BobFromBrockley

My other house is brockley.blogspot.com but this house is more colourful

[bobfrombrockley]

Alfred De Zayas and the AfD

The following is material deleted from Alfred De Zayas’ Wikipedia page, probably by De Zayas himself. Storing it here for reference. 

He is close to the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Germany, for instance joining the board of trustees of their "Desiderius Erasmus Foundation" think tank in 2018[1][2][3] and speaking to their parliamentary group in 2019 on the dangers of "globalism".[4]

^ "Wie sich die AfD mit ihrer Stiftung in die bürgerliche Mitte vorgräbt". FOCUS Online (in German). 25 March 2019. Retrieved 29 March 2019.

^ jungefreiheit.de (21 March 2018). "Eine Bresche in den einseitigen Meinungsdiskurs schlagen". JUNGE FREIHEIT (in German). Retrieved 28 March 2019.

^ "Mitglied Tübinger Studentenverbindung sitzt im Kuratorium AfD-naher Stiftung". Tübingen Rechtsaußen (in German). 22 March 2018. Retrieved 28 March 2019.

^ "Alfred de Zayas: Die Intoleranz der deutschen Presse & des Zeitgeistes ist etwas was mich dermaßen anekelt!". dieAfD.de (in German). 23 March 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2019.

[bobfrombrockley]

Morgan Freeman as litmus paper

Morgan Freeman’s criticism of the Russian manipulation of American politics has shown how some sections of the pro-Kremlin anti-Hillary left are indistinguishable from the pro-Trump right. Here are some examples, calling Freeman a neocon, saying he deserves a beating, calling him a Zionist puppet, an Uncle Tom, a puppet of the Clintons and/or of Soros, portraying him as unable to think for himself. 

This is the face of the alt-left:

[bobfrombrockley]

The ethics of punching fascists, continued

Some women who punched fascists, Yugoslavia, 1943 I wrote four very short throwaway posts on punching fascists these last few weeks, si...

This was the follow-up to the four pieces I published on Tumblr about punching fascists

[fuckswp]

The Trouble with Unite Against Fascism

In an attempt to capitalise on the recent attack outside Parliament, the English Defence League (EDL) and Britain First have called demonstrations on April 1 2017 - in Trafalgar Square and at Charing Cross, respectively. London Antifascists and the Anti-Fascist Network have called a counter demo to confront these fascists groups and to prevent them from marching - we will be there to stand with them. But the violence of fascism will not be the only threat to our safety in the streets on Saturday, we also face the danger posed by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) - and we will be there to oppose them, too.

To anyone with even a passing knowledge of anti-fascist organising, UAF will be a familiar presence. They have a well-documented history of working with the police against the interests of antifascists. Their negotiations and information sharing practices with cops have regularly placed antifascists at greater risk of facing arrest and police violence and they have already announced their attendance in a separate callout on their website. What may not be well known, however, is that UAF is one of a number of front organisations for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) - if that fact alone isn’t enough to make you realise the necessity of opposing their presence, please read on.

The SWP is notorious for the well-documented failing of two women members who accused the then central committee member of the SWP, known as “Comrade Delta”, of rape and sexual assault. The complainants were confronted with classic victim-blaming questions about their behaviour and drinking habits. Some members of the SWP leadership denounced the complaints as motivated by a “dangerous feminism”. SWP members who in 2012-2013 challenged the central committee’s kangaroo courts were expelled from the party – many more left in disgust. The party has utterly failed to be accountable for this violence, and has abused, harassed and harmed anyone attempting to challenge them on their record, whilst continuing to recruit and bring more people into this unsafe space.

Due to this failure of accountability, the SWP has increasingly found itself removed from social movements by committed people determined to challenge their violence. Their front groups, including Stand Up to Racism, Love Music Hate Racism and UAF, have been instrumental in attempting to rebuild themselves away from their tarnished “brand”. These groups seek to co-opt protest, to control social movements, and to recruit people to the SWP.

