1984 at 70

 

George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984 was published on 8 June by the socialist  publisher  Victor Gollanz. The book arrived at the birth of the cold war between the Soviet and American blocs, soon after Winston Churchill fixed the phrase ‘the Iron Curtain’ in the language and as a ‘Red Scare’ gripped American society. Orwell’s novel remained one of the most significant and contested cultural products of that era of ideological struggle between capitalism and communism, its influence surviving long beyond the actual year 1984. Translations and many different radio, film and television adaptations across the post-war decades testify to its continuing significance. The novel has since inspired movies, television shows, plays, a ballet, an opera, a David Bowie album, imitations, parodies, sequels.
This month  as it turns 70 years old, this seminal work with its themes of totalitarianism, repressive regimentation of the population, perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and propaganda  are now more relevant than ever in the age we currently live. Orwell's predictions were so spot on that is almost acts an instruction  manual for would be tyrants and many of the themes contained in  this amazing book are compelling and contemporary, foreshadowing the state of our world today, containing remarkable foresight and vision given that it was first published in 1949. Orwell began writing the novel in 1944, and wrote the bulk of it while residing on the Scottish island Jura  in the Inner Hebrides while battling tuberculosis during 1947-1948. Orwell  was recently widowed, his wife having died during a surgical procedure. He was left with his young son, and he was seriously ill with tuberculosis. There was not a known cure for TB in 1947, and physicians typically prescribed fresh air and rest. Orwell was given streptomycin, which was an experimental drug in the US, and after treatment, his TB symptoms disappeared. He raced to finish his novel, and upon publication it became an instant success. Orwell died shortly after of a brain haemorrhage in 1950 at age 46.
1984 has been in publication ever since, and has been translated into multiple languages, and is often heralded as one of the best novels of the 20th century. Still resonating in the times we live today, still worryingly reliable. Commenting on 1984, Orwell wrote, “I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe that something resembling it could arrive.”
 In the week of Donald Trump’s inauguration,  after the president’s adviser Kellyanne Conway used the phrase 'alternative facts,' the novel returned to the best-seller lists. A theatrical adaptation was rushed to Broadway. The vocabulary of Newspeak went viral. An authoritarian president who stood the term fake news on its head, who once said, “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” has given 1984 a whole new life.
Censorship  sadly is  still the norm in this world, and is so extreme that individuals can become "unnpersons" and  removed from society  because their ideas are considered  too dangerous by the establishment. Take for example the likes of Julian Assange and other activists and independent journalists who are punished for continuing to speak out about government corruption. All over the world where tyrannies rule 1984 is banned.
The novel is set in 1984 in Great Britain, known as Airstrip One.The world has suffered through a global atomic war, and there are 3 superpowers called Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. The standard of living is relatively low.The media is run by the government, which is known as Big Brother and the written word is perpetually changed to suit what the government requires. People  are controlled into what to think, how to act and how to live .It uses telescreens, fearmongering, media control and corruption to control the masses.
One of the Party pillars in 1984 is endless war on a global scale. The war, however, is a fabrication accepted and treated as fact. For, unreal as it is, it is not meaningless. World powers become enemies and allies interchangeably simply to keep the masses in perpetual fear, perpetual industry, and perpetual order. War provides outlet for unwanted emotions such as hate, patriotism, and discontent, keeping the structure of society intact and productive without raising the standard of living. The state of perpetual war described by Orwell is also reflected in the wars  that have raged since 1945, across the globe from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen etc etc.
Winston Smith the main protagonist is  an editor employed by the government and is one of many citizens responsible for rewriting history. In 1984, government surveillance is constant and at the forefront. The state knows every move its citizens make, including their habits, whom they talk to, and what they are doing at any given time. Big Brother is watching and running the show. The people are sheep who are herded and controlled. Winston Smith embarks on a clandestine love affair with Julia, a party member, and joins The Brotherhood, an illegal organisation dedicated to the overthrow of Big Brother. He is caught,and taken to Room 101, alongside everyone else who offended had been taken and subjected to torture and brainwashed . He along with everyone ends up loving Big Brother.
 It’s almost impossible to talk about propaganda, surveillance, authoritarian politics, or perversions of truth without dropping a reference to 1984. Today across the world there are a lock-up concentration camp style jails where unconvicted, ostensibly innocent individuals are held and openly abused. Electronic surveillance in 2019 is a common and accepted government practice: cell phone listening, cameras on corners and traffic lights, and electronic toll payment system tracking are all everyday occurrences. By using our credit cards, shopping rewards cards, and even our driver's licenses, data are collected on all of us and sold and used daily, each of us daily profiled. Orwell’s book was supposed to be a warning, not a guidebook on how to create a surveillance state. It really is remarkable how the many tools that were used to suppress in 1984  are now part of our everyday lives.
Newspeak is the fictional language spoken in 1984. It is a controlled and abbreviated version of English.  Also  known as “doublespeak!”. As George himself said " Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.. "  Politicians continue to  use language to deceive and manipulate, through concealment or misrepresentation of the truth, desperately and deliberately using euphemistic or ambiguous language as they have been doing ad infinitum. One of the objectives of Newspeak is also to decrease self-expression. With the  popularity of texting, it would be fair to say that there are similarities. And today we are so busy Facebooking, tweeting, etc,  the following line  from one of the characters that works for Big Brother.  “The people will not revolt. They will not look up from their screens long enough to notice what’s happening.” is  still amazingly uncanny. Orwell may not have had a crystal ball, but  he did have was an understanding of the human condition and its weakness. And today it’s almost impossible to talk about propaganda, surveillance, authoritarian politics, or perversions of truth without dropping a reference to 1984.
Orwell began writing the novel in 1944, and wrote the bulk of it while residing on the Scottish island Jura while battling tuberculosis during 1947-1948. Orwell  was recently widowed, his wife having died during a surgical procedure. He was left with his young son, and he was seriously ill with tuberculosis. There was not a known cure for TB in 1947, and physicians typically prescribed fresh air and rest. Orwell was given streptomycin, which was an experimental drug in the US, and after treatment, his TB symptoms disappeared. He raced to finish his novel, and upon publication it became an instant success. Orwell died shortly after of a brain haemorrhage in 1950 at age 46.
1984 has been in publication ever since, has been translated into multiple languages, and is often heralded as one of the best novels of the 20th century. Still resonating in the times we live today, still worryingly reliable. Commenting on 1984, Orwell wrote, “I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe that something resembling it could arrive.”
 In the week of Donald Trump’s inauguration,  after the president’s adviser Kellyanne Conway used the phrase 'alternative facts,' the novel returned to the best-seller lists. A theatrical adaptation was rushed to Broadway. The vocabulary of Newspeak went viral. An authoritarian president who stood the term fake news on its head, who once said, “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” has given 1984 a whole new life.
 In some cases, what is happening in the world today is more draconian and invasive than anything Orwell conceived. The corruption of language described in 1984 is widespread in the media today, with "Newspeak" terms such as democratic, socialist, fascist, war criminal, freedom fighter, racist and many other expressions being used in a deliberately deceptive, propagandistic way to whip up mass hysteria or simply to ensure that people can never achieve even an approximation of the truth.
We are today all living in a massive prison and George Orwell predicted it. The ability of Big Brother government to observe our every activity is increasing week by week and soon each and every car journey we make, every financial transaction we undertake, everywhere we go will be fed into a computer and if there is a slight variance from what they decide is the norm then we will be taken in and questioned. Give the wrong answers and you could well end up in room like 101, or Belmarsh Jail, Guantanamo Bay etc. We should continue to be on guard, raise alarms, be objective, keep questioning and hold our individual Governments to account.
 As  free speech today is still under attack and the Trump administration preparess new charges against Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes and the French government is prosecuting journalists for reporting on France’s support for the Saudi war in Yemen, and Chelsea Manning remains locked-up for refusing to inform on Assange, 1984 can still serve as a handbook for our difficult times. Citizens today should support bona fide civil liberties groups and actively oppose government measures restricting basic freedoms. Freedom of speech is a basic civil liberty and people should fight to retain it. They should defy group pressure, think for themselves and speak out. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.We should continue to be on guard, raise alarms, be objective, keep questioning and hold our individual Governments to account.In 2003 a docudrama was released by the BBC, detailing the life and works of George Orwell. The documentary contains footage from his deathbed, and his final words are certainly chilling. You can here them in the following video. We can't say that we were never warned.

