feckcops

[feckcops]

Spare a thought for Hilary Cass

“In the end, the anti-trans victory lap barely made it a few feet before being overtaken by hundreds of academics, experts and service users exposing the review as a sham.

“Over 100 academics signed an open letter by the Feminist Gender Equality Network condemning the review as ‘dangerous and potentially harmful to trans children’ due to its ‘unsound methodology, unacceptable bias [and] problematic and supported conclusions’. Therapists Against Conversion Therapy & Transphobia (TACTT) slammed the review as having an ‘eliminationist agenda, dressed up in the language of reasonableness’, urging clinicians to treat the Review’s findings with ‘extreme caution’. ‘Underpinning this report,’ wrote trans rights group TransActual, ‘is the idea that being trans is an undesirable outcome rather than a natural facet of human diversity.’ ...

“Cass also suggests that the rate at which young people move from puberty blockers to subsequent hormone treatments may, as anti-trans groups have warned, prove puberty blockers help cement a trans identity in these youth. Her data for this is the fact that in two studies, nearly all trans youth prescribed blockers went on to take hormones. Of course, this finding could just as easily suggest that puberty blockers are being prescribed very precisely – a possibility Hilary Cass does not entertain for even a second.

“While roundly ignoring the evidence of experts, the review mysteriously arrives at many of the same conclusions that anti-trans groups did years ago. Cass recommends that young adults aged 17-25 use an intermediary gender service instead of being referred to adult services, for example – a recommendation straight out of the mouth of anti-trans group Our Duty, which has long pushed to ban gender transition for under-25s. The influence of anti-trans groups like Sex Matters, Therapy First and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, all of whom appear in the citations, can be felt throughout the review.

“More worryingly still, many of Cass’s conclusions are based on evidence that does not corroborate, or in some cases, directly contradicts her findings. For example, her recommendation of an intermediate service is based on the idea that brains don’t reach maturity until 25 – a notion that Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist and the author of The Idiot Brain describes as ‘guff based on hearsay, misunderstanding of neuroscience or wilful ignorance’.”

#cass review #anti-trans lobby #transphobia #trans healthcare #puberty blockers #tavistock centre #gender services #gender identity services #conversion therapy #nhs england #nhs #trans rights #lgbt rights #queer rights #transgender #trans #lgbt #queer

[feckcops]

Why is Labour still using the self-defeating, discredited ‘maxed out credit card’ analogy?

“Rarely has a lacklustre policy been abandoned for a reason so bad that it threatens to inflict long-term damage on a society. Independently of whether the £28bn green investment programme was the right policy for the next Labour government to commit to, Rachel Reeves’s reasons for ditching it were an undeserved gift to the Tories and a partial vindication of their disgraceful flirtations with an austerian, anti-green political narrative ...

“When your credit card is ‘maxed out’, you do indeed need immediately to tighten your belt. The reason why parsimony works for you, and helps limit your debt, is that you are blessed with an income that is independent of what you decide to spend money on. In other words, if you don’t buy the shoes or new phone you covet, your income will not diminish, and so your deficit will shrink reliably. But the state’s budget is nothing like a credit card. As chancellor of the exchequer, your (tax) income is highly dependent on your (public) spending. Limit your spending and you have limited your income too. This is why the more Osborne slashed public spending in the 2010s, the more money he needed to borrow. By adopting the ‘maxed credit card’ narrative, Reeves endorsed Osborne’s flawed logic and, indirectly, absolved the Tories for the wanton damage they have inflicted on a generation of Britons.

“Austerity, and the credit card analogy that provides its thin veneer of logic, is not just bad for workers and people in desperate need of state support during tough times; it also depresses investment. By hastening the stagnation of a society’s aggregate income, it signals to businesses that they would be mad to put money into building up the capacity to produce the output that society is too impecunious to buy. That’s how austerity undermined investment in Britain and that’s how it will annul Labour’s ambition to draw in private green investments, now that Reeves has ditched her modest green public investment plan, replacing it with wishful thinking that the private sector will, magically, make up the difference ...

