STRETCHING is good for keeping healthy during 2023!

Having good balance and coordination are important goals for all of us to strive for. Stretching helps us keep good balance, and so does Scottish dancing. Dancers are healthier, better coordinated and better-balanced human beings.

Dancing and stretching will keep you Fit and Healthy during 2023! 

William Williamson, the Society’s new Chairman, launched the RSCDS Centenary Year in Glasgow at the AGM on November 5th during the Autumn Gathering. This was my very first time to attend an AGM, after 55 years as a member of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.

Like Nicola, I am very interested in music (and dance) education. Every child should play an instrument. If they can do it in Venezuela (and they do), they could do it also in Europe. We Europeans under-estimate the value of culture.

You are witnessing a moment of history, as the official announcement is uttered : ”The Queen is dead. God Save The King.”

The Crown stands for British and Commonwealth unity

It has been said by others before me, that “The Queen represents all that unites us; the prime minister represents all that divides us.” That is why The Crown is such a precious national asset.

Which nations have beautiful national costumes? Where do we see them? When to they wear them? In this increasingly homogenized world of social media and American commercialism, I am proud that Scotland’s National Dress is probably the best loved, the most recognized and the most often admired in the whole world. Certainly it is the most important in Britain, and in Europe.

Scotland and the Scots should be proud of their tartans.

BE HAPPY! DANCE FOR JOY!

I am weightless when I dance. I have no need of a Jeff Bezos rocket; all I need is Strathspey music or a beautiful Waltz …. and a beautiful partner to dance with, of course. When they dance well, all women become beautiful. Dancers are Angels.

Scottish dancing has many different formats

There are snobs everywhere, and I hope I am not one of them. Ceilidhs do not offer top-level dancing. Nor are Ceilidh dancers always elegant. But Ceilidhs are fun. Definition: a Ceilidh is a Scottish party with any combination of music, dance, singing and storytelling.

These Highland dance feet are not our Breton feet. We leap less high and we are non-competitive. Dancing is for joy. We dance for pleasure, whether with our old friends (skilled and experienced) or with our new friends who are Beginners.

As soon as French government rules allowed outside gatherings, the Breton Branch members came together to dance in the beautiful medieval city of Josselin, where - as ever - Branch President Dr Penny Gibbs was a generous host.

On Sunday, June 13th 2021 in Josselin, in the centre of Brittany, the Scottish Dancers of the RSCDS Breton Branch will be dancing out of doors, in open-air safety with masks for some and clean hands for all.

A different leader would have saved the hostages, negotiating without bombs in favor of peace. Instead, Netanyahu has opted for destruction and genocide: and I agree with the governments of South Africa, Brazil, and others that genocide is what Israel is perpetrating in Gaza.

The war-mongering, and profit and revenge-driven calls for Russia to be defeated, are based on the mistaken assumption that the theater of war—including nuclear war—can be limited. This was not, however, the case in either the First or Second World Wars.

The evidence suggests that inside the Israeli State Apparatus, there are people who wish to destroy Gaza and use famine as one weapon of war. The killing of aid workers is a deliberate policy of these people, aiming to disrupt the flow of aid.

Netanyahu has lost the support of most of the world.

Now we are all witness to his IDF drones bombing aid workers, killing the dedicated volunteers devoted to alleviating the famine Netanyahu has created in Gaza. These aid workers could have been my friends or members of my family.

Genocide is genocide, whoever commits it.

We were horrified by the deaths of 1200 Israelis on October 7th, and we cannot be anything other than horrified by the deaths of >30,000 Gaza citizens at the hands of Israel.

While the Hamas attack against Israel in October 2023 was appalling, brutal, savage, and unacceptable, the Netanyahu response has been worse. Hamas created a criminal, disgusting massacre. Netanyahu created war.

A sustainable peace needs to be rooted in the particular community itself. Each conflict and each peace process is different and specific to the people involved. Unarmed civilian protection draws on the peace infrastructure that exists within all communities.

How can I stay silent when American bombs, dropped by Israeli planes, are flattening the city of Gaza and killing Palestinian children? Of course, the October 7th attack by Hamas on civilians dancing, or living in their houses, was horrendous. But the Jewish law “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” produces nothing but a world filled with blind and toothless people, all hating one another.

War is never a win:  both sides always lose.

Associated Press (AP) reported May 17th that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have agreed to separate meetings with a delegation of leaders from six African countries to discuss a possible plan to end the war in Ukraine, South Africa’s president said Tuesday.

Keeping the peace is not what turns on military leaders. American generals have new weapons they are longing to try out on the battlefield. You should not be giving these people a platform, Mr Kristof. You should be talking to the Peace Makers, and providing a platform to people who seek to end the war.

Few of us would describe emigration as “illegal” when families are fleeing death and destruction, yet when these refugees cross a national frontier, our hypocritical politicians classify them as “illegal immigrants.”  

The friendship between Richmond and Segou remains strong.

Read issues of our newsletter, the Richmond Chiwara, in the archives.

I support the well-written article of Mr Jonathan Freedland and Mr Gary Lineker.

Not only does Britain not take a “fair share” of the immigration wave, but neither Freedland nor Lineker mentioned that the United Kingdom is actually responsible for much of the refugee crisis.

Listen to this Hymn of Nature from Rokia Traoré. No translation is needed. It sounds wonderful. You feel the vibrations of these lyrics and music, coming from the cradle of humanity, Africa.

BBC coverage emphasizes the “pull” factor encouraging migrants to move to the UK, in a manner that simply misrepresents the nature of migrations. Do your reporters believe that people come to frozen Northern Europe for pleasure?

Catastrophic flooding in Bamako on August 5th, 2021

AFRICOM & NATO create war, death and migrations…. but Africa needs food and vaccines.

In this week’s Transcend Media Service dispatch, there is a revealing exposé by Pavan Kulkarni of AFRICOM, the Pentagon’s African Command = America’s Imperial Machine for controlling Africa.

Since 2016, the growing insecurity in Central Mali has forced thousands of people to seek refuge in makeshift camps in the cities, leaving everything behind.

One such refugee camp sprung up on a stretch of vacant land in the Faladiè neighborhood of Bamako, Mali’s capital city, located between a park of livestock pens and an abandoned garbage dump. This site now constitutes the largest informal refugee camp in Bamako. In April 2020, a large section of the camp was ravaged by fire. When the ashes cooled, most residents soon moved back, with nowhere else to go.

This is a book about politics, peace and disarmament: indispensable for students of West Africa, of Sahara security, of development and disarmament, of terrorists and migrations.

There are some original ideas to discover and some challenging political themes that offer very new ways of looking at the problems of Africa.

Ségou, Mali’s second city, holds a fabulous music festival ! For three days we sat and listened to world-famous singers like Habib Koité, Salif Keita, and the exotic Tuareg group Tinariwen, or watched local groups twist and dance and drum their way through the African dust.