Easter used
to be the Festival of Eostre, originally a Anglo- Saxon word, denoting a
goddess of spring,
dawn, and fertility,in honour of whom sacrifices were offered about
the time of the Passover.According to St. Bede, a seventh and
eighth-century Northumbrian monk and historian, who reported that pagan Anglo-Saxons in medieval Northumbria held festivals in her honor during the month of April.
Rabbits, thanks to their tendency to have lots of babies very quickly, so they are a perfect animal to symbolically represent the fertility of springtime, that has been absorbed into Easter. But no
one is quite sure how the idea of an “Easter Bunny” that delivers eggs
and treats to good children came about. The egg tradition traces back to
Germany and eastern Europe, where painting eggs was popular in the
spring, and the Osterhare, or Easter bunny has a curious relationship with the Goddess that gave the holiday her name.
In Germanic mythology,
it is said that Ostara a.k.a. Eostre “healed a wounded bird she found
in the woods by changing it into a hare. Still partially a bird, the
hare showed its gratitude to the goddess by laying eggs as gifts.” Eostre, originally a Anglo- Saxon word, denoting a
goddess of the Saxons, in honour of whom sacrifices were offered about
the time of the Passover.
The origins of Easter are wrapped up in a celebration of seasonal
renewal that has taken place in numerous cultures for thousands of years
around the time of the Spring Equinox. Some argue that even the
Christian version of Easter merely perpetuates an age-old, familiar
theme of resurrection rather than honoring an actual person or event in
history.
Ishtar, was the Assyrian and
Babylonian goddess of fertility and sex. Her symbols (like the egg and
bunny) were and still are fertility and sex symbols. After
Constantine decided to Christianize the Empire, Easter was changed to
represent Jesus.
For obvious reasons, eggs have been a symbol of fertility for many
cultures since antiquity. The egg is literally new life, so what better
representation of the spring, when the time of winter, scarcity and
darkness had ended. Eggs, like many traditions that were tied to the
fertility of the earth and cycles of the season, became associated with
Easter as pagan traditions were absorbed.
Easter Eggs or painted eggs are a Middle Ages tradition which is
borne out of the Lenten fast. Since people were fasting, eggs weren't
being eaten and were stored up until Easter Sunday. During this time,
people began to decorate them to give to children. They were often
painted red to symbolise the blood of Jesus, and the shell used to
represent the empty tomb of the resurrection.
Chocolate eggs first appeared in the 17th century in France in the
court of Louis XIV based on this tradition and in 1725, solid chocolate eggs were produced. The
first chocolate Easter egg appeared in Britain in 1873 and then in 1875,
Cadbury’s created the modern Easter egg we know today.
According to an ancient “Sumerian legend of Damuzi (Tammuz) and his wife
Inanna (Ishtar), [...] Tammuz dies, Ishtar is grief–stricken and
follows him to the underworld.” Here, “‘naked and bowed low’ she is
judged, killed, and then hung on display. In her absence, the earth
loses its fertility, crops cease to grow and animals stop reproducing.
Unless something is done, all life on earth will end.”
Inanna is missing for three days after which her assistant seeks help
from other gods. One of them goes “to the Underworld” gives Tammuz and
Ishtar “the power to return to the earth as the light of the sun for six
months.
After the six months are up, Tammuz returns to the underworld of the
dead, remaining there for another six months, and Ishtar pursues him,
prompting the water god to rescue them both. Thus, were the cycles of
winter death and spring life.” Since this myth
was discovered on tablets dating back to around 2500 BC, Tammuz and
Ishtar might be the protagonists of the first pagan Easter story.
Commentators have cited numerous reasons why cultures have chosen to
celebrate Easter in some form. Popular themes have included,light conquering darkness; barren winter giving way to spring birth
life conquering death;good vs. Evil, virgin birth and sacrifice
Often,
these themes are regarded as part of recurring cycles, like the
seasons. Every spring, the world comes back to life. Flowers emerge.
Birdsong fills the air. Animals give birth to their young. Death always
leads to new life. Some elements, such as the three-day timeline and the
hero going to Hell, are also scattered among the myths.
One
writer draws “parallels between the story of Jesus and the epic of
Inanna.” This “doesn't necessarily mean that there wasn't a real person,
Jesus, who was crucified, but rather that, if there was, the story is
structured and embellished in accordance with a pattern that
was very ancient and widespread.”
Other sacrificial heroes have included Attis,
lover of Cybele, both of them gods, but Attis “was born of a virgin.”
“Attis was Cybele’s lover, although some sources claim him to be her
son.” Attis “fell in love with a mortal and chose to marry.”
In response to Cybele’s rage,
Attis “fled to the nearby mountains where he gradually became insane,
eventually committing suicide.” She regained her sanity, and “appealed
to Zeus to never allow Attis’s corpse to decay.” Every year, “he would
return to life during the yearly rebirth of vegetation; thus identifying
Attis as an early dying-and-reviving god figure.”
Other gods associated with resurrection include Horus, Mithras, and
Dionysus. “Dionysus was a divine child, resurrected by his grandmother.
Dionysus also brought his mum, Semele, back to life.” The Sumerian
goddess Inanna, or Ishtar, was hung naked on a stake and was
subsequently resurrected and ascended from the underworld.
Hot cross
buns are related to “Israelites baking sweet buns for an idol, and
religious leaders trying to put a stop to it.” Eventually, “defiant
cake-baking pagan women” were successful and a cross was added to the
buns to Christianize them.
The only time the word “Easter” is found in the Bible (Acts 12:4), it is
there by mistranslation. The word in the original Greek is “Passover.”
Jesus died at the time of the Passover feast, but the Passover is
not Easter and Jesus did not die at Easter time. Passover is the historical and still-celebrated Jewish festival commemorating the
exodus led by Moses of the Hebrews from Egyptian captivity.
Passover traditions include the consumption of unleavened bread, and Jesus distributed the same to his disciples at the Last Supper.
The Passover celebrations also included the sacrifice of lambs. (Hebrew slaves in Egypt marked their doorsteps
with the blood of such sacrifices so that the angel of death would
pass-over their families.) Similarly, mankind can be saved from
spiritual death through the blood spilled by Jesus through his sacrifice
on the cross
Unlike Christmas,
which is always on the same day each year, Easter is a moveable
celebration where the date is set by the Church and computed according
to the cycle of the moon.
There have been several attempts to have a fixed annual date, but like many other things tradition has prevailed and the old Pagan calculation remains to this day.
Since the 10th century, there have been 15 attempts by senior Church leaders to regulate the date of Easter.
In 1928 the UK Parliament passed an act that allowed for Easter
Sunday to be always the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April,
but there was neither agreement with other governments, nor the Roman
or Eastern Churches.
In 1990 the Vatican agreed to a fixed date, but there was still no
general consensus. And as recently as 2016, the Archbishop of Canterbury
Justin Welby launched an attempt by the Anglican Church.
Anyway whatever your beliefs I hope your having a wonderful blessed, peaceful weekend, am sure Cadbury's and other confectionary merchants are very happy.
Gilbert “Gil” Scott-Heron was an American soul and jazz poet, musician, and author, known
primarily for his work as a spoken word performer in the 1970s and ’80s.
Born in Chicago, Illinois on April 1, 1948 to parents Bobbie Scott
Heron, a librarian, and Giles (Gil) Heron, a Jamaican professional
soccer player who played for Celtic. He grew up in Lincoln, Tennessee and the Bronx, New York,
where he attended DeWitt Clinton High School. Heron attended Lincoln
University in Pennsylvania and received an M.S. in Creative Writing from
Johns Hopkins University.
By age 13, Scott-Heron had written his first collection of poems. He published his first novel, The Vulture,
a murder mystery whose central themes include the devastating effects
of drugs on urban black life, in 1968 at age 19. Four years later,
Scott-Heron published his second novel, The Nigger Factory
(1972), which, set on the campus of a historically black college (HBCU),
focused on the conflicting ideology between the more traditionally
Eurocentric-trained administrators; the younger, more nationalistic
students—founders of Members of Justice for Meaningful Black Education
(MJUMBE); and the more moderate students and their leader, Earl Thomas.
Scott-Heron, is however, best
known as a musician and songwriter. In 1970, he released his first
album, New Black Poet Small Talk at 125th and Lennox,. The liner notes of that first album credit the influence of Malcolm X
and Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton alongside that of Billie Holiday
and John Coltrane. Gil Scott-Heron’s art grew out of social movements
and fed back into them.
Then came. Pieces of Man (1971), Free Will (1972) and Winter in America
(1974). These albums include such classic signature works as “The
Revolution Will Not be Televised,” “Lady Day and John Coltrane,”
“Whitey on the Moon,” “No Knock On My Brother’s Head,” and “Home Is
Where the Hatred Is.”
One of his most critically acclaimed albums, Winter in America, was
released as the strongest waves of the revolutionary tide of
the ’60s and ’70s were already ebbing into the Nixonian Reaction. The
U.S. military had finally withdrawn from Vietnam, and other
institutional gains from the movement could be seen in the form of
legislation like the Clean Air Act of 1970 or the formation of the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). But following the
capitalist recession of 1973, the Western world was mired in
stagflation: inflation coupled with economic stagnation and high
unemployment. The title track laments those dynamic parts of America
that “never had a chance to grow.”
Known for his oral word performance, Scott-Heron walked onto the
international stage simultaneously as did many of the Black Arts
Movement poets, including Amiri Baraka,https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2014/01/amiri-bakara-lee-roi-jones-71034-9114.html Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez,
and Nikki Giovanni.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/06/happy-birthday-nikki-giovanni-7643.html He shared their conviction that art must be
functional and, therefore, as artist and communal leader, he must
embrace his role as a significant political voice inevitably committed
to the liberation of black people. Scott-Heron’s cacophonous voice
resonated as well with that of Malcolm X, the militant prophet-leader of
the Nation of Islam who inspired a generation to address the needs and
condition of the urban black masses. The electric, edgy, angry sounds
he created with his fusion of soul, jazz, blues, and poetry—often in
collaboration with musician Brian Jackson—make him a forerunner to a
later generation of rap artists, particularly such socially conscious
rappers as Tupac Shakur, Jay Z and Dr. Dre.
The author of songs dealing head-on with the abuse of drugs and alcohol,
songs like “The Bottle” and “Angel Dust,” went through his own
struggles with substance abuse in his later years. It is difficult not
to see this personal struggle as an expression of the historical
demobilization and depoliticization that overtook the movements that
meant so much to him
Small Talk at 125th
and Lenox, featured the first version of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The track has since been referenced and parodied extensively in pop culture.A diatribe against mass media’s trivialization of social upheaval and the seeming paralysis of those who watch via television.
