I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid—I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.
Sad news that Pete Shelley has died at the untimely age of 63 of a suspected heart attack.The iconic lead singer of legendary influential Bolton punk rock band Buzzcocks died yesterday (November 6) in Estonia where he was living. His brother Gary McNeish posted a heartfelt tribute on Facebook. on Thursday evening.It read:
"This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, is tell you my brother
Pete Shelley had a heart attack this morning and passed away.
Shelley was born in Leigh, Lancashire, England, just west of Manchester on the 17th April 1955, Formed in Manchester in 1975,by Shelley (born Peter
Campbell McNeish) and Howard Devoto (né Howard Trafford), after the two met at the Bolton Institute of Technology and travelled to London together to see the Sex Pistols.The group began working in earnest after Shelley and Devoto booked
the Sex Pistols at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall, a signal event
in the city’s rock history that was depicted in Michael Winterbottom’s
2002 film “24 Hour Party People.”
The Buzzcocks became part of the UK’s punk scene and have been closely associated with it ever since.Like their contemporaries, the Buzzcocks scorned what they considered
the pretensions and bloated style of mainstream groups and turned out
brief, stripped down songs, performed at manic speed. They released their blinding debut Spiral Scratch containing four songs in
February 1977 on their own New Hormones label. “The implications of ‘Spiral Scratch’ were enormous,” critic Jon
Savage noted in his seminal 1991 history “England’s Dreaming.” The record ended up selling 16,000 copies and reaching the top 40 and became
a model for a legion of DIY punks in Britain, spurring a flood of
self-released music.
Boredom - Buzzcocks
Breakdown - Buzzxocks
Devoto left the
band in 1977 to form the angular post-punk act Magazine. The band was reconfigured with Diggle taking on
lead guitar and Garth Smith joining on bass. (Smith was soon displaced
by Steve Garvey.) The quartet was signed to United Artists Records in
the U.K. Shelley went on
to become Buzzcocks’ principal songwriter and front man.The
band became known for short, fast and loud hits like “Orgasm Addict”, featuring such inarguably brilliant lines as "It's a labor of love
fucking yourself to death." With England obviously not totally prepared
at the time for a song about porking anything that moved,the single didn't exactly rocket onto the charts at the famously
conservative BBC.
Orgasm Addict - Buzzxocks
Still, in the months and years that followed, Shelley and the Buzzcocks became one of the genre's most reliable forces, as at home with brute-power ragers ("Harmony in My Head") and pioneering
power-pop ("Ever Fallen in Love, With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve”) and “What Do I Get.” and as punk pushed in artsy new directions ("Why Can't I Touch It?") all touched with Shelley' ever distinctive voice..
Ever Fallen in Love, With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve - Buzzcocks
What do I get - Buzzcocks
Their energy and intensity were worthy of punk, and though no less
aggressive and pointed than their peers, Buzzcocks flashed a more
melodic streak, thanks to Shelley’s tuneful skills as a
writer with the song "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" sounding at
times like a punk version of the Beach Boys.
Everybody's Happy Nowadays - Buzzcocks
The group’s brilliant, acerbic singles (sharply produced by Martin
Rushent) crafted one perfect pop-punk track after another, some of the finest the punk genre had to offer, and a trio of strong 1978-79 albums, “Another Music in a
Different Kitchen,” “Love Bites” and “A Different Kind of Tension”,vaulted Buzzcocks to the top rank of England’s first-generation punk
groups. The band’s early 45s were compiled on the flawless 1979 hits
package “Singles Going Steady.”which, nearly 40 years after its release, still stands
as glowing testament to Shelley’s prowess as a punk rock vocalist. It should be in everybody's record collection. They toured the U.S., and appeared in
the 1982 concert film “Urgh! A Music War.”
Speaking in 2006 about his views on music, Shelley told the Guardian:
“I’m not interested in being able to play. A musician is like another
brand of entertainer.
“There are plenty of musicians that I enjoy watching that are
entertainers. But I wouldn’t want to be that, because the thing with an
entertainer is that there is always that dishonesty, which is what punk
tried to get rid of.
“It was like, you’re not pretending to be something you are not. You
are just what you are. Punk is an art of action. It’s about deciding to
do something and then going out and doing it.”
