Palestinians in the East Jerusalem town of Silwan are living in fear of imminent eviction. Last week Israeli authorities posted demolition orders on several houses in Silwan's al- Bustan neighbourhood, which they plan to develop into a theme park. With 1,000 people set to lose their homes, this would be the largest single mass demolition since 1967. Three days before the orders were issued, Israel shut down a local football club and a kindergarten.
Please take urgent action to help the Palestinians of Silwan save their homes
Silwan lies just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City. Since the early 1990s the town has been targeted for Israeli settlement, largely coordinated by a charity called Elad (the city of David Foundation). For the al- Bustan neighbourhood Elad's plans are to build the "King's Gardens", a theme park for tourists to walk in the footsteps of the biblical King Soloman. But this means sending in bulldozers to knock down the homes of families who have lived there for generations.
Even the British government has criticised the plans. On 30 December, minister for the Middle East Alistair Burt said, " I condemn the decision by the Jerusalem Local Planning and Building Committee to build additional structures in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan... This is another provocative and deeply counter-productive step, the latest in a series by the Israeli authoritis." Yet Burt and the British government have done nothing to back up the comment, and continuesto offer Israel preferential treatment. This sends a message to the Israeli government that it can ignore the criticisms.
Please ask your MP to demand that the government takes concrete action to stop the bulldozers.
At present many children from Silwan take their toys to school every day, not wanting toleave behind in case their homes are knocked down. Your action will help end this climate of fear
This month marks the 75th anniversary of the battle of Jarama in the Spanish Civil War, seven months following the army revolt led by Franco on July 18th 1936. Almost immediately foreign volunteers enlisted in left wing militias to defend the Spanish Republic.
On February 7th the fascists unleashed an offensive on the Jarama Valley, the river was strategically important, and their the aim was of cutting communications between Valencia and Madrid, and hence the Republican Forces.
Jarama was the first battle that the British Batallion of International Brigadiers went into battle, with as many as 500 British volunteers fighting.
Jarama marked the beginning of a bruising and often dispirited campaign. By the end of the first day of battle, the British batallion found itself with less than half the number they had set out with, the next few days were a bloody brutal ordeal.On February 12th the British, deployed in the hills on the east bank of the river Jarama, in a place that became known as 'Suicide Valley", the fascists were able to virtually surround the British Batallion but even though they were outnumbered, they still managed to keep the fascists at bay, but suffered heavy losses.
On February the 18th the brigadiers lauched a counter attack, but this was stopped by the fascists. Despite the poor conditons, the brigadiers managed to stand firm , which resulted in a stalemate situation that would carry on untill the end of the war. Of the 500 brave men only 140 survived, the memory of this battle haunting them for many years later. But the vital road that Franco needed to have cut remained open. I remember those who throughout this conflict their faith and ideals remained intact,with their bravery, sacrifice and committment to their noble cause. Comrades that stood together and fought for good against the evils of fascism.
No pasaran.
The battle of Jarama 1937
A poem by the young International Brigades volunteer John Lepper charts the day's fighting in the Jarama valley .With music by John Webster with Brindaband featuring flamenco guitarist Steve Homes.Followed by two more reflections on this battle.
Battle of Jarama - John Lepper.
The sun warmed the valley
But no birds sang
The sky was rent with shrapnel
And metallic clang
Death stalked the olive trees
Picking his men
His leaden finger beckoned
Again and again
Dust rose from the roadside
A stifling cloud
Ambulances tore past
Klaxoning loud
Men torn by shell-shards lay
Still on the ground
The living sought shelter
Not to be found
Holding their hot rifles
Flushed with the fight
Sweat-streaked survivors
Willed for the night
With the coming of darkness
Deep in the wood
A fox howled to heaven
Smelling the blood.
Jarama Front - T.A.R Hyndman
I tried not to see,
But heard his voice.
How brown the earth
And green the trees.
One tree was his he could not move.
Wounded all over,
He lay there moaning.
