Rest in Power Jeremy Hardy, Comedian and Social Justice Campaigner

Sad to hear that Jeremy Hardy ,the  much-loved British comedian and activist, died far to young earlier today after a long battle with cancer aged 57. He is survived by his wife, filmmaker and photographer Katie Barlow, and his daughter Betty who were with him when he died.
"Friends and family of comedian Jeremy Hardy are immensely sad to announce that Jeremy died of cancer, early on Friday 1st February," said   his publicist Amanda Emery in a statement. "He was with his wife and his daughter as he died. He retained to the end the principles that guided his life; trying to make the world more humane, and to be wonderfully funny.He retained to the end the committed principles that guided his life; trying to make the world more humane, and to be wonderfully funny. He will be enormously missed by so many, who were inspired by him and who laughed with him. A fitting memorial will take place, details to be announced soon."
Born in Farborough, Hampshire, in 1961, he started his career as a stand-up comedian and won the coveted Perrier Award in 1988 and best live act at the ITV Comedy Awards in 1991.
His TV debut came in 1986 when he starred in Now - Something Else appearing alongside Rory Bremner. The impressionist posted that Hardy was "unfussy, unshowy, principled, self-deprecating," and "funnier than the lot of us put together"
He went on to play Corporal Perkins in an episode of Blackadder Goes Forth in 1989 Having studied history and politics at the University of Southampton, the life-long socialist wrote at length about social politics for publications including The Guardian and ES Magazine.
Hardy  built a reputation for weaving socialist politics into his comedy acts, balancing outrage at the state of the world and the United Kingdom with a compassion for ordinary people. Away from stand-up, Hardy was known for his social justice campaigning and guest appearances on BBC Two's Mock the Week and BBC Radio 4's The News Quiz and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. He was also an author and actor.
Like many of his '80s contemporaries, Hardy was an overtly political comic who railed against the perceived injustices of the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
 When he started off in comedy he said that he originally hadn't intended to be a "political" comic, but that the atmosphere of Margaret Thatcher's Britain made it inevitable.
"I'd always been a sort of leftist, liberal social democrat, but the country in the 80s was so right-wing that I thought I'd become part of some beleaguered minority of ultra-leftists," he told friend and fellow comedian Jack Dee on the BBC show Chain Reaction.
He was also fiercely opposed to the Iraq War begun by the labour government of Tony Blair.He was ubiquitous on demonstrations against war, austerity, racism and in support of striking workers.
One of his greatest political passions was Palestine. For most comedians, especially those who regularly appeared on BBC panel shows, the topic was too sensitive to broach. Of course, the main reason for this is that few take the effort to do their homework, let alone travel to the region to see the situation first hand.
In 2002, at the peak of the Second Intifada, which had then been raging for two years, Hardy took up an offer by his friend Leila Sansour - chief executive of the Open Bethlehem NGO, to be the subject of a film in which he travelled to the West Bank as part of the International Solidarity Movement to be a human shield.
The result was the very moving, and very funny documentary, Jeremy Hardy Vs The Israeli Army.
which saw the comedian facing down Israeli gunfire and eventually become trapped along with six other British activists in Bethlehem as the town was placed under siege by the Israelis.
Palestine activist Leila Sansour had wanted to bring a "recognised name" - someone famous - to the West Bank to see the occupation for themselves, and to bring the solidarity movement to a wider audience. The only person willing to do it was Jeremy Hardy.
"I could see she had a strange faith in the power of minor celebrity," says Hardy in the film's introduction.

 He remained a committed activist in solidarity with Palestinians, raising money for Palestinian causes including the Palestine Trauma Centre and Medical Aid for Palestinians.
He campaigned against the Israeli military's use of checkpoints, forcing patients to transfer between ambulances on either side of often arbitrarily-placed barriers.
"People die because they don't reach the hospital in time," he told The New Arab. "People also miss appointments all the time because of getting held up at the checkpoints, for example for not having the right paperwork.
"It just highlights the brutality of the occupation in the way it just makes ordinary everyday life, things that we take for granted, impossible."
 In one of his last visits to the West Bank, a trip organised by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) along with fellow British comedian Imran Yusuf, he highlighted the ongoing plight of the people of occupied Hebron and the attempts by Israeli settlers to gain full control of the centre of the city.
“They want them to leave," he tells the camera. "They want Palestinians to leave. They want the businesses to close, they want people to stop coming here to shop. They want the economy to collapse. And then take all of it, take all of the land, basically."