We do not believe it is possible to oppose fascism without standing in solidarity with survivors of sexual violence, and against any organisation which perpetuates a culture of intimidation, abuse, and institutional misogyny,

There are networks of grassroots groups already committed to organising against racism and against fascism whilst maintaining a firm opposition to the SWP. We need to continue to build effective organising spaces and networks, free from the violences committed against those at the receiving end of racism, patriarchy and other forms of violence. We ask you to join us in this.

Do not carry SWP, UAF or SUTR banners.

Do not sign their petitions.

Do not accept them as the face of anti-fascism or anti-racism

Do not help this violent group reassert its ability to cause additional harm by tolerating them amongst us.

Images courtesy of Justseeds art collective.

[fuckswp]

Centring Survivors: The Trouble with Stand Up To Racism

Some non-SWP organisers may argue that calls for a boycott are divisive, we must be clear that perpetuating political spaces that put survivors at risk is divisive.

✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽

[bobfrombrockley]

Under attack

This is another footnote to my recent posts on punching fascists. A number of people argue that violence is OK in self-defence, but not “unprovoked”. My argument is that fascism is already using violence on our streets, and that violence against fascism is self-defence. Some acts of fascist violence - Jo Cox’s brutal murder for example - have been widely reported. Others less so.

Just to give an illustration, these are from the latest fortnightly round-up by IRR. Just two weeks of incidents. Not all of these are by fascists, but fascism produces some of the mood music that makes this kind of violence possible. This violence is the result of allowing fascism to grow. 

Violence and harassment

27 January: A 15-year-old boy appears in court and pleads not guilty to the manslaughter of 40-year-old Arkadiusz Jóźwik, a Polish man murdered in Harlow in August 2016. (Guardian, 27 January 2017)

27 January: Christopher Cole, 32, is jailed for ten years after pushing a Polish man on to Tube tracks at Bond Street station in June 2016. Cole, who was angry over the behaviour of Russian fans in Euro 2016, mistook his victim for a Russian. (Guardian, 27 January 2017)

30 January: Nathan Waterman, 28, pleads guilty to GBH with intent after an unprovoked attack on a Kurdish man on a ferry, punching him on the jaw and pushing him over a railing on to a lower deck. He is jailed for four and a half years. (Hull Daily Mail, 31 January 2017)

1 February: Police appeal for information following a racially motivated attack on 28 January at Worthing train station, on a man who intervened to stop a group of girls from being attacked. (Sussex Argus, 1 February 2017)

2 February: The number of antisemitic incidents in the UK rose by more than a third to record levels in 2016, according to data released by the Community Security Trust. Read its report here. (Guardian, 2 February 2017) [68% of those where the political motivation of the perpetrator was visible were far right - B.]

6 February: Peter Scotter admits racially aggravated harassment and assault after racially abusing, beating and pulling the niqab off a woman in a Sunderland shopping centre in the days after the Brexit vote. (Guardian, 6 February 2017)

6 February: David Gallacher, 37, is charged with actual bodily harm, racially or religiously aggravated assault, assaulting police officers and common assault after an attack on a Somali woman who lost her unborn twin babies in Milton Keynes in August 2016. (Metro, 6 February 2017).

9 February: A Conservative official is suspended from the party after retweeting a message aimed at Labour MP Diane Abbott that portrayed her as an ape wearing lipstick who should be in a zoo. Alan Permain, deputy chairman of the South Ribble Conservative Association and a parish councillor, added a comment to the post reading: ‘Nice lips kid. But a shade too much rouge’. (Guardian, 9 February 2017)

EXTREME RIGHT

27 January: A 17-year-old Bradford boy, described as a white supremacist and a member of the now proscribed National Action, is found guilty of making a pipe bomb, but cleared of another charge of preparing a terrorist act. (Guardian, 27 January 2017)

31 January: The Guardian reports that Adam Walker, leader of the BNP, has been working as a children’s sports coach, despite being banned from working with children for life. (Guardian, 31 January 2017)

30 January: Six Swiss soldiers, photographed making a Nazi salute in front of a swastika drawn in the snow, are detained pending disciplinary action. (The Local, 30 January 2017)