“These large sums can be raised, not through Treasury bonds that need to be repaid by taxpayers, but by bonds issued by a new public investment bank – to be repaid from the proceeds of the green enterprises they fund. The Bank of England could also help with an announcement: if the price of these green bonds were to fall below a certain point, it would buy them second-hand – even while selling off its stock of Treasury bonds. This mere announcement would ensure it would not need actually to buy them because investors would rush in to snap them up, thus leaving Britain’s public debt servicing costs unaffected.”

#yanis varoufakis #keynes #rachel reeves #keir starmer #labour party #labour #green new deal #green investment #industrial policy #public spending #austerity #deficit #economics #uk politics #politics

[feckcops]

Free Palestine seen in Chicago

#free palestine #free gaza #palestine #gaza #right to return #israeli occupation #israeli genocide #israel #genocide #graffiti #chicago

[feckcops]

Police refused to label Brianna Ghey’s murder a hate crime. Why?

“In the hours after her murder, Cheshire police chief superintendent Mike Evans said her killing wasn’t a ‘hate crime’, pointing to the existence of the kill list as evidence. ‘I think if it hadn’t been Brianna, it would have been one of the other four children on that list,’ he said. ‘Brianna was the one who was accessible at that time, and then became the focus of those desires.’ At the subsequent trial, presiding judge Mrs Justice Amanda Yip also gestured towards online discussions of transphobia as a possible factor in the crime, telling potential jurors to discard ‘uninformed views’ about Brianna’s murder.

“This is a profound mistake. Brianna Ghey’s murder sits at the intersection of several social issues facing us in Britain today. 

“It’s a crime committed by desensitised children, numbed to the magnitude of their actions via consumption of violent content and the detachment enabled by digital-first communication. It’s another sad entry in the logbook memorialising the women and girls who’ve fallen victim to an epidemic of gender-based violence. And it’s an example of the extra vulnerability engendered upon trans people, particularly trans women and girls, by a climate of transphobia that has now seeped from mainstream politics into the schools and playgrounds.

“Messages swapped between the two killers reveal Brianna’s gender identity to be a prominent theme of conversation. Boy Y ‘didn’t agree’ with trans and gay people, testified his co-defendant. In texts, he referred to Brianna as ‘it’ and called her slurs. Meanwhile, Girl X spoke of an ‘obsession’ she had with Brianna, pairing praise for her beauty with reference to her genitals.  

“‘I think it’s quite clear that dehumanisation and fetishisation played a part in the psychosexual way in which they plotted this very, very violent murder,‘ says Shon Faye, author of The Transgender Issue.

“Brianna, Faye adds, was targeted as a victim because she was anxious and therefore vulnerable – something that Faye says is ‘very common among trans kids of her age. Yes, it might not be the sole motivating factor, that Brianna was trans,’ she explains. ‘But she was selected, or more vulnerable to being selected for this terrible crime because she was trans. Mainstream reporting […] reduces the inflection of transphobia on the whole thing.’

“Cross-examination during the trial of Girl X and Boy Y revealed that all other potential victims on their kill list were identified because one party had a personal grudge against them. Brianna was the exception. She was singled out because Girl X – who had struck up a friendship with Brianna the previous year – found her ‘really interesting’.”

#brianna ghey #trans girl #trans people #anti-trans hatred #transphobia #anti-trans violence #transphobic violence #transphobic hate crime #hate crime #trans moral panic #shon faye #mainstream media #police #uk

[feckcops]

What does it mean to erase a people – a nation, culture, identity? In Gaza, we are beginning to find out

“Earlier this month, Gaza’s oldest mosque was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. The Omari mosque was originally a fifth century Byzantine church, and was an iconic landmark of Gaza: 44,000 sq ft of history, architecture and cultural heritage. But it was also a live site of contemporary practice and worship. A 45-year-old Gazan told Reuters that he had been ‘praying there and playing around it all through my childhood‘. Israel, he said, is ‘trying to wipe out our memories’.

