“Felix, does you friend who goes rabid about Israel not have a brain? Can s/he not do some basic research? Going on rabidly about Israel and not about other countries sounds anti-Semitic to me.”

No, she does have a brain and is most certainly not anti-semitic. She goes on rabidly, not only about Israel, but also about Bush, Berlusconi, Islamic fundamentalism. I think her prejudice about Israel is due to ignorance, as you say, not having done basic research. I could I think make some progress with her, but we don’t see each other that often. With similar friemds I have got them to the point where I have asked them, “Can YOU suggest an alternative way Israel could have reacted to Hamas?” At this point they switch off and say ‘they’ are all as bad as each other; we just don’t like people being killed and then they ask me not to bring up the subject again.

Yes, there is a lot of stupidity in otherwise intelligent people. Not only in the field of politics, there are truths which people fear to touch. It’s easier to have a scapegoat.

Anyone who reads HP has to be prepared to be hurt, and badly too. But facing the truths it reveals is more salutary then letting them fester on blindly.

What a mixed bagage we have in the ‘Left’ now and in the world in general.

I appreciated Mike S’s 11.16 pm letter.

Does he really imagine it was the international right that overthrew Pol Pot? Is he rewriting history so that the self-appointed champions of the free world, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, rode to the rescue in Phom Penh?

In reality it was a left wing government, the communist regime in Vietnam, that overthrew Pol Pot and put an end to the Cambodian genocide.

And for the next decade or so, the United States disgracefully ensured that the Pol Pot regime, though it no longer existed, continued to hold the seat of “Democratic Kampuchea” at the United Nations.

Of course. Leftists never criticise one another. [/bangs head against wall] FFS…

O.K. Marcus, what would you think if Conservative MP’s, past and present were to join a platform with the BNP, the KKK and the Ayrian Nation?
Be a bit pissed off wouldn’t you.
So what do you think if Labour MP’s, past and present were to join a platform with the Communists, Trotskists, Jihadists and your basic evil motherfuckers?

Tony Benn, StWC President, former Labour Party MP and Cabinet Minister
Katy Clark MP, Labour Party MP for Ayrshire North & Arran
Jeremy Corbyn, StWC officer, Labour Party MP for Islington North
Tam Dalyell, StWC Vice President, former Labour Party MP
George Galloway, StWC Vice-President, Former Labour Party MP, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.
Alice Mahon, StWC Vice President, former Labour Party MP
Vice-president CND and member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -
Andrew Murray, StWC chair, full-time ASLEF official, leading Communist Party of Britain member
Lindsey German, StWC convenor, Socialist Workers Party (SWP) Central Committee member, Respect candidate in the elections for Mayor of London
Chris Nineham, StWC officer, SWP Central Committee member
John Rees, StWC officer, SWP Central Committee member, Respect National Secretary
Salma Yaqoob, Birmingham City Councilor, Respect founding member
Kate Hudson, StWC officer, chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Caroline Lucas MEP, StWC Vice-President, Green Party of England and Wales
Keith Sonnet, StWC Vice-President, Deputy General Secretary of Unison
Tariq Ali, StWC Vice-President, anti-imperialist writer
Louise Christian, StWC Vice-President, Campaigning lawyer
Walter Wolfgang, StWC member, Vice-chair Labour CND,

Interesting then in the 1980s that it was lefty journalist Jon Pilger doing the most to condemn Pol Pot’s atrocities, while the right-wing governments of the US and UK still supported his seat in the UN, and allegedly supplied him with weapons.

“As New Labour have sold out the working classes, they really have very little political alternative these days and it’s hardly surprising (and very worrying) that they turn to the BNP when there’s no real (sane) socialist alternative out there.”
Weirdly, this is not a million miles for a particularly patronising strand of bourgeois labour thinking that I’ve encountered. That a falling labour vote represents a rump of working-class thinking that needs to be “salvaged” from the BNP. Despite all the evidence being that those people are going to the Lib Dems or the Tories.
We’re in tough times in the UK, but would I want to go back in to 1983 and Tory class warfare? Not in a million years.

Taking from the poor to give to the government’s billionaire mates – what’s not socialist about that?
Do get with the programme, it’s 2009 and if Brown and Darling say it’s socialist, it must be true! Just double your workload and stop criticising your betters.