Lets not forget Chelsea Manning

Today marks  six years since Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (then known as Bradley Manning) was arrested in Iraq for blowing the whistle on war crimes on suspicion of having passed classified material to WikiLeaks, including videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan; 250,000 United States diplomatic cables; and 500,000 army reports that came to be known as the Iraq War logs and Afghan War logs.
It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public, exposing imperialist crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. As an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army, Manning saw U.S. war crimes and took the courageous steps necessary to blow the whistle on human rights abuses. Manning was arrested and held in solitary confinement from July 2010 in the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, causing an international outcry. Outrageously, Manning is serving a 35 year prison sentence. This extreme sentence is designed to act as a deterrent to other whistleblowers and journalists. Chelsea Manning is a hero and a whistleblower. We should all be very grateful for her sacrifice but sadly her moral courage is rare today.Chelsea manning has always claimed she acted in the public interest, hoping to spark a meaningful debate on the costs of war, specifically on the conduct of  the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. However she was not permitted to present this as evidence at her trial, and was only allowed  to explain her motives at the sentencing  phase. Before her conviction, she had already been held for three years in pre-trial detention, including 11 months in conditions which the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture described as cruel and inhumane.
 The US army intelligence analyst, who has appealed to reduce 35-year sentence, has endured the most severe punishment ever given to a whistleblower.
 I am saddened by the persecution and incarceration of such a morally courageous person. Chelsea was born in 1987 in Oklahoma to an American father and a Welsh mother. When her parents divorced at an early age, she moved with her mother to Wales. She moved back to the US to live with her father in 2005, and got a job with a software company in Oklahoma City..She spent her schooldays down the road from me in Pembrokeshire. She went to school in Tasker Milward , Haverfordwest where she is remembered for his integrity and intelligence . His mum, aunts and uncles still live in Pembrokeshire.
Chelsea  is being held in the military brig at Fort Leavenworth. in Kansas, where she is involved in separate legal action relating to her desire to transition as a transgender woman. Transition is another courageous act in its own right in a largely deeply sexist society. Her safety is of of grave concern.Athough her lawyer expects Manning will be released on good behaviour in 7 years, this is a long time for anyone to have to wait to feel complete.To say that Chelsea Manning has a most difficult and dangerous road ahead of her during her time in prison is an understatement.
Here is a transcript of the statement made by PFC. Chelsea Manning as read by David Coombs (her attorney) at a press conference after she was sentenced to 35 years in prison. You can also watch the video of the statement here. It shows an awakening and a decision to act.
Chelsea Manning:

“The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.
I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.
In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.
Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission.
Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
As the late Howard Zinn once said, “There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.
If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.”

We simply can't forget this honorable individual.On Monday May 9th, Chelsea Manning was honored for her heroic actions at a London ceremony hosted by Blueprint for Free Speech, a non-profit dedicated to supporting freedom of expression for all individuals and seeking improved government transparency. Chelsea received this year’s Blueprint Enduring Impact Whistleblowing Prize along with fellow whistleblowers John Kiriakou and Dr. Raj Mattu. In times like these we need brave people like Chelsea and others to hold the government accountable for its actions at home and abroad that can give us hope in the possibility of standing up to make the world better, safer, and more just.  The fights for accountability, transparency, and justice continue. Hopefully through Chelsea’s actions and the brave actions of others we can continue to be informed, while individual acts of bravery and defiance can help open eyes and inspire people to follow their own conscience,
We still need to support Chelsea in prison , maximise her voice, and continue the call for a Presidential pardon. 
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Find more about Chelsea Mannings case here :-

 http://www.chelseamanning.org/

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

 Have written  many times about the lives of the surrealists, one of their number the artist and writer Leonora Carrington died in Mexico on this day in 2011. She was 94, she led an eventful and productive life, from reluctant debutante in England to bohemian in 1930s Paris, from despair in a Spanish asylum to many decades of stable artistic productivity in Mexico City. Though she’s long been celebrated and honoured in Mexico, it’s only quite recently after her death that her reputation has grown on this side of the Atlantic. 

I love the work of Leonora Carrington. It is always strange, often unsettling and unfailingly magicaI, in terms of fame and renown, she’s not as well known as some of her male contemporaries, including her sometime partner Max Ernst, or Salvador Dali, but I believe she should be.
Born into an upper class, reactionary Lancashire family in 1917, she soon discovered the restrictive and mentally stifling penalties that go with the privileges of bourgeois existence. But conformity was not an option. When she was eight her Catholic parents sent her to the Holy Sepulchre convent in Chelmsford, where she refused to do any schoolwork.. Even  as a young girl, Carrington was a non-conformist.She was an individual, unwilling to conform to authoritative, unreasonable rules. Her free-spirit and candid quips resulted in expulsions from at least two schools  “anti-social tendencies and certain supernatural proclivities”. In Florence and Paris she revelled in the arts, but dodged her workload and school regime through running away. In the end, Carrington’s parents capitulated to their wilful debutante daughter when, in her teens, she announced her intention to study at Chelsea School of Art, and become a painter.Her life was to become an amazing journey of change and discovery.

Having seen the work of Max Ernst at a major surrealist exhibition in London, she met him at a dinner party. He was 46 and married for the second time but, almost immediately, they were captivated by one another and ran off together, to Cornwall and then to Paris, where he separated from his wife, and Carrington found herself at the heart of several charmed artistic circles variously including Picasso, Dalí, André Breton, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp Joan Miró and others. Although she never considered herself a card-carrying surrealist, she embraced the spirit of the movement with theatrical zeal; for example, she reputedly turned up for a party wrapped in a sheet, which she strategically discarded to reveal that she was naked beneath it. She and Ernst were reportedly known to clip the hair of their house guests as they slept, then serve it to them mixed in their breakfast omelettes.  Surrealism has/had a very uneven relationship with women, and  this 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. 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..Surrealism gave her a visual and literary vocabulary to express herself whilst not avoiding limitation.

Then war broke out, the Germans invaded, and in time Ernst was interned by the Vichy administration.for simply being German and then  by invading Nazis because his work was considered decadent and was locked up in an internment camp.. It was the beginning of a profoundly disturbing period for Carrington. She may already have suffered a nervous breakdown, hitched a lift with friends to Spain.

