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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • I’d like to recommend The Trojan Horse Affair. Its a limited series and a few years old now, but a a really interesting listen

    Its about the scandal in the UK in 2013, where an anonymous letter ‘exposed’ an Islamist conspiracy in Birmingham schools to radicalise children.

    The investigation in the podcast is helmed by two people; a rookie journalism grad who is muslim, and an experienced white journalist. The contrast in perspectives and emotion between them adds to it

    And yeah it’ll probably make you angry, and for those not in the UK it might key you in a bit on the tensions that do and don’t exist with British Muslims, how they’re viewed and treated by lots of parties here (including the Government)


  • I think Occupy was really interesting, and part of the reason was the lack of a clear and actionable message

    I fully agree that the best and most effective protest movements are those with clear goals and demands, and Occupy wasn’t that

    What it managed to do really effectively was bring all kinds of people and ideologies together - there were the active leftists and anarchists, but also liberals and the middle class and all sorts. I’ve read articles and accounts that talk of just every kind of person spending time in that main/original camp, and it spawned a lot of similar events here in the UK

    Ultimately it had the same kind of energy as the ‘If you want it, war is over’ billboards of the late 60s. And absolutely thats frustrating from an activist p.o.v

    But on the other hand, it did in a lot of ways shift public perspective. I’d stop short of saying it changed the paradigm, but it definitely contributed to an anti-neoliberal, anti-free-market normalization

    So yeah, idk. It didn’t really achieve anything; the issues it tried to tackle are still omni-present. But maybe it did do something in some hard to quantify, nebulous ways. Its interesting at least 🤷‍♀️

    But yeah really not a blueprint of an effective protest in a majority of ways




  • This just isnt true. I’m not saying this to defend Israel and their actions in Gaza - its just really important to not get swept up in falsehoods, particularly at a time when legitimate criticism of Israel is being portrayed as antisemitic.

    There are allegations that Israel administered a birth control drug - which has to be readministered every three months - to Ethiopian immigrants without informed consent. The investigation into this was flawed, but there is literally no evidence to suggest that anyone was forced or coerced into taking this.

    What does seem plausible and even likely based on the facts is that doctors often made little or no effort to overcome language and cultural barriers and make sure that consent was fully informed and patients were completely aware of the effects of the procedure.

    This is definitely an issue in and of itself, and is a level of societal racism. But what it is not, is ideoligical forcible sterilization.

    Further, when you say ‘Ethiopian Jewish women tried to invoke the Law of Return’ the implication is that Israel was really against Ethiopian immigration. In reality, the Israeli government worked with the US to actively enable this - in 1984 Israeli covert forces worked to evacuate the Beta Israel community from Sudan to Israel during the civil war there (this is known as Operation Moses).

    Basically, there is so so much to legitimately criticise the Israeli government for right now. Repeating misinformation like this just straight up doesn’t help.