Can't Get You Out of My Head - An Emotional History of the Modern World (2021)

 

The highly anticipated new work from journalist and Bafta award-winning filmmaker, Adam Curtis  premiered exclusively on BBC iPlayer on 11 February 2021.

Spanning eight hours over six episodes, the series presents an audacious and frequently mind-boggling attempt to explain how we got to the present moment: turbulent and chaotic times in which nothing ever fundamentally seems to change, during which those in power have lost the ability either to make sense of it or offer a way out to something better. It is an exploration of how, throughout history, different characters from all over the world have sought to break through the stasis and corruption of their time and transform reality – and how very often in so doing, have unleashed powerful forces that would ultimately lead to their destruction. And why both those in power - and we - find it so difficult to move on.

The films trace different forces across the world that have led to now, not just in the West, but in China and Russia as well. It covers a wide range - including the strange roots of modern conspiracy theories, the history of China, opium and opiods, the history of Artificial Intelligence, melancholy over the loss of empire and, love and power. And explores whether modern culture, despite its radicalism, is really just part of the new system of power.

Adam Curtis says: “These strange days did not just happen. We - and those in power - created them together.”

The world is an exciting, maddening and confusing place. As a documentary-maker and visual historian, Adam Curtis' films have been a perfect cipher for those elements to run wild. Packed with eclectic soundtracks and images that tantalise, horrify and baffle, allied to Curtis' simultaneously soothing and scary narration of his own scripts, his work begins with a grand theme and aims to throw as much at the wall as possible in order to build up a picture that persuades the viewer of his case.

The joy of an Adam Curtis film resides in following his journey which is never less than richly coloured and compactly detailed, with surprising (and yes, extraordinary) stories of those who often played a marginal role alongside the real players of history. So we have the tragic arc of Mao's seemingly Machiavellian wife Jiang Qing, or social activist Michael X, the UK's wannabe Malcolm X, who ended up paying a terrible price for his own vaulting ambitions and psychological flaws.

We are indeed living through strange days. Across Britain, Europe and America societies have become split and polarised. There is anger at the inequality and the ever growing corruption - and a widespread distrust of the elites. Into this has come the pandemic that has brutally dramatised those divisions. But despite the chaos, there is a paralysis - a sense that no one knows how to escape from this.

 Few documentary filmmakers care more about music than Adam Curtis. Since his award winning 2002 film, The Century of the Self, Curtis’ baroque style has returned – year on year – to haunt the BBC airwaves like a spectre, each time supported by an extraordinary soundtrack. Reportedly, Curtis delayed the release of his new six-part series, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, because he couldn’t think of the right song to end it on. 

If you sit down to Can't Get You Out Of My Head to receive all the answers about this mystifying planet, ultimate frustration lies in wait.Adam Curtis is after all a  populist and a lot of what he offers  is pure escapism.and a form of ambient soup. But nevertheless does allow us to learn some intriguing unheard stories and raise many  questions  it's also totally mesmerising, so different from the norm that we usually see, so much needed right now in the current climate, so cheers Adam Curtis.

All episodes available now on BBC iPlayer.

Remembering the White Rose Movement and their brave non-violent resistance to Nazi Germany

#

 Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst, White Rose Society 1943

The morality of every person dictates the innate wrongness of genocide, and yet the world stood by as the Nazis sent millions to the gas chambers during the Holocaust. Historians and social scientists often attribute this moral failure to the blissfully feigned ignorance of the German people, enveloped in a blanket of fear propagated by the Nazi regime, and the indifference and prejudice of other nations. Yet a few brave college students in Munich proved to the world that conscientiousness still existed in the Fatherland. It is for their willingness to die to end the silence that The White Rose Movement has since become legendary.
The White Rose Movement was an informal group made up of students who attended Munich University and their professor who sought to oppose the war, Hitler and the fascist Nazi regime with non-violent resistance. It was founded in early 1942 by Hans Scholl, Willia Graf and Christoph Probst after the mass deportation of jews had begun, who were fully aware of the atrocities that were being committed against certain non-Aryan minorities. They had seen clearly the loss of liberty, the shredding of human rights, and the disturbing reality that the war was probably already lost. By the summer of 1942, knowing  that resisting Hitler in any form was a capital crime, and who were fully aware of the existence of Nazi concentration camps and that hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been murdered in them, to keep secrecy under these extremely dangerous circumstances  kept membership of their group very small.They took their name, The White Rose, from the book La Rosa Blanca, about struggling campesinos rising up against capitalist landowners in Mexico.
Between June 1942 and February 1943, they prepared, wrote and distributed six different leaflets, in which they called for the active opposition of the German people to Nazi oppression and tyranny and clandestinely distributed them across Munich.
The leaflets of the White Rose contained messages, such as :- ”Nothing is so unworthy of a nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by a clique that has yielded to base instinct…Western civilization must defend itself against fascism and offer passive resistance, before the nation’s last young man has given his blood on some battlefield.”
However, this was Nazi Germany which kept a high degree of surveillance on any resistance activity and there were informants everywhere. After leaflets were found in the University of Munich, the local Gestapo stepped up its efforts to catch the resistors. Hans, Willi and Alex also began a grafitti campaign painting anti-Nazi slogans like "Freedom" and "Down with Hitler," and drew crossed-out swastikas on buildings in Munich.
On February 18, 1943, members of the group including Hans sister, Sophie Scholl were arrested distributing anti-fascist leaflets at Munich University. Sophie and Hans were interrogated by Nazi officials and despite trying to protect each other, on February 22, 1943 were bought before the Peoples Court which had been set up try people accused of political offences against the Nazi state. The trial was presided over by Roland Freisler, chief justice of the People’s Court of the Greater German Reich. Freisler was an ardent Nazi and with great vigour and a manic intensity, frequently roared denunciations at the accused.
Despite the hostility, and appearing in court with a broken leg after her interrogation. Sophie replied to the court,“Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.”
She also said:“You know the war is lost. Why don’t you have the courage to face it?”
No defence witnesses were called and, after what amounted to a short show trial, the judge passed a guilty verdict, with a sentence of death. The sentence was to be carried out early the next morning by guillotine.
Walter Roemer, the chief of the Munich district court, supervised the execution, he later described Sophie’s courage in facing her execution. He reports that Sophie’s last words were:-
“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”

 

Gestapo photographs of Sophie Scholl (18th February, 1943)

The guards were impressed with the courage of the resistors, and relaxed the rules to allow Hans, Christoph and Sophie to meet before their execution. After the execution of Sophie, Hans and Christoph, the Gestapo continued their relentless investigation.

 

Gestapo photographs of Christope Probst  (20th February, 1943)

Later that same year other members of the White Rose, Alexander Scmorell, Willi Graf and Kurt Huber were also tried and executed. Most of the other students convicted for their part in the group's activities received prison sentences.
Before their deaths members had believed that their executions would stir other university students and other anti-war citizens into a rallying call against Hitler and the war, but accounts clearly suggest sadly that most university students continued their studies as usual, the public said nothing, many actually seeing the movement as treacherous and as anti-national such was the grip of madness in Nazi Germany at the time.
Yet reports of mass killings of Jews, were widely shared by members of the White Rose. This features in the second White Rose pamphlet :- "Since the conquest of Poland 300,000 Jews have been murdered, a crime against human dignity…Germans encourage fascist criminals if no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds. An end in terror is preferable to terror without end.”
The members of the White Rose remain heroes who sacrificed their lives for the basic principles of freedom and the preservation of human dignity, and a potent symbol of how people can take a courageous action to resist,speak out ,even against the most brutal totalitarian regimes. Today again those with conscious must defend itself against the dark forces of fascism and offer resistance.
This is an archive of their leaflets: 

https://libcom.org/library/white-rose-documents

Celebrated Palestinian Poet Mourid Barghoutti dies at the age of 76

The celebrated Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, died on Sunday at the age of 76.There has been no immediate announcement on the cause of his death. On his official Facebook page, his son, the well known poet Tamim Al Barghouti, mourned his father. 

