KARL RAIMUND POPPER & THE PARADOX OF TOLERANCE

Karl Popper

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Karl Popper, one of her favourite philosophers, who was born on a day like today in 1902. Our societies are empty of Philosophy and full of Economics. All themes turn around money and human relationships seem to be less important when, in fact, they are the most valuable.

In a current world, where racism, xenophobia and untolerance are rising up without control, we need to read and reread Popper's works to understand us and to fight against these untolerance attitudes, sometimes accepted, in the name of tolerance. This is the base of the Paradox of Popper.

Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902-17 September 1994) was an Austrian philosopher and professor.

Generally regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favour of empirical falsification.

A theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can and should be scrutinised by decisive experiments. Popper is also known for his opposition to the classical justificationist account of knowledge, which he replaced with critical rationalism, namely the first non-justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy.

In political discourse, he is known for his vigorous defence of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism that he came to believe made a flourishing open society possible. His political philosophy embraces ideas from all major democratic political ideologies and attempts to reconcile them, namely socialism/social democracy, libertarianism/classical liberalism and conservatism.

Karl Popper

Karl Popper was born in Vienna, then in Austria-Hungary, in 1902 to upper-middle-class parents. All of Popper's grandparents were Jewish, but they were not devout and as part of the cultural assimilation process the Popper family converted to Lutheranism before he was born and so he received a Lutheran baptism.

Popper left school at the age of 16 and attended lectures in mathematics, physics, philosophy, psychology and the history of music as a guest student at the University of Vienna.

In 1919, Popper became attracted by Marxism and subsequently joined the Association of Socialist School Students. He also became a member of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria, which was at that time a party that fully adopted the Marxist ideology. After the street battle in the Hörlgasse on 15 June 1919, when police shot eight of his unarmed party comrades, he became disillusioned by what he saw as the pseudo-scientific historical materialism of Marx, abandoned the ideology, and remained a supporter of social liberalism throughout his life.

In 1928, he earned a doctorate in psychology, under the supervision of Karl Bühler. His dissertation was titled Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie, On Questions of Method in the Psychology of Thinking.

More information: Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In 1929, he obtained the authorisation to teach mathematics and physics in secondary school, which he started doing. He married his colleague Josefine Anna Henninger (1906–1985) in 1930. Fearing the rise of Nazism and the threat of the Anschluss, he started to use the evenings and the nights to write his first book Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge. He needed to publish one to get some academic position in a country that was safe for people of Jewish descent. However, he ended up not publishing the two-volume work, but a condensed version of it with some new material, Logik der Forschung, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, in 1934. Here, he criticised psychologism, naturalism, inductivism, and logical positivism, and put forth his theory of potential falsifiability as the criterion demarcating science from non-science.

In 1935 and 1936, he took unpaid leave to go to the United Kingdom for a study visit.

In 1937, Popper finally managed to get a position that allowed him to emigrate to New Zealand, where he became lecturer in philosophy at Canterbury University College of the University of New Zealand in Christchurch. It was here that he wrote his influential work The Open Society and Its Enemies. 

Karl Popper

In Dunedin he met the Professor of Physiology John Carew Eccles and formed a lifelong friendship with him. 

In 1946, after the Second World War, he moved to the United Kingdom to become reader in logic and scientific method at the London School of Economics. Three years later, in 1949, he was appointed professor of logic and scientific method at the University of London. Popper was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1958 to 1959. He retired from academic life in 1969, though he remained intellectually active for the rest of his life.

In 1985, he returned to Austria so that his wife could have her relatives around her during the last months of her life; she died in November that year. After the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft failed to establish him as the director of a newly founded branch researching the philosophy of science, he went back again to the United Kingdom in 1986, settling in Kenley, Surrey.

Popper died of complications of cancer, pneumonia and kidney failure in Kenley at the age of 92 on 17 September 1994. He had been working continuously on his philosophy until two weeks before, when he suddenly fell terminally ill. After cremation, his ashes were taken to Vienna and buried at Lainzer cemetery adjacent to the ORF Centre, where his wife Josefine Anna Popper, called Hennie, had already been buried.