  There’s been no crop failure here, there’s been no natural disaster - people have just been crushed by being occupied.”
With a few exceptions - such as his close friend Mark Steel - there will be no mainstream voices left in the ever-shrinking pool of "actually well-informed satire" after Hardy's passing, let alone those who can speak and ridicule with authority about Syria or Palestine or war and capitalism.
 Tributes this morning were led by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Who said on twitter
" Jeremy Hardy was a dear, lifelong friend. He always gave his all for everyone else and the campaigns for social justice."
 Fellow comedians and activists also took to Twitter to remember their friend.
 Jack Dee, who worked with Hardy on Channel 4 sketch show Jack and Jeremy's Real Lives and I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, tweeted that Hardy was "ground-breakingly brilliant, off the register funny, compassionate and caring".
Fellow comedian David Baddiel called his death simply "a great loss to comedy".
 Deputy Labour leader John McDonnell praised Hardy for "courageously supporting campaigns for social justice".
Journalist Owen Jones added: "Utterly devastated to hear of Jeremy Hardy's death. He was such a wonderful guy, hilarious, full of humanity and heart, committed to fighting for a world without injustice. Just a lovely bloke."
Until 2001, Hardy wrote a column for the Guardian newspaper in which he regularly expressed his support for the Socialist Alliance .His radical views did not always go down well, however, and he was once booed by members of the audience on Radio Four's Just A Minute for ranting about the Royal Family when asked to talk about "parasites".
In 2004, Burnley Council cancelled one of his shows after he said members and supporters of the British National Party should "be shot" on an episode of his Speaks to the Nation programme.
 Hardy’s political history and identity is neatly captured by two recent tweets. The comedian’s own last message on his official account – sent at 2.40am on 8 January – attacked Tony Blair’s latest intervention in the Brexit debate, warning that the former premier risked precipitating hard Brexit and a right-wing Tory government.
Hardy was twice married, to American actress and comedian Kit Hollerbach, who appeared alongside him in radio sitcoms and with whom he adopted a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1990. A memorial to Mr Hardy is set to be announced.
Sadly  he never lived to see the end of the occupation of Palestine or the kind of people he thought should run the country actually taking power in Britain. Though his death was untimely, Jeremy remained philisophical on matters of mortality and the apparent pointlessness of life:
"Why don’t they just accept that life is sad and cheer up? After all, it’s not forever."
 Rest in Power to such a good man  and one of the few genuinely funny and radical comedians who chose to use his comedy to change the world, rather than to fill stadiums.

https://inews.co.uk/light-relief/jokes/jeremy-hardy-comedian-funniest-jokes-quotes/

