This morning I woke up thinking of my old friend Huw Davies, who took his own life in early 1994.

Huw Davies: via PhotoAccess, Canberra

Huw was a talented art photographer and ‘life artist’.

His friends adored him for his kindness, his compassion, his amazing energy and above all for a wonderful sense of humour.

About a year before his death, I had an intense debate with Huw about prospects for humanity. I took the optimist side, arguing we’re not only part of creation, but a special and significant part – for all our faults and weaknesses.

Huw – in blacker mood than I’d  seen him before – countered that humans are more like a lethal virus. I clearly remember him saying that if humans ever truly escape from the bounds of this planet, we’ll screw up the rest of the universe too.

I still can’t agree with Huw about that. Yet 15 years on, it’s hard to adduce much evidence he was wrong. I don’t think Huw believed all humans as intrinsically evil. His point was about the powerful (those most likely to head for the stars).

Perhaps our outward progress is stalled until we develop the wisdom to coexist and co-evolve?

I wish Huw was still around to continue the discussion.

In the last years of his life, Huw Davies developed a style for retouching photos by fingerpainting. The similarity with the painting style of Vincent Van Gogh was obvious. Somewhat later, he became intensely depressed and took his own life, like Vincent before him.

The world will not go back to sleep again, Gaza.

More ships are on the way…

Even Israeli brutality at its worst has not scared off the brave activists who flock from around the world to support freedom and justice for Gazans – and for Palestinians as a whole.

“All Aboard the Mavi Marmara”, an inspiring protest song by David Rovics in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, is the sound track for a moving and informative video.

Suzanne Vega: a sad disappointment

Suzanne Vega, whom I’d fondly imagined over decades to be an intelligent and humane individual, apparently hasn’t got the message: playing in segregationalist Israel is no game!

Ms Vega cheapened herself this year in the eyes of many fans by performing in the Zionist State and giving comfort to its Jewish supremacists, desperate to avoid cultural isolation from a world community that’s lost patience with Israeli malevolence.

How many shekels was it worth, Suzanne?

Not for the first time within the last year, an aging rock star has performed in worse-than-Apartheid Israel and breached the growing global cultural boycott. How sad!

The days of cost-free collaboration with worse-than-Apartheid Israel are over. I hope you get heckled at your concerts, Suzanne. If I ever get to one again, I’ll heckle you myself.

These posters by the brilliant young artist Carlos Latuff illustrate the case for boycotting Israel.

They may not impress jaded cynics, but will help inspire a new, less corrupt generation of musicians and poets…

Dont play in worse-than-Apartheid Israel! (illustration by Carlos Latuff)

More like this at the DesertPeace website.

Boycott Israeli goods! (illustration by Carlos Latuff)

I just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to email Elton John and ask him not to play in worse-than-Apartheid Israel.

Elton John: Greedy Suckass and Recidivist Apartheid Stooge

So unlike Joan Armatrading, he was spared my emails.

Like Joan Armatrading, Elton John played recently in Israel. He jetted in and out last week on the same day, dodging interviews: just a quick cash snatch.

The Israeli media is jubilant and the packaged ‘good news’ story soon bounced around the world. From India to Indiana, we’ve all been informed that Elton John took a swipe at artistes observing the cultural boycott of Israel. “We do not cherry-pick our consciences” he said.

Not exactly a deep thinker.

Toadying to Zionists pays off if naff parties and cozying up to reactionary bullies are your thing. Elton knows. He got a well-publicized invite to Rush Limbaugh’s wedding.

But Elton is the guy who has to look at himself in the mirror each day.

Omar Barghouti of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel put it well:

“Elton John was on the wrong side of history during the South Africa cultural boycott when he put interest over principles and played Sun City when hardly any self-respecting artist would do the same,” he says. “He is choosing to do the same with Israel.”

The song of humanity for Palestine, by the incomparable Roger Waters.

It has simple but profound messages.

End the siege of Gaza!

Freedom and Justice for the Palestinians

Tear down the walls of Apartheid oppression!

The Truth shall set ALL humanity FREE!

We SHALL Overcome!

See also Roger Water Talking About The Wall In Israel – at which he called on the Israeli audience to tear down The Wall.

Artistes who use a visit to the Zionist State for a real purpose, such as this, are in a different category from Zionist stooges such as Leonard Cohen and Joan Armatrading.

Soon we’ll see which side Bob Dylan is on.

After last week, you may be thinking that the Israeli regime are a bunch of arrogant, murdering, maiming, lying shysters.

Making light of murder, laughing at the worl

Sad to say, you’d be right.

But what you may have missed is their sense of humour. Netanyahu – and all the junior yahoos who steer the nuclear-armed Israeli Ship of Rogues – aren’t just surly war criminals. They like a laugh too.

I just spotted this mind-numbing tale, contributed by Ayman Mohyeldin, on the Al Jazeera website: Israeli government’s media madness

It’s short – and I trust acceptable to quote in entirety [emphasis added]:

For weeks the Israeli government has bombarded journalists with statements, press releases and videos - all professing that Gaza is not suffering a humanitarian crisis, there is no shortage of goods entering the Strip and even mocking the suffering of people in Gaza by recommending restaurants to visit in the coastal territory.

It also went so far as to claim those on board the Freedom Flotilla had links to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. They showed us edited video clips of military footage supporting their version of events as to what happened onboard the Mavi Marmara – reports that are now widely discredited by eyewitness accounts.

That is the Israeli narrative of events and it is certainly within their rights to espouse it.

It’s hard work keeping up with the Chickenhawks. The cast of lying clowns changes so quickly.

The video below is at least two years old now – but to my eyes it looks even more dated.

Politicians’ faces displayed are mostly yesterday’s war criminals, though the media chickenhawks are more durable.

Perhaps a mash-artist out there could update this late 1960s classic by Credence Clearwater Rivival with some new ‘face-overs’?

If you do, please let me know.

Lyrics of John Fogerty’s ‘Fortunate Son’…

Some folks are born made to wave the flag, Ooo, they’re red, white and blue.
And when the band plays hail to the chief, Ooo, they point the cannon at you, y’all!

It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, Son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one. No.

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand, Lord, don’t they help themselves, y’all!
But when the taxman comes to the door, Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale.

It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no millionaire’s son.
No, no. It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one. No.

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes, Ooo, they send you down to war, y’all.
And when you ask them, how much should we give? Ooo, they only answer more! More! More! Y’all.

A series of explosive reports today’s Guardian newspaper (from Britain) details the almost romantic relationship between the governments of South Africa and Israel in the decades preceding the collapse of South African Apartheid in the late 1980s.

Shimon Peres

The major focus was military collaboration, including nuclear weaponry.

More later – but for now head over to the Guardian for a feast of ‘Top Secret’ memos from the Apartheid era which highlight the deep and longstanding collaboration between racist Israel and apartheid South Africa: The memos and minutes that confirm Israel’s nuclear stockpile: Documents reveal how then-defence minister Shimon Perez tried to sell South Africa’s apartheid government the bomb.

Here’s a gem – a 1974 personal note from Shimon Peres, then Defence Minister of Israel (currently Israel’s President!) to the South African Minister for Information. It includes a sentence that even the world’s smoothest old liar will not be able to explain away:

“…cooperation is based not only on common interests and on the determination to resist equally our enemies, but also on the unshakeable foundations of our common hatred of injustice and our refusal to submit to it.”

Joan Armstrading: pretty voice for sale to Apartheid?

Co-incidentally, I wrote to Joan Armatrading yesterday via her website.

Apparently the British singer is booked to perform in Apartheid Israel next month.

How this artiste could even contemplate performing in the Sun City of our era is utterly beyond me. I told her so, as politely as I could.

If you haven’t heard the Corrigan Brothers‘ excellent ‘No-one as Irish as Barak Obama‘ by now, you may be deaf or live in a Trappist monastery.

The Corrigan Brothers: three cheeky black boys from North Tipperary

Now the incorrigible Corrigans have come up with a gem about the British MPs expenses rorts scandal.

Outrageous revelations of absurd expenses claims have been crashing, like a giant steel wrecking-ball through the collective credibility of Britain’s political establishment for several months.

There’s more to the MPs’ expenses  scandal than meets the eye. Lots more.

The ‘rorts’ that scandalized the nation are ridiculous in many cases and perfect fodder for the press. But they amount to chicken-feed compared with the billions spent on Britain’s bloated military expenditure and massive investment in the machinery of an Orwellian police state.

It would be an interesting exercise to scrutinize the expenses claims of 600+ executives in any large modern corporate for comparison. How about the expenses claims of News Corp executives, for example? Can we see them? How about expenses claims by members of the so-called ‘Intelligence Services’? Who’s watching out for rorts there? (Answer: that’s an ‘Official Secret’)

Whistle-blower Craig Murray: His campaign in the forthcoming Norwich North by-election has been invisible to BBC viewers

Of course, people expect higher standards from elected politicians, who are paid taxpayers’ money and expected to act in the public interest. On the same basis, how about a trawl through the BBC’s executives expenses claims? After all, they’re paid taxpayers’ money too – and expected to act in the public interest.

Jim Morrison

Like everyone else around the world who left their satellite/cable TV on over the last 24+ hours, I’ve just absorbed over a day’s worth of wall-to-wall Michael Jackson mass media hysteria.

Much of it has been presented by lying shysters such as Larry King, who on my observation revelled in this tortured artist’s troubles while the poor man was still alive.

I think it’s time to post about something completely different.

This is about another ‘star’ that I miss – although I was barely aware of his existence during his lifetime.

Larry King: loves Michael Jackson, especially now he's dead

This is about Jim Morrison, who in my opinion was THE outstanding rock and roll poet of his generation.

Jim Morrison died before he was 30.

The video below conveys the power of a revolutionary music. It’s mysteriously, yet powerfully motivating. ‘The Doors’ was named after Aldous Huxley’s ‘The Doors of Perception‘.

When I travelled from country to country in the 1970s, shared familiarity with this haunting music was a passport to friendship with so many people from very different cultures, whether Hindu or Buddhist, Muslim or something else.

I believe Riders on the Storm is the warning we’ve so far failed to heed  - and no, this is not a claim to superior insight into the ‘real meaning’ of the words of an artist I didn’t know.