London - Undemocratic, this is the right word describing the British electoral system which excludes its citizens living abroad and EU citizens in UK from general elections. Look at the electoral register and see people from Antigua, Bahamas, Botswana, Zimbabwe and all the Commonwealth countries can have their say on who rule the UK.
The ‘post-imperial’ electoral system gives ex colonies citizens the right to vote in the country which once exploited their own, and this is absolutely right and fair. But it is utterly unjust citizens from the neighbouring countries living in the UK and the British abroad (who lose the right to vote after a number of years) are excluded from the democratic process by the law since 1969. Why? Is it just for chance or this is the result of the British crossparty establishment's 'domestic defence policy'?
The answer is complex and touches the very founding process of democracy. Every political establishment, in every country, defends itself from whom considers, and wrongly classifies, as defector. This means those who flee their countries of origin are perceived as potential political defectors able to detect the structural, systemic failures of political systems in the countries they left: people emigrate when understand there is no hope for change. But why then Indian or Pakistani, for instance, living in the UK take part to national elections and have MPs representing their communities in the House of Commons while European origin and British expats don't?
Firstly because they are from former colonies and Commonwealth citizens, secondly because nearly all Commonwealth countries (except for Australia, Canada, New Zealand and perhaps few others), are not democracies comparable to the EU ones (exceptions here as well starting from Hungary) therefore people from Nigeria or Malawi have de facto a different political awareness and might not be able to promote changes in the structural system of an advanced democracy such as Britain.
Today the campaign to give British citizens living abroad and EU citizens in UK full political rights launched by Another Europe is Possible, The 3 Million and British in Europe marks a radical change in support of democracy in Great Britain, and goes far and beyond Brexit. The fight is for a fair and just society representing all and for a political system no longer allowed to hide and perpetrate exclusion in the name of a dead ‘post-imperialist’ establishment.
Let Us Vote: campaign and petition launched by Another Europe is Possible, British in Europe and The3Million
African unsustainable development between EU grants and China loans
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Photos from video Copyright @Aljazeera
On May 13th 2021 Israeli army announced an operation in the strip of Gaza while Hamas said launched from Palestinian territories more than 1.500 rickets in an escalation of conflict which already caused 109 dead of which 27 children. UN Security Council will meet this Sunday.
Brussels, 13 May 2021 - As Israel has been created by the UN after the persecution and the genocide of Jews by the Nazi during WWII, a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be found within the UN.
Though the UN established the partition of Palestinian territory in 1947 to give the Jews their own land after the Holocaust and put an end to centuries of diaspora, it did not recognize Palestine as a state. Still today the UN does only reckon Israel as a state.
Thirty years of intifada, a row of violent conflicts the territorial disputes and the inhumane, illegal, violent, evictions of Arab Palestinians from their own homes in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, root in that grey area of unenforceable international law where justice is replaced by the launch of stones, rockets, bombs, heavy artillery and high tech weapons regularly sold to Israel by US and UK and, on the other side, rockets smuggled by Iran, Turkey and Russia into Palestinian territories through Syria and Lebanon.
Yes the conflict is a proxy war. But today it’s also a civil-war raging in towns and cities between local communities, splitting Jewish and Arab Israelis, far and beyond the territorial dispute and out of the control of western and eastern powers and international lobbies.
Meanwhile in the Gaza strip the armed conflict is escalating to war: at 9pm of today Thursday 13th May Israel is deploying heavy weapons, troupes and tanks to ‘protect the edge’; 9,000 reservists are being sent to the front.
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We risk a new 2014 bloodshed which counted over 2000 dead.
The death toll of 109 dead so far on the Palestine side, of which 28 children, is going to soar as military operations on the ground in Gaza will make, once again, clear that the UN Security Council is unevenly ruled by 5 Permanent global economic and nuclear powers not representing anymore (if they ever had) the actual state and need of the world.
From at least two decades the international community is rising the issue of a necessary change as the P5 post WWII asset does not maintain actual peace: though prevented a third World War, so far, US, UK, France, China and Russia are mirroring in the General Assembly interest, and strategic vetoes, making us all pay with local or regional wars the price of a spared global conflict: they are selling the global peace in change of their shared global power enforced through the nuclear deterrent.
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Clearly, an inclusion of India and Brazil is the next step forward, but this is not expected in the foreseeable future. The south of the globe is being still kept out.
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The stop from US yesterday to a UN declaration and condemnation of this late Gaza crisis on Tuesday created alarm as violence is not de-escalating. Both Israel and Hamas asked for a UN condemnation of the attacks which they blame each other for.
A new UN Security Council will meet this Sunday 16 May to discuss the crisis in Israel and Palestinian territories. We don't expect more than words.
P5: the UN formula that doesn't guarantee peace
Gaza under Israeli siege as tonight clashes escalate to war