No to outside influence in Venezuela

Since 15 January, the situation in Venezuela has escalated dramatically when the opposition-controlled National Assembly declared that Maduro had usurped power. Opposition leader Juan Guaido proclaimed himself interim president on 23 January. The United States and other countries swiftly recognised him as the country's leader. This US-Venezuelan gambit is the latest attempt by the Washington “swamp” to fully re-enter its historical role in Latin America as congenital genocidals.
You have to ask yourself , why would the US and UK governments, states where millions rely on food banks, care about starving Venezuelans when they have proven they don't care about people starving in their own countries. They care because Venezuala  has the  largest oil reserves on the planet, and would take this time to take the opportunity of grabbing it for themselves. This together with the Bank of England refusing to  return £900 million in gold bullion smacks at another attempt at regime change.
Currently  President Trump faces  his own crisis situation at home, with his cave-in over the shutdown that has led to government workers, 700,000 of them, facing day after day without pay. What better way to divert attention from the domestic crisis than a military intervention in Venezuela.  Of course, there’s more to this than that, as the USA has always regarded Latin America as its backyard and regularly intervenes in the region- the military coup against Allende in Chile, the invasion of Grenada and Panama, the support for every murderous military dictatorship from Somoza in Nicaragua to the overthrow of Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic to enthusiastic support for the bloody regime of Videla in Argentina.
Some backgroud  to the current cisis in Venezuela  is needed ,during the early 2000s, when oil prices were high, socialist President Hugo Chávez used oil profits to reduce inequality and poverty, building over two million homes and capping the price of basic goods such as flour, cooking oil and toiletries.When oil prices dropped in 2014, the government suddenly had to make lots of cutbacks. This led many people to begin buying goods on the black market, causing inflation to rise and unemployment, which  is set to rise above 44% by 2020.  There are now chronic food shortages. This has brought forth protests around the country, protests that were answered with severe repression by the regime, which responded violently to strikes and demonstrations, and reported cases of human rights abuses.There is currently a very real social crisis in Venezuela. This crisis  which is very complicated manifests itself in real hunger, shortage of basic household commodities, medicine and  mass migration to Colombia, and the US.
Now the old bourgeoisie, organised around Guaido and his party, is attempting to overthrow the Maduro regime of the state bourgeoisie, with the backing of the USA. The Americans are eying up the rich resources of Venezuela, not just oil but other raw materials, diamonds, gold, natural gas, gold, bauxite, iron ore, and hydroelectric power.
Neither Maduro nor Guaido have an answer to the severe economic  and humanitarian crisis hitting Venezuela. The masses there have to begin to organise against both these wings of the ruling class. This will be a difficult task but is one worth engaging with and seeking to understand..We should  remind ourselves for now  though that the Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, who I do not view uncritically is  the twice democratically elected legitimate president of the country. He was sworn in after being elected by the popular vote, on January 10, 2019, and is legally entitled to serve a six-year term as president. Juan Guaidó is the head of the legitimately elected National Assembly. He is an Opposition leader, though he has declared himself “interim president of Venezuela”. This situation is complex and fraught with possibility of further political and social breakdown, and requires skilful and good-faith diplomacy. Cynical political chicanery and bluster from  outside forces are unwarranted at this moment in time.
Currently the Venezualan military aims to protect its privileged  position and stand with rhe Maduro system. While Maduro aims to hold onto power it is at same time going to be very difficult for him to solve the Veneuala's economic crisis. He has it must be said  lost confidence among  huge swathes of the population. Yet for now holds the backing of the military and the majority of the populace. .
In the meantime President Maduro,  has called opposition leader Juan Guaido a US "puppet" and accused Washington of attempting to organise a coup in Venezuela and declared his intent to cut off diplomatic ties.
Addressing  Donald Trump in English to demand that Washington keep its “hands off” the country, after the US imposed sanctions on its state oil company in recognition of Juan Guaido as president.
“Donald Trump, do not get involved with Venezuela! Hands off Venezuela! Donald Trump, hands off Venezuela!” Maduro said, blaming Washington for the political conflict that is causing tremors in the country.
Maduro’s words came shortly after US imposed sanctions on the country’s state-owned oil company PDVSA in order to “help prevent the further diversion“ of assets by the country’s government. Venezuela’s president called Washington’s actions an attempt “to steal” the company, and promised to take countermeasures “to protect the interests of Venezuela.”
The US, imposing leaders, as it did earlier in the 20th century, is another phase of its gunboat diplomacy that has been seen  time and time again and they ought to keep their bloody hands off. They and their European counterparts in France, Britain and Germany should  not interfere,  and stay at home to solve their own chronic political and economic crises. This is a time for negotiation and compromise not a winner takes all showdown that could lead to civil war costing many lives. A peaceful solution is what is urgently  needed, however .the planet is dividing into distinct blocks in a period of post economic  collapse, each one with  their own spurious agendas,  whether it be China, Russia and Iran  or the USA, UK and other western  nations and Israel on the other. We are living in truly dangerous times.
In connection with all this I would urge  people here in the UK to get their MP's to sign the following EDM (Early Day Motion) 2022 https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/52512/outside-interference-in-venezuela

Outside influence in Venezuela

'  That this House express its opposition to outside interference in Venezuela, whether from the US or elsewhere; believes that the future governance of Venezuela is a matter for Venezuelans alone to determine; rejects the US President Donald Trump's approach to regime change, which violates international law; express its disappointment at the UK Government's decision to fall in behind the US Administration's actions towards Venezuela; and urges the Government to constructively engage with the existing Government of Venezuela and other political forces to support a dialogue and a negotiated peaceful settlement that can overcome the crisis in Venezuela.