1 February: Seventeen years after the Düsseldorf train station bombing, which left ten people injured, the majority Jewish, a 50-year-old known neo-nazi is arrested. A former German soldier, he ran a military shop near the scene of the crime. (DW, 1 February 2017)

2 February: Die Zeit reports that a far-right website illegally selling pistols, shotguns and semi-automatic weapons, delivered from Hungary to Germany, has been taken down. The website encouraged people to buy weapons to scare immigrants. One gun was sold as ‘Migrant deterrent DP120’. (The Local, 3 February 2017)

[bobfrombrockley]

Defining fascism

In this post I said that punching fascists “requires a robust working definition of fascism (and a commitment not to inflate the term), but that exists.”

In this follow-up post I said that “some people rhetorically asked me for a list of people who it is OK to punch, which initially I thought I could do with no problem. But on reflection, this is exactly the wrong approach... A commitment to punching fascists should only come with a commitment to rigorous political and intellectual work in thinking through the nature and clear definition of fascism.”

Arguably, I was avoiding the question by saying that we need more than a quick blogpost to do that work. So here are some resources on how to define fascism. They are not 100% unanimous in their definitions, but they are very close. 

Matthew N Lyons “What is fascism?” (1997, updated 2016) - short and to the point

Dylan Matthews “I asked 5 fascism experts whether Donald Trump is a fascist. Here's what they said.” (2016) - a really accessible summary of some of the key points from the academic literature, and why Trump is not a fascist 

Dave Renton “After fascism, what?” (2016) - good analysis of rethinking definitions in the age of Trump

Evan Smith “Defining Fascism: Some notes on the Marxist interpretation” (2012) - opens with quite a strong critique of some of the wrong definitions (including the academic definitions in the Matthews article), and draws on Dave Renton’s broadly right definition, although whole piece might be a little arcane for non-Marxists

Chip Berlet “What is fascism?” (1992) - a bit wordy but basically right if a bit on the broad side, and addresses some proto-Trump phenomena of the 1990s.

Robert O Paxton The Anatomy of Fascism (2004) - a really interesting study of actually existing fascism in several historical contexts. Here is the money quote from that:

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants who, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." 

Leon Trotsky “Fascism: What it is and how to fight it” (1944)  - a compilation of several texts by Trotsky from the 1930s. It’s soaked in the jargon of Orthodox Marxism and does not have the benefit of hindsight about where Nazism led, but is still pretty insightful.

//A note on borderline cases//

There are several borderline cases, including those of right-wing populism. Not all far right groups are “fascist” and the “alt-right” is a term that might include fascist and non-fascist positions. We should be thinking hard about these cases, and where to draw clear lines, but that is beyond the scope of this brief post.

There are also various forms of non-Western politics that are closely related to fascism, including (as Lyons notes in the link above) religious movements, such as Islamist movements. Some versions of Zionism and Hindu nationalism are or have been very close to the classic generic fascism of 1930s Europe - but obviously not all versions. Ba’athism in my view is a form of fascism. Again, we could argue about that further, but this isn’t the place to do it.

There are also several forms of Islamism that are related to fascism. Hamas and Hezbollah are both fascist movements in my view, but Salafism, Wahhabism and the Hazimis aren’t. That doesn’t mean there might not also be cases for punching these kinds of Islamists, and that they might constitute exceptional forms of politics too, in a different way - but this is a different issue which I will leave to those who know more about these scenes. Here, I will just note that British anarchist antifa activists physically confronted Anjem Chaudhary long before the EDL existed. 

[bobfrombrockley]

A bit more on punching fascists

Last month I wrote a brief post on punching fascists, something I’d been arguing about on Twitter. Here are a couple of brief post scripts, mainly relating to some responses on Twitter. 

1. One of the central points I made was that fascism is exceptional and that is why it should be treated exceptionally. I thought that this dealt with the “slippery slope” response to militant anti-fascism: “If you punch Nazis, why not punch other people you dislike?” or “If it’s OK to punch Nazis, why not punch Zionists?” My response to these arguments would be to re-stress that fascism is exceptional and therefore should be treated exceptionally; principles applied to fascism should not be applied to other ideologies or movements we dislike. 