Regarding the song, he said: "The revolution takes place in your mind.
Once you change your mind and decide that there's something wrong that
you want to effect that's when the revolution takes place. But first you
have to look at things and decide what you can do. 'Something's wrong
and I have to do something about it. I can effect this change.' Then you
become a revolutionary person. It's not all about fighting. It's not
all about going to war. It's about going to war with the problem and
deciding you can effect that problem. When you want to make things
better you're a revolutionary."
Gil Scott-Heron wrote this song when he was 21
years old. He would perform and release several reworkings of "The
Revolution Will Not Be Televised" in his lifetime.The lyrics build a strong, intelligent and humorous case against American consumerism:
"The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal."
"The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner."
These
words remind us that big business owns almost everything we see on
television. Scott-Heron contends that if the common people were to rise
to rebellion, there will be no news coverage of the event.
Gil
Scott-Heron spoke on the poetry in this song:
"All of those poems do
not just represent me. They represent the people I know and the people I
see. You have to separate the problems that effect the whole community
from the problems that effect just the individual person. A good poet
feels what his community feels. He feels what the organism that he's a
part of feels. And one of the problems that our community was facing as a
whole was the fact that we were being discriminated against and there
was something that needed to be done."
The electric, edgy, angry sounds
he created with his fusion of soul, jazz, blues, and poetry,often in
collaboration with musician Brian Jackson, make him a forerunner to a
later generation of rap artists, particularly such socially conscious
rappers as Tupac Shakur, Jay Z and Dr. Dre.
In 1975 Scott-Heron became the first artist to sign with Clive Davis’s new Arista label. His second Arista release, From South Africa to South Carolina , contained the energetic “Johannes-burg,” a proclamation of solidarity with blacks in then apartheid white-ruled South Africa that reached the Top 40. “Our
vibration is based on creative solidarity: trying to influence the
black community toward the same kind of dignity and self-respect that we
all know is necessary to live,” Scott-Heron said “We’re trying to put out survival kits on wax.” Gil Scott’s 1976 song would become an anthem against
white minority rule in South Africa and the struggle for
liberation in that country.
By the late 1970s Scott-Heron had developed a serious cocaine habit, and
he later progressed to freebasing. Drugs were his escape from the
pressures of the music business, and they were also a refuge from
difficulties in his personal life. He had a turbulent marriage to
actress Brenda Sykes that ended in divorce, as well as several on-again,
off-again romances, and he had four children from different
relationships. “Love is a difficult thing for me to experience,” he once
wrote poignantly. As his addiction took its inevitable toll on his
body, his career, and his life, he was unable to admit the seriousness
of his problem or accept help from anyone, even those who cared about
him deeply.
Scott-Heron parted company with Jackson in the early 1980s and
explored jazzier territory as well as the techno-funk that had begun to
dominate black pop. As well as exploring more personal issues, he
continued attacking specific political targets. The U.S. presidential
election of conservative Republican Ronald Reagan.“Ray-gun,” as Scott-Heron was fond of calling him,unleashed a further torrent of musical scorn.
In 1980 Scott-Heron also released his anti-nuclear anthem “Shut ‘Em Down” on the all-star No Nukes concert album. However, as the decade advanced, Scott-Heron was increasingly isolated in his political militancy.
In 1984 Arista released The Best of Gil Scott-Heron, but would drop the artist the following year. He collaborated with jazz legend Miles Davis on “Let Me See Your I.D.” for the anti-apartheid benefit album Sun City,
but otherwise stopped recording for several years, though he continued
to tour and a documentary film was made about him. Unfortunately for
fans, most of his albums went out of print. With the exception of the Best of collection and the earlier The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, much of his work would not be available on CD for many years. The re-release in 1988 of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised reintroduced to a new generation the Scott-Heron classic “Whitey on the Moon,” a satirical comment on American socioeconomic values,
He shunned conventional pop stardom but nevertheless became a star,
playing to large crowds and winning abundant critical praise. I
was lucky to be able to see him perform on a number of occassions in
the late nineteen eighties, once at Glastonbury, can't remember the
correct year, perhaps someone could remind me, and 3 times more in
London at C.N.D and anti apartheid rallies one I think in Hyde Park? .
Apparently the era I saw him perform, his talent was on the wain, but I
did not notice, I did not care, all I remember was a powerful,
incendiary, sweet , soulful, smoky voice , gently rallying us against
the cruelty of the world. He became a bit of a hero to me, so it was sad
not to have him around for a while, but the thing is, for some of us he
never did go away. His songs of freedom lifting us through our sombre
histories, stirring and always inspiring.His sad songs and his
melancohly somehow reaching and getting through.
He briefly returned to the studio for 1994’s
Spirits. That album featured the track “Message to the Messengers,” in
which Scott-Heron cautions the hip-hop generation that arose in his
absence to use its newfound power responsibly. “I ain’t comin’ at you with no disrespect/All I’m sayin’ is you damn well got to be correct/Because if you’re
gonna be speaking for a whole generation/And you know enough to handle
their education/Be sure you know the real deal about past situations/And
ain’t just repeating what you heard on a local TV station.”