Barghouti, was born on the 8th of July in 1944 in the mountainous village of Deir Ghassanah, west of the River Jordan in Palestine. The cluster of villages was dominated by the Barghouti clan (the name he delights in means flea) of politicians, poets and landowners. His father worked the land, then joined the Jordanian army. Aged four when the state of Israel was declared, Barghouti learned of the Palestinian nakbah, or catastrophe,https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2020/05/marking-72th-anniversary-of-nabka-day.html as non-Barghoutis with different dialects appeared in his village. "I was told they were refugees. The story unfolded of the destruction of villages, and the policy of ethnic cleansing that drove them away." Hearing of a massacre at Deir Yassin https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2019/04/remembering-deir-yassin.html in April 1948 was "the nakbah for me as a child - stories of those killed in cold blood that were disseminated all over Palestine. They were meant to be, to encourage people to flee". The second of four brothers, he moved with his family to Ramallah, aged seven. At school he admired the Iraqi modernist poet of the late 40s, Badr Shakir Al Sayyab, who broke the classical Arabic poem that had survived for 15 centuries unchanged, during the surge of Arab liberation movements against British and French occupation.

He moved to Cairo in 1963 to study English literature at Cairo University and graduated in 1967, after which he didn’t go back to Ramallah for 30 years. It  was in Cairo that he met the love of his life, the Egyptian novelist Rawda Ashour who he married in 1970, staying together until her death in December 2014.In 1977 he was deported from Egypt after his opposition to the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The poet headed for Beirut, then left in 1981 for Budapest, where he lived for 13 years. He returned to Egypt in 1994 to be reunited with his wife and son.

He visited his birthplace in Palestine only after the peace agreement signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in 1993.The event inspired his autobiographical novel Ra’aytu Ram Allah (I Saw Ramallah), published by Bloomsbury in 2004 in a translation by Ahdaf Soueif, that first won him an international audience.It was translated to English by his late wife..The book won him the Naguib Prize in Literature in 2017. The late Edward Said saw it as “one of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement” 

Reflecting on crossing the bridge from Jordan to his West Bank birthplace in 1996 after 30 years' exile - a visit under Israeli control that he refused to call a return - he described a condition of permanent uprootedness and the harrowing experience of a Palestinian who is denied the most elemental human rights in his occupied country, and in exile alike. It provided a view of Palestine that has been dispossessed and changed beyond recognition by usurpers. All writing, for him, was a displacement, a striving to escape from the "dominant used language" and the "chains of the tribe - its approval and taboos".

 I Saw Ramallah, was followed by another book I Was Born There, I Was Born Here after Barghouti returned to the Occupied Territories. Barghouti weaved into his account of exile poignant evocations of Palestinian history and life - the pleasure of coffee, arriving at just the right moment and as an exile, the importance of being able to say, 'I was born here', rather than 'I was born there'.

In all Barghouti published 12 poetry books in Arabic since the early 1970s, as well as a 700-page Collected Works (1997). Midnight and Other Poems was his first major collection in English translation.

He reflected on the cruelty of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, in particular the siege of Jenin in 2002 and wrote, “We have been subjected to massacres at intervals throughout our lives. Thus we find ourselves competing in a race between quickly realized mass death and the ordinary life that we dream of every day. One day, I will write a poem called “It´s Also Fine.”

It’s also fine to die in our beds
on a clean pillow
and among our friends.
It’s fine to die, once,
our hands crossed on our chests
empty and pale
with no scratches, no chains, no banners,
and no petitions.
It’s fine to have an undusty death,
no holes in our shirts,
and no evidence in our ribs.
It’s fine to die
with a white pillow, not the pavement, under our cheeks,
our hands resting in those of our loved ones,
surrounded by desperate doctors and nurses,
with nothing left but a graceful farewell,
paying no attention to history,
leaving this world as it is,
hoping that, someday, someone else
will change it.

