Castle Street in Cardiff was shut down for a short while a couple of days ago to allow for the concerned peaceful protestors to mark their commemoration to those who have died as a consequence of the lack of care and duty of the government appointed department ATOS that are a not-fit-for-purpose organisation who's motive is profit and not care.
Meanwhile today thousands demand RESPECT and Quality of life.
Disability rights campaigners have ended a week of protests outside the central London headquarters of ATOS . They have for some wierd reason been one of the main sponsors of the Paralympic Games.
It is ATOS's tests for people on disability allowance, that have led to peoples suicides, and is daily adding damage and distress to peoples lives.
Protestors gathered in London, and have been taking direct action against what is being called the Atos Games. Atos is benefitting from peoples misery, and are making a tidy profit too, people should be put first.
There contract is worth £110 million a year, but the appeals alone cost the taxpayer another £60 miilon. The impact of wrongly being declared fit to work can be enormous.
Increasingly people are realising that ATOS are not fit for purpose, but the government keeps giving them their backing.In the first 8 months of last year , 1,100 people have died of their illnesses soon after being found fit for work by ATOS. No regard for peoples feelings, but their that type of government.....complete heartless basrards actually.
People are refusing to be ghettoised and silenced, and are declaring enough is enough. If the Paralympics has managed people to see how this government is treating it's most vulnerable citizens, then that is a good thing.
I keep banging on about this issue, because it's an issue that is close to my heart. People matter, and untill ATOS are removed we will keep bannging and shouting. The fact that ATOS has been sponsoring the Paralympics is a sick joke gone to far.
In a globalised world, you might expect to see a rise in the number of cross border couples. But one person (backed by the Whole Government) stands to stop international love for many ordinary people.
Indeed Theresa May, the Home Secretary wants to make it harder for British citizens and those settling in the U.K to bring their spouses, civil partners and indeed other family members to the U.K. Join the campaign to stop a flagrant abuse of human rights http://www.jcwi.org.uk/
The death of pro-palestinian activist Rachel Corrie was a "regrettable accident" for which the state of Israel was not responsible, a judge has ruled, dismissing a civil lawsuit brought by the family.
According to Judge Oded Gershon of Haifa Court she had " put herself in a dangerous situation" whilst dressed in a bright orange jacket and acting as a human shield, when she was crushed under the weight of an Israeli miltary bulldozer while trying to obstruct the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border.
Israel to all intents and pupose has declared itself not guilty of Rachel Corrie's murder. The world I think sees things differently.
The home Rachel Corrie died trying to protect was razed, along with hundreds of others. She was murdered whilst protesting against home demolitions and injustice in Gaza. This court has now given its stamp of approval to the flawed and illegal practices of the Israeli military. The verdict has failed to hold the Israeli military accountable for continuing violation of human rights. It is a shocking day for human rights, but a verdict that I am not too surprised about. Again and again Israel acts with impunity, carrying on regardless in an arrogant violent manner. There is no justice when their courts show such contempt, for justice's meaning,
there is no justice too, when the Gaza strip remains a sealed ghetto,there is no justice when countless Palestinian families are made homeless, there houses destroyed, where is the justice for them or their friends after the death of their loved ones.
By disregarding international law and granting Israeli war criminals impunity, the verdict exemplifies that Israel's legal system cannot be trusted to administer justice according to international standards.
The fight and struggle will continue, the end result being that we get truthful answers and yes JUSTICE...... the world will not stay silent, and I will remember Rachel Corrie , who courageously died whilst living her dreams, staying human, amd showing solidarity with her beloved friends, the Palestinians.
This will not be last time we hear her name. The memories of her death will not fade, nor that of the death of thousands of Palestinians. Israel have stated their objectives, they are participating in a war, and in there war, there is no such thing as civilians casualties. At least 6,444 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli occupation since 2000, so we carrying on fighting for their Justice too as well as Rachel's.
Rachel said 2 days before she was killed
"I'm witnessing the systematic destruction of a people's ability to survive. Its horrifying'.
This is still the situation today, despite the condemnations internationally, Israel believes it can get away with murder...... the world is watching and the world says no.
