People take part in a pro-Palestine march in central London, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, February 17, 2024
BRITAIN’S rulers are coming for our democratic rights. And their way is being prepared with a barrage of propaganda and lies.
The “counter-extremism commissioner” Robin Simcox peddles an outrageous smear against the peace movement when he claims Palestine solidarity demonstrations make London a “no-go zone for Jews.”
Tell that to the large and growing Jewish bloc that has marched for a Gaza ceasefire at every national demo.
But, as Stop the War Coalition officer John Rees warns, the ruling-class’s cynical strategy of interpreting empathy with Palestinians as hostility to Jews has sown confusion and fear.
“The next government’s energy policy should aim at ending fuel poverty, not managing it, and the money to do it is right there in energy company profits.”
In Manchester, there was an angry response to what the End Fuel Poverty Coalition described as a ‘another feeble budget.’
“The Chancellor failed to close the 91 percent loophole in windfall taxes, and failed to invest in the green jobs that would deliver cheaper home-grown energy for us all, and healthier homes,” said a spokesperson for the Coalition.
…
Stu Bretherton, Energy For All Campaign Coordinator at Fuel Poverty Action said he hopes Wednesday’s Statement will be the last Budget of a government that has “driven mass poverty, broken public services, illness and death.”
But Bretherton warned that none of the parties are “offering the bold changes that we desperately need so today we’re seeing trade unions, pensioners, climate activists and health workers Unite for Energy For All.”
“The next government’s energy policy should aim at ending fuel poverty, not managing it, and the money to do it is right there in energy company profits,” he said.
Protesters during a National March for Palestine in central London, January 13, 2024
JEWISH campaigners accused the government of exploiting fear for its own political purposes today.
The backlash came after the government’s counter-extremism commissioner said London has become a “no-go zone for Jews” during weekend pro-Palestinian marches. Around 145,000 Jews live in the city.
Robin Simcox, previously a Margaret Thatcher fellow at the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, said protests were “becoming ever more vociferous” in an article in the Daily Telegraph.
He said that the government had “more power to tackle extremism than it sometimes thinks” and that it should “move faster, be bolder and be willing to accept higher legal risk if it means implementing policies that keep us safer.”
In response, Downing Street said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was taking the concerns “extremely seriously.”
dizzy: Football or rugby matches are also no-go zones on weekends for others. It’s a matter of simply staying out of the way of huge numbers, not applying apartheid by banning sporting events at the behest of a privileged class.
Newly elected MP for Rochdale, George Galloway, speaks to the media outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London after he was sworn in following his victory in the Rochdale by-election last week, March 4, 2024
GEORGE GALLOWAY’S “emphatic” victory in the Rochdale by-election is a warning to Labour, Britain’s communists say.
The Communist Party’s international secretary Kevan Nelson reminded its political committee earlier this week that the Workers Party candidate had overturned a 10,000 Labour majority.
He argued that Mr Galloway’s campaign “had combined internationalist support for the Palestinian people of Gaza with serious class politics,” calling for the return of A&E and maternity services and town centre regeneration.
A Palestinian man holds a child as he mourns the death of twin babies Naeem and Wissam Abu Anza, killed in an overnight Israeli air strike, during their burial in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 3, 2024. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)
The Palestinians, facing down the most powerful countries in the world, left virtually alone even by their allies, have suffered immeasurably. But they have won this war.
The following is a statement written by Arundhati Roy and delivered on her behalf at the meeting of Working People Against Apartheid and Genocide in Gaza, at the Press Club, New Delhi, on Thursday March 7, 2024. The remarks were first published by Scroll, an independent media outlet in India.
The richest, most powerful countries in the Western world, those who believe themselves to be the keepers of the flame of the modern world’s commitment to democracy and human rights, are openly financing and applauding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Gaza strip has been turned into a concentration camp. Those who have not already been killed are being starved to death. Almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced. Their homes, hospitals, universities, museums, and infrastructure of every kind has been reduced to rubble. Their children have been murdered. Their past has been vaporized. Their future is hard to see.