His poems were translated into several languages, including English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Russian. He read his poetry and exhibited his books around he world, and lectured on Palestinian and Arab poetry at universiiies in Oxford, Manchester, Oslo, and Madrid, among others.

Although he was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Barghouti did not identify with any political party. He spent years as the body's cultural attache in Budapest.Few poets managed to evoke the existential complexities of living in exile and being stranded from a homeland as eloquently as Barghouti did. Barghouti reflected on his life under many regimes, seeing and witnessing in them all the corruption of power and at the same time the indomitable courage and resilience of the Palestinian people, their daily acts of resistance to occupation who in  just trying to live a normal life is an act of resistance. .

“The homeland does not leave the body until the last moment, the moment of death.The fish, Even in the fisherman's net, Still carries The smell of the sea."” Mourid Barghouti wrote in his award-winning autobiographical novel I Saw Ramallah. the quote is now one of many by Barghouti being shared online as people pay tribute to the Midnight poet.

The Palestinian Minister of Culture, Atef Abu Seif, mourned the late poet, saying that Palestinian and Arab culture had lost with his death “a symbol of creativity and the Palestinian national cultural struggle.”

Abu Seif pointed out that Mourid Barghouti was “one of the creative people who devoted their writings and creativity in defense of the Palestinian cause, the story and struggle of our people, and Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian existence.”

 He may have envisioned his homeland leaving his body upon death, but his contributions to Palestine and Arab literature will survive long after he is gone. However, his death marks a great loss not just to Arab poetry but to world literature as a whole. Mourid Barghotti Rest in Power.

 

 “People like poetry only in times of injustice—times of communal silence—times when they are unable to speak or act. Poetry that whispers and suggests—can only be felt by free men.”

"Silence said:/truth needs no eloquence./After the death of the horseman,/ the homeward-bound horse/says everything/ without saying anything." -  Mourid Barghotti

There is always Beauty

There is always beauty to comfort

More precious than silver or gold,

Harmonious thoughts passing through

Beyond the troubled world that contains us ,

Songs of hope to advocate and release

The power of love, affection, peace,

Cloudbursts of honesty and integrity

Gifts of protection, care, sincerity, 

The  flickering constellations of stars

Planets, moons, and rain that showers,

Laughter that keeps escaping our lungs

Dreams of better times, soothing tonques,

Voices of truth and reason in every season

Doggedly working, shielding us with light,

In trees, the breeze, rippling leaves

Passion bringing corrupt governments to knees,

Blooming flowers on a clear spring day

To relieve the tensions impaling our way

Good samaritans with hearts of kindness

Delivering  phone calls to console the lonely,

Air full of fragrances of love and passion 

The warmth of companionship and solidarity.

Tom Paine's Bones

Thomas Paine was an English/American political activist, author and political theorist, whose words helped shape modern Britain and France, Born to a Quaker family of Thetford, England, on January 29th , 1737 ( or February 9th, 1737 according the Gregorian calender) ,the son of an artisan, he was well educated at Thetford Grammar School but soon chafed at the constraints of his home town. His chequered career eventually led him to the American colonies where he emigrated in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin. There he found his calling, as a revolutionary writer.

Thomas Paine played a crucial part in the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789, after his popular pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis swept through the Western worlds, both new and old, placing before the public eye in simple, yet dramatic terms, the virtues of self-government and individual liberty.

On  January 10 1776, his pamphlet Common Sense  was published for the first time ( though anonymously,because of its treasonous content.). Here he delivered his uncompromising message to the common people, which set the seeds for the American  Revolution.In this important document, he passionately urged the American to create a new form of government - a modern republic, based entirely on popular consent. He believed all men were born equal, so saw no need for Kings and Queens, he also distinguished  between governments and society, at the root of all governments is evil but the root of society lay good. The pamphlet called for the end of British tyranny in the American colonies and a break with a country ruled by kings. Common Sense made its appearance at a crucial moment as the debate for American independence reached a tipping point.