“We  are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be a thousand years. At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively.
We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation. In the face of the Thought Police there is no other way.”    

- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty- Four

Happy birthday Nikki Giovanni (b:-7/6/43) - Radical poet

Happy 76th birthday to Nikki Giovanni . Poet. writer, activist. Queer icon, Civil rights activist, Educator, Promoter of the Black Power movement.. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In all of her work, she challenges the racial and status quo,providing a poetry guided by a political aesthetic, still dreaming radical dreams of a society more equal for all.
As an African American woman, Nikki Giovanni has written many revolutionary poems reflecting on the culture and heritage of her race. Spending much of her youth growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee, Giovanni’s childhood has greatly influenced her writing. Nikki Giovanni, (Yolande Cornelia Giovanni is her given name) was born June 7, 1943 in Knoxville Tennessee. As a child, she attended an Episcopal school, and when it came time for her to start college, she enrolled at Fisk University. As a freshman, Giovanni was a very rebellious student, ignoring many of the school’s social rules. This attitude led her to suspension from the university before her first year was even completed. However, in 1964 she returned to Fisk, and her writing career began.
Attitude and reality and honesty are all encompassed into the work of this fine artist. Speaking for all those that struggle, and who love fiercely, who  places an emphasis on the power of the individual to effect change in his or herself, as well as in others. She reminds me that words are our weapons, that we should not be afraid to use.
Nikki Giovanni doesn't think of writing as a profession. "I barely think of it as a career," she once said .  "I think of it as who you are.”To Giovanni, writing comes as naturally as breathing.  It has certainly defined her and given her  a strong voice. A survivor of  cancer, she battles on, sharing her light with the world. Happy birthday to her, blessed be. 

Choices

If i can't do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don't want
to do

It's not the same thing
but it's the best i can
do

If i can't have
what i want . . . then
my job is to want
what i've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want

Since i can't go
where i need
to go . . . then i must . . . go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral

When i can't express
what i really feel
i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal

I know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry .

A Library (for Kelli Martin)

a Library Is:
a place to be free
to be in space
to be in cave times
to be a cook
to be a crook
to be in love
to be unhappy
to be quick and smart
to be contained and cautious
to surf the rainbow
to sail the dreams
to be blue
to be jazz
to be wonderful
to be you
a place to be
yeah… to be

Love is 
 
Some people forget that love is
tucking you in and kissing you
“Good night”
no matter how young or old you are

Some people don’t remember that
love is
listening and laughing and asking
questions
no matter what your age

Few recognize that love is
commitment, responsibility
no fun at all
unless
Love is
You and me

Revolutionary Dreams

I used to dream militant dreams
of taking over america to show
these white folks
how it should be done
I used to dream radical dreams
of blowing everyone away
with my perceptive powers
of correct analysis
I even used to think I’d be the one
to stop the riot and
negotiate the peace
then I awoke and dug
that if I dreamed natural
dreams of being a natural
woman doing what a woman
does when she’s natural
I would have a revolution.
  

30 years after Tiananmen Square Massacre

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the massacre of hundreds if not thousands of unarmed peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Beijing and the arrest of tens of thousands of demonstrators in cities across China.
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.

Tank Man



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. In the 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. Indeed, as the Tiananmen Mothers — a group set up by the mothers of some of the student leaders — said in a statement translated by Human Rights in China: "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."
The Chinese government should acknowledge and take responsibility for the massacre of pro-democracy protesters in June 1989, Human Rights Watch said recently. Authorities should immediately release activists held for commemorating the occasion, and cease censoring discussions of the bloody crackdown.
"Twenty-nine years after the Tiananmen Massacre, President Xi Jinping's 'China dream' means getting the world to forget about it. But suppressing the truth has only fueled demands for justice and accountability," said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. "The only way to remove this stain on China is to own up to it."
The Chinese government continues to this day to deny wrongdoing in the brutal suppression of the protests. Authorities covered up the killings, failed to bring to justice the perpetrators, and persecuted victims and survivors' family members. Under President Xi Jinping, the government has further retreated from the democratic ideals the protesters advocated and is aggressively tightening ideological control, attacking civil society groups, and imprisoning rights activists. In March 2018, Xi eliminated term limits for the presidency, spelling an ominous future for the direction of the country.
As in the past, Chinese authorities are quashing efforts to commemorate the Tiananmen crackdown:
Since late May, Beijing police have put a group of activists, including He Depu, Zha Jianguo and Xu Yonghai, under house arrest.
Activist Hu Jia said police informed him that between June 1-5 he would be taken to Qinhuangdao, 300 kilometers away from his home in Beijing.
In Shandong province in mid-May, authorities detained activists Li Hongwei and Yu Xinyong, accusing them of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." Li and Yu were detained for two days last year for commemorating the massacre.
In June 2017, Beijing police detained activist Li Xiaoling after she posted photos online of her standing at Tiananmen Square and holding a sign that read "June 4th Marching to the Light." Li was later charged with "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." Li's lawyers alleged that Li has been tortured in custody and denied adequate medical treatment for glaucoma.
Activists Chen Bing, Fu Hailu, Luo Fuyu, and Zhang Junyong, detained since May 2016 for producing and selling a liquor named "Eight Liquor Six Four" – a homophone for "89.6.4," the numerical date of the massacre – are still awaiting trial. The four have been charged with "inciting subversion of state power."
Sichuan-based activist Chen Yunfei, convicted of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" in March 2017, is serving a four-year sentence for organizing a memorial service for victims of the massacre.
While the last individual known to have been imprisoned for his involvement in the 1989 pro-democracy protests was released in 2016, many other participants have been re-incarcerated for their continuing pro-democracy work. Activists Liu Xianbin and Chen Wei are serving 10-year and nine-year sentences respectively on inciting subversion charges, while Guo Feixiong is serving a six-year sentence for protesting press censorship. Huang Qi, detained since November 2015 for "illegally leaking state secrets abroad," is awaiting trial. Huang suffers from several health conditions for which he has not been given adequate treatment.
Other prominent participants in the Tiananmen protests have passed away in the past year. In July 2017, public intellectual and Nobel Peace Prize Laurate Liu Xiaobo, a leader in the protests who was jailed for 21 months for his role supporting the students, died from complications of liver cancer in a hospital in Liaoning province while being guarded by state security. His wife Liu Xia remains under house arrest. Dissident writer Yang Tianshui, who participated in democracy protests in Nanjing at the time, died in November 2017, three months after being released on medical parole for a brain tumor. Prior to his release, Yang was serving a 12-year sentence for "inciting subversion of state power."Today sadly  the persecution  of the Uyghurs, Falun Gong and Tibetan Buddhists combined with the repression of Christianity contnues with an estimated one million or more incarcerated in prison camps.
"Chinese leaders travel the world touting their ideas for 'win-win' human rights diplomacy and a 'community of common destiny,'" Richardson said. "But until they account for past and present human rights abuses, those pledges are just empty propaganda promoting impunity for grave crimes."
The nongovernmental organization Tiananmen Mothers, consisting mostly of family members of those killed, has established the details of 202 people who were killed during the suppression of the movement in Beijing and other cities. Last year, more members of the Tiananmen Mothers have passed away without seeing justice, including geologist Xu Jue and music professor Wang Fandi. Xu's 20-year-old son Wu Xiaongdong and Wang's 19-year-old son Wang Nan were killed by troops.
Human Rights Watch urges the Chinese government to mark the 30th anniversary of the  Tiananmen massacre, by addressing the human rights violations pertaining to the event. Specifically, the government should:
Respect the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly, and cease the harassment and arbitrary detention of individuals who challenge the official account of June 4;
Meet with and apologize to members of the Tiananmen Mothers, publish the names of all who died, and appropriately compensate the families of the victims;
Permit an independent public inquiry into June 4, and promptly release its findings and conclusions to the public;
Allow the unimpeded return of Chinese citizens, exiled due to their connections to the events of 1989; and investigate all government and military officials who planned or ordered the unlawful use of lethal force against peaceful demonstrators, and appropriately prosecute them.
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. President Xi Jinping should acknowledge, even in the face of extraordinary persecution, that demands for accountability and human rights remain strong.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.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/05/31/china-answer-tiananmen-massacre-calls-justice