Shelley left the Buzzcocks and had a hit with the proudly out Gay “Homosapien” in 1981 as
a solo performer; the single was banned by the BBC for its reference to
gay sex, in the lyric “homo superior/ in my interior” but it became an underground hit nonetheless. Shelley came out as bisexual around that time, reflecting on the moment to Pitchfork
in 2009: “They [other punk artists] didn’t seem to bat an eyelid,
really. Because the idea of what people know, or the stereotype of a
punk, hadn’t been formed.
Homosapian - Pete Shelley
He
was also involved with a series of experimental recordings from the early ’80s which were far and away from the Buzzcocks’ pogo-inducing reputation. As a solo
artist, he issued five albums during the ‘80s; beginning with Sky Yen in 1980, which had actually been recorded in 1974. to his last solo album,
“Cinema Music and Wallpaper Sounds,” which was released in 2016.
I've always had an affection for the following synth- pop classic.
On your own - Pete Shelley
Telephone Operator has him in full on sneering camp mode and as the record plays, you can just picture him looking side on to an imaginary camera, left eyebrow slightly raised, arched and knowing. Telephone Operator - Pete Shelley
The band eventually reunited in 1989, convening their classic line-up
of Shelley, guitarist Steve Diggle, bassist Stephen Garvey and drummer
John Maher, to release six more albums and tour off and on with dates
scheduled through June 2019.Buzzcocks’ ninth and most recent album, 'The Way', came out in 2014. Shelley also reunited with Devoto for a collaborative release, Buzzkunst, in 2002. The Buzcocks were not only a great punk band. They were also active supporters of the Anti- Nazi League and Rock Against Racism. And it's just over 40 years since 'Rock Against Racism' and the Buzzcocks played to over 40,000 people at a concert in Manchester./40-years-since-rock-against-racism-and-buzzcocks-brought-40000-to-manchester/?fbclid=IwAR11-DMM1vaA5JfuojseZSswzG-YJ3XosaIJyMZlr1fJ2SvNgOQCPcr1wyA
Following the news of Shelley’s passing, many have taken to social
media to share their condolences and memories of this rock icon.
“I am totally shocked and saddened to just hear of the untimely death of Pete Shelley,” wrote Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock. “A superb songwriter, artist and a totally sweet hearted guy who was
one of the very few originals of punk and even a one off within that. My
deepest condolences to his family and friends.”
Captain Sensible from the Damned said ' Shocked to hear of the passing of our good mate Pete Shelley who’s
fabulous songs are amongst the catchiest in all of punk rock. We will
miss you Pete - love from @damnedtwits, X'
Former member of The Charlatans, author and radio host Tim Burgess also shared his love for the late singer-songwriter: “Pete Shelley wrote perfect three-minute pop songs. The soundtrack to
being a teenager. You’ll be missed Pete but you’ll be remembered for a
long long time for your brilliant music.”
The author Neil Gaiman tweeted “part of my youth dies with him”.
The Buzzcocks paid tribute to their late band member too: “Pete’s music has
inspired generations of musicians over a career that spanned five
decades and with his band and as a solo artist, he was held in the
highest regard by the music industry and by his fans around the world.”
Music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine said Buzzcocks were one of the
most influential bands to emerge in the initial wave of punk rock, with
echoes of their music in everyone from Hüsker Dü to Nirvana.
"The Buzzcocks were inspired by the Sex Pistols' energy, yet they didn't copy the Pistols' angry political stance," he wrote in AllMusic. "Instead,
they brought that intense, brilliant energy to the three-minute pop
song. Shelley's alternately funny and anguished lyrics about adolescence
and love were some of the best and smartest of his era."
I personally loved the Buzzcock's and have subsequently been playing my old singles again, which I've treasured since getting them as a teenager in the early 1980's, they still sound as fresh and vivid to my ears now to when I first heard them. He sure bought me many harmonies for my head, feet and heart to enjoy..
Shelley was a sonic spark on the U.K. punk scene, who unlike many acts with similar beginnings, solo and alongside the Buzzcocks carried on making great records. I'm sure Shelley's music will be remembered for a long time to come. I' will end this post with another classic Buzzcocks track a live version from 1989 taken from their brilliant album Another music in a different kitchen .Yet another light has been dimmed from the world.Rest in Peace Pete Shelley.his place in punk history is guaranteed and will continuously resonate. Moving Away From The Pulsebeat
Two years after coming to power, Theresa May's premiership is the most shambolic for over a century. Continuing to show incompetence, May has already in complete delusion told MP's she was confident that
the deal ' take us significantly closer to delivering what the British
people voted for in the referendum. But her Brexit divorce deal is an absolute failure, combined with her refusal to listen to anyone in such a contemptuous manner and we are now fast approaching constitutional crisis territory, which could at last bring about the Government's collapse.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March next year, but the deal
negotiated with the EU has to be backed by a majority MPs if it is to
come into force.The problem with Brexit, as the Prime Minister is finding to her cost,
is that it has been impossible to find a blueprint for EU withdrawal
that makes all factions in all parties happy, or, more seriously, is
not furiously opposed by at least one of those factions.
In the absence of any deal, and without a revoking of Article 50,
Britain crashes out of the EU on a no-deal basis , a scenario that has
alarmed national and international businesses and inside Britain's
machinery of government and public services, due to the prospect of
swingeing tariffs on goods at the border, miles of queued lorries and
stockpiling of food and medicines by panicking householders.
However, all this raises the question of how the UK might revoke notification. It
would almost certainly need to be done by an act of parliament. If it
was done by ministers alone using prerogative powers it would frustrate
the will of parliament as expressed in the European Union (Withdrawal)
Act 2018.
It should be noted that the statement and the case
concerns revocation of notice to leave, and not a delay or extension of
the two-year period provided for under Article 50.That period
can be extended, but only with the agreement of all of the other 27 EU
states. Whereas extension of the Article 50 period could become a
political necessity, revocation of Article 50 remains something of an
academic point at present. However, that would change if there was a
second referendum in which the British people voted to remain in the EU.
On Wednesday, the full legal advice given by Attorney General
Geoffrey Cox to Theresa May's cabinet was published after the Government
was found in contempt of Parliament in an unprecedented defeat in the
House of Commons. Parliament also voted in favour of Dominic
Grieve's motion by 321 votes to 299 which gives MP’s greater influence
in Brexit should Mrs May’s deal be rejected in six days time.
The theme of cake has propped up constantly throughout the Brexit process with Brexiteer and Former Secrerary Boris Johnson accused of 'cakeism' for saying the UK should ' have our cake and eat it' as we leave the European Union. The president of the European Council Donald Tusk mocked May on an
Instagram story. In the picture of the prime minister and himself at the cake stand he wrote: “A piece of cake, perhaps? Sorry, no cherries.” The
roasting is a reference to a running joke in Brussels that Britain
wants to “cherrypick” the things
it likes about the EU in its new deal. It's all such a bloody mess, would you eat Theresa May's Brexit Cake ? I certainly wouldn't. The Tory's are currently failing us badly.
It is clear that the disastrous government has run out of steam. The Withdrawal Agreement must be voted down and the country needs a general election. The deal that May is presenting to parliament is the worst of all worlds, but is at least uniting Remainers and Leavers alike.
George H.W Bush, the 41st president of the United States, died on Friday at the age of 94
While several publications and media figures used his death to glorify his legacy, and sing his praises, saying that he was a patriot, who served his country with honour and distinction in Office and during the Second World War. While the establishment celebrates the life of the former president and
Americans line up to mourn their fallen leader, the facts that are being
reported in the mainstream media are far different than the legacy he
is leaving behind. Others are pointing to his dark human rights record and his responsibility for war crimes. Many millions in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, will have great cause to curse him, now that he has shuffled off this mortal coil.
Let us not forget that as a member of the Reagan administration, he opposed sanctioning
Apartheid South Africa. whilst the Willie Horton ad he used in his Presidential campaign is rightly seen as a
precursor to Donald Trump’s race-baiting politics. And any full accounting of Bush’s legacy has to include his appalling record
on LGBTQ issues. “Bush was as captive to the evangelical right on
social issues—and thus a decidedly Republican president—as was his
predecessor, Ronald Reagan, who cultivated religious conservatives as a
potent political force and bowed to their anti-LGBTQ agenda as the AIDS
epidemic mushroomed in the 1980s,” Michelangelo Signorile writes
in the Huffington Post. On a host of issues—ranging from AIDS funding
to the ban on gays in the military to collecting data on the prevalence
of teen suicide among young gays—Bush sided against the LGBTQ community.
In 1988, Bush was elected president defeating Michael Dukakis of
Massachusetts. Within his first year in office Bush’s approval ratings
began to slip due to his inability to deal with Manuel Noriega, the
Panamanian leader he previously aided while serving as head of the CIA.
Bush responded by deciding to invade Panama, and on December 20,1989 he
deployed 25,000 troops to the tiny nation. Bush justified the
invasion— code named operation just cause— on the grounds of national
security. The president mislead the country by claiming Noriega had threatened the US, a claim which turned out to be untrue. After two weeks the conflict ended, resulting in the deaths of twenty American soldiers and as many as 2,000 Panamanians.
Less than a year after the invasion of Panama, Bush once again found
himself responding to another foreign policy debacle. On August 2, 1990
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein began an invasion of nearby Kuwait. In
response, President Bush and the American media used the testimony of
a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah to
justify US intervention in Kuwait. However, Nayirah was later discovered
to be the daughter of a U.S. ambassador, who was being coaxed by
military psychological operations specialists. Thirteen years before his son George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction to justify his invasion and
occupation of Iraq, George H.W. Bush made his own set of false claims to
justify the aerial bombardment of that same country, the end result being horrific civilian casualties.
Under George H.W. Bush, according to the New York Times,
the United States dropped a staggering 88,500 tons of bombs on Kuwait
and Iraq. Seventy percent of the bombs “missed” their targets, killing
thousands of civilians. The administration
deliberately targeted civilians and essential infrastructure.from electricity-generating
and water-treatment facilities to food-processing plants and flour
mills. This was no accident. As Barton Gellman of the Washington Post reported
in June 1991: “Some targets, especially late in the war, were bombed
primarily to create postwar leverage over Iraq, not to influence the
course of the conflict itself. Planners now say their intent was to
destroy or damage valuable facilities that Baghdad could not repair
without foreign assistance. … Because of these goals, damage to civilian
structures and interests, invariably described by briefers during the
war as ‘collateral’ and unintended, was sometimes neither.”
By January 1992, Beth Osborne Daponte, a demographer with the U.S. Census Bureau, was estimating
that Bush’s Gulf War had caused the deaths of 158,000 Iraqis, including
13,000 immediate civilian deaths and 70,000 deaths from the damage done
to electricity and sewage treatment plants. Daponte’s numbers
contradicted the Bush administration’s, and she was threatened by her
superiors with dismissal for releasing “false information.”
In the aftermath of the Gulf War, Bush also used the United States'
diplomatic clout to lead the United Nations to impose one of the most
devastating sanctions regimes in history. Child mortality rates up to 1996 alone were half a million deaths
and were justified by the Clinton administration's Madeleine Albright
who said, "We think the price is worth it." Millions more Iraqis were
affected by the sanctions that Bush instigated and laid the foundations
for.
Eminent jurists, professional legal organizations, and human rights
monitors around the world have since declared that
President George W. Bush to be a war criminal for his overt and systematic violations of such
international laws as the Geneva and Hague Conventions and such US law as
the War Crimes Act, the Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws.Bush’s CIA disappeared countless people to secret detention to be tortured.
After leaving office in 1993, George H.W. Bush retired with his wife
Barbara and built a home in a community near Houston, Texas. Though
retired, the former president would still face controversy.
Last year, during the height of the #MeToo movement, at least five women claimed they were abused by him. In an interview with
Time Magazine, a woman named Roslyn Corrigan claimed Bush sexually
assaulted her in 2003 when she was only 16-years-old. At least five more
women have accused Bush
of sexual assault, including an unnamed Michigan woman who came forward
claiming the former president groped her in 1992 at a campaign event.
Bush leaves this world having evaded being arrested or prosecuted for the crimes that he was responsible for. When media figures try to redeem him, or portray him as
lovable-but-flawed, they ignore the actual record. In fact, Bush never atoned for his actions, on the contrary, he consistently defended his decision-making, and the illegal doctrine he
espoused. George W. Bush intentionally offered false justifications for a war, that destroyed and devastated an entire country, causing thousands of innocent deaths.A war that needn’t have been fought in the first place. Bush set the stage for a mess with which we are still dealing with today.Any way you look at it, Bush left the world worse off than it was. This is his damning tainted legacy.
‘All businesses should be following Airbnb’s example’ – Andy Slaughter
Amnesty International took a Christmas hamper of Israeli
“stolen goods” to the Foreign Office today.
The hamper contained numerous food items – including red wine,
olive oil, honey, mineral water, eggs, dates, peppers, oranges and
avocados – all bearing spoof “Delicious but tainted” branding.
The goods all bore labels alluding to their tainted and illegal nature, with a bottle of wine declaring itself to be “100% stolen”, eggs labelled as from “free-range hens” but “probably rotten”, spring water that is “too good for the locals”, and Israeli settlement honey described as “a blend of honeys originating from stolen Palestinian land”.
The hamper hand-in was designed to draw attention to the fact
that these goods are all currently being produced in Israel’s unlawful
settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
Each year, hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of goods produced in
the settlements are exported internationally, despite the fact that
most countries around the world have officially condemned the
settlements as illegal under international law. In the UK, imported
settlement goods include oranges, dates, spring water and halva
desserts.
The spoof Christmas hamper is part of Amnesty’s ongoing campaign
calling on all governments around the world to ban the importation of
Israeli settlement goods. All countries have a clear obligation to
ensure respect for international humanitarian law and shouldn’t
recognise or assist the illegal situation that Israel’s settlement
policy has created.
Last week, the online travel company Airbnb announced it would
withdraw some 200 listings for properties located in Israeli settlements
in occupied territories in the West Bank. The company said the move
recognised that the settlements “are at the core of the dispute between
Israelis and Palestinians”.
Amnesty’s tainted goods hamper was handed to Foreign Office
officials along with a 50,000-strong petition from supporters of the
campaign. The hand-in took place with MP Andy Slaughter, a prominent supporter of the ban Israeli settlement goods campaign within Parliament, and Kate Allen, Amnesty UK’s Director, Andy Slaughter said:
“All businesses should be following Airbnb’s example and stop
profiting from illegal trade with settlements. But it is the UK and
other governments that need to enforce a ban. Otherwise they are
complicit in breaching international law and giving comfort to the
occupation and theft of Palestinian land.”
Kate Allen said:
‘All Israeli settlement goods are tainted goods. They’re tainted by
the illegality of the settlements themselves and tainted by the
discrimination and violence that has led to the creation of the
settlements.
More than half a century of occupation
During the course of the 51-year occupation, more than 50,000
Palestinians have had their homes demolished, while some 600,000 Israeli
settlers have moved into illegally-constructed settlements, many
serviced by settler-only roads and guarded by a network of Israeli
military checkpoints. In total, approximately 1,000 square kilometres of
Palestinian land has been expropriated by settlers in the past
half-century – approximately the size of Hong Kong.
On December 1, 1955, 42 year old Rosa Louise Parks, a black American seamstress was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Her act of civil disobedience, led to black citizens boycotting the bus company for over a year, in what was to become known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was to continue for over a year, setting up the seeds of a social revolution, putting the effort to end
segregation on a fast track.
Rosa became nationally recognized as the “mother of the modern
day civil rights movement” in America. Her act of dignified defiance and courage triggered a wave of protest that reverberated
throughout the United States.
Contrary to some reports, Parks wasn’t physically tired and was able to
leave her seat. She refused, on principle, to surrender her seat because
of her race, which was the law in Montgomery at the time.
She was also a long-time member of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People and washighly respected in her community, and over the years, she had repeatedly disobeyed bus segregation
regulations. Once, she even had been put off a bus for her defiance.
Rosa Louise McCauley spent the first years of her life on a small farm
with her mother, grandparents and brother. She witnessed night rides by
the Ku Klux Klan and listened in fear as lynchings occurred near her
home.
The family moved to Montgomery; Rosa went to school and became a
seamstress. She married barber Raymond Parks in 1932, and the couple
joined the Montgomery NAACP.
When she inspired the bus boycott, Parks had been the secretary of the
local NAACP for twelve years (1943-1956). Parks founded the Montgomery
NAACP Youth Council in the early 1940s.
Later, as secretary of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, she
traveled throughout the state interviewing victims of discrimination and
witnesses to lynchings.
The
NAACP realized it had the right person to work with, as it battled
against the system of segregation in Montgomery. It also worked with
another group of local leaders to stage a one-day boycott of passenger
buses, when Parks went to court.The
group expanded to include other people, chose a name, the Montgomery
Improvement Association, and planned an extended boycott.
But the MIA also needed a public spokesman with leadership qualities to make their fight into a wide-ranging cause.Their pick was a little-known pastor who had recently arrived in Montgomery: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Rosa was briefly jailed and paid a fine, but for many years would continue as an activist in the movement for the rights of exploited people.Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the boycott,and ater losing her tailoring job and receiving death threats.
Parks, along with her husband and mother, eventually decided to move to
Detroit, where Parks’ brother resided.
In the years following her retirement, she traveled to lend her
support to civil-rights events and causes and wrote an autobiography,
“Rosa Parks: My Story.”
She remained an active member of the NAACP and became an administrative
aide in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. a
post she held until her 1988 retirement..
The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute Of Self-Development was established
in 1987 to offer job training for black youth.
In 1999, Parks received the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the
highest honor a civilian can receive in the United States. The Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) also sponsors an annual Rosa
Parks Freedom Award.
Her husband, brother and mother
all died of cancer between 1977 and 1979.
When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she
became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in state at the
U.S. Capitol. At
the time, she was only the 30th person accorded that honor. She was the
first woman to receive the honor, and her coffin sat on the catafalque
built for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln.
Parks's legacy lives on. In 2000, a library and museum in Montgomery were dedicated to Rosa Parks. The Rosa Parks Museum https://www.troy.edu/rosaparks/ houses
a replica of the bus that sparked the civil rights activists to boycott
an important mode of transportation. The library and children's wing
not only tell the story of Parks to its hundreds of visitors, but also
those of Nixon, Gray, and Colvin. There is a "time travel" machine that
transports the visitors from the 1800s to the Jim Crowe era and to 1950s
Montgomery.
Let us remember her today, and acknowledge Rosa's act of quiet resistance, that still resonates down the corridors of time. She remains a symbol to all to remain free. It is worth noting that in the same week President Obama honored Rosa Parks’ 100th birthday, Israel
announced two newly segregated bus lines for Palestinian workers
traveling to Israel from the West Bank. The “Palestinian only” buses
were introduced after Israeli settlers complained that fellow
Palestinian passengers posed a “security risk.”The timing of Israel’s announcement set the internet abuzz with
moralizing references to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Jim Crow.
Let us also think what would happen if a Palestinian Rosa Parks chose to sit on a segregated West Bank Bus, Palestinians in the present moment are unable to travel freely in their own country - they even have to have permits to enter Jerusalem.
"Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that
degrades human personality is unjust," Martin Luther King said "All segregation
statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages
the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority
and the segregated a false sense of inferiority."
Like Rosa Parks before her, Palestinians like Ahed Tamimi , among others are struggling against
unjust laws, in their case the injustice of a 50-year military occupation
that denies Palestinians their land, right to travel and
self-determination. Israel maintains an apartheid system of democracy
for Israeli Jews - and discrimination against Israelis of colour -
second-class citizenship for Israeli citizens of Arab descent, and
dispossession and disenfranchisement for Palestinian Arabs in the
territories.
We need more brave souls like Rosa Parks and Ahed Tamimi. It is possible for a single person to engage in an act of resistance against oppression to spark the seeds that can change the world.
Earlier post on the Montgomery Bus Protest can be read here.
#UniversalCredit causes serious financial hardship for claimants.
The government claim Universal Credit (UC) will make things better for
claimants. But where it has already been rolled out it’s been plagued
with problems that are pushing more people into #poverty.
It has caused tens of thousands of people to fall into debt, rent arrears, and to become reliant on food banks.
Despite huge flaws in the system the Tory government continue to push ahead with rolling out UC to more claimants.
Personally I do not believe it can be fixed, or modified it needs to be
stopped and scrapped completely. It is crucial that we carry on
campaigning against its implementation to defend those on the receiving
end of brutal cuts and to push for the complete abolition of these
policies that will hurt those who are already the most disadvantaged in
our society who are merely being treated as collateral damage.
We must
continue to resist these devastating policies, an end to this cruel
austerity measure and give support to all those that currently need it.
Remember no one is immune to becoming ill or losing their jobs.I will be
tomorrow joining a demo in my home town of Cardigan, at 10. 30
outside the Guildhall, it is being introduced in Ceredigion this month.
lets make our voices be heard and tell the
government that we wont simply stand back and let this happen. Many ,
more events will be happening across the country
Show your support — join an action near you.Stop this discredited failing Tory policy.
I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.”
-George Duchamel, Scenes de la vie future (1930)
A Situationist International detourned poster representing the society of the spectacle.
The Duchamel quote above was also used in Walter Benjamin's book Illuminations
[1968]. It refers to people who have their own thoughts replaced by those
introduced by mass media.