More information: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Popper's estate is managed by his secretary and personal assistant Melitta Mew and her husband Raymond. Popper's manuscripts went to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, partly during his lifetime and partly as supplementary material after his death. Klagenfurt University has Popper's library, including his precious bibliophilia, as well as hard copies of the original Hoover material and microfilms of the supplementary material. The remaining parts of the estate were mostly transferred to The Karl Popper Charitable Trust. In October 2008 Klagenfurt University acquired the copyrights from the estate.

Popper and his wife had chosen not to have children because of the circumstances of war in the early years of their marriage. Popper commented that this was perhaps a cowardly but in a way a right decision.

In The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism, Popper developed a critique of historicism and a defence of the Open Society.

Karl Popper

Popper considered historicism to be the theory that history develops inexorably and necessarily according to knowable general laws towards a determinate end.

He argued that this view is the principal theoretical presupposition underpinning most forms of authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

He also argued that historicism is founded upon mistaken assumptions regarding the nature of scientific law and prediction. Since the growth of human knowledge is a causal factor in the evolution of human history, and since no society can predict, scientifically, its own future states of knowledge, it follows, he argued, that there can be no predictive science of human history. For Popper, metaphysical and historical indeterminism go hand in hand.

In 1947, Popper co-founded the Mont Pelerin Society, with Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises and others, although he did not fully agree with the think tank's charter and ideology. Specifically, he unsuccessfully recommended that socialists should be invited to participate, and that emphasis should be put on a hierarchy of humanitarian values rather than advocacy of a free market as envisioned by classical liberalism.

  

Download The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper

The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.

Karl Popper first described it in 1945 -expressing the seemingly paradoxical idea that, In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.

The paradox of tolerance is important concept for thinking about which boundaries can or should be set on freedom of speech. 

Popper asserted that to allow freedom of speech to those who would use it to eliminate the very principle upon which they rely is paradoxical.

Popper helped to establish the philosophy of science as an autonomous discipline within philosophy, through his own prolific and influential works, and also through his influence on his own contemporaries and students.

Popper founded in 1946 the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and there lectured and influenced both Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, two of the foremost philosophers of science in the next generation of philosophy of science.

Download Science and Enlightenment by Karl Popper

There is no history of mankind, 

there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. 

And one of these is the history of political power. 

This is elevated into the history of the world.

Karl Popper

THE GENEVA CONVENTION & THE PRISONERS-OF-WAR

The Geneva Convention, 1929

Today, The Grandma has been reading about The Geneva Convention, the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War which was signed on a day like today in 1929.

We live in a crazy world where wars seem to be a way to solve problems. This is a terrible mistake but economic and political reasons pass over human needs.

The Geneva Convention was signed to establish some rules relatived to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Before reading about the Convention, The Grandma has studied her Ms. Excel course.

Ch. 7. Cell Format (IV) (Spanish Version)

The Geneva Convention (1929) was signed at Geneva, July 27, 1929. Its official name is the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva July 27, 1929.

It entered into force 19 June 1931. It is this version of the Geneva Conventions which covered the treatment of prisoners of war during World War II. It is the predecessor of the Third Geneva Convention signed in 1949.

More information: International Committee of the Red Cross

Article 1 makes explicit reference to Articles 1, 2, and 3 of Hague Convention respecting the laws and customs of war on land (Hague IV), of October 18, 1907, to define who are lawful combatants and so qualify as prisoners of war (POW) on capture. In addition to combatants covered by Hague IV, some civilians are also covered in the section of this Convention called the Application of the Convention to certain classes of civilians.

Articles 2, 3, and 4 specifies that POWs are prisoners of the Power which holds them and not prisoners of the unit which takes their surrender; that POWs have the right to honor and respect, and that women shall be treated with all the regard due to their sex, and that prisoners of a similar category must be treated in the same way.

Articles 5 and 6 covers what may and may not be done to a prisoner on capture. If requested, unless too ill to comply, prisoners are bound to give their true name and rank, but they may not be coerced into giving any more information. Prisoners' personal possessions, other than arms and horses, may not be taken from them.

The Geneva Convention, 1929

The wording of the 1949 Third Geneva Convention was intentionally altered from that of the 1929 convention so that soldiers who fall into the power following surrender or mass capitulation of an enemy are now protected as well as those taken prisoner in the course of fighting.

Articles 7 and 8 states that prisoners should be evacuated from the combat zone within the shortest possible period, and that Belligerents are bound mutually to notify each other of their capture of prisoners within the shortest period possible.

Articles 9 and 10 covers the type of camp in which POWs can be detained. They must be constructed in such a way so that the conditions are similar to those used by the belligerent's own soldiers in base camps. The camps must be located in healthy locations and away from the combat zone.

Also, Belligerents shall, so far as possible, avoid assembling in a single camp prisoners of different races or nationalities. Prisoners may not be used as human shields by being sent to an area where they would be exposed to the fire of the fighting zone or be employed to render by their presence certain points or areas immune from bombardment.

Articles 11, 12, and 13 states, Food must be of a similar quality and quantity to that of the Belligerent's own soldiers, and POWs cannot be denied food as a punishment; A canteen selling local produce and products should be provided. Adequate clothing should be provided; and that sanitary service in camps should be more than sufficient to prevent epidemics.

More information: International Committee of the Red Cross

Articles 14 and 15 covers the provision of medical facilities in each camp.

Articles 16 and 17 covers the provision of religious needs, intellectual diversions and sport facilities.

Articles 18 and 19 covers the internal discipline of a camp which is under the command of a responsible officer.

Articles 20, 21, 22, and 23 states that officers and persons of equivalent status who are prisoners of war shall be treated with the regard due their rank and age and provide more details on what that treatment should be.

Article 24 covers the rate of pay of prisoners of war.

The Geneva Conventions of 1906 and 1929

Articles 25 and 26 covers the responsibilities of the detaining authority when transferring prisoners from one location to another. Prisoners must be healthy enough to travel, they must be informed to where they are being transferred; and their personal possessions, including bank accounts, should remain accessible.

Articles 27 to 34 covers labour by prisoners of war. Work must fit the rank and health of the prisoners. The work must not be war-related and must be safe work. Remuneration will be agreed between the Belligerents and will belong to the prisoner who carries out the work.

Articles 42 to 67 covers the prisoners' relations with the authorities. Most of these provisions are covered by the provision that prisoners are under the detaining power's own code of military regulations, with some additional provisions which cover specific prisoner of war issues and some other provisions to protect prisoners of war if the military regulations of the detaining power do not meet a minimum standard. Two specific regulations which differentiate prisoners of war from the detainees' own military regulations, is that no prisoner of war may be deprived of his rank by the detaining Power, and escaped prisoners of war who are retaken before being able to rejoin their own army or to leave the territory occupied by the army which captured them shall be liable only to disciplinary punishment.

Articles 68 to 74 states that seriously sick and seriously injured prisoners of war must be repatriated as soon as their condition allows and no repatriated person may be utilized in active military service.

Article 75 covers release at the end of hostilities. The release of prisoners should form part of the armistice. If this is not possible then repatriation of prisoners shall be effected with the least possible delay after the conclusion of peace. This particular provision was to cause problems after World War II because as the surrender of the Axis powers was unconditional, unconditional surrender, there was no armistice, and in the case of Germany a full peace treaty was not signed until the signing of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in 1990.

More information: History

Article 76 covers prisoners of war dying in captivity: they should be honorably buried and their graves marked and maintained properly. Wills and death certificate provisions should be the same as those for the detaining power's own soldiers.

Articles 77 to 80 covers how and how frequently the Powers should exchange information about prisoners and the details of how relief societies for prisoners of war should be involved in their relief.

Article 81 states that individuals who follow the armed forces without directly belonging thereto, who fall into the enemy's hands and whom the latter think expedient to detain, shall be entitled to be treated as prisoners of war. This provision covered military support contractors, civilian war correspondents and sutlers.