Portrait of Max Ernst

Carrington, understandably, was distraught. She stopped eating, and was in dangerously poor health when she was rescued by some friends, fleeing the Nazis, who drove her to Madrid. She wrote later: “I’d suffered so much when Max was taken away to the camp, I entered a catatonic state, and I was no longer suffering in an ordinary human dimension.”
On the journey to Spain she saw bodies hanging from trucks and corpses on the roads – at least she thought she did, though her traumatised mind wondered if they might actually be delusions. The Spanish authorities certainly thought so when she reported them, and threw her into an asylum in Santander. According to her 1944 memoir, Down Below, she suffered there, subjected to barbiturate and Cardiazol treatment, until her family in England got sufficiently worried about her to send a nanny  to rescue her and take her instead to a hospital in South Africa. In the finest traditions of Surrealist weirdness, Carrington escaped from her minders while they were waiting to board the boat, jumped into a cab and headed straight for the Mexican embassy, immediately entering into a marriage of convenience with a diplomat friend she’d known in Paris. Then they went back to wait for a boat to the USA, joined by a liberated Ernst, his new partner, his ex-wife, and his new partner’s ex-husband. Carrington and Ernst didn’t get back together – he married again, and after a few months Carrington dissolved her own marriage and moved, permanently this time, to Mexico City.

Leoonora Carrington and Max Ernst 

It’s an extraordinary tale of surrealism, love and madness and more, some have claimed that Carrington’s asylum memoir was more fiction than fact. (Interestingly, Amazon classes the book as fiction.) But Anne Hoff of  the University of Alabama wrote  a paper on Down Below in in 2009, concluding that Carrington’s barbaric experience could well have been entirely factual. Clinical descriptions of other people’s treatment with  Cardiazol, a powerful convulsive drug that was a forerunner of ECT, suggest her recollections of seizures, hyper-sexualised thoughts post-treatment and being left to lie in her own faeces (incontinence was a common side-effect) are depressingly accurate. She was also given Luminol, a powerful anti-convulsive. I can imagine it would have been an horrific ordeal that would have bound to leave a mark.In her paintings and writings, she generates a heady fantasy world. It draws on elements of folklore and fairytales, Celtic and other mythologies,  a lot of this gets mixed up  in her work plus elements from  occult mystical  traditions including alchemy. There’s a lot going on, I like them a lot, deep  dreamlike spaces of infinite possibility with a magical poetical quality. Like a magical alchemist she had the ability to smuggle cryptic messages or absurd spells  into her art enabling her to transform the viewers eye. Often there are Gothic undertones, maybe recalling the Lancashire mansion where she  grew up in and longed to escape, she was a rebel who was  twice expelled from school, and was instinctively opposed to her parents’ social aspirations.

The fantasy in her work is sometimes disturbing with a violent, edge. It draws from her own disturbed  personal experience and emotional life, her own and of course many others, in a way that links her to such artists as Louise Bouergois , Paula Rego and Frida Kahlo. In line with the male surrealists’ view of the role of women, she was often assigned the subservient role of muse to Ernst, implicitly diminishing her, even though she remarked that she was far too busy getting on with things to be a muse.

A big influence on her was  Robert Graves’s The White Goddess . Drawing on a range of European mythology, especially the Welsh and Irish traditions, Graves controversially proposed the presence of a consistent, if variously named and depicted, goddess. In doing so he was revealing an alternative, potentially feminist mythological and religious predecessor to familiar, patriarchal models.The White Goddess appears again and again in her work such as Then we saw the daughter of the minotaur (1953) is not to he a relic from a lost religion but to a living (dancing) entity in the present. Add to this influence Carrington’s memories of stories told to her by her mother and her cherished Irish nanny,  Mary Kavanagh and you can begin to see what she’s getting at in her pictures, even if nothing quite prepares us for their edgy strangeness.

                                Then we saw the daughter of the Minotaur

In her painting, 'The Giantess', the guardian of the egg, 1947, and painted for her patron, Edward James, possibly Carrington's most famous work, The Giantess, is dwarfing land and sea, ''drawing out the psychic prowess of the Goddess, her regenerative life-giving properties, and her fertile creative powers. This Goddess-centred spirituality, benevolent and nurturing, emanates from the giantess: the birds flock from her robes, and between her palms she clasps a mysterious black egg, perhaps the source of new life.''
Carrington said, ''The egg is the macrocosm and the microcosm, the dividing line between the Big and the Small which makes it impossible to see the whole.  To possess a telescope without its other essential half – the microscope – seems to me a symbol of the darkest incomprehension. The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope while the left eye peers into the microscope.''

                                    
                                                       The Giantess , 1950 

Alongside her painting and sculpture she was also a prolific writer prolific writer with many articles, novels, essays, and poems to her name. Apart from the autobiographical Down Below, her most celebrated piece was a dream fairy-tale of 1974, The Hearing Trumpet. Her books are as utterly imaginative as her visual art.In The Hearing Trumpet ( a favourite book of mine), Carrington appears under the alias Marian Leatherby, who is 92 and has a beard. She has no teeth left and has become vegetarian  an elderly woman getting irritated by her patronising family, who think her senile. But the care home that she is carted off to is unlike any establishment of its kind. Marian discovers evidence of mysterious gatherings, disappearances, and hints of the supernatural. Ultimately, all this leads to a total reordering of the terrestrial order: a world "transformed by the snow and ice.” Marian anticipates the day when “the planet is peopled with cats, werewolves, bees, and goats. We all fervently hope that this will be an improvement on humanity. "I'll leave you to discover the pure magical joy of her writing for yourself, I strongly recommend her..Her other notable books were The House of Fear (1938), The Oval Lady (1939), The Stone Door (1976), Pigeon Flies (1986) and The Seventh Horse (1988). She also wrote the plays The Debutante (1937), A Flannel Night-Shirt (1951), Penelope (1957) and The Invention of the Mass (1969).
After her move to Mexico in 1943 a new chapter began. Free of her family and her besieged relationship with Ernst (he married Peggy Guggenheim to escape Europe), she immersed herself in the art world of Mexico City. Steeped in Surrealist ideas and mysticism, she joined a close group of artists and enjoyed much creative experimentation.. Here in Mexico there was Aztec and Mayan culture, Catholicism and Spanish colonialism all mixed together in a vast, steaming cauldron of exotic images. Snakes, saints, candles, life and death, dark and light. Vast brooding volcanoes, huge pyramids, mythical dragons. The young artist from England had found her ‘milieu’. In her novels and her art, Leonora combined her favoured symbols of  folklore with Mexican motifs. El Mundo mágico de los Mayas, 1963-4, was a commission for a new museum, in an area dedicated to the state of Chiapas. She visited the region, attended healing ceremonies in order to get to know the people. Carrington was accepted as someone who spoke for Mexican history as well as engaged with its culture, history and art.  She attempted to study the preconquest outlook of the Chiapas Indians, and in her finished painting shows the way cultures were mixed in the area. The painting is a fairytale of old and new, historical and imagined. Figures walk between Catholic processions and indigenous healings. Mystical animals swirl around a landscape that seems a living creature itself, while her favourite motif, the Irish white horse, sits amidst a carnival of human activity.

