Rallies and protests. ICE. Destruction of cultural heritage.

 It seems there are going to be No Kings rallies all over the USA tomorrow. These are being described by people in the White House as ‘Hate Rallies’. 

“They have a ‘Hate America’ rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall,” the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said on Fox News on Friday. “It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and, you know, the antifa people. They’re all coming out.”

From the organisers of the rallies come appeals to keep everything peaceful, to show that there is no violence involved.

Other protests in the USA have seen people dressed up in inflatable animal costumes like this one against ICE in Portland, Ohio.

We shouldn’t be complacent about the right to protest here in the UK. It seems that the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has announced that the police should be able to stop protests that have a “cumulative impact”, by recurring in the same place. That would presumably affect the sort of protest that a friend of mine used to attend every week outside her MP’s constituency office. 

The home secretary will apparently also consider “powers to ban protests outright”. Bang goes freedom to protest! 

Thinking of ICE, here’s a link to an article about 13-year-old Mazyouna Damoo whose face was partially destroyed when an Israeli missile hit their home in June last year, killing two of her siblings. She survived and eventually was sent to the USA for reconstructive surgery, treatment which is still ongoing. She and her mother and her sister are living in El Paso, Texas, adjusting to a different life, the sisters going to school. The pessimist in me wonders if at some time in the future ICE will try to deport them!

Here’s a photo of the remains of the Great Mosque in Gaza City, a photo from last year. 

And here’s a link to an interesting article about the cultural heritage of Gaza. As well as the huge, cruel loss of life in Gaza, there’s a whole swathe of culture and architecture that has disappeared forever. 

A long time ago now Phil and I visited Guernica, the town largely bombed to smithereens by German planes during the Spanish civil war. This small town is another place with a long history. The old centre of the town was rebuilt after the war was over, rebuilt as it was before the bombing, which was largely intended to demoralise the people of Basque Country who held out against the forces of Franco. 

I doubt that they can rebuild Gaza City in the same way.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!