Question Authority

Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening
terrorising fact that we do not know who we are, 
or where we are going in this ocean of chaos,it has been the authorities - the political, the religious, the educational authorities -
who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules regulations, informing and forming our minds to view their reality.
To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable  open-mindedness, chaotic confused vulnerability to inform yourself ".

- Timothy Leary. 

The definition of "authority" is the power to make orders or make decisions ; the power or right to durect or control" someone or something" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authority
To question authority is to call into question the power or right of that authority to direct or control people or events. Questioning authority asks "Why do I have to do what you tell me I should do? Why can't I do as I plase instead of as you instruct me to?"
The human world is in ruins. It does not seem to be getting any better, with the rise of division, sexism, religious extremism, racism, forces of fascism, xenophobia, homophobia and general intolerance.Then we have the mess that is Brexit, which was supposed to give us an element of control but in effect has left us all powerless, fighting amongst ourselves. The sooner we can withdraw from it all the better. Timothy Leary was right when he urged young people to "drop out " in 1966. His message all the more profoundly true today, in the awful times we live in.
Life in modern society seems to offer us no future. The modern world has failed on all levels. Capitalism and industrialism that is fuelling catastrophic climate change cannot be reformed for the benefit of mankind. 
Have you ever wondered  how a sickening atrocity like the Holocaust could happen. People being blindly compliant and obedient with unadulterated evil. The mantra "think for yourself and question authority" speaks a universal simple truth, which is  that society isn't right, and we have to trust our own hearts and minds at end of the day, no matter what anyone tells us to do. 
It's not easy to stand up for something when it seems everyone else is sitting quietly in blind complacency, and turning ther heads away. But it's up to all of us to continue to question authority, when the needs be, because if we don't, who else will? No species can evolve new features or behaviours if there is no change in their environment and similarly society cannot become more equal and just unless every aspect of it is questioned. Societal progress can only be achieved by those willing to seek out what is wrong and challenge it without swaying to power nor denying reason.
People worldwide are beginning to question their leaders in government and wonder if they are to blame for the mess the world finds itself in. Standing up against injustice. Ultimately the questioning of authority is not only a good thing, it is a necessary thing. It is the ever so precious backbone of freedom, that is essential to all.
Cherish the right to protest . Cherish the right to be different. Cherish the right to question authority.   Or as our Governments carry out policies that ae grotesquely cruel and immoral, just simply relax and keep your heads down and move along with your normal consensus lives, because after all your Government will continue to take care of you, and keep listening to the authoritarians  and everything will be fine. 

Holocaust Memorial Day

Today marks Holocaust Memorial Day, on the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz Birkenau,the largest Nazi death camp in occupied Poland. where 1.6 million men, women children were killed in the holocaust.
The day aims to remind people of the crimes and loss of life and encourage remembrance in a world scarred by genocide  and prevent it ever being forgotten.
Alongside the six million Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, hundreds of thousands of others were targeted by Hitler's regime - including trade unionists, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transpeople, (LGBT) gypsies, disabled people and the mentally ill, and others attacked for their race or simply being different. At Belsen, Chelmno, Revensbrul to name a few more among hundreds where the inhumanity of man to man was endorseded by the Nazi regime.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is ‘Torn from Home’ and encourages people to reflect on how the enforced loss of a safe place to call ‘home’ is part of the trauma faced by anyone experiencing persecution and genocide. ‘Home’ usually means a place of safety, comfort and security. On Holocaust Memorial Day 2019 we will reflect on what happens when individuals, families and communities are driven out of, or wrenched from their homes, because of persecution or the threat of genocide, alongside the continuing difficulties survivors face as they try to find and build new homes when the genocide is over.
Shockingly  more than  2.6 million British people think that the Holocaust is a myth a poll  has found. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/holocaust-memorial-day-poll-uk-jews-murdered-nazi-germany-hope-not-hate-a8746741.html?fbclid=IwAR0IWwpY3BB_EMp9pRlMMDZzmM1GvcjQxDVAqoec7hlNbLu7jjemZkcCLuc
HMDT chief executive Olivia Marks-Woldman said: "The Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation and has implications for us all. Such widespread ignorance and even denial is shocking.