                                From El Mundo de Magica Mundos

                                   Who art , though  white face 
 
The student demonstrations of 1968 revealed a further facet of Carrington's personality, her political militancy.In 1969 she continued to make her views heard in a series of public appearances. 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". Take this wonderful quote from her " it is impossible to understand how millions and millions of people all obey a sickly collection of gentlemen that call themmselves ' Government'! The word I expect frightens people. It is a form of planetary hypnosis and very unhealthy" from 'The Hearing Trumpet'
The  rest of Leonora’s life remained blissfully quiet and stable. Having only married for convenience, Leonora and Leduc split. She met Hungarian photographer, Chiki Weisz and had two boys, Gabriel and Pablo. She planted a tree in her front yard, taped pictures of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana on her kitchen cabinets, drank PG tea in the afternoons and tequila at night. She continued to paint and write, building a sizeable repertoire of fantastical surrealist works depicting mythical, made-up creatures representing themes of identity and transformation. She had once again constructed her own lovely little universe where she was bound by no one, free to be and create as she wished. So finally  Leonora Carrington died on this day at the age of 94, after what was a remarkable life. Described as “the last great living surrealist” by the Mexican poet and activist, Homero Aridjis. Her legacy a mighty fine one that was later carried by other female artists, with their own sense of liberation, Frida Kahlo included, who fought for the rightful place of women in arts and in everyday life.

    

                                         Leonora Carrington - self-portrait , 1937

Waiting for Chilcot's judgement to call

The delays in the Chilcot inquiry have for a while moved into farcial terrain, the establishment clearly terrified of any further damaging revelations that will reopen discussions about the tragedy of Irag.Who knows Tony Blair could  face charges over his role in sending British soldiers to the tragedy that was Iraq. A cross-party group of MPs want him prosecuted if the Chilcot report shows he lied to get support. In the meantime I offer you this poem.

Waiting for Chilcot's judgement to call

Sixteen years and still waiting,

The rot and the lies have gone on to long,
Truth twisted and buried at every turn,
We have known for so long who was to blame,
Darkness revealed in sanctimonious smiles,
Tony Blair's conscience flashing in deceit,
Hopefully now he will pay the political price,
When all his excuses are finally discredited,
No mere apology will be enough,
He should be made to pay for his crimes,
That went against international law,
As the silence and agony are abandoned,
The dead unable to testify, finally get justice.

Ken Loach wins Cannes Palm d''Or for his latest powerful film; I, Daniel Blake, about welfare struggle.

 

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He has championed the downtrodden and poor for 50 years, but now Bath film director Ken Loach has returned to make a modern-day version of his breakthrough film Cathy Come Home – a film about the poverty and humiliation inflicted upon them by the welfare state, which left much of the Cannes Film Festival in tears and won him the coveted  Cannes Palm d'Or Prize last night  in an awards ceremony in southern France.
Cathy Come Home shocked a blissfully-unknowing British society of 1966 to the descent of a wife from a normal family home to living on the streets and having her children taken away – all because her husband is injured at work and loses his job.
And now, 50 years on, the 79 year old Bath film director has returned and created something of a remake – but this time exposing the plight of a man left to the uncaring ravages of the benefits system, which looks set to generate the same shock from audiences across Britain.
. Accepting the festival's top prize, Loach attacked the "dangerous project of austerity,".At times of despair the far right take advantage,” the  film-maker said. “And some of us who are old remember what that was like. So we must give a message  of hope, we must say another world is possible," he said."The world we live in is at a dangerous point right now. We are in the grip of a dangerous project of austerity driven by ideas that we call neo-liberalism that have brought us to near catastrophe."
The powerful film  tells the story of  fifty-nine year old British carpenter Daniel Blake's Kafkaesque  journey to get benefits in Britain for the first time in his life after suffering a heart attack and being told by doctors he can no longer work.Turning to the welfare state for assistance, he is confronted with the tragic realities of a modern society bogged down by miles of cold and unfeeling red tape.
Daniel, is just a generous hard-working individual who has simply fallen on hard times,who  embodies the very reason social safety nets are created, yet the system engineered ostensibly to give a much-needed break to such decent men seems more intent on pounding its supposed beneficiaries into submission.This might be a piece of art, but this is a familiar tale to all those trapped in the benefit system , and caught in the barbed wire of bureacracy in Tory Britain.
Because Blake is denied illness benefit and is forced to apply for assistance for unemployment.
That in turn forces him to spend hours hunting for jobs which he has to turn down because he is too sick to work.The movie's writer Paul Laverty has said the research team was stunned at how people with mental health issues and disabilities were targeted by the welfare cuts.He said people interviewed within the Department for Work and Pensions told them "they were humiliated at how they were forced to treat the public. There is nothing accidental about it."
Exasperated at every turn by the almost laughable inefficiencies of a blindingly complicated network, Daniel is bounced from one broken program to the next. Whether they be for employment insurance or a job seeker’s allowance, there are always stupefying catches; ridiculous paperwork; and government employees who appear completely incapable of empathizing with the plight of the unfortunate waiting around the corner.
The actress who plays the young single mother, Katie -- Hayley Squires -- who Daniel's character befiends, recently slammed anti-welfare "propaganda" that she said has turned working class people against each other. "Normal people are led to believe that this amount of people are on benefits and are therefore scroungers, and this amount of people are going to work to pay so that they can scrounge." "They've left us to argue among ourselves so they can keep doing what they are doing."
For the Conservatives, the ideological destruction of peoples lives has always been their clear aim. For them austerity isn't a temporary economic measure, it's a permanent moral imperative. I look forward to the day, when we say enough is enough. In the meantime well done Ken for this award and for continuing to lend the poor and downtrodden a voice,telling real honest stories of lives ruined by a cruel system that  continues to unleash savage attacks on Britain's poor.I  hope that this film and its powerful indictment of life under Tory rule and the austerity myth and all it's savage impacts is seen by many and as the star of the film , stand up comic Dave Johns  recently tweeted, like Cathy Comes home, 50 years previously  "Let's hope it shames those that should be into change.".

