Tuesday 17 November 2020
sleep furiously
Sunday 15 November 2020
Happy birthday Aneurin Bevan (15 November 1897 – 6 July 1960)
Aneurin Bevan , was born on this day at 32 Charles Street, Tredegar in 1897. It was one of a long row of four- roomed miners' cottages. He was the sixth of ten children born to Phoebe and David Bevan a coal miner of whom only eight survived infancy and only six to adulthood.
Bevan married a fellow left-wing Labour MP, Jennie Lee, in 1934 and together they campaigned to support the Socialists in the Spanish Civil War against France as well as setting up the Committee for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism. In 1936 a group of prominent left-wingers including Bevan set up a weekly Socialist newspaper, The Tribune, followed by trips around Spain during the Civil War. He famously declared ' Fascism is not itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born."
In 1959 he was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party, but he was a very ill man and died of cancer on 6th of July 1960 having made his reputation as father of the NHS.
Thursday 12 November 2020
Durability
Tuesday 10 November 2020
Ogoni 9 activists remembered 25 years on
"Dance your anger and your joys,
Dance the military guns to silence,
Dance oppression and injustice to death,
Dance my people,
For we have seen tomorrow
And there is an Ogoni star in the sky."
— Ken Saro Wiwa - Hung for opposing Shell
Saturday 7 November 2020
Coronavirus: Insights from Albert Camus' 'The Plague'
Born in extreme poverty, on the 7th of November 1913 in French occupied Algeria, to an illiterate mother who was partially deaf, who lost his father in the horror that was World War 1, and despite tremendous disadvantages by the age of 44 he was collecting the Nobel Prize for literature.
Thursday 5 November 2020
Remember, remember, the fifth of November Gunpowder treason and plot
Fawkes returned to England with fellow English Catholic Thomas Wintour, who introduced him to Robert Catesby. There were 13 conspirators all together, Guy Fawkes, Thomas Bates, Robert and Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Christopher and John Wright, Francis Tresham, Everard Digby, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, Hugh Owen, John Grant with Robert Catesby being the true ringleader.
Fawkes at the time said his only regret was that the plot was foiled. When he was asked why he was found with so much gunpowder he said “to blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains.”
Despite attempting to kill the new king of England, James I apparently praised Fawkes for being dedicated to his cause and for having a ' Roman resolution.'
Remember, remember, the fifth of November Gunpowder treason and plot
We see no reason
Why Gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot ….
Guy Fawkes, guy, t'was his intent
To blow up king and parliament.
Three score barrels were laid below
To prove old England's overthrow.
By god's mercy he was catch'd
With a darkened lantern and burning match.
So, holler boys, holler boys,
Let the bells ring.
Holler boys, holler boys,
God save the king.
And what shall we do with him?
Burn him!
In the end Fawkes and his friends paid the ultimate price, and although unhappy with the state of Catholicism in Europe, Fawkes would have happily seen a return of an autocratic Catholic monarch to Britain. Hero or Villain; it really depends on your interpretation of their legacy and your level of dissatisfaction with the world we live in today, to many a freedom fighter who in his time stood up for the people of England, and against the oppression of the government, who still resonates deeply with the world we live in today. In the meantime carry on resisting, and if you must play with fire, please be careful out there, and don't get caught.
Monday 2 November 2020
A.J.Cook - Militant Miner and Trade Union Leader ( 22/11/1884 - 2/11/31)
Balfour Declaration’s 103rd Anniversary prompts calls on Britain to apologise and recognize Palestinian rights
" His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by jews in any other country."
The Original Letter of the Balfour Declaration
Saturday 31 October 2020
Samhain Reflections
Bright Blessings (A Poem for Samhain )
today is one of celebrating light,
time to remember the paths of ancestors
forever casting their eternal beams,
goddesses returning, resurrecting feeling
whispering enchantment, releasing power,
as the veil of life gets thinner and dimmer
time to welcome old spirits that walk among us,
that enable us to dance and sing again
beyond this realm allows us to be blessed,
as leaves turn golden, and fall to nourish the land
under trees branches we can all nobly stand,
mother earth reaching out offering protection
absorbing our longings, accepting our wrongs,
in the vortex of time, keeps on shining bright
guiding us as we follow ancient paths of wisdom,
slipping through time, surrounded by love
allowing truth and justice to be the natural law.
( when the barrier between the worlds is whisper-thin and when magic, old magic, sings its heady and sweet song to anyone who cares to hear it.
~Carolyn MacCullough, Once a Witch)
Thursday 29 October 2020
Diane di Prima, Pioneering Feminist Beat poet and activist, dies at 86
Falling out of attention.
Wiping gnarled fingers on a faded housedress.
Lying down in the puddle beside the broken jug.
Where was the slack, the loss
of early fierceness?
How did we come to be contained
in rooms?”
Left to themselves people
grow their hair.
Left to themselves they
take off their shoes.
Left to themselves they make love
sleep easily
share blankets, dope & children
they are not lazy or afraid
they plant seeds, they smile, they
speak to one another. The word
coming into its own: touch of love;
on the brain, the ear.