It’s raining again. Or maybe it’s still raining. No, we’ll go with the first statement as it wasn’t raining when I went out first thing this morning. So we’ve gone from a warm, dry spring back to a damp, dull, very cool spring. My Spanish sister (I’ve just been speaking to her as it’s her birthday) tells me that in Cádiz they’ve gone from exceptionally rainy weather to hot and dry, almost overnight, with temperatures heading up towards 30°! Phew! Things are, as they say, hotting up!
Yesterday Liverpool went from football celebration to chaos as someone drove his car into the crowds lining the street. Nobody seems to know what really happened, or what motivated it. The police very quickly released the information that the driver of the vehicle is ethnically white British, aged 54, apparently not connected to any terrorist organisation. They are being praised for releasing that information, thus avoiding the kind of rumours that spread about the attacker in Southport last summer which led to racist incidents. No doubt more information will come out eventually.
From elsewhere in the world came this report, also about yesterday:
“Thousands of Israelis on Monday joined a state-funded march through the Muslim quarter of the Old City in Jerusalem, where large groups chanted racist slogans including “Gaza is ours”, “death to the Arabs” and “may their villages burn”.
The annual march, paid for and promoted by the Jerusalem city government, celebrates Israel’s capture and occupation of East Jerusalem and its holy sites in the war of 1967. The Israeli takeover is not recognised internationally.
The Jerusalem municipality advertises the event, known as the flag march, as a “festive procession”, part of a broader programme of events celebrating the “liberation” of the city.
The march has been marred by racism and attacks on Palestinians for years, and is preceded by a campaign of violence in the Old City that in effect shuts down Palestinian majority areas, particularly in the Muslim Quarter.”
State-supported demonstrations in praise of “superiority”!
As I read about it I was reminded of the Orangemen’s Parades of my childhood in Southport. Every summer, on the 12th of July, the protestant Orangemen would travel from Liverpool, with their bands and the men and boys in military-style uniforms and the girls in cheerleader-style outfits, waving their pom-poms in the air. They would march through the centre of our town. It was one day in the year when my father would not allow us to go into the centre: too many, often drunken, hoodlums he would say.
At the time I had no idea what it was all about: a primarily Ulster Protestant celebration of the victory of the Protestant King William of Orange over the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne (1690).
It’s amazing how religion and politics get intermingled with colonialism and one group taking over another group’s land. It’s also amazing how the victors show off, rubbing the losers’ noses in it.
And as far as I know, the Orangemen still march in Southport on The Twelfth!
Peace in our time?
Michael Rosen has been writing about inquiries into antisemitism:-
“The antisemitism inquiry at Goldsmiths University of London has now been going on for two years and nothing has been published. No interim reports, no statements.
I'm now in search of possible theories as to why this is the case.
1. There is so much antisemitism at Goldsmiths, it's taking years to find it and describe it.
2. The subject 'antisemitism' is so complex that it's taking years to understand it, define and describe it.
3. The person or people involved in conducting the inquiry don't know what they're doing or why.
4. The person or people involved in the conducting do know what they're doing, they have produced a report but the people who commissioned the inquiry don't like it and have knocked it back.
5. The people who commissioned the inquiry now wish they hadn't commissioned it. That might be because:
a) it looks a bit odd to be spending something like 200k on one particular kind of racism and not on others
b) they've realised that when the inquiry does the report, people are going to ask, who said that we needed this inquiry in the first place and why?
c) they are worried that the report will be 'inflammatory in the present context'.
6. They're tired.
7. The college has run out of dosh.
8. Any other suggestions?”
Personally I wound like to know how they have managed to spend £200k on such an enquiry without anything to show at the end of it!
That’s another unsolved mystery.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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