"Without a basic understanding of this recent history, we are in danger of failing to learn where a lack of respect for difference and hostility to others can ultimately lead.
"With a rise in reported hate crime in the UK and ongoing international conflicts with a risk of genocide, our world can feel fragile and vulnerable. We cannot be complacent."
 Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "We know that education is vital in the fight against ignorance and hate.

"Whatever the statistics, one person questioning the truth of the Holocaust is one too many and so it is up to us to redouble our efforts to ensure future generations know that it did happen and become witnesses to one of the darkest episodes in our history."
HMD is for everyone. Each year across the UK, thousands of people come together to learn more about the past and take action to create a safer future. We know they learn more, empathise more and do more.Together we bear witness for those who endured genocide, and honour the survivors and all those whose lives were changed beyond recognition.
It is important that we do not forget,  but  if we look at history this is not the only time that genocide has occurred, and history repeats. Humanity continues to turn against itself.Yesterday for instance was Australia day or for many others Invasion Day, when people remembered the terrible wrongs and crimes against the aboriginal people, then there is Colombus Day on the 8th  of October, you see the list is endless.
Somehow  human beings around the world are capable of so much hate, we should work together to prevent this. Remember those who have resisted, shown bravery and courage. We should remember them all. Sadly we seem to forget from past pain and experience. There is still so much to lean, we should stand united against genocide wherever it occurs. We should never forget where hatred and bigotry can lead. There can never be anytime for passivity, and we must  stand strong against dark forces  of intolerance, bigotry and division that create them. .
Some other  places  and people that the world sometimes forgets.

Cambodia,

Darfur,

Siebrenica,

Karabakh,  

Bosnia, 

Liberia,

Sudan,

Holodonor,

 Armenia, 
                                 
the ethnic cleansing of indigeneous Palestinians,

The Indigeneous Peoples of  America,

Checknya,

Congo,

India

and the genocide of slavery

and on and on and on.

We are all human, and we should never forget, where hate and division is fostered we should
strive for equality , peace and justice for the whole of mankind.

First They Came - Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the Trade Unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade Unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left To speak out for me.

Conscious Consumer

( a poem released last night at local monthly poetry meet the Cellar Bards)

Strolling down the supermarkets aisles
my wavering willpower in temptations path
special offers buy one, get one free
rows of ready meals, beer and crisps
on spur of moment, shopping list changes
as I walk on by must try to stay focussed
find some sustainable coffee, organic chocolate
candles and bubble bath that ease the mind
to help distract from capitalists obsessions
with greed and unmitigated  power.

Advertisements  release hunger
suppress the inner need for control
misconcieving  and wetting appetite
subliminally like others forget to think
act like a sheep and buy another drink
a trick that  makes  me  angry
when environmental degradation
and human rights abuse continue  to grow
stuck among endless rows of plastic
processed food, that  looks and tastes like shit.

Shopping can be a political act
what we choose to boycott, buy or consume
in the meantime will grab a notepad and pen
sip milk of human kindness that never ends
cancel out all walls of oppression
seek outsretched arms of  affiliation
avoid goods stolen from Palestinian land
find free keys of love, for heart to rest
rekindle the gift of friendship
places to ditch superfluouos crap

Eurovision Artwashing Apartheid : Israel 2019

Israel is expected to host the Eurovision Song Contest in May 2019, following Netta Barzilai’s win at the 2018 edition. Israel is shamelessly using Eurovision as part of its official Brand Israel Strategy which presents  “Israel’s prettier face” to whitewash and distract attention from its war crimes against Palestinians.

Israel massacred 62 Palestinians in Gaza, including six children just two days after its 2018 Eurovision win. That same evening, Netta Barzilai performed a celebratory concert in Tel Aviv, hosted by the mayor, and said, “We have a reason to be happy.”

And Shortly after her win, Barzilai said she looked forward to the world seeing “the Israeli carnival” when Jerusalem hosts the contest next year. People will see “how wonderful we are, what a vibe we have. Best people… the best place in the world.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called Barzilai “the best ambassador of Israel,” underlining his far-right government’s art-washing agenda.