2. If fascism was just an intellectual ideology, a set of beliefs, a political philosophy, defined in terms of ideas, then the case for punching fascists would be weak. What makes fascism exceptional is its effects in the real world, not just when it reaches power but how it functions as a movement within liberal democracies. Crucially, it works through terror and violence, and specifically violence against people (rather than against the state) - most often against those it sees as racial or national others (such as the Jews of Whitefish,  Montana). This is a big part of what makes fascism exceptional. And it is why we shouldn’t wait until fascism is in power before responding, and why free speech defences of fascism don’t cut it. 

3. Some people rhetorically asked me for a list of people who it is OK to punch, which initially I thought I could do with no problem. But on reflection, this is exactly the wrong approach. Punching fascists is not something people should enter into lightly. It might be fun for some people, but that should not be the goal. (When I was younger and actively punched fascists, I did not find it fun at all, but terrifying.) Some opportunistic acts of street violence against those assumed to be fascists might in retrospect be judged morally acceptable (perhaps including the viral punching of Richard Spencer while he was being interviewed), but that’s not the course of action I’d recommend. A commitment to punching fascists should only come with a commitment to rigorous political and intellectual work in thinking through the nature and clear definition of fascism, thinking through the strategic, tactical and moral implications of particular targets, and careful planning of actions to avoid or minimise the manifold risks. (Anti-Fascist Action in the 1990s would be a good model of this, as I think would the 43 Group after World War II or the Jewish anti-fascist groups in East London Joe Jacobs describes in Out of the Ghetto.) 

4. There are objections to the culture of machismo likely to develop around militant anti-fascism, or that it will attract reckless idiots, or that it is a politics only accessible to the physically able and brace. These are all valid points, and in the 1990s there was certainly a culture of machismo around Anti-Fascist Action, which some participants (mainly anarchists) tried to combat. We should guard against this, as we need to guard against authoritarian tendencies, machismo, sexism and ablism in all of our movements. The key point, though, is that militant anti-fascism must function as a movement; it is not the task of individuals. Militant anti-fascism cannot be a single track commitment to just punching fascists; punching fascists must always be happen alongside political opposition to fascism. In most periods, political opposition will be the priority. Within the movement, there are multiple tasks, suiting different personalities and skills: intelligence, analysis, communication, stewarding, writing, punching, and many more. 

UPDATE: A note on defining fascism.

[bobfrombrockley]

On punching fascists

Been arguing about this on Twitter. Here’s my quick take:

Nobody serious says punching people we disagree with politically is ok. Lots of serious people say that fascism is an exceptional form of politics that is qualitatively different from other forms of politics, because it is based on the terrorisation and ultimately violent excision of certain groups (groups defined by an accident of descent - usually “racial” minorities) and on the violent prohibition of democratic spaces (even if it cynically uses those spaces in its attempt to grow). History shows us that the liberal state cannot be relied on to prevent fascism’s growth, but that - under the right conditions - physical direct action (never alone - always in parallel with political struggle) can.

Such action comes with multiple risks, but these risks can be minimised by careful planning and intellectual rigour. And it requires a robust working definition of fascism (and a commitment not to inflate the term), but that exists.

Fascism also thrives on the projection of physical strength - hence uniforms, spectacular formation marches, images of virile male bodies, etc. That glamour is essential both to their ability to terrorise communities and their capacity to recruit and grow. Embarrassing them on that terrain (eg by punching them in public) arrests those possibilities (whereas relying on the liberal state lets them narrate themselves as heroic victims).

Richard Spencer almost certainly meets the working definition of fascism. He believes in a racially pure white secessionist state - which requires ethnic cleansing (ie genocide). Acting on this philosophy, his followers have made life in Whitefish, where he lives, un-liveable for Jews.

He himself has said that being punched makes him scared to organise and speak in public - which is good. The attack has sent a clear message to the public that - despite his portrayal in the liberal media as a dapper hipster intellectual - he is a pariah whose presence in the public sphere will be met with violence.