Dawn's Respite

After a night of endless agitation
A day that had become draining
The first sunrays come creeping
Glinting through my window
Life's breath stirring senses
Among testemants of existance
I chant declarations of  resolution
While millions  pray in lamentable discomfort
And ripples of power exude depravity
The morning light and its trilling melodies,
At least captures dreaming thought
As days remains uncertain, unwritten
Regenerative energies  rekindle
Removing the gags of suppression
Allowing voices to speak  truth
Spurring the spirit to unsurpassed horizons
Unblemished like the taste of freedom
As we navigate to desinations unknown
New dawn's can enrich, keep our hopes alive
In the dapple of an eye, not defeated yet.

Wales: Liberation Magazine, Voice of Welsh Socialist Republicans

 

The Welsh Socialist Republican Movement was formed in 1979-80, but was short-lived. After its collapse, some leading members joined the Communist Party, while others returned to Plaid Cymru, however, its core survived and continued to publish Y Faner Goch (The Red Flag) and then transformed themselves into Cymru Goch (Red Wales) in the late 1980s. Cymru Goch survived another 20 years, continuing the publication of Y Faner Goch until 2003 and establishing the Red Poets' Society, an annual poetry magazine that is active today.
In March 2012  saw the formation of Yr Afionyddwch Mawr to advance the struggle in Wales for Socialism and Independence. Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr is the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement in the 21st century, rooted in the tradition of William Thompson and James Connolly in Ireland and John Maclean in Scotland.
They do not see themselves as  reformist socialists but revolutionary socialists and take their name from Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr / The Great Unrest in Wales, just before the First World War, when class consciousness was high and when national consciousness underwent a revival.
Today, Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr stands for the rebirth and resurgence of Welsh Independence and revolutionary Socialism. They  use the image of the White Eagle of Snowdon, which they believe is a symbol of Welsh resistance to imperialism. That rune is a representation of that eagle, and it is also known by its Welsh name Yr Eryr Wen. Other symbols tied to the movement include the Red Pitchfork, which  they use as a symbol of their rural land campaigns, and the Scotch Cattle, which they use to show  their commitment to class struggle in Wales. Here is link to their webpage :-
 https://greatunrest2012.blogspot.com
They also happen to have a magazine too that helps promote their ideas further.It first appeared in March 2013 and is called Liberation Magazine – Voice of Welsh Socialist Republicanism, that aims to address the question of strategy and tactics for Welsh Liberation. Issue 4 is out now.
It's editorial read's as follows.


"Daring Ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game"

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The reason for Liberation Magazine is that we take the view you cannot win a game where the rules are made by your opponent.

In the case of Wales, the British state determines the rules and Welsh people are supposed to play the Welsh assembly game according to its rules.

It is arrogant imperial intellectual and practical colonialism where very important decisions on Welsh life are taken in London and not Wales.

The Welsh are closely seen as unfit to govern their own country.

Liberation Magazine unashamedly stands for a Welsh Socialist Republic an idea that has been maturing in Wales for over a century.

The Labour Party and Plaid Cymru in Wales have never really embraced the idea of Welsh Socialist Republic.

Sometimes Plaid Cymru flirts with the idea but  quickly backtracks under pressure.

Monarchism has not only inected the Labour Party but also sections of Plaid Cymru.

We launched Liberation Magazine because we want a journal where the Welsh, the Socialist and Republican cases can be argued and discussed. ELSH the lasty


A new strategy and new tactics needs to be developed for the social and national liberation of Wales in the 21st Century if Wales is to arrest its current trajectory of economic and social decline.

Liberation Magazine is about ideas, the precursor of events and the inspirer of people.

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people".

Eleanor Rossevelt 


Within it's pages you can find interesting, thought provoking articles on a variety of themes and issues as far ranging as Tryweryn, Welsh Water, Welsh Land ,Public Banking, International Solidarity. Kurdish Welsh Solidarity, Catalan Independence , Venezuela, First World War Liberal Home Rule , and an account of Welsh soldiers executed in the First World War, to the real meaning of the October Russian Revolution, among other things.
I though non-aligned to any political party do however  support the ideas of an Independent Socialist Republican Wales, that is rooted in real autonomy and radical ideas. As the struggle against the capitalist, reactionary and undemocratic forces that act against Wales and her interests continues, the pages of Liberation at least gives power to the oppressed, with its combination of international solidarity and a historical narrative that still has much relevance in the struggles that we live with today.To obtain copies of this magazine please contact: nickglais@yahoo.co.uk