Common Sense ignited a wildfire.The numbers were astonishing—150,000 copies were in print within a few months (roughly equivalent to 15 million copies today). But its real impact can best be measured in the way that colonists from Massachusetts to South Carolina moved in the direction that Paine prescribed. “Without the pen of Paine,” as one contemporary wrote, “the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.” 

He became a champion of equality and liberty and went on to support struggles in Britain and France, he  despised tyranny and oppression, the divine right of kings, organised religion, the death penalty and slavery.  He loved reason, freedom, the emancipation of mankind and was the first person to coin the term “the United States of America” and to use the term “democracy” as something other than a pejorative.

 Paine thought the revolution in America did not go far enough since it did not abolish black slavery and he thought the revolution in France went too far since it became entrenched in medieval violence and bloodshed. He took bold private stands in both revolutions against his own friends, colleagues and comrades, never willing to compromise his conscience, but always ready to go it alone if that’s where the courage of his convictions took him – and it nearly always did.

Returning to Europe in 1787, and in response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, he published his most famous work, The Rights of Man, 1791-2,  dedicated to Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, Rights of Man extensively lays out Paine’s Republican utopianism and envisions a society where man’s natural rights are respected, all forms of hereditary government such as monarchy and aristocracy are abolished, and the welfare of the poor are taken care of. Paine’s work resulted in him receiving honorary French citizenship as a reward, as well as a seat on the French Constitutional Committee.

Paine fled to France and was briefly elected to the French National Convention. Imprisoned in the Bastille for opposing the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, Sentenced to death by Robespierre, he escaped his fate only by a miraculous accident (the executioners marked his cell door on the wrong side). Free again, Paine lashed out at President Washington, whom he blamed for not coming to his rescue.This alone would have been enough to secure his lasting ignominy in America, but Paine had more in mind. 

In 1795, he released the final, and most daring, chapter of his classic trilogy. The Age of Reason, an attack on traditional religion and the Christian church, made him one of history’s great apostates. He returned to America in 1802, his promotion of the concept of human rights greatly influenced the American Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.

However scurrilous attacks followed him in his waning years. It was symbolically appropriate that, as he tottered around New York City, he could find no place to be buried. (Even the arch liberal Quakers spurned his request.) His last years in America often depressed, drunk and in poverty. When he died on the 8th of Jine 1809, tragically only six people attended his funeral in New Rochelle, New York, and his tombstone was desecrated soon afterward.

His isolated grave was all but forgotten until a onetime foe, then later admirer, radical newspaper editor William Cobbett, dug up his skeleton, without permission ten years after his death. Cobbett was horrified when he visited Paine’s neglected grave in 1819 and deeply felt that the man had not been given his posthumous due. He decided that since America had turned its back on its revolutionary hero, he would rebury him in England,with grand plans for a memorial that would inspire England’s democracy movement.

After disinterring Paine’s grave, he shipped the bones in a common merchandise crate and predicted their momentous effect. “…those bones will effect the reformation of England in Church and State.” Unfortunately for Cobbett, the bones failed to stir England and Cobbett became a laughingstock, the subject of vicious caricatures and grim jokes.

Despite Cobbett’s noble motive, the public responded in horror to the desecration of the grave, especially because of the surreptitious way he went about it. Lord Byron even wrote about the incident, which was quoted at the time:

“In digging up your bones, Tom Paine,
Will Cobbett has done well;
You visit him on earth again;
He’ll visit you in hell”

 The memorial never materialized and when Cobbett died a bankrupt in 1835, Paine’s bones remained above ground, in debtor’s limbo. Surviving the auctioneer’s hammer as a matter of taste, different fragments or parts of Paine’s bones were then over time dispersed and scattered over four corners of the earth.Parts of Paine might still be in England, possibly in the form of buttons made from his bones. There might be a rib in France. A man in Australia who claims to be a descendant says he has Paine’s skull. No one really knows where the skull that held the mind which one day long ago opined, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” For  such a 'Citizen of the World', his mortal remains have no final resting place.