Inspired by conscientious artists who shunned Sun City in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, Palestinian artists and cultural organizations have called for nonviolent pressure in the form of boycotts on Israel until it complies with its obligations under international law.

Last year alone Israel killed 290 Palestinians and injured more than 20,000, including thousads shot with live sniper fire. Most of these fatalites and injuries took place in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians have been demonstratng for the end of Israel's criminal siege and for the right to return to the homes that they have been expelled from since 1947.

Israel effectively declared itself an apartheid state by adopting the "Jewish Nation-State Law." last year, Palestinian citizens are now constitutionally denied equal rights, further enshrining racist discrimination aginst Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Against this backdrop of escalating brutality and entrenched apartheid. Israel is desperate for new ways to whitewash its violations of Palestinian human rights.  

Straight out of apartheid South Africa’s propaganda playbook, Israel uses the arts to explicitly deflect growing condemnations of its violations of Palestinian human rights. Israel is using Eurovision to art-wash its egregious crimes against the Palestinian people..

Watched by 186  million people last  year Eurovision is a hugely popular televised event. But already, hundreds of prominent artists including former finalists and one winner, legendary artists, trade unions and political parties. have supported the Palestinians call to boycott the contest, if hosted by Israel regardless of its location.
In September, about 140 artists, including musicians, writers, actors, directors, novelists, and poets,  including six Israeli artists, signed a letter calling for the boycott of the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest
.https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/sep/07/boycott-eurovision-song-contest-hosted-by-israel
The letter  demanded the song contest should be boycotted if it is “hosted by Israel while it continues its grave, decades-old violations of Palestinian human rights.”
“Until Palestinians can enjoy freedom, justice and equal rights, there should be no business-as-usual with the state that is denying them their basic rights," the letter said.
And tens of thousands of people have signed petitions urging  broadcasters and participants to refuse to go.

 The European Broadcasting Union has since written to the Israeli prime minister requesting that "visitors to Israel be allowed to travel anywhere without restrictions regardless of their political opinions or sexual orientation, and that [Israeli public broadcaster] Kan have complete freedom in editing the broadcast".

However, some have dubbed this a pointless demand given that it is a request that concerns itself only with the contest, and not on lifting the systematic repression placed upon Palestinians and vocal supporters of their liberation all year round.

Even if Netanyahu agrees, the contest would be taking place in a country that continues to colonise Palestinians through an illegal occupation, regular house demolitions, discriminatory laws, and its deadly blockade.

How can an event like the Eurovision Song Contest, despite its slogan of “Dare to Dream,” not be deemed complicit with the subjugation of Palestine by allowing Israel to play host?
This year will be the fifty-second year of the occupation of Palestine, and is unlikely to be the last. Let us do more than just dare to dream of a free Palestine but work towards it and support it in whatever way we can. The normalisation of Israeli Apartheid is part of a broader structure of erasure and violence.. We must refuse to be complicit. Until Palestine is free.
Join more than 35,000 people and sign the petition to boycott Eurovision hosted by Israel!
In Solidarity.

We, the undersigned residents of Europe and beyond, call on members of the European Broadcasting Union -- our public broadcasters -- to withdraw from the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Israel, to avoid being complicit in Israel's ongoing violations of Palestinian human rights. 
We support the many prominent artists, including former contestants, who have endorsed the appeal of Palestinian artists and journalists to turn their backs on Eurovision 2019.
We urge songwriters and performers to boycott the 2019 contest hosted by Israel just as they once boycotted the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Ursula K. Le Guin (21/10/1929 - 22/1/2018) - A Slow Burning Fury

Celebrated beloved author, American literary legend and visionary Ursula K. Le Guin who wrote science fiction, fantasy, essays and poetry, who we lost a year ago today. A quote of hers is pemanently embedded on this blog. Have written about her before, this is a vastly updated post based on previous ones.
Her body of work encompasses novels, including the famous and beloved Earthsea novels, a series of epic fantasy novels that set the blueprint for the genre. novellas, short stories, poetry, criticism and more (including speculative anthropology). She published her first short story at thirty-two, and while perhaps the chief characteristic of her early work was, as she says, an "open romanticism," Le Guin's work gradually became, again in her own words, "something harder, stronger, and more complex." It also became the site of radical emancipatory visions, courageous and profound reimaginings of the way life is, and a beautiful yet clear-eyed utopianism. It became, in other words, extraordinary.