UPDATE 1: A bit more.

UPDATE 2: Defining fascists.

[revolutionarysocialism]

Saving jobs at Dulwich Picture House

Saving jobs at Dulwich Picture House

Olivia Mansfield, describes the joys of a collective victory against redundancies Supporters show their solidarity with the Dulwich Picture Gallery staff (Photo: Bettina Trabant) Being told by your employer, most likely a person who earns substantially more than you, who has weight and seniority, who has their own job security and power, someone that you may have trusted to have your best…

View On WordPress

[bobfrombrockley]

On atoning for the refugee crisis and for Jewish privilege

I left the comment below at this post by Rabbi Brant Rosen. I am posting it here in case it gets lost in comment moderation. 

This is a powerfully written piece, but I have to disagree with a few things.

First, you talk about America’s complicity in the situations in the five nations from which most refugees are fleeing. i am not sure where you get your top 5 list from, but in all the lists I see Syria is at no.1 and Eritrea, and its is striking that you don’t mention Eritrea (also the main country from where refugees to Israel come) here. I am not sure how the West is complicit in driving Eritreans to seek refuge. Eritreans are fleeing an unhinged anti-Western dictator, forced conscription and torture, as well as drought.

But I don’t understand why you think America is responsible for Syria’s refugees either. You say For years now, we have been meddling in that civil war, providing weapons to rebels fighting Assad’s government. But since the rise of ISIS the US has backed away from toppling his regime – and there are now reports that the US and Assad have even reached “an uncomfortable tacit alliance.” But has our “meddling” made the refugee crisis worse? It is not the rebels that Syrians are fleeing; it is the regime they are fighting, which killed 8000 civilians in the first half of 2015 and which forcibly conscripts Syrian men to fight his unjust wars, and to a lesser extent it is ISIS, which we have not supported. In other words, more meddling from us, rather than less, might just have averted the scale of displacement.

Even Afghanistan is not as simple as you suggest. Afghanistan was the main refugee sending country in the world until Syria overtook it, and held that top spot for 32 years, i.e from long before America. Although this does not erase our complicity in the recent turmoil in Afghanistan, it is important to remember six million Afghans were pushed across its borders during the period of Soviet invasion after 1978 too.

Second, I think you radically misread James Baldwin’s brilliant and provocative essay. Baldwin does not talk at all about “Jewish privilege”. He talks about “a relative safety… and a relative future” – relative, that is, to Jewish life before arrival in America and relative to black people in America. Not Jewish privilege then, which Baldwin did not think existed, but American Jews accessing white privilege. That is a wholly different thing. (Which is why white supremacists such as David Duke have taken up the idea of “Jewish privilege”, but not the idea, implicit in Baldwin’s analysis, of white privilege. And that, in turn, is why we should be careful in “daring” to talk about Jewish privilege.)

***

I added this later:

I messed up the first paragraph of my comment above. I meant something like this:

I am not sure where you get your list of top 5 refugee sending countries from, but in all the lists I see Syria is at no.1. Eritrea is also now high on most lists - it is the second biggest sending country for Mediterranean boat refugees and also the main country from where refugees to Israel come - so it is striking that you don’t mention Eritrea here.

While I'm here again, I would also quibble about Libya. The figure you give - 363,067 - is internally displaced people in Libya, not refugees, although displacement is also traumatic, and is due to the upheaval during the civil war (although the civil war is not, as you seem to suggest, caused by American bombing! Libya is not such a significant sending country, but it has a significant role in the refugee crisis. Prior to the 2011 revolution, Europe effectively outsourced its border control to Libya in exchange for trade, cash and military and development assistance. Gaddafi's authoritarian regime stopped people transiting from sub-Saharan Africa to Italy and Malta. When the regime fell, refugees and other migrants once again had a route to Europe. Perhaps you prefer refugees dying in the Sahara rather than dying in the Mediterranean where they bring shame on the West by their visibility?