He used his voice to chart the injustices and cruelty of American society for
years, raging against its hypocricy,with wit, empathy, and justified anger, the irony being, it was
this very same system that turned on him, culminating in jail sentences
and stretches due to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time,
found with too much gear in his pockets, labelled and spat out. Sure he
had problems, but when this man needed help, what did they do? They
locked him up, that was really going to cure him, no I don't think so,
just another sad reflection of a cold stinkin' rotten system.Anyway in my opinion a brave, charismatic figure, He never stood on fences, his language and honesty apparent to all who witnessed him..
He continued to perform, and he received new attention thanks to the
rise of hip-hop, but he was in no shape to work regularly, and his last
years included several stints in jail for drug possession. Followng After his release from prison in 2007, in 2010 released a new album, I'm New Here, to widespread critical acclaim. Although he
was on good terms with his children, he died alone aged 62, on May 27, 2011, in a New York hospital, where he apparently told the staff he had no next of kin. His
daughter Gia, saw this as typical of her father’s
self-protective pride: “Maybe he didn’t want people to see him in that
weak and vulnerable position.”
In 2012, he posthumously received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
and two years later was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for “The
Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
Gil Scott-Heron’s voice and songs continue to project the strength, the anger,
the humanity and the beauty of struggles in our own time whose deeply political words continues to inspire many. In the tapestry of musical history, Gil Scott-Heron occupies a unique and enduring place. His life and work stand as a testament to the transformative potential of artistry, as well as a rallying cry for justice and social change. Gil should remind us of the profound impact that one individual can have in shaping the cultural zeitgeist and challenging the status quo. .His legacy as a musician, poet and activist is immeasurable.
It's Your World - Gl Scot Heron
The ground beneath my feet
I know was made for me
There is no any one place where I belong
My spirit's meant to be free
And soon now everyone will see
Life was made for us to be what we wanna be!
And it's your world
It's yours and yours and yours
And what you see
Was not meant for me
It's your world
But you don't have to be lonely
'Cause in your world
You are truly free!
The thoughts that fill my mind
Are a very special kind
Because they're home to me and me alone
And then I realize
That we all have a home inside
That was meant for us to be what we wanna be
And it's your world
It's yours and yours and yours
And what you see
Was not meant for me
It's your world
But you don't have to be lonely
'Cause in your world, you are truly free!
Music of life fills my soul
Music of love makes me feel whole
As human history unfolds before my eyes
My spirit's meant to be free
And soon now everyone's will be
It's your right to be whatever you wanna be!
And it's your world
It's yours and yours and yours
And what you see
Was not necessarily meant for me
It's your world
But you don't have to be lonely
'Cause in your world
You are truly free!
And it's your world
It's yours and yours and yours
And what you see
It was not meant for me
It's your world
But you don't have to be lonely
'Cause in your world
You are truly free!
And it's your world
It's yours and yours and yours
And what you see
It was not meant for me
It's your world
But you don't have to be lonely
'Cause in your world
You are truly free!
You are truly free
(So go 'head) Be what you wanna be
You are truly free
(So go 'head) Be what you wanna be
You are truly free
(So go 'head) Be what you wanna be
You are truly free
(So go 'head) Be what you wanna be
The World - Gil Scot Heron
The world! Planet Earth; third from the Sun of a gun, 360 degrees. And as the new worlds emerge stay alert. Stay aware. Watch the Eagle! Watch the Bear! Earthquaking, foundation shaking, bias breaking, new day making change. Accumulating, liberating, educating, stimulating change! Tomorrow was born yesterday. From insde the rib or people cage the era of our firdt blood stage was blotted or erased or TV screened r defaced. Remember there's a revolution going in in the world. One blood of the early morning revolves to the one idea of our tomorrow. Homeboy, hold on! Now more than ever all the family must come together. Ideas of freedom and harmony, great civilizations yesterday brought today will bring tomorrow. We must be about earthquaking, liberating, investigating and new day making change in the world.
The Revolution Will Not be Televisised
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out foreeer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back after a message
About a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution WILL put you in the driver's seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
I Think I'll Call it Morning - Gil Scot Heron
'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine
and paint it all over my sky.
Be no rain. Be no rain.
I'm gonna take the song from every bird
and make them sing it just for me.
Be no rain.
And I think I'll call it morning from now on.
Why should I survive on sadness
convince myself I've got to be alone?
Why should I subscribe to this world's
madness
knowing that I've got to live on?
I think I'll call it morning from now on.
I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine
and paint it all over my sky.
Be no rain. Be no rain.
I'm gonna take the song from every bird
and make them sing it just for me.
Why should I hang my head?
Why should I let tears fall from my eyes
when I've seen everything that there is to see
and I know that there ain't no sense in crying!
I know that there ain't no sense in crying!
I think I'll call it morning from now on.
Today is the 45th anniversary of Palestinian Land Day,
which also happens to coincides with the third anniversary of the Great March of
Return in Gaza, and is marked by Palestinians wherever they live. Land Day is held on the anniversary of March 30, 1978,when Palestinian
villages and cities across the country witnessed mass demonstrations
against the states plans to expropriate 2,000 hectares of land in and around the Arab
villages of Araba and Sakhnin as a part of a plan to "Judaise the
Galilee".Israel's Galilee region. In coordination with the military, some 4,000
police officers were dispatched to quell the unrest. At the end of the
day, six Palestinian citizens were Killed by occupation forces, Kheir Mohammas Salim Tasin, Khadija Qaeem Shavaboch, Raja Hssein, AbuRayva, Khader Eid, Mahmoud Khalayleh, Muhsin HasanHasan, Said Taha and Raafar Ali-Zheir, as they defended their land, and over one hundred injured by state security forces..
