The New Dark Age

25 January, 2011

The Edinburgh conference this weekend is important for everyone who wants to work seriously for Palestinian freedom. Attend this conference and urge others to come. To campaign effectively, we need to understand the dramatic changes taking place across the region.

Register today via SPSC website: http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk

A weekend of discussion of the dramatic events across the Arab world and what they mean for the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

A popular, radical democratic revolution is shaking Tunisia and the whole Arab world, its reverberations being felt from Morocco to Yemen. An unarmed people has shaken off a bloody, pro-Western dictatorship. The army and sections of the police have joined the popular movement against the remnants of the dictatorship. Journalists, teachers and trade unionists are driving figures from the old regime out of their workplaces and representative bodies. Some leading figures from the old regime are in prison, charged with fraud, torture, and other crimes.

The General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) has called an indefinite strike, refuses to recognise the current government, and is demanding the ousting of all former ruling party officials from any role in Government. “We support the demands of the people in their struggle to demolish the old regime,” said Nabil Haouachi, representative of the teachers’ union within the UGTT.

Popular mobilisations and a general strike against the old regime continue. The French and US Governments have declared their support for the government.

Unrest is spreading to other Arab dictatorships. The best source of live coverage of these astonishing events is Al Jazeera YouTube. The BBC is barely touching a popular revolution on the southern Mediterranean a few miles from Italy, with profound implications given the large population of North Africans and other Arabs inside the EU, already immensely proud of the achievements of the Tunisian revolution.

Three corrupt dictatorships away, via Libya and Egypt, the Palestinian Authority is revealed in all its shame:
– abasing itself before an intransigent Israel (Abbas to Sharon – ‘You are my friend’)
– willing to suppress the Goldstone Report on Israel’s crimes against humanity
– ready to betray the refugees right of return
– negotiating away Jerusalem
– cooperating with Israel to massacre supporters of the last Palestinian elections, and kidnap Hamas’ elected majority

All this for US and EU ‘aid’ and while Israel massacres and steals.

These dramatic events in the Arab World are game changing:
– What will happen when the PA goes?
– How long till Israel’s next war or massacre?
– How can the racist project of Zionism be defeated and Palestinians be free?
– What kind of threat does increasingly racist, nuclear-armed Israel pose to the entire region?

Dr Haider Eid, a founding member of the One Democratic State Group, has just left Gaza to deliver the keynote speech at the Conference on Saturday morning in Edinburgh. He will analyse the bewilderingly rapid developments across the Middle East and how popular movements are the best – the only – defense against the incessant wars that the US and Israel have in store for the region.

Mohamed Ali, a Tunisian oppositionist who was hounded by the ex-dictatorship, will be speaking at the Conference in Edinburgh.

Mike Prysner was a soldier in the US army of occupation in Iraq. Mike’s searing testimony is known to many. He will draw on lessons of past popular movements against war to suggest a way out of our seemingly permanent war drive.

Also speaking:
Haifa Zangana, Iraqi author, weekly columnist for al Quds newspaper writing occasionally in the Guardian and al-Ahram weekly and activist, co-founder of Women’s Solidarity for Indepedent and Unified Iraq.

Mohamad Asif, Scottish Afghan Society will analyse the basis for the growing and spreading Afghan resistance to occupation.

All the above speakers will participate in a plenary at the end of each day as well as their individual presentations. There will be ample time for discussion and debate.

Register today via SPSC website: http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk