Steve Wallis
2009-02-16 11:12:52 UTC
Note: I sent the following message out yesterday, but I've just
written an important postscript (PS) at the end.
I've recently started attending demonstrations outside the BBC studios
in Manchester (Oxford Road, 5.30-6.30pm every night) against BBC
bureaucrats' decision not to screen the Disasters Emergency Committee
(www.dec.org.uk) appeal for humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza
after the Israeli invasion which caused 100 Palestinian deaths
(including many women and children) for every Israeli killed.
When I arrived on Friday, a fire engine siren was going on and was
rather mystified - until I noticed that it was leading a convoy to
take aid to Gaza from the Manchester area. The police forced the siren
to be turned off after a bit, but it certainly caused a stir! I later
discovered that this fire engine is being donated to the Gazan people
by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU). I didn't count the number of
vehicles in the convoy, most of which were cars (although one news
item suggested that there were many ambulances) but would estimate
15-20 just from Manchester. This was part of a convoy of about 110
vehicles with activists (primarily left-wingers and Muslims) from
across Britain, via France, Spain, Portugal and North Africa to Gaza,
delivering £1 million raised by these and other activists (or from the
Viva Palestina website at http://www.vivapalestina.org/donations.htm).
I have just checked that page and noted that they are trying to raise
another £50,000 before the convoy reaches Egypt.
Anyway, as many of you will be aware due to TV, internet or newspaper
reports, part of the convoy (the North West region) was stopped on a
motorway and nine of the activists were arrested (and three charged)
with alleged terrorism offences. I wouldn't like to comment on those
allegations, but some were apparently being tracked by the security
services, which is clearly a much better way to defeat terrorism than
the use of torture - which results in a lot of false information from
those who'll say anything to get it to stop (and I've been tortured by
police handcuffs as I reveal on my socialist website - www.socialiststeve.me.uk).
New US president Barack Obama has not only ordered the closure of
Guantánamo Bay, but all of the secret CIA detention centres around the
world to which terrorist suspects (or those deliberately framed) have
been taken to undergo torture via the process of "extraordinary
rendition". [He also ended the policy of the US government refusing to
support any organisations who provided any sort of support for women
who want an abortion, showing that he is also dedicated to women's
rights.] In my opinion, Obama was taking advantage of the massive
momentum and goodwill towards him, including the 2 million people who
witnessed his inaugaration, to get such good bills passed in the first
few days of taking office before other members of his administration.
Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have apparently made hawkish comments in
contrast to Obama's apparent willingness to negotiate with Iran which
could play a major problems in solving conflict between people of
different religions in the Middle East and throughout the world. Obama
is far to the left of Tony Blair, but even Blair's government managed
to negotiate peace in Northern Ireland.
On Friday's protest, some demonstrators were chanting "Barack, Barack,
terrorist, terrorist", which is an appalling mistake - clearly put
forward by ultra-left Marxists (the CPGB put "World's #1 terrorist"
with a picture of Barack Obama on the front page of their Weekly
Worker newspaper before he'd even had a chance to make his
inaugaration speech never mind do anything as president) and Islamic
fundamentalists (al-Qaeda put out a video saying they wantd John
McCain to win the US presidential election "because he was better at
Jihad", tactically released after it took place). I chanted "Hero,
Hero" very loudly to try to drown out the "Terrorist" chants.
A 15 year old girl I talked to at a benefit for Gaza yesterday
afternoon (some children were making cards for people in Gaza and I
joined in, including the lyrics of my song "9/11 Inside Job" which I
thought they may like to know about, and perhaps hear/download from
www.red-day.net if they could get to an internet cafe which would
almost certainly require them going through the apartheid wall to
Israel) told me she was boycotting BBC programmes completely as a
result of them refusing to show the appeal. This is a very bad idea,
because there are many well-intentioned people working for the BBC who
have nothing to do with that decision, producing great programmes like
the Horizon programme on dreams which say a lot about how the mind
works - I strongly recommend people living in the UK to play/download
it from http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hnc9n/Horizon_Why_Do_We_Dream/
before it expires on Tuesday. I intend to write a message soon about
how this programme provides scientific justification for my Good
Intentions Manifesto (in short - whether you are good or bad depends a
lot on whether you have dreams in REM or non-REM sleep (or both), the
former being negative ones and the latter being positive ones).
Anyway, as suggested by the subject of this message, ITV news last
night (at 10pm) censored the news of police arresting people in the
convoy, mentioning the terrorism charges and showing a picture of the
convoy from a distance, but not saying anything about their presence
in a convoy, and certainly nothing about taking aid to Gaza. In
contrast, there were much longer items on the BBC news at both 5pm and
10.30pm, and it was the first item on the North West news too - all of
which mentioned that they were taking aid to Gaza and the organisers,
Viva Palestina, which would of course enable people to search the web
to find out about it and perhaps donate further aid.
This is not to say that targetting the BBC is wrong (in fact, it is a
brilliant strategy in Manchester since many people see us in the rush
hour on a very busy street). However, BBC news people are different
from those who took that appalling decision, and our protests have
probably led to them acting more favourably to our cause. I suggest
however, that we should also occasionally target ITV with protests
too! I will in fact suggest to demonstrators in Manchester tonight
that we march off at the end of a BBC protest to Granada studios at
some point in the fairly near future (allowing time to produce
placards and publicise the event). I'll print out this email to hand
out to distribute to other protesters, as well as talking to them.
I received an email today saying that you can get messages about how
the convoy is progressing using the Twitter social networking site (a
sort of blog but with a 140 character limit to each message and the
ability to update it with mobile phone mssages). As it happens, I
signed up at Twitter on Thursday and put quite a bit there already (a
mixture of political points, what I'm doing politically in Manchester
and my social/love life - quite a bit about that since it was
Valentine's Day yesterday). Go to www.twitter.com to sign up and then
www.twitter.com/georgegalloway for the convoy updates (by Respect MP
George Galloway) or www.twitter.com/socialiststeve for my "super-
blog". [Or you can go directly to George's or my pages without signing
up to Twitter if you prefer.]
PS:
There were only 8-10 people on the protest outside the BBC yesterday,
compared with 25 and 40 when I went before, so calling for a march to
Granada studios was clearly pointless. Besides, I missed a Greater
Manchester Stop the War Coalition meeting earlier that evening, which
could have been a better place to raise the idea of an ITV protest,
but there were only 10 present there too (poorly publicised by the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) or poor morale due to the recent faction
fighting in that party and their failure to grow in a period of
massive economic crisis methinks). Also, whereas the previous protests
had been quite inclusive, this was clearly dominated by the Muslim
Association of Britain (MAB) - their placards appeared for the first
time and two male Muslims hogged the microphone. It was actually a
female member of MAB who told me about the protests, and she had far
more charisma leading the chants making protesting far more enjoyable
- but I'm almost certain that she is on the convoy to Gaza. I may turn
up for BBC protests occasionally while the convoy is on its way to
Gaza and back, but I'll wait until it returns before making much of an
effort to attend them...
I was involved in an interesting discussion with two other protestors
I already knew and a male MAB member (clearly an Islamic
fundamentalist) came over. He claimed that the Holocaust was committed
by Zionists (Jewish fundamentalists) against other Jews! The idea of
Jews running most/all organisations in society is a fascist myth and I
responded by loudly accusing MAB of being infiltrated by the British
National Party (BNP)! Two BNP members did infiltrate the SWP a few
years back, but in retrospect that idea is a bit ridiculous. More
credible would be a different fascist organisation, the National
Revolutionary Faction (which is supposedly now defunct but after a bit
of web browsing I discovered they still exist but in a more undercover
form). I recovered the contents of a web page (from their own website)
describing their strategy of long-term infiltration (involving several
different layers) and put it on my website as http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/nrf.txt.
I did blurt out about this MAB member putting forward BNP ideas, which
in retrospect I realised was wrong - they generally claim that the
Holocaust didn't happen, that some Jews died but not in gas chambers,
or that the claim of six million is an exaggeration. I visited
Auschwitz and saw a huge number of bones there; a page of mine partly
about it with a picture of some of the bones (http://
socialiststeve.me.uk/manifesto/large7.htm) gets a lot of hits. Don't
believe the fascist or Islamic fundamentalist lies! [Also, bear in
mind that the Nazis were funded by big business to stop a socialist
revolution, and socialists, communists and trade unionists were
targetted first by the Nazis. They called themselves "national
socialists" but murdered many of the genuine socialists in their ranks
in the Night of the Long Knives.]