Articles 82 to 97 covers the implementation of this convention. Articles 82 and 83 contained two important clauses. In case, in time of war, one of the belligerents is not a party to the Convention, its provisions shall nevertheless remain in force as between the belligerents who are parties thereto, and that the provisions of this convention continue to cover prisoners of war after hostilities up to their repatriation unless the belligerents agree otherwise or a more favorable regime replaces it.

The annex added detail to the provisions covering repatriation and hospitalization.

More information: The Indian Express

Under the Geneva Convention, for example, 

a POW is required only to provide name, rank, 

and serial number and cannot receive
any benefits for cooperating.
 

John Yoo

WALT DISNEY'S 'ALICE IN WONDERLAND' IN LONDON, UK

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

Today, The Grandma has gone to the library to borrow Alice in Wonderland, the masterpiece written by Lewis Carroll.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland, is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.

It tells of a young girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children.

It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. Its narrative course, structure, characters, and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.

She has reread this amazing book and she has watched animated musical fantasy-adventure adaptation film produced by Walt Disney Productions and premiered in London, England, on a day like today in 1951.

Before watching the film, The Grandma has studied her Ms. Excel course.

Chapter 7. Cell Format (III) (Spanish Version)

Alice in Wonderland is a 1951 American animated musical fantasy-adventure film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the Alice books by Lewis Carroll.

The 13th release of Disney's animated features, the film premiered in London on July 26, 1951, and in New York City on July 28, 1951. The film features the voices of Kathryn Beaumont as Alice, Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, Verna Felton as the Queen of Hearts, and Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter.

Walt Disney first attempted unsuccessfully to adapt Alice into an animated feature film during the 1930s. However, he finally revived the idea in the 1940s. The film was originally intended to be a live-action/animated film; however, Disney decided to make it an all-animated feature in 1946.

More information: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The film was considered a flop on its initial release, leading to Walt Disney showing it on television as one of the first episodes of his TV series Disneyland. It proved to be very successful on television, especially during the psychedelic era. It was eventually re-released in theaters which proved to be massively successful.

The film became even more successful through merchandising and subsequent home video releases. The theme song of the same name has since become a jazz standard. While the film was critically panned on its initial release, it has since been regarded as one of Disney's greatest animated classics, notably one of the biggest cult classics in the animation medium, as well as one of the best film adaptations of Alice.

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

A live-action adaptation of Carroll's works and animated film, Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton, was released in 2010.

Walt Disney was familiar with Lewis Carroll's Alice books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and had read them as a school boy.

In 1923, he was a 21-year-old aspiring filmmaker working at the Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, making the unsuccessful short cartoon series by the name of Newman Laugh-O-Grams. The last of Newman Laugh-O-Grams was called Alice's Wonderland, which was loosely inspired by the Alice books.

The short featured a live-action girl (Virginia Davis) interacting with an animated world. Faced with business problems, however, the Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt in July 1923, and the film was never released to the general public.

However, Disney left for Hollywood and used the film to show to potential distributors. Margaret J. Winkler of Winkler Pictures agreed to distribute the Alice Comedies, and Disney partnered with his older brother Roy O. Disney and re-hired Kansas City co-workers including Ub Iwerks, Rudolph Ising, Friz Freleng, Carman Maxwell and Hugh Harman to form the Disney Brothers Studios, which was later re-branded Walt Disney Productions. The series began in 1924 before being retired in 1927.

In 1933, Disney considered making a feature-length animated-and-live-action version of Alice starring Mary Pickford. However, these plans were eventually scrapped in favor of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, mainly because Disney was put off by Paramount's 1933 live-action adaptation Alice in Wonderland. 

However, Disney did not completely abandon the idea of adapting Alice, and in 1936 he made the Mickey Mouse cartoon Thru the Mirror.

More information: Screen Prism

In 1938, after the enormous success of Snow White, Disney bought the film rights of Alice in Wonderland with Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, and officially registered the title with the Motion Picture Association of America. He then hired storyboard artist Al Perkins and art director David S. Hall to develop the story and concept art for the film.

