Thousands of Palestinians have been rallying at the Gaza-Israel border today to mark the first anniversary of the weekly 'Great March of Return'
protests, facing off against Israeli forces massed across the
perimeter.
The protests call for the lifting of a security blockade imposed by
Israel and Egypt, and for Palestinians to have the right to return to
land from which their families fled or were forced to flee during
Israel’s founding in 1948.
The Gaza Health Ministry said two Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli
forces near the border fence, during clashes that began on Friday. About 200 Gazans have been killed by Israeli troops since the protests
started, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.
Gaza's Health Ministry said Saturday ten people have sustained
injuries from live fire coming from Israeli troops, who also fired tear
gas as dozens of protesters approached the fence.
The territory's Hamas rulers are trying to restrain the rallies.The
militant group hopes a calmer demonstration would allow for the
implementation an Egyptian-brokered agreement with Israel to ease the
economic blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2007. But warnings to stay far back from the heavily fortified fence were not being heeded by all."We will move towards the borders even if we die," said Yusef Ziyada,
21, his face painted in the colours of the Palestinian flag.
"We are not leaving. We are returning to our land."
March 30 also marks “Land Day”, that Palestinians worldwide have commemorated Land Day since 1976, when Israeli security forces shot dead six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces during
demonstrations over government land confiscations in northern Israel in
1976.
The main Land Day march in Israel is planned for Saturday afternoon in
the northern city of Sakhnin, with additional marches and demonstrations
expected across the country, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza.
More than 2 million Palestinians are packed into the Gaza Strip, a
narrow coastal enclave where poverty and unemployment rates are high. The blockade is cited by humanitarian agencies as a key reason for impoverishment in Gaza. Lat year alone , about 200 Palestinians, including children, journalists, and the disabled, were killed at the border, most by Israeli live ammunition; 23,000 have been injured.
Israel’s use of lethal force has drawn censure from the United Nations
and rights groups. U.N. investigators said last week that Israeli forces
may be guilty of war crimes for using excessive force.
The protests mark nearly twelve years of a blockade that has made Gaza into what is often called the world's largest open air prison. They also come to invoke UN Resolution 194 their right to return in peace to their homes, from which they were expelled in 1948, when Israel was created.
The Palestinians have no choice but to protest, their spirit not broken, despite their suffering they continue to carry on undaunted. Lets continue to gie them the solidarity and respect they deserve.
Incredible dancers in the UK perform Dabke, the dance of Palestinian
resistance, in solidarity with the Palestinians on the frontline of the
Great Return March.
In the face of Israel's military attacks funded by complicit companies
like HSBC, the Palestinian people continue to resist and fight for their
fundamental rights.
Tell HSBC to end its complicity in Israeli war crimes: https://bit.ly/2GQnrtB
And take to the streets this Saturday in solidarity with the Palestinian
people, one year since the start of the Great Return March: https://bit.ly/2TYR2rJ
On March 30, 2018 evoking memories of the South African apartheid
regime’s massacre of peaceful protesters in Sharpeville in 1960,
Israel’s military committed a new massacre
against Palestinian civilians as they were peacefully commemorating
Palestinian Land Day, calling for an end to Israel’s brutal blockade of
Gaza and asserting the UN-stipulated right of return for Palestinian
refugees.
The Israeli military killed
at least 17 and injuring 1,400. Almost half of these were children.
While Israel routinely carries out mass killings of Palestinian
civilians in the Gaza strip, the massacre nonetheless stands out as a
particularly flagrant attack on non-violent demonstrators with no
conceivable pretext.
Last month, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) published a damning indictment of Israeli forces' conduct in suppressing the protests. According to the COI, Israeli soldiers have been
deliberately shooting civilians, killing and maiming protesters -
including children, as well as journalists and medics. The COI's findings were welcomed by human rights groups who last year
unsuccessfully challenged the army's rules of engagement and its
shooting policy in Israel's Supreme Court.
Land Day has been commemorated by Palestinians every year since 30 March 1976,
when Israeli military forces killed six Palestinian youth in mass
peaceful protests in the Galilee against Israel’s large scale policy of
confiscating their ancestral land to create exclusionary Jewish-only
colonial settlements.
The Palestinians call for Israeli authorities to lift their 11 year
illegal blockade on Gaza and allow Paletinian refugees to return to
their villages and towns has still not been met.These demands are supported by
international law as well as nearly every country in the world – with
the marked exception of Canada, the USA, and Israel. In addition, the
organizers of the march, which was supported by a wide cross-section of
Palestinian political organizations, repeatedly insisted upon the
non-violent nature of the march – claims supported by the observations of human rights workers
People of conscience across the world must continue to pressure international banks and investment funds, like HSBC to end their complicity in Israel’s human rights violations, support and show solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, and demand that Palestinians’
fundamental rights to exist, resist , freedom , justice and return are respected.
If you're not around London, take action in your communities.Full list of events across the country here.
Pop music legend and avant-garde icon, 60's pop crooner, visionary Scott Walker has died at the age of 76. The news was announced by his label, 4AD on Monday morning. “For half a century, the
genius of the man born Noel Scott Engel has enriched the lives of
thousands”, reads a statement posted to the label’s website. “He has produced works that dare to explore human vulnerability and the godless darkness encircling it.” The cause of death it seems was cancer.
Radiohead’s Thom Yorke yesterday said the “kind, gentle outsider” would be much missed.
The poet Ian McMillan described his “unforgettable” voice as being like “a cathedral lit by a sunset”.
Walker was best-known for his work with blue-eyed soul trio The Walker
Brothers in the 1960s, but it was his late-career trilogy of challenging
art-rock albums that defined his reputation as one of avant-garde
music's most electrifying auteurs.
Walker was born Noel Scott Engel in Ohio on Jan. 9, 1943 and rose to fame in the United Kingdom as part of The Walker Brothers.Who were pretty much the '60s equivalent of a boy band, and for a while were bigger than The Beatles. (The group's members were unrelated, and none were born
with the name Walker.) With the help of Scott Walker's booming baritone,
the act topped the British charts
with covers of "Make It Easy On Yourself" (1965) and "The Sun Ain't
Gonna Shine (Anymore)" originally recorded by Frankie Valli.(1966), but the trio never achieved the
superstardom in the United States that they enjoyed overseas.
Hating the pace and hollowness of pop-star life, so much
that he called time on the band at their peak, having tried to escape it
all by using drugs, holing himself up in a monastery and attempting
suicide.
Scott said: “It was a very bad period. I thought everyone was trying to destroy my life. I had this idea that the press were people who misquoted me, fans
were the ones who would not stop ringing my phone, smashing my door and
making me move flats.”
Scott relied on Valium and sleeping pills to cope with his paranoia.
He dabbled with cocaine and tried marijuana but abandoned it because it
hurt his throat.
In August 1966 he tried to kill himself, but was saved when the
obsessive fans outside his apartment that he had been so desperate to
escape alerted the authorities. He later reflected: “Pressure wasn’t the
only reason.“Nobody has the right reasons. I don’t remember a thing.”
Later that year he escaped to Quarr Abbey, on the Isle of Wight. He
intended to spend ten days taking part in Gregorian chanting. But even a
monastery provided no escape.
He said: “We had obsessive fans and they discovered the monastery and they were ringing the bell the whole time.“We were plagued, and eventually I had to leave.”
The Walker Brothers split in 1967 but Scott went on to sell millions of
records as a solo act, even though the BBC banned his first single,
Jackie, for its references to drugs and “phoney virgins”.
Scott went solo releasing the first of four eponymously titled
solo albums: Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and Scott 4 — the latter released under his birth name.These records are rightly considered today to be masterpieces, that turned him ino a different sort of star—a cult icon revered by people
who crave lyrics of profound literacy and powerful, complicated
emotions, as he took on
darker and more experimental tones as Scott’s interests in Jacques
Brel, European art and cinema, formative drone music, Gregorian chanting
and themes of death, decadence and European culture and history grew.
By 1969’s ‘Scott 4’, his first entirely
self-penned album and released under his birth name, he was playing
chess with Death himself on the Bergman inspired ‘The Seventh Seal’ and
dedicating a track to the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Though he was popular enough to be granted his own TV show Scott by
this point, the album was a commercial disappointment, but is now
considered his masterstroke, cited as a major influence on David Bowie , Radiohead, Nick Cabe among others.
Failing to chart 'Scott 4' sent Scott spiralling into booze and depression. On the
orders of his record company he returned to making more commercial
records but became more disillusioned with the music industry.
He said: “I was acting in bad faith for many years during that time. I
was trying to hang on. I should have stopped. I should have said, ‘OK,
forget it’ and walked away. “I started going downhill, imbibing a little too much of everything.“I think I did temporarily go crazy, because I don’t remember the period at all very well.”
A loner, Scott insisted he was not a recluse, but a solitary type,
saying: “I like people but sometimes I can’t wait to get away and be on
my own again.”
In the late Seventies The Walker Brothers reformed and put out three more albums. But it was not long before Scott disappeared into obscurity again
after apparently becoming enraged by an out-of-tune trumpet while
performing with his band on a cabaret tour in Birmingham. He never sang
live again.
He released several albums, written by others, which failed to chart
and which he described as “middle-of-the-road dross”. Much of the next
few years was “sat in pubs watching guys play darts”.
Walker returned to other
writers' songs for an eight-year stretch, resulting in four forgettable
cover albums. But in 1978, Walker penned four of the songs on the
regrouped Walker Brothers' final album, Night Flights, a noisy,
avant take on the disco sound of the day. One of his credits on the
album, an eerie track called "The Electrician," distinctly foreshadowed
where Walker would wander on future recordings.
It was another
eight years before Walker emerged again,interest in Walker’s output was renewed thanks to the Julian Cope-curated compilation Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker, released in 1981. Three years later, Walker returned with Climate of the Hunter, an avant-garde collection of fragmented and trance-like compositions lacking either titles or easily identifiable melodies.Though the album was again a commercial dud, Climate of the Hunter set the stage for Walker’s immense talents to be fully appreciated.
This album featured an assortment of studio musicians who — according to Walker in the documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man— recorded
their parts without knowing the melodies, to ensure that there was "no
chance of everyone swinging together." Unlike most of Walker's
recordings from the previous 15 years, Hunter was critically acclaimed.
It would 11 more years before Walker completed his metamorphosis from
pop crooner to avant-garde godfather. That would come on 1995's Tilt,
a work of art that features bleak, atmospheric orchestrations, with touches of minimalist experimental music and industrial music. Tying it all together
was Walker's inimitable voice, which he pushed to awkward, operatic
heights. Tilt was a harrowing listen, but its uncompromising singularity attracted experimental music fans of all types.
Again, it would be 11 years before Walker would release new music when 2006's The Drift was released on 4AD, Walker again sent shockwaves through the avant-garde community. While Tilt was, in part, adored for its misdirection, The Drift was celebrated
for its execution. As the second part of Walker's late-career trilogy,
it took his ornate orchestration to new depths; every second of its
nearly 70-minute runtime felt intentional and intricate.
Scott, who never listened to his own records, explained that he
“needed an undercurrent of violence and that came into my head” and
added: “There’s darkness in everything I do.”
Even Scott believed his penultimate album, 2012’s Bish Bosch, was not one to listen to for hours on end. “No! No! You’ll end up dead if you do that,” he told one reviewer.
Walker then surprised many fans with Soused, a collaboration with experimental doom-metal droners Sunn O))), in 2014. Consisting of five songs, each circa ten minutes in length. Each
consisting of Walker’s abstract, Beckett-like incantations. Each
consisting of sweeping monolithic guitar drones. Truly incredible channeling stuff,peerlessly deep and complex .
In his final years he produced Pulp’s final album, We Love Life, in
2001, was celebrated with a Proms concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall
in 2017 and, last year, composed the score for the Brady
Corbet-directed film Vox Lux, a musical drama
starring Natalie Portman.
Much of his time, though, was spent out of the public gaze with
long-term partner Beverly or doting on his granddaughter Emmi-Lee. He lived in Chiswick, West London, until his death.
He said: “I’m an outsider, for sure. That suits me fine. Solitude is like a drug for me. I crave it.” Speaking to The Guardian in 2018,
Walker predicted that even his most far-afield work would eventually
find an appreciative audience. "I'll be six feet under — but they will."
An absolute Musical genius, enigmatic, existential and intellectual. From teen idol to avantgarde recluse , no one quite had a career like him. The music world currently mourns this uniquely challenging artist, whose seismic influence on popular culture will long be felt. So long Scott Walker.Rest in Peace.
The Sun Ain't Gnna Shine Anymore - Walker Brothers
The International Committee of Solidarity in Defence of Lula and Democracy in Brazil ( Portugese: Comitê Internacional de Solidariedade a Lula e à Democracia no Brasil), also known as the Free Lula Movement (Portuguese: Movimento Lula Livre), is a political and social movement composed of several Brazilian entities that advocates the release of the ex- Brazilian President Lula from prison. Lula has long proved a divisive figure , but the summary imprisonment has sounded the alarm
for many people – even those who might not agree with his politics –
about a danger to the fabric of Brazil’s democracy. How did a rising
global power with a vibrant democracy plummet into a political abyss?