Stjepan Filipović (27/1/13 -22/5/42) - " Death to fascism, freedom to the people ! "

(image: of Filipović with his arms in the air, moments before his death)

Today 22 May, 1942 - Stjepan Filipović, a Croatian Partisan during World War II, was hanged by the fascists. He is one of the heroes of anti-fascist struggle in Yugoslavia during World War 2.  He  had joined the workers movement  in 1937, becoming a member of  the Communist Worker’s Revolutionary Movement, and shortly thereafter was arrested for his political activity. He was imprisoned for one year, and upon his release was forced to leave Kragujevac. Soon after the German invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Filipovic returned to Kragujevac and volunteered for active duty in the partisan struggle against the occupiers. He was posted to Valjevo where he was given responsibility for the organizing of arms and the gathering of new supporters to the cause. He rose quickly in the ranks of the partisan resistance and eventually became commander of his own battalion, the Tomnasko-Kolubarski detachment.
On February 24 1942 he was captured by Axis forces and given to the Germans, tortured in Loznica, then in Sabac. Before being taken to solitary confinement, he said "Comrades, hope for nothing. Be brave when they shoot you. Don't show them that our death is their victory."
As his executioners  put a rope around his neck, Filipović defiantly thrust his hands out and denounced the Germans and their Axis allies as murderers, shouting "Death to fascism, freedom to the people!" He urged the Yugoslav people to resist and implored them to never cease resisting.
He was declared a national hero of Yugoslavia in 1949. 

The picture of him raising his arms in resistance  just  before being hanged became ironic in post-war Yuhoslavia and became a symbol in the fight against fascism.In the city where Filipovic died, which is in present-day Serbia, there was a monumental statue  in his honor replicating that Y-shaped pose — an artistically classic look posed between death and victory.
Since the break up of Yugslavia he has been claimed by all sides - Valjevo monument -it's in Serbia remember -calls him Stevan Filipovic, which is the Serbian variant of his given name. But as Serbia is the heir to Yugoslavia he at least remains there  as a legitimate subject for a public memorial.
But has been targeted by fascist resentment since 1961 when it was  first erected, torn down in 1991, it's plinth sadly since then  desecrated by fascist scrawls .Reconstruction is  currently being planned by the Croatian Ministry of Culture.
With nationalism and intolerance creeping back into Croatian life it would be a shame that the memory of this anti-fascist hero was destroyed forever.We should continue to stand against the dark  forces of fascism, forces ever so real that will crop up in time of crisis and turmoil that must always be beaten back before these vile ideas take root.

The Tale of Elen of the Ways

                                              
                                                 St Helen of Caenarfon


The Roman road, Sarn Elen is named after Saint Elen ( angliscised to Helen)  whose feast day is celebrated today which connects her to Spring. Saint Elen  was a late  4th century founder of churches here in Wales. Her influence on  present day Wales still evident  by the existing roads  that bear her name,  ancient Roman roads throughout the British Isles – that we can all still walk along. Roman roads in Britain are often called Sarn Elen, but it is possible that the original Elen’s causeways belong to a much earlier period. Evidence of earlier paving is found under some of the roads, but the straightness of the Roman roads must sure have impressed the locals. The Celts associated straight paths with magic and the Otherworld, the paths that fairies took from one mound to another, the straight path of a magical spell, and the spirit flight of the shaman. It is significant that Elen is first beheld in a dream, then goes on to build a network of magical roads across Britain. Some associate these with ley lines, the ancient trackways that are said to join together ancient sites, such as tumuli, burial mounds, hillforts, stone circles and so on. It is possible that Elen is the guardian of these, or perhaps she is the guardian of the paths of dreams and visions.
She was the patron Saint of travel long before St. Christopher. On present day survey maps Sarn Elen is clearly posted. it is said that Elen is responsible for the building of  these roads which in an ancient Britain connected strongholds. Some of these roads are associated with ley (energy) lines.The Welsh revered Elen as Elen of the Roads who at Beltane (1st May) opened the season of travel.She is certainly a pre-Roman goddess, and possibly much older than the Celts. The first trackways across Britain are said to have been reindeer tracks; Elain is Welsh for deer, and it is possible that Elen is one of the horned goddesses portrayed in Celtic art, such as the two figures found at Lackford and Icklighmam.
Elen's story is told in The Dream of Macsen Wledig, one of the tales associated with the Mabinogion.Welsh mythology remembers her as the daughter of a chieftain of north Wales named Eudaf or Eudwy, who probably lived somewhere near the Roman base of Segontium now Caernarfon  in North Wales. and as the the wife of Macsen Wledig ( Magnus Maximus), the 4th-century  emperor  in Britain, Gaul and Spain who was killed in battle in 388 AD. 
She is remembered for having Macsen build roads across her country so that the soldiers could more easily defend it from attackers, thus earning her the name Elen Luyddog (Elen of the Hosts).
The Mabinogion  collection is drawn from Medeival  writings, although it is accepted that  most  of the tales were probably transmitted orally for centuries previous to their writing down. Nevertheless by the  twelfth century, Britain had been Christian for a long time while it is clear that while some characters have been diminished, while once they were gods or otherworldly heroes, they appear in the tales as ordinary humans. Some believe that Saint Elen or Helen is such a diminished goddess, and her tale does give us a few snippets which tend to support this idea. There is her mysterious appearance  in Macsen's dream , and the curious, almost ritualistic  surroundings in which she first appears. She sits upon a magical seat that grows bigger when Macsen joins Elen upon it. There is the emphasis  on her beauty and magnificance, which could indicate an otherworldly appearance. 
And then there is this business with the roads, which has led many modern pagans to proclaim her as goddess of roads, ley lines, shamanic journeying, a guardian of all who journey etc. In addition some modern pagan writers, in a bid to increase  the amount of information  we have on Elen, are assuming that she is identical with other goddesses such as Brighid or that she is the forerunner of such goddesses.
Through the ages Elen and Helen's  lives have been combined. In myth and legend Elen is representative of the land of Britain itself, Elen of the Ways istherefore  a rich combination  of legend, myth, history and imagination..

Transcension

( A flight of fancy? Maybe )

Tomorrow and eternity are one,
Whatever the situation,
Destiny rules by circumstance,
The pendulum of the clock ticks,
It is our battle to prepare.

Between earth and sky
Crimson petals fall,
Whispering their silence
Fall among stones freely,
Leaving fragments of emptiness.

Leaf shadows dance on the horizon
Slowly, fluttering,almost unsure,
Cascading in a whirl of wind
Mingling with the rain,
Falling lightly on the ground.

Fluffy clouds above
Build temples in the sky,
An ever mindful distraction
Far away floating,
Beyond Earth's fury.

Alpha tries to
Give Omega rest,
To cry no more
To be numb, immune,
Pulled all along by forces strong
Carried on the mirrors of time.

