ALB
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Thanks. Mrs Thatcher knew that and was reluctant to shake hands with him as a former terrorist who had ordered the killing of British soldiers but she had to for diplomatic reasons when he was became Prime aminister of Israel and visited Britain. She didn’t like it and always had disdain for the man.
https://fullfact.org/online/margaret-thatcher-menachem-begin/
Those Christian cultists are utter nutters:
“Hagee’s flagrant support for Israel has its basis in Scripture, to be sure, but in weird Scripture–namely Revelation, the strangest book of the New Testament. Revelation is the source of the phantasmagoria known as the Rapture, in which the battle of Armageddon is fought (against the Arabs, one expects), Israel triumphs, Jesus returns in celebration, lifts all Believers to heaven…and everyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus is incinerated.” (https://swampland.time.com/2008/07/23/but_what_happens_to_jews_in_th/)
So Israel wins the war. Jesus returns and all those who don’t believe in him are incinerated, including any Jew who doesn’t convert (and I can’t imagine Nutty-yahoo and his cabinet doing that) is destined to be burned . . . along with us.
As they say, with friends like that.
They didn’t chant “Keir Starmer, Kid Starver” only “Starmer is a wasteman”:
There was no national demonstration this week, only local ones. The one in Islington in London seems to have been organised by the SWP. They had a big stall and were handing out placards saying Free Palestine. They also led the chant of “from the river to the sea”. At least I think it was them rather than the Stop the War Coalition which also had a stall — otherwise they’d be the Start the War Coalition.
I doubt if they really meant that but were more likely chanting it as an act of defiance as it’s what the government and the media say should be banned. The police didn’t intervene.
In any event, not everybody there agreed with it. SPEW was there too and their leaflet called for “an independent, socialist Palestinian state, alongside a socialist Israel, with two capitals in Jerusalem.” That’s a novel proposal — a two state-capitalist states solution.
There was also a march in Camden to Starmer’s constituency office in St. Pancras (he’s the local MP). It’s not known whether, in view of his support for the siege of Gaza, they revived the slogan of “Keir Starmer, Kid Starver”, coined over a different issue.
The second link is indeed ironic but the first (which doesn’t work for me but I found it by a different route) is more problematic as Almayadeen has been accused of being pro-hesbollah and pro-Iran.
This is what Wikipedia says about them:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Mayadeen
This is what they say about themselves:
https://english.almayadeen.net/
Bearing in mind that Israel’s “biblical lands” extend to the whole of Lebanon and as far east as the river Euphrates, extending Israel to that extent would be impossible, even if it is what some crazed Jewish Nationalists might be thinking and calling for. The Israel Attack Force is not that powerful.
I would imagine that more pragmatic counsels would prevail amongst the rulers of Israel even as regards southern Lebanon and the West Bank. Besides, the US wouldn’t let them do it.
There’s another national demonstration, on Saturday 25 November, so we’re having more leaflets printed. Also for distribution elsewhere, even to passers-by on the streets.
https://palestinecampaign.org/events/national-march-for-palestine-ceasefire-now-2/
Here is an extract from an article in today’s Times headed “Pupils skip school to March on Labour office over ceasefire stance”:
“Many of those marching were holding banners carrying a logo for the Socialist Party, which has organised many marches since the conflict in the Middle East began.”
Not us of course, not that we would have an objection in principle to schoolkids expressing criticism of the Labour Party’s support for the continuation of the siege and bombing of Gaza. Only our leaflet and placards would be conveying a quite different message.
Incidentally SPEW, unlike many of the others, is not calling for the dissolution of the state of Israel but for a “workers government” there.
Starmer’s reaction to 8 members of his shadow government of capitalism resigning and a quarter of his MPs voting, against his advice, for a ceasefire (he wants the killings and destruction to continue) was;
“Leadership is about doing the right thing. That is the least the public deserves. And the least that leadership demands.”
But what on Earth does that mean? It has a certain rhetorical flourish but has sinister implications.
Everybody, not just leaders, should of course do the “right thing”. But who decides what is the right thing? Starmer, as a Leader, naturally thinks that a leader should and that this is what the public “deserves”. In other words, he considers that “the public” are incapable of deciding this but only leaders are; that they require leaders to tell them what is right. What arrogance!
It might be slightly less bad if he personally didn’t change his mind so often about what is the “right thing”. At one time he thought Corbyn was and that certain leftwing reform such as ending charity status for private schools were. Now he doesn’t. Even on Gaza he has changed his mind. Initially he thought it was the right thing that Israel should cut off water, fuel and electricity to Gaza. Then he said (but probably doesn’t believe) that it was the wrong thing.
The lesson of all this? We don’t need leaders to tell us what is right. In fact we don’t need leaders at all. Don’t follow them, just tell them to get lost. It’s the least leaders deserve and the least the public should demand.
Full list of all 125 here:
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23926857.gaza-ceasefire-vote-mps-vote-full-list-rebels/
I see “my” MP was amongst them. The LibDems voted for as well as the Scots Nats. Also the non-DUP Northern Ireland MPs and the sole Green Party MP.
”this article concludes that Atlantic slavery’s stimulus was likely of limited importance for driving the later Industrial Revolution.”
There is an obituary in today’s Times of Professor Nick Crafts, billed as “economic historian known for his radical reinterpretation of the Industrial Revolution”. The obituary quotes him as saying that “I was accused of taking ‘industrial’ and ‘revolution’ out of the Industrial Revolution”, and goes on:
“He argued that the British economy was already well advanced by the early 18th century, before industrialisation began, thanks partly to an early transition into what he called capitalist farming driving many smallholders to the cities to find work. He paid tribute to the role of railways and canals, but noted that steam did not become cost-effective until the 1840s.”
So in the end there were 125 humane beings in the House of Commons including 56 Labourites among them some ex-future ministers.
“Keir Starmer is braced for resignations from his frontbench after ordering Labour MPs not to vote for a ceasefire in Gaza.”
In other words, he wants his MPs to vote for the bombings, the killings and the wanton destruction to continue. Most probably will.
We will find out later today who are the Labour Party leaders who put their hope of becoming a minister before what any decent human being feels about what they can see on television is happening to ordinary people in Gaza and just want it to stop.
An interesting article from 2002 proposing a “a secular democratic state in historic Palestine” based on one person, one vote “without reference to ethnicity or creed”:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040805065028/http://www.one-state.org/articles/2002/karmi.htm
It is probably never going to happen (at least not until we get socialism when it would be a secular democratic administration) if only because the Zionists would fight it to the death — and they’ve got the atomic bomb — as it would mean a repudiation of their claim that part of historic Palestine should be a Jewish state for Jews.
But anyone raising it would put the Zionists on the back foot as, when you think about it, their claim is outrageous even from a bourgeois-democratic point of view.
Preliminary statistics show that over Saturday and Sunday there were 108 hits on our website via the QR code on the leaflet. As by then some 1600 had been handed out, that’s 1 in 15, ie for every 15 leaflets handed out 1 person was sufficiently interested to scan the code and visit our site.
That suggests it is worth putting a QR code on our leaflets and handing out leaflets.
Apparently in Stroud some want to ban The Light from being handed out in the streets, including initially the Tory MP.
https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/23660745.stroud-mp-light-seems-sow-division-create-fear/
They are peddling nonsense but then so are a lot of others, including the Tory and Labour parties. The answer is not to prevent their views being expressed but to publicly expose them as nonsense.
