In remembrance of the heroes of the Tiananmen democracy movement and victims of the massacre in Beijing on 4 June 1989

 

Today marks the anniversary of the bloody  massacre of hundreds of unarmed peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Beijing and the arrest of tens of thousands of demonstrators in cities across China.

The Chinese government has never released a death toll of the June 4, 1989 crackdown, but estimates from human rights groups and witnesses range from several hundred to several thousand.

China had slid into economic chaos in 1988 with panic buying triggered by rising inflation peaking at more than 30 per cent in cities. Public discontent, coupled with the death of purged reform-minded Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, set the stage for the demonstrations.
More than one million people flooded into central Beijing, keen to vent their anger against corruption, economic mismanagement, nepotism and poor career prospects for students. Gathering in Tiananmen Square, the students erected their own 'Goddess of Democracy' statue opposite the official portrait of the Communist revolutionary leader Chairman Mao Zedong.

The Tiananmen Massacre was precipitated by the peaceful gatherings of students, workers, and others in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and other Chinese cities in April 1989, driven  by the hope for a better future, they were simply  calling for freedom of the press and for some government accountability, and the imminent problems of corruption, and began the largest political protest in the history of Communist China. #

The government responded to the intensifying protests in late May 1989 by declaring martial law.Overnight on 3 to 4 June, the government sent tens of thousands of armed troops and hundreds of armoured military vehicles into the city centre to enforce martial law and forcibly clear the streets of demonstrators. The government wanted to 'restore order' in the capital.

As they approached the demonstrations, troops opened fire on crowds of protesters and onlookers. They gave no warning before they started shooting.A night of bloodshed on  June 3rd resulted  with over 2,000 of protestors being killed.As the troops kept firing into the crowds, some of those running away were shot in the back. Others were crushed to death by military vehicles. Brave, innocent, the Chinese government has never accepted responsibility for the massacre or held any officials legally accountable for the killings. despite individual souls, shotdown and massacred triggering shock and outrage across the world.

The Tiananmen protests were immortalised in Western media on 5 June through the image of a lone man in a white shirt carrying shopping bags, facing an imposing column of military tanks sent by the government to disperse protesters. The man is known simply as Tank Man: his identity has never been confirmed.
Tank Man would not let the military vehicles pass. He succeeded. Eventually, he was pulled out of the way of danger by onlookers. But the image of unarmed man versus tank quickly came to symbolise the struggle of the Tiananmen protesters - peaceful protest met with military might.
'It demonstrates one man's extraordinary courage, standing up in front of a row of tanks, being prepared to sacrifice his own life for the sake of social justice' Stuart Franklin, Tank Man photographer
Stuart Franklin took the Tank Man photograph.

Tank Man



In  the following short film below he talks about how he came to capture what would become one of the most iconic images of the twentieth century.

In the aftermath long prison sentences were given out, one  of which was for 17 years for  simply throwing paint at a portrait of Mao Zedong. We should take a minute and think about those sacrifices and all those who died,  so that their actions  have not been in vain. Sadly brutal suppression and censorship has continued to this day, that  condemns the Chinese nation and its people to a future without freedom.

Today many activists are still being  ruthlessly persecuted by the Chinese Authorities, and the climate of free expression remains stifling,  with scores of writers still being silenced, also many social media sites are still banned, and three decades later, China, under President Xi Jinping, is undergoing the worst crackdown on human rights since the Tiananmen massacre. Hopes that China would gradually liberalize politically as it opened up economically have been dashed.

The  Chinese regime to this day  continues to bury the truth of what happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. Tiananmen remains one of the most censored issues in an internet and social media environment that has become increasingly restrictive  since Xi Jinping became president in 2012.Young Chinese below the age of 35 today either know nothing about it or believe that it was the protesters who were the criminals. A regime that sent tanks and guns to slaughter its people now seeks to hide the evidence, threaten its critics, eliminate alternative ideas and impose absolute control. Seeking to suppress every form of freedom, with Pro-democracy activists being jailed, and in every corner of China's territory, from Xinjiang to Hong Kong, that  has also seen critics abroad being intimidated, threatened and, in the worst cases, kidnapped.The Chinese government has never accepted responsibility for the massacre or held any officials legally accountable for the killings. It has been unwilling to conduct an investigation into the events or release data on those who were killed, injured, forcibly disappeared, or imprisoned.

For those who participated or observed the events of 1989, however, the search for truth goes on. Memories have not faded. The hard facts of the massacre are etched into history.No one can erase it; no power, however mighty, can alter it; and no words or tongues, however clever, can deny it.

Chinese censors scrubbing the internet of any words or symbols that could be used to reference the Tiananmen Square massacre in the run-up to todays anniversary had a new target in their sights: a bridge in Beijing where a rare protest was staged last year.  As the 34th anniversary of the 1989 massacre approached, anyone searching in Chinese for Sitong Bridge on Baidu maps will  have drawn a blank. 

On 13 October 2022 white banners with large red characters criticising the Chinese Communist party  (CCP) were hung over the bridge near Beijing’s university district in advance of a major CCP congress.  According to pictures posted on social media, the road sign for Sitong Bridge has been removed. Searches on Baidu for Sitong Bridge return the message: “No related places were found.”  

It is still possible to search for the bridge using the traditional Chinese characters used in Hong Kong and Taiwan, rather than the simplified characters used on the mainland. And it is still possible to find related locations, such as “Sitong Bridge East” – a nearby bus stop – on Baidu.  October’s Sitong Bridge banners called for “freedom”, “respect” and the right to be “citizens, not slaves”, as well as the removal of Xi Jinping, China’s leader, who was about to begin an unprecedented third term as the CCP’s general secretary. The man responsible for the banners, Peng Lifa, was detained by police shortly after they appeared and has not been seen since.

He has become known as Bridge Man, a reference to the Tank Man of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.  Peng’s stunt precipitated the White Paper protests, which called for an end to the zero-Covid policy that swept Chinese cities in late November and early December. It was a period of mass unrest the likes of which have not been seen in China since 1989.

Since this day  a candlelight vigil has been held in Hong Kong to remember the victims, but the authorities banned the event in 2020. In 2021, union leader Lee Cheuk Yan, along with seven others, was sentenced to 14 months in prison for “inciting, organising and participating” in the candlelight vigil on the 4th of June 2020.

Police in Hong Kong have again detained pro-democracy activists on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.  Authorities have banned public commemoration of the 1989 incident, which saw China crush peaceful protests in Beijing with tanks and troops.  However, dozens of candlelight vigils are expected to take place in cities around the world.

 Among those detained was 67-year-old campaigner Alexandra Wong, widely known as "Grandma Wong".  Amid a tense evening in Hong Kong, she was detained while carrying flowers near Victoria Park, where vigils had been held for decades.  The leader of one of Hong Kong's main opposition parties has also been detained and placed in a police van. Chan Po Ying, a veteran pro-democracy activist who heads the League of Social Democrats party, was holding an LED candle and two flowers.  Mak Yin Ting, former head of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, was also detained and subsequently released. Police later said they had made one arrest and taken 23 people to police stations for investigation. 

Events to mark the 1989 massacre in Beijing are banned in mainland China.  Hong Kong was previously the only Chinese city where these commemorations were allowed, under the city's semi-autonomous economic, political and legal set up - known as "one country, two systems" - established when the city handed over to China by the UK in 1997.  But public events to mark the anniversary have since been outlawed, after the Chinese government imposed a strict national security law outlawing many forms of dissent in 2020.  The annual commemorations have not been held since 2019, after being initially banned under Hong Kong's Covid regulations. 

The Chinese government has long ignored domestic and international calls for justice for the Tiananmen Massacre, and some of the sanctions that the European Union and US imposed in response have over the years been weakened or evaded. The lack of a sustained, coordinated, international response to the massacre and ensuing crackdown is one factor in Beijing’s increasingly brazen human rights violations.Three decades on from the Tiananmen Massacre the human rights situation for all who live under China’s rule has hit an all-time low and repression across all regions and occupied territories.

The spirit of the Tiananmen movement continues to burn in the hearts of veterans of 1989 and younger generations of activists who fight for a more just China.We must continue to support all those that fight  against state  oppression and censorship and never forget the tragic  legacy of Tinanamen Square that continues to haunt us.,

China’s government wants us to forget what happened 34 years ago today in Tiananmen Square.The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. We must remember 

In remembrance of the heroes of the Tiananmen democracy movement and victims of the massacre in Beijing on 4 June 1989 Support the democracy struggle today!  Defend China democrats and  workers, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and the Uyghur peoples.

Sojourner Truth: "Ain't I a Woman?"

On  the 29th of May 1851 enslaved woman and abolitionist , Sojourner Truth delivered her famous stirring"Ain't I a Woman?" speech to the Women's Rights Convention in Akron. Ohio . The speech challenged discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and intellectual ability, and lays  bare the cruelty of slavery and would become a pivotal moment in the women's rights movement.

Born into slavery in Ulster County, New York, as Isabella Baumfree. Her  early  childhood was spent on a New York estate owned by a Dutch American named Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh. Like other slaves, she experienced the miseries of being sold and was cruelly beaten and mistreated. Around 1815 she fell in love with a fellow slave named Robert, but they were forced apart by Robert’s master. Isabella was instead forced to marry a slave named Thomas, with whom she had five children. In 1827, after her master failed to honor his promise to free her or to uphold the New York Anti-Slavery Law of 1827, Isabella ran away, or, as she later informed her master, “I did not run away, I walked away by daylight….” 

After experiencing a religious conversion she became a itinerant Pentecostal preacher and an outspoken abolitionist and supporter of womens rights. She traveled throughout the northeast and midwest, of the USA speaking publicly and (famously) singing her message as well.and in  1843, Isabella changed her name to Sojourner Truth. 

According to Frances Gage, the president of the Convention at the the time of her famous speech, on the second day several male ministers showed up and argued that women should not have the same rights as men. The ministers reasoning: women were weak, men were intellectually superior to women, Jesus was a man, and our first mother sinned. 

Sojourner Truth rose and (amidst protests from some of the women who feared shed talk about abolition) delivered her short, masterful speech. invoking tenets of Christianity and using her strong, imposing presence to debunk the ministers arguments

By all accounts, as Truth spoke, the crowd in the church rose and wildly applauded.Several versions of Truths famous speech exist today .One version was published a month after the speech was given in the newspaper The Anti-Slavery Bugle by Rev. Marius Robinson, a friend of Truth's. 

The most famous  however is an 1863 account of the speech as remembered by Frances Gage. but  some believe that Gage changed the speech so that Truth would sound more like a Southern slave. In fact, Truth did not speak in a Southern style, having been born in New York and speaking Dutch until age 9. 

Both versions of the speech are included below.

Narrative of Sojourner Truth : Ain't I A Woman?

Delivered 1851.Women's Rights Convention,  Akron, Ohio

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

 Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say

  Anti-Slavery Bugle version:

' May I say a few words? Receiving an affirmative answer, she proceeded; I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman’s rights [sic]. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am strong as any man that is now.

As for intellect, all I can say is, if woman have a pint and man a quart—why can’t she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much—for we won’t take more than our pint’ll hold.

The poor men seem to be all in confusion and don’t know what to do. Why children, if you have woman’s rights give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won’t be so much trouble.

I can’t read, but I can hear. I have heard the Bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. The lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept—and Lazarus came forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and woman who bore him. Man, where is your part?

But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, and he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.'

Regardless, of the two different versions . what remains  undisputed  and beyond doubt  is that Truth's speech.and many others she gave throughout her adult life, moved audiences, and .with her voice  straightforwardly described the predicament of Black women, who were not even afforded the paternalistic treatment their white counterparts received.

Truth  would continue speaking throughout the rest of her life, advocating for women’s rights, equality and suffrage. and when   the Civil War started, Truth urged young men to join the Union cause and organized supplies for black troops. After the war, she was honored with an invitation to the White House and became involved with the Freedmen’s Bureau, helping freed slaves find jobs and build new lives. While in Washington, DC, she lobbied against segregation, and in the mid 1860s, when a streetcar conductor tried to violently block her from riding, she ensured his arrest and won her subsequent case. In the late 1860s, she collected thousands of signatures on a petition to provide former slaves with land, though Congress never took action. Nearly blind and deaf towards the end of her life, Truth spent her final years in Michigan.until her death in 1883 where her funeral was said to be one of  the largest he town had ever seen.. 

Many readings of Truth’s famous speech have since been recorded, including some by notable actresses like Kerry Washington and Alfre Woodward, as well The Color Purple author Alice Walker. All three readings follow the transcript containing the “Ain’t I a Woman” phrasing,

More than a century since her speech, Truth's words continue to resonate with generations, being taught in schools and "Ain't I a Woman" emblazoned on t-shirts, posters, pins and more.Her words continue to impact American society as a beacon of hope and equality, Sojourner Truth's bold assertion of her own identity, serves as a timely reminder that the fight for equality has always been, and will continue to be, a constant challenge and an ongoing rhetorical and physical process that continues  to  resonate and speak to us today.

The legend of St Melangell and the Hare

St Melangell. the patron saint of hares and rabbits and 27th May marks her  feast day which and was established in the year 590.Her latin name is Monacella though it is rarely used.   The story of St. Melangell is a blend of local history, custom, folklore and pre-Christian goddesses and practices.

The association of religious female figures and hares is legendary and predates Melangell by several centuries.The hare is itself a beast of legend. Primarily seen as a creature of the Moon goddess, an emblem of fecundity.  It has also acquired many names.

The hare was a sacred and mystical animal to the Celts; a symbol of abundance, prosperity and good fortune. They were believed to have connections to the Otherworld. They were treated with great respect and never eaten. A group of hares is called a drove, a down or a husk and they are well known for their boxing antics around the mating season in March.

In Ireland the hare was associated with women who could shapeshift into their form, so eating them was taboo. and there is a legend too that the God and warrior, Oisin, hunted a hare, wounding it in the leg.  He followed the wounded animal into a thicket, where he found a door leading down into the ground. He went in and came to a large hall where he found a beautiful young woman sitting on a throne bleeding from a leg wound.

The young Scottish witch, Isobel Gowdie, at her trial for witchcraft in 1662, recited the charms that turned her and her sisters into hares, in which shape they leaped away to meet the Queen of Elphame in her home “under the hills.”

I shall go into a hare,
Wi’ sorrow and sighing and mickle care;
And I shall go in the devil’s name
Aye, till I come home again.
To change back, she would say:
Hare, hare, God send thee care.
I am in a hare’s likeness now,
But I shall be in a woman’s likeness even now.

In Wales such “hare witches” ran in families. The Victorian folklorist, Sir John Rhys, tells how his own nurse belonged to one such family and how his mother was considered to be rather reckless in entrusting him to her care, “as she might run away at any moment, leaving her charge to take care of itself.” An early poem by Walter de la Mare perfectly captures this long-standing belief:

In the black furrow of a field
I saw an old witch-hare this night;
And she cocked a lissome ear,
And she eyed the moon so bright,
And she nibbled o’ the green;
And I whispered “Whsst! witch-hare”,
Away like a ghostie o’er the field
She fled, and left the moonlight there.

It’s the usual story of a creature once revered as a goddess, demoted to the rank of woodland spirit, and finally to an evil witch. Yet somehow, the legend of Melangell managed to preserve the old memory of the hare as a sacred creature to be protected and cared for, a view appealing to all those who care about living creatures of the wild.

Melangell’s life is as obscure as anyone’s from 7th century Britain might be, but  in most accounts Melangell is described as a 7th-century Irish princess. who had dedicated her life to prayer, the daughter of an Irish king who  had arranged for her to marry against her will. Unhappy at the prospect of an arranged marriage to a man she did not love in  about the year 590 she fled Ireland and  arrived at the remote valley of the river Tanat, at the foot of the Berwyn mountains in Powys, Wales where she lived a life of solitude and prayer  and founded a small  nunnery.

Nearly fifteen years later, in the year 604, Brochwel Ysgithrog, then Prince of Powys and Earl of Chester, encountered the young Melangell while hunting, when the hare that his hounds were chasing took refuge under her cloak. Seeing her, the hounds stopped.  Brochwel tried to command them to go on but Melangell defied them and they turned and fled.

Brochwel had never experienced anything like this, and was keen to speak to the mysterious young woman. Struck by her beauty, he had hoped that she would marry him, but when he heard her story he was so moved and impressed by her determination and piety that he donated to her a parcel of land in the valley where she could live her monastic life among the wild creatures there.

News of her spread throughout the area and other women came to gather around her, forming a community there. They ordered their communal life on prayer and works of mercy, providing sanctuary to the poor and needy. Melangell was the mother to this community of women for the remaining 37 years of her life, and was often seen surrounded by hares during this time.

After Melangell's death, her tomb became a place of healing, with pilgrims travelling for miles to venerate her relics and ask her intercession. Brochwel's successors decreed that the area must be protected as a place of solace for those in need of healing and restoration, as well as a place of refuge for the small animals, who were to remain unharmed. So it remained for centuries. However, at the Reformation, the site was desecrated. The holy shrine was destroyed and the stones were scattered in the churchyard, with some incorporated into walls and other structures. In an act of love and devotion reflected in many parts of the country where holy places were laid to ruin, the pious local people had hidden St Melangell's relics.

In the 1990's the shrine was reconstructed from the stones reclaimed from around the churchyard, and the holy relics were enshrined once more. The little church at Pennant Melangell is once again a place of pilgrimage, where people go to venerate St Melangell, to ask for her prayers, and to thank her as a model of piety and protectress of the little animals. A grove of ancient yew trees encircles the church,estimated to be two thousand years old,which in turn is encircled by the boundaries of the churchyard,and near to her shrine archaeologists have discovered evidence of a nearby Bronze Age settlement, while many round barrows, ring cairns, and standing stones dot the higher ground testament to a long-forgotten Neolithic race. 

On the opposite side of the river is a rock ledge known as ‘Gwely Melangell’ (Melangell’s Bed) where the saint was said to have slept. Yet it is also known as ‘Gwely y Gawres’ (the Giantess’s Bed), presumably based on an older legend of a female giant who lived in the valley.Throughout Wales and other Celtic countries, significant natural or constructed rock features in the landscape are associated with giantesses and goddesses, and are often named “the Hag’s Seat” or  “the Old Woman’s Bed.”

Up above the Pennant valley rears the mountain peak of Cadair Bronwen, “Bronwen’s Seat," the highest point in the Berwyns. Bronwen may have been an early mountain goddess, perhaps cognate with Branwen, sister of the god Brân in Welsh legend.

Inside the little church at Pennant Melangell, the legend of Melangell and the Hare can still be seen carved on a 15th-century oak rood screen with carvings that tell the story of St Melangell and Prince Brochwel of Powys and depicts hares running to her for her protection. The carving of the legend is underlined by a frieze of oak-leaves; at one end, significantly, we see a Green Man, oak-leaves spilling from his mouth; at the other, a hand holding a vine, perhaps, , a symbol of the creative power at work in nature. And  because of her association with them she was made the patroness of hares which were sometimes called St. Monacella’s Lambs or Oen Melangell. The words "Duw a Melangell a’th gadwo" (God and Melangell keepeth thee) are offered to hunted animals.

In recent years, the legend of Saint Melangell has attracted increasing attention from poets in Wales. They have explored a range of different, even contrasting, meanings, revealing the complexity of what might seem at first hearing quite a straightforward tale.

A slim selection of lovely poems about St Melangell, The Hare That Hides Within, was published by Parthian in 2004. It contains 10 poems that  play on the pagan, magical associations of the hare; others on the power of the maiden over the hunter.

I huddle at your feet in your garments' folds, 

and am simple hare, fool hare, hunted hare.' 

(Ruth Bidgood, Hare at Pennant.)

The legend of St Melangell and the hare continues to inspire people to this day. 

RIP Kenneth Anger, Legendary Gay Underground filmmaker and Hollywood Babylon author. (February 3rd 1927 – May 11th 2023)

 

It is sad  to write that the legendary gay underground  experimental filmmaker  and author Kenneth Anger' has  died at the age of 96 on May 11 in Yucca Valley, Southern California from natural causes after living for some time in an assisted living facility. His death was  reported by the Sprüth Magers gallery, which has represented Anger's work since 2009  said “It is with deep sadness that we mourn the passing of visionary filmmaker, artist and author Kenneth Anger,” the gallery tweeted on May 24. “Kenneth was a trailblazer. His cinematic genius and influence will live on and continue to transform all those who encounter his films, words and vision.”

A pioneer in the field of avant-garde film and video art, Anger’s short films were characterized by what his gallery describes as “a mystical-symbolic visual language and phantasmagorical-sensual opulence that underscores the medium’s transgressive potential.” The films are often credited with have a deep impact on the aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s subcultures, particularly queer iconography.

Born in Santa Monica, California, on February 3rd 1923 Anger was the the third child of Wilbur Anglemyer, an electrical engineer, and Lillian Coler. The Presbyterian family had moved to Santa Monica to be closer to Lillian’s mother, Bertha.

Anger created his own first film in 1937, when he was ten. Titled Ferdinand the Bull, the short used 16mm film and features Kenneth dressed as a matador. His second film, Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat, was made several years later, in 1941, and comprised footage of kids playing during the summer.

His family’s Midwestern Presbyterian roots offer no clue as to his later immersion with the occult. His father's job enabled a comfortable life for the family  until the Great Depression joined with Kenneth’s stature as the troubled family member who would spend more time with grandmother, Bertha, who encouraged his artistic interests; she took him to the movies for the first time, a double bill featuring The Singing Fool (1928) and Thunder Over Mexico (1933) and financially supported the Anglemyers during the Great Depression.. 

He claimed to have gotten his start in the film  industry as a child actor in the 1935 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that starred James Cagney and Mickey Rooney.According to official records, he did no such thing. But the story was, among other things, a way for Anger to place himself in the Hollywood firmament that he would make often gorgeous war on via art and prose.

Anger created his own first film in 1937, when he was ten. Titled Ferdinand the Bull, the short used 16mm film and features Kenneth dressed as a matador. His second film, Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat, was made several years later, in 1941, and comprised footage of kids playing during the summer.

In the 1940s, Kenneth shortened his name from Anglemyer to Anger. He  rejected Christianity in childhood, saying he preferred reading comics on a Sunday.  During high school,  Anger was influenced first by fantastic readings such as The Wizard of Oz, then by Rosicrucian philosophy, and by the writings of Eliphas Levi,French esotericist, poet, and writer and James Frazer Scottish social anthroplogist and folklorist and creator of the seminal tome The Golden Bough. His favorite author, however, was the British magician Aleister Crowley, who founded the Thelema religion based on his experiences of 1904 in Egypt, a stay during which he declared that he had been contacted by Aiwass, the mysterious Minister of Hoor-Paar-kraat, or Harpocrates, the Egyptian deity of silence Horus the Son, who had recited the Book of the Law to him. Later, having moved to Los Angeles, he met avant garde film-maker Curtis Harrington, and Anger converted to the Thelema religion. which urges members to “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will,” and for a time he lived in the house of Thelema founder Aleister Crowley.His absorption in the Crowley demi-monde led to various works centered on the mystic’s Thelemite belief system,

In the following decade, Anger became aware of his homosexuality at a time when it was still illegal. In the mid-1940s he was also arrested for this crime. During that time he began studying cinema at the University of Southern California and began using drugs, especially cannabis and peyote.