A story reel was completed in 1939, but Disney was not pleased; he felt that Hall's drawings resembled Tenniel's drawings too closely, making them too difficult to animate, and that the overall tone of Perkins' script was too grotesque and dark. Realizing the amount of work needed for Alice in Wonderland, and with the economic devastation of World War II and the production demands of Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi, Disney shelved production on Alice in Wonderland shortly after the screening.

In fall 1945, shortly after the war ended, Disney revived Alice in Wonderland and hired British author Aldous Huxley to re-write the script. Huxley devised a story in which Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice, were misunderstood and persecuted following the book's publication.

In Huxley's story, stage actress Ellen Terry was sympathetic to both Carroll and Liddell, and Queen Victoria served as the deus ex machina, validating Carroll due to her appreciation for the book. Disney considered child actress Margaret O'Brien for the title role. However, he felt that Huxley's version was too literal an adaptation of Carroll's book. 

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

Background artist Mary Blair submitted some concept drawings for Alice in Wonderland. Blair's paintings moved away from Tenniel's detailed illustrations by taking a modernist stance, using bold and unreal colors. Walt liked Blair's designs, and the script was re-written to focus on comedy, music, and the whimsical side of Carroll's books.

Around this time, Disney considered making a live-action-and-animated version of Alice in Wonderland, similar to his short Alice Comedies, that would star Ginger Rogers and would utilize the recently developed sodium vapor process. Lisa Davis, who later voiced Anita Radcliffe in One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and Luana Patten were also considered for the role of Alice. 

However, Disney soon realized that he could do justice to the book only by making an all-animated feature, and in 1946 work began on Alice in Wonderland. With the film tentatively scheduled for release in 1950, animation crews on Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella effectively competed against each other to see which film would finish first. By early 1948, Cinderella had progressed further than Alice in Wonderland.

Through various drafts of the script, many sequences that were present in Carroll's book drifted in and out of the story. However, Disney insisted that the scenes themselves keep close to those in the novel since most of its humor is in the writing.

 More information: Alice in Wonderland

One omitted scene from the 1939 treatment of the film occurred outside the Duchess' manor, where the Fish Footman is giving a message to the Frog Footman to take to the Duchess, saying that she is invited to play croquet with the Queen of Hearts. Alice overhears this and sneaks into the kitchen of the manor, where she finds the Duchess' Cook maniacally cooking and the Duchess nursing her baby. The cook is spraying pepper all over the room, causing the Duchess and Alice to sneeze and the baby to cry. After a quick conversation between Alice and the Duchess, the hot-tempered Cook starts throwing pots and pans at the noisy baby. Alice rescues the baby, but as she leaves the house the baby turns into a pig and runs away. The scene was scrapped for pacing reasons.

Another scene that was deleted from a later draft occurred in Tulgey Wood, where Alice encountered what appeared to be a sinister-looking Jabberwock hiding in the dark, before revealing himself as a comical-looking dragon-like beast with bells and factory whistles on his head.

A song, Beware the Jabberwock, was also written. However, the scene was scrapped in favor of The Walrus and the Carpenter poem. Out of a desire to keep the Jabberwocky poem in the film, it was made to replace an original song for the Cheshire Cat, I'm Odd. 

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

Another deleted scene in Tulgey Wood shows Alice consulting with The White Knight, who was meant to be somewhat a caricature of Walt Disney. Although Disney liked the scene, he felt it was better if Alice learned her lesson by herself, hence the song Very Good Advice. Other characters, such as The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon were discarded for pacing reasons.

In an effort to retain some of Carroll's imaginative poems, Disney commissioned top songwriters to compose songs built around them for use in the film. Over 30 potential songs were written, and many of them were included in the film -some for only a few seconds- the greatest number of songs of any Disney film.

In 1939, Frank Churchill was assigned to compose songs, and they were accompanied by a story reel featuring artwork from David S. Hall. Although none of his songs were used in the finished film, the melody for Lobster Quadrille was used for the song Never Smile at a Crocodile in Peter Pan.

