Harry's Place

I won’t be watching, but knock yourselves out.

My only observation is (without hearing their song), if these women don’t win, something is fundamentally wrong with the world:

Not being a Communist, my first impulse was to regard this letter to the Communist Party of Britain’s Morning Star as some kind of sly satire:

I agree with George Hickman (M Star May 13) that articles on gardening, cooking etc are a needless distraction from the serious business of industrial and community activism.

Lenin himself would have agreed.

In his famous speech in the Ruzheinaya Square in July 1920, Lenin denounced the trivia and distractions employed by the bourgeoisie in their attempts to divert the proletariat from their historic mission.

He described these distractions – in a term that has become famous – as "momentary interests."

The Star should concentrate on industrial disputes and community activism. Including articles on cooking and gardening might "broaden the appeal" of the paper but this would have the effect of diluting its message. This would be blatant Martovism.

Martov tried to change the party from an organisation of professional revolutionaries to a "broad, flexible" party that any Tom, Dick or Harry could join.

And had he succeeded, there would never have been a revolution or a USSR – and would reduce the paper to just one more lifestyle magazine.

Peter Cole
Sudbury

But the more I study the letter, the more I suspect, with a shudder, that the writer is entirely serious.

(Julius Martov was leader of the democratic socialist Menshevik party during the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks banned the Mensheviks and other opposition parties during the Russian civil war, and Martov died in exile.)

Anyway it’s an excuse to link to George Orwell’s essay “A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray“:

The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil. A year or two ago I wrote a few paragraphs in TRIBUNE about some sixpenny rambler roses from Woolworth’s which I had planted before the war. This brought me an indignant letter from a reader who said that roses are bourgeois, but I still think that my sixpence was better spent than if it had gone on cigarettes or even on one of the excellent Fabian Research Pamphlets.

Recently, I spent a day at the cottage where I used to live, and noted with a pleased surprise–to be exact, it was a feeling of having done good unconsciously–the progress of the things I had planted nearly ten years ago.

…The fruit trees, which were mere saplings when I put them in, are now just about getting in their stride. Last week one them, a plum, was a mass of blossom, and the apples looked as if they were going to do fairly well. What had originally been the weakling of the family, a Cox’s Orange Pippin–it would hardly have been included in the job lot if it had been a good plant–had grown into a sturdy tree with plenty of fruit spurs on it. I maintain that it was a public-spirited action to plant that Cox, for these trees do not fruit quickly and I did not expect to stay there long. I never had an apple off it myself, but it looks as if someone else will have quite a lot. By their fruits ye shall know them, and the Cox’s Orange Pippin is a good fruit to be known by. Yet I did not plant it with the conscious intention of doing anybody a good turn. I just saw the job lot going cheap and stuck the things into the ground without much preparation.

(Hat tip: Brian)

This is a guest post by Brian Henry

A recent high-level United Church of Canada report recommends that the United Church should confirm its hostility to Israel. Written by three prominent United Church officials, the Report of the Working Group on Israel/Palestine Policy endorses Palestinian “resistance” to Israeli occupation.

The church officials do specify that such resistance should be non-violent, but as with much in their report, the call for non-violence means less than it might.

I’ve never worried about United Church ministers strapping on suicide vests and blowing up busses in Jerusalem. But while officially condemning such violence on the part of Palestinians, the United Church also vigorously promotes the Palestinian Kairos Document. Written by Palestinian Christians, the Kairos Document explicitly okays terrorism, calling it “legal resistance.” (More on the Kairos Document here.)

Do ordinary members of the United Church share the anti-Israel obsession of the clique at the top? Not at all. And I think they’d be appalled if they noticed what their leaders were up to.

In the most offensive paragraphs, the report compares the Palestinians to Holocaust victims. Usually, such comparisons come from obvious antisemites. In this case, I think the church officials are simply so self-absorbed, so wrapped up in anti-Israel politics, so shuttered from reality that they’re unaware of their offensiveness, like a four-year-old who’s overheard the word ‘nigger’ and admires his own cleverness as he runs about shouting it.

On the plus side, the report does notice that the BDS movement – the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel – “sometimes” crosses the line to “delegitimize Israel’s existence,” which the church rejects.

Unfortunately, this again means less than it might. Because in truth, the only point of the BDS movement is to delegitimize Israel.

The BDS movement is purely a propaganda offensive. It has no economic effect and never will. Yet the report recommends joining the BDS movement through a boycott of Israel, specifically of “all products produced in the settlements.”

