-of-action-2/
Nat Turner was born October 2, 1800 in slavery on a plantation of Benjamin Turner in Southampton County.Virginia, about twenty miles from the North Carolina border. His mother was named Nancy, but nothing is known about his father.
Over the years, Turner worked on a number of different plantations. Turner's experience was typical of slaves on southern plantations. He had little freedom; he could not legally marry, travel without his master's permission, own property, or earn money. He was forced to work long, hard hours in the fields for meager rations of food and clothing, and if he refused he faced the whip or other punishment. And, like many slaves, Turner was sold several times to different masters. Each time, he was forced to leave family and friends and move to a different plantation. It was this brutal, demeaning, system of slavery that Nat Turner sought to overthrow. He sought not only his own freedom, but to dismantle the entire system of slavery and liberate African Americans from white tyranny.
In his twenties, Turner was a spiritual leader among his fellow slaves, and many people, including his mother and grandmother, believed that he had been chosen by God to do great things. Then, in the 1820s, he had a series of visions through which he believed God was commanding him to prepare himself for a great battle against evil. During the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening, many Americans from all walks of life experienced visions or believed that God spoke directly to them, and Nat Turner’s belief that God had destined him for a special purpose reflected the religious fervor of his time.
In 1821, Turner ran away from his overseer, returning after thirty days because of a vision in which the Spirit had told him to "return to the service of my earthly master." The next year, following the death of his master, Samuel Turner, Nat was sold to Thomas Moore. Three years later, Nat Turner had another vision. He saw lights in the sky and prayed to find out what they meant. Then "... while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn, as though it were dew from heaven, and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighborhood; and then I found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens."
On May 12, 1828, Turner had his third vision: "I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first... And by signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work, and until the first sign appeared I should conceal it from the knowledge of men; and on the appearance of the sign... I should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons."
At the beginning of the year 1830, Turner was moved to the home of Joseph Travis, the new husband of Thomas Moore's widow. His official owner was Putnum Moore, still a young child. Turner described Travis as a kind master, against whom he had no complaints.
Then, on February, 1831, there was a solar eclipse of the sun. Turner took this to be the sign he had been promised and confided his plan to the four men he trusted the most, Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam. They decided to hold the insurrection on the 4th of July and began planning a strategy. However, they had to postpone action because Turner became ill.
On August 13, the sun appeared blue-green in the sky, and Turner and his friends took this as the final sign.and a week later, on August 21 in what has become known as the Southampton insurrection , Turner and six of his men met in the woods to eat a dinner and make their plans. At 2:00 that morning, they set out to the Travis household, where they killed the entire family as they lay sleeping and joined about 60 other slaves from other plantations in Southampton County,Virginia and started a general revolt, because they could no longer face race oppression and slavery in a hypocritical nation founded on revolutionary ideas of freedom and equality.
As an act of necessity and as a as a means of survival they were forced to use violence as means to an end, in an effort to escape their daily lives of burden and suppression. They killed mercilessly and attacked whites without regard to age or sex believing tht killing all the whites they encountered was the only way they might have a chance of fulfilling the cherished goal of freedom for which thy were willing to sacrifice their lives.
His rebellion became one of the bloodiest and most effective in American history. Igniting a culture of fear, as the insurrection spread from plantation to plantation. Somewhere between 55 to 65 people were killed by the rebels before the revolt was brutally put down. Nat managed to escape, and eluded capture for a couple of months, but on October 30, 1831was arrested He was represented by attorney Thomas R. Gray, who documented Turner’s statement. During his prosecution, Turner pled not guilty, stating that his rebellion was the act of God. On November 11, 1831, he was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging in Jerusalem, Virginia of the crimes of conspiracy to rebel and making insurrection.
He had given all slaves a chance to see freedom and herald it on it's way. He died as he had lived, with courage and conviction, apparently he walked to the hanging tree, without showing a sign of fear, famously refusing to speak any last words. we will always remember him, a man whose breath was forever free.
After he was hanged his body was then mutilated.He never received an official burial and Turner’s headless bones were presumably buried in an unmarked grave.Many believed his death was made a symbol of warning to other would-be insurgents.
And unfortunately in the aftermath, in total, the state executed 55 people, banished many more, and acquitted a few. The state reimbursed the slaveholders for their slaves. But in the hysterical climate that followed the rebellion, close to 200 black people, many of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion, were beaten, tortured and murdered by white mobs. In addition, slaves as far away as North Carolina were accused of having a connection with the insurrection, and were subsequently tried and executed. . New legislation was passed that further restricted people rights. laws were passed to make it illegal to teach slaves to read and write, and their travel was severely restricted.
It would be a long road, but from this point on, there would be no turning back. Nat Turner actions acted as a catalyst for the many struggles that lay ahead, leaving a mythic footprint for those who came later, and he became a powerful symbol of black autonomy and it's fight and struggle for freedom and emancipation.
Over the years, Turner has emerged as a hero, a religious fanatic and
a villain. Turner became an important icon to the 1960s Black power
movement as an example of an African American standing up against white
oppression.