The idea of détourning existing comics with often ironic sayings came
about in the 60s Pop Art movement but was also used by French
Situationists in the late 60s.
The Situationist International was formed in 1957 as a merger between the international movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, headed by Asger Jorn and the Lettrist International headed by Guy Debord.
The Situationists were highly politicised at a time when it was
fashionable for avant-gardes to separate from social revolt.
Guy Debord’s (1931–1994) best-known work, La société du spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle)
(1967),https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-society-of-spectacle-guy-debord.html is a polemical and prescient indictment of our image-saturated
consumer culture. The book examines the “Spectacle,” Debord’s term for
the everyday manifestation of capitalist-driven phenomena; advertising,
television, film, and celebrity.
Debord defines the spectacle as
the “autocratic reign of the market economy.” Though the term “mass
media” is often used to describe the spectacle’s form, Debord derides
its neutrality. “Rather than talk of the spectacle, people often prefer
to use the term ‘media,’” he writes, “and by this they mean to describe a
mere instrument, a kind of public service.” Instead, Debord describes
the spectacle as capitalism’s instrument for distracting and pacifying
the masses. The spectacle takes on many more forms today than it did
during Debord’s lifetime. It can be found on every screen that you look
at. It is the advertisements plastered on the subway and the pop-up ads
that appear in your browser. It is the lists telling you “10 things
you need to know about ‘x.’” The spectacle reduces reality to an endless
supply of commodifiable fragments. For Debord, this constituted an unacceptable “degradation”
of our lives.
We all like to think we’re in control of our perceptions and decisions. but every day we are unconsciously being .manipulated. Because we’re human, the very things that make us
human in the first place, like empathy, emotion, and exhaustion to name a few, give those who are
unscrupulous, desperate, or egotistical an edge when it comes to
distorting our thoughts and judgments, especially by governments.
And in certain ways the problem is getting worse. Information overload is one reason we’ve grown more vulnerable to manipulation. Research .suggests that we receive five times more information now than we did 30 years ago, and daily we are bombarded. This is the Spectacle that Debord warned us about. Hitler himself said, “By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda,
one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched
life as paradise.” We must discriminately keep awake and aware. Be careful and beware. Be weary of your thoughts being replaced and dominated by moving images, that dull and passify you, best to stay awake, with your life in your own hands, move away from the spectacle that seeks to control you.
The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is
observed by the United Nations on 29 November each year, in accordance
with mandates given by the General Assembly in its resolutions 32/40 B
of 2 December 1977, 34/65 D of 12 December 1979, 56/34 of 3 December
2001, and other relevant resolutions.
Special commemorative activities are organized by the Division for
Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat, in consultation
with the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the
Palestinian People.
The date of 29 November was chosen because of its meaning and
significance to the Palestinian people. On that day in 1947, the General
Assembly adopted resolution 181(II), which
came to be known as the Partition Resolution. That resolution provided
for the establishment in Palestine of a “Jewish State” and an “Arab
State”, with Jerusalem as a corpus separatum under a special
international regime. Of the two States to be created under this
resolution, only one, Israel, has so far come into being.
This United Nations decision unleashed a catastrophe whose
reverberations Palestinians continue to experience until today.
Three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs—who were the majority of
the population of historic Palestine, fled for their lives after
experiencing or learning of massacrs by Zionist paramilitary organizations, or were expelled from their homes during the ensuing Arab-Israeli war of 1948. By the 1949 armistice, the original partition lines had shifted violently so that Israel’s footprint became much larger than envisioned by the roposed partition plan, itt was accorded 55 percent by the plan, but sized and additional 25%of
Palestinian territory. At present, the drastically reduced Palestinian
land continues to be occupied by the Israeli military and Jerusalem is
occupied and divided with Israel controlling and limiting access to
religious sites. Palestinians originally displaced during the Nakba (the
Arabic word for Catastrophe—what the Palestinians call the 1948 war
when they lost their homeland) are still prevented from exercising the
right to return to their homes in what is now Israel. And contrary to
the resolution (and to the Fouth Geneva Convention )
Israel has continued to expropriate additional vast tracts of Palestinian territory
for its own use and especially for the building and transfer of its own
Israeli citizens to illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
The Palestinian people, who now number more than 8 million, live
primarily in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967,
including East Jerusalem, part of which is now administered by the
Palestinian Authority; in Israel; in neighbouring Arab States; and in
refugee camps in the region.