“St Porphyrius church, the oldest in Gaza, also dating back to the fifth century and believed to be the third oldest church in the world, was damaged in another strike in October. It was sheltering displaced people, among them members of the oldest Christian community in the world, one that dates back to the first century. So far, more than 100 heritage sites in Gaza have been damaged or levelled. Among them are a 2,000-year-old Roman cemetery and the Rafah Museum, which was dedicated to the region’s long and mixed religious and architectural heritage.

“As the past is being uprooted, the future is also being curtailed. The Islamic University of Gaza, the first higher education institution established in the Gaza Strip in 1978, and which trains, among others, Gaza’s doctors and engineers, has been destroyed, along with more than 200 schools. Sufian Tayeh, the rector of the university, was killed along with his family in an airstrike. He was the Unesco chair of physical, astrophysical and space sciences in Palestine. Other high-profile academics who have been killed include the microbiologist Dr Muhammad Eid Shabir, and the prominent poet and writer Dr Refaat Alareer, whose poem, If I must die, was widely shared after his death ...

“As the ability to tell these stories publicly comes under attack, so do the private rituals of mourning and memorialisation. According to a New York Times investigation, Israel ground forces are bulldozing cemeteries in their advance on the Gaza Strip, destroying at least six. Ahmed Masoud, a British Palestinian writer from Gaza, posted a picture of him visiting his father’s grave, alongside a video of its ruins. ‘This is the graveyard in Jabalia camp,’ he wrote, where his father was buried. ‘I went to visit him in May. The Israeli tanks have now destroyed it, and my dad’s grave has gone. I won’t be able to visit or talk to him again.’

“A memory gap is forming. Libraries and museums are being levelled, and what is lost in the documents that have burned joins a larger toll of record-keeping. Meanwhile, the scale of the killings is so large that entire extended families are disappearing. The result is like tearing pages out of a book. Dina Matar, a professor at Soas University of London, told the Financial Times that ‘such loss results in the erasure of shared memories and identities for those who survive. Remembering matters. These are important elements when you want to put together histories and stories of ordinary lives’ ...

“This is what it would look like, to erase a people. In short, to void the architecture of belonging that we all take so much for granted so that, no matter how many Gazans survive, there is, over time, less and less to bind them together into a valid whole. This is what it would look like, when you deprive them of telling their story, of producing their art, of sharing in music, song and poetry, and of a foundational history that lives in their landmarks, mosques, churches, and even in their graves.”

#omari mosque #st porphyrius church #islamic university of gaza #free gaza #free palestine #from the river to the sea #religion #education #art #culture #journalism #occupation of palestine #israeli occupation #ethnic cleansing #genocide #israeli war crimes #war crimes #gaza #palestine #israel #middle east

[feckcops]

‘Transphobic bullying is rife’: a 15-year-old trans boy’s view of coming out at school

“When I started secondary school I was allowed to use the disabled toilet but the lock on the door didn’t work and it didn’t feel safe. I was badly bullied and my mental health plummeted so I stopped attending and was home schooled for a year. Now I’ve joined a 14-16-year-olds GCSE equivalent group at my local college. I’d hoped things would be different there but people still laugh and make up rumours about me.

“My secondary school counsellor always said to me she’d deal with my bullies ‘by the book’, but that really meant she was worried about red flags for Ofsted rather than reassuring me that it wasn’t OK to abuse me just because I’m trans.

“Transphobic bullying is rampant and I think 100% this guidance only fuels that fire. If I’d been able to exist in my school as a trans kid from the beginning, nobody would have complained because I wasn’t asking for anything special. The only reason other kids saw the difference was because it was pointed out to them.

“It’s inexcusable to say a child needs to have permission to experiment with their name or wardrobe. Cis kids do that all the time without their parents being informed.

“The politicians behind this guidance don’t know what it is to be trans, they’ve never listened to a trans voice so they don’t know what damage it will cause.”

#transphobic bullying #transphobia in schools #transphobia #bullying #trans boy #trans kids #trans youth #trans people #trans #bodily autonomy #education #schools #kemi badenoch #gillian keegan #tories #conservatives #fascists #far right #uk

[feckcops]

The corruption behind Starmer’s rise has finally been exposed

“A massive fraud was perpetrated in the 2020 Labour leadership election. It is now clear that Starmer was a kind of Manchurian Candidate, a sleeper agent for entirely other interests than was made to appear at the time.

“There is little need to rehearse here the manner in which the infamous ten pledges that underpinned Starmer’s leadership bid have been serially and comprehensively abandoned: this is by now well understood, with social media awash in evidence so egregious that even occasional mainstream media interviews have sought to hold Starmer to account. Starmer’s own explanation for whether he has broken particular pledges or not – in some instances, whether he even made them in the first place – shifts back and forth according to expediency ...

“What’s significant, though, is the extent to which Starmer’s dishonesty has been facilitated by a mainstream media actively conniving in his marginalisation of the left after the shock upsets of the Corbyn period, a form of journalistic omertà. The most dishonest leadership campaign in British political history has also been one of the least cross-examined.

“It has thus been politics on easy mode. Starmer has had the easiest ride of any Labour leader since Blair, able to get away with the flimsiest of justifications for his shape-shifting positions because they are barely given a moment’s proper scrutiny. This extends beyond factional struggles in the Labour party to the most fundamental questions of policy and posture, on which Starmer and Reeves and the rest have largely been given a free pass.

“The result is basic incoherence. To pick an example almost at random, Starmerism declares itself to be a break with ‘trickle-down economics’, but immediately contradicts that with an insistence on growth as the cure-all whilst rejecting redistribution or structural changes in the economy, meaning that unless by magic there is no logical way that growth can benefit most people in any way other than trickling down in Starmer’s model.

“Relatedly, Starmer’s insistence that ‘when business profits, we all do‘ is the polar opposite of what has actually been happening in the economy, actively and aggressively belied by the current cost of living crunch. Sellers’ inflation and corporate profiteering have been occurring at the expense of the vast majority, for whom living standards have been declining as profits have soared, prices risen, and interest rates shot up. Only a political party that has hitherto been allowed to play on easy mode could get away with such glaringly self-evident contradictions.”

#keir starmer #rachel reeves #tony blair #starmer #reeves #blair #starmerism #labour together #labour right #labour party #labour #corporate profits #price gouging #profiteering #inflation #growth #trickle-down economics #westminster #uk politics #uk

[feckcops]

Workers face the sack if they don't cross their own picket lines. What kind of country is this?

“Six sectors of public services in Britain – some of them privatised – will in the next month or so be subject to Minimum Service Levels. The list covers health services, fire and rescue services, education, transport, nuclear decommissioning, and border security. 

“What this means in practice is that when workers vote to strike in these sectors from now on, a significant proportion of them will be forced to come in – even if they voted to strike – or face the sack.

“For most sectors so far – including transport and education – that figure is 40%. The Trades Union Congress estimates that five million workers are now affected by the workers’ rights clampdown, with many told to cross their own picket lines even if they vote to strike ...

“The new Code of Practice is a convoluted mess which requires unions to instruct their members to defy strike actions they democratically voted for ... Unions must now navigate a complex web of requirements, pushing them to act against their members’ interests and their own principles. Members will be told to break their own strikes, or face the sack. Unions will be told to break their own strikes, or face hefty fines.”

#minimum service levels #strike laws #anti trade union laws #anti union laws #right to strike #labour rights #labor rights #strikes #striking #pickets #trade unions #unions #nhs #education #rail #transport #public sector #tories #conservatives

[feckcops]

Parents hold playgroup at arms company office in protest at Gaza genocide

“Dozens of parents and children staged a noisy playgroup at the London office of arms manufacturer BAE Systems on Friday to highlight its complicity in Israel’s killing of thousands of Palestinian children.

“Pushing prams and toting a parachute banner, Parents for Palestine flooded into the lobby of the glittering Blue Fin building, which houses BAE’s Digital Intelligence division. The group released 100 black balloons in memory of children killed in Gaza, called out BAE with chants and songs, and urged the building managers to evict ‘murderers’ who work alongside them. 

“‘Our government allows BAE to export arms knowing full well they’ll be used to perpetrate a genocide,’ said Rees Nicolas, one of the organisers, there with four-month-old Sylvia. ‘As parents, we couldn’t stand by and let this happen.’

“Outside, the group taped photos of murdered Palestinian children to the building’s pillars and played ‘sleeping bunnies’ with a five-metre parachute, painted with the words ‘BAE, stop arming Israel’.

“BAE Systems, Europe’s largest arms company, supplies the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) with key components of fighter jets, munitions, armoured vehicles and missile launching kits. Activists say BAE has made as much as £300m selling weapons components to Israel since 2016.

“Many of those parts are for the F-35, the Lockheed Martin-designed plane that is Israel’s most advanced fighter jet. The IDF is deploying F-35s in its airstrikes on Gaza, which have killed at least 14,500 people and devastated infrastructure in the Strip, and uses the jets to support invading troops.”

#from the river to the sea #palestine will be free #parents for palestine #solidarity with palestine #free gaza #free palestine #bae systems #bae #arms manufacturers #arms companies #arms trade #anti-war activists #activists #activism #occupation of palestine #collective punishment #ethnic cleansing #genocide #war crimes #israeli war crimes #israeli military #palestine #israel #middle east #uk

[feckcops]

#free gaza #from the river to the sea #palestine will be free #gaza #palestine #occupied palestine #idf #israeli genocide #israeli war crimes #genocide #war crimes #israeli occupation #israel #middle east

[feckcops]

Palestinian journalists are risking their lives to counteract the ‘Israeli narrative’

“Reporters working in Gaza told Novara Media they are living and working in constant fear of death. ‘I’m under huge psychological pressure, as I feel I could be killed at any moment,’ said freelancer Rakan Abdelrahman. Last month, three of Abdelrahman’s colleagues were killed while trying to film a building in Gaza which was about to be bombed. Wearing jackets and helmets that clearly identified them as press, the men set up hundreds of metres from the stated target, only for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to instead strike a different building, much nearer to where they were standing.

“Last week, the IDF told Reuters and Agence France Presse it could not guarantee the safety of their journalists in Gaza, leading the news agencies to release a joint statement describing the situation on the ground as ‘dire’. ‘The IDF’s unwillingness to give assurances about the safety of our staff threatens their ability to deliver the news about this conflict without fear of being injured or killed,’ the statement said.

“In its letter to the news agencies, the IDF claimed Hamas is deliberately putting military operations “in the vicinity of journalists and civilians”. But several journalists who spoke to Novara Media said they believe they are being deliberately targeted by Israeli forces. ‘There were threats to several places where I was present, including Hiji Tower and Al-Tabbaa Tower’, said Abed Elhakeem Abo Riash, who has worked as a freelance journalist in Gaza for 14 years. ‘These towers all house the offices of journalists and foreign agencies.’

“Last week, Abo Riash was told to evacuate a residential tower by Israeli forces. He struggled to carry all of his equipment – which included his sleeping gear, two cameras, a laptop and a first aid kit – down from the 14th floor, and feared he would not make it out in time. ‘I was very afraid. The army has mercy on no one,’ he said.”

#free gaza #free palestine #from the river to the sea #palestine will be free #palestinian journalists #targeting journalists #journalistic freedom #journalists #freedom of the press #free press #israeli genocide #genocide of palestinians #ethnic cleansing #israeli war crimes #israeli war machine #war crimes #gaza #palestine #israel #middle east

[feckcops]

A communique on sabotaging Zionist infrastructure: shutting down Friends of the IDF

“On November 5th, the Zionist fascist scum, ‘Friends of the IDF’ who represent the interests of wealthy American capitalists in their direct support of the settler colonial state of Israel and its continued campaign of genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people, attempted to hold a fundraiser gala ...