Luís Inácio Lula da Silva was the
most influential trade union leader in Brazil in the 1970s, and the most
important leader of the ‘new unions’ emerging under the military
dictatorship. These combative unions were centred in the consumer goods
industries, state-owned enterprises and the civil service. Between the late 1970s and early
1980s, Lula led some of the largest and most influential workers’
strikes in Brazilian history. He was also the leading founder of the
Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) in the early 1980s, spending several years
as party president. But, despite media hype at the time, Lula was never
a ‘socialist’ of any description. He was always a social democrat, and a
negotiator: he is impressively good at reaching agreement across
economic and political divides, and this quality was essential in his
political trajectory.
He built the largest
party of the masses in the country, he ran and lost three presidential
elections, and he challenged the discrimination, the powerful upper
class and the media, to become, in October 2002, the first worker
elected president of Brazil. In eight years in office, he proved it was
possible to change the destiny of the country.
Lula was favourite to win Brazil's 2018 presidential election but was barred from
running by the country’s top electoral court, due to a controversial
corruption conviction, which people say was just a means of keeping
him from returning to power.in a move condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee. This was the outcome of an unprecedented judicial persecution already lasting four years: the most egregious case of lawfare
in the world today. The affair is thought to have contributed to the
sudden death of Lula’s wife Marisa. His bank accounts, savings and
pensions have been blocked, rendering him destitute. Yet, no allegation
has been proven, and this ruling comes courtesy of a judge overtly
aligned with a right-wing party and with close contacts with the US
Department of Justice, who also played the roles of prosecutor and jury
The result was the election of Jair Bolsonaro, an ultra-militaristic,
right-wing, religious extremist who has pledged to continue imposing
neoliberal economic policies that impact Brazil’s working class and poor
while encouraging hatred and violence against LGBTQI people, Black
people, poor, social movements and dissidents in general.Threatening civil liberties, the rights of minorities and Brazil’s fragile
democracy. These dark forces are preventing Brazil from being a truly
democratic country.
On January 24, 2018, an appeals court in Porto Alegre, Brazil
confirmed a previous ruling against Lula of the Workers’ Party,
sentencing him to over 12 years in jail.
On April 4, the Supreme Court rejected the habeas corpus presented by Lula’s defense.
The habeas corpus would have permitted Lula to remain free while he
appealed his criminal conviction. The following day, Sérgio Moro, the
federal judge heading the Lava Jato investigation and the soon-to-be
Minister of Justice in the Bolsonaro presidency, gave Lula until 5 p.m.
of the next day to present himself to the Federal Police of Curitiba, a
city in the south of Brazil, to begin his sentence. The declaration of the judge caused an uproar both within Brazil and internationally. Major international media organizations denounced the decision as a sign of the decay of Brazilian democracy.
For many he is considered to be a political prisoner whose continuing detention tarnishes Brazilian democracy. Persecuted
and imprisoned by the Brazilian elite he remains a symbol for progressive forces in Brazil. He is backed by the Brazilian
trade union movement he used to lead and the Workers’ Party he helped to
found.His supporters also include numerous MPs, cultural figures, alongside foreign leftist leaders, such as Michelle Bachelet from Chile and François Hollande from France, as well as the Bolivian leader Evo Morales and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.
Please help this important campaign by adding your name here: https://brazilsolidarity.eaction.online/freeLula
Lawrence Ferlinghetti heretic, civil libertarian, painter, poet, political activist and countercultural icon, celebrates his 100th birthday today, a living legend who in 1953, founded the City Lights bookstore. Ferlinghetti's mission for City Lights was aligned with his
socialist politics: to break poetry out of its stuffy academic cage and
make it accessible to all.
A prominent voice
of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, he has written
poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration
and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues. His work
counters the literary elites definition of art and the artists role in
the world. Though imbued with the commonplace, his poetry cannot be
simply described as polemic or personal protest, for it stands out for his
craftmanship, thematics and grounding in tradition. Born in Yonkers,
New York in 1919 , an activist whose beats still goes on, still brave
enough and daring to challenge people's beliefs.His life has seen him act as a
catalyst for numerous literary careers and for the Beat movement itself,
publishing the early work of Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder etc.
Ferlinghetti’s own verse came to national, and later international attention, with his first self-published poetry book, “Pictures of the Gone World” (1955), which was followed by “Coney Island of the Mind” (1958). a voice fresh and optimistic, even as he denounced consumerism, capitalism and the deadening effects of conformity. Making poetry accessible to all, with his lucid views he has long
watered my senses. His bookstore long now has been an iconic literary
institution that has embodied social change and literary freedom. A
truly remarkable person, Ferlinghetti urges poets and writers to “create works capable of
answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning
sounds apocalyptic… you can conquer the conquerors with words.”