Others have objected to Turner's indiscriminate
slaughtering of men, women and children to try to achieve this end. As
historian Scot French told The New York Times, "To accept Nat
Turner and place him within the pantheon of American revolutionary
heroes is to sanction violence as a means of social change. He has a
kind of radical consciousness that to this day troubles advocates of a
racially reconciled society. The story lives because it's relevant today
to questions of how to organize for change."
His rebellion made it clear that slaves were not content with their enslavement and as a result and August 21, 1831, remains an important date in American History
Turner was the subject of William Styron's 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Confessions of Nat Turner.
Turner’s life and uprising was also the subject of the 2016 film, The Birth of a Nation,
which was directed, written by and starring Nate Parker. The film won
the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at the 2016 Sundance Film
Festival.
"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read man's history, is man's original virtue, it is through disobedience that progress has been made - through disobedience and through rebellion." - Oscar Wilde
Stuart Christie, founder of the Anarchist Black Cross and Cienfuegos Press and co-author of The floodgates of anarchy has died peacefully after a battle with lung cancer.
Born
in Glasgow and brought up in Blantyre, Christie credited his
grandmother for shaping his political outlook, giving him a clear moral
map and ethical code. His determination to follow his conscience led him
to anarchism: “Without freedom there would be no equality and without
equality no freedom, and without struggle there would be neither.” It
also led him from the campaign against nuclear weapons to joining the
struggle against the Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco
(1892-1975).
He moved to London and got in touch with the
clandestine Spanish anarchist organisation Defensa Interior (Interior
Defence). He was arrested in Madrid in 1964 carrying explosives to be
used in an assassination attempt on Franco. To cover the fact that there
was an informer inside the group, the police proclaimed they had agents
operating in Britain – and (falsely) that Christie had drawn attention
to himself by wearing a kilt.
The threat of the garotte and
his twenty year sentence drew international attention to the resistance
to the Franco regime. In prison Christie formed lasting friendships with
anarchist militants of his and earlier generations. He returned from
Spain in 1967, older and wiser, but equally determined to continue the
struggle and use his notoriety to aid the comrades he left behind.
In
London he met Brenda Earl who would become his political and emotional
life partner. He also met Albert Meltzer, and the two would refound the
Anarchist Black Cross to promote solidarity with anarchist prisoners in
Spain, and the resistance more broadly. Their book, The floodgates of anarchy
promoted a revolutionary anarchism at odds with the attitudes of some
who had come into anarchism from the sixties peace movement. At the
Carrara anarchist conference of 1968 Christie got in touch with a new
generation of anarchist militants who shared his ideas and approach to
action.
Christie’s political commitment and international
connections made him a target for the British Special Branch. He was
acquitted of conspiracy to cause explosions in the “Stoke Newington
Eight” trial of 1972, claiming the jury could understand why someone
would want to blow up Franco, and why that would make him a target for
“conservative-minded policemen”.
Free but apparently
unemployable, Christie launched Cienfuegos Press which would produce a
large number of anarchist books and the encyclopedic Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review.
Briefly Orkney became a centre of anarchist publishing before lack of
cashflow ended the project. Christie would continue publishing, and
investigating new ways of doing so including ebooks and the internet.
His https://christiebooks.co.uk contains numerous films on anarchism and
biographies of anarchists. He used facebook to create an archive of
anarchist history not available anywhere else as he recounted memories
and events from his own and other people’s lives.
Christie wrote The investigative researcher’s handbook (1983), sharing skills that he put to use in an exposé of fascist Italian terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie (1984). In 1996 he published the first version of his historical study We the anarchists : a study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), 1927-1937.
Short-run printing enabled him to produced three illustrated volumes of his life story (My granny made me an anarchist, General Franco made me a ‘terrorist’ and Edward Heath made me angry 2002-2004) which were condensed into a single volume as Granny made me an anarchist : General Franco, the angry brigade and me (2004). His final books were the three volumes of ¡Pistoleros! The Chronicles of Farquhar McHarg, his tales of a Glaswegian anarchist who joins the Spanish anarchist defence groups in the years 1918-1924.
Committed
to anarchism and publishing, Christie appeared at many bookfairs and
film festivals, but scorned any suggestion he had come to ‘lead’ anyone
anywhere.
Christie’s partner Brenda died in June 2019. He
slipped away peacefully, listening to “Pennies From Heaven” (Brenda’s
favourite song) in the company of his daughter Branwen.
Stuart Christie, 10 July 1946-15 August 2020
I was a friend on facebook where he posted frequently lots of inspiring stuff , so my deepest condolences go the family and friends of Stuart Christie. Sad news, May this lifelong committed anti-fascist and anarchist rest in power and his extraordinary life long be remembered.
A perfect society may not come tomorrow, the struggle could last forever, but at least we can thank people like Christie who had the courage and vision that provides the spur to struggle against things as they are, and for things that might be. Our progress towards a more meaningful world must begin with the will to resist every form of injustice.
