Labour Oldham Council and MP’s Debbie Abrahams & Michael Meacher’s shameless cynical attempt at vote gathering & appeasing the religious masses by flying the peace flag for Gaza over the civic centre and delivering a petition to Downing Street needs to be addressed, so here goes. Let’s start with common ground and say that anyone, any-faith or any group inflicting violence upon another other than in self-defence when life & limb are in peril should have their actions considered an aberration of human behaviour and every decent person has a duty to speak against it. There are currently 10 wars in which over a thousand people have died in a twelve month period and an additional 8 military conflicts around the world so Oldham politicians & communities choosing just one conflict to champion their humanity is arrogant and belies discriminatory undertones. In July 2014 at a full Council meeting the new Labour Mayor’s Imam delivered the pre-meeting prayers where he said as part of prayers “help those who are suffering & facing difficulties in all parts of the world especially Palestine” Not an exceptable statement to make and I can only imagine what uproar would have resulted in prayers that specified Israel. Oldham politicians need to stop pandering to religious communities and deal with human beings from all cultures on an equal humanitarian real world basis. Flying the peace flag for Gaza & the flag of sexist, authoritarian, homophobic religiously oppressive & violent Pakistan a week later to celebrate their independence anniversary shows the Labour Party’s prejudice and inability to say no. Whether it is the murdered families of Gaza or the 1000 victims of crassly titled honour killings every year in Pakistan, it is religion masquerading as divine culture that causes divisions & excuses the pious and their group superiority complex their crimes of genocide & murder.