Paine remains ,an icon of defiant, unorthodox idealism. and his promotion of the concept of human rights influenced the American Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.After his death, Napoleon is said to have suggested that every ‘free-thinking city’ should have a gold-plated statue of Paine. Instead, he is commemorated with a gilded bronze statue outside Thetford town hall commissioned by American philanthropist Joseph Lewis, who believed Paine was the true author of the American Declaration of Independence.  Paine’s work continues to be a great inspiration to politicians and activists he was a truth-teller, contentious and bold, who was adamant about holding accountable the brokers of authorised versions of history,calling out their hypocrisy, omissions and mistruths. I wonder what he would say in this age of tyranny, the rage spreading across the land of liberty, the urgent global crisis that we collectively face.would he still be speaking truth to power?,  His own basic philosophy, “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion,” has never  been more timely. Hail to thee Tom Paine.

Here is  Dick Gaughan singing about the revolutionary 18th century thinker and propagandist The song  was written by Graham Moore.

Dick Gaughan - Tom Paine's Bones

 
As I dreamed out one evening
By a river of discontent
I bumped straight into old Tom Paine
As running down the road he went
He said, "I can't stop right now, child, King George is after me
He'd have a rope around my throat
And hang me on the Liberty Tree" But I will dance to Tom Paine's bones
Dance to Tom Paine's bones
Dance in the oldest boots I own
To the rhythm of Tom Paine's bones
I will dance to Tom Paine's bones
Dance to Tom Paine's bones
Dance in the oldest boots I own
To the rhythm of Tom Paine's bones "I only talked about freedom
And justice for everyone
But since the very first word I spoke
I've been looking down the barrel of a gun
They say I preached revolution
Let me say in my defence
That all I did wherever I went
Was to talk a lot of common sense"
Old Tom Paine he ran so fast
He left me standing still
And there I was, a piece of paper in my hand
Standing at the top of the hill
It said, "This is the Age Of Reason
These are The Rights Of Man
Kick off religion and monarchy"
It was written there in Tom Paine's plan
Old Tom Paine, there he lies
Nobody laughs and nobody cries
Where he's gone or how he fares
Nobody knows and nobody cares But I will dance to Tom Paine's bones
Dance to Tom Paine's bones
Dance in the oldest boots I own
To the rhythm of Tom Paine's bones
I will dance to Tom Paine's bones
Dance to Tom Paine's bones
Dance in the oldest boots I own
To the rhythm of Tom Paine's bones 

The writer/artist Paul Fitzgerald from Hulme in Manchester also known as Polyp,has been busily working to take Tom Paine out of stuffy lectures on politics and philosophy and onto the illustrated novel page.  Important update: copies of Paine are now on sale here!  The result of his labours is now out in the world, and is itself a cause for celebration. Paine: Being a Fantastical Visual Biography of the Vilified Enlightenment Hero, by his Ardent Admirer ‘Polyp’ quite lives up to its title. The book was funded through a Kickstarter appeal,

The Fuse of Cognition

The world is full of constant sorrow

Darkest hours.and the longing,

Politicians creating climates of fear

Releasing pain across the land.

The world is full of inquisitors

Poking daily against reason,

Hearts of darkness, chords of division

Emissaries of death, hovering over misery.

The world is full of conspirators

Malignant forces  that do not discriminate 

Killing hope, releasing unfriendly fire

Condemning and intimidating all in reach.

The world is full of vultures

Devouring and masticating,

Preying on us, with deadly intent

Feasting persistently without regret,

The world is full of waves washing over

Dragging us down, lower than we've ever fallen,

Into dungeons of time that does not cease

Deeper and further into the abyss,.

