Palestine and the Middle East - a thread - The Bear and Badger

ZMM

Don't realise that fascism is on the rise in Germany? Do you not remember when there was a coup to overthrow the government about a year or so ago by a number of members of AfD?

hunk

It's not just germans tho, it's the west in general. And by the west in general I mean rightwinger neo lib privatise everything for free trade freedom fascism is alright in my book fuck woke antifa capitalism. As long as the war effort/Suez trade route remains profitable there isn't any incentive for the system to course correct.

But yeah, fuck the germans. They actually banned Yanis Varoufakis from entering and speaking on german soil. He must be doing something right.....

ZMM

Also they banned a British Palestinian doctor for wanting to speak about what he saw when he was working in Gaza
Then stormed the conference that he and Yanis were due to speak at and shut it down. Peaceful freedom of assembly, supposedly guaranteed in the ECHR

hunk

Aye, posted a vid on it a while ago I think. The rightwinger gaslighting tactics are laughable; claiming attendees incl. jews being anti-semitic and Yanis speaking endangering state security.

DrewMerson

ZMM wrote:

Don't realise that fascism is on the rise in Germany?

Do you realise that there’s a difference between writing this, which is a reasonable statement, and what you wrote on the previous page? You don’t really get to act pious about other people’s prejudices if you’re going to splash your own around without a care.

equinox_code

ZMM might be crude at times, but he's at least making good-faith contributions. What's your contribution, Drew? Nitpicking from the sidelines? What about a bit of that trademark pedantry and finger-wagging? Or perhaps you have a few vaguely disparaging but ultimately meaningless questions to ask?

DrewMerson

I don’t find regular posting without sources, empty promises to follow up with sources, making statements that are not supported by the evidence provided, or episodes of rank hypocrisy to be particularly good-faith, but by all means lap it up. I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that I’m unconcerned with your assessment of what constitutes a meaningful contribution.

hunk

What's more is ZMM is observant and asking the correct if uncomfortable questions. Germany is supposedly a centre left coalition but their rhetoric and official policy is weirdly shifted to the afd far right pro Zionist Israel. The clamping down on pro Palestine protests (abuse of the police force?) is just as bad as in the US. This is basically what I mean by: the whole system literally shifts to the right every time labour takes over from the (populist) right or when there's a surge of the populist right threatening the left. It's a weird TikTok effect of a system out of balance.

Such observations are making a lot of people (and badgers here) uncomfortable and rightfully so. This is worrying discourse for a democracy.

acemuzzy

I'm not sure "Germans can't help being fascist" was particularly helpful positioning though

b0r1s

The whole of Europe, including the UK, has elements of society that have shifted to the right. Due to the right. First the right help to make everyone that bit poorer (austerity, rampant capitalism etc), then point the finger to foreigners or disabled or sick or trans or anything different, the people affected don’t fight back at the right wing cunts that put them in that situation but actually continue to vote for said cunts. Don’t think Germany has an exclusive on this behaviour.

hunk

Exactly my point. It's a systems thing, the right has far more money too to fund these distraction (look it's the immigrants!) campaigns as they keep sucking the working class dry and funneling money to their off shore tax haven accounts.
It's not the first time they did this too. 1929, after the first market krach and the rise of the populist nsdap (Hitler's party), the jews were the obvious scapegoat. In the current day the populist rightwing system's ire is on palestinian muslims? It's a weird parallel where the zionists have embraced rightwing authoritarianism and palestinians muslims are on the receiving end of the capitalist stick. The result is a fucked up genocide. Again.

Hence this continual shift to the right being disturbing. Where will the capitalist system end up?
See how we (humanity) are walking around in circles? History repeating.

b0r1s

Totally agree. I just disagree with ZMM singling out Germans as though it’s inherently in their nature, which seemed to be the inference. Hopefully ZMM can see the irony in that.

equinox_code

Utterly despicable behaviour from ZMM. Good thing we have Drew around, ever on-hand and on-topic, honing in on- and calling out- the rank hypocrisy and baseless assertions of .. *checks notes*.. ZeldaMindMelda. Without his tireless service, nobody would be there to speak up for.. *checks notes again* .. the state apparatus of wealthy, privileged, genocide-enabling nations.

hunk

b0r1s wrote:

Totally agree. I just disagree with ZMM singling out Germans as though it’s inherently in their nature, which seemed to be the inference. Hopefully ZMM can see the irony in that.

Basically yes, that's my takeaway.
Indeed, the villain here isn't a single western country. It's the capitalist system gradually becoming unbalanced and destabalising over time because of the push for market deregulation; in the name of 'free markets'.

DrewMerson

equinox_code wrote:

Utterly despicable behaviour from ZMM. Good thing we have Drew around, ever on-hand and on-topic, honing in on- and calling out- the rank hypocrisy and baseless assertions of .. *checks notes*.. ZeldaMindMelda. Without his tireless service, nobody would be there to speak up for.. *checks notes again* .. the state apparatus of wealthy, privileged, genocide-enabling nations.

You realise how ridiculous this post is, don’t you? I could also do without the implication that I’m speaking up for genocide-enablers. I know you don’t like me, but it shouldn’t stop you from engaging your brain when you read my posts.

Armitage_Shankburn

Will someone PLEASE think of the Germans

ZMM

I admit, my choice of words was poor. I've had German colleagues and friends and I don't think that all of them love fascism, I just think that, given the atrocities they committed in world war 2, they should be held to a higher standard of observation than other nations for at least a couple of centuries. But yeah the same goes for Italy, they love a bit of fascism. Fucking Italians. Also this country is already fascist IMHO.

In other news, ICC arrest warrants for Satanyahu and his cronies imminent https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/netanyahu-worried-about-prospect-icc-arrest-warrant

Kow

I think the fact that Germany is held to a higher standard is exactly why this overreaction is happening. Germany still pays billions and billions to Israel every year. I guess they don't want to feel their money is wasted...

GurtTractor

Plenty of colonialist mentals in that.

ZMM

Pro israel protestors showing up and attacking the Palestine encampment. Why are they not being arrested?

hunk

The left needs to get it's head out of its arse and realise that all of the main crisis' we're faceing today are interconnected and different facets of the same phenomenon. The forever wars of Gaza and Ukraine, the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the cost of living/ growing inequality crisis, climate change, the impeding encroachment of the far right and the migration crisis; they're all symptoms of Big Business becoming ever more powerful because of the exponential accumulation of wealth over time in the 1%. The more time goes by the richer they get, the more power becomes concentrated within them. It really is simple maths. It's the same fight but at different fronts, whether at home or abroad.

The left needs to unite and operate internationally, otherwise we're forever stuck with 1 step to the left 4 steps to the right (Hello Starmer!). Looking down condescendingly on other lefty factions won't help you win once at the negotiation tables. The left also need to stop falling for the right's bs gaslighting tactics. We'll be forever confused, walking in circles fighting one another if they have their way.

acemuzzy

Prepare for disappointment

:-(

Brooks

What are you defining as 'the left' in that statement? I'm fairly left and I know all that shit already in tedious detail, and I'm hardly alone. I assume you mean summat institutional but.

hunk

The general 'left' as in labour (duh). Rant wasn't aimed at anyone in particular here, just my frustraton with the overall state of affairs.

ZMM

Very true. It's the poorest people who will suffer the most with the impending climate crisis. Entire nations will be uninhabitable because of heat or because they'll be literally underwater.

Armitage_Shankburn

hunk wrote:

The left needs to get it's head out of its arse and realise that all of the main crisis' we're faceing today are interconnected and different facets of the same phenomenon. The forever wars of Gaza and Ukraine, the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the cost of living/ growing inequality crisis, climate change, the impeding encroachment of the far right and the migration crisis; they're all symptoms of Big Business becoming ever more powerful because of the exponential accumulation of wealth over time in the 1%. The more time goes by the richer they get, the more power becomes concentrated within them. It really is simple maths. It's the same fight but at different fronts, whether at home or abroad.

The left needs to unite and operate internationally, otherwise we're forever stuck with 1 step to the left 4 steps to the right (Hello Starmer!). Looking down condescendingly on other lefty factions won't help you win once at the negotiation tables. The left also need to stop falling for the right's bs gaslighting tactics. We'll be forever confused, walking in circles fighting one another if they have their way.

The oligarchy and their servants need an incentive to compromise. Revolution and upheaval are the main threat, and with them redistribution, asset seizure, requisition etc etc. Democracy is a compromise between the powerful and the many, and there are gradations within the range of systems it allows. you could say it's somewhat of a self correcting mechanism (see for eg, the 2017 GE, the shitting bricks that ensued, and the immediate abandonment by May and, after her Johnson, of austerity) so that things do not get that bad that you end up with asset seizure.

There is indeed a link between what is happening in Israel and the disappearance of incentives to limit greed. Put simply, Israel has become a symbol of a technocratic dream for control of the rabble. Gaza and to a lesser extent the west bank are a sandbox for oligarchs to watch how effective a development drones, signals intelligence, social media and mainstream media alignment with powerful interests, and AI can be at totally defeating the threat of revolution and upheaval, which in the end is the main reason why powerful interests (largely capital) have been restrained in the west.

The experiment must fail and must be seen to fail. Or else time will run out before there is owt anyone can do about anything.

hunk

Agreed.
Throw in AI into the mix and the 1% will use it to entrench their position even more by accumulating exponentially more wealth + (social) media influence. It's the inevitable endpoint lest the international left gets it's act together.

ZMM

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6cq-IlxLzX/ Columbia University professor and historian Rashid Khalidi addressed the repression of student protests at his university

Brooks

Will be a mild miracle if this blows over without a student or prof perishing to a curbstomping.

b0r1s

So Sangita Myska is out and Vaness Feltz is in at LBC after Santa grilled that twat Avi Hyman over the Iran embassy strike. Whether you believe she was sacked or not the optics on this could not look worse. A mixed African / Indian journalist with excellent track record of holding people to account replaced by a white upper middle class Jewish woman who does fluff pieces on Radio 2 and some shite on Talk TV.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories