www.brixtonbuzz.com
Tbh, I kind of feel like there's not much visible anarchist presence on a lot of demos nowadays.
Well, on an immediate sense, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who want to see a ceasefire (or a proper ceasefire that doesn't involve the cops firing tear gas at a mosque hours after the ceasefire's announced) and Israelis who want to see a ceasefire have a pretty obvious immediate common interest there. Beyond that... idk, groups like Standing Together or Koah LaOvdim would be able to answer that better than I can. I think a lot depends on the fortunes of the class struggle, like it's easy to assume a shared interest between Israeli workers and their ruling class but we shouldn't forget that the wave of uprisings around the Middle East in 2011 included a series of mass protests in Israel around housing that acted pretty explicitly as a class movement, making demands on/opposed to the Israeli state.
Is not rather facile to make a comparison between the situation in Britain and in Palestine/Israel? When members of a nation are denied their rights, then it would be rather dimissive to dismiss their demands as simple "nationalism".
Depends on the comparison being made. I think one comparison between Britain and Israel that holds up is that, when I've asked for an explanation of why people think Israelis would never be able to identify with Palestinians instead of their own ruling class, the only actual answer I've ever got is a sort of soft-third-worldist one, that Israelis benefit too much from imperialism and inequality to want to give it up. I think it's worth pursuing that line of thought/questioning, because I'm not sure that Israel is a bigger player in imperialism or benefits more from it than the UK does.
Having an anti-Hamas/islamic fundie/antisemite message is important and perhaps that's something anarchists could maybe bring to these demos. But it should go beyond just anarchists. Certainly I feel that there seems to have been an opportunity missed with such a big turn out at these demos, especially the last one in London, with many young people attending. I feel we need to engage with these people.
Meanwhile in Tamworth today . . .
Palestine Action group storms factory site in Israel arms protest
Members of Palestine Action scaled a roof and daubed blood-red paint across the Elite KL site on Amington Industrial Estatewww.birminghammail.co.uk
They make air-conditioning.
A large part of the reason the Catholic church no longer so central is because so many priests abused children. Because of the magdalene laundries. Quite a high price paid in ruined lives
but before you got there, and after you left 95%, of the marchers were from Hartlepool or adherents of the Hare Krishna temple.
You're talking the same kind of right wing racist bollocks as you did in the other thread where you lied through your teeth and claimed that the Football Lads Alliance was some sort of multicultural carnival. You're not going to fuck up this thread with your thinly veiled racist drivel, so you're now banned from it.
I'm not too confident that Arafat was blameless tbh, but I'm by no means an expert on this: al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - Wikipedia
palestineaction.org
It’s not about religion - there are Palestinians who are Christians including in Gaza, it’s about a ethno-nationalist rogue nuclear state that openly flaunts international law and breaches the human rights of the people who’s land they are occupying under force: it’s obviously a lot more then that but I do think the situation is a long way from just needing the workers to rise up against the bad bosses. Perhaps this is why the anarchist movement achieve fuck all in this country
You may not agree but I think most people would accept that religion contributes substantially to the problems of much of the Middle East. (I would say it contributes to many other problems around the world as well). Fundamentalist Muslims. Zionist Jews. The Shia/Sunni divide. Christian/Muslim/Druze conflicts in Lebanon. Islamic Jihad. Persecution of Yezidis, Yasanis, Baha'i, Alevis, Assyrians etc. Religion is rarely the only cause of conflict, but in religious societies it generates fault lines which are difficult to circumvent.
Many of the problems of the middle east would be far smaller if it hadn't been for things like the sykes-picot agreement or the balfour declaration. You make out it's those pesky god-botherers when the people who decided the borders, the people who created the middle east, came from Britain and France. Some conflicts in the m.e. have been to do with resources, eg the six day war arguably had its origins in a water dispute. Many posters will recall the gulf war over oil and the invasion of Iraq to complete us unfinished business. And some observers argue that the Syrian civil war was in part caused by climate change. So tbh the problems of the me stem in great part from decisions made in Washington, London and Paris. By factors outside the control of regimes in the me let alone imams or patriarchs or rabbis or the man and woman in the street.
Indeed. The CIA coup that got rid of Mossadegh in Iran was all about oil, and look what that lead to. And that's just one example.
I don't disagree with you on that. I'm just making the point that the divisions caused by religion, especially the militant kind of religion too often on display in the Middle East, make the finding of solutions and common ground so much more difficult. Conflicts all over the globe are caused or aggravated by super powers, arbitrary borders, disputes about resources, and all manner of stuff. Religious divisions just make it a whole lot worse, sometimes.
Not all over the world. You don't see anything like the arbitrary borders, the straight lines, of the me and africa in europe. (Altho of course all borders arbitrary, but some more than others) if the me had been able to determine its own borders rather than had them imposed after ww1 the situation wouldn't be so shit. If the us, UK etc didn't keep supporting repressive regimes or intervening the situation wouldn't be so shit. If secular movements hadn't been so comprehensively crushed in much of the me people wouldn't be turning in extremis to groups like the muslim brotherhood or daesh.