The world is full of walls of indifference

Mirrors of illusion, enabling complicit voices,

Tyranny and oppression, that brutalize and dehumanise

Crushing and delivering weights of burden.

The world despite all this is full of love

Those that are tired never give up their struggle,

To a war that never ends, will never ever surrender 

Continue resisting creating a new world.

The world is still full of seeds of reason

Ever flowering, augmenting our deepest wounds,

Fruitful pastures, stemming the flood of tears

Beyond hurtful paradigm, healing balms to share.

World Cancer Day 2021: I Am And I Will

 

Today (4 February) marks World Cancer Day 2021, a global event  designed to prevent cancer, promote research, improve patient services, raise awareness, and “mobilise the global community to make progress against cancer”.

The day was set up by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) – the largest and oldest international cancer organisation – and was first marked in 2000.

The theme for 2021’s World Cancer Day is: “I Am And I Will”.

The UICC says this year's event marks the final year of a three year campaign, which offers “a chance to create long-lasting impact by increasing public-facing exposure and engagement, more opportunities to build global awareness and impact-driven action.”

They describe 2021 as “the ultimate year of the ‘I Am and I Will’ campaign”, and say “more than ever, our actions are also being felt across borders and oceans.

"This year is a reminder of the enduring power of cooperation and collective action. When we choose to come together, we can achieve what we all wish for: a healthier, brighter world without cancer.”

World Cancer Day 2021 comes as people are being urged to seek help for potential symptoms of cancer after it emerged that fewer are coming forward during the pandemic.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said that the latest NHS data for England shows fewer people are being referred for helpfor lung cancer and urological cancers because they are not coming forward for help.

As a result, the Health Secretary and NHS clinical director for cancer are calling on the public to speak to their GP if they are worried about symptoms.

They stressed that cancer diagnosed at an earlier stage is more likely to be successfully treated, and the NHS has robust measures in place to protect cancer patients, and those being screened for cancer, from Covid-19.

“This World Cancer Day we should come together to commit that diagnosing and treating cancer is a top priority,” said Health Secretary Matt Hancock. “If you notice any unusual symptoms which last more than a few weeks, however mild you think they might be, please come forward and discuss it with your GP.

“The sooner you speak to your GP, the sooner a diagnosis can be made, the sooner treatment can start, and the more lives we can save.” 

For more information on World Cancer Day 2021, head to the UICC’s website 

To support World Cancer Day this year, you can make a donation to a number of registered cancer charities, including Cancer Research UK.

Cancer Research say their vital work has been "slowed down"by Covid-19 and are urgingg supporters to “donate now to get us back on track”.

You can donate to the charity by heading to their website, and can even choose which area of cancer research your donation goes to. They’re also offering some fun fundraising ideas for this year, including virtual quiz or games nights, home exercise challenges or head shaves.

You can also display your Cancer Research UK Unity band with pride this World Cancer Day.

The Unity Band is the charity’s symbol for support for World Cancer Day 2021, representing unity and showing support for those affected by cancer. You can get your Unity Band online today.

World Cancer Day 2021 comes as a study carried out by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine found the UK is at the bottom of a list of countries ranked by survival rates of some of the deadliest cancers.

The UK came 25th, 26th and 27th out of 29 countries for its five-year survival rates of pancreatic, stomach and lung cancer respectively, research – first published in 2018 but shared to mark World Cancer Day – shows.

For cancers diagnosed between 2010 and 2014, the UK had an average five-year survival rate of just 15.97 per cent compared to South Korea, which had a rate of 32.78 per cent.

It ranked 14th for oesophagus cancer, 21st for liver cancer, and 22nd for brain cancer. Less survivable cancers make up around half of all common cancer deaths in the UK.

These numbers are likely to be impacted further by the pandemic, which has seen people having a much harder time dealing with their ailment, and people are being urged to seek help for potential symptoms of cancer after it emerged that fewer are coming forward

Cancer is a disease that causes  great physical and mental suffering, and yes death, and its management always requires great dedication in terms of time, investment, means and good organisation. Throughout the disease , may  unforseen  and delicate situations arise that require great individual adaption to overcome them.