When work on Alice resumed in 1946, Tin Pan Alley songwriters Mack David, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston began composing songs for it after working on Cinderella. However, the only song by the trio that made it into the film was The Unbirthday Song.

While he was composing songs in New York, Sammy Fain had heard that the Disney studios wanted him to compose songs for Alice in Wonderland. He also suggested lyricist Bob Hilliard as his collaborator. The two wrote two unused songs for the film, Beyond the Laughing Sky and I'm Odd. The music for the former song was kept but the lyrics were changed, and it later became the title song for Peter Pan, The Second Star to the Right. By April 1950, Cahn and Hilliard had finished composing songs for the film.

More information: Animation Screen Caps

The title song, composed by Sammy Fain, has become a jazz standard, adapted by jazz pianist Dave Brubeck in 1952 and included on his 1957 Columbia album Dave Digs Disney.

The song, In a World of My Own, is included on the orange disc of Classic Disney: 60 Years of Musical Magic.

The film soundtrack was first released on LP record on July 28, 1951. The soundtrack was re-released on Audio CD by Walt Disney Records on February 3, 1998.

All tracks written by Sammy Fain, Bob Hilliard, Mack David, Al Hoffman, Jerry Livingston, Oliver Wallace, Ted Sears, Gene de Paul, and Don Raye.

Alice in Wonderland premiered at the Leicester Square Theatre in London on July 26, 1951.

During the film's initial theatrical run, the film was released as a double feature with the True-Life Adventures documentary short, Nature's Half Acre. Following the film's initial lukewarm reception, it was never re-released theatrically in Disney's lifetime, instead being shown occasionally on television. Alice in Wonderland aired as the second episode of the Walt Disney's Disneyland television series on ABC on November 3, 1954, in a severely edited version cut down to less than an hour.

Beginning in 1971, the film was screened in several sold-out venues at college campuses, becoming the most rented film in some cities. Then, in 1974, Disney gave Alice in Wonderland its first theatrical re-release.

The company even promoted it as a film in tune with the psychedelic times, using radio commercials featuring the song White Rabbit performed by Jefferson Airplane. This release was so successful that it warranted a subsequent re-release in 1981. Its first UK re-release was on July 26, 1979.

More information: White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane

 If you don't know where you are going, 

any road will get you there.
 

Lewis Carroll

JOAN BAEZ, COMMITMENT & CIVIL RIGHTS IN SITGES

Joan Baez

Today, Claire Fontaine & The Grandma have gone to Sitges to listen to a legend of music and a great human rights activist, Joan Baez. They love her songs, many of them are considered hymns, and they admire her activism in defence of human rights around the world.

Claire and The Grandma don't live disconnected of the real situation of their day-by-day in their country which is suffering a terrible repression of a state that doesn't respect human and civil rights and attacks free speech and cultural difference.

Listening to Joan Baez is an incredible opportunity to take enough force to go on, to resist under this regime of repression, and also a wonderful way of remembering the fight in a favour of the civil and human rights along the last decades, a strong struggle reflected in the lyrics of her songs and in the beauty of her unforgettable voice.

Before going to Sitges, The Grandma has studied her Ms. Excel course.

Chapter 7. Cell Format (II) (Spanish Version)

Joan Chandos Baez (born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist whose contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice.

Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages. Although generally regarded as a folk singer, her music has diversified since the counterculture era of the 1960s, and encompasses genres such as folk rock, pop, country, and gospel music.

Although a songwriter herself, Baez generally interprets other composers' work, having recorded songs by Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Woody Guthrie, Violeta Parra, the Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and many others. On her past several albums, she has found success interpreting songs of more recent songwriters, including Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle, Natalie Merchant and Joe Henry.

More information: Joan Baez

She began her recording career in 1960 and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, Joan Baez, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, and Joan Baez in Concert all achieved gold record status.

Songs of acclaim include Diamonds & Rust and covers of Phil Ochs's There but for Fortune and The Band's The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. She is also known for Farewell, Angelina, Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word, Forever Young, Here's to You, Joe Hill, Sweet Sir Galahad and We Shall Overcome.