She was a giant of 20th century literature. On her shoulders stand not just classics of genre fiction but everything from Salman Rushdie’s postcolonial magical realism to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter mega-franchise.
Le Guin used science fiction and fantasy not as a genre but a “method”. Future societies, distant planets and magical realms provided “a safe, sterile laboratory for trying out ideas”. 

 Ursula K. Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley California, on October 21, 1929.
Le Guin’s parents were anthropologists, their summer home “a gathering place for scientists, writers, students and California Indians”. Their interactions with Native Americans seem to have laid the basis for much of her “Hainish cycle” of novels, which explore a variety of planets through the culture shock of the ambassadors sent to meet them.
One of the visitors was Robert Oppenheimer.  Le Guin would later use Oppenheimer as the model for her protagonist in The Dispossessed.
Ursula had three older brothers,Karl, Theodore, and Clifton.The family had a large book collection, and the siblings all became interested in reading while they were young
She might be best-known nowadays for the groundbreaking book ' The Left Hand of Darkness' a science fiction novel published in 1969 set in the Hainish universe, Le Guin often used science fiction to transgress normalised conceptions of gender and sexuality.Not content to limit her incisive examinations of society to fiction and allegory, Le Guin spoke and wrote frequently about contemporary politics. She often described fantasy and fiction as a tool for social change, a way of imagining the world not as it  but as it should be. Her criticisms in both fiction and beyond it , often focused on social inequality and the unsustainability of capitalism .

Her novel  ' The Dispossessed' was a thought experiment on how an anarchist society would work. The novel  begins with the journey of the physicist Shevek from the planet Anarres, which was settled by anarchists a century and a half previously, to the planet Urras, a caricature of our own world in the 1970's.

In alternating chapters, it tells the story of Shevek's life on Anarres and its discontents, leading up to his decision to leave, and his adventures on Urras and how grotesque a society based on  power and profit seems in his eyes.

A truly mesmerising read, given us an idea of how a possible anarchist society could function and, more importantly, the moral foundations of such  a society. Anarres is flawed and falls short of its ideas of individual freedom, mutual aid and voluntary coperation, but is still infinitely preferable to the money- hungry, power-hungry nation of Urreas. 

In short my sort of Utopia. It is a society without government, laws, police, courts, corporations,.money, salaries, profit, organised religion or private property. Its  people speak an artificial language, a kind of benign Orwellian Newspeak, which lacks words for concepts such as 'debt or 'winner,'

 “We have nothing but our freedom. We have nothing to give you but your own freedom. We have no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals. We have no government but the single principle of free association. We have no states, no nations, no presidents, no premiers, no chiefs, no generals, no bosses, no bankers, no landlords, no wages, no charity, no police, no soldiers, no wars. Nor do we have much else. We are sharers, not owners. We are not prosperous. None of us is rich. None of us is powerful. If it is Anarres you want, it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with epty hands. You must come to it alone, and naked, as the child comes into the world, into his future, without any past, without any property, wholly dependent on other people for his life. You canot take what you have not bee given, and you must give yourself. You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere,"

― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

Le Guin would write more than 20 novels, 100 short stories, seven essay collections and more than a dozen books of poetry. Despite many of her protaganists  being men, she always considered herself a feminist, but was always confident in questioning societal conditioning and how it impacted the human perspective on gender and sexuality. 

Le Guin used a 1986 speech to young women that today sounds made for the #MeToo movement. She said, “In this barbaric society, when women speak truly they speak subversively. They can’t help it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert. We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. That’s what I want — to hear you erupting.”

In 2010 at the age of 81 she arrived in the digital age and started a blog

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Blog2017.html

and in December  2017 published a collection of essays based on her posts called ' No time to spare.' 

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Index-NoTimeToSpare.html 

It included everything from moving reflections on her cat to wry observations about coming to terms with her advancing age, " If I'm ninety and believe I'm forty five, I'm headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub."