The International Day of Solidarity has traditionally provided an
opportunity for the international community to focus its attention on
the fact that the question of Palestine is still unresolved and that the
Palestinian people is yet to attain its inalienable rights as defined
by the General Assembly, namely, the right to self-determination without
external interference, the right to national independence and
sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property from
which they had been displaced.
This year’s International Day of Solidarity with the
Palestinian People takes place at a time of turmoil, trouble
and torment. The decades-long Palestinian struggle for
self-determination, independence and a life of dignity faces
numerous obstacles, including: continued military
occupation of Palestinian territory; ongoing violence and
incitement; continued settlement construction and expansion;
deep uncertainties about the peace process; and
deteriorating humanitarian and economic conditions,
particularly in Gaza. The prolonged Palestinian struggle against dispossession and the
fragmentation of the State of Palestine has resulted in the aggressive
displacement of many Palestinians seeking refuge mainly in the Middle
East. In the past decades, civilians have been denied their dignity and
fundamental rights to free movement, education, healthcare and even the
right to life.They have had their land, livelihood, and lives taken away. They have
been killed for resisting the illegal occupation of their homes and
their country. They have been denied their independence.
With each passing day, the number of Palestinians
in need of humanitarian assistance increases. It has therefore become
clear that the conflict between Palestinian and Israel feeds into the
wider regional dynamics by having a negative effect on peace, economic
development, socio-political progression and security throughout the
entire region.
We should remain concerned and condemn the continued illegal settlement
expansion by Israel which constitute a contravention of international
law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. The ongoing
Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories is a fundamental
obstacle to a return to negotiations and a grave threat to the very
existence of a future Palestinian state as well as a safe and secure
Israel. We should also call for the effective and immediate
implementation of resolution 2334 (2016), which reaffirms that Israeli
illegal settlements have no legal validity.
Many believe that the only way to bring about lasting peace in
the Middle East is to have a two state solution for Palestine and Israel
based on the international recognition and independence of the State of
Palestine, based on the 04 June 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as
its capital, functioning within recognized and secure borders and living
side-by-side in peace with Israel and its other neighbours as endorsed
in the Quartet Roadmap the Madrid Principles, the Arab Peace Initiative
and the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.
So today lets reiterate our solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right
to self-determination, as well as support for a free and
sovereign State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and an end to the illegal occupation of the Palestinians land, .towards building a future of peace,
justice, security and dignity for the Palestinians.
Heartbroken to hear of Harry Leslie Smith's passing at the age of 95. He was a brilliant polemicist and author, an inspiring activist, for social justice and peace a loving father, and much much more. A shining light among the darkness of our times., one of the giants whose shoulders we all stand on. We should all carry his fighting spirit forwards. Rest in Power
The socialist campaigner rose to fame with a speech praising the NHS and
had devoted his last years to visiting refugee hotspots. He was also a supporter of Palestinian rights, and of the right to non-violent resistance in the form of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)
The Labour campaigner was taken ill in Canada following a fall earlier
this month, and his son John had been keeping followers updated on his
popular Twitter account.
"At 3:39 this morning, my dad Harry Leslie Smith died. I am an orphan," he wrote.
Mr Smith, who was in the RAF during WWII and lived through the
Great Depression, had become a vocal advocate for socialist policies,
arguing neo-liberal forces had degraded the welfare state built during
his lifetime.
Nicknamed the "world's oldest rebel", he rose to prominence after making an impassined speech
in support of the NHS at Labour's 2014 conference, calling his
childhood, before public healthcare, a "barbarous time" and criticising
government austerity.
Mr Smith had devoted the latter years of his
life to visiting refugee hotspots around the world, documenting the
suffering caused by displacement in the hope that his age and following
could create a "rallying cry" for action.
Born in 1923 in
Barnsley, Yorkshire, he grew up in poverty after his coal miner father
became unemployed, watching his sister die at the age of ten, and turned
to writing in later life after working as a carpet trader in Toronto.
He described his book Harry's Last Stand as a "rallying call",
telling the younger generation of the need for a "social safety network"
giving all the right to good housing, further education, healthcare, a
living wage and dignified old age.
"I am not a historian. But at 91 I am history, and I fear its repetition," he said.
Mr
Smith's son tweeted that he would "follow in his footsteps" and
"endeavour to finish his projects", including publishing some of his
father's later writing.
#Istandharry