The Merthyr Rising of 1831

From May-June 1831, the Welsh working class exploded onto the pages of history in a ferocious uprising unprecedented in British history.  Its roots lay in the deep discontent which had been evident for many years,the preceding years had seen the emergence of popular protest movements like the Barley-Meal Riots of 1801 and the South Wales strike of 1816, which paralysed the coalfields. Against a backdrop of a collapse in living conditions, with lack of proper sanitation where disease was rife and life expectancy within a working-class household was low, this led to simmering resentment.
In 1829 depression set in in the iron industry which was to last for three years. As a result Merthyr Tydfil Ironmasters made many workers redundant and cut the wages of those in work. Against a background of rising prices this caused severe hardship for many of the working people of the area and, in order to survive, many people were forced into debt. Often they were unable to pay off their debts and their creditirs would then turn to the Court of Requests which had been set up in 1809 to allow the bailiffs to seize the property of debtors. As a result the Court was hated by many people who saw it as the reason for their losing their property. The low wages of the industrial workforce, poor working conditions and the implementation of the 'truck'system' by the iron masters, in which workers were not payed real money, but vouchers and tokens valid only in their masters own shops, contributed to ongoing social unrest.
Against this background the Radicals of Merthyr, as part of the National movement for political reform, organised themselves into a Political Union in 1830 to lead the local campaign for reform. In November 1830 they called for demonstrations in Merthyr to protest against the Truck System and the Corn Laws. The campaign was actually supported by some local Ironmasters. William Crawshay of Cyfarthfa Ironworks and Josiah John Guest of Dowlais Ironworks, for example, both supported the campaign. By the end of the year 1830 the campaign had broadened to embrace the Reform of Parliament, and the election of a Liberal Government in Great Britain led to a bill being brought before Parliament to reform the House of Commons. The Bill was welcomed by the Merthyr Radicals as a step in the right direction, although it did not give Merthyr a Parliamentary Constituency and only extended the right to vote to the Middle Classes rather than the workers. In April 1831, however, the Bill was defeated in a House of Commons vote, the Government resigned and a new General Election was called to fight on the issue of Parliamentary Reform.
Despite Crawshay's support for the Reforms he was forced,in March 1831, to announce cuts in the wages of his workers and redundancies. In May the wage cuts took effect and he made 84 of his workers. It was this, combined with similar situations in other ironworks, the hatred of the activities of the Court of Requests, that saw the increasing tension come to a head,
On 30 May 1831 at the Waun Common above Dowlais a mass meeting of over 2000 workers from Merthyr & Monmouthshire discussed petitioning the King for Reform, the abolition of the Court of Requests and the state of wages in the iron industry.
Then on 31 May,  baillifs from the Court of Requests attempted to seize goods from the home of Lewis Lewis, known as Lewsyn yr Heliwr/ Lewis the Hunstsman, at Penderyn, near Merthyr. Lewis refused to let them take his property and, supported by his neighbours, prevented them from entering his home. The Magistrate, J.B.Bruce, was called and he arranged a compromise between Lewis and the bailiffs which allowed the latter to remove a single trunk belonging to Lewis.
The next day a crowd led by Lewis Lewis marched to the home of a shopkeeper who was now in posession of his trunk, took the trunk back by force, and prepared to march to Merthyr. On the march to Merthyr the crowd went from house to house, seizing any goods which the Court of Requests had taken, and returning them to their original owners. They ransacked the house of one of the bailiffs (Thomas Williams) and took away many articles. By this time the crowd had been swollen by the addition of men from the Cyfarthfa & Hirwaun Ironworks. They marched to the area behind the Castle Inn where many of the tradespeople of the town lived and in particular the home of Thomas Lewis, a hated moneylender and forced him to sign a promise to return goods to a woman whose goods he had seized for debt.
On the same day  Thomas Llewellyn, a coal miner, attempted to hold a rally advocating reform at Hirwaun Common. However, the reformers met with a more militant group who wanted to take more radical action. The radicals killed a calf and dipped the white cloth of a reform flag in its blood.On its staff was impaled a loaf of bread, the symbol of their slogan and the needs of the marchers, Bara neu Waed (Bread or Blood) creating a symbol of common suffering and of equality of humankind. They raised the flag on a pole and it was probably the first time the red flag of revolution was flown as a symbol of workers revolt.
Over the next two days some 7,000-10,000 workers marched on Merthyr Tydfil and the town was seized by the workers. After storming Merthyr, the rebels sacked the local debtors’ court and distributed the goods that had been collected. Account books containing debtors’ details were also destroyed. Among the shouts were cries of Caws a bara (cheese and bread) and I lawr â’r Brenin (down with the king).
The Magistrate J.B. Bruce arrived at the scene and realised that this was rapidly becoming a more widespread revolt against the Court of Requests. He and some other magistrates, quickly enrolled about 70 Special Constables, mainly from the town’s tradespeople, to help keep the peace, and then advised the Military Authorities in the town of Brecon that he may need troops sent.
Bruce, along with Anthony Hill, the Ironmaster of the Plymouth Works, tried to pursuade the crowd to disperse, but to no avail. He then had the Riot Act read in both English and Welsh. This also had little effect, and the crowd then drove the magistrates away and attacked Thomas Lewis’ house.
That evening, (the 2nd of June) the crowd assembled outside the home of Joseph Coffin, President of the Court of Requests, demanded the books of the Court and other books in the house, which they then burned in the street along with his furniture.
On hearing of this attack, Bruce decided that he would have to call in the troops after all, and soon, 52 soldiers of the Royal Glamorgan Light Infantry were despatched from Cardiff to Merthyr by coach, and a detachment of the 93rd (Sutherland) Highlanders were sent from Brecon.
Meanwhile the crowd had marched to the various ironworks and managed to persuade the workers to join them.On their march from Brecon, the Highlanders were mocked and jeered but eventually arrived at the Castle Inn where they were met by the High Sheriff of Glamorgan, the Merthyr Magistrates and Ironmasters and the Special Constables.
The crowd outside the Inn, now some 10,000 strong, again refused to disperse when the Riot Act was read for a second time and pressed ever closer toward the Inn and the soldiers drawn up outside.
Anthony Hill then asked the crowd to select a deputation to put forward their demands. They demanded higher wages, a reduction in the cost of items they used in their work and immediate reform.
The Ironmasters however flatly refused to consider any of these demands, and the deputation returned to the crowd. The High Sheriff then informed the crowd that if they did not disperse, the soldiers would be used against them. William Crawshay and Josiah John Guest also tried to get the crowd to disperse, but they became even angrier and the front ranks of the crowd tried to surround the soldiers. Lewis Lewis was hoisted onto the shoulders of some of the crowd and called for the soldiers to be disarmed by the rioters.The front ranks of the crowd surged forward and threw clubs and rocks at them and even managed to disarm some.
Soldiers fired into the crowd gathered around the Castle Hotel and over 16 rioters were killed and a great many others wounded, later to die of their injuries. Many injustices were committed by the authorities on that day. Not one of the soldiers received a bullet wound and the crowd was largely completely unarmed.The street outside Castle Hotel  was said to have been running with blood, women were screaming and desperately looking for their husbands and sons.
The authorities were certain that this was not the end of the rioting and they moved their headquarters to a safer position at Penydarren House.That night the rioters searched for weapons ready for an attack the next day. They also sent word to the Monmouthshire ironworks in an attempt to obtain furher support.By the 4th of June, more troops including the Eastern Glamorgan Corps of Yeomanry Cavalry and the Royal Glamorgan Militia had arrived in Merthyr. A troop of the Swansea Yeomanry Cavalry (under a Major Penrice) on arrival at Hirwaun, were ambushed when they stopped to rest, being greeted in an apparently friendly manner, but were soon surrounded, their weapons seized and they were forced to retreat to Swansea, where they re-armed and joined the Fairwood Troop for the march back to Merthyr.
A similar ambush was laid at Cefn Coed y Cymmer to stop ammunition being delivered from Brecon.
The Cardiff Troop of Glamorgan Yeomanry Cavalry (under Captain Moggridge) sent out to assist in the passage of the ammunition, was forced to retreat, being fired upon by the rioters and having rocks hurled at them from the hills above. Another troop of 100 Central Glamorgan Yeomanry (under Major Rickards) was sent to assist but were unable to break through the mob.
However Moggridge and the Cardiff Troop  managed to bring the wagons safely to Merthyr by a different route but despite meeting various deputations from the rioters the ironmasters had not managed to pursuade them to disperse.
On Sunday the 5th of June, delegations were sent to the Monmouthshire Iron Towns to raise further support for the riots and on on the 6th of June, a crowd of around 12,000 or more marched along the heads of the valleys from Monmouthshire to meet the Merthyr Rioters at the Waun Common.
The authorities decided that rather than wait for this mob to attack them they would take the initiative, and 110 Highlanders, 53 Royal Glamorgan Light Infantry Militia and 300 Glamorgan Yeomanry Cavalry were despatched to stop the marchers at Cefn Coed.
Josiah John Guest tried to address the crowd but to no avail, the Riot Act was read but had no effect, and then the Highlanders and Militia were ordered to level their muskets at the mob and the Yeomanry to draw their sabres. Words of command were given clearly and slowly so that the mob could hear them.With this the crowd gradually dispersed, only a hardcore remaining. Eventually they too gave way. No blood was spilled that day.
After the uprising on the evening of the 6th of June the authorities began raiding houses and arrested 18 of the rebel leaders. Lewis Lewis was found hiding in a wood near Hirwaun and a large force of soldiers escorted him in irons to Cardiff Prison to await trial.
The rising at Merthyr caused shockwaves through the British Government, and it was decided that at swift, strong action must be taken against the ringleaders of this movement. The trials began on the 13th of July at the Cardiff Assizes. 28 men and women were tried, 23 of them ironworkers (12 colliers , 2 women, 2 shoemakers and one blacksmith).
John Phelps, David Hughes, Thomas Vaughan and David Thomas were all found guilty of attacks on the houses of Thomas Wiliams and/or Thomas Lewis. Phelps was sentenced to transportation for 14 years, the others were sentenced to death (but with a recommendation for transportation for life instead). 
Wounding a soldier received the death penalty, but soldiers could kill with no questions asked as long as the Riot Act had been read. Lewis Lewis and Richard Lewis (Dic Penderyn) a local miner, were charged with attempting to murder a soldier, a Donald Black of the 93rd Highland Regiment, by stabbing him with a bayonet attached to a gun outside the Castle Inn on the 3rd June. They were both sentenced to death.
Joseph Tregelles Price, A quaker Ironmaster from Neath, took up the case of Dic Penderyn and Lewis Lewis, and presented a petition to Parliament to have them transported instead. There was no evidence that Dic played any substantial part in the rising at all unlike Lewis who was definitely involved, and in fact manypeople stated on oath that Penderyn was not even present when Black was attacked, and that they also knew who had actually carried out the attack,
Lord Melbourne, the Home Secretary, reprieved Lewis Lewis, who was certainly one of those who were most responsible for the riots, and accused of inciting others towards revolution and he was subsequently transported to Australia for the rest of his life, but would not even consider reprieving Penderyn, and sought to make an example out of him, who was clearly seen to have been much less involved. Many  believe that the  reason, Penderyn was chosen to be hanged, was precisely because he wasn't one of the leaders, but a typical worker in the town and was simply targeted  to show all other workers what would be in store for them if they stepped out of line.

Richard Lewis (Dic Penderyn) was taken from his cell at Cardiff Prison at Dawn on the 13th of August 1831, to the gallows at St.Mary Street, Cardiff and was executed before a large crowd, despite the appeal of thousands of people for his life. After he was cut down, his body was transported across the Vale of Glamorgan by his fellow workers and friends, where he was finally buried outside the chapel walls in his home town.(convicted criminals were not permitted to be buried in consecrated ground).
Thousands of people had lined the route as word of his execution had spread throughout Wales.
Dic Penderyn was believed to have been innocent of the crime for which he was executed, and many people over the years  submitted petitions to the Home Office for a posthumous pardon, for the man who is still seen as, and will always be revered as the first Martyr of the Welsh working class people.
He is remembered as a symbol  of the working man who died protesting against oppression and is commemorated in books and songs. A memorial was unveiled outside the library in Merthyr Tydfil by the General Secretary of the TUC in 1977.
Outside the market on St Mary Street, Cardiff near the spot where he was executed, you will find a plaque in commemoration of his execution. To the last he protested his innocence, and his final words in Welsh were an anguished cry at injustice. “O Arglwydd, dyma gamwedd” “O Lord what an iniquity” he shouted, as the hangman’s noose was tightened.
In 1874, the Wetern Mail reported that a man named Ianto Parker confessed on his death bed that he stabbed the soldier and then fled to America fearing capture by the authorities, thus exonerating Dic Penderyn. Another man named James Abbott, who testified against Penderyn at the trial, also later admitted that he lied under oath.
Yes Dic Penderyn was the innocent martyr and deserves recognition for this, but it was Lewis Lewis, who was the de facto leader of the workers uprising in Merthyr and also deserves recognition as a true working class hero.
The Merthyr Rising of 1831 still resonates in both Welsh and British working-class history. As Marxist historian Gwyn Alf Williams  https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/09/gwyn-alf-williams-30-0925-161195.html argued, this was in no small part to Dic Penderyn himself, the Welsh working-class’s first popular martyr. The story of thousands of workers coming together to fight their bosses and rulers continued to inspire future generations, and that the events of 1831 in Merthyr were central to the emergence of a working class in south Wales:in that year its pre-history came to an end and its history began.
There is no doubt in the aftermath of the rising  it changed Welsh history with the growth of militancy among the workers of South Wales, with many workers joining trade unions to fight collectively for their rights. Resistance became more organised and militant newspapers flourished.The resistance articulated itself through the Chartist movement, which armed workers for the strike waves of the early 20th century.
Unlike  events like the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 in Manchester where an unarmed crowd was dispersed by soldiers. the Merthyr Rising has been airbrushed out of history, apart from amongst socialists and labour movement activists in Wales. But fittingly, a group of socialists and trade unionists local to Merthyr came together, inspired by festivals such as Tolpuddle and the Durham Miners’ Gala, to create the Merthyr Rising Festival in honour of all those who fought in 1831. It was also from this Rising that the red flag spread across the world as a symbol of the socialist and communist movement, inspiring  Jim Connell's lyrics in The Red Flag itself:

The people’s flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold.

Sources; 

Gwyn Alf Williams - The Merthyr Rising, University of Wales Press

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/06/cofiwch-dic-penderyn-remember-dic.html

https://libcom.org/library/1831-merthyr-tydfil-uprising?fbclid=IwAR2kZ5gMGJHat0duJCA6tOxct0caGqwmKMr5pqlU9dGqUA8wdT6OCoxEc6U

Stravinksy's Rite of Spring

                                                 Vaslay Nijinksy 

Igor Stravinky's The Rite of Spring, ( Le Sacre du Printemps) caused a riot when it was first performed in Paris on the evening of 29 May 1913 in Paris at the brand-new Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, in front of a glittering audience. The piece was commissioned  and produced by the noted impresario of the Ballets Russes, Serge Diahilev who had earlier produced the young composer’s The Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911). Stravinsky developed the story of The Rite of Spring, originally to be called The Great Sacrifice, with the aid of artist and mystic Nicholas Roerich, whose name appears with the composer’s on the title page of the earliest publications of the score. The production was choreographed by the brilliant Vaslay Nijinksy (photo above).
Details surrounding the events on this evening remain hazy. Official records are scarce, and most of what is known is based on eyewitness accounts or newspaper reports. To this day, experts debate over what exactly sparked the incident , was it  the music or  the dancing, a  publicity stunt or social warfare? Though most agree on at least one thing: Stravinsky’s grand debut ended in mayhem and chaos. As the crowd arrived on opening night, expectations were high.The Théàtre des Champs Élysées had just opened, and audience members came to see and be seen. Stravinsky was nervous because he knew that avant-garde pieces were risky in Paris.Decades before, Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser had been booed off the stage at the Opera. But Stravinsky had had great success here in the past with his  The Firebird and Petrushka.

                                                     Igor Stravinsky

According to accounts I have read as the curtain went up and not long after the opening notes were heard, a ruckus broke out in the auditorium. The opening bassoon solo was set so high that the audience didn’t know what instrument they were hearing. As the lights came up on the first tableau of dancers, people began yelling, and a wilder shouting match began, and it became increasingly difficult to hear the music, and amidst the noise the dancers could not stay in sync.Stravinsky had taken the orchestra, which was associated with high society and culture, and brought it to a carnal, bestial, earthy level. As he heard the roar of the audience begin to build, Stravinsky panicked and ran backstage to intervene. By the time he reached the wings, things were in complete chaos.
But the performance continued. Diaghilev may have expected there would be some kind of ruckus at the performance. Unbeknownst to Stravinsky and Nijinsky, he had instructed the conductor, Pierre Monteux, to keep going no matter what happened.
As some in the audience booed and shouted during the performance, others as loudly and energetically defended the performance, resulting in fist fights and eventually a riot that required police intervention. In the second half , police were unable to keep the audience under control and rioting resumed.  Stravinsky was so taken aback by the audience's reaction, and he fled the scene before the show was over.
Musically, in addition to its provocative harmonic character what was that most shocking to the audience was Stravinksy's abandonment of classical melodic and harmonic development in favour of the rhythmic and tonal properties of the music. The music itself was unlike anything that came before it, primitive and savage , celebrating the raw, the physical, the elemental.
This combined with imaginative scenes of “pagan” Russia,and the evocative, sometimes violent dancing, sharp and unnatural choreography (dancers danced with bent arms and legs and would land on the floor so hard their internal organs would shake), was considered shocking to some, though exciting, brilliantly creative and innovative to others. It should hardly have come as a surprise given the ballet's thematic content. The ballet's title and subtitle alone hint that something darker lurks behind the velvet theater curtains: The Rite of Spring: Picture of Pagan Russia in Two Parts. It's essentially a story that centers around ancient Russian tribes and their pagan celebration of Spring. That offers a remorseless human sacrifice to their gods, choosing a young girl who is forced to dance to death.

