I added the following important postscript to my message when I sent it out to further places yesterday, and thought those of you who just received and read the previous message (included below) would appreciate seeing this too. It is important for left-wing activists to oppose Islamic fundamentalist ideas. This doesn't mean we shouldn't unite and discuss with Muslims; indeed, it was only by discussing with one of them that I found out that he believes you need to obey God to go to heaven!!! How do you know what God wants you to do - this presumably means obeying the Imam!!! In my opinion, if there is a God (and I am fairly convinced there was one once even if there isn't now), she would be a very good god and prefer people who think for themselves and try to do good in the world rather than those who have blind faith. To be controversial (which is nothing new!) I suggest that the Koran gives a more complete view of society than the Bible (perhaps only due to it being written later) leading to bad Muslims being particularly bad (Jewish fundamentalists, i.e. Zionists, don't do suicide bombings, nor do Christian fundamentalists in the Bible Belt of the USA) but good Muslims (particularly female ones) being very good - and I've tended to fall in love with good Muslims lately...

There were only 8-10 people on the protest outside the BBC yesterday, compared with 25 and 40 when I went before, so calling for a march to Granada studios was clearly pointless. Besides, I missed a Greater Manchester Stop the War Coalition meeting earlier that evening, which could have been a better place to raise the idea of an ITV protest, but there were only 10 present there too (poorly publicised by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) or poor morale due to the recent faction fighting in that party and their failure to grow in a period of massive economic crisis methinks). Also, whereas the previous protests had been quite inclusive, this was clearly dominated by the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) - their placards appeared for the first time and two male Muslims hogged the microphone. It was actually a female member of MAB who told me about the protests, and she had far more charisma leading the chants making protesting far more enjoyable - but I'm almost certain that she is on the convoy to Gaza. I may turn up for BBC protests occasionally while the convoy is on its way to Gaza and back, but I'll wait until it returns before making much of aneffort to attend them... 

I was involved in an interesting discussion with two other protestors I already knew and a male MAB member (clearly an Islamic fundamentalist) came over. He claimed that the Holocaust was committed by Zionists (Jewish fundamentalists) against other Jews! The idea of Jews running most/all organisations in society is a fascist myth and I responded by loudly accusing MAB of being infiltrated by the British National Party (BNP)! Two BNP members did infiltrate the SWP a few years back, but in retrospect that idea is a bit ridiculous. More credible would be a different fascist organisation, the National Revolutionary Faction (which is supposedly now defunct but after a bit of web browsing I discovered they still exist but in a more undercover form). I recovered the contents of a web page (from their own website) describing their strategy of long-term infiltration (involving several different layers) and put it on my website as http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/nrf.txt.

I did blurt out about this MAB member putting forward BNP ideas, which in retrospect I realised was wrong - they generally claim that the Holocaust didn't happen, that some Jews died but not in gas chambers, or that the claim of six million is an exaggeration. I visited Auschwitz and saw a huge number of bones there; a page of mine partly about it with a picture of some of the bones (http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/manifesto/large7.htm) gets a lot of hits. Don't believe the fascist or Islamic fundamentalist lies! [Also, bear in mind that the Nazis were funded by big business to stop a socialist revolution, and socialists, communists and trade unionists were targetted first by the Nazis. They called themselves "national socialists" but murdered many of the genuine socialists in their ranksin the Night of the Long Knives.]

Incidentally, I'm a quarter Jewish and have some German Jews in my ancestry - and some of their descendents would undoubtedly have diedin the Holocaust. Those Muslims who are anti-semitic, blaming all Jews for attrocities committed by some of them, are being countered bypeople like myself (and a fully Jewish woman who turned up last night) who attend demos organised on a broad basis and organisations likeJews for Justice for Palestinians (www.jfjfp.org).