In 1947, when he was just 20, Anger directed a short gay art film Fireworks – not worlds apart from Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s collaborations Un chien andalou (1929) and L’Age d’or (1930)  filmed at his parents’ house in Beverly Hills .It’s a daring “dream of a dream”, according to Anger. ‘Daring’ because it featured a gay gang-rape fantasy, a Roman candle exploding from a guy’s crotch, and Anger himself being brutally beaten by a group of sailors with chains.

The film  did not go unnoticed by Jean Cocteau, with whom he became friends and this landmark of queer cinema also  inspired the poet Robert Duncan, who  too became friends with Anger and dedicated sections of his poem “The Torso,” whose imagery is akin to that of Fireworks.

Acknowledged as the first American film to openly deal with homosexuality, it also ruffled a few feathers with the military and became an instant favorite of the famous Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who became a frequent correspondent with Anger.  also ruffled a few feathers with the military and became an instant favorite of the famous Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who became a frequent correspondent with Anger. Seen today it's still quite potent, and the image of Anger's abused face drenched in blood and milk can still make viewers gasp.

 

 

Fireworks won the poetic film prize at Cocteau’s 1949 festival Le Film Maudit (“The Cursed Movie”). Quite rightfully sensing that Europe was more accepting of his work than the U.S., he moved to Paris and worked under Henri Langlois at the Cinémathéque Française. 

Anger switched to color with the beautiful, non-narrative "Puce Moment," a six-minute mood piece which begins with a series of vividly colorful shimmering past the camera.Then a baby-faced movie star (Anger's cousin, Yvonne Marquis) emerges and regards herself indulgently, then sprawls around outside in the Southern California hills. The film was originally intended to be much longer, but the only filmed fragments are still a visual treat and feature an effective psychedelic folk-rock piece by Jonathan Halper, added much later.

 

 For his 1950 film Rabbit’s Moon (not completed and released until 1971), Anger used an 18th century magic lantern from the Cinematheque’s collection and 35mm film stock left over from an UNESCO shoot in Paris. He had only four weeks to make the costumes, build the set and film in Pierre Braunberger’s Pantheon Cinema soundstage before the French producer returned from vacation.

Anger created a a visual feast jumping off from the Eastern myth of a magical rabbit in the moon. Here that deity becomes the obsession of Pierrot, a mime alone in a magical forest whose doomed quest is complicated by the arrival of a harlequin, his beautiful princess companion, and a magic lantern which projects various arcane symbols. Sort of like Children of Paradise on acid

 

 

In 1953 he went to Rome, where he wanted to make a film about the sixteenth-century occultist, Cardinal d’Este. He only managed to shoot the first scene in the Villa d’Este in Tivoli where a woman dressed in eighteenth-century clothes wandering around the gardens accompanied by Vivaldi’s music.

Shortly thereafter Kenneth returned to the States following the death of his mother. During this period he entered the circle of Californian artists. Times were changing and California was fast becoming a leading art breeding ground and refuge for experimental and extreme artists who found no place in the rest of the country.

1954’s Inauguration  of the Pleasure Dome  made with the artist Marjorie Cameron and  writer Anaïs Nin.  is a 40 minutes of layered images, in which footage of the hell sequence from the 1911 Italian silent film L'inferno is intercut with characters with giant eyelashes, who appear as if plucked from a classical painting. It builds and builds. Suddenly there’s a volcanic explosion of distorted images accompanied by a thunderously operatic soundtrack. It’s beautiful, mind-melting stuff, and probably Anger’s most demanding work.

In his own words: “The film is derived from one of Aleister Crowley’s dramatic rituals where people in the cult assume the identity of a god or a goddess. I wanted to create a feeling of being carried into a world of wonder.”

 “Scorpio Rising,a 28-minute production from 1963 was heavily influenced by the influence of the Sixties’ atmosphere and Aleister Crowley‘s magical occultism.Scorpio Rising,featured footage of motorcyclists is accompanied by such hits as Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” and Elvis Presley’s “(You’re the) Devil in Disguise.” In one especially provocative sequence, the Crystals’ hit “He’s a Rebel” is played to images of Jesus and his disciples from Cecil B. DeMille’s silent epic “King of Kings.””  His work proved that sound and image could be combined to create something powerful. 

Kenneth sensed that the right place to be was San Francisco, the Hippie capital and frequented at the time by a multitude of artists such as Fritz Leiber, Philip Dick, and many others, and more precisely at the Ford Foundation, which gave him 10,000 dollars for the production of an artistic short, Kustom Kar Kommandos. 

Kenneth spent most of the money on daily life and handed over an edit of the previous footage. Psychedelic drugs, initially still legal, made their massive appearance on the market and probably influenced by this fertile cultural fabric, Anger projected a special version of “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome”, entitled “Sacred Mushroom Edition” to an audience of people under the influence of LSD.and the film became a  firm favoirite with 60s acid heads, 

Anger began to play on his growing fame as a cursed author and defined himself as the most abnormal of underground directors. At this point, Anger could not miss another great controversial personage, namely Anton Lavey, founder of the Church of Satan. The two became good friends. At that time Kenneth would also seem to harbor a certain resentment towards Andy Warhol, who managed to be hugely popular both in the underground and in the mainstream.

In 1966 Anger moved to the Russian Embassy, ​​a nineteenth-century mansion in San Francisco. Here he planned his new project Lucifer Rising, a film in search of symbolic lucifer. Kenneth in search of a truly Luciferian actor proposed to each of the candidates to live with him for a certain period. In the end, the choice felt on Bobby Beausoleil. Bobby Beausoleil at that time also formed a musical group, the Magick Powerhouse of Oz, to create the soundtrack for the film.

In 1967 Anger reported that all the material filmed so far had been lost, stolen and blamed Beausoleil for the theft, which instead responded to the accusations in Bill Landis’ unofficial biography, stating that Anger had spent all the money and that he had invented this story to please the producers. Beausoleil ended up joining Charles Manson’s Family and in 1969 he was arrested for the murder of Gary Hinman.

In 1967 Anger published an obituary announcement on an entire page of a newspaper: “In Memoriam. Kenneth Anger. Filmmaker 1947 – 1967”. Shortly thereafter he reappeared claiming to have burned all his previous productions.

In 1968 he went to London where he became friends with J. Paul Getty, the industrialist, founder of the Getty Foundation, and wealthiest man in America who became his patron.

For those who see his short films, which are now collected in the Magick Lantern Cycle. the influences are evident.The themes of his stories range from surrealism to occultism, not excluding experimental, erotic, and psychedelic elements and homosexual culture. His most famous works, such as  Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) partly filmed on Haight Street in San Francisco – ground zero for countercultural experimentation  against the grim backdrop of 1969 – specifically the Manson murders and the Rolling Stones’ infamous Altamont concert it sees Bobby Beausoleil,(who would later join the Manson family and become a convicted murderer). Anton LaVey, Mick Jagger, who also composed the soundtrack and Keith Richards, appear among others. The film was released the following year 

The new version of the film thus became a symbolic representation of the arrival of the Age of Horus, as prophesied from the Book of the Law. The famous actress and singer Marianne Faithfull was involved in the project in the role of Lilith. Anger had asked Mick Jagger to play the role of Lucifer, but the singer of the Rolling Stones refused, rather suggesting his brother. Anger reluctantly accepted. The director shot eight minutes of the film, presented it to the British National Film Finance Corporation, and obtained a £ 15,000 grant to complete it.

Thanks to this funding, however, Anger managed to  shoot some sequences in Germany and Egypt. During this period Kenneth also became friends with Jimmy Page, the guitarist of Led Zeppelin. At the very invitation of Page, who shared an interest in Crowley with the Californian director, Anger went to Boleskine, on the banks of Loch Ness in Scotland where Crowley once lived, to help the musician exorcise the place from a headless ghost.The episode of the exorcism was later recounted at a press conference by Jimmy Page’s ex-wife to ridicule her husband.

 Lucifer Rising, lasting 30 minutes, which  was only finished in 1981, is perhaps Anger’s most ambitious effort to date. Like a Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic put through the blender with a pinch of paganism, it touches on the story of Lucifer, the fallen angel who rebelled against God. It was inspired by Aleister Crowley's poem ‘Hymn to Lucifer’ and, as with all Anger films, it’s not so straightforward. Suffice to say, it ends with a flying saucer hovering over ancient Egypt.