Le Guin combined hostility to all oppression and war with extreme scepticism towards collective action, tinged with both anarchism and Taoism. Le Guin was closely aligned with anarchist politics. In the 1960s, she was involved in activism, including opposition to the Vietnam War, and began to identify with pacifism and anarchism. She immersed herself in a broad range of writing, including work by Gandhi, Martin Luther King and even Peter Kropotkin.
While her work often celebrates anarchism, Le Guin dodged labeling herself as such in a 2016 interview, somewhat halfheartedly describing herself as a "bourgeois housewife." Regardless of how she viewed her own politics, she was certainly sympathetic toward anarchism as a set of ideals and practices.
For her, freedom is a responsibility of the individual, not a battle between classes. But if that makes her writings hardly a roadmap to the revolution, as a reminder to look up to that horizon they are irreplaceable.

 Le Guin's appreciation for the natural world, her interest in environmental issues, and her questioning of capitalist exploitation are evident throughout her work. One can find in most of Le Guin’s fiction and nonfiction hard-won wisdom about living a balanced life.

 Published in 1975, "The New Atlantis" offers an early, short-story-length warning about climate change. In a near future of climatic and geological upheaval, a man on a bus announces to the narrator, Belle, that a new continent is rising from the depths of the sea. “Manhattan Island is now under 11 feet of water at low tide, and there are oyster beds in Ghirardelli Square,” she confirms. The oceans are rising due to polar melt, and Antarctica may soon be habitable, because of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, a polluted Portland, Oregon, has no electric power in the wake of earthquakes.The story not only presents a vision of environmental decline and authoritarian dystopia, but it also offers a glimpse of utopia. Belle, Simon, and their compatriots still have enough spirit to imagine a better day, when humankind might exist in harmony with what rises up out of the transformed ocean.
The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Neebulas, seven Hugos and SFWA'S Grand Master, along  with the PEN/Malamud and many other awards.

Author and Marxist China Mieville observed that Le Guin had a "slow-burning fury at injustices" and" a very sharp and unremitting diagnosis of things in the social world."

This slow burning fury was on display in 2014 when Le Guin was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation.This is one of literature's most prestigious honors, recognizing individuals who have made an exceptional impact on the United States' literary heritage. http://www.nationalbook.org/amerletters_2014_uleguin.html#.Wmfeh6hl_IU 

Her speech quickly went viral and was turned into memes on social media:

 “Books aren’t just commodities,” she said in that speech. “The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words."

The National Book Award speech wasn't the first or last time Le Guin used her voice and position to challenge those in power. She refused to support sci-fi/fantasy anthologies that only published male authors.
After the 2016 election, she wrote about the despair and frustration felt by so many in that moment. She defended Standing Rock protesters, comparing that struggle to the civil rights struggle in Selma, Alabama.
As we braced ourselves for the beginning of the Trump presidency, Le Guin wrote, "I know what I want. I want to live with courage, with compassion, in patience, in peace." And she did.

The story that sums up her philosophy borrows a thought experiment from Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Henry James. The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas imagines a society peaceful, happy, equal and free — except for one child, condemned to perpetual torment as the price of Utopia.
For some, not even Utopia justifies that oppression. “They walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going.”
Like the people at the end of this story the people who make the revolution will decide that a better world is possible and set out to find it.
Her legacy is clear, it's for us, as writers and readers, to think deeply, work with love and discipline, and to have the courage to believe in the transformative power of fiction, and of imagining other realities, free of capitalism another world can be possible. She was simply brilliant: as a writer, as a thinker, and as a human being. She is greaty missed. Thank you Ursula K. Le Guin

How It Seems To Me - Ursula K. Le Guin

In the vast abyss before time, self
is not, and soul commingles
with mist, and rock, and light. In time,
soul brings the misty self to be.
Then slow time hardens self to stone
while ever lightening the soul,
till soul can loose its hold of self
and both are free and can return
to vastness and dissolve in light,
the long light after time.

From So Far So Good: Final Poems 2014-2018. Courtesy of Copper Canyon Press. Copyright 2018 by the Ursula K. LeGuin Estate.