Thanks to our corporate media most activists have been succesfully brainwashed into believing that Moslems and Anti capitalist have little common ground. In fact Islam is the only theology which activly promotes economic, social and political justice.
Come on guys, work togahther and dont fall for the demonisation tactics. Read up on Islamic civilisation between 800ad and 1500ad .. a bit of an eye opener.

where were i? at home surely. my compromise with the palestinians is as a human being not as a religious fellow. as an anticapitalist, i am also very much opposed to arafat and, paradoxa -that lovin' thing- sympathysed much more with those athean israel citizens demostrating for peace and represed by their own police. i just simply cannot line with this boys and girls who fight for god and country. "ours", advance in civic terms i mean, from the french revolution can never be given up for any political end involving god: that's not a paradoxa, it is shear hipocrisy. as for the best literature in the arab literature it is also good to point that is precisely that of the laical authors, and about sex rather than economics.
long live to you all and gracias for the muslim support in all other struggles of life and the world.

How about a report of the todays protest? Did it go well? Who went? What groups were present? How many people showed up? Anything out of the ordinary happen? Who spoke? etc. etc.

The anti-capitalists may be in DC getting ready to confront Sharon and the Zionist elite next week. for information on anti-capitalist organizing against state sponsored terror see  http://www.mashriq.org/a22

This anti-capitalist practices Islam as a personal spiritual path as the majority of Muslims in the world do. Maybe folks are confusing being Muslim with being an Islamist. Two different things. There is nothing Hypocritical with being a Muslim and being an Anarchist.

The March was huge, larger than any of the national Stop the War marches. Police estimate of 15,000 reported on BBC, a ridiculous underestimate. Perhaps 80,000?

The march was almost entirely muslim, very few Stop the War, CND, anti globilisation protesters.

Why?

I am one such anti-capitalist who was present at the demonstration and also captured the demonstration on DV (has to be edited).

I arrived there at 12pm and already, between 10-20,000 people had already turned up. At this time it wasn't loud or quiet but there were people praying, selling papers etc etc.

Nearer to 1.30pm things started to get a little heated and near chaos as stewards in charge of keeping the protest organised had a difficult time in urging protestors to sit down and be calm. eventually the demonstration started. by this time, an estimated 50,000 people had begun to demonstrate. The BBC estimated 100,000, the police 15,000. 100,000 looks more realistic. This protest is like nothing I had seen before. It was loud, overly passionate, very militant but nonetheless inspiring, absolutely bloody inspiring. Police were taken back by the huge numbers of people and I became abit cramped by the shere number of people, so I had to break the cordon which lined the route (of course to take some pictures as well as give myself some space).

It was loud from beginning to end and im not complaining.

When we arrived at Trafalgar Square it became difficult to keep all the protestors off the road. The whole place was overflowing with people. A religious prayer was read out first before the speakers started speaking. Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn was the first to speak then Tony Benn (who ironically came out of parliament to get into politics) and another Labour MP George Galloway who announced that the British government had suspended all arms sales to Israel.

The whole place roared jubilantly to the sound of cheers and clapping and "down down israel." The best piece of news all week. Later on after the rally, Trafalgar was still full with protestors and were burning US and Israeli flags.

Yeah I went on the demo - I was one of the 20-or-so anarchists with flags (funnily enough we seemed to be the only people followed all the way by cops taking pictures...) and was quite disturbed by some of it.

Obviously I'm opposed to the brutal Israeli occupation + all the human rights abuses which go with it, BUT I'm ana atheist and marching alongside people chanting "Jihad, Jihad!" made me think that I really didn't have much in common with some of the other demonstrators, politically.

Especially as one guy who was with us put a placard on a lamppost, and some middle-class tosser doing his shopping climbed up it just to take it down. Okay he was an arsehole but a large section of the crowd began hurling sticks at him calling him a "Jew", whicb I thought was really fucking disgusting.