Fame first came to Ferlinghetti when he and City Lights clerk
Shigeyoshi Murao were arrested and put on trial in 1957 for publishing
Allen Ginsberg’s “controversial Howl and Other Poems , drawing attention to te issues of free speech. In a landmark decision, Judge Clayton W. Horn
ruled that the Beat poet’s work was not obscene.Since then, Ferlinghetti’s activist voice has not
softened. When speaking about President Trump, he is unequivocal: “Trump
is an evil man,” he says. “He’s so dangerous. I think you’ve got to
take this man seriously. I think he’s out to destroy democracy.”
He's grown "frail and nearly blind," writes Chloe Veltman at The Guardian in an interview with the poet this month, "but his mind is still on fire." Ferlinghetti “has not mellowed,” says Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, "at all." but he's still got the edge, still got so much force.His innovative
poetics incorporating slang, pop cultural references wry humour continue to
examine the human condition.
Ferlinghetti who has recenly released his latest book Little Boy, is a consistently spirited and astute observer, spiking his
vital, frank accounts with cultural, political, and personal insights
both funny and stinging in language that is jazzy and lyrical. Soulfully open to
the world and all its sorrows and wonders, Ferlinghetti affirms, in
every line, the power of literature and art as essential navigational
tools. Happy birthday Lawrence Ferlinghett, whose voice is still vital as ever, a giant who long will inspire.
Poet as Fisherman - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
As I grow older I percieve
Life has its tail in its mouth
and other poets other painters
are no longer any kind of competition
Its the sky that's the challenge
the sky that still needs deciphering
even as astronomers strain to hear it
with their huge electric ears
the sky that whispers to us constantly
the final secrets of the universe
the sky that breathes in and out
as if it were the inside of a mouth
of the cosmos
the sky that is the land's edge also
and the sea's edge also
the sky with its many voices and no god
the sky that engulfs a sea of sound
and echoes it back to us
as in a wave against a seawall
Whole poems whole dictionaries
rolled up in a thunderclap
And every sunset an action painting
and every cloud a book of shadows
through which wildly fly
the vowels of birds about to cry
And the sky is clear to the fisherman
even if overcast
He sees it for what it is :
a mirror of the sea
about to fall on him
in his wood boat on the dark horizon
We have to think of him as the poet
forever face to face with old reality
where no birds fly before a storm
And he knows what's coming down
before the dawn
and he's his own best lookout
listening for the sound of the universe
and singing out his sightings
of the land of the living.
The World is A Beautiful Place - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
Catchy jingles, striking slogans and subliminal commands
Cook up the tailor baked insidious mixture,
Guilefully iced with fairy fingertips
Cunningly crafted to engender the bite,
Cultivating tastes and erasing senses
Resetting fashion and exploiting the impressionable,
Crippling the mind with fabricated dreams
Epitomising the dysfunctional corporate culture.
Relentless blitz campaigns infiltrate young minds
Wafting of empty catchpenny blurb,
Magnetising and harvesting incipient souls
Channeling conception of lifelong habits,
Casting the spell of deluded grandeur,
Emblazing emblems and velvet voices,
Pull at the fraying parental purse strings,
Planting the seeds of the anticipatory crop.
As unscrupulous measures invite comparison
And polarizing attitudes sever relationships,
Advocating change and facilitating division
Endorsing the social class perimeters.
Glorifying the rich, shunning the poor
Harbouring hate and compromising principles,
Breeding contempt and empowering crime
Stimulating suicides and signing death warrants.
The spectre of materialism courts capitalism
Reinforcing elitism and widening the gap,
The opulent empires triumph and prosper
Home to rapacious fat cats and parsimonious millionaires,
Embroiled in a mission of propelling persuasion
Shooting sugar coated spears at the statistical melange,
Bagging vulnerable victims with wily schemes
Prey of the coercive stimulus of obsequious ladder climbers.
(Spring Equinox Greetings,we llive in sad times but life can renew, this old poem bought back afresh)
I have prayed for miracles
That simply do not exist,
Perception tested, rearranged
Obscured by realities mist,
In the morning tinged with sadness
Tickling blossoms return to nurture,
The air, bright clear and glorious
Plough all depths of possibility, Old spirits return, needing to inspect
Sit beside me once more and investigate,
Call my name as birds sing
Spring guiding lifeblood of existence,
Resurrecting in subtlest way
While daffodils dance, and snowdrops bow
Nature alive again, with scented treasure,
Love resonating with every sound
Touched with truth, that needs no eye,
In Camouflaged ripples of time
Trees whisper secrets of surrender,
darkness dwindles, hope releases
Under open sky, dreams tapestry unfurls,
Pagan life forces of crescendo
Lift us forwards to tomorrow.