The Day of the land - or Land Day marked the first mass mobilization of
Palestinians within Israel against internal colonialism and land theft.
It also signalled the failure of Israel to
subjugate Palestinians who remained in their towns and villages, after
around 700,000 of them were either expelled or forced to flee
massacres committed by Zionist armed groups in 1948.
Today's commemoration of Land Day is an emblematic reminder of the countless human rights violations that have characterised more than 72 years of Palestinian land confiscation and dispossession. Forty-five years on, Israeli land theft continues unabated.
Settlements are expanding; land confiscations for military, security,
or industrial purposes are increasing; and, especially unsettling,
measures to rid Jerusalem - the aspired capital of a future Palestinian
state.
The Israeli policy of land theft and expropriation has never ended. The
Annexation plan of the occupied Palestinian territory is being
implemented with more land being seized and more people becoming forcibly displaced. In the
last few days Israeli confiscated lands in the South, East and West of
Bethlehem, and on on.06/01/2021 alone, the Israeli occupation forces
uprooted more than 3400 olive trees in Deir Ballut village in the Salfit
Governorate .for settlement expansion and
for military purposes, a clear violation of the international
Humanitarian Law.The Palestinian Bedouin
citizens of Israel also now face the appropriation of 800,000 dunams of
the Negev by the Israeli state.The housing situation for the Bedouin remains dire. Settlements that
house 160,000 people are deemed "Illegal" by Israel, and risk
demolition. The issue of land allocation and housing for Palestinian citizens of Israel has now reached crisis point.
This important day in Palestinian history commemorates the Palestinians
sense of belonging to a people, to a
cause and a country, to stand united against racial oppression and rules
of apartheid,and the discriminatory practices of the Israeli
government, giving continual potency to the Palestinians cause , its
quest for justice and Palestinian rights, and its resistance to
injustice,who never cease to fight for their land while holding
passionately to their history and identity. It is the right of return,
recognised in the United Nations Resolution 194, that drives Palestinians to continue with the commemoration of Land Day - regardless of their geographical location.
The day is commemorated annually by Palestinians in the West Bank, the
Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and further afield in refugee camps and among
the Palestinian diaspora worldwide, with demonstrations, marches and by
planting olive and fruit trees, as a symbol of their resilience to daily occupation..This year, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which has left much of the world’s
populations under lockdown and curfew. Being confined to their homes or their villages and towns is not a new experience for Palestinians which is perhaps why so many have taken it in their stride, and continue to show show incredible strength, courage
and sumud (steadfastness) in the face of great adversity. While Israeli
settler colonial expansionism does not rest, neither does Palestinian
perseverance and Palestinians are continuing to mark Land Day with anti-Israel protests around Israel, West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Land Day continues to be poignantly relevant as Israel continues to
confiscate land, expand their
colonies, and continue to build their illegal settlements in flagrant
violation of all international conventions, particularly the Fourth
Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law. Land day is a
Palestine day, a day for its people to proudly declare that they are
one from
the River to the Sea. It serves to remind the world that
the Israeli denial and suppression of Palestinian resistance and their
right to self-determination is a policy intended to squash the
Palestinian people’s will and dominate them to expand Israel’s settler
colonialism.
The Keep Hope Alive - Olive Tree Campaign
works to support the Palestinian farmers to protect their land, to
restore their hope, to empower them and to strengthen their
steadfastness, by providing them with olive trees and share with them
actions of solidarity and support from partners and friends worldwide.
In 2018, the Day of the Land once again bore witness to the popular organizing of the people, as thousands upon thousands gathered in Gaza for the Great March of Return, and occupation foces again shot down Palestinians defending their land and upholding their rights, 47 years after the first Land Day massacre. Israel occupying forces killed 16 martyrs of the land and return, with over 200 more shot down in the marches in the months and days to come.
In the Palestinian reality, every day is Land Day. Today and tomorrow I continue to stand side by side with my sisters and brothers in solidarity with their struggle
for peace, justice, equality and an end to the illegal occupation of
their land.I would urge others who may read this to do the same. The Land Day strike inspired the following powerful poem by Tawfiq Zayyad, Palestinian poet, writer, scholar and politician, that continues to resonate across the Palestinian generations.
Here we will stay - Tawfiq Zayyad ( 7/5/ 29 - 5/7/ 94)
In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee,
we shall remain
like a wall upon your chest,
and in your throat
like a shrad of glass,
a cactus thron,
and in your eyes
a sandstorm.
We shall remain
a wall upon your chest,
clean dishes in your restaurants,
serve drinks in your bars,
sweep the floors of your kitchens
to snatch a bite for our children
from your blue fangs.
Here we shall stay,
sing our songs,
take to the angry streets,
fill prisons with dignity.
In Lidda, in Ramla, in the galilee,
we shall remain,
guard the shade of the fig
and olive trees,
ferment rebellion in our children
as yeast in the dough.
Link to poem by Mahmoud Darwish on the same theme :-
A civil liberties group and a Labour MP have raised concerns about “heavy-handed policing” after a second consecutive weekend of “Kill the Bill” protests in Bristol produced footage of police punching a woman and attacking a newspaper reporter.
Liberty, the civil liberties group, called the footage following a prolonged stand-off in central Bristol on Friday "Disturbing scenes at #BristolProtests last night. Protest is a right not a privilege.Heavy-handed policing and further restrictions in the #PoliceCrackdownBill are a threat to that right."
Boris Johnson blamed the violence on “disgraceful attacks” by protesters against the Police Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, currently before parliament.
The bill has produced a string of demonstrations because of concerns that it would give police more power to curtail the right to protest. https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2021/03/defend-right-to-protest.html
“Our officers should not have to face having bricks, bottles and fireworks being thrown at them by a mob intent on violence and causing damage to property,”The police and the city have my full support" Boris Johnson wrote on Twitter
Whatever he was watching, the rest of us saw ' his officers' in Bristol battering seven shades out of peaceful protestors, using their shields to chop at the heads, necks and limbs of unarmed people . sitting down, in a deliberate and savage attempt to cause serious bodily harm.
Protesters tweeted videos showing a police officer’s apparent punching of a woman and officers’ use of the edges of their riot shields to hit protesters sitting on the ground.
Matthew Dresch, a reporter from the Daily Mirror, tweeted a video of an officer hitting him with a baton, he said: “Police assaulted me at the Bristol protest even though I told them I was from the press. I was respectfully observing what was happening and posed no threat to any of the officers. I have muted the latter part of the video to spare you all the pain of hearing my shrill voice. https://twitter.com/MatthewDresch/status/1375606889740898305?s=20
Labour MP Nadia Whittome called for an investigation into the policing of the demonstrations.“Reports
of protesters and journalists injured last night in Bristol. The case
for an independent investigation into the policing of the #BristolProtests is clear,” she tweeted.
Two reporters from the Bristol Cable were also reportedly assaulted by police during protests earlier in the week. Bristol Cable editor Alon Aviram shared a video of protesters
shouting “we are peaceful, what are you”, while police in riot gear
brutally hit a defenceless demonstrator to the ground. He noted that
this was the moment the peaceful sitting protest descended into
violence:
Protetors tweeted videos showing a police officer apparantly punching a woman and officers using the edges of their riot shields to hit protestors sitting on the ground.
Griff Ferris shared videos of police charging peaceful protestors – and
hitting them with batons. Police even hit protesters who had their hands
in the air:
" Just before the dogs came – police hitting people with batons and shields, many with their hands up in the air pic.twitter.com/iROYuvYBNf — Griff Ferris (@g__ferris) March 26, 2021
And Michael Volpe circulated a video of police using their riot shields to strike sitting protesters:
"Taking careful aim. Savagery and a deliberate
attempt to cause serious bodily harm. These officers will be hailed as
brave in the morning by their boss. This needs to be seen and shared. "pic.twitter.com/DeeyeCMWvg
Responding to the home secretary’Priti Patels statement calling protestors a
“criminal minority”, James Felton shared a video of police in riot gear
hitting a woman in the face:
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't a shield a defensive device, used passively to protect the holder?When a shield is used as a weapon to hit an unarmed person, that's misuse of power. And when police charge at you with horses and dogs, with batons and pepper spray, think it's only right that people defend themselves against that.
Whatever your political views ask yourselves how you would feel if it was your son, your daughter, your neighbor on the recieving end of those savage blows. This cannot be allowed, it has to stop. Defend this and your complicit, quietly accept it and your complicit.For every beating that is caught on camera, there are so many more the police hide.
As during the miners strike in the 1980's once a right wing government gives carte blanche to the police they go at it with gusto. We're but a whisker away from a police state at times,and will only continue if this draconian Bill is passed.Violence only ever seems to start when the police arrive, so how about we send no Police to the next protest and see what happens. The policing of the Kill the Bill protests has underlined concerns about police tactics against demonstrations following the manhandling of women by officers from London's Metropolitan Police at a vigil on Clapham Common in London for Sarah Everard, a murdered woman.
A serving Metropolitan Police officer, is awaiting trial for Everard's kidnap and murder.
It is worth noting that thousands of deaths in police custody in England and Wales since 1990. No officers have ever been convicted of their deaths, which have a number of different causes.
Inthe following essay penned shortly before his tragic and untimely death at the age of fifty-one in September 2020, the well respected anthropologist, and active anarchist David Graeber wrote on what life and politics could look like after the COVID-19 pandemic. (It was was published in. Jacobin’for the first time. ).
In it David Graeber argued that post-pandemic, we can’t slip back into a reality where the way our society is organized , is to serve every whim of a small handful of rich people while debasing and degrading the vast majority of us.
The pandemic has despite much worry and disruption, has at least exposed aspects of our current culture and economy that has long needed fixing, .a world which is stained with inequalities and based on dirty capitalist exploitation. At the moment though the government's response to all this, is to arm the police with more powers and to crank up repression , whilst flying the flag for right wing Britain, in the name of jingoism and patriotism.
Despite Boris Johnson's recent proclamations, it is now beyond doubt that it is the greed' and rampant capitalism, that .his and our Government's culpability has caused, resulting in the needless deaths of tens of thousands. Capitalism has long been under an extended period of decay, bringing untold misery to peoples lives, that puts profit first instead of the needs of people. Hopefully at the end of this pandemic we can all be be given the tools we need to nail its coffin shut. In the times ahead, we can't afford to go back to sleepy normal.
After the Pandemic . We Can't Go Back to Sleep
At some point in the next few months,
the crisis will be declared over, and we will be able to return to our
“nonessential” jobs. For many, this will be like waking from a dream.
The media and political classes will
definitely encourage us to think of it this way. This is what happened
after the 2008 financial crash. There was a brief moment of questioning (What is “finance,” anyway? Isn’t it just other people’s debts? What is money? Is it just debt, too? What's debt?
Isn’t it just a promise? If money and debt are just a collection of
promises we make to each other, then couldn’t we just as easily make
different ones?) The window was almost instantly shut by those insisting
we shut up, stop thinking, and get back to work, or at least start
looking for it.
Last time, most of us fell for it. This time, it is critical that we do not.
Because, in reality, the crisis we just experienced was waking
from a dream, a confrontation with the actual reality of human life,
which is that we are a collection of fragile beings taking care of one
another, and that those who do the lion’s share of this care work that
keeps us alive are overtaxed, underpaid, and daily humiliated, and that a
very large proportion of the population don’t do anything at all but
spin fantasies, extract rents, and generally get in the way of those who
are making, fixing, moving, and transporting things, or tending to the
needs of other living beings. It is imperative that we not slip back
into a reality where all this makes some sort of inexplicable sense, the
way senseless things so often do in dreams.
How about this: Why don’t we stop
treating it as entirely normal that the more obviously one’s work
benefits others, the less one is likely to be paid for it; or insisting
that financial markets are the best way to direct long-term investment
even as they are propelling us to destroy most life on Earth?
Why not instead, once the current
emergency is declared over, actually remember what we’ve learned: that
if “the economy” means anything, it is the way we provide each other
with what we need to be alive (in every sense of the term), that what we
call “the market” is largely just a way of tabulating the aggregate
desires of rich people, most of whom are at least slightly pathological,
and the most powerful of whom were already completing the designs for
the bunkers they plan to escape to if we continue to be foolish enough
to believe their minions’ lectures that we were all, collectively, too
lacking in basic common sense do anything about oncoming catastrophes.
This time around, can we please just ignore them?
Most of the work we’re currently doing
is dream-work. It exists only for its own sake, or to make rich people
feel good about themselves, or to make poor people feel bad about
themselves. And if we simply stopped, it might be possible to make
ourselves a much more reasonable set of promises: for instance, to
create an “economy” that lets us actually take care of the people who
are taking care of us.
On March 21, 1960. at a police station in the small Black South African township of Sharpeville near Johannesburg , following a day of demonstrations, police opened fire on a crowd of around 5,000 to 7,000 protestors. The crowds had gathered to protest the establishment of apartheid pass laws which restricted movement of non-whites. designed to segregate the population.
The Sharpeville Massacre took place in a South Africa that denied even
basic democratic rights and freedoms to those considered as "non-white"
under an apartheid (racial segregation and discrimination) system.
Apartheid means “apartness” in the Afrikaans language. The concept was
endorsed, legalized and promoted by the National Party, which was
elected in South Africa in 1948 by a minority, exclusively white
electorate.
Apartheid laws placed all South Africans into one of four racial
categories: “white/European,” “native/black,” “coloured,” (people of
“mixed race”) or “Indian/Asian.” White people – 15 percent of the South
African population – stood at the top, wielding power and wealth. Black
South Africans – 80 percent of the population – were relegated to the
very bottom. Apartheid laws restricted almost every aspect of black
South Africans’ lives.
The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) planned a series of national protests
against the pass laws in 1960. Black South Africans were asked to gather
outside police stations around the country on March 21 and offer
themselves up for arrest, for not carrying their pass books.
At Langa Township in Cape Town, two people were killed and 49 injured when police opened fire. Sharpeville,
was through the 1950s a community untouched by anti-apartheid
demonstrations that occurred in surrounding towns. By 1960, however,
anti-apartheid activism reached the town. In March 1960, Robert
Sobukwe, a leader in the anti-apartheid Pab=Adricn Congress (PAC)
organized the town’s first anti-apartheid protest. In order to reduce
the possibility of violence he wrote a letter to the Sharpeville police
commissioner announcing the upcoming protest and emphasizing that its
participants would be non-violent.
Nearly 300 police officers arrived to put an end to the peaceful
protest. As they attempted to disperse the crowd, a police officer was
knocked down and many in the crowd began to move forward to see what had
happened. Police witnesses claimed that stones were thrown, and in a
panicked and rash reaction, the officers opened fire into the crowd.
Other witnesses claimed there was no order to open fire, and the police
did not fire a warning shot above the crowd. As the thousands of
Africans tried to flee the violent scene, police continued to shoot into
the crowd. Sixty-nine unarmed Africans were killed and 186 were wounded with
most shot in the back.
Sharepville became a symbol of the violence and racist cruelty of the apartheid
regime that divided black and white and reduced Africans to third class
citizens in the land of their birth.
But there was also resistance. As the bodies were being carted away so news of the
massacre raced around the countries’ poverty stricken townships. In Cape
Town thousands of African workers stopped work and stevedores walked
off the ships.
A “day of mourning” a week later resulted in riots and
shooting around Johannesburg, and police baton charges at the crowds in
Cape Town.
Nelson Mandela and his 29 co-accused in the infamous Treason Trial were
still on trial when the massacre happened. In his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom,
Nelson Mandela recalled: “The massacre at Sharpeville created a new
situation in the country ... A small group of us – Walter [Sisulu], Duma
Nokwe, Joe Slovo and I – held an all-night meeting in Johannesburg to
plan a response. We knew we had to acknowledge the events in some way
and give the people an outlet for their anger and grief. We conveyed our
plans to Chief Luthuli, and he readily accepted them. On March 26, in
Pretoria, the chief publicly burned his pass, calling on others to do
the same. He announced a nationwide stay-at-home for March 28, a
national Day of Mourning and protest for the atrocities at Sharpeville.