Incidentally, I'm a quarter Jewish and have some German Jews in my
ancestry - and some of their descendents would undoubtedly have died
in the Holocaust. Those Muslims who are anti-semitic, blaming all Jews
for attrocities committed by some of them, are being countered by
people like myself (and a fully Jewish woman who turned up last night)
who attend demos organised on a broad basis and organisations like
Jews for Justice for Palestinians (www.jfjfp.org).
--
Steve Wallis (Manchester, England)
Preferred email address: ***@yahoo.co.uk
Super-blog: http://www.twitter.com/socialiststeve
Other blogs: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/steve-wallis-socialist-blog,
http://blog.myspace.com/galaxiasteve
My socialist website: http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk
My pages at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1038291480,
MySpace:http://www.myspace.com/galaxiasteve and Bebo:
http://www.bebo.com/SteveW519
Founder, Ethical Capitalism Network: http://www.ethicalcapitalism.net
Founder, Foundation for Proportional Representation-based Socialism:
http://www.PRsocialism.org
Founder, Revolutionary Platform Network: http://www.revolutionaryplatform.net
My revolutionary socialist band, Galaxia:
http://www.galaxiamusic.net,http://www.myspace.com/galaxiamusic,
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Galaxia-a-revolutionary-socialist-band/84310120180,
http://www.bebo.com/galaxiamusic.
My socialist band, Red Day: http://www.red-day.net,
http://www.myspace.com/reddayband,http://www.facebook.com/pages/Red-Day/27468311341
Author, "Revolution Destroyed? Have I ensured that a world socialist
revolution will never happen?":http://www.revolutiondestroyed.net
For discussion of the credit crunch, go to
http://www.revolutionaryplatform.net/forum/index.php?board=156
For discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories, go to
http://www.revolutionaryplatform.net/forum/index.php?board=89
written an important postscript (PS) at the end.
I've recently started attending demonstrations outside the BBC studios
in Manchester (Oxford Road, 5.30-6.30pm every night) against BBC
bureaucrats' decision not to screen the Disasters Emergency Committee
(www.dec.org.uk) appeal for humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza
after the Israeli invasion which caused 100 Palestinian deaths
(including many women and children) for every Israeli killed.
When I arrived on Friday, a fire engine siren was going on and was
rather mystified - until I noticed that it was leading a convoy to
take aid to Gaza from the Manchester area. The police forced the siren
to be turned off after a bit, but it certainly caused a stir! I later
discovered that this fire engine is being donated to the Gazan people
by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU). I didn't count the number of
vehicles in the convoy, most of which were cars (although one news
item suggested that there were many ambulances) but would estimate
15-20 just from Manchester. This was part of a convoy of about 110
vehicles with activists (primarily left-wingers and Muslims) from
across Britain, via France, Spain, Portugal and North Africa to Gaza,
delivering £1 million raised by these and other activists (or from the
Viva Palestina website at http://www.vivapalestina.org/donations.htm).
I have just checked that page and noted that they are trying to raise
another £50,000 before the convoy reaches Egypt.
Anyway, as many of you will be aware due to TV, internet or newspaper
reports, part of the convoy (the North West region) was stopped on a
motorway and nine of the activists were arrested (and three charged)
with alleged terrorism offences. I wouldn't like to comment on those
allegations, but some were apparently being tracked by the security
services, which is clearly a much better way to defeat terrorism than
the use of torture - which results in a lot of false information from
those who'll say anything to get it to stop (and I've been tortured by
police handcuffs as I reveal on my socialist website - www.socialiststeve.me.uk).