I hardly knew:
I tore his coat
it was easy -
Shrapnel had helped.
But he was dying
And the blanket sagged.
'God bless you, comrades,
He will thank you.'
That was all.
No slogan,
No clenched fist
Except in pain.
Jarama Valley - Woody Guthrie
Jarama - A.M. Elliot
Unrisen dawns had dazzled in your eyes,
Your hearts were hungry for the not yet born.
In agony of thwarted love and wasted life,
Through all long misery, from countries torn
With savage hands, you did not shrink or bend,
But marched on straighter, prouder to the end.
Not blindly, fighting in another's war
Lured by cheap promises and dugged with drums,
Striking down brothers in the name of lies,
Slaves of the blackest with all senses numbed-
But clear-eyed, bravely, counting all the cost,
Knowing what might be won, what might be lost.
The rifles you will never hold again
In other hands will speak against the night.
Brothers have filled your places in the ranks
Who will remember how you died for right
The day you took those rifles up, defied
The power of ages, and victorious died.
Comrades, sleep now. For all you loved shall be.
You did not seek for death, but finding it-
And such a death - better than shameful life,
Rest now content. A flame of hope is lit.
The flag of freedom floats again unfurled
And all you loved lives richer in the world.
Civil War Veteran in his own words.
Poems reprinted from The Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse 1980.
That genius Uncle Bill would have been celebrating his birthday today if he was still around. Then again his benevolent spirit still resonates here at teifidancer. Still remembered, this invisible man whose echoes still penetrates todays present. A true subversive always travels in disguise, the masks that are weaved are what shape us. Adventuror's beyond control.Soft voices in rhthm still gently explode.
Listen all you boards, syndicates, governments of the world. Pay it all, pay it all back. Those crimson shadows, raising pen to a point, tales of twists , rubs it all out, we sit and wait for silence.
Nothing lasts forever, only the usual manoeuvres, in the distance the motionless brake,the dark air carries the cry, moves through memory and saunters by, forbidden words that gather sorcery,and yes no borders are necessary, fragments follow crooked constellations, wayward cosmic currents. best to observe, shut out the order, there are no accidents, nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. Smash the control images, smash the control machine.
Willliam S . Burroughs - Is everybody in?
William S.Burroughs - Twilights last gleaming
Williams S. Burroughs - Pantopen Rose
William S. Burroughs - words of advice for young people.
Today marks Holocaust Memorial Day, on the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz Birkenau, where 1.6 million men, women children were killed in the holocaust.
The day aims to remind people of the crimes, racism and loss of life during this holocaust 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.
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.
There is still so much to learn, we should stand united against genocide wherever it occurs.
Some other places and people that the world sometimes forgets.
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.
Today St Dwynwen's day Welsh Patron Saint of Lovers. Dream of hope, dream of happiness the feel of protection, listen to old choruses sparks of history, people who circumnavigated with inspired attitude.
Souls - direct manifestations keep touching, turning, over and over ferociously spinning. The scanner verifies words to steal calm amidst the storms, comprehension becomes jumbled follow shootings stars, the phases of the moon.
Flashes inspire, lists become endless every man and woman a star. In world of wonder, ergot blossoms, the image has not yet cracked, unconscious rambling everyday we ressurrect. Fingerprints glowing hearts beat in synchronisation.
The land of my mothers the green, green grass of home. A saints day parade of names old relics shape us our heritage forever to be hummed. In difficult times, lose ourselves in imaginations wander waiting to be fed let ancient currents hum as day ripples with orgasmic sweet cocktails.
Write it all down sometimes we get what we need caught and taken in the breeze Temperature is rising head full of elevated thought flickers tonight will touch palms will not starve senses will tremble the firebox rekindled tomorrow smoulders with today'safterglow. In dreams and love, there are no impossibilities.
painting by A.C Hemming in 1918 held in Wellcome Collection, London
I currently live in the present and hopefully the future, but often visit the past for inspiration, especially to those before us who have gone wild with their ideas.
