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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.]
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Steve Wallis (Manchester, England)
Preferred email address: revolutionarysocialiststeve@...
Super-blog: http://www.twitter.com/socialiststeve
Preferred email address: revolutionarysocialiststeve@...
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
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
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