We spoke among prisms of silence
And words melted into air,
Our spirits glided outwards
Onwards into the beginning,
Searching the Cosmos
Following guiding stars.


Absorbing new life forces
The mind shines on,
Crazy diamonds, riding rays of light
No turning back
The soul moves on.

Beaming and glittering
Over a thousand peaks,
Memories forever planted
To haunt dreams of ceaseless time,
To hold us gently in transcension.

No to Governments plan to scrap the Human Rights Act

I have written of this before, but as the government yesterday again confirmed plans to scrap the Human Rights Act in the Queens speech it is to important a subject not to come back to. We should not allow politicians to take away our universal privileges for the benefit  of a chosen few and repeal legislation that has been crucial to lifes of so many ordinary people.The state has every interest in preventing light from being shone into dark corners.
The Human Rights Act was created to protect us all as individuals from abuses by the state and state bodies, allows UK nationals access to rights contained in the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) which allows us over 2,000 protections, ensuring all authorities treat people with fairness , dignity and respect, but gradually piece by piece the Tory's are trying to take away our basic freedoms and rights and want to overturn  these recognised principles that  we should all be proud of, but yet again they are attempting to steal them away,which  says so much about their mindset incidentally. They want to replace it with their own Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.They would weaken the rights of everyone, meaning less protection against powerful interests. It would also limit human rights to only cases  the Government considers "most serious!" Threatening the very concept of the universality of human rights.
However many remain fervent in their support for this Act because of its positive contribution to society and the message that it serves globally that we have enshrined an international human rights convention into UK law. The Human Rights Act is ours, scrapping it will take away the rights of everyone, and it is the most vulnerable that will suffer the most.
A useful reminder of whether the Act needs to change, or should remain is to look at the list of rights protected by the Act and ask yourself ,"Which one would I give away? Which one would I not want for myself or for members of my family?"the right to life? the right not to be tortured? the right to a fair trial? http:/legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1  
Sometimes we can't appreciate the value of something until it is taken away.We have to stand up for the Act.
Please call on Justice Secretary Michael Gove to save the Human Rights Act

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/issues/Human-Rights-Act

Pablo Neruda (12/7/04 -23/9/73) - Epithalamium

Have been re-reading recently the magnificent Pablo Neruda's Captain's Verses. A writer who I have long admired whose work who continues to inspire. He led a life charged with poetic and political energy and activity, and is now regarded as one of the greatest major poets of the last century. His poems charged with sensuality and passion. Here is a link to a previous post of mine about this poet of love :- https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/pablo-neruda-july-12-1904-september-23.html  .
Here I offer his rather beautiful "Epithalamium " which I dedicate to my lovely partner Jane. The mighty furbster Hope you enjoy. 

Epithalamium

Do you remember when
in winter
we reached the island?
The sea raised toward us
a crown of cold.
On the walls the climbing vines
murmured letting
dark leaves fall
as we passed.
ou too were a little leaf
that trembled on my chest.
Life's wind put you there.
At first I dd not see you :  I did not know
that you were walking with me,
until your roots
pierced my chest,
joined the threads of my blood,
spoke through my mouth,
flourished with me.
Thus was your inadvetant presence,
invisible leaf or branch,
and suddenly my heart
was filled with fruits and sounds.
You occupied the house
that darkly awaited you
and then you lit the lamp.
Do you remember, my love,
our first steps on the island?
The gray stones knew us,
the rain squalls,
the shouts of the wind in the shadow.
But the fire was
our only friend,
next to it we hugged
the sweet winter love
with four arms.
The fire saw our naked kiss grow
until it touched hidden stars,
and it saw grief be born and die
like a broken sword
against invincible love.
Do you remember,
oh sleeper in my shadow,
how sleep would grow
in you,
from your bare breast
open with  its twin domes
toward the sea, toward the wind of the island,
and how I in your dream sailed
free, in the sea and in the wind
yet tied and sunken
in the blue volume of your sweetness?
Oh sweet, my sweet,
spring changed
the island's walls.
A flower appeared like a drop
of orange blood,
and then the colors discharged
all their pure weight.
The sea reconquered its transparency,
night in the sky
outlined its clusters
and now all things murmured
our name of love, stone by stone
they said our name and our kiss.
The  island  of stone and moss
echoes in the secret of its grottoes
like the song in your mouth
and the flower that war  born
between the crevices of the stone
with its secret syllable
spoke, as it passed, your name
of blazing plant
and the steep rock, raised
like the wall of the  world,
knew my song , well beloved,
because earth, time, sea, island,
life, tide,
the seed that half opens
its lips in the earth,
the devouring flower,
the movement of spring,
everything recognizes us.
Our love was born
outside the wall,
in the wind,
in the night,
in the earth,
and that's why the clay and the flower,
the mud and the roots
know your name,
and know that my mouth
joined yours
because we  were sown together in the earth
and we alone did not know it
and that we grow together
and flower together
and therefore
when we pass
your name is on the petals
of the rose that grows on the stone,
my name is in  the grottoes.
They know it all,
we have no secrets,
we have grown together
but we did not know it.
The sea knows our love, the stones
of the rocky height
that our kisses flowered
with infinite purity,
as in their crevices  a scarlet
mouth dawns:
just as our love and the kiss
that joins your mouth and mine
in an eternal flower.
My love,
sweet spring,
flower and sea, surround us.
We did not change it
for our winter,
when the wind,
began to decipher your name
that today at all hours it repeats,
when
the leaves did not know
that you were a leaf,
when
the roots
did not know that you were seeking me
in my breast.
Love, love,
spring
offers us the sky
but the dark earth
is our name,
our love belongs
to all time and the eath.
Loving each other, my arm
beneath your neck of sand,
we shall wait
as earth and time change
on the island,
as the leaves fall,
from the silent climbing vines,
as autumn departs
through the broken window.
But we
are going to wait for
our friend,
our red-eyed friend,
the fire,
when the wind again
shakes the frontiers of the island
and does not know the names
of everyone,
winter
will seek us, my love,
always
it will seek us, because we know it,
because we do not fear it,
because we have
with us
fire
forever,
we have
earth with us
forever,
spring with us
forever,
and when a leaf
falls
from the climbing vines,
you know, my love,
what name is written
on that leaf,
a name that is yours and mine,
our lve name, a single
being, the arrow
that pierced winter,
the invincible love,
the fire of the days,
a leaf
that dropped upon my breast,
a leaf from the tree
of life
that made a nest and sang,
that put out roots,
that gave flowers  and fruits.
And so you see, my love,
how I move
around the island,
around the world,
safe in the midst of spring,
crazy with the light in the cold,
walking tranquil in the fire,
lifting your petal
weight in my arms
as if I had never walked
except with you my heart,
as if I could not walk
except with you,
as if  I could not sing
except when you sing.