“You cannot do damage to the Zionist project by merely engaging with its facade; you must strike at its soulless heart. You must strike at its veins (supply chains, logistics, cash flows, infrastructure). 

“While the liberals were congratulating themselves for having their nonthreatening photo op parade out in front of the gala, our people were out of sight at work on the veins of the building. Palestinians have suffered decades of Israeli soldiers and settlers restricting and destroying their access to water, often bricking up or concreting any water source not directly under strict control of the occupation forces, cutting off Palestinian access to the Jordan River while draining it to near extinction for settlement mono-crop agriculture, shooting holes in Palestinian water towers, bombing Gazan water treatment facilities, poisoning Palestinian springs and enforcing water apartheid in order to exert total control over Palestinian life. We decided to give these Zionist bootlickers a taste of their own medicine.

“We cracked open the water main for the building housing the gala, switched it off, and filled the box with fresh concrete. This form of sabotage is quick and incredibly easy to replicate, and the tools are quite cheap. It also renders the building in question completely uninhabitable and unusable. We had a good laugh imagining these fascist motherfuckers driven out of the gala by the stench of overflowing toilets, unable to raise any more money for genocide. As we did we were reminded of how Israeli settlers flood Palestinian olive groves with sewage, poisoning food sources, destroying livelihoods.”

#from the river to the sea #palestine will be free #israeli apartheid #water apartheid #apartheid #friends of the idf #american zionists #zionists #anti-zionists #anarchists #activists #sabotage #direct action #israeli occupation #ethnic cleansing #israeli genocide #israeli war crimes #war crimes #settler colonialism #us #palestine #israel

[feckcops]

The road to freedom runs through Palestine

“The road to Jerusalem, it has so often been said, runs through Cairo. Writing from a regime prison cell in the months after Palestine’s ‘unity intifada’ of 2021, the Egyptian revolutionary Alaa Abd El-Fattah modified this historic injunction: ‘The road to Jerusalem looked like it ran through Cairo — but what is certain is that it must pass through Gaza. Jerusalem is not too proud to ask for Gaza’s help. Maybe Cairo should now show a little humility and do the same.’  

“Here we have a lyrical articulation of a simple political truth: that the freedom struggle of the Palestinian people and the wider fight for democracy in the Arab world are one and the same. Only through the violent suppression of popular sovereignty across the region have the military dictatorships, the petro-monarchs, and the settler-colonial project in Palestine survived.

“As Alaa’s mediation suggests, this interconnected struggle is not one-way traffic, a matter of the Palestinians waiting for the Arab peoples to triumph over their autocratic rulers (American clients, more often than not). On the contrary, the Palestinian people often lead the way, generating space for struggle beyond the borders of their historic homeland, in places where the conditions of possibility for mass politics seem to have been crushed. Two weeks ago, it was a march in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza that saw Egyptian democrats surge back into Tahrir Square for the first time since the revolution ...

“From the West, action against the complicity of our governments has an indispensable role to play in the struggle to liberate Palestine. That is the most important thing, and the first purpose of an emerging mass movement. In Cairo two weeks ago, the chants quickly turned from Palestine to calls for ‘bread, freedom, and social justice.’ There are no such revolutionary horizons in Britain, but the significance of it being Palestine that offers us a glimpse of mass politics again cannot be overstated.

Not only the Egyptians: we, too, should be grateful to the Palestinian people. We stand with them, but it is the steadfastness of their popular struggle for universal freedom and dignity that shows the way.”