One individual that I have recently been fascinated by is one Dr William Price. Archdruid, healer, political activist, non-conformist, vegetarian, animist, cremator, and abundant dreamer of schemes.
Born on the 4th of March 1800 to an Anglican clergyman in the village of Rudry , Monmouthshire he became a radical in almost everything he did.
From his early days he displayed signs of an evident refusal to obey societies so called norms, often roaming naked across the mounrains close to his home. By the age of 20 he was fluent in many languages and his journey towards a life of rebellion was formed. In addition to being an incredibly forward thinking vegetarian who also oppsed practices such as vivisection and vaccination, he believed in equality between men and women, a believer in the abolition of marriage ( which he considered as enslavement of women), he was also an advocate of conservation.
At 20 he went to London where he was admiitted to the Royal Colege of Surgeons, and after gaining his accreditations returned to Potypridd in Wales where he became a General Practitioner and physician.He formed what could be considered an embryonic National Health Service, for local workers, concentrating on causes, not symptoms, charging his patients only when he failed to cure them, ( he did however not treat patients who he knew smoked ) and washed every coin he recieved. An advocate of herbal remedies, he dispensed his own potions to the sick under his care.
A photograph of Dr.Price taken in 1844.
He became an early supporter of the Chartist cause,( and was a probable member of the daughters of Rebecca) recognising their uncompromising demand for a new social order, and the concept of equal rights. Their Charter embodied many of the principles which he had been advocating for years, such as universal manhood suffrage, annual parliaments, secret ballot, egual electoral districts, salaries for members of parliament, and the abolition of property qualifications for members of parliament. These demands he considered vital and urgent, and so all his other interests were, for the time being set aside.
At a secret nocturnal conclave, lit up by flickering torches, he was appointed leader of the Pontypridd section of the movement. On July 12th, 1839, the petition for the Charter. with its one and a half million signatures, was rejected by the ruling class in Parliament by 235 votes to 46. The advocates of 'moral force' had failed, and so the advocates of 'direct action' took control of the situation.
John Frost of Newport, Taylor of Birmingham, Bussey of Yorkshire, and other leaders met in secret and decided that the only alternative was to emancipate the working class by means of an insurrection.
Towards the end of October 1839, John Frost, a draper, William Jones, a journey-man watchmaker, and Zephaniah Williams, an innkeeper, decided that the time had arrived to organise a march on Newport, They proposed to take the town by force and proceed to Cardiff, hoping that their victory would be a signal for a general uprising in the country.
Price aided the rebellion with financial support and armoury,playing a part in the planning of the Chartist rising in Newport in 1839, but on its failure he escaped to France, where he experienced a kind of spiritual epiphany. On his return to Wales in 1840 he still supported the cause and set up one of the first co-operative stores in Wales. He was known for his dislike of capitalist coal owners and the all powerful local gentry, supporting revolutionary republicanism. Whilst in France he had been inspired and been drawn to the words of the great French Anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. However he had also been drawn to the old druidical mysteries. writing his own take on the subject in his own invented Welsh, in a book called 'Gwyllis yn Nawd' translated as ' The Will of My Faith'. He tried to revive what he saw as the religion of the ancient druids and founded a Druidic group and attracted a few followers.
As a druid.Price would occassionally visit the celebrated Rocking-Stone on Pontypridd Common, where he would perform some ancient rites, and chant ;' Song of the Primitive Bard to the Moon.'
He took to wearing green trousers and fox fur hat, growing his beard and hair long. What a site to behold in conventional Victorian Britain. Raging against the world he once wrote ' there are two worlds, the world the master and the world of the slave... there can never be peace until the world of the mansion, the master and the exploiter is abolished.' He was also an advocate of the Welsh Language and the cause of nationalism.