Reprinted from :-  The  Captain's  Verses
- Pablo Neruda; New Directions Press 1973,
Translated by Donald D. Walsh

Marking 68th anniversary of the Nakba :- Day of catastrophe.

Today marks the 68th anniversary of the occupation of Palestine, so on this day as Palestinian people enter the 68th  year of dispossession and exile, Palestinians, friends of Palestine and supporters of justice and liberation , commemorate the Nakba ( day of catastrrophe) and call for the right of return for Palestinian refugees and freedom for Palestine.
68 years after the Nakba in which over 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and land and the state of Israel created on their land. Palestinians continue to struggle for their right tto return, for freedom from occupation and for justice.
Today also marks 68 years of land theft and bloodshed. It saw 531 villages being cleared , with massacres that led to 16,000 Palestinians being killed at the hands of Zionist para-military groups like Haganah, that later formed the core of the Israeli Defense Force, Ergun and the Stern Gang. Systematically removing the Palestinians from their land in an ethnic cleansing that continues to this day.
I will continue to side with the Palestinian who dares to dream of the day of return, when they can open up the locked doors of their stolen homes, are welcomed home, recognised  and encouraged by a world that acknowledges the injustice that has been inflicted upon them.
Today we will see the Palestinian people renew  their demands for return, to their cities, villages and lands that they were forced to leave in 1948. Many Palestinians still carry keys to the homes they or their ancestors were displaced from,all those years ago, a  continuing haunting memory of their existence.
For the past 68 years  Palestinians have resisted the Israeli Government's continued efforts to erase the memories of trauma and resistance that began with the Nakba and will remain rooted to their land. Beyond their suffering and Israels blockade of the West Bank and the open air prison we know as Gaza it does not stop their dream for their right to return and for having Jerusalem as their capital. 
Today we remember and recount the unique personal stories of those who lived through the Nakba  and acknowledge that today over 4 million registered Palestinians worldwide, the majority of them still living within 60 miles of the border of Israel and the West Bank and Gaza strip where their original homes are located. Israel refuses to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes or to pay them compensation as required by UN resolution 194  of 1948. Over 1.7 million Palestinians now live under occupation in the West Bank  imprisoned by an Israeli wall, and the over  2 million currently living under military siege in Gaza, denied a series of fundamental rights, that include the freedom to move, access to clean water, food, medicine and electricity.
Their catastrophe ongoing. But their will remains  unbroken, we stand with them today in solidarity,until they are allowed to move freely again in Palestine, until they are given back the dignity and respect and basic rights  that they deserve as human beings, hoping that this cycle of injustice can be ended,  it is not just about remembering , a day of mourning , it is acknowledging the Palestinians right to return,  maybe one day, one day the continued catastrophe will end.
Viva Palestina.

Hail Rebecca

The Rebecca riots  took place between 1839 and 1843, in the rural parts of Wales, here where I live in West Wales. Throughout Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire protests against the payment of tolls to use on the roads. 

On the 13th of May 1839, the first of the Rebecca riots took place at Efailwen near St Clears. The leader of the group of rioters was Thomas Rees (Twm Carnabwth) and he and the others dressed in women's clothes to march on Eifailwen tollgate. Apparently, the attack was unsuccessful because the men returned on 6 June, when they again destroyed the turnpike and this time burnt the tollhouse.

In the early 19th century many of the main roads in Wales were owned and operated by Turnpike Trusts. These trusts were supposed to maintain and even improve the condition of the roads and bridges through charging tolls to use them. In reality however, many of these trusts were operated by English businessmen whose main interest was in extracting as much money as they could from the locals. 

The farming community had suffered badly through poor harvests in the years preceding the protests and tolls were one of the biggest expense a local farmer faced. The charges levied to do even the simplest of things, such as taking animals and crops to market and bringing fertilisers back for the fields, threatened their livelihood and very existence.  The people finally decided enough was enough and took the law into their own hands; gangs were formed to destroy the tollgates.
During these protests, men disguised as women with blackened faces attacked the tollgates calling themselves "Rebecca and her daughter," probably referring to a passage from the Bible where Rebecca ( my sisters name incidentally) talks of the need to "possess the gates of those who hate them."
The tollgates were seen as symbols of oppression, and became the focus of discontent.But the protests weren’t purely about the tolls. For rural communities, mired in poverty, the gates were a symbol of gross inequality. Rents and church tithes were spiralling out of control, while the centuries-old Poor Law had paved the way for workhouses.The protesters also hated paying high taxes to the church and resented local magistrates that did nothing to help them. 

This movement sweeped my local countryside, a popular uprising off the oppressed peasantry. By day the countryside seemed quiet, but at night fantastically disguised horsemen careered along highways and through narrow lanes on their their rebellious quests.They developed uncanny skill in evading the police and the infantry, and although their mounts were unweildy farm horses they also succeeded in outwitting the dragoons, after all the rioters knew their territory much better and could spread false information about when they would strike next, often leading troops on a wild goose chase. 

Many of the protests tended to follow a ritual, whereby a ringleader (‘Rebecca’) would stumble towards a gate like a blind, elderly woman. The ‘daughters’ would then clear the path with an almighty racket. A local newspaper recalled the scene after a riot at Llandeilo: “pickaxes, hatchets, crowbars, and saws were set in operation and the gate was entirely demolished.'

They ceased as suddenly as they started, and for three and a half years my countryside was quiet and undisturbed. Then in the winter of 1842, they broke out again with greater violence, and this time continued throughout the following year.

On 19 Jun 1843 a crowd of around 4,500 Rebecca" rioters with blackened faces and dressed as women gathered and attacked the Carmarthen workhouse in Wales, and set about destroying it. It took the arrival of a unit of the British army to disperse them Other major tollgates destroyed included those at  Llanelli, Pontardulais, and Llangyfelach, and at the small village of Hendy near Swansea, a young woman named Sarah Williams, the tollhouse keeper was killed.

After months of disorder, the government concluded that the turnpike trusts should be merged and the hated  tolls reduced. Because of this it  took away many of the  major grievances of the protesters , and by 1845 my corner of West Wales was quiet again.

An inspiring uprising that had justice and reason on their side  and is still remembered  as one of the most  striking protest movements in modern Welsh history. That still strikes the imagination in our hearts, minds and deeds.

Further reading :- The Rebecca Riots- David Williams, University of Wales Press, 1986.