Because of the pandemic added challenges have been added. We could not imagine that the pandemic caused  by covid-19 would affect cancer patients so much, fundamental tests and treatments are being put on hold such as radiology, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery. All these changes are causing a significant delay both in diagnosis and treatment. An extremely stressful and anxious time for all concerned. 

Cancer is a  disease that will kill more than  eight million people worldwide this year . The world needs to unite against this disease that knows no borders and represents one of humanity's most pressing concerns.

Moreover , understanding and responding to the full impact of cancer on emotional , mental and physical wellbeing  will maximise the quality of life for patients, their families and care-givers. Every citizen should have access to  free treatment options and care.

 Like other wars, real and imagined, the war on cancer is a gift to opportunists of all stripes. Among the vultures are travel insurers who charge people with cancer ten times the rate charged to others, the publishers of self-help books and the promoters of miracle cures, vitamin supplements and various ‘alternative therapies’ of no efficacy whatsoever.

But most of all, there’s the pharmaceutical industry, which manipulates research, prices and availability of drugs in pursuit of profit. And with considerable success. The industry is the UK’s third most profitable sector, after finance and tourism, with a steady return on sales of some 17 per cent, three times the median return for other industries. Its determination to maintain that profitability has seen drug prices rise consistently above the rate of inflation. The cost of cancer drugs, in particular, has soared.

The industry claims high prices reflect long-term investments in research and development (R&D). But drug companies spend on average more than twice as much on marketing and lobbying as on R&D. Prices do not reflect the actual costs of developing or making the drug but are pushed up to whatever the market can bear. Since that market is comprised of many desperate and suffering individuals, it can be made to bear a great deal. The research that this supposedly funds is itself warped by the industry. When it comes to clinical trials of their products, they engage in selective publication and suppression of negative findings and are reluctant in the extreme to undertake comparative studies with other products

Taking political action is also key to us preventing, treating and diagnosing cancer earlier in order for us to achieve survival of 3 in 4 by 2034. For those living with cancer, now and in the future (and that’s one in three of the UK population), the biggest threat is the coming public spending squeeze, cuts in NHS budgets and privatisation of services will mean more people dying earlier from cancer and more people suffering unnecessarily from it. Even better survival rates will become a curse, as responsibility for long-term care is thrown back on families. A real effort to reduce suffering from cancer requires a political struggle against a system that sanctifies profit – not a ‘war’ guided by those who exploit the disease. 

The target for treating cancer patients within 62 days of  urgent GP referral has not been met for over 5 years, despite the pandemic, and surveys evidence suggests that people are experiencing lengthening delays in getting GP appointments. Longer waits are a symptom of more people needing treatment than the  NHS has the capacity to deliver. As we remember Captain Tom  this week, he deserves are utter most respect  we should not forget the heartless uncaring hypocrites in government who are underfunding the NHS, that are continuing to put those that suffer from cancer further at risk, what better tribute than for out Government to increase funding for the NHS,, after all it was Captain Tom's sense of gratitude for the care he received for skin cancer that inspired him to take up his noble fundraising walk. We must not forget to hold out Government to accountable further down the road . We must not cower from politicising the deficiencies in the NHS that the crisis has revealed. 

Please also try and spare a thought  for all specialist cancer staff across the NHS who do so much for so many. They did everything they could to try and keep vital services running in 2020, and will no dock in 2021.

On World Cancer  Day any other day in fact, awareness  is so important, for the survivors and those who are not so fortunate, we should not be afraid to talk about it. For many affected by the disease it is a solemn one of reflection, personally a love of mine did not make it, but for others it's a time to become aware of this disease's impact and what is being done to help effect change for millions it impacts. A diagnosis of cancer does not mean that you have to live a painful and miserable life. Their is hope and positivity to. But it is so important to keep up the conversations. Best wishes.