One more thing. The picture at the top of your post is, as you probably know, of Yarmouk. Yarmouk is a city in Syria where mostly Palestinian people live; it evolved from an informal encampment on the edge of Damascus. Yarmouk's population has been decimated by the Assad regime: death (mainly from starvation) and escape have reduced a population of 180-200,000 (75% Palestinian) to a mere 7,000 between 2011 and now. This scale of suffering is almost impossible for us in the West to contemplate. But this is not Palestinian suffering caused by Israel, and so does not seem to register on the moral radar of most Jewish anti-Zionists.

The solidarity you talk about is urgent, and there are few people for whom it is more urgent than the people of Yarmouk.

My blogpost on Jewish privilege. 

My blogpost on why we might be wise to meddle a bit more in Syria.

My blogpost on Yarmouk.

[bobfrombrockley]

Gilad Atzmon tweets, 5 September 2015

[bobfrombrockley]

Gilad Atzmon doesn’t see himself as Jewish

For those who still think Gilad Atzmon's antisemitism isn't obvious or that his "Jewishness" lets him off: pic.twitter.com/RexEqeHATi

[bobfrombrockley]

On Corbyn’s association with the LaRouche association

THIS IS A COMMENT LEFT AT EDINBURGH EYE https://edinburgheye.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/smearing-by-mensch-1/

PASTED HERE IN CASE IT GETS LOST IN MODERATION

Jane,

You make a strong and convincing case that Louise Mensch misrepresented what Corbyn said at the CEC event, and that taking the whole quote in context he does not posit this “choice” between IS and the US.

But I think that the question of what he was doing talking to CEC at all remains. You say “there is absolutely no reason why anyone in the UK should ever have heard of CEC Australia” and add that “had Corbyn, Meacher, or Oulds looked this microparty up in Wikipedia before they were interviewed” they’d have found some weird stuff. But if a political body you’d not heard of asked for an interview, wouldn’t you quickly google? The group’s own page displays LaRouche’s name prominently, and the Google results for the page says “Proponents of the LaRouche movement fighting for peace through economic development.” Surely most people involved in politics would at least have heard of LaRouche? The Wikipedia page, as you say, suggests that CEC might be fascist. (Here is the version they’d have seen when the invite was made: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Citizens_Electoral_Council&oldid=577012751 “The Citizens Electoral Council of Australia (CEC) is a minor nationalist[1] political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement, led by American political activist and conspiracy theorist[2] Lyndon LaRouche. It reported having 549 members in 2007.[3] They have been described as “far right”,[4] “fascist” and “lunar right,”[5] as well as “ideologues on the economic Left.”[6]”

You say “Since 1992, CEC Australia have been affiliated with the La Rouche movement, which is described in a Washington Monthly feature in 2007 as “a vast and bizarre vanity press.”” But it’s worth noting that before LaRouche took them over, as the Wikipedia article notes, they were a product of the Australian League of Rights, basically a more conventional fascist party.

So why would Corbyn associate himself with them? (And Meacher and Oulds too – but they’re not potential leaders of the opposition and therefore potential next prime ministers.)

You say: “I think Corbyn, Meacher, and Oulds all agreed to be interviewed because, well: a speaking engagement is a speaking engagement, especially one that can be completed on your lunch hour (you can hear Big Ben strike one during Corbyn’s interview).” So would Corbyn or Meacher agree to ANY speaking engagement? Would they accept a speaking engagement with the EDL, the BNP, the Ku Klux Klan or the Jewish Defence League? I am sure that they wouldn’t. And rightly, because socialists don’t give fascists any legitimation or association.

So, at the very least, agreeing to speak with CEC represents a total lack of due diligence from Corbyn and Meacher and their staff: poor judgement that we are right to draw critical attention to.

The only other possibility is that Corbyn and Meacher knew a bit about CEC but thought it was acceptable. That would be worrying. But it might not be totally out of the question. Meacher, along with Oulds, signed a petition circulated by the LaRouche movement associated with the conference they were beamed tohttp://newparadigm.schillerinstitute.com/media/the-u-s-and-europe-must-have-the-courage-to-reject-geopolitics-and-collaborate-with-the-brics/ which strongly advocates for Putin’s foreign policy goals in Eurasia.