Even though the highest court in the world believes that almost every indicator seems to meet the legal definition of genocide, IDF soldiers continue to put out their mocking “victory videos” celebrating what almost looks like fiendish rituals. They believe that there is no power in the world that will hold them to account. But they are wrong. They and their children’s children will be haunted by what they have done. They will have to live with the loathing and the abhorrence the world feels for them. And hopefully one day everybody – on all sides of this conflict – who has committed war crimes will be tried and punished for them, keeping in mind that there is no equivalence between crimes committed while resisting Apartheid and Occupation, and crimes committed while enforcing them.
They and their children’s children will be haunted by what they have done. They will have to live with the loathing and the abhorrence the world feels for them.
Racism is of course the keystone of any act of genocide. The rhetoric of the highest officials of the Israeli state has, ever since Israel came into existence, dehumanized Palestinians and likened them to vermin and insects, just like the Nazis once dehumanized Jews. It is as though that evil serum never went away and is now only being recirculated. The “Never” has been excised from that powerful slogan “Never Again”. And we are left only with “Again”.
Never Again.
President Joe Biden, head of state of the richest, most powerful country in the world, is helpless before Israel, even though Israel would not exist without US funding. It’s as though the dependent has taken over the benefactor. The optics say so. Like a geriatric child, Joe Biden appears on camera licking an ice-cream cone and vaguely mumbling about a ceasefire, while Israeli government and military officials openly defy him and vow to finish what they have started. To try and stop the hemorrhaging of the votes of millions of young Americans who will not stand for this slaughter in their name, Kamala Harris, US vice-president, has been tasked with the job of calling for a ceasefire, while billions of US dollars continue to flow to enable the genocide.
And what of our country?
It is well known that our prime minister is an intimate friend of Benjamin Netanyahu and there is no doubt where his sympathies lie. India is no longer a friend of Palestine. When the bombing began, thousands of Modi’s supporters put up the Israeli flag as their DP on social media. They helped spread the vilest disinformation on behalf of Israel and the IDF. Even though the Indian government has now stepped back into a more neutral position – our foreign policy triumph is that we manage to be on all sides at once, we can be pro- as well as anti-genocide – the government has clearly indicated that it will act decisively against any pro-Palestine protestors.
President Joe Biden, head of state of the richest, most powerful country in the world, is helpless before Israel, even though Israel would not exist without US funding. It’s as though the dependent has taken over the benefactor.
And now, while the US exports what it has in abundant surplus – weapons and money to aid Israel’s genocide – India too is exporting what our country has in abundant surplus: the unemployed poor to replace the Palestinian workers who will no longer be given work permits to enter Israel. (I’m guessing there will be no Muslims among the new recruits.) People who are desperate enough to risk their lives in a war zone. People desperate enough to tolerate overt Israeli racism against Indians. You can see it expressed on social media, if you care to look. US money and Indian poverty combine to oil Israel’s genocidal war machine. What a terrible, unthinkable, shame.
The Palestinians, facing down the most powerful countries in the world, left virtually alone even by their allies, have suffered immeasurably. But they have won this war. They, their journalists, their doctors, their rescue teams their poets, academics, spokespeople, and even their children have conducted themselves with a courage and dignity that has inspired the rest of the world. The young generation in the Western world, particularly the new generation of young Jewish people in the US, have seen through the brainwashing and propaganda and have recognized apartheid and genocide for what it is. The governments of the most powerful countries in the Western world have lost their dignity, and any respect they might have had. Yet again. But the millions of protestors on the streets of Europe and the US are the hope for the future of the world.
Arundhati Roy Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. Her most recent book, a novel, is: “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.” Her other books include: “Listening to Grasshoppers: Fields Notes on Democracy,” “The God of Small Things,” and “The End of Imagination.
This blog is named after and in tribute to Roy’s 2002 article which now seems difficult to find. She made a speech at the World Social Forum on 27 January 2003. “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” I consider that this article answers and satisfies the question I posed in my recent Coming Soon: Should it properly be called Fascism?
