Tag: Sunak

Remembrance Day Will Never Be the Same Again

~ The Koboi Project

When I wrote my reflection on the recent Remembrance Day controversy in the UK, I began by confessing that I have never worn the commemorative poppy. I have, however, always doubted my disavowal of this symbol and wondered if my rejection was, regardless of its genuine pacifism, ultimately disrespectful to those who had sacrificed their lives for their country. I am truly relieved to find Joe Glenton, a British veteran expressing views that are consonant with my own less experienced ruminations. Glenton underscores his withering criticism of both the fascistic posturings of the contemporary British establishment and the inherent hypocrisy of the celebration. He quotes Harry Patch who was the last survivor of the trenches of the First World War, “War is a calculated and a condoned slaughter of human beings. War has no use to anyone” and further, that “remembrance was nothing more than show  business.” For anyone new to this insight who is open to its heartfelt pacificism, Remembrance Day will never be the same again. 

Image: modified from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMw15R_eR9I&ab_channel=DoubleDownNews

The Shame of the Sunaks

~ The Koboi Project

European settler colonialism was initiated in the 15th century, on the premise of a divinely ordained white supremacy1, and the founding of Israel in the land of the Palestinians during the British Mandate in the 20th Century was the last significant instantiation of this mode of ethnopolitical domination, albeit it might be seen as a species of settler colonialism all of its own.2 The current British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, removed Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Paul Bristow from his post for rebelling against the government’s position on the ongoing war in Gaza. Bristow had expressed his support for a ceasefire and called on the PM to push for an end to fighting between Israel and Hamas. That Sunak, who rose to his high station in the British polity from Indian origins, and who should, therefore, be alert to the inhumanity of subjugation, would be complicit in Israel’s genocidal colonial expansion in the 21st century, is a shame unto him, his family, and their origins.

  1. This theocratic doctrine was initiated 1452, when Pope Nicholas V issued a bull Dum Diversas which authorized King Afonso V of Portugal, to subjugate the lands of non-Christians. 
  2. While, it can be argued that Zionism does not derive directly from the Christian ‘doctrine of discovery’, the ethos of populating lands of non-Jews with European Jewish settlers under the auspices and geo-political designs of the British Empire, in my opinion, within the bounds of a broad notion of settler colonialism.

Image: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/rishi-sunak-piles-pressure-on-spineless-keir-starmer-as-he-sacks-parliamentary-aide-paul-bristow-for-defying-him-with-demand-for-a-permanent-ceasefire-in-gaza/ar-AA1j6jnu

https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/israel-hebrew/why-israel-isnt-a-settler-colonial-state/

https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/dum-diversas/