The filmmaker, who shot this mini epic in Egypt, Germany and at Stonehenge,again enlisted famous friends. Along for the ride were Marianne Faithfull again, filmmaker Donald Cammell. Jimmy Page, (who also scored the movie, though it was scrapped by Anger after the pair fell out) and in the  end it was Beausoleil's score, written and recorded from prison,while on death row, (The death penalty was later commuted to life imprisonment) that tied the final film together. Even if one does not quite understand what's going on, it is at least visually fantastic.

 

 

Anger who had a  “Lucifer” tattoo emblazoned across his chest,  made films for much of his life. He  knew everyone from the poet Jean Cocteau to sexologist Alfred Kinsey.and was close enough to Keith Richards that the Rolling Stone would claim that Anger called him his “right hand man.” 

Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page both wrote soundtrack music for Anger, who in turn helped bring about a Rolling Stones classic by lending a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satanic satire “The Master and Margarita” to  Marianne Faithfull. Faithfull passed the novel along to her boyfriend, Jagger, who cited it as the basis for “Sympathy for the Devil.”Asked about Anger, Mick Jagger replied: "Know 'im? Guy threw a book through my window"

Few so boldly and imaginatively mined the forbidden depths of culture and consciousness as Anger, who has since inspired other film makers  such as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, and John Waters. Scorsese would emulate Anger’s style in “Mean Streets,” “Goodfellas” and other movies, and Lynch featured Vinton’s drowsy ballad in the 1986 cult favorite “Blue Velvet.” John Waters would praise Anger as one of the directors who “dirtied” his mind.

And well before the rise of punk and heavy metal, Anger was juxtaposing music with bikers, sadomasochism, occultism and when the Sex Pistols and the Clash appeared on the same bill at a 1976 concert, clips from Anger’s movies were screened behind them.

Since 1982, however Anger's, film s production  slowly decreased. Only in 2000, after almost thirty years of artistic inactivity, Kenneth made a new short film “Don’t Smoke That Cigarette” and the following year “That Man We Want To Hang“which comprised images of Crowley's paintings that had been shown at a temporary exhibition in Bloomsbury, London.

In 2004, he began showing Anger Sees Red, a short surrealistic film starring himself, and the same year also began showing another work, Patriotic Penis. Anger soon followed this with a flurry of other shorts, including Mouse Heaven, which consisted of images of Mickey Mouse memorabilia; Ich Will!; and Uniform Attraction, all of which he showed at various public appearances.

Anger's most recent project was Technicolor Skull, with  musician Brian Butler, described as a "magick ritual of light and sound in the context of a live performance", in which Anger plays the theremin and Butler plays the guitar and other electronic instruments amid a psychedelic backdrop of colors and skulls.

Anger makes an appearance in Nik Sheehan's 2008 feature documentary about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine.  He also appears alongside Vincent Gallo in the 2009 short film Night of Pan, written and directed by Brian Butler In 2009 his work was featured in a retrospective exhibition at the MoMA PS1 in New York City, and the next year a similar exhibition took place in London

Anger  had his greatest commercial success, and notoriety, as the author of Hollywood Babylon  written in 1959. a book that anticipated the highs and lows of celebrity journalism. In it Anger assembled an extraordinary and often apocryphal family album, whether pictures from the fatal car crash of Jayne Mansfield or such widely disputed allegations as actor Clara Bow having sex with the University of Southern California football team.Completed in the late 1950s and originally published in French, “Hollywood Babylon” was banned for years in the U.S. and was still adult fare upon formal release in 1975.

Although much of Hollywood Babylon has been dismissed as fiction, the book still has many admirers.  Anger released a sequel, the less popular “Hollywood Babylon II,” and in 1984.and also  said he was working on a third book in recent years, with a chapter dedicated to Tom Cruise and Scientology.

In  the latter years pf his life Anger lived the part of a respected if underfunded doyen of cinema as art. Speaking to a cineaste site in his latter days, he still carried the mantle of a Hollywood maverick who nonetheless carried a deep love for the town and the medium he so boldly influenced: “I loved the young John Wayne. ..that’s a little slice of history. I love the things that have gone by the wayside.”

Death preoccupied Anger and he was a frequent visitor to Hollywood Forever, the burial site for everyone from Judy Garland to Johnny Ramone. Actor Vincent Gallo, a friend of Anger’s, told the filmmaker that he had purchased a plot for him next to Ramone’s.

“They’re peaceful,” Anger said during a 2014 interview with Esquire when asked about his affinity for cemeteries. “They’d better be…”

RIP Kenneth Anger,iconic extraordinary filmmaker, Thelemite, who doubtless takes fascinating secrets to the grave although he liked to tell all. He was one of the first st and was openly and unapologetically  gay filmmakers, a  remarkable achievement considering the hostile environment in which he rose to prominence. He was also one of the few to understand cinema as ceremony. a true alchemist of media arts whose work offered a distinctively radical mix of paganism and homoeroticism.

Ever controversial and confoundingly brilliant. Few so boldly and imaginatively mined the forbidden depths of culture and consciousness as Anger did.While many will no doubt mourn  his recent passing and detractors will continue to mock, he  has I believe left an  undoubtable legacy that will live on. All my heroes are dying but every man and every woman is a star. 

“Although, of course, my definition of evil is not everybody else's. Evil is being involved in the glamour and charm of material existence, glamour in its old Gaelic sense meaning enchantment with the look of things, rather than the soul of things.”

 "Making a movie is casting a spell." 

 Time is all we have and every second that ticks away is one less second we’re alive,”

- Kenneth Anger

Remembering the life of Annemarie Schwarzenbach :Swiss photographer, writer and anti-fascist (23 May 1908 – 15 November 1942)

 

On 23 May 1908 Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Bisexual Swiss photographer, writer,  and anti-fascist  was born,  in Zurich, in German-speaking Switzerland ,When she was four, the family moved to the Bocken Estate in Horgen, near Lake Zurich, where she grew up. Her father, Alfred Schwarzenbach, was a textile magnate/.

Her mother Renee Schwarzenbach-Wille, the daughter of the Swiss general Ulricj Wille and descended from German aristocracy, was a prominent hostess, Olympic equestrian sportswoman and amateur photographer. is said to have almost bled to death at the birth of her daughter and to have clung to her fiercely all her life. Terrible feelings of loneliness were later to torment this daughter, who remained tied to her mother in a kind of love-hate relationship. Her imposing shadow hangs over the childhood of young Annemarie, as she grew up in the luxurious property of Bocken. Her mother had an imposing and devouring personality and while she  was growing up, her mother conducted a long-term affair with opera singer Emmy Krüger, which her father  and may have catalyzed Annemarie's awareness of her own attractions to women. In childhood, Annemarie was not only allowed to wear traditionally masculine clothes, but it was encouraged by her mother.

Her family might have been one of the wealthiest families in Switzerland, but Annemarie spent most of her adult life trying to get away from them. Tensions evolved .into major political disagreements with her mother, who had a domineering personality.But from an early age, it was in writing that Annemarie  found freedom and a way to emancipate herself from her mother’s suffocating presence.

At her private school in Zurich she studied mainly German, history and music, neglecting the other subjects. She liked dancing and was a keen piano player, but her heart was set on becoming a writer. She studied in Zürich and Paris and in 1931, at the age of 23,  she received her doctorate in history at the University of Zurich and wrote her first book freunde um bernhard (bernhard's circle).  

Annemarie left Switzerland for the bohemian underground of Berlin. There, she met fellow writers and her life became a flurry of words, lovers, projects, international expeditions and disappointments.

Though her beauty caught the eye of men and women alike, her androgynous style also baffled people and gave way to cruelty. Throughout history a male-dominated world has enforced a very rigid idea of what women should  look like and how a woman should behave Annemarie Schwarzenbach.was a trailblazer and a seductress, who dared to challenge the norm.