To the person who said "you can be a Muslim and an anarchist" I disagree. Noone can tell you how to live your life, not even "Allah".

no gods, no masters!

but don't you think it was great to be on a demonstration full of people who had come purely to express an opinion about something which is affecting them deeply and personally (as opposed to coming in order to promote their party, sect or 'coalition') - and with placards that simply had messages on them rather than advertisements for their party? to be on a demonstration so passionate that you got the feeling that these people might be prepared to actually DO SOMETHING rather than just talking about it? of course there will have been some real arseholes there who see it only as a race or religious issue but i certainly didn't get that impression - everyone i spoke to seemed glad that i had come and george galloway & tony benn got a fantastic reception. (it also has to be said that the best way to foster the belief that they are fighting for allah against the infidels is for us to ignore their demos!)

of course it was organised by a muslim group and so most of the people there were religious (hence 'jihad', which doesn't necessarily mean blowing people up or flying planes into buildings any more than 'class war' means 'kill all the bourgeoisie' - i lived with palestinians for a time and i have a good friend out there whose NAME is jihad.)

i'm not saying i felt totally comfortable all the way through but i was very glad to have gone (and whether or not you can be a muslim anarchist, you can certainly be a muslim anti-capitalist). they were even giving out leaflets telling people to boycott nestle, disney, murdoch etc. and apparently mcdonalds is also giving loads of money to israel. what i'm saying is we shouldn't ignore large numbers of perfectly good people who are intensely angry and more importantly personally affected by something which we are also opposed to, and who seem ready to take direct action to do something about it. and if that means going on demonstrations with people who chant about religion then so be it.

I wonder more why 20 or so Anarchists bothered to show up at this thing?

Firstly these are not peace demonstrations .
"Victory to the Intifada", - do S.W.P. have same slogan in England?, and "jihad" have nothing to do with being for peace or anti-war. They support one side in that war.
(As for the leftists the same people who scream and shout about anarchists defending themselves from the police as "violence", "thugery", "police agents", etc..., supporting Islamic fundo suicide bombings).
This is really an Orwellian definition of a Peace March.

Secondly the point of these demonstrations, appears to be support for the Palestinian Authority/National Liberation Movement, which ran the Occupied Territories as a police state, is totally autocratic, capitalist, and formed from elements which were the tools of Russian Imperialism for decades (and this is part of the reason the Palestinaian people are in refugee camps/occupied territories etc..)
Not then something Anarchists should be supporting.

Thirdly supporting nationalism is no solution to national oppression as it simply replicates the oppression on to some other ethnic group. What do you think will happen to Jews after the "Victory to the Intifada"?
Let me help you it will involve all these liberals and lefties (although not the fundos obviously) adopting the Jewish national liberation movement fighting an oppressive Arab state, just like they supported Zionism in the first place!.

All Nationalisms serve to unite us with our rulers or would be rulers, and mask class conflict.
All States are instruments of Capitalist rule.

Being anti-capitalist means being anti-nationalist and anti-state, if the term has any meaning, and being pro-autonomous working class struggle, not pro-Palestine, pro-Israel, pro-China or pro-America.
Reverse Patriotism is still Patriotism.

Finally as regard Islamic Fundamentalists - well these are the people you are supporting when you say "Victory to the Intifada", "Freedom?????? for Palestine" etc.... so it is good that they are with you on these marches and you can get to know them.

Just to comment on UK arms sales to Israel.Does anyone believe that the UK government realy as called a halt to these arms sales.It is most likely a new labour propoganda ploy,their is far to much money at stake for this to be true.

hey 'A is for Anarchy' aren't you so fucking ideologically pure. good for you, let's not support anyone who isn't also an anarchist. most palestinians aren't anarchists, therefore we should ignore their struggle against murdering, raping, bombing US/israeli/UK nationalism. no matter how much they suffer, no matter how many of their children are shot or poisoned by being forced to drink sewage after the israelis cut off their water supply, we disagree with countries and so therefore until they are all anarchists they are not worthy of our support. so let's not support workers' struggles either, since most of them agree with the idea of a nation state, let's not struggle for racial equality since most blacks, asians etc aren't anarchists either. oh, and let's not bother fighting sexism either - until all women are anarchists they deserve everything they get. in fact, let's do exactly as you advise, and just 'stay at home' - we might not change anything, but at least we won't have helped any of those fucking bastards out there who haven't been introduced to anarchist ideas yet.

