Artist Ai Weiwei slams 'shameful' politicians ignoring refugees

'Chinese  trailblazing dissident artist Ai Weiwei launches his largest single work ever,focused on refugees. Called "Law of the Journey", the 70-metre-long (230-foot-long) inflatable boat with 258 oversize refugee figures is on display at Prague's National Gallery. Called Law of the Journey, the show features a 70-metre-long inflatable boat with 258 oversize refugee figures.

It is a tribute to the thousands who have drowned crossing the Mediterranean, the piece is Ai’s biggest-ever installation.A topic Ai has been particularly vocal about in the past. It will be on display until the end of the year. It certainly makes a particularly powerful statement. The site-specific installation that went on exhibit last Thursday and was made in a Chinese factory that produces dinghies used by actual refugees,

“My message is very clear: being a politician or a political group, you cannot be so short-sighted, you cannot have no vision, you cannot sacrifice human dignity and human rights for political gain,” Ai said.“My message is very clear: being a politician or a political group, you cannot be so short-sighted, you cannot have no vision, you cannot sacrifice human dignity and human rights for political gain,” Ai added..
The Czech Republic and the other post Communist central European members have rejected EU plans to allow Muslim refugees on their territories throughout the migrant crisis. According to the European Commission, the Czech Republic has so far accepted 12 migrants for relocation. Data from the International Organisation for Migration shows that over 1.2 million people have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since 2015.

“If we see somebody who has been victimised by war or desperately trying to find a peaceful place, if we don’t accept those people, the real challenge and the real crisis is not of all the people who feel the pain but rather for the people who ignore to recognise it or pretend that it doesn’t exist,” said Ai.

“That is both a tragedy and a crime,” said the 59-year-old painter, sculptor and photographer.

Ai spent the last year visiting such migrant and refugee hotspots as the US-Mexican border badlands to the Turkish-Syrian frontier and crowded holding camps on Greek islands.

An outspoken critic of the Chinese government, Ai was detained in 2011 for 81 days and had his passport confiscated for four years.He later travelled to Berlin where his wife and son live.Recently he has staged several high-profile exhibitions inspired by migrants, including decking out the columns of Berlin's Konzerthaus with 14,000 orange life jackets from Lesbos, which is.an entry point for many migrants trying to reach western Europe from Turkey.
Last month, he said he looked on in dismay at the Trump presidency, the US entry ban on Syrian refugees, the attempt to deny visas to citizens of several mainly Muslim nations, the pledge to build a wall with Mexico and invoke mass deportations.
 People are already finding it a particularly powerful statement.

Comments underneath Ai’s Instagram posts of the installation show how much of an impact his work has made.https://www.instagram.com/aiww/?hl=en
They include “Deeply moving! The enormity and profound silence” from @moniqueloveringstudio and “An astounding and emotionally charged work, it’s beautiful too, which it has to be to represent the sad story. Thank you as always for what you do,” from @michaelbirtphoto.

Ai Weiwei slams 'harmful' politicians ignoring refugees

 

Derek Walcott (23/1/30 - 17/2/17) RIP - Love after Love

 
Derek Walcott, a Nobel-prize winning poet known for capturing the essence of his native Caribbean who became the region’s most internationally famous writer,  died early Friday at his home in the eastern Caribbean nation of St. Lucia, aged 87,according to his son, Peter after battling a long illness. “Derek Alton Walcott, poet, playwright, and painter died peacefully today, Friday 17th March, 2017, at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia,” read a statement the family released later in the morning. It said the funeral would be held in St. Lucia and details would be announced shortly This was confirmed by his publishers who noted on social media: "Derek Walcott was a true presence who filled  the literary landscape and did so with a delicacy of touch. We  have lost a giant of literature."
In “Omeros” (1990), an epic poem considered his most ambitious and accomplished work, he invoked Caribbean voices through Greek myth, drawing on Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey”.Two years later,  this prolific and versatile poet was awarded the Nobel Prize, after being shorlisted for many years and in its citation, the Swedish Academy said: “He has both African and European blood in his veins. In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet. He would later win the TS Eliot prize for poetry in 2011, followed by the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry lifetime recognition award in 2015.Born in 1930, he studied at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, before moving to Trinidad in 1953, where he worked as a theatre and art critic.He first attracted attention on St Lucia with a  book of poems that he published himself when he was 18 entitled 25 poems.Walcott’s  breakthrough came with the collection In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962), a book which celebrates the Caribbean and its history as well as investigating the scars of colonialism and post-colonialism. Walcott, who was of African, Dutch and English ancestry, said his writing reflected the “very rich and complicated experience” of life in the Caribbean.His ancestry wove together the major strands of Caribbean history, an inheritance he described famously in a poem from 1980's ' The Star-Apple Kingdom' as having "Dutch, nigger, and English in me,/ and either I'm nobody, or I'm a/ nation." Both of his  grandmothers were said to have  been descended from slaves, but his father who died when Walcott was only a year old, was a painter, and his mother the headmistress of a methodist school - enough to ensure that Walcott received what  he called in  the same poem a' sound colonial education.' His  work earned him a reputation as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century. He compared his feeling for poetry to a religious evocation. Derek Walcott found that he was often defined as a black writer. That is not how he saw himself. He was, he said, first and foremost, a Caribbean writer.  “I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer,” he once said during a 1985 interview published in The Paris Review. “The English language is nobody’s special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. I have never felt inhibited in trying to write as well as the greatest English poets.”He was also an accomplished painter and playwright.
His life though was marred with controversy.He taught at US universities, where two female students accused him of interfering with their academic achievements after they rejected his advances. This was said to have counted against him when he was passed over for the post of poet laureate in 1999. He was also forced to withdraw his candidacy for the post of Oxford professor of poetry in 2009 in a case which also forced the resignation of his rival Ruth Padel only nine days into her term.
Prior to his retirement in 2007, Walcott taught for decades at Bostom University and spent time in New York and Boston as well as St Lucia. He married and divorced three times, and he had  three children - Peter , Elizabeth and Anna. He is survived by his children, grandchildren and his companion of many tears, Sigrid Nama. The world has lost one of its most noted literary icons. He helped illuminate the world,  RIP. The poetry society described his death as terrible news and encouraged others to read his poetry in memoriam.https://poetrysociety.org.uk/news/a-tribute-to-derek-walcott/ A full -length obituary has been published by the Guardian newspaper.https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/17/nobel-laureate-poet-and-playwright-derek-walcott-dead-aged-87

Love after Love

 The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
 

Happy St Patrick's day: Christy Moore - If they come in the morning (AKA no time for love)

Dedicated to all the people of the world who still search for freedom, in all our different struggles against oppression, we must continue to hold on to our humanity.
Thank you Linda for reminding me, let us continue to endure and overcome and keep spreading seeds of possibility and hope. Continue to support peoples pride, in waves of solidarity.

Rachel Corrie, still not forgotten ( 10/4/79 - 16/3/03)

It has become customary of me to mark the passing of  Rachel Aliene Corrie a 23 year old American Peace activist  from Olympia, Washington who was crushed to death by an Israeli military, caterpiller D 912 bulldozer in 2003, while undertaking non-violent direct action trying to protect the home of a Palestinian family from demolition in Rafah in the Gaza strip.
Justice has never been served for her, along with others killed under the Israeli occupation.
Today I reflect upon Rachel's brave stand in Gaza 14 years ago today and her courage to resist and all  those who continue to live and struggle there, and all those passionate change makers across the globe who each day act with conscience, work tirelessly to try and make a difference.
Remember that what is happening in Palestine which we keep on witnessing  is an equal  cycle of violence as seen in apartheid South Africa. Being against  this injustice  is not anti-Jewish anymore than being against a British governments military aggression marks you as as anti-British. Rachel Corrie understood these links and connections and would have known about an active Israeli peace movement, and of the hundreds  of Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied territories, many of whom have been jailed for their stance. Israel has invaded Palestinian land in breach of international law. Rachel died while attempting to prevent a demolition of a home, a common practice of the Israeli army's collective punishment that has left more than 12,000 Palestinians homeless since the beginning of the second uprising in September 2000. A practice that violates International Law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.The struggle against demolition and occupation of Palestinian  homes and lands continues unabated.
So here's to the memory and bravery of Rachel Corrie  a true American hero but another pointless death.Bulldozed and suffocated  her memory though will remain.

http://www.rachelcorrie.org

No to Balfour Royal Visit to Israel: Time now for an apology

A member of the  Royal family maybe visiting Israel in an official capacity later this year, on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, according to British media reports.Though members of the royal family have travelled to Israel in the past on personal visits,an official visit of this kind would be a historic first, and would mean breaking decades of precedent in which invitations to visit have been previously rejected.
President Reuven Rivlin  extended the invitation at a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in Jerusalem last week, citing the importance of the Balfour centenary. According to Whitehall sources, such a visit could take place this year, the Independent reported.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/palestinian-campaign-israel-royal-visit-israel-netanyahu-israel-prince-charles-a7620251.html
The invitation comes on the 100 years anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.On November 2, 1917, the then British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote a letter in what is now known as the Balfour Declaration  in what is considered to be the first political recognition of the Zionist aims by a foreign government. This  cursed declaration, by means of which those who had no ownership (Britain) permitted those who had no right to establish a national homeland on an established country Palestine, inevitably bought about a promise that marked  the  beginning of confiscation of the Palestinians homeland and displacement of its people. I personally believe it is time not for Royal visits but a moment  that my rulers  apologise  about this historical injustice which Britain committed against the Palestinian people.

                                    
                                           UK Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour

Palestinians believe the Balfour Declaration marked the beginning of a series of moves by the British government in Palestine, which facilitated Jewish migration in Palestine, which initiated a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Palestine in 1947-8, which led to the displacement of some 750,000 Palestinians.The population of Palestinian refugees today currently stands at 6,000,000 and their issue is considered the longest standing in the world.
A statement by the London based Balfour Apology campaign  (BAC) http://balfourcampaign.com/recently said that :-
"
The royal family visit to Israel is seen by the campaign and Palestinians under occupation and in the diaspora as ‘unhelpful’. Such   visit will only encourage Israel to continue its human rights violations against Palestinians and provide free publicity to cover Israel’s ongoing settler colonialism, occupation and apartheid policies.”
.
Surely it is now  time for the Royal  family and the British Government to simply say sorry for what has bought untold misery through nearly a century of conflict, ethnic cleansing, ongoing human rights abuse, brutal occupation and apartheid.It has a responsibility and duty and  to redress the pain and suffering of individual Palestinians that have had to  endured ever since, and keep up pressure on the state of Israel as they keep  continuing to breaking international law and finally apologise for distributing land when they had absolutely no right to do so in the first place and redress the historical injustice that Britain committed against the Palestinian people .This surely would be a sensible approach to reconciliation  and the road to peace.
Here is a petition you could sign if you wish, cheers :-

UK must apologise for the Balfour Declaration and lead peace efforts in Palestine:- https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/184398

For the Rivers ( a Poem)

 

Today is  the 20th annual International Day of Action for Rivers!
For two decades, communities all over the world have gathered to defend, protect and celebrate their rivers as sources of life and renewal. It’s an amazing moment of global solidarity, for an event to join, discover this interactive global action map. Each year, this event reminds us that we’re not alone in the struggle for our freshwater. We share a common purpose with sisters and brothers all over the planet who are fighting for their rights and their rivers. It is a day to educate one another about the threat facing our rivers, and learn about how to protect them. Here's a little poem I wrote for the rivers.

For the Rivers

From their source, delivers hope 
helps release  joy instead of sorrow;
into the sea allows freedom to grow
gives us  hope for a brighter future,
currents moving more precious than gold
forever running, constantly turning,
rippling inspiration, reaching horizons of
                                            another tide
the rivers trace generations of memory,
constant  treasures  full of magic
veins of life that help sustain the planet,
we must conserve these flowing waters
help them replenish  our mother earth.

Question Everything, Why? : Some thoughts by Doris Lessing ( 22 10/19-17/11/13)

Some wise words from the late British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer, Doris Lessing.

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”

Doris Lessing - extract from, The Golden Notebook, 1962