Both women and  men  found her painfully attractive. after all there’s nothing more tempting than a beautiful woman who breaks the rules. She was introspective, sensitive and passionate. Stylish and daring while at the same time she also developed intense anti-Fascist political views..

Annemarie loved the Bohemian lifestyle Berlin offered and was described by her friend Ruth Landshoff stating, “ She lived dangerously. She drank too much. She never went to sleep before dawn.” It was during this time period she befriended the children of author Thomas Mann, Klaus and Erika Mann, and like their father, they hated Nazi’s.

In 1933 bohemian Berlin disappeared with the Nazi take-over Annemarie found her carefree lifestyle coming to. an end. Her mother was a Nazi sympathizer and demanded Annemarie cut ties with her Berlin friends, especially the Mann family. Annemarie who was devoutly anti-fascist refused, and remained friends with them anyway, rejecting her pro neo-nazi family she soon starting a relationship with Erika. This relationship would not last, though, as while Annemarie was head over heels for Erika, Erika soon moved on to a new woman, an actress named Therese Giehse.  Something she never fully got over.

She spent much of her time with Klaus in Berlin. Klaus however was the one to first introduce her to morphine the drug that would haunt her.. Annemarie would spend the rest of her life battling her on again/off again addiction.

She helped Klaus Mann finance an anti-fascist literary review called “Die Sammlung.” This review helped writers in exile from Germany by publishing their articles and short stories. But the complications and strain of being pulled between what she knew was right and her family took its toll on her mental health and Annemarie attempted suicide which caused a scandal among her family and their conservative circle in Switzerland. .

Annemarie is portrayed by Klaus Mann in two of his novels: as Johanna in Flucht in den Norden (1934) and as the Angel of the Dispossessed in Der Vulkan (The Volcano, 1939).

Thomas Mann called her a “ravaged angel”; another writer, Roger Martin du Gard, said she had “the face of an inconsolable angel”; while German photographer Marianne Breslauer, who took numerous photos of Schwarzenbach, likened her to “the Archangel Gabriel standing before Heaven”.the portraits that remain still retain their  androgonous  alllure

Over the next several years Annemarie travels to France, Italy and Scandinavia with Klauss. To Spain, with fellow photographer Marianne Bresleaur. She visited Moscow with Klaus for the Soviet Writers Union Congress. There she met André Malraux and Louis Aragon. Annemarie did not hide her enthusiasm for the Bolshevik model, stressing in a letter to her friend Claude Bourdet the place of literature in the USSR: “Here, a man like Gorky is, with Stalin, at the center of the interest of the greatest number, he is a true national hero – and here everyone is concerned with literature”.

In 1935 Annemarie returns to Persia. Here she meets French diplomat Claude Clarac. After just a few weeks they decide to marry. Their marriage was one of convenience as they were both gay but allowed her to obtain a French diplomatic passport and to travel without restrictions.. She stays with Claude for a while but has an affair with the daughter of a Turkish diplomat that does not end well.

 n 1937 and 1938, her photographs documented the rise of fascism in Europe, visiting Austria and Czechoslovakia.

Ultimately, she leaves Claude, although still married, and travels to America. This is the first of two trips to the US for Annemarie. She spends her time there as a freelance photographer and reporter working alongside  her friend American photographer, Barbara Hamilton-Wright. . She is completely taken with capturing the social dynamics and everyday life for those in the mining and steel industries during the Great Depression. 

She returned again the following year and traveled to the deep South—Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. Anniemarie published several articles depicting the suffering and violence happening there. The pair encountered lumberjacks in Tennessee, who were starting to organize unions—And her support for the formation of labor unions, caused a deeper rift with her family who owned many textile mills in the US.

On her second trip to America she has an affair with fellow writer Carson McCullers. Carson fell madly in love with Annemarie saying “She had a face that I knew would haunt me for the rest of my life.” But the relationship became rather one-sided. Annemarie’s depression rears its head again and she makes her second attempt at suicide. This time she’s admitted to a psychiatric hospital. When she’s finally released it is with the agreement that she leaves the US. Carson never quite gets over Annemarie. She dedicates several books to Annemarie.

She then embarks on a daunting 4,000 mile road trip from Geneva to Kabul, Afghanistan with her friend the ethnologist Ella Maillart. To finance the adventurous journey  the two women signed contracts with a Swiss press and photo agency, a book publisher and several newspapers, which paid them advances. In their luggage they had typewriters, cameras and a movie camera. Schwarzenbach also planned to participate in excavations of the "Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan". The trip was   taken in part in an effort to help cure Annemarie of her addiction to morphine, but failed as she  eventually found her way back to the drug. Ella eventually becomes so frustrated with Annemarie for wasting all her talent on drugs that she abandons her in Kabul. Maillart chronicled the difficult experience in the book All the Roads Are Open: The Afghan Journey It is considered a classic of travel literature, but the name of her troubled and transcendent companion was changed to Christina, presumably at the intervention of Annemarie’s family. 

Schwarzenbach would make her way back to Europe and then on to the U.S. where she met her old friends, the Manns, and worked with them on a committee for helping refugees from Europe.

Annemarie’s last years lead her on writing expeditions to Portugal, the Belgian Congo  as an accredited journalist in order to join the resistance and in particular the Free French Forces., but was prevented from taking up her position. .

In June 1942 in Tétouan, she met up again with her husband, Claude Clarac,before returning to Switzerland. While back home, she started making new plans. She applied for a position as a correspondent for a Swiss newspaper in Lisbon. In August, her friend the actress Therese Giehse stayed with her at Sils. Then on September 7, 1942 tragically she suffered a devastating fall on her bicycle and fell into a coma for three days. she awoke to amnesia ,and died soon after on the 15th of November aged just 34.During her final illness, her mother permitted neither Claude Clarac, who had rushed to Sils from Marseille, nor her friends, to visit her in her sick bed.

After her death, her possessive   mother also destroyed all her letters and diaries.Hundreds of letters from Klaus and Erika Mann,  and Carson McCullers which would have provided an important insight into her fascinating life went up in smoke. Thankfully, one of Schwarzenbach’s friends held on to a collection of photographs and writings, and in the process saved Annemarie Schwarzenbach from the mists of obscurityl

Although Annemarie’s life span was short, wrecked by morphine, as well as a domineering mother  and other disasters before the bicycle crash that ended it.her output in those few years  was prodigious, and eventful She was immensely gifted as a photographer, author, photojournalist, and documentarian in a time dominated by men when few women were represented in these fields.

Between 1933 and 1942 she produced approximately 170 articles and 50 photo-reports for Swiss and German newspapers and magazines.  Schwartzenbach’s subjects, her travels, were widespread and amazingly disparate—linked together chiefly by her liberal-to-radical political emotions.

With thankfully the rediscovery in the late 1980s of Schwarzenbach’s body of work  she gained new interest and e was recognised as a female pioneer and a gay icon.

In 2001, there was even a feature film, The Journey to Kafiristan, tracing her 4,000-mile drive from Geneva to Kabul in a Ford Deluxe with  Ella Maillart.

In life, Annemarie Schwarzenbach may have battled personal demons, but she also waged ideological war against the violent political regimes, social inequalities and gender norms of her time.She rebelled against her prestigious family’s conservative values and struggled with her mother’s possessiveness. Nonetheless, Annemarie lived openly as a lesbian and developed her journalistic voice and camera skills through adventurous travel and keen observation of social conditions. 

Annemarie remains a remarkable trailblazer who dared to challenge the norm. She refused to live within the confines of traditional femininity or masculinity, and instead occupied a space of radical liberation. Antifascist, courageous and lucid, she stood her ground and remained focused in the face of Hitler’s rise to power, while her family saluted.  She traveled the world, as a daring free spirited seeker and despite her traumas and  struggles  in her words. photographs, and fascinating life, her legacy endures. long may her life be celebrated.