#from the river to the sea #palestine will be free #free gaza #free palestine #end the occupation #ceasefire now #solidarity with palestine #palestinian resitance #popular resistance #resistance #uprising #revolution #intifada #occupation of palestine #israeli apartheid #israeli war crimes #war crimes #palestine #egypt #dictatorships #arab world #settler colonialism #israel #middle east

[feckcops]

There is no actual, tangible reason why we allow people to starve, to be homeless, to suffer and die needlessly. Food is plentiful. Empty homes are plentiful. Medicine is plentiful. It’s hidden away behind constructs and we pretend those constructs mean something. There is an empty home and a homeless family, give them it. There is a sick child and common medicine to treat it, give it to them. There is a starving person and so much food wasted by corporations or hidden behind a dollar sign, feed them.

#money #social constructs #poverty #homelessness #capitalism

[feckcops]

Sisters Uncut does it again with the occupation of London Liverpool Street station calling for an end of the seige on Gaza

#from the river to the sea #palestine will be free #free palestine #solidarity with palestine #jews against genocide #sisters uncut #activists #activism #gaza #palestine #israel #middle east

[feckcops]

I wanted to highlight examples of actions I've seen people organize to protest the genocide happening in Palestine.

[ID: A tweet by Demilitarize Western Mass @demilitarizewma that reads “BREAKING. We're blockading all vehicle entrances to the L3Harris facility in Northampton, MA. L3Harris is one of the largest weapons contractors in the world, and they profit from war, the prison industry, and the violent occupation of Palestine..” End ID]

[ID: A tweet by Rebecca Pierce @aptly_engineerd that reads “Happening now: Jewish emergency protest blockading the San Francisco Federal building in solidarity with Gaza and calling for a ceasefire and end to US complicity in the occupation of Palestinians.” End ID]

[ID: A tweet by Jewish Voice for Peace @jvplive that reads “JEWS SAY: STOP THE GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS! Over two-thousand Jews protested in front of the offices and homes of elected officials in NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Indiana, Florida, and Los Angeles to demand action to prevent the genocide of Palestinians..” End ID]

Last thing I wanted to highlight was this message from Palestinian-American Author Nadia Shammas. You can read the full thread on twitter.

[ID: A tweet by Nadia Shammas @Nadia_Shammas_ that reads “I want to hear non-Palestinians to hold the same faith in their heart as we do that Palestine will be liberated. I dream of a world where, when it’s too painful to keep faith, I can rest knowing they’ll believe it just as hard for me, that they’ll carry it for me just as firm"]

#solidarity with palestine #direct action #activists #activism #from the river to the sea #free palestine #free gaza #occupation of palestine #israeli war crimes #california #massachusetts #usa #palestine action #elbit systems #uk #leicester #gaza #palestine #israel #middle east

[feckcops]

While all of Europe is responsible, I think it’s also important for people from the UK to acknowledge the particular and direct culpability of our government in what has happened in Israel and Palestine - mostly because it never is. Politicians don’t mention it, the media never mentions it, they tell you nothing about it in school, no one talks about it. I was just saying exactly the same thing about India, but if you ask an average British person if they think their country did a good job of ruling Palestine you’ll get a blank stare, maybe they’ll pull a massively uninformed opinion out of their arse, I doubt many could tell you exactly when it was. But the fact is that when Britain assumed control of the Holy land in 1918 both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism were relatively minor concerns, and when we left in 1948 there was a civil war raging between those two sides. All of the important seeds of the conflict were sown and took root while Britain was in charge. The first major Palestinian uprising of 1936-39 was an anti-colonial struggle against the British Empire. 

But today, watching the news, British people are like ‘wow guess we’ll never understand why Jews and Arabs just naturally hate each other’… just like those Hindus and Muslims in India and Pakistan, and those Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland’….. and all of those other places on earth where the legacy of British occupation and partition is division, violence and misery. The Empire is not a distant memory we can feel vaguely proud and nostalgic about (as most British people apparently do) it was a global crime of almost unimaginable proportions and it’s still (in some cases quite literally) blowing up in our faces. 

#zionism #british empire #divide and rule #palestine #israel #india #pakistan #ireland #uk #colonial legacy #settler colonialism #neocolonialism #colonialism #free palestine #from the river to the sea #occupation of palestine #israeli occupation #israeli apartheid #israeli war crimes #middle east