Harry’s Place

Read all about it in tomorrow’s Guardian …. Not …..

Not sure, but it could be something like:

‘ “Zionist” infiltrated teachers union, peaceful re-education plan initiated by the glorious resistance, Hamas ‘

or ‘ despicable “Zionist” Mind Control Ray(tm) causes teachers to clash with Hamas ‘?

Socialist Worker headlines:

Harry’s Place to blame for unrest in Gaza. David Duke reporting….

Can anybody on the left support wars and occupations? It reminds me of when Mussolini invaded the Balkans. (I had to resist the Godwin prophecy)

Hi Flanker. Yes, the left can support wars and occupations. I hope this has cleared this up for you.

Nope they cannot. That is why you are lepers, and the mainstream left hates you.

You are insignificant based on your support of the Iraq war, all you have is a bully pulpit.

Can anyone explain how Hamas has hundreds (or thousands?) of qualified teachers sitting around ready to be slotted into positions like this?

Hamas:qualified teachers::US:Iraqis with flowers.

I doubt Hamas has teachers ready to go in the Western sense of a Teacher. Perhaps they have plenty of religious scholars ready to go. It will be interesting to see whether this story is picked up in the Left. I note that the case of Mansour Ossanlu in Iran and his arrest and imprisonment went largely unreported as well. Who would have ever thought that the Left would side with Islamist fundamentalists who stand for everything against what the Left should hold as fundamental beliefs.

Come on, anybody who supports Hamas through all their terrorism including suicide bombing of civilians and the gorification of such atrocities are not going to be put off by some strike breaking. Hamas supporters are utterly impervious to reason. You can not expect any facts to change them.
Thanks though for posting about this, Gene. It is not likely to change any Hamas supporters from their path of the true believer.

Have to remember that whoever is an enemy of the US is an ally of the old pro-communist Left. Islamic Extremists mouthing vile anti-Semitic hate slogans and beheading people on film are their beloved anti-imperialist allies.

It is in the best interests of islamism, that the children of Gaza grow up to be helpless, hopeless, ignorant unemployable and violent. This is a great way to do it. They get to scupper education and employment rights at a stroke. Heaven forbid that they should ever start to build a functional civil society, or a healthy economy. Their arab neighbours would be livid to see their attack dogs starting to embrace civilisation.

Flanker
Your cynicism aside, even you would have to admit that this can only have a disastrous impact on the quality of education being supplied to the children of Gaza and its long term impact will be devastating for Palestinian society.

Reminds me of El Comandante’s smashing of the PDVSA maintenance workers in 2002. There’s nothing the ‘left’ like more than someone who takes a hard line on industrial relations.

Btw, can anyone let us know if the UCU are now considering a boycott of Gaza’s political leadership and education sector due to these events?

Oniad - To be fair to the Union movement though it is they that are the flag carriers of the international left. It is they that work constantly on international solidarity projects and continue to highlight injustices throughout the world. I do not think you can cast a black mark on the UCU as a whole by the actions of one of its members (or those who defend her).

in fairness, many of today’s faux “anti-imperialists” are not experienced in trade unionism or seem to care much about it

Flanker is but one example, he’s a rich kid in Venezuela who shouts El commandante’s propaganda and has never really belong to a trade union, best to ignore him.

most genuine trade unionists would support the teachers in Gaza, Labour Start has a fair bit on Gaza and Hamas’s stream of attacks on workers.

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/show_news.pl?country=Palestine

It’s a self correcting problem. In a few years literacy in Gaza will be illegal and the only people left to build rockets and IEDs will have to do it from memory.

If the videos on tv teaching kids to write suicide notes, celebrating mass murder and promoting genocidal hatred weren’t problems, why should union busting be?

If torturing gays to death wasn’t a problem, if killing women for any public displays of affection wasn’t a problem…

I don’t know. Where I live there is no left that should be called a left anymore. Did anyone unionize the high tech industry when it was big? No. Is anyone unionizing biotech? No.

People from Europe don’t believe me when I tell them how many hours Americans work… There is no left.

So I guess it’s the same in Europe. The shell that’s called “left” is just a fancy name for conspiracy theorists and antisemites. There is no left.

Joshua Scholar - I cannot comment on your own circumstances but Unions have tried to organise in new industries. It has been difficult and Governments have gone out of their way to make it increasingly difficult for Unions to operate.