In this set of clips, Americans are shown how to spot Communists. For example . " If a person reads and advocates the views expressed in a Communist publication, he may be a Communist. If a person defends the activities of Communist nations while consistently attacking the domestic and foreign policies of the United States, she may be a Communist!!! The video also goes on to demonstrate the evils of Communists stealing one's daughters away to work on a collective farm.
Joking aside it was not just Communists the Americans were afraid of, they garnered a lot hatred for other things too. On this day in 1927, Ferdinando Sacco and Bartholomew Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants living in Boston, were executed after being framed in a robbery. The alleged robbery had taken place some time before in 1920, in Massachusetts, and their subseguent trial and execution was surrounded in conntrovery.Their real crime was that they were anarchists, involved with the vibrant anti-capitalist movement that was popular at the time. That too scared the shit out of the American establishment, voices that threaten their authority still do. So here's to Sacco and Vancetti's rebel spirit rattling through time. We never forget, never forgive. RIP comrades
" Oh martyr!
Dead, dead! You are dead
But your human tree and your human root
Are budding
Blooming
Growing!
Listen to the war cries of your living brothers!
This is the incense we are burning to you."
from Sacco Vancetti - H.T. Tsaing Daily Worker August 20, 1928
Sacco and Vancetti - Ben Sahn
Song about Sacco and Vancetti - David Roviks and Woody Guthrie
As Michelangelo, the great Italian composer,
once remarked: Artists have responsibilities.
Hearing music is like contracting a disease,
a beautiful infection. It brings closer
the point of no return. One must be strong.
There's no such creature as a harmless song.
Painting too, as the English artist Shakespeare
pointed out, can be debilitating
unless you aspire beyond paint to real things.
A painting freezes movement. The eye, like the ear,
is a channel of impotence. Mere airs and graces
often induce an unproductive stasis.
And as for words, I only need quote Mozart,
the Swiss poet: They're tainted by unreason.
Language is discourse, words slippery. To seize one
we must lay traps, as for mice. The throat's part
of the respiratory tract, and you may clip
a speech, like air, by tightening your grip.
Too many of you are wasting your time and ours
with gewhaws, bric-a-brac and frolicking.
It's time to give you all a rollicking.
We're not impressed, I fear, by your endeavours.
The role of the past is to prepare the future
and your task is to welcome it with Culture
Reprinted from Sing Freedom Faber and Faber in production with Amnesty International
Deprivation of Freedom of Expression - Paulo Zerbato
Stop the War's http://stopwar.org.uk John Rees interviewed on the BBC Jeremy Vine show on why he gives unequivocal support to Julan Assange in his fight against extadiction to Sweden and from their possibly to the United States.
Many of us can remember too, when The Conservative Party gave uneguivocal support to the fascist dictator General Pinochet when he came to stay in our country.
The differences perhaps is that one has exposed human rights abuses, whilst one perpetuated them.
As feared Pussy Riot have been found guilty, in what was not a fair trial but a political witchhunt. The draconian, reactionary beasts of authority have convicted them of 'hooliganism'. In my opinion the only thing that should have been found guilty was the Russian Court System. The 3 individuals from Pussy Riot could now face up to 7 years in prison, but they seem to be holding their heads up and showing no fear.
Protests will now continue as planned across the world. Already a couple of thousand were outside the Moscow Courthouse chanting ' Freedom to Political Prisoners '. The sentence will be handed down later today, the real verdict being, is that it exposes how sick Putins regime is.pussy riots only real crime was one of thinking for themselves, and not bowing down to the slavery of patriarchy and conformity.
The message below is one I endorse, because Putin is so arrogant, he refuses to listen, to the millions across the world who share the same sentiment, that is his folly, he will be now remembered as a man, that cannot take a joke, and will be forever mocked ' Sweet Vladimir Putin is afraid of girls dancing in a church.' 'Virgin Mary , Mother of God, Put Putin away. Put Putin away. Put Putin away.
Postscript
15.27
have just found out they have all been individually sentenced to 2 years imprisonment.
The Pussy Riot has only just begun. Fuck you Putin.
Following Tuesdays post, and on the day that members of Pussy Riot await theiir fate, when at 3 0'clock this afternoon, they will finally get their verdict and sentence, thought I'd qickly post this. Their is all probability that they will not recieve a not-guilty verdict, so the eyes of the world will be on how long the jail sentences will be. The expectations are that they will get between one and three years.
They have been fortunate I guess because they have managed to garner much sympathetic international media attention, unlike many other prisoners of conscious across the globe. They have also attracted the support of many celebrities and international organisations like amnesty, and many groups and individuals across the world, for a little noticed You Tube video of a political prank back in February, and have certainly succeeded in capturing our hearts and imagination too.
Pussy Riot video of performance, that has garnished so much attention
The eyes of the world will now be watching what happens, does Putin and his allies want to be seen as confirming themselves as draconian reactionaries. Personally I hope not, and that they will not be treated to harshly and that they will soon be free.
In an act of solidarity I am reprinting Yekaterina Samutsevich, one of the defendents closing statement at the Pussy Riot Trial.
Yekaterina Samutsevich's closing statement in the criminal case against the feminist punk group Pussy Riot.
During the closing statement, the defendant is expected tp repent or express regret for her deeds, or to enumerate attenuating circumstances. In my case, as is the case of my colleagues in the group, this is completely unnecessary. Instead, I want to express my views about the causes of what happened with us.
The factthat Christ the Savir Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of our powers that be was already clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin's former (KGB) colleague Kirill Gunyaev took over as head of the Russian Orthodox Chrch. After this happened, Christ the SaviourCathedral began to be used as a flashy setting for the politics of the security services, which are the main source of power (in Russia).
Why did Putin feel the need to explain the Orthodox religion and its aesthetics? After all, he could have emplyed his own, far more secular tools of power - for example, national corporations, or his menacing police system, or his own obedient judiciary system. It may be that the tough, failed policies of Putin's government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced fim to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign, otherwise the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendenal guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God himself.
How did he succeed in doing this? After all, we still have a secular state, and shouldn't any intersection of the religious and political spheres be dealt with severely by our vigilant and critically minded society? Here, apparently, tha authorities took advantage of a certain deficit of Orthodox aesthetics in Soviet times, when the Orthodox religion had the aura of a lost history, of something crushed and damaged by the Soviet totalitarian regime, and was thus an opposition culture. The authorities decided to appropriate this historical effect of loss and present ther new political project to restoore Russia's lost spiritual valus, a project which has little to do with a genuine concern for the preservation of Russian Orthodoxy's history and culture.
It was also fairly logical that the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long had a mystical connection with power, emerged as this project's principal executor in the media. Moreover it was also agreed that the Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Soviet era, when the church opposed, above all, the crudeness of the authorities towards history itself, should also confront all baleful manifestations of contemporary mass culture, with its concept of diversity and tolerance.
Implementing this thourougly interesting political project has required considerable quantities of professional lighting and video wquipment, air time on national TV channels for hours-long live broadcasts, and numerous background shoots for morally and ethically edifying news stories, where in fact the Patriarch's well constructed speeches would be pronounced, helping the faithful make the right political choice during the election campaign, a difficult time for Putin. Moreover, all shooting has to take place continuously; the necessary images must sink into the memory and be constantly updated, to create the impression of something natural, constant and compulsary.
Our suddem musical appearance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with the song "other of God, Drive Putin Out" violated the integrity of this media image, generated and maintained by the authorities for so long, and revealed its falsity. In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch's blessing, to combine the visual image of Orthodox culture and protest culture, suggesting to smart people that Orthodox culture belongs only to the Russian Orthodox church, the Patriarch and Putin, that it might also take the side of civic rebellion and protest in Russia.
Perhaps such an unpleasant large-scale effect from our media intrusion into the cathedral was a surprise to the authorities themselves. First they tried to present our performance as the prank of heartless militant aethiests. But they made the blunder, since by this time we were already known as an ant-Putin feminist punk band that carried out their media raids on the country's major political symbols.
In the end, considering all the irreversible political and symbolic losses caused by our innocent creativity, the authoritis decided to protect the public from us and our nonconformist thinking. Thus ended our complicated punk adventure in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
I now have mixed feelings about this trial. On the one hand, we now expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. Now the whole world sees the criminal case against us has been fabricated. The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial. Once again, Russia looks different in the eyes of the world from the way Purin tries to present it at daily international meetings. All the steps toward a state governed by the rule of law that he promised have obviously not been made. And his statement that the court in our case will be objective and make a fair decision is another deception of the entire country and the international community. That is all, Thank you.
