Tuesday 7 July 2015

Remembering 51 day bombardment of Gaza, one year on




Today July 7th, 2014 the  51 day Israeli bombardment of Gaza began. The relentless widespread destruction and loss of life shocked the world. We should not  these 51 days of suffering that the people of Gaza had to endure. Today I remember the beginning of this devastating assault and all the Palestinians who were subsequently killed.
Codenamed Operation Protective Edge by the Israeli Defence Force,  between 7th  July and August 26, Israel  carried out  its third major military assault on Gaza in the past 6 years (2008-09; 2012, 2014, respectively). It was to be the most deadly, killing 2,251 Palestinians of which 1,462 were civilians, and included 299 women and 551 children, as well as injuring 11,231, a number  that includes 3,436 children in a bombardment from land, sea and air. In what amounts to nothing lshort than a crime of terror.
The devastation caused by Operation  Protective Edge is said to be greater than that  of the two previous wars. Gaza had been  taken back 1,000 years, but still remained as an open-air prison, where nothing is safe or certain. people still sharing a heavy burden as a consequence of this bombardment.
The Palestinians were left with their hospitals and clinics destroyed and damaged, their one  only power plant destroyed. Electricity only coming on for  about  6 hours per day, with sewage and water systems in tatters. The after effects of this war has taken its toll on all economic sectors. People left living amongst ruins, with  many children living with  the constant feeling of  fear,  left with emotional and psychological  problems. Around 100,000 people in Gaza are still homeless, one year after the  conflict and Israel's illegal blockade continues.
But despite, this, and the terrible tragedy that they had to go through, the Palestinians have reliance in their souls, and despite it all, carry much hope. I remember too, again the continuing plight of the Palestinian. I hope our dedication to ending their occupation, suffering and injustice  continues and is renewed, I remember those that were lost and long and hope that the human rights of the Palestinian people continues to be recognised and respected.
The UK must play its part too by stopping selling Israel arms, that signals it tacit approval, and allows the facilitation of future attacks.


Save The Children : Gaza one year on ; a Living nightmare


http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/sites/default/files/docs/A_Living_Nightmare.pdf


Names of Palestinians killed in war on Gaza since July 8


http://www.imemc.org/article/68429




Scenes earlier this week, across Britain in support of the Palestinian people.











Monday 6 July 2015

Protesters shut down Israeli owned Arms Factories across UK






Respect,  Elbit systems drone factory in Shenstone has been closed for business, currently being blockaded by campaigners from across the UK, Manchester, London, Leeds, Glasgow and more.

Activists are shutting down arm factories around the world today to disrupt the global arms trade which sustains Israeli Apartheid.

The UK continues to be complicit in  Israels crimes against the Palestinian people by issuing export licences  to Israel and hosting Israeli arms manufacturers.
The British  government shamefully continued to approve arms sales totalling £4 million to Israel in the months following the Israeli military's  controversial operation in Gaza last summer.


http://europe.newsweek.com/britain-approved-4m-arms-sales-israel-after-gaza-50-day-war-329739




http://waronwant.org/resources/arming-apartheid

John Lennon - Power To The People



Well done Greece, went to bed last night very happy.
This is not just a victory for the people of Greece , but a victory to the people of Europe. The tide against Austerity has turned. Another Europe is coming!
Greece is the word, better shape up.

Sunday 5 July 2015

Happy birthday NHS


Nye Bevans legacy came into the world 67 years ago this morning,when he opened Park Hospital in Manchester at a time of rationing and shortages, when we were nearly bankrupt, a jewel  that the war generation left us with, a proud legacy, for us to all to continue to share. It offered for the first time a free healthcare system for all, and has since  played a vital role in caring for all aspects of our nations health. My own father served it well for nigh on 40 years.
Remember we paid for it, so it is owned by us, it is our precious commodity, it must suvive, we must tear the vultures hands from it.
As the Tory's and their rotten hearts seek to dismantle it,  we should not forget Nye's words who said ' It will last as long as their are folk with enough faith to fight for it.
We  cannot reach the day again where people make a profit out of our sickness.





Happy birthday Clara Zetkin ( 5/7/1857 -20/6/33) Organiser of the First International Womens Day


