ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Here’s another one and clearly a liar too.
https://theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/23/james-cleverly-stockton-remark
There is another national demonstration in London tomorrow, starting at Hyde Park and ending in Parliament Square.
https://www.stopwar.org.uk/events/ceasefire-now-national-demonstration-for-palestine/
Once again London and Kent members and sympathisers will be leafletting it.
The arrangements will be the same as last time. Head Office at 52 Clapham High Street SW4 will be open from 10.30 to 4pm for members and sympathisers to pick up leaflets.
This one is organised by the Stop The War Coalition rather than Palestine Solidarity Campaign and so should in principle be more anti-war than pro-Palestine. Whether it will be remains to be seen.
At least they got to demonstrate even if they were censored and self-censored on what they could say.
This was interesting:
“Many speakers, Arabs and Jews, talked about the fact that there are millions of Arabs and Jews living between the river and the sea and that the only solution is to have full human rights and equality for all.”
That’s an idea. If the demonstrators in Britain were to chant “From the river to the sea” followed not by “Free Palestine” but by “Full political rights for all” that would put those who want to ban the slogan on the defensive. It would then be a democratic rather than a nationalist slogan.
Of course it still wouldn’t be “the only solution” — socialism would be — as it would still leave capitalism intact but it would be a step in the right direction.
South Wales branch report on leafletting this meeting:
“Two of us gave out leaflets outside tonight’s Stop the War meeting at the Unison offices in Cardiff. There was an attendance of around 70 and just about everyone there got one. Surprisingly there were no other organisations giving their stuff out, and that made it easier. The meeting was addressed first by John Rees of STW who spoke at length (too long). It must be said that he’s a hell of a good speaker and did it all ad lib with eloquence and power, but not in a rabble-rousing way. As for the content, well he never attempted to back Hamas but focused on the need for a ongoing ceasefire, something I think we would all, at least on a personal level, consider positive if it were to happen. He also mentioned the underlying economic elements, the kind of thing that’s done very effectively indeed in the editorial on p.3 of this month’s Standard. It’s unsigned, but whoever wrote it, congrats. Anyway the next three speakers were an MP, a Palestinian living in Cardiff and a poet, but after that we left. This was partly because the room was so hot, but also because 8 more speakers were billed, so it’s probably still going on now.”
This will please KAZ. Mind you, it has been subject to criticism and pushback:
Begin took the money for Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 and then 4 years later presided over the bombing of Beirut. I don’t think they asked him to pay it back.
I see the utter nutter won. Now let’s see how successful he is in introducing anarcho-capitalism in Argentina. Mind you, capitalism is pretty anarchic anyway.
Here’s the front cover of the September 1982 Socialist Standard, the last time the Israeli government (Begin was prime minister) ordered the Israel Attack Force to do this sort of thing — flatten parts of Beirut and hold the ring while they let a Lebanese Christian militia slaughter Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. This time they are doing their own dirty work. Read the article called Holocaust2. It could be reproduced almost word for word today.
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.