 

It be Friday the 13th

at least the sun is shining over here.

Civil disobedience

( a few thoughts that just drifted by)

Beyond voting,
And the convenience store of conscience,
We can slip outside the gates, 
With no room for control,
Disobey the rules, 
Follow another  path,
Sometimes things need to be bent,
For something else to to be put in place,
In compliance  we can be left  without grace,
With civil disobedience, we can break free,
Shake of their chains of obedience,
Do do not be afraid to stand apart.

Michael. S. Harper ( 18/4/38 -7/5/16) R.I.P - Here where Coltrane Is.

Sad to hear that Michael S Harper acclaimed poet and writer has passed away, known for his innovative use of jazz rhythms , cultural references and personal narrative has passed away.For Harper history and mythology were related. The mythology of white supremacy for instance. 
As an adolescent he was forced into awareness of racism in America. His familt moved from New York to Los Angeles where African Americans were the target of racial violence.
During high school he began experimenting with creative writing. He later attended  the famous Iowa workshop at the University of Iowa in Iowa city. As the only African American student in the poetry and fiction workshop classes, he endured misunderstanding and prejudice. However these experiences motivated him to confirm  the dualism instead in being an African American writer. He refused exclusive containment in either the African American or in the American category. Rather he affirmed his identity in both groups.
Harper's writing manipulated old European and  American myths to create new ones. His first poetry collection was called ' Dear John, Dear Coltrane (1970) for Harper, John Coltrane who he knew personally is both the man and his jazz. Harper included the music of poetry to affirm and articulate suffering in black life and culture, to gain from it and survive it, drawing attention in his work to the many injustices faced by African Americans in the course of his country's history.
Michael S. Harper  was the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island from 1988 to 1993, and was and will be continued to be regarded as a significant powerful voice in contemporary poetry.
The following poem is from his 1971 collection ' history is your heartbeat,' combining philosophical and social concepts and cultural references that is uniquely representative of the Civil Rights movement, mentioning Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and of course John Coltrane, out of this painful and tragic legacy he makes song.

Michael S Harper R.I.P

Here where Coltrane is 

Soul and race
are private dominions,
memories are modal
songs, a tenor blossoming,
which would paint suffering
a clear colo
r but is not in
this Victorian house
without oil in zero-degree
weather and a forty-mile-an-hour wind;
it is all a wet-knit family:
a love supreme

Oak leaves pile up on a walkway
and steps, catholic as apples
in a special mist of clear white
children who love my children.
I play 'Alabama'
on a warped record player
skipping the scratches
on your faces over the fibrous
conical hairs of plastic
under the wooden floors.

Dreaming on a train from New York
to Philly, you hand out six
notes which become an anthem
to our memories of you:
oak, birch, maple,
apple, cocoa, rubber.
For this reason Martin is dead;
for this reason Malcolm is dead;
for this reason Coltrane is dead
in the eyes of my first son are the browns
of these men and their music.

In the Circle, we are all equal.

                                           Image by Jane Ray

In the Circle, we are all equal.
There is no one  in front of you and there's  nobody behind you.
No one is above you, no one is below you.
The circle is Sacred  because it is designed to create Unity.

- Lakota Wisdom

Sadly some still gets golden parachutes,
Influence is daily up for sale, 
The rich get richer, leading to inequality,
Government policies still dividing all,
The earth in the 21st Century,
Still not a common treasury.  
Life is full of double standards;
The dark side of capitalism,
Our mainstream media fails to expose
There's something rotten at the core
The poor and the weak ridiculed
Who all  deserve dignity, respect,
Time to take down the barriers
For collective welfare, 

The system must fall,
Fill the world with beauty.
For everything and everyone to share.
In rich diversity, we are all still human
In the circle we can all be equal again.

In the garden of love

 ( for the mighty furbster, Jane for her birthday )


The moon is now in pisces,
This is a water sign,
Now is a good time to sow,
A sprinkling of jazz,
Positive vibrations.
Side by side
As clouds float past,
And the west wind blows,
Singing of dreaming and waking,
The smell of the earth rises. 

Planting bulbs,
Our memories will be forever stored,
Tucked in corners,
Mingling in the future,
Together will always run.
Peace by piece,
Our love will grow,
Following Pan's footprints,
Fireflies casting glow.

In the garden of love,
Wildness rules,
With all our strength,
We will nurture,
Take care,
Give all that is needed.

40 years after the American Indian Movement surrenders at Wounded Knee: Leonard Peltier's injustice continues.

                                 participants of 1973, Wounded Knee occupation.

On this day - 8 May - 1973, the American Indian Movement's  (AIM) occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota ended with the surrender of some 120 Native American and Lakota activists.
Initially provoked by the corruption of the Government's approved tribal governance , their goal too was to protest injustices against their tribes, and the many violations of various treaty's with the United States  government and current abuses and repression against their people. In the 2 years prior to the confrontation more than 60 Indians at the Pine Ridge reservation had been killed, without anyone having been bought to justice for their crimes. The occupation began on February 27 lasting for 71 days and was symbolically located at  Wounded Knee which was the site of a US government massacre of 300 Lakota in 1880. In addition to its historical significance , Wounded  Knee was one of the poorest communities in the United States and shared with the other Pine Ridge settlements some of the country's lowest rates of life expectancy.
The actions of AIM acclaimed by many Native Americans. The 200 activists from AIM soon faced a federal government force including Marhalls, the FBI  and the Nebraska National Guard who responded to the occupation with a full scale military style assault. In the resulting melee two fedral agents were shot along with two brave warriors - Buddy Lamont and Frank Clearwater - died during the siege, where over 200,000 rounds of ammunition were fired at the protestors. Also 2 federal agents had been shot during the standoff. This use  of military force by the federal government later ruled to be unlawful..

After AIM's eventual surrender Leonard Peltier, a member of the Lakota Ogkla Sioux was arrested and charged  with the murder of the two FBI agents on the  flimsiest off evidence. Leonard Peltier is now one of American society's  longest serving political prisonersi, considered to be the Native American peoples  own Nelson Mandela, who though admitting to being there at the time, to help protect his community from continuing violence, has always proclaimed his innocence of actually shooting anyone.
Still in jail today despite the protests and claims of AIM and human rights groups, including Amnesty International. His prosecution and conviction  is felt by many to have driven only  by his participation  in the American Indian Movement. He has continued to be a victim of the racism and corruption embedded in the US criminal justice system. But Leonard Peltier is not simply a victim, he is also a fighter, writer, activist, grandfather, Nobel Peace Prize nominess, and was the Presidential candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party in 2004 whose spirit refuses to be beaten. Leonard his friends family and comrades have fought over the years for real justice to be done. In the years since his conviction, millions upon millions of people around the world have come  to learn of his case, agree that he is innocent and demand his freedom. 
With failing health I hope he is given his freedom soon, and the injustice that continues to be metered out finally ends. 40 years later despite serious concerns about the fairness of the proceedings leading to his conviction is time that President Obama grants him clemancy on humanitarian grounds and in the interests of justice.

http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info 

                                       
                                           Leonard Peltier

Congratulations to Monster Raving Loony Party in Wales, but alarmed about UKIP's rise.