no-one ever said this was a 'peace march' either - it was a march in support of the palestinians, who are being massacred as you read this, not that you give a flying fuck. and since when does the desire to see one group of people liberated automatically entail wanting to see them enslave their enemies? you might as well say that being a feminist means that you want to live in a country ruled by dominatrixes. as an anarchist you should be against all heirarchy and oppression, and if what's going on in the middle east isn't a prime example of that then i don't know what is. or, of course, you could just 'stay at home' bathing in your own smugness and telling everyone how bad they are for wanting to ease the terrible suffering of those who are, for whatever reason, not anarchists.

fucking twat.

fucking right. i wasn't on that march supporting Jihad. i was there supporting liberation of the people of palestine from the hard line of the IDF. There were people trying to turn the message of the march their own ways there like the people with the Hesboullah flags and stuff like that, but the idea of the march was on against the occupation of palestine. i don't believe this to be nationalistic or even anti-nationalistic in anyway. when i say palestine i mean the region in which people known commonly as palestinians are being oppressed by the IDF. i disagree totally with hierarchical government but i also disagree with murder. and that's what's going on. and i was there protesting. and some smug fucking so-called "anarchist" wasn't. i've got to say that the whole sectarianism thing is just pissing me off more and more. personally i have a rule about going to protests. if i agree with the cause and i can make it, i'll be there. regardless of which groups are there. i'm not there to discuss the politics of different groups. i don't agree politically with a lot of people from revo but i still went on the women's day No Sweat action. as far as i can see anyone claiming to be anarchist or anti-capitalist not turning up to that particular action for any political reason (ie exempting people with travel problems / other plans beforehand or whatever etc etc) was being detrimental to the movement because of snobbishness.

you absolute idiot. i have friends names Jihad, Guhad and other derivatives of the name. lest you forgot you flaming pustule, jihad implies 'struggle' and not holy war. a slack jawed yokel in alabama knows that by now. moreover, peace process or not, the gist of the protest was making a loud collective voice to the apathy ridden, cnn, faux news watching world. a few extremists will always be at gatherings of this magnitude, the absolute beauty of it was the overall crowd quickly dismissed the mad men and went with the show.

with the islam - anti capitalist comment. in an islamic structured society (erhm, a correctly structured one) capitalism is obsolete, public and centralized.

"i have a rule about going to protests. if i agree with the cause and i can make it"

I have the same rule therefore I'm a twat? You must be one too! If this was a demonstration against Israeli occupation I would support it, but the demonstarions which have taken place don't look like that to me they look like demonstrations in favour of a Palestinian state (which to qoute Palestinian Human Rights Campiagners the Arafat state was a police state - sorry I just don't support that).
In Belguim one of these marches very nearly turned into an anti-Jewish pogrom.
The other bloke missed the point entirely it's not a matter of whose an anarchist and whose not. Racial equality, for example, isn't just complimentary with anarchism, it's essential to it, establishing police states, and destroying Israel (in either a national liberation struggle or a jihad), thereby inflicting national oppression on the Jews, has nothing to do with anarchism.
In regard to sectarianism if every time some one disagrees with the prevailing viewpoint they are therefore sectarian and sectarianism is bad, well we are hardly ever going to have a free society then, are we? People have the right to disagree? No?
These demonstrations are advertised as anti-war or peace demos. Either anti-war or peace would mean being against the indiscriminate murder of Jews every bit as much as it is against the indisciminate murder of Arabs.
Sorry for disagreeing I promise to follow the party line from now on!

The anti-war demo coincided with a demonstration in Sheffield to free Anarchist prisoner Mark Barnsley, lots of anarcos were there, maybe that explains the low numbers

A 4 Anarchy

I was one of the anarchists on the march and I appreciate many of your concerns. We weren't about to start waving palestinians flags or shouting Allah Akbar, cos like you i'm an atheist and think that all states are unjust, immoral and unnecessary.
However, i think its important for anarchists to make links with other struggles. Lots of people came up to me on the day and asked me what my flag represented (largely because of the pack of cops on our trail) and i tried to give a coherent reply. It's like i go to support the palestinians against oppression, but also to make my own point, I'm there for my own reasons.
If i only ever got involved in purely anarchist struggles, I feel i would be isolating myself from lots of people. For various reasons, anarchism has got some unsavoury associations in the minds of many , so to expect them to just appreciate it as a genuine socio-political alternative without approaching them face to face in a context where they are already witnessing repression and wish to resist it is perhaps nieve.
anyway, see ya mayday ;)