Marking the ongoing injustice of the Palestinian Nakba

On May 15 Palestinians  and their allies around the world mark the Nakba ( Catastrophe in Arabic) the time when more than 750,000 Palestinians, about half of the Arab population  in Palestine at that time, were forced out of their homes and lands and saw Palestinian villages wiped off the map in places like Yassin, Lydda, Tantura  by the hands of Zionist para-military groups like Haganah, that later formed the core of the Israeli Defense Force, Ergun and the Stern Gang. to establish the state of Israel. 

The 1948 founding of Israel was preceded and accompanied by a massive ethnic cleansing operation to remove as many of the Muslim and Christian inhabitants as possible. During Israel's "war of independence," Palestinians were driven from their homes, never to be allowed to return. Hundreds of towns were razed; villagers were massacred. Their very existence on the land was nearly wiped from history as Israel built new towns over the ruins.  This devastating event is given almost no attention in  history books or by the mainstream news media but is essential in understanding the ongoing violence in Israel-Palestine and the Middle East in general.  

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the establishment of the Palestine Mandate, the British colonial power began implementing its plan of creating a Jewish state on Palestinian land. At the same time, the Zionist movement was lobbying Western powers to support the mass migration of Jews to Palestine and recognize a Jewish claim to the land.  In 1917, the Balfour Declaration declared British support for a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, and that's how the Day of Nakba officially began. 

The  notorious declaration was made in a letter written by Britain's then-Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, to Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Zionist movement. The letter was endorsed by Britain's then-Prime Minister David Lloyd George..The letter stated the British would "use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object". For Zionists, this was a clear victory.

The vast majority of Palestinian refugees, both those outside the 1949 armistice lines  and those internally displaced, were barred by the newly declared state of Israel from their right to return to their homes or the reclaiming of their property, and in doing so Israel violated international law. It is the defining event that formed and solidified the Palestinian liberation struggle.

To understand the Nakba is to first confront its sheer scale and totality. Before the Nakba there was a large, deeply rooted, and essentially ancient Arab society in most of what, within a few months, became the Jewish state of Israel. In effect, one day it was there, as it had been for living memory, and the next day it was gone. An entire society, with the exception of relatively small groups in a few places, simply vanished.

After World War I, the League of Nations broke the Ottoman Empire up into territories assigned to different colonial powers. The lands that today constitute Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories were placed under British rule, but with two explicit and incompatible purposes: Britain was already committed to supporting the recently established Zionist movement that sought to create “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. 

Then in Britain came the notorious 1917 Balfour Declaration and the Palestine mandate, in which the overwhelming Palestinian majority was simply referred to as “existing non-Jewish communities,” with “civil and religious rights,” but not political ones.

With the Balfour Declaration, the government of the time was seeking Jewish support for its war efforts, and the Zionist push for a homeland for Jews, which was becoming an emerging political force. In 1917, Jews constituted 10% of the population, the rest were  Arabs. Yet Britain recognised the national rights of a tiny minority and denied it to the majority This was a classic colonial document which totally disregarded the rights and aspirations of the indigenous population. In the words of Jewish writer Arthur Koestler: “One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.”

It was a shock to the Arab world, which had not been consulted and had received promises of independence of its own in the post-war break up of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians have always condemned the declaration, which they refer to as the "Balfour promise" saying Britain was giving away land it did not own.

The Balfour Declaration constituted a  dangerous historical precedent and a blatant breach of all international laws and norms, and this  act of the British Empire to “give” the land of another people  for colonial settlement created the conditions for countless atrocities against the Palestinian people. Balfour, in a 1919 confidential memo, wrote: 

 “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”  

The discriminatory language used by Sir Arthur Balfour and seen in the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate reveal the prejudiced rational behind British foreign policy in Palestine. A month after the Balfour Declaration on 2 December 1917, the British army occupied Jerusalem. In 1923, the British Mandate for Palestine came into effect, and included the entire text of the Balfour Declaration. Through the Mandate, Britain would go on to rule Palestine for three decades.

As a result of all of this the Palestinian people were denied the right to independence and statehood, and were treated as refugees in their own land. The Nakba resulted in the destruction of much of Palestinian society and much of the Arab landscape was obliterated by the Zionist state. And in the post 1948 period the Palestinians became second class citizens, subject  to a system of military occupation by a government that confiscated the bulk of their lands.

Even the word 'Nakba' was banned by the Israeli Minister of Education in 2009, and was removed from school textbooks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayah said at the time that the word was tantamount to spreading propoganda against Israel. But the word Nakba is the term that about a fifth of Israel's population, the Palestinians use to describe this day.

The influx of Zionists to Palestine, supported by the British, was however was met with fierce Palestinian resistance and is very important to note that the Palestinian leadership in Al-Quds at the time insisted on continuing negotiations with the British to resolve the simmering tensions, Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam, a Syrian leader living in Haifa since 1922, began calling for resistance against the British and the Zionists.  In 1935, Al-Qassam was surrounded by British forces and killed along with some of his men. His resistance inspired many Palestinians.

By 1936, an Arab resistance erupted against British imperialism and Zionist settler colonialism and by  1939, the Palestinians found themselves fighting two enemies: British colonial forces and Zionist militia groups.

And although the British had backed mass Jewish immigration to Palestine, the colonial power began to limit the number of Jews arriving in the country in an attempt to quell Arab unrest.This new limit on immigration upset the Zionists and they launched a series of terrorist attacks on British authorities to drive them out, while at the same time the Zionists continued to further advance their dream of creating a Jewish state on Palestinian land. 

The Zionist strategy of expelling Palestinians from their land was a slow and deliberate process. According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Zionist leaders and military commanders met regularly from March 1947 to March 1948, when they finalized plans to ethnically cleanse Palestine.  As Zionist attacks on the British and Arabs escalated, the British decided to hand over their responsibility for Palestine to the newly founded United Nations.

In November 1947, the UN General Assembly proposed a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab one. Jews in Palestine only constituted one-third of the population - most of whom had arrived from Europe a few years earlier - and only retained control of less than 5.5 percent of historic Palestine. Yet under the UN proposal, they were allocated 55 percent of the land. The Palestinians and their Arab allies rejected the proposal. The Zionist message was simple: Leave the land or be killed. The Zionist movement accepted all this on the grounds that it legitimized the idea of a Jewish state on Arab land. But they did not agree to the proposed borders and campaigned to conquer even more of historic Palestine. 

As the date (May 14, 1948) selected by the British for their Palestine Mandate to expire approached, Zionist forces hastened their efforts to seize Palestinian land. In April 1948, the Zionists captured Haifa, one of the biggest Palestinian cities, and subsequently set their eyes on Jaffa. On the same day, British forces formally withdrew, and David Ben-Gurion, then-head of the Zionist Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel.  Overnight, the Palestinians became stateless. The world’s two great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, immediately recognized Israel. 

As the Zionists continued their ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinians, war broke out between neighboring Arab countries and the new Zionist state. The UN appointed Swedish diplomat, Folke Bernadotte, as its mediator in Palestine. He recognized the plight of the Palestinians and attempted to address their suffering. His efforts to bring about a peaceful solution and halt to the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign ended when he was assassinated by the Zionists in September 1948. 

Nevertheless the  UN continued to push for an armistice deal between Israel and those Arab countries.  Bernadotte was replaced by his American deputy, Ralph Bunche. Negotiations led by Bunche between Israel and the Arab states resulted in the latter conceding even more Palestinian land to the newly founded Zionist state. In May 1949, Israel was admitted to the UN, and its grip over 78 percent of historic Palestine was consolidated. The remaining 22 percent became known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

This is the Palestinian peoples history and it is essential we should be allowed to talked about. It is it not wrong to question, when other regimes oppress, we question them too, we have a duty to criticise and condemn, when fundamental freedoms and rights are violated. Any state that acts aggressively is open to criticism. All human beings are entitled to human rights.

75 years later over 7 million Palestinians live as refugees or exiles, and are stull denied the right to return to the land from which they, or their family, were forcibly expelled. A right which is enshrined in international law. Palestinians who remained in the State of Israel, and those in the occupied territory, many of whom are refugees, face a sertheless the  UN continued to push for an armistice deal between Israel and those Arab countries.  Bernadotte was replaced by his American deputy, Ralph Bunche. Negotiations led by Bunche between Israel and the Arab states resulted in the latter conceding even more Palestinian land to the newly founded Zionist state. In May 1949, Israel was admitted to the UN, and its grip over 78 percent of historic Palestine was consolidated. The remaining 22 percent became known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

This is the Palestinian  peoples history, and it is essential we should be allowed to talked about. It is it not wrong to question, when other regimes oppress, we question them too, we have a duty to criticise and condemn, when fundamental freedoms and rights are violated. Any state that acts aggressively is open to criticism. All human beings are entitled to human rights.

This period of time is what we remember today, and also now marks the anniversary of those killed during the Great Return March in Gaza in 2019. Thousands of Palestinians, stuck in the blockaded Gaza strip, initiated protests that started in Gaza as a way to draw attention to the living conditions in Gaza, where currently more than 1.3 million Palestinian refugees live, but more importantly as a march for the right of return.

This Great March characterized the use of peaceful activism by Palestinian citizens since the early 2000s. These mobilizations aim to defend land rights, rights to resources, mobility through non-violence and sometimes innovative actions to attract international attention demanding their right to return to their homes from which they were expelled in 1948. They were also condemning the continued occupation and siege. Hundreds of people were killed during these marches, including children, disabled protesters, journalists and paramedics.

There is no peace in stolen lands, especially when people still cry for liberation and the right to return to their lands.The fact is the Nakba never ended. It continues every day as Palestinians are evicted from their homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to be replaced by illegal Jewish-only settlements. It continues as Israel’s occupation obstructs and severely restricts Palestinians’ attainment of rights and fundamental freedoms, including: the right to life, the right to liberty and security of person, and their right to an adequate standard of living.

Notably, Israel  continues to violate Palestinians’ right to freedom of movement within and from the Occupied Palestinian Territories through its closure policy made up of the Annexation Wall and its associated permit-regime in the West Bank, and its prolonged closure of the Gaza Strip, which has made Gaza uninhabitable for Palestinians.

In the Gaza Strip, in particular, Palestinians continue to be severely deprived of their liberty as a result of Israel’s unlawful closure, amounting to collective punishment. In Gaza, Palestinians are trapped in a humanitarian crisis without adequate water or electricity as they are prevented from returning to their lands inside what is now Israel.It continues with sniper attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, encroachment of illegal settlements across the West Bank and extreme limitations placed on Palestinians' movements within and between towns, courtesy of IDF-staffed checkpoints and all in violation of international human rights law and in denial of the fundamental aspirations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which sought “the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy … freedom from fear and want”.

Palestinians still have no state and no equality, Refugee camps still exist all over the world and a majority of Palestinians live in the diaspora and Palestine is occupied  in the most brutal way possible.

For the nearly six million Palestinians who live between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Nakba remains an ongoing process, as Israel uses a range of tools to restrict their livelihoods.

They remain vulnerable to expulsion, watching an ever-increasing share of their land become off-limits. About half of the occupied West Bank is already inaccessible to Palestinians, designated as military zones or nature reserves, or set aside for future Israeli settlements.The Israeli military control large parts of the West Bank and Gaza is completely sealed and “monitored” by Israeli ships, fighter planes and tanks.

Against their will, the Nakba has divided the Palestinian people between Gaza and the West Bank. Still searching for justice and dignity who despite the international attention that the Nakba has received over the years, the state of Israel to this day has not yet recognized the Nakba, nor their responsibility for what happened in 1948.

The right of return for Palestine refugees is a right guaranteed by international law and enshrined in UN General Assembly resolution 194. Knowing that the displacement of Palestinians is still being practiced by Israel today in the West Bank and Gaza, the question of the ongoing Nakba needs to be addressed to achieve justice and peace in the region. The right for Palestinian refugees to return to their land must be the precondition for a dialogue for peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine.

The development of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine is deemed a breach of international law, and thus by doing business in these settlements, many international companies are contributing to the economic viability of settlements and are normalising Israeli annexation of Palestinian land,and aiding in promoting discrimination, oppression and injustice.

As a result the Nakba still reverberates today because  Al Nakba is constant and continuing, felt through all aspects of Palestinian life, whether in Israel. the Occupied Territories, the refugees camps, or even in settled Palestinian communities abroad.

The Nabka is not a static event, but rather an ongoing reality for Palestinians.The Nakba is felt each time a Palestinian family is forcibly removed from their home. The Nakba is felt each year that the crushing siege on Gaza continues, and with each Israeli air strike. And the Nakba is felt each time Israeli forces violently raid some of Islam's holiest sites, as was the case with the numerous attacks on the Al Aqsa compound during Ramadan recently.

Only Last Tuesday, Israeli military forces intentionally and indiscriminately bombed families in Gaza and over the the past week, apartheid Israel’s airstrikes on the over 2 million Palestinians under siege in Gaza have killed, so far, 31 Palestinians, including 7 children and shockingly, in just five months, Israel's occupation forces and illegal settlers have murdered at least 144 Palestinians.This daily violence cannot be allowed  to continue.

Today, as we observe the sad sombre event of the Nakba  lets be more determined  than ever to stand up to Israeli policies of apartheid. It is more important than ever that the  international community keep defending Palestinian human rights, support Palestinian protests against forced housing demolitions and land theft and put real pressure on Israel to end its occupation and comply with international law. To take all measures within international law to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing strategy resulting in ongoing human rights violations and international crimes committed against the Palestinian People, including forcible transfer, colonization and apartheid.

Let. continue too use this occasion to reaffirm the inherent dignity and rights of Palestinians and to assert the right of the Palestinian people, as a whole, to self-determination, which includes the right to permanent sovereignty over natural wealth and resources and the right of return of Palestinian refugees, in order to achieve justice and durable peace for the Palestinian People.

The ongoing occupation of Palestinian land also makes the Boycott Divestment  Sanctions (BDS) campaigns all the more urgent and necessary.Lets remember that  Palestinians will never to give up and be content to mourn the ghost of Palestine. They still belong to their land, and though time drifts, for the Palestinians their memory is never erased, still  proudly belonging to the land of their ancestors, where their  hearts and minds can never leave.  It is time for the leaders of the world to understand that there is no homeland for the Palestinians except Palestine.

As we recount  today the unique personal stories of those who lived through the Nakba  and recognise the Palestinians who daily live under occupation in the West Bank  imprisoned by an Israeli wall, and the over 2 million currently living under military siege in Gaza, denied a series of fundamental rights, that include the freedom to move, access to clean water, food, medicine and electricity 

Let's  today remember that the Palestinians  will remains  unbroken, so lets continue to stand with them today in  solidarity and  keep demanding  that they are allowed to move freely again in their own land and are given keep  back the dignity and respect and basic rights  that they all deserve as human beings.

In  attempt to understand the catastrophe, here is a small reading list of key books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, from Ghada Karmi, Mahmoud Darwish, Naji al-Ali, Ilan Pappe, Edward Said, Shlomo Sand, and more. http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3210-nakba-day-reading-list?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=US+UTM+Nakba+Day+reading+list

 

Growing Free

The hands of the clock move faster

The spirit of youth fading away

Friends going to sleep

In  the mornings gone forever

Moments of time

Increasingly darker

Dreams defaced

By forces of fascism

Worry lines etched deeper

Instead of those of laughter

Remembering all in same boat

Keep searching for the light

So close the door on malice

Stop menace from  entering

To distract inner fear

Try to keep on dancing

Celebrate life's rich diversity

Music still releasing joy

Sources of synergy

Allowing awakening

Releasing gratitude of now

In precious moments

As the end approaches

Enabling us to be

More conscious neighbours

Not restricted by fields of negation

That define and shut down

Without inhibition

Refuse to let passions expire

Forces of life on the loose

Unchained, unbound.