Following yesterday's Welsh Assembly elections I would like to congratulate the Monster Raving Loony Party for winning more than two National Front numpties in the South Wales East region.
But very worried about increased vote for UKIP, these dangerous draconian, anti-immigrstion, anti-foreigners, Little Englander party whose vote is up by 11.5% here in Wales. Resulting in their first Senedd seats. There are  8 of the bastards now. Including former Tory's Neil Hamilton, a liar and cheat, a man so dodgy that even the Tories kicked him out of their party and Mark Reckless. Then you've got the racist Graham Bennett, recently embroiled in a race row, when he blamed Cardiff's rubbish problem on Eastern European immigrants. And five bloody more in various shades of dubiousness The ugly whiff ot racism combined with the stench of xenophobia never far from UKIP's doors.  Votes from disgruntled Tories or just from people who have been fooled. How can anyone though  be fooled by their anti-Europe, anti-refugee, anti-immigrant shit. Mark my words they will  to shit on any form of democracy that lies in their path. Is their a risk that their policies of blame and division will now become normalised here in Wales. We can't allow this to happen.
I think the people of Wales should hang their heads in shame or at least wake up.

35 years since the death of Bobby Sands ( 9/3/54 - 5/5/81)

As people go to polling booths today to vote in assembly elections, thought  i'd remember a man who also took part in the political process subsequently becoming  a Member of Parliament.
Today marks the 35th anniversary of the death of Robert  Gerard "Bobby " Sands  who died after being on  hunger strike for 66 days in the Long Kesh  Maze Prison in Northern Ireland  to protest against British treatment of IRA prisoners.  He was 27, emaciated weighing a mere 95 pounds his fillings having fallen out, his organs shut down and the whites of his eyes turned orange from toxins released.
Over the next few months, 9 other republican prisoners followed him, the culmination of a 5 year struggle in the prisons of Northern Ireland demanding jail reforms and the return of special category status allowing them to be treated as prisoners of war , allowing them the privileges of POW's as specified in the Geneva Convention.
Margaret Thatcher the British  Prime Minister at the time decided that no concessions be made to the prisoners, and with cold and calculated cruelty she and her government allowed them to die.
Bobby Sands had been bought to the republican struggle through personal experience after being intimidated out of his job as an apprentice car builder  by fellow workers. and after his family were intimidated out of their home in Rathcoole, a predominantly loyalist area of North Belfast, growing up under the cloud of nationalist and loyalist divisions, Catholics like Bobby were  reduced to second class citizens while the Protestant majority were granted privileges in jobs, education and services.
In 1971 the British introduced internment - allowing its forces to arrest anyone they saw fit and hold them indefinitely without charge. In 1972 the year he joined the IRA he was picked up by the police beaten up and tortured after some handguns were found in a house he was staying in and was sentenced to 5 years in Long kesh, he was rearrested in 1976 and in a juryless trial was sentenced to 14 years  for possession of a gun found in a car he shared with 5 other people
Developing his political ideas he was to  become a leader and inspiration to the prisoners.He pushed hard for prison reforms confronting the authorities, and for his outspoken ways was often given solitary confinement sentences He was also a prolific writer , who wrote numerous poems . His name will always be remembered, his sacrifice never forgotten. Today his smiling face is known the world over and his fight for freedom  remains an inspiration wherever people rise up against  injustice. Following his death Nelson Mandela led a hunger strike by prisoners on Robben Island to improve their own conditions.Palestinian prisoners have increasingly  used the same tactics too to bring attention to their plight. The hunger strikers who died over thirty years ago still continue to provide inspiration to political prisoners everywhere.
Many years later it is perhaps difficult to fully appreciate the sacrifices made by Sands and his comrades, which even if you disagree with the aims for which they gave their lives remains a monumental testament to the power of the human spirit.
It should be noted that their fight won huge support in Ireland, North and South and around the world One month before his death Bobby Sands was elected to Parliament in a rebuke to the British Government from the people of Northern Ireland having won 30,492 votes, ten thousand more than Thatcher in her London Constituency of Finchley and with a majority twice as large. I remember  Thatcher's ( British PM at the time)  callous refusal to reach any compromise - " crime is crime, it is not political." she said,  which only served to reinvigorate the republican cause at the time. It is estimated that over 100,000 people attended Bobby's funeral.and  an international outpouring of grief and anti British demonstrations were to take place. Protests were held in Paris, Milan, Ghent , Australia and Greece. In a ripple effect that was felt across the world.
And although Thatcher claimed victory , her government conceded the hunger strikers demands soon after the protest ended and even she, the main adversary of Sands and his comrades was moved to say years later " It was possible to admire the courage of Sands and the other hunger strikers who died."
In political terms , the 1981 hunger strike marked a sea change in irish republicanism and in the history of the Northern Ireland conflict, the scale of the mass campaign in support of the prisoners it helped turned the republican struggle increasingly towards a political, rather than a purely military focus , away from viole, decommissioning  and towards ceasefire  which would be crucial in laying the ground for the peace process which would have once seemed inconceivable, that has continued to prosper because peace and justice is what the people want and need.
Bobby Sands stature keeps growing, and his poetry and songs still resound, let us remember him, let us never forget.
He said before he died " our revenge will be the laughter of our children." - a phrase that says all that we need to know about him and looks beyond the bloodshed to true peace.

Here is a link to a previous post that includes some of his fine poetry

http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/bobby-sands9354-5581-rhythm-of-time.html

a small eulogy from my own pen :-

For Bobby

He died in springtime,
When flowers were waking,
But his passion born of love and anger,
Remained undimmed, his will unbroken,
On the side of justice and right,
The most profound human hunger of all,
Through pain and struggle he rode on,
Kept up the fight, let the world be his witness,
Let truth shine it's light, for his cause to be seen,
Strength and courage carried this poets bones,
No fear, only defiance was to be seen in his eyes,
And  now today his spirit still lives on, 
As the ugliness of injustice continues to roam.