The writer Jean Cocteau described a certain amount of manipulation of the whole thing, writing  in a pamphlet called Cock and Harlequin "All the elements of scandal were present, the small audience in tails and tulle, diamonds and ospreys, was interespersed with the suits and bandeaux of the aesthetic crowd. The latter would apply novelty to show their contempt for the people in the boxes.... uniumerable shades of snobbery, super-snobbery and inverted snobbery were represented... The audience played the role that was written for it."

                                     A drawing by Jean Cocteau of Stravinsky playing his music

I will end with a 1987 Joffrey Ballet performance of the work, and you can seen for yourselves how this work might have looked and sounded in 1913.Many years later, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring which foreshadowed rock, punk and jazz, managed to destroy the old order and  still has an edgy, intense, almost out-of-control feeling that makes it so exhilarating, liberating and engaging, this I believe is the immense power that good music carries.The composer Pierre Boulez said "The Rites of Spring serves as a point of reference to all who seek to establish the birth certificate of what is still called "contemporary" music."  Sometimes new music is born, and new births can be violent.

“Truth Ultimately Is All We Have” Julian Assange Appeals for Public Support

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange  has detailed the repressive conditions  he faces in Britain's Belmarsh Prison and called for a campaign against his threatened extradition to the United States  in a handwritten letter to independent British journalist Gordon Dimmack  who decided to make it public following last Thursday’s announcement by the US Justice Department of additional charges against Assange accusing him of violating the Espionage Act.
Assange in the letter says he is being denied a chance to defend himself and that elements in the US that “hate truth, liberty and justice” want him extradited and dead. The letter  also acts as a critique of Washington’s attempts to crush media freedom, and is a call to action from his supporters.
The WikiLeaks publisher had sought refuge in Ecuador in 2012, claiming – correctly, as it turned out – that trumped-up charges in Sweden would be used to get him extradited to the US.
The new 18-count indictment handed down in the Eastern District of Virginia alleges that Assange actively solicited classified information, goading  former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning Manning to obtain thousands of pages of classified material and providing Assange with diplomatic State Department cables, Iraq war-related significant activity reports and information related to Guantanamo Bay detainees.
In April, prosecutors in Virginia revealed that Assange had been charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion related to helping Manning obtain access to Defense Department computers in 2010.
Assange's initial indictment spared a debate over the First Amendment and whether Assange's alleged role in procuring secret US material constituted protected journalistic activity. Press freedom advocates have expressed concern that a conviction of Assange could undermine protections for journalists to challenge government secrecy.
The U.S. government charged Assange with: one count of conspiring to violate the Espionage Act; three counts of violating a provision of the Espionage Act that targets individuals who obtain information they’re not authorized to receive; and four counts of violating a provision of the Espionage Act in which prosecutors allege Assange “solicited” information.
Prosecutors assert Assange “aided, abetted, counseled, induced, procured, and willfully caused [Chelsea] Manning, who had lawful possession of, access to, and control over documents relating to the national defense” to “communicate, deliver, and transmit the documents” to WikiLeaks. He faces nine charges under two provisions of the Espionage Act for this alleged conduct.
The Justice Department focused on a list published to the WikiLeaks website in 2009 that was titled, “Most Wanted Leaks.”
“Assange personally and publicly promoted WikiLeaks to encourage those with access to protected information, including classified information, to provide it to WikiLeaks for public disclosure,” the indictment argues. And, “WikiLeaks’ website explicitly solicited censored, otherwise restricted, and until September 2010, ‘classified’ materials.” 
 The new charges against Assange have alarmed even the mainstream media outlets that have spent years pouring vitriol on WikiLeaks, as they began to realize his prosecution along these lines would essentially criminalize all journalism. Assange's crime was doing his job, informing us, having shown us the brutality of collateral damage and the cruelty of war  amongst other sinister illegal activities by politicians and governments.
Assange is currently serving 50 weeks in Belmarsh prison for skipping bail – a sentence WikiLeaks described as “shocking and vindictive”. The UN working group on arbitrary detention also said it was a “disproportionate sentence” for what it described as a “minor violation”. Assange’s next hearing is set for Thursday May 30 at Westminster Magistrates Court in London.

WikiLeaks responds to espionage act indictment against Assange: Unprecedented attack on free press

'The indictment carries serious implications for WikiLeaks publishing partners, numbering over one hundred across the globe, including The New York Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian, who collaborated on the publications and may now face co-defendant charges.
The final decision on Assange’s extradition rests with the UK Home Secretary, who is now under enormous pressure to protect the rights of the free press in the U.K. and elsewhere. Press rights advocates have unanimously argued that Assange’s prosecution under the Espionage Act is incompatible with basic democratic principles.This is the gravest attack on press freedom of the century.'

Below is the full text of Assange’s letter to Gordon Dimmack: 

'I have been isolated from all ability to prepare to defend myself, no laptop, no internet, no computer, no library so far, but even if I do get access it will be just for half an hour with everyone else once a week. Just two visits a month and it takes weeks to get someone on the call list and the Catch-22 in getting their details to be security screened. Then all calls except lawyer are recorded and are a maximum 10 minutes and in a limited 30 minutes each day in which all prisoners compete for the phone. And credit? Just a few pounds a week and no one can call in.
A superpower that has been preparing for 9 years with hundreds of people and untold millions spent on the case. I am defenceless and am counting on you and others of good character to save my life.
I am unbroken albeit literally surrounded by murderers. But the days when I could read and speak and organise to defend myself, my ideals and my people are over until I am free. Everyone else must take my place.
The US government or rather those regrettable elements in it that hate truth liberty and justice want to cheat their way into my extradition and death rather than letting the public hear the truth for which I have won the highest awards in journalism and have been nominated seven times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Truth ultimately is all we have.'

 Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/25/assa-m25.html

Write to Julian Assange: Here's How 

Mr Julian Assange 
DOB: 3/07/1971 
HMP Belmarsh 
Western Way 
London SE28 0EB
UK

You may send mail to the address above (you must include Julian’s date of birth in UK format, DOB: 3/07/1971. Do not include his prisoner number.
You must include your full name and address on the back of the envelope, or else the letter will not be delivered.
Include a blank piece of paper with a self-addressed envelope for Julian to write back. It must be pre-stamped (UK stamps only). Do not send loose stamps. Click here for stamps. Include 2 UK first class stamps for international mail.
All letters are read by Belmarsh & security. Do not send letters containing sensitive matters.
You may send paper items only, such as letters, photos & drawings. Please do not attempt to send other items. Postcards are not allowed.

WriteJulian.com

Kurdish hunger strikes end in Victory

 

 Thousands of Kurdish activists have  announced the end of their hunger strikes on Sunday after a call from imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan issued through his lawyers after a rare visit.
 Ocalan, the co-founder of the  outlawed  Kurdish revel group the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who has been in prison on Imrali island since his capture in 1999, issued a letter through his lawyers on Sunday four days after they visited him for the second time this month, to activists taking part in hunger strikes against his prison treatment.
 
“Dear comrades,

In light of the wide-ranging statements my two lawyers will be making, I expect the protests, especially of the comrades who have committed themselves to hunger strikes and death fasts, to come to an end. I would like to express that your intentions with regards to me have been realized and I present to all of you my deepest affections and gratitude.

In fact, after this point, I diligently hope and expect you to accompany me with adequate intensity and will power.

With lasting affection and regards,

22 May 2019, Imralı Prison

Abdullah Öcalan”


Following the announcement, a representative of imprisoned hunger strikers said that they would be heeding Ocalan's call.
 "After the call...we are ending our hunger strikes," Deniz Kaya said in a statement, quoted by pro-PKK news agency ANF.
 Previously, Ocalan had been kept in what his supporters called "isolation" since 2016, and no statements or visits were allowed. Until the visit on 22 May, he had not met with his lawyers in eight years.
Since 2018, close to 3,000 people had joined the hunger strike in some 90 prisons in protest at his treatment. Hunger strikers in Turkey traditionally refuse food but take vitamins and salt and sugar solutions, which prolong life. A hunger strike is not a form of protest to be undertaken lightly. It is a last resort when other methods have become impossible. The fact that this has become a regular resort for Kurdish activists is an indication of the extent to which the Kurds have been made to suffer.
Kurds in Turkey, where they have survived through a century of Turkish ethnic nationalism,  tie their hopes for a better future to their imprisoned leader. His political ideas have inspired the grassroots, feminist, multicultural democracy that is being created in Northern Syria, and that briefly flowered in the Kurdish autonomous movements of Eastern Turkey, before being brutally crushed by the Turkish army. Öcalan is pivotal to any hopes of a peaceful settlement between the Turkish state and its large Kurdish minority.
The longest-running hunger strike has been by Leyla Guven, an MP for the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democracy Party (HDP), who stopped eating on 8 November 2018, beginning a historic wave of hunger strikes which today have claimed victory. Ms Güven argued that by isolating Mr Ocalan and by refusing to allow visits from his family or lawyers, theTurkish government has placed major impediments towards maintaining peace in Turkey. Before being transported to hospital by ambulance on Sunday, Guven said the hunger strike had achieved its goal.
"But our struggle against isolation and our struggle for social peace will continue in all areas. This struggle must lead to an honourable peace," she said in a written statement.

 The HDP said seven people, six in Turkish prisons and one in Germany, had killed themselves in March in protest against Ocalan's isolation.
Ocalan's lawyers said that though the hunger strikes should end, it was necessary to apply pressure to the Turkish government to get them to restart the peace process that originally began in 2013 and collapsed in 2015.
 "Our client stated that if talks were not held in the future, it could be protested by a political struggle, but actions such as hunger strikes and death-fasts should be avoided," they said during a news conference on Sunday.
 "He [Ocalan] stated that the main thing is a culture of democratic political struggle and that it is more important for the strikers to be physically, spiritually and mentally healthy."
finally ended their hunger strike.
Politicians, political prisoners and activists around the world had been starving themselves to protest the isolation of their leader  a key figure in the Kurdish people’s struggle against their oppressor, 
After his capture, Turkey initially sentenced Öcalan to the death penalty. But this was later dropped when Turkey wanted to  join the EU. Öcalan now serves life imprisonment in solitary confinement on  the heavily fortified İmralı prison island.
In a massive international campaign, solidarity activists around the world have demonstrated, occupied buildings, and contacted politicians and European institutions.There were reports of ill-treatment of hunger strikers at Silivri, Şakran and Tekirdağ prisons.  Other reports indicated that, in some cases, authorities had unlawfully limited the hunger strikers’ access to drinking water, sugar, salt, and vitamins.
Despite this  people successfully  lobbied the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), asking it to take action and visit Öcalan in prison. All of these actions amplified the voices of the hunger strikers, making their demands heard, and putting pressure on Turkey.
Turkey has imprisoned Abdullah Öcalan for the last twenty years, keeping him in solitary confinement for much of that time, without access to his family or lawyers. The hunger strikers’ demand was simple: for Turkey to abide by its own law and to lift the isolation.
Turkey finally allowed Öcalan two visits from his lawyers in May. And after months of seemingly ignoring the hunger strikers’ demands, the CPT visited Imrali prison where Öcalan is held. On 16 May, Turkish justice minister Abdulhamit Gül announced that the ban on visits to Öcalan had been lifted.
Imam Sis, 32 who lives in Newport, Wales who  based himself at the Kurdish Community Centre on Chepstow Road, had refused food for 161 days. has also announced that he will end his hunger strike, and said “I would like the Welsh Senedd, which was the first parliament in the world to give full support to the hunger strikers.
“Also to Plaid Cymru Assembly Members Delyth Jewell, Leanne Wood and Bethan Sayed, and party leader, Adam Price, for all their support.
“Ending the hunger strike does not mean the end of the struggle against isolation, we will continue to struggle in other forms to ensure isolation is definitively brought to an end.”
 Mr Sis - who has lost 25kg (55lb) during his hunger strike - will now be assessed in hospital.
 

Now that Turkey has agreed to meet the protestors’ core demands,  Plaid Cymru – who supported the hunger striker and pressed the Welsh Government to intervene – have hailed a foreign policy victory.
The Welsh Government wrote a letter to Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, with Mr Hunt also contacted directly by a group of 50 MPs and Assembly Members, which included all Plaid Cymru elected members, and appealed to him to intervene.
The Foreign Secretary replied to Plaid Cymru’s Westminster Leader, Liz Saville Roberts, saying he had asked Turkey to comply with the findings on a report by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment into the conditions in which Mr Öcalan was held.
 Plaid Cymru’s Shadow International Relations Minister, Delyth Jewell AM, said: “I am delighted that the Kurdish hunger strikers have secured victory in their campaign to end the solitary confinement of Abdullah Öcalan.
“Many of them have sacrificed their long-term health in order to secure justice for their cause; it’s such a relief that they will not have to sacrifice their lives as well.
“My constituent, Imam Sis, has gone 161 days without food and faces a difficult battle to recover, but I know he will gain strength from the support of well-wishers from across the UK.”
 Delyth Jewell AM, who represents South Wales East in the Welsh Assembly, added: “While the campaign was an international one, we in Wales played a crucial part by putting pressure on the relevant actors to do the right thing.
“I’d like to thank everyone who played a part in this campaign, from the Plaid Cymru activists who have been supporting Imam, to politicians across the board who have saved lives by acting decisively.
“My hope is that formal peace negotiations can now resume between Turkey and representatives of the Kurdish nation in order to bring long-term peace for a people who have spent centuries fighting for their lives.”
The Kurdish hunger strikers courage and determination has been an inspiration to many, as their strike ends in victory lets continue to stand in solidarity with the Kurdish people in their struggle, for peace and to ensure that the isolation is not broken again.

The magical world of Surrealist Leonora Carrington Part 2 ( 6/4/17 -25/5/11)

Leonora Carrington who was born on the 6th of April 1917 spent her childhood on her family estate in Lancashire, England. There she was surrounded by animals, especially horses, and she grew up listening to her Irish nanny's fairytales and stories from Celtic folklore, sources of symbolism that would later inspire her artwork. Carrington was a rebellious and disobedient child, educated by a succession of governesses, tutors, and nuns, and she was expelled from two convent schools  in acts of rebellion against the Catholic Church and her family whose excessive  piety she loathed. Carrington also despised the capitalist ideals of her father Harold Carrington, a wealthy textile manufacturer in Lancashire, and broke free to artistic and personal freedom.
In The Tempation of St Anthony Carrington  brings these two things together. When he was 20 years old St Anthony's father died leaving him a large sum of money. After subsequently reading Mathew's Gospel  in which the reader is encouraged to sell ones's possessions in exchange for treasures in heaven, St Anthony disposed of his inheritance and embraced asetticism, becomming a hermit. In the desert he was subjected to temptation by demons in much the same way as Jesus had been.  Having resisted these temptations , St Anthony went on to found a monastery based on his own ascetic life. Carrington's interpretation is iconclastic, defying the conventions of Renaissance paintings  that depict St Anthony resplondent in a red cloak. Although St Anthony is given a physical presence in  Carrington's painting he appears as an emaciated hermit,  the resplondent red cloak given instead to his tormentor.