Happy Birthday Clara Zetkin, ( nee Eissner), pioneering German Marxist theorist, advocate for womens rights and universal suffrage.Born  on  July 5, 1857, Wiederau, Saxony [Germany,
Clara Eissner was educated at the Leipzig Teachers’ College for Women.
Perhaps influenced by her upbringing and social class, it was during her time there that she became involved with the women’s movement and  in 1878 she joined the Socialist Workers’ Party (SAP), which changes its name to Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1890.  In 1878, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck banned all SPD activity in an attempt to curb the party’s power in the government. Following this act, Zetkin and other leading members of the SPD had to leave Germany to avoid persecution and prison. Zetkin migrated first to Zurich, and then to Paris. While in exile, she met her partner Ossip Zetkin. Though they never married, she took his name and together they had two sons. 
She spent most of the 1880s in self-imposed exile in Switzerland and Paris, writing and distributing illegal literature and meeting many leading international Socialists.  After participating in the founding congress of the Second Socialist International (1889), she returned to Germany and from Stuttgart edited the Socialist women’s paper Die Gleichheit (“Equality”) from 1892 to 1917.
In 1907 she was a cofounder of thegal literature and meeting many leading international Socialists.  After participating in the founding congress of the Second Socialist International (1889), she returned to Germany and from Stuttgart edited the Socialist women’s paper Die Gleichheit (“Equality”) from 1892 to 1917.
Zetkin became the leading female theorist of socialist emancipation theory and as such helped to formulate the core ideas of socialist feminism. An important medium for her to spread socialist ideas in circles of working class was the socialist women’s journal of the SPD, Die Gleichheit (Equality). Here and elsewhere she argued that women could only become emancipated if they worked like men and earn their own income, which would made them independent from men and integrated them in society and politics. They should receive the same pay and privileges as men in the workplace. For her wage inequality hurt women and men.  She strongly made this arguments in an article in Die Gleichheit published in December 1893, in which she addressed this issue. 
The article served as a call to action. It  framed women’s economic equality and social emancipation as a matter of class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat, only after a socialist revolution women could really become equal as women and as workers. Zetkin argued that wage inequality would hurt both, female workers because the poor wages made it incredibly difficult for women to afford adequate living conditions, and male workers because of the competition of cheap female labor.
 As a result, Zetkin called equal wages and stronger attempts pf the SPD and the trade unions to organize women in the labor movement. Only when women became equal to men at work and, by extension, in the home could they begin working towards class reforms. In addition to promoting socialist feminism, Zetkin provided some much-needed leadership and structure in the German socialist women’s movement. In 1907 she was a cofounder of the International Socialist Women’s Congress.
During the First World War, Zetkin, along with Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919) and her friend Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), belonged to the small opposition in the SPD that rejected the party’s policy of Burgfrieden (a truce with the government, promising to refrain from any strikes during the war). Among other anti-war activities, Zetkin organized an International Socialist Women’s  Conference against the war in Bern, in neutral Switzerland, from March 25-28, 1915, to which  all other participants had to travel illegally. 
Despite the danger of imprisonment, 25 women from, Britain, France Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Switzerland participated in this first international women’s conference for peace, which ended with a joint resolution.  Because of her anti-war opinions, Zetkin was arrested several times during the war, and in 1916 taken into “protective custody” (from which she was later released on account of illness). 
In 1916 Zetkin was one of the co-founders of the Spartacist League (Spartakusbund), which published  illegal, anti-war pamphlets pseudonymously signed “Spartacus” (after the slave-liberating gladiator who had opposed the Romans). The Spartacus League vehemently rejected the SPD’s war policy and supported the growing number of riots and strikes against the war all over Germany. 
In April 1917 Zetkin joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) which had split off from the SPD, in protest at its pro-war stance. In January 1919, after the German Revolution in November 1918 she became a co-founder of the Communist Party of Germany becoming a member of the party’s central committee and got first elected to the Reichstag in 1920, and again  in 1932, at the age of 75, where as the oldest member she was entitled to open the parliaments first session. She took this as  her golden opportunity to make a long speech, denouncing Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
She also held the view that still holds much resonance today, that the source of womens oppression was in capitalism, and that any form of liberation, could only be served with the self-emancipation of the working class.
Elected to the presidium of the Third International (1921), she spent more and more of her time in Moscow.  Three volumes of collected works, Ausgewählte Reden und Schriften (“Selected Speeches and Writings”), were published in East Berlin from 1957 to 1960.] She died June 20, 1933, Arkhangelskoye, Russia, U.S.S.R.) aged nearly 76, 
Long may this grandmother of revolution, be recognised and celebrated. Clara Zetkin remains an invaluable fixture in modern feminist movements. Even now, women are still fighting for equal pay in the workplace, and figures such as Zetkin remind modern women that cooperation is of utmost importance, and that perseverance is critical to making progress in the movement for women’s equality. Zetkin’s most lasting legacy however, is her reputation as an organizer and effective leader. It’s no secret that modern politics and social movements are deeply affected by partisanship, so Zetkin is most relevant in that she is an example of what can be achieved with organization and cooperation.

Friday 3 July 2015

In the garden


In  the garden, I steal myself away,
sit and inhale pungent smoke,
watch the grass grow beneath my feet,
as I try to forget the burden that humanity brings,
the shadows lift and the sun comes out.

I escape darkened patterns of thought,
walk barefoot over turf,
water flowers as senses awaken,
scatter seeds for the butterflies and bees,
in my sanctuary of devotion.

Here lies a place of  peace, a pleasant distraction,
a landscape shaped by hand,
in harmony with nature,
enabling magic to grow again,
to release its melding scents.

I could stay here for a while,
but I go and wait for loyal love's return,
and the companionship of friends,
as the earth spins gently by,
and the night sky turns silver.

Wednesday 1 July 2015

Heatwave flashback


Been busy helping someone move today, gosh it was rather sweltering. But if I think its been hot this week, I recall the summer of 1976, the year of the national Eisteddfod coming home to us here in Cardigan/Aberteifi. Throughout the summer the entire country sweltered under the heat, for most of its duration, the therometers tipped 26c,  at least I was not stuck in the confines of school. 
Rivers ground to a trickle, while some even stopped flowing. Without water,  companies were forced to cut the working week, while vans patrolled the streets to make sure the hosepipe bans were strictly enforced. Today at least I had  the relief of a bit of rain, thank goodness for that.Ah days of youthful adventures by the seaside on the West Wales coast, and the dawning of the musical explosion of Punk.



The 1976 Punk explosion