Claire Fontaine & The Grandma in Sitges

She was one of the first major artists to record the songs of Bob Dylan in the early 1960s; Baez was already an internationally celebrated artist and did much to popularize his early songwriting efforts.

Baez also performed fourteen songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights and the environment.

Baez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 7, 2017.

Baez was born on Staten Island, New York, on January 9, 1941. Joan's grandfather, the Reverend Alberto Baez, left the Catholic Church to become a Methodist minister and moved to the U.S. when her father was two years old. Her father, Albert Baez (1912–2007), was born in Puebla, Mexico and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where his father preached to -and advocated for- a Spanish-speaking congregation.

Due to her father's work with UNESCO, their family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S, as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, and the Middle East, including Iraq.

Joan Baez became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and non-violence. Social justice, she stated in the PBS series American Masters, is the true core of her life, looming larger than music.

More information: DW

The opening line of Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With is I was born gifted, referencing her singing voice, which she explained was given to her and for which she can take no credit. A friend of Joan's father gave her a ukulele. She learned four chords, which enabled her to play rhythm and blues, the music she was listening to at the time. Her parents, however, were fearful that the music would lead her into a life of drug addiction.

When Baez was 13, her aunt and her aunt's boyfriend took her to a concert by folk musician Pete Seeger, and Baez found herself strongly moved by his music. She soon began practicing the songs of his repertoire and performing them publicly. One of her very earliest public performances was at a retreat in Saratoga, California for a youth group from Temple Beth Jacob, a Redwood City, California Jewish congregation. A few years later in 1957, Baez bought her first Gibson acoustic guitar.

Her true professional career began at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. Following that appearance, she recorded her first album for Vanguard, Joan Baez (1960), produced by Fred Hellerman of The Weavers, who produced many albums by folk artists.

The War Is Over! Rally, May 1975

From the early-to-mid-1960s, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Bob Dylan, and was emulated by artists such as Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, and Bonnie Raitt.

Baez's distinctive vocal style and political activism had a significant impact on American popular music. She was one of the first musicians to use her popularity as a vehicle for social protest, singing and marching for human rights and peace.

Pete Seeger, Odetta, and decades-long friend Harry Belafonte were her early social justice advocate influences. Baez came to be considered the most accomplished interpretive folksinger/songwriter of the 1960s. Her appeal extended far beyond the folk-music audience.

In 1980, Baez was given honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees by Antioch University and Rutgers University for her political activism and the universality of her music. In 1983, she appeared on the Grammy Awards, performing Dylan's anthemic Blowin' in the Wind, a song she first performed twenty years earlier.

More information: ThoughtCo

Baez also played a significant role in the 1985 Live Aid concert for African famine relief, opening the U.S. segment of the show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has toured on behalf of many other causes, including Amnesty International's 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope tour and a guest spot on their subsequent Human Rights Now! tour.

In 1993, at the invitation of Refugees International and sponsored by the Soros Foundation, she traveled to the war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina region of former-Yugoslavia in an effort to help bring more attention to the suffering there. She was the first major artist to perform in Sarajevo since the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil war.

On April 4, 2017, Baez released on her Facebook page her first song in twenty-seven years, Nasty Man, a protest song against US President Donald Trump which became a viral hit.

In 1956, Baez first heard Martin Luther King, Jr., speak about nonviolence, civil rights and social change which brought tears to her eyes. Several years later, the two became friends, with Baez participating in many of the Civil Rights Movement demonstrations that Dr. King helped organize.

Martin Luther King, Jr. & Joan Baez

In 1958, at age 17, Baez committed her first act of civil disobedience by refusing to leave her Palo Alto High School classroom in Palo Alto, California, for an air raid drill.

The early years of Baez's career saw the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. become a prominent issue. Her performance of We Shall Overcome, the civil rights anthem written by Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan, at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom permanently linked her to the song.

Baez again sang We Shall Overcome in Sproul Plaza during the mid-1960s Free Speech Movement demonstrations at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California, and at many other rallies and protests.