Oulds’ Bruges Group of extreme right-wing eurosceptic Tories has long been associated with a pro-Putin geopolitcs, and it is disturbing to see the language used by the Bruges Group and the LaRouche movement echoed by lots of people on left, including lots of Corbyn’s close supporters. Paul Canning’s blogpost herehttp://paulocanning.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/corbyn-and-ukraine-its-not-pretty.html (written some time before the Mail and Louise Mensch got hold of this story) discusses this in more detail and puts the LaRouche association in context. From a left-wing, anti-fascist perspective, this is very worrying, whether or not Mensch’s other allegations hold water.

[bobfrombrockley]

Miscarriages of justice

Right-wing Tories against European arrest warrant coz of danger of miscarriage of justice: great that they all stood up for Winston Silcott, theBridgewater 6, the Guildford 4 and the Maguire 

[bobfrombrockley]

Too long for Twitter: On Israel/Hamas, 23 July 2014

@ContentiousNote You are too thoughtful and these issues too complex to work well in Twitter's format so I hope you don't mind me answering at more length here. I agree that Israel's primary obligation is to defend its people and especially its children. I insist it also has as much right as any country to defend itself. I accept that it its military is not cynical, that it has no aim or desire to shed innocent life. I agree it is unreasonable to expect it to be flawless, and it has probably been more effective in avoiding what is horribly known as "collateral damage" than, say, the UK or US armies in their engagements in Iraq (let alone, going back further, in Vietnam, for example, or even during WWII, during which mass bombing of civilians was a major element in the prosecution of war on a scale far beyond anything Israel has ever contemplated). I am not holding Israel to a higher standard. I understand too that Israel is confronting probably the most immoral military force imaginable, and that Hamas use of children as human shields is one of the most obscene crimes of conflict our age has seen. But one part of the hard raw reality of the last week has been the death of many, many Palestinian civilians, including children, at Israel's hands. And many (not all, maybe not most) of these deaths have been in circumstances in which avoidance of unnecessary death is very hard to claim. The tight spatial scale of the conflict and the machinery of surveillance Israel has at its disposal should preclude strikes on hospitals, on schools where people are sheltering. To care about their lives is not about "human rights discoursivity"; it is about the horror of the death of children. I do not see Jewish life as more precious than Arab life, but I do not see the current Israeli military strategy as being the best way of protecting Jewish life either. In the face of attack, both Israelis and Gazans understandably become more enraged, more bellicose, as anyone would. In Gaza, this can only benefit Hamas, for whom loss of Palestinian life is desirable. Hamas popularity was at a long-time low in June, less than 10% approval in Gaza; now most reports suggest the population is rallying to it, not despite but because of the killing they have created. We can hope that the IDF operation manages to take out the tunnels and the rocket sites as quickly as possible and the killing can stop. But I can only see that the cycle will resume, that nothing fundamental will change, but that hundreds will be dead and that Hamas will be more deeply entrenched. Any military solution can only be temporary. I don't know what Israel should do. I don't know what the path to a non-temporary solution is. But I don't think the current approach is working at all.

[bobfrombrockley]

JUSTICE

COATESY WRITES:

If you want to read a proper European report on the condemnation of Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman Khan do not look in the Guardian, still less to the BBC.

Read le Monde today,

A special Bangladesh court has sentenced to death in absentia on Sunday a British and an American for their role in the torture and murder of 18 teachers, journalists or doctors during the struggle for independence waged against Pakistanin 1971.

It then goes on to describe Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin’s role in Britian and Ashrafuzzaman Khan’s in the US.

The article notably states,

A survey identified 1,175 private individuals – including Pakistani generals and Islamist allies in Islamabad at the time – suspected of having committed numerous crimes during the 1971 war, such as murder, rape and the forced conversion of Hindus to Islam .

According to the Government, the 1971 war led to three million deaths. Some  independent authorities believe that the total amounted to between 300,000 and 500,000 dead.

Victory to the Beloved Bangladeshi People!