Does this mean that the United Church will boycott Agrexco, which exports agricultural products from the West Bank? The British BDS movement does – even though the Palestinians are 100 per cent dependent on Agrexco and similar Israeli companies to export their olives and other agricultural products.

While acting in a way that would crush Palestinian farmers if their efforts were successful, the boycotters get to tell themselves they’re fighting the evil Israelis. And this is what the United Church wants to be part of.

The report claims to take “seriously questions about why Israel is the only country in the world being challenged by a global BDS movement.”

Seriously? The report’s rationalizations are laughably thin. It notes that the Israeli occupation has lasted a long time. Well, yes, ever since 1967 when Jordan invaded Israel and Israel occupied the West Bank in its counter-attack.

Israel has a claim to this territory, which Israelis know as Judea and Samaria, but rather than unilaterally exercising its claim, Israel has maintained a perfectly legal defensive occupation while waiting for the Arabs to negotiate.

In 1994, Jordan finally signed a peace treaty with Israel. But Jordan also renounced its claim to the West Bank in favour of the Palestinians, who haven’t been so reasonable.

With the exception of United Church officials, everyone familiar with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict knows that Israel has offered several comprehensive peace plans, but that the Palestinians have refused them all and made no counter offers.

The United Church’s report calls for an end to the occupation. Fine. But talk to the Palestinians. They won’t even discuss peace. And the United Church report doesn’t suggest they ought to.

By way of rationalizing its singling out of Israel, the report also argues that Israel is a democracy, and therefore, should be held to a higher standard than the autocracies that surround it. To me, this seems rather hard on the downtrodden people of the region.

Syrians are being slaughtered in the thousands by their despotic ruler. But the United Church’s stance is that Syria isn’t a democracy, so too bad for the Syrians.

Or what about the Palestinians of Gaza? Ruled by the despotic fanatics of Hamas, Gazans have no free speech or free press and face arrest for crimes such as dressing immodestly.

Does the United Church find this problematic? Apparently not.

The territory is ruled by a terrorist group that’s not just dedicated to destroying Israel, but openly proclaims its goal is genocide against the Jews.

Will the United Church boycott Gaza? Not a chance.

Instead, the United Church proposes boycotting Israel – because it’s a democracy. Well, so is Canada! Also, like Israel, Canada has a long-standing dispute over land claims: Israel with the Palestinians, ours with First Nations. Also, like Israel, Canada is trying to negotiate a settlement.

Seems to me that these similarities make Canada a perfect target for a United Church boycott. Unless of course the United Church really is boycotting Israel just because it’s a Jewish state.

P.S. At least one United Church minister, Rev. Andrew Love, is trying to counter his church’s anti-Israel stance. (See here.)

This piece was previously published in the Jewish Tribune. Brian Henry is a writer and editor living in Toronto. He blogs sporadically here.

Ben White is a freelance writer, who has argued that Ahmadinejad did not deny the Holocaust, when Ahmadinejad claimed:

“They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets.”

Ben White asserts that Ahmadinejad is correct to describe the Holocaust as a “myth“.

Ben White recommends the writings of Roger Garaudy on Zionism, on p.162 of White’s first book Israeli Apartheid: A Beginners’ Guide, in the ’select bibliography’.

Roger Garaudy categorically states that gas chambers were not used to kill Jews. Garaudy thinks that the number of 6 million Jews killed is a “myth“.

When antisemites are arrested for trying to kill Jews in their synagogues in the USA, Ben White think’s their arrest is a “threat to our freedoms.”

Ben White also claims to “understand” antisemitism. He boasts:

I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are. There are, in fact, a number of reasons.

In addition to his ‘I’m-not-a-racist-but’ equation, Ben White then listed 3 main reasons for antisemitism, blaming Jews for 2 of them. Ben White himself acknowledges that, if you start to understand why some people are racist, you begin to justify racism, and then to accept it.

Ben White is a justifier of racism.

This justifier of racism, is now writing articles about why you should boycott the Israeli theatre company, Habima, because they have performed in West Bank settlements. Ben White claims in the New Statesman that there are:

“specific reasons for the Habima boycott call, namely that the company performs in illegal West Bank settlements – colonies that form a key part of Israel’s apartheid regime”.

