Category: Politics
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Trespassers Will: a great, long, monster blog-post posing as a book review

“Ownership insecurity”- a fascinating concept that, especially on the topic of land. It’s a vicious form of paranoia that threatens to manifest as soon as someone lays claim to a bit of land larger than the average family allotment. Until recently, most of us were completely baffled by the obsession Israel and its followers had…
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There’s a tiny chink of light in the darkest hour…

Close on the heels of our nationwide horror at seeing almost all of our UK politicians excusing Israel’s blatant and atrocity-strewn destruction of Gaza, this week we had to witness yet another disgrace in the House of Commons, where MPs claim to be the voice of the people. In a packed House, each MP was…
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Samud: an afternoon in Chalton Street

Today, I went to the last day of the Palestine exhibition at P21 gallery in Chalton Street, London. You can see quite a lot of it here… Click here to watch the reel on Facebook When I arrived, I recognized the face on the screen in the main hall. It was Wael Dahdouh, talking about…
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It’s Galloway — be happy — really!

Galloway wins by a landslide. He finished way ahead of Labour’s former MP, a right-wing racist and the candidate they abandoned shortly before the election. I know Galloway’s an egoist, I know he hasn’t got his head round the urgency of climate crisis and I know the nascent party he supposedly heads will probably implode…
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I found the racism, now what?

At least the BBC has the decency to mention the Pennines, the Co-operative Movement and Gracie Fields but other than those reasons to think about Rochdale, this article is mainly rattling with racism and as far as I can see, that’s really not the fault of the people of Rochdale. I decided to spend a…
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Inspiration from old bags

I love those bags you get given at conferences. As a trade union and a Labour Party officer a few years ago, I became a gleeful picker up of pens, badges, note books and above all, what I insist on calling book-bags, because when I wasn’t doing political conferences I was doing book fairs. Those…
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From Hastings to Gaza

Through this coming half term week, there is a series of workshops, and an exhibition of poetry and art for, by and about Palestinian children. Whether you want to spend a few minutes in the quiet hall, just looking at the paintings, to sit down and make use of the art materials provided to write…
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In memoriam

In the course of his career, John Pilger made 61 documentaries, all questioning the ‘establishment narrative’ on big, international news stories. Topics he’s covered include Palestine, the Thalidomide scandal, Julian Assange and Wikileaks, and the ‘Coke v Pepsi’ battles. Bottom up journalism People often talk about ‘bottom-up v top-down’ politics, but Pilger believed in bottom-up…
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We keep winning, why haven’t we won?

This is for all those councillors, MPs, TU reps and organization heads who think women’s rights is a minority interest. The accurate answer to ‘transwomen are women’ is ‘no, women are women. Transwomen are transwomen‘. Unfortunately, the people running all our councils and government departments and big organizations hardly ever hear the right answer, so…
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Hastings for Palestine

We had a fantastic weekend in Hastings. Below is a link to the local PSC’s video of the kids’ banner-making and the Bike-ride-for-Palestine on Saturday… And on Sunday, we had a march along the seafront, led by the young banner-makers, and a rally in the town centre. Thank you, Hastings, to all those who continue…