As one steeped in Druidic lore, he was a worshipper of Nature, of the earth, the sky, the. the mountains, rivers and seas. Religion was, in his opinion, the outcome of primitive man's innate fear of the unknown, When man was still completely at the mercy of Nature's elemental powers and could not explain such natural phenonoma as change of seasons and weather storms, thunder, lightning, floods and pestilences, he ascribed them to the work of some supernatural power. Religion was primitive man;s first attempt to explain the ever-threatening and incomprehensible phenomena of nature.
Price considered the Rocking Stone at Pontypridd to be a primitive Druidic Temple, and in 1838 issued a public appeal for funds to preserve the monumental religues by the erection around them of a tower one hundred feet high, at a cost of £1,000, "Let Y Mae''n Chwyf,," he appealled, " be the banner of our heritage, around which millions, yet unborn, shall assemble to learn the language of our people."
He began having a relationship with a young woman named Ann Morgan, who in 1842 bore him a daughter. He baptised the child himself at the Rocking Stone in Pontypridd, naming her Gwenhiolan Iarlles Morganwg, ( Gwenhiolan, Countess of Glamorgan). He started holding various druidic events in the area and in 1855 led a parade through the streets of Merthyr Tydfil, accompanied by a half-naked man calling himself Myrddin ( the Welsh name for Merlin) and a goat! There was an air of performance about him.
Frequently raging against authority, he became involved in various litigations,and got into a bit of financial dissaray and off he popped to France for a while.
His story does not end here however and in 1866 he returned to Wales, (in the meantime his daughter had grown up) where he continued his work as a G.P.. In 1873 he settled in Llantrissant where he was joined by his 16 year old housekeeper- Gwenllian Llewellyn. Into his 80's he succumbed to matrimony in a druidic ceremony of his own making and they had a child that he called Iesu Crist Price ( Jesus Christ) unfortunately after 5 months the baby had died. He was devastated and believing the child was destined to restore the earth 'lost secrets of the druids' he took the body to Caerleon Field, near Llantrisant, where he decided that to bury a body was a desecration of the earth and decided to cremate it instead. He was arrested on 19th January, 1884 with illegal disposal of a body, but in court he argued that while the law did not state that cremation was legal, it did not in fact state that it was illegal. He won the case and returned to Llantrisant to a hero's welcome in order to cremate his son, involving his own Druidic prayers, that paved the way for the 1902 Cremation Act. He had fought the law and the law had lost.In 1892 he erected a pole over sixty feet high, with a crescent moon symbol at its peak on top of the hill where the cremation had taken place,
Lithograph, 19th Century.
A maverick who helped shape our world. He had two further children Iesu Crist 11 and a girl called Penelopen. He died on the 23th of January 1893, in Llantrisant and his body on 31st of January was cremated,where his son had been cremated as he had instructed on a pyre of two tons of coal overlooking Llantrisant in front of a crowd of 20,000. overseen by his family ,who were dressed in a mix of Welsh and druidic clothing. in front of a crowd of 20,000. overseen by his family ,who were dressed in a mix of Welsh and druidic clothing.
His last words were said to have been ' Bring me a glass of Champagne' ( his favourite tipple had been cider)
Along with Iolo Morganwg ( see earlier post of mine http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2009/10/iolo-morganwg-10th-march-1747-to-18th.html ) -I think he could be considered in line for the title of one our nations greatest living, his legacy, powerful and impessive.His invincible belief in himself, his open defiance of all orthodox ethics and usages, and his unconcealed conceit of the world, served to secure for him. an indefinable place in hearts of many of his countrymen.There is a statue and an exhibition dedicated to him in Llantrisant.
Measured in distant history, there is fire, as restless voices still rise. Eccentric or visionary, you decide. He was no ordinary man. A life of adventure and revolutionary abundance. Long may we remember him.
Dr William Price's Cremation.
Further Reading:-
A welsh heretic - Islwyn Ap Nicholas , Ffynon Press , (1973)
Dr William Price: Saint or Sinner - Cyril Briegirdle (1997) Gwasg Garrig Gwalch.