Her recording of the song Birmingham Sunday (1964), written by her brother-in-law, Richard Fariña, was used in the opening of 4 Little Girls (1997), Spike Lee's documentary film about the four young victims killed in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

In 1965, Baez announced that she would be opening a school to teach nonviolent protest. She also participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches for voting rights.

Highly visible in civil-rights marches, Baez became more vocal about her disagreement with the Vietnam War.

Baez was arrested twice in 1967 for blocking the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California, and spent over a month in jail.

More information: Nasty Man by Joan Baez

Baez was instrumental in founding the USA section of Amnesty International in the 1970s, and has remained an active supporter of the organization.

In 1976, she was awarded the Thomas Merton Award for her ongoing activism.

In 1989, after the Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing, Baez wrote and released the song China to condemn the Chinese government for its violent and bloody crackdown on thousands of student protesters who called for establishment of democratic republicanism.

In a second trip to Southeast Asia, Baez assisted in an effort to take food and medicine into the western regions of Cambodia, and participated in a United Nations Humanitarian Conference on Kampuchea.

On July 17, 2006, Baez received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Legal Community Against Violence. At the annual dinner event, they honored her for her lifetime of work against violence of all kinds.

In 2015, Baez received the Ambassador of Conscience Award. 

Joan Baez & Bill Shipsey visit Carme Forcadell in prison

In 2016, Baez advocated for the Innocence Project and Innocence Network. At each concert, Baez informs the audience about the organizations' efforts to exhonerate the wrongfully convicted and reform the system to prevent such incidents.

In December 2005, Baez appeared and sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot at the California protest at the San Quentin State Prison against the execution of Tookie Williams. She had previously performed the same song at San Quentin at the 1992 vigil protesting the execution of Robert Alton Harris, the first man to be executed in California after the death penalty was reinstated.

Baez has also been prominent in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. In 1978, she performed at several benefit concerts to defeat the Briggs Initiative, which proposed banning all gay people from teaching in the public schools of California. Later that same year, she participated in memorial marches for the assassinated San Francisco city supervisor, Harvey Milk, who was openly gay.

On Earth Day 1999, Baez and Bonnie Raitt honored environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill with Raitt's Arthur M. Sohcot Award in person on her 55 m-high redwood treetop platform, where Hill had camped to protect ancient redwoods in the Headwaters Forest from logging.

In early 2003, Baez performed at two rallies of hundreds of thousands of people in San Francisco protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as she had earlier done before smaller crowds in 1991 to protest the Gulf War.

More information: The Guardian

In August 2003, she was invited by Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle to join them in London, UK, at the Concert For a Landmine-Free World.

In the summer of 2004, Baez joined Michael Moore's Slacker uprising Tour on American college campuses, encouraging young people to get out and vote for peace candidates in the upcoming national election.

In August 2005, Baez appeared at the Texas anti-war protest that had been started by Cindy Sheehan.

On June 25, 2009, Baez created a special version of We Shall Overcome with a few lines of Persian lyrics in support of peaceful protests by Iranian people. She recorded it in her home and posted the video on YouTube and on her personal website.

On March 18, 2011, Baez was honored by Amnesty International at its 50th Anniversary Annual General Meeting in San Francisco. The tribute to Baez was the inaugural event for the Amnesty International Joan Baez Award for Outstanding Inspirational Service in the Global Fight for Human Rights.

On November 11, 2011, Baez played as part of a musical concert for the protestors at Occupy Wall Street. Her three-song set included Joe Hill, a cover of the Rolling Stones' Salt of the Earth and her own composition Where's My Apple Pie?

Joan Baez has been a strong defender of the Catalan independence movement due to its non-violent nature. On July 21, 2019, she described Catalan independence leaders as political prisoners. A few days later, on July 26, 2019, she visited former President of the Parliament of Catalonia Carme Forcadell in prison.

More information: Catalan News

I think music has the power to transform people,

and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations 

-some large and some small.

Joan Baez