When Carrignton continued to rebel, she was sent to study art briefly in Florence, Italy. Carrington was impressed by the medieval and Baroque sculpture and architecture she viewed there, and she was particularly inspired by Italian Renaissance painting. When she returned to London, Carrington's parents permitted her to study art, first at the Chelsea School of Art and then at the school founded by French expatriate and Cubist painter Amédée Ozenfant.
Before Leonora Carrington became one of the most representative faces of the surrealist movement, she went mad. In the late 1930s, the English debutante was living with her lover Max Ernst (more than 20 years her senior) in a farmhouse in Provence, when Ernst was imprisoned on a visit to Paris and sent to a concentration camp. As the German army advanced, Carrington fled across the Pyrenees into Spain, where, after exhibiting increasingly deranged behavior, she was interned in an insane asylum in Santander. Down Below is Carrington’s brief yet harrowing account of her journey to the other side of consciousness.

It was André Breton who encouraged Carrington to write down her experience. Liberation of the mind was the ultimate aim of surrealism, and Carrington, already consecrated as a surrealist femme-enfant, a conduit for her much older lover to the realms of youth and mystery, had now traveled further than any of them and lived to tell the tale. While she was predisposed to find artistic merit in her experience of madness, Carrington’s reasons for telling her story seem more personal and therapeutic: “How can I write this when I’m afraid to think about it? I am in terrible anguish, yet I cannot continue living alone with such a memory…I know that once I write it down, I shall be delivered.”
Carrington would often look back on this period of mental trauma as a source of inspiration for her art. Just as in Carl Gustav Jung’s famous psychosis, Carrington emerged with a firmer stance on her individual purpose. Thus, on your journey you should embrace abnormalities and eccentricities; trusting that your mind will lead you to a greater path.
In 1941 Carrington married the Mexican poet and diplomat Renato Leduc, a friend of Pablo Picasso. In their short-lived partnership, Carrington and Leduc traveled to New York before eventually requesting an amiable divorce.
In 1943,  after a short  stay in New York, Carrington  moved to Mexico,here she met the Jewish Hungarian photographer Emeric ("Chiki") Weisz,  and the darkroom manager for Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War. whom she married and with whom she had two sons, Pablo and Gabriel. Carrington devoted herself to her artwork in the 1940s and 1950s, developing an intensely personal Surrealist sensibility that combined autobiographical and occult symbolism. She grew close with several other Surrealists then working in Mexico, including Remedios Varo and Benjamin Péret.
A central  theme for many of the women Surrealists was alchemy and their possession of its secret powers, which for them was linked to the mysterious cylcles of nature. Andre Breton had already put forward the proposal  that women possessed these Hermetic powers and suggested that men could unlock these secrets by means of love. Some women Surrealists sought their own enpowerment of this resource for picture making believing that the origins of their own creativity were rested in Hermetic tradition.
Sharing her enthuiasm for alchemy with Vara (1908 -63),  also a European exile, although their depictions are somewhat different they shared a common exploration in paint and poetry, of life's mysteries  and its resolution using alchemy in her one-act play, Une Chernise de Nuit de Flanelle, written in 1945, Carrington developed characters that would later populate her paintings. One character, Prisne, populates the world of the living and dead,  a theme that is used in Again the Gemini are in thee Orchard, the twins representing the same duality.The paintings allusion to fertility, through the allegory of the garden, suggests that this duality is part of the life cycle of humanity.

There are two  constant motifs in Carringtons work after 1945, the partridge and other bird and the egg. the parttridge makes a number of appearances in Carrington's work, most famously in Portrait  of  the late Mrs Partridge from 1947 is seen walking with a partridge that is not to scale and appears incongrous. In one hand the woman carries an egg, while the other gently rsts on the back  of the overgrown partridge.

The incongruity of scale also appears in Baby Giant. This time the central figure is surrounded by normal scale birds, resembling geese, flying around her and from inside her cape. However, she is standing within two Liliputian worlds. The first is a hunting scene at the bottom of the picture, redolent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, the other is a seascape in which appear Viking ships, whales and various sea creatures. The central figure has a mane of wheat  that replaces her hair and is carrying an egg very carefully with both hands. These symbols of the generative and regenerative powers of nature, as exemplified by the egg, are key motifs in the work of many of the Surrealist women artists. For Carrington in particular, the egg also represented  the alchemist's oven.

Women artists, however even  those within the Surrealist coterie, still found themselves outside the circle that formulated Surrealist theories, though they nevertheless contribued significantly  to its language. The erotic biolence in the art of thir male conterparts was replaced  by an art of magical fantasy  that still managed to shift the depiction  of the female within a male dominated movement. In place of depicting women as 'other'  as  her male counterparts had done,  women artists like Carrington  depicted women as self'anticipating the female artists  of the 1970's by some 40 years or so.
In 1947 Carrington was invited to participate in an international exhibition of Surrealism at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, where her work was immediately celebrated as visionary and uniquely feminine. Her work was also featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of this Century Gallery in New York.

Carrington's early fascination with mysticism and fantastical creatures continued to flourish in her paintings, prints, and works in other media, and she found kindred artistic spirits through her collaboration with the Surrealist theater group Poesia en Voz Alta and in her close friendship with Varo. Her continuing artistic development was enhanced by her exploration and study of thinkers like Carl Jung, the religious beliefs of Buddhism and the Kabbalah, and local Mexican folklore and mysticism.

It is worth noting that she was very aware of and supported feminist issues. In particular she championed the newly established women’s movement: In the early 1970s she was responsible for co-founding the Women’s Liberation Movement in Mexico; she frequently spoke about women’s “legendary powers” and the need for women to take back “the rights that belonged to them”  ”Surrealism has/had a very uneven relationship with women, as has been discussed by many scholars throughout the years.” Andre Breton and many others involved in the movement regarded women to be useful as muses but not seen as artists in their own right. As Angela Carter once said, voicing the concerns of many women artists of her time, “The Surrealists were not good with women. That is why, although I thought they were wonderful, I had to give them up in the end.” Leonora Carrington was embraced as a femme-enfant by the Surrealists because of her rebelliousness against her upper-class upbringing. However, Carrington did not just rebel against her family, she found ways in which she could rebel against the Surrealists and their limited perspective of women.

The student protests of 1968 revealed a further facet of Carrington’s beliefs, her political militancy. In support of the left-wing activists and as a remonstration, she  left Mexico for a while and returned in 1969 continuing to make her views heard in a series of public appearances.

 Today Carrington's style is ecognizable worldwide, a combination of anthropomorphic whimsy and an undercurrent of shadowy darkness. Yet she often rejected the label "Surrealist," insisting instead that she painted what she observed in the magical space between the corporeal world and the subconscious.

Chilean filmmaker and actor Alejandro Jodorowsky, a later Surrealist, wrote of Carrington as one of his "witch" muses, yet she once remarked: "I didn't have time to be anybody's muse; I was too busy rebelling against my parents and learning to be an artist."

Carrington was a prolific writer as well as a painter, publishing many articles and short stories during her decades in Mexico and the novel The Hearing Trumpet (1976). Inspired by the country's rich pre-Hispanic civilizations and the mythologies and occult knowledge of cultures from around the world. One of her best-known works is an enormous mural titled "The Magical World of the Maya," commissioned in the early 1960s for the National Museum of Anthropology.

She also collaborated with other members of the avant-garde and with intellectuals such as writer Octavio Paz (for whom she created costumes for a play) and filmmakerLuis Bunuel. In 1960 Carrington was honored with a major retrospective of her work held at the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno in Mexico City.

After a battle with pneumonia, Carrington died in Mexico City on May 25, 2011, aged 94. Her work continues to be shown at exhibitions across the world, from Mexico to New York to her native Britain. In 2013, Carrington's work had a major retrospective at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and in 2015, a Google Doodle commemorated what would have been her 98th birthday. By the time of her death, Leonora Carrington was one of the last-surviving Surrealist artists, and undoubtedly one of the most unique. Carrington's life was a whirlwind tribute to creative struggle and artistic revolution, that still is of great interest to me.

For an earlier post of mine on her see here  https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-magical-world-of-surrealist-leonora.html

Leonora Carrington - Self Portrait  (1937 -1938)