In Orlando, Duma Nokwe and I then burned our passes before hundreds of
people and dozens of press photographers.”
Nelson Mandela burning his pass
The world was shocked too and condemnation was universal. International
solidarity and the isolation of apartheid South Africa became one of the
key elements contributing to its demise. People abroad, by linking
hands with South Africa’s oppressed, provided inspiration and decisive
support. On April 1, the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed a resolution
condemning the killings and calling for the South African government to
abandon its policy of apartheid. A month later, the UN General Assembly
declared that apartheid was a violation of the UN Charter. This was the
first time the UN had discussed apartheid. Since then, apartheid and many of its elements have been codified as crimes against humanity.
The massacre also sparked hundreds of mass
protests by black South Africans, many of which were ruthlessly and
violently crushed by the South African police and military. On March
30, the South African government under Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd declared a state of emergency which
made any protest illegal. The ban remained in effect until August 31,
1960. During those five months roughly 25,000 people were arrested
throughout the nation. The South African government then created the
Unlawful Organizations Act of 1960 which banned anti-apartheid groups
such as the Pan Africanist Congress and the African National Congress.
The South African’s government’s repressive measures in response to the
Sharpeville Massacre, however, intensified and expended the opposition
to apartheid, many members of both organizations mentioned decided to go underground. Nelson
Mandela was among those who chose to become outlaws. He would later say,
“We believe in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
that ‘the will of the people shall be the basis of authority of the
government,’ and for us to accept the banning was the equivalent of
accepting the silencing of Africans for all time.'
Mandela and others no longer felt they could defeat apartheid
peacefully. Both the PAC and the ANC formed armed wings and began a
military struggle against the government.Nelson Mandela became commander-in-chief of the ANC’s armed wing, “Umkhonto we Sizwe”
or “Spear of the Nation”They took to acts of sabotage against
government targets, which sometimes killed civilians. These were
denounced by South Africa’s main backers, Britain and the United States
and the ANC was labelled as a “terrorist organisation”.Following his arrest, Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment on four counts of sabotage.
However, many
foreign investors pulled out of the country and a number of sporting
boycotts followed. Many long years of struggle
and suffering lay ahead. but the Sharpeville massacre was a turning point South African history and
led to a chain of events that shaped the direction of resistance to
apartheid both in South African and internationally and heped create a receptive political setting for the British
Boycott Movement’ Sharpeville certainly played a decisive role
in the Boycott Movement's transformation into the Anti-Apartheid
Movement (AAM).
The incident and its repercussions alsp led to the growing politicisation of
the South African working class and created a more militant younger
generation in the townships. The struggle in the townships grew
steadily, with a major uprising in Soweto, Johannesburg in1976. By 1985,
the regime had lost control of these working class districts and
declared a state of emergency. The country was on the brink of civil
war. Elements in the regime and leading businessmen opened talks with
the ANC, recognising that it was the only organisation that could quell a
revolutionary upsurge.
President F. W. de Klerk released the ANC’s Nelson Mandela from prison
on February 2, 1990, heralding the end of the Apartheid system. White
minority rule finally collapsed in 1994 in elections that brought the
ANC and Mandela to power. Had he not released Mandela when he did, de
Klerk said, “The prospects for a satisfactory negotiated settlement
would have diminished with each successive cycle of revolution and
repression”.
Symbolically in 1994, Mandela signed the nation’s first post-apartheid
constitution near the site of the 1960 massacre. The anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre is remembered the world over
every March 21as International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Proclaiming the day in 1966, the United Nations General Assembly called on the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.
In South Africa, Human Rights Day is a public holiday wbich is celebrated on 21
March each year. The day commemorates the lives of those who died to
fight for democracy and equal human rights for all in South Africa
during apartheid an institutionally racist system built upon racial discrimination.
While the Sharpeville Massacre and its annual commemoration serve as a
stark reminder of the violent consequences of the apartheid regime in
South Africa and its threat to fundamental rights, freedoms, and human
dignity, it is also a time to commemorate the ultimate defeat of this
institutionalised system of oppression, and encourages us to continue to
work to bring an end to all forms of racial discrimination, racial
segregation, and apartheid around the world. But this work is not done,
particularly as apartheid endures in Palestine.
For decades, Israel has established and maintained an apartheid regime
over the Palestinian people, through a plethora of laws, policies, and
practices designed to ruthlessly segregate, fragment, and isolate
Palestinians. The Palestinian people have been deliberately divided into
four separate legal, political, and geographic domains, including
Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, Palestinian residents of
Jerusalem, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza subject to Israeli
military law, and as a result, Israel ensures that
the Palestinian people are unable to meet, group, or live together, nor
exercise any collective rights.
As I mark the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa, more
efforts must be taken to ensure the legacy of apartheid, and all other
forms of racial discrimination and oppression, are finally brought to an
end. In the same way that apartheid fell in South Africa, supporters of
human rights, international law, social justice, and equality must
exert pressure today to uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian
people. "Remember Sharpeville" was the late South African activist, educator, journalist, former inmate with Nelson Mandela at Robben Island in the mid -1960s,
and poet Dennis Brutus memorial to the Sharpeville massacre of 1960,