“Can anyone explain how Hamas has hundreds (or thousands?) of qualified teachers sitting around ready to be slotted into positions like this?”

You are obviously assuming that all the ousted Fatah teachers were qualified.

Strikebreaking is strikebreaking, if done by Hamas, Fatah or Zionism.

The left and the right are like drunks, only revolutionary socialism represents sobriety.

Anyone mention “Peace” and a “Palestinian State”?

Do the leftist antisemites realise there is no peace partner for Israel? Do they think that if Israel withdrew its security from around Gaza and West Bank that Hamas and Fatah would join hands and fly doves of peace.

The only “Peace Deal” they need is the one between those two fractures called West Bank and Gaza - or Hamastan and Fatahland. THEY are the ones who need a peace deal otherwise there won’t be a Palestinian State.

And while Hamas accelerates towards indoctrinating its children with hate, like the Hitler Youth, then I can’t see anything positive happeniong until someone invades Gaza and destroys Hamas.

Until then we will get Fatah and Christians persecuted by Hamas and their preparations for war. Don’t doubt they will want bigger and more powerful rockets to attack Israel.

Aren’t they supposed to be following The Roadmap?

When peple like UCU support Palestinians do they have any idea WHICH Palestinians they are supporting?

“Can anybody on the left support wars”, asks Flanker - from which I presume that he must be a) a Quaker, or (much more likely) b) completely ignorant of the history of the left prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Does he really imagine that that the left should not have mobilised support for the Spanish Republic in the 1930s, - including the sending of International Brigades to fight on the Republican side? Does he think the European left should just have rolled over when faced with Nazi aggression? Does he think the Vietnamese were wrong to mount an armed resistance to first French, and later American imperialism? Should the people of the Portuguese colonies in Africa just have waited for fascism to fall in Lisbon, rather than giving it a push through their anti-colonial wars?

There are perfectly valid reasons fro opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but these have nothing to do with a general opposition to all wars, which is quite alien to the mainstream left´s traditions.

As for the subject of this thread, I note that some of the crazier comments on Lenin´s Tomb, and several other blogs, during the UCU/Jenna Delich controversy, accused Harry´s Place of being “anti-union”. So it will interesting to see if they show any more solidariry with Gaza teachers than they did with Tehran bus workers.

And…..

Where are the activists urging peace between Hamas and Fatah? Where are they urging some return to democratic rule whereby the West Bank and Gaza are under different political rule? Where are they condemning Hamas for shooting Fatah people in hospital beds or throwing them from the roofs of buildings? Isn’t THIS the ‘murder of Palestinians” ‘ that that they mistakenly throw at Israel?

You are right. Where is the Trades Union solidarity with Gaza teachers. Is it that they refuse to release their children for military indoctrination? Maybe they are actually trying to educate their children.

But hang on! Does this mean schools are open? The lights are on? The children aren’t so weak from starvation that they can go to school?

Palestinian Propaganda myths busted again!

So it will interesting to see if they show any more solidariry with Gaza teachers than they did with Tehran bus workers.

Ah, but Hamas must be right in this dispute. Anyone who is antisemitic, hates Israel and who kills Israelis can’t be all that bad in their moral soup. Fatah who are actually trying to negotiate peace are obviously Zionist stooges who deserve everything they get.

do they have any idea WHICH Palestinians they are supporting?

Well given the leaked comments from the more vociferous of the antizionists on the UCU Activist list (for example Jennacide D and her apologists), apparently no question of which Palestinians to support and which to oppose, nor for that matter a question of which Zionists to support and which to oppose are even possible, because all Palestinians everywhere and at all times are “innocents” being subjected to a “genocide” by a monolithic state of Israeli racist murderers.

Flanker is like an ex living in your front garden with a megaphone, constantly shouting: “I don’t care about you. I’ve forgotten you, you know!”

because all Palestinians everywhere and at all times are “innocents” being subjected to a “genocide” by a monolithic state of Israeli racist murderers.

We should be awarding HP t-shirts to the first poster to come up with one of these:-

“Israel created Hamas”

“But Israel ignores The Roadmap”

“But Hamas are the elected Govt of the Palestinians”

“Gaza is under a sige reminiscent of the Warsaw Ghetto”

“Palestinians are murdered every day by the racist, apartheid, genocidist, ethnic-cleansing Israelis”

The left and the right are like drunks, only revolutionary socialism represents sobriety.

I disagree with your sloganeering Mr. Eye. I’d say it’s the anti-political, revolutionary socialists themselves, their vanguards and foot soldiers that need to be marginalized and tossed out of positions of power in unions before there can be a glimmer of hope for a sober social democracy.

‘Can anybody on the left support wars and occupations?’

Pseudo-leftists have had no problems excusing Russia’s recent adventure in Georgia.

Do you support anti-union activity, Flanker? And can you explain to us how Bush had his Reichstag burned?

re: how bush had his reichstag burned

the idiot means 911. But i guess the comparison is apt, for Hitler didn’t have anything to do with the reichstag fire, though he exploited it to rid himself of the pesky opposition. of course the analogy is entirely false, since the Patriot Act is hardly the “enabling act” that hitler got passed in the wake of the reichstag fire to silence and then murder his political opponents. In one way i wish the comparison were apt, since it would be interesting to see how the “night of long knives” would have played out among republicans. oh well.

as many have said, 911 was an OUTSIDE job.

cheers

Antisemitism is a core value of the grand alliance that makes the far left feel relevant. No matter how warped or obnoxious the rhetoric or actions
of bigots the movement trumps all.

Students of the American far left will recall in the 60’s how the far left worshiped the Black Panthers. There were plenty of responsible leaders working in the Black community. However, the far left made a drug pushing street gang that shook down prostitutes as their poster boys.
No amount of logic or facts about the actual criminal activities of the Black Panthers made their apologists rethink the facts. A group that dealt drugs and killed Blacks ran a few breakfast programs. I am certain
your average organized criminal was often generous to charity, but it didn’t change who they are.

The current group of lefties remain willfully oblivious to the most outlandish expressions of antisemitism. The grand alliance demands that
all the misdeeds of the sacred cause be glossed over. If Israel and the Jews disappeared they would be reduced to protesting poultry abuse at KFC or legalizing pot with some Bill and Ted types. Antisemitism serves
as a force multiplier for some irrelevant opportunistic people with warped ideas.

oops. i looked and realized that “flanker” never talked about the reichstag here, though S&A seemed to be responding to just such a comment. oh well. In searching for the quote, however, i did come up with another doozy. apparently flanker has no idea what a bully pulpit actually is. He seems to think it’s an empty platform where all you can do is bully. WRONG. The term was invented (i believe) by U.S. president Teddy Roosevelt, who said he would use his office as a “bully pulpit” to effect change in the U.S. Someone correct me if i’m wrong, please. cheers.

Hi Flanker.

You asked whether anybody on the left could support war and occupation. The answer is yes. Many on the left throughout history have supporter both of these, sometimes correctly and sometimes misguidedly.

Perhaps you are under the impression that the left is inherently and historically isolationist, pacifist and supporting of westphalian sovereignty. If so, you are misguided. If fact, this combination is much more historically connected with the right.

Again, I hope this clarifies things for you and look forward to any further questions you have with which I may be of assistance.

vildechaye

S & A was referring to Flanker’s notorious comment

Then why do you (HP) support your dictators? I mean Bush was one when he lost the popular vote and had his Reichstag burned.

He has never provided an explanation.

Mark T:

I don’t think Flanker needed to explain. He chose his comparators such that the implication is beyond doubt: Flanker believes that 9/11 was staged by Bush’s government and/or their associates, and that there is no such thing as Islamist terrorism except as a figment, a bogeyman invented by the West. Whether he thinks, like David Duke and pals, that the Jews were involved in this 9/11 staging he has not elucidated as far as I know. Perhaps I shall ask him.

Flanker, in the staging of 9/11, do you believe Mossad or any other Israeli/Jewish organisation was involved, or do you think that Bush did this on his own, without consultation or prodding from the Jewish Lobby?

Post, I meant that whenever the subject of that comment has been raised, he has not addressed it.

I suspect that he might actually be embarrassed about how much of his lunacy slipped out.

Hi Mark,

I note that it seems to be becoming increasingly acceptable on the mainstream to posit 9/11 conspiracy theories. With that in mind, perhaps Flanker now feels willing to discuss further his beliefs that 9/11 was staged by Bush and/or the Jews.

Re - “For this, leftists and labor activists around the world rightly denounced Reagan as a union buster”

Reagan could fire the air traffic controllers because they were striking illegally. He was right to do so. The way democracy works is that the power to govern is passed to representatives elected by all the citizens. This is does not include union leaders who attempt to hold the country to ransom purportedly in the interests of their members.