New US president Barack Obama has not only ordered the closure of
Guantánamo Bay, but all of the secret CIA detention centres around the
world to which terrorist suspects (or those deliberately framed) have
been taken to undergo torture via the process of "extraordinary
rendition". [He also ended the policy of the US government refusing to
support any organisations who provided any sort of support for women
who want an abortion, showing that he is also dedicated to women's
rights.] In my opinion, Obama was taking advantage of the massive
momentum and goodwill towards him, including the 2 million people who
witnessed his inaugaration, to get such good bills passed in the first
few days of taking office before other members of his administration.
Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have apparently made hawkish comments in
contrast to Obama's apparent willingness to negotiate with Iran which
could play a major problems in solving conflict between people of
different religions in the Middle East and throughout the world. Obama
is far to the left of Tony Blair, but even Blair's government managed
to negotiate peace in Northern Ireland.
On Friday's protest, some demonstrators were chanting "Barack, Barack,
terrorist, terrorist", which is an appalling mistake - clearly put
forward by ultra-left Marxists (the CPGB put "World's #1 terrorist"
with a picture of Barack Obama on the front page of their Weekly
Worker newspaper before he'd even had a chance to make his
inaugaration speech never mind do anything as president) and Islamic
fundamentalists (al-Qaeda put out a video saying they wantd John
McCain to win the US presidential election "because he was better at
Jihad", tactically released after it took place). I chanted "Hero,
Hero" very loudly to try to drown out the "Terrorist" chants.
A 15 year old girl I talked to at a benefit for Gaza yesterday
afternoon (some children were making cards for people in Gaza and I
joined in, including the lyrics of my song "9/11 Inside Job" which I
thought they may like to know about, and perhaps hear/download from
www.red-day.net if they could get to an internet cafe which would
almost certainly require them going through the apartheid wall to
Israel) told me she was boycotting BBC programmes completely as a
result of them refusing to show the appeal. This is a very bad idea,
because there are many well-intentioned people working for the BBC who
have nothing to do with that decision, producing great programmes like
the Horizon programme on dreams which say a lot about how the mind
works - I strongly recommend people living in the UK to play/download
it from http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hnc9n/Horizon_Why_Do_We_Dream/
before it expires on Tuesday. I intend to write a message soon about
how this programme provides scientific justification for my Good
Intentions Manifesto (in short - whether you are good or bad depends a
lot on whether you have dreams in REM or non-REM sleep (or both), the
former being negative ones and the latter being positive ones).
Anyway, as suggested by the subject of this message, ITV news last
night (at 10pm) censored the news of police arresting people in the
convoy, mentioning the terrorism charges and showing a picture of the
convoy from a distance, but not saying anything about their presence
in a convoy, and certainly nothing about taking aid to Gaza. In
contrast, there were much longer items on the BBC news at both 5pm and
10.30pm, and it was the first item on the North West news too - all of
which mentioned that they were taking aid to Gaza and the organisers,
Viva Palestina, which would of course enable people to search the web
to find out about it and perhaps donate further aid.
This is not to say that targetting the BBC is wrong (in fact, it is a
brilliant strategy in Manchester since many people see us in the rush
hour on a very busy street). However, BBC news people are different
from those who took that appalling decision, and our protests have
probably led to them acting more favourably to our cause. I suggest
however, that we should also occasionally target ITV with protests
too! I will in fact suggest to demonstrators in Manchester tonight
that we march off at the end of a BBC protest to Granada studios at
some point in the fairly near future (allowing time to produce
placards and publicise the event). I'll print out this email to hand
out to distribute to other protesters, as well as talking to them.
I received an email today saying that you can get messages about how
the convoy is progressing using the Twitter social networking site (a
sort of blog but with a 140 character limit to each message and the
ability to update it with mobile phone mssages). As it happens, I
signed up at Twitter on Thursday and put quite a bit there already (a
mixture of political points, what I'm doing politically in Manchester
and my social/love life - quite a bit about that since it was
Valentine's Day yesterday). Go to www.twitter.com to sign up and then
www.twitter.com/georgegalloway for the convoy updates (by Respect MP
George Galloway) or www.twitter.com/socialiststeve for my "super-
blog". [Or you can go directly to George's or my pages without signing
up to Twitter if you prefer.]
PS:
There were only 8-10 people on the protest outside the BBC yesterday,
compared with 25 and 40 when I went before, so calling for a march to
Granada studios was clearly pointless. Besides, I missed a Greater
Manchester Stop the War Coalition meeting earlier that evening, which
could have been a better place to raise the idea of an ITV protest,
but there were only 10 present there too (poorly publicised by the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) or poor morale due to the recent faction
fighting in that party and their failure to grow in a period of
massive economic crisis methinks). Also, whereas the previous protests
had been quite inclusive, this was clearly dominated by the Muslim
Association of Britain (MAB) - their placards appeared for the first
time and two male Muslims hogged the microphone. It was actually a
female member of MAB who told me about the protests, and she had far
more charisma leading the chants making protesting far more enjoyable
- but I'm almost certain that she is on the convoy to Gaza. I may turn
up for BBC protests occasionally while the convoy is on its way to
Gaza and back, but I'll wait until it returns before making much of an
effort to attend them...
I was involved in an interesting discussion with two other protestors
I already knew and a male MAB member (clearly an Islamic
fundamentalist) came over. He claimed that the Holocaust was committed
by Zionists (Jewish fundamentalists) against other Jews! The idea of
Jews running most/all organisations in society is a fascist myth and I
responded by loudly accusing MAB of being infiltrated by the British
National Party (BNP)! Two BNP members did infiltrate the SWP a few
years back, but in retrospect that idea is a bit ridiculous. More
credible would be a different fascist organisation, the National
Revolutionary Faction (which is supposedly now defunct but after a bit
of web browsing I discovered they still exist but in a more undercover
form). I recovered the contents of a web page (from their own website)
describing their strategy of long-term infiltration (involving several
different layers) and put it on my website as http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/nrf.txt.
I did blurt out about this MAB member putting forward BNP ideas, which
in retrospect I realised was wrong - they generally claim that the
Holocaust didn't happen, that some Jews died but not in gas chambers,
or that the claim of six million is an exaggeration. I visited
Auschwitz and saw a huge number of bones there; a page of mine partly
about it with a picture of some of the bones (http://
socialiststeve.me.uk/manifesto/large7.htm) gets a lot of hits. Don't
believe the fascist or Islamic fundamentalist lies! [Also, bear in
mind that the Nazis were funded by big business to stop a socialist
revolution, and socialists, communists and trade unionists were
targetted first by the Nazis. They called themselves "national
socialists" but murdered many of the genuine socialists in their ranks
in the Night of the Long Knives.]
Incidentally, I'm a quarter Jewish and have some German Jews in my
ancestry - and some of their descendents would undoubtedly have died
in the Holocaust. Those Muslims who are anti-semitic, blaming all Jews
for attrocities committed by some of them, are being countered by
people like myself (and a fully Jewish woman who turned up last night)
who attend demos organised on a broad basis and organisations like
Jews for Justice for Palestinians (www.jfjfp.org).
--
Steve Wallis (Manchester, England)
Preferred email address: ***@yahoo.co.uk
Super-blog: http://www.twitter.com/socialiststeve
Other blogs: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/steve-wallis-socialist-blog,
http://blog.myspace.com/galaxiasteve
My socialist website: http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk
My pages at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1038291480,
MySpace:http://www.myspace.com/galaxiasteve and Bebo:
http://www.bebo.com/SteveW519
Founder, Ethical Capitalism Network: http://www.ethicalcapitalism.net
Founder, Foundation for Proportional Representation-based Socialism:
http://www.PRsocialism.org
Founder, Revolutionary Platform Network: http://www.revolutionaryplatform.net
My revolutionary socialist band, Galaxia:
http://www.galaxiamusic.net,http://www.myspace.com/galaxiamusic,
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Galaxia-a-revolutionary-socialist-band/84310120180,
http://www.bebo.com/galaxiamusic.
My socialist band, Red Day: http://www.red-day.net,
http://www.myspace.com/reddayband,http://www.facebook.com/pages/Red-Day/27468311341
Author, "Revolution Destroyed? Have I ensured that a world socialist
revolution will never happen?":http://www.revolutiondestroyed.net
For discussion of the credit crunch, go to
http://www.revolutionaryplatform.net/forum/index.php?board=156
For discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories, go to
http://www.revolutionaryplatform.net/forum/index.php?board=89