Previously, Ben White wanted to force BT to boycott the Israeli phone company Bezeq, for connecting Israeli citizens with religious settlers in the West Bank. To justify this, Ben White linked to a Haaretz article about Bezeq, which also showed that the settlers could use Facebook, not just Bezeq. Then, Ben White did not call for a boycott of Facebook, just Bezeq.

BT commendably dismissed Ben White’s view on a boycott of Bezeq. The Globe Theatre will also dismiss Ben White’sview on a boycott of Habima.

Who is taking Ben White seriously?

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, of course, who have posted a link on Facebook, urging people to read Ben White on why boycotting Habima is the right step.

Here’s the irony:

Ben White is an individual who claims not to be an antisemites, but understands why some people are. Meanwhile, the PSC is an organisation which claims to oppose antisemitism, but is riddled with antisemites.

Habima performing The Merchant of Venice in London, in the Hebrew language, is an excellent idea. The boycotters ought not to derail this important event. The ideological justification for their campaign, comes from Ben White.

Ben is “somewhat startled” that Antonio should hate Shylock. Ben does not hate Shylock himself, but understands why Antonio does. There are, in fact, a number of reasons.

It has been suggested, seeing as the topic has come up on more than one thread, that this issue deserves a post of its own. As you have probably read elsewhere, GCSE students sitting a religious studies exam, were asked: “Explain, briefly, why some people are prejudiced against Jews.”

I understand why some people found the question disturbing or offensive, but my own response is closer to that of Norman Geras.

It seems undeniable that some people are prejudiced against Jews.  Investigating causes, finding out about the tropes associated with Christian antisemitism for example,  is not the same as excusing or justifying the phenomenon – and can help guard against it.  It can help people translate a feeling that something is antisemitic into an intellectually cogent dissection of the precise reasons why it is antisemitic, which can be explained to others.

The Daily Mail headline distorted the question, hiding the fact that the setter , through the use of the word prejudice, is strongly steering people away from answers that simply reproduce bigotry.

Of course it is easy to imagine some uncomfortable answers, but it is easy to imagine uncomfortable answers on all sorts of other ethical and political issues: Islam, race, gender, sexuality.  I’m sure the question could have been better worded. (Is ‘explain the roots of antisemitism in Western Europe’ better, less emotive?) And so, surely, could this apparently real question: ‘”homosexuality is a sin”’ Discuss’.

The IUF is inviting signatures to a petition against human rights abuses in a Thailand shrimp factory which is also a major supplier to Walmart:

The workers, from Cambodia and Burma, protested the seizure of their passports by factory owners in Thailand. Police were called. Shots were fired.

It wasn’t just the passport seizure that incited the workers’ anger – it was management slashing wages again. Their wages already failed to cover the most basic needs, and this latest action put workers deeper into the factory’s debt. Many of them are still legally and financially trapped at the factory, victims of human trafficking.

This is not an isolated incident. Also in Thailand, workers at a pineapple factory recently held similar protests over wage reductions. There are now reports of human trafficking involving children under 15, bought and sold to work there. More than 73% of this factory’s shipments to the USA go to Walmart.

Here is a link to the petition.

In China, of course, tweeting messages that certain people don’t like can get you in a lot more trouble than it can in the UK.

In April 2011, retired forestry official Fang Hong posted a scatological tweet, mocking a powerful Chinese politician, Bo Xilai, the Chongqing party secretary.

Fang had been critical of Bo in the past. But last year, he was fired up by what he considered the injustice of a court case taken against lawyer Li Zhuang, who’d been defending an alleged gangster during Bo’s clampdown against the mafia. In the heat of his outrage, Fang posted his tweet, which also mocked the powerful police chief, Wang Lijun.

After that, Fang went out to buy vegetables and didn’t think about the tweet. He estimates only around 90 people saw it that day. But despite its limited influence, that night he was summoned to the Fuling public security bureau and asked to delete the tweet, which he did.

The next day, more than 20 police officers came to his house to arrest him.
…..
Without a trial, Fang was sent to a re-education-through-labor center for a year.

And yet another reminder for those of us in the West who serenely buy Chinese-made products:

When Fang was inside the camp, he worked for as many as 14 hours a day. Initially he made Christmas tree lights for export to Germany.

“A skilled worker at the company welds 4,300 lights a day, but we welded 6,500 lights a day each,” he says. “If you didn’t finish, you weren’t allowed to eat meat, buy cigarettes or sleep at night, and your sentence might be extended. We earned one U.S. dollar, 25 cents a month.”

Those who did not make their quota were sometimes even beaten, he says, with the pressure rising in the summer when orders had to be filled for export in time for Christmas. Later he made wiring for laptop computers.

At Socialist Unity (or should I say “Corporatist Unity”?), Andy Newman wrote:

The difficult task for socialists today is to envisage how to make transformative change in a globalised world where the power of multi-national corporations is outwith the reach of state sovereignty.

The tasks before us are how we acheive sustainable economic growth, which requires a model for finding a win-win relationship between a left government exercising economic and political sovereignty on the one hand, and private multi-national corportations on the other. China has shown this can be done.

Well, yes, I suppose you could say that.

Unfortunately the folks at SU have decided they don’t want us linking to them anymore. If you click on the Socialist Unity link under “Stoppers” in the lefthand column, you’ll see what I mean.

So you’ll have to copy and paste if you want to see the original:

http://www.socialistunity.com/lessons-bradford-west-labour-respect-debate/#comment-606878

A reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, located in the vaults and kindly sent in a copy of the Young Liberal Songbook from September 1967. They correctly assessed that I would find it of interest. I copy below a song from that book ridiculing the Labour Party for a perceived inability to get rid of Trotskyist infiltrators. “Harold” was the then prime minister and Leader of the Labour Party, Harold Wilson. “George” was the then Foreign Secretary and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, George Brown. I hope some of you are amused as I was.

THERE’S A TROT IN OUR PARTY

Tune: There’s a Hole in My Bucket

There’s a Trot in our party, dear Harold, dear Harold,
There’s a Trot in our party, dear Harold, a Trot.
Then expel him dear George, dear George, dear George.
With what shall I expel him, dear Harold, dear Harold?
With a block vote, dear George, dear George, dear George.
And where shall I find it, dear Harold, dear Harold?
In the unions, dear George, dear George, dear George.
But union leaders are elected, dear Harold, dear Harold.
Then rig the elections, dear George, dear George.
With what shall I rig them, dear Harold, dear Harold?
With Catholic action, dear George, dear George, dear George.
And where shall I find it, dear Harold, dear Harold?
In Glasgow, dear George, dear George, dear George.
But that’s where the Trots are, dear Harold, dear Harold.

Source:

Mary Green and Michael Steed (compilers), After The Count Was Over: Young Liberal Song Book, (Salisbury Young Liberals, September 1967), p2.

No, of course Kerry McCarthy didn’t mean it, but – WTF?

She wrote: “Oaf on train drinking lager and playing techno music out loud. Everyone being very British about it and not complaining.”

She then described how he was wearing a T-shirt with an offensive message about his sexual prowess, adding: “Should have killed him when we had the chance before he could breed.”

She has explained that the tweet was ‘obviously flippant’.  So that’s all right then.

Here’s an apology in today’s JC:

On May 13 2011, we published an article entitled “Pears funded charity which hosted jihadist” which related to the Pears Foundation, a charity called Forward Thinking, and an individual called Tafazal Mohammed.

We have since accepted that Mr Mohammed is not a jihadist and have apologised to him, the Pears Foundation and Forward Thinking for this error. It follows that there was no basis for linking Forward Thinking’s director, Mr McTernan, to any jihadist. We apologise to Mr McTernan for the distress caused.

This is a lie.

The entire purpose of Forward Thinking is to advance the cause of jihadist groups from the Middle East. Have a look through our archives, and you’ll see.  In particular, these three items.

Forward Thinking is run by Oliver McTernan – an ex-Catholic priest whose interests include having sex with women and helping jihadist groups which want to kill Jews.

I was told an interesting story by a prominent pro-peace individual who had spoken on platforms with Forward Thinking. He stopped when it became clear to him that this was not simply an organisation which supported peace talks with Hamas. It actually supported Hamas, itself.

The problem with British libel laws is that it allows public figures and those engaged in high level political campaigning – like Oliver McTernan – to force small poor, small circulation newspapers to withdraw allegations which are transparently and demonstrably true.

Why?

Because if you sue – particularly on a “no win no fee basis” – it will almost always be cheaper to settle than to fight to trial: even if you win.

Claimants know this. They therefore routinely fire off letters before action, with the sole intention of preventing critical coverage of their activities. The worse you behave, the greater the opportunity to cry “libel” when your conduct is reported.

This is “Lawfare”: the use of litigation by supporters of extreme and vicious politics to advance their disgraceful cause.