I thought Harry’s Place comprehended this.

“Can anybody on the left support wars and occupations?”

Cretin

“The way democracy works is that the power to govern is passed to representatives elected by all the citizens.” Not absolute power - remember the tyranny of the majority stuff.

Most democrats, and pretty much all those on the left-liberal continum below the the powers of a democratically elected government are - or ought to be - limited in the sense that they may not infrige the civil rights of the citizens. Democratically elected governments are not legitimatised in, for example, supressing the freedom of the press. Obviously the extent to which the right to strike is a human / civil right is a very difficult issue, but conceptually it is not enough to say Reagan was democratically elected so that is OK.

The other point is that in most democracies only a minority of adults actually voted for the govering party / president.

Government limited by constitutional checks and balances, not absolute, yes of course.

Reagan was right not because he was elected. That would make Hamas right. He was right because the strike was illegal and he therefore he had the legal right to fire them, or threaten to fire them, if they did not return to work.

Democracy relies on people voting in order to establish who will be accountable for the exercise of the power allowed to governments.

No system of representation is perfect but nonetheless we understand how it works and at some level accept its limitations based on the fact that no better system of providing accountability exists.

Strikebreaking is strikebreaking, if done by Hamas, Fatah or Zionism.

Can you give some examples of strikebreaking by “Zionism”?

We all know what Hamas can do to people that really tick them off. I take this as the next level in an escalating threat.

“We knew where you worked, we know where you live.”

Now they are no longer a recognisable group they can be terrorised as individuals. Unions were created to stop this.

UCU will probably find some twisted logic to blame Israel for this. The trauma of the “occupation” etc.

Of course, this is because reality is not important to hardened anti-Zionists. Israel already get demonised despite being one of the few liberal democraies in this crazy violent world - Hamas get a free pass, despite the violence, misogyny, homophobia and other hallmarks of Islamofascism.

What this state of affairs shows us, beyond any argument, is that your Sue Blackwell’s don’t give a flying fuck about good or bad, right or wrong. They just hate the you-know-whews and their homeland.

So Hamas ban a teaching union. The UCU crowd couldn’t give a shit. Israel could give every Paleo a billion quid and 99/100ths of the land and they’d still be campaigning against the last 1%. Hamas could order the federal rape of all barnyard animals and the left would blame Israel.

At least the far right are honest about their antisemitism. It takes the hypocrisy demonstrated by reaction to events like this to show the left’s abject lack of political or social concern. To show that they, like the far right, just hate Jews.

Here goes for a piece of obscure Jewish labour history: Regarding strikebreaking by Zionism - yes, in the 1930s there were a series of strikes by the Histadrut which were broken using recent immigrants from the Betar youth movement as scabs. The Betar people in turn claimed that they had been unfairly discriminated by the Histadrut and therefore prevented from finding employment. Anyway, things got quite heated for a while, with Ben-Gurion bringing the old Hashomer leader Yisrael Shochat out of retirement to form a strong arm squad based on the Hapoel sports federation which did battle with the Betar people. One of the places in which this epic clash of minnows took place was called the Frumkin biscuit factory, if my memory serve me well.

Oh dear. I have just been banned for mentioning the plight of the Palestinian trade unionists on Lenin’s Tomb. I wonder why he would prefer it weren’t mentioned?

John M,

to be expected really?

the SWP don’t like debates that they can’t control, count yourself lucky that they don’t have access to guns, or most of us would probably be “up against the wall” :(

Andy Newman’s rather good on them:

“163. Michael

Comment by Andy Newman — 29 August, 2008 @ 4:30 pm”

http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=2766

spot on

Here goes for a piece of obscure Jewish labour history: Regarding strikebreaking by Zionism - yes, in the 1930s there were a series of strikes by the Histadrut which were broken using recent immigrants from the Betar youth movement as scabs. The Betar people in turn claimed that they had been unfairly discriminated by the Histadrut and therefore prevented from finding employment. Anyway, things got quite heated for a while, with Ben-Gurion bringing the old Hashomer leader Yisrael Shochat out of retirement to form a strong arm squad based on the Hapoel sports federation which did battle with the Betar people. One of the places in which this epic clash of minnows took place was called the Frumkin biscuit factory, if my memory serve me well.

Weiss, thanks for that interesting bit of history. But it ought to be emphasized that in that instance both the strikers and the strikebreakers were Zionists.

I go away to DisneyWorld, Florida for a week and when I come back all hell has broken out!!! I see Johng piously says that communications between unionist activists should not be discussed by non-union members as in the nutty FE lecturer from Sheffield case, I’d like to know what he thinks about this wholesale sacking of teachers by Hamas. It did occur to me while I was in DisneyWorld, that it’s a great, big shame that the real world isn’t like Disney. At least the trams run on time and there is no litter. I tried to access ‘Harry’s Place’ from DisneyQuest, their interactive attraction, but the computer wouldn’t let me, I now know it must have been during your little problem. I did notice that it gave around 1,600,000 hits for Harry’s Place on the Google toolbar. I don’t know if that means internationally or just from Disney Quest.

Gene - you are of course correct to clarify this.

Sue R. The I programmed the control computers on the virtual raft ride at Disney Quest.

Sue R @ 29 August 2008, 5:15 pm

“It did occur to me while I was in DisneyWorld, that it’s a great, big shame that the real world isn’t like Disney”

Imagine Ronald Reagan making a speech about “a city where everyone is happy, there is no crime and a mouse can lie down with cat. But it is not a myth. It exsits in the United States today, and it is called….
Disneyand”

“a mouse can lie down with cat.”

Minnie might have something to say about that.

And following on from Josh’s comment, I have to share with you the only Mickey Mouse joke I’ve got:

Mickey and Minnie were going through a divorce, and as it went to the courts, it was a typical Hollywood divorce - nasty, acrimonious, with no-holds-barred by either side’s legal team. It was Mickey’s turn in the witness stand, and Minnie’s lawyer just went for him.

‘Mr Mouse, I put it to you that you had an abusive relationship with your wife’.

‘That’s not true’, Mickey squeaked, ‘I never, ever even laid a finger on Minnie. I’d never do that’.

‘Well Mr Mouse’, the lawyer replied, ‘There are other forms of abuse other than physical violence. I’m talking about mental and emotional abuse. Verbal abuse intended to undermine the victim’s esteem and sense of self-worth’.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’.

‘Well, Mr Mouse, your wife recounts an occasion, during a heated argument, when you told her - in a harsh, cruel way - that she looked stupid and had buck teeth. How to you respond to that?’

The lawyer looks at Mickey with a smug sense of triumph. Mickey is momentarily stunned and confused, then there is a glint of recognition and understanding in his eyes, and he shouts:

‘That is NOT what I meant when I said she was fucking Goofy!!!!!’

I was working for Disney when that joke made the rounds

Almost as bad as the pro-occupation movement’s attempt to bust the UCU.

My twelve year old daughter spent the whole trip saying ‘Minnie Mouse is a hussy, she shows her pants’. I had to tell her to stop or we’d be thrown out. The cynicism of youth. As for the raft ride, good one Joshua. At one point I was thrown against my husband nearly knocking him out of the boat, and as this is the most physical contact we have had for ten years, he was rather shocked. I explained I was merely trying to sling him to the encircling alligators and he was reassured.

I won’t tell you what her sister said about Daisy Duck, who does not cover her nether regions at all!!!

It’s an old joke that Disney cartoons are full of incest. Mickey and Minnie are boy and girlfriend, yet they have the same last name. Also Donald doesn’t wear pants around his three young nephews, yet when he comes out of the shower he covers himself with a towel.

The UN has a slightly different take on this story:

“PA teachers strike in the Gaza strip
The new school year for PA schools began on 24 August. However, the Teachers’ Union in Ramallah has called upon teachers in Gaza to
strike for a period of one week to protest the Hamas de facto government decision to transfer approximately 30% of school head masters, and an unknown number of teachers, to schools in
other areas. Approximately 40% of PA teachers adhered to the strike call. In response, the de facto government contracted more than 3000 unemployed teachers, as well as secretaries and school guards, for a period of four months to replace those on strike. The strike has disrupted many schools, and caused confusion among
affected students.”

From the UN’s OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS - P r o t e c t i o n o f C i v i l i a n s W e e k l y R e p o r t
20-26 August 2008.

Mind you, OCHA continues to insist that Gaza is still part of the Occupied Territories, and the report does not diffierentiate substantially between Gaza and the West Bank. I doubt their take on anything happening there is particularly trustworthy.

Maybe not so much a different take as a different angle.