Harry’s Place

You’ll remember that this is how 2009’s ongoing ramble-a-thon started on everybody’s favourite soap opera, the UCU Activists list:

I generally consider online “best blog” contests rather silly (unless Harry’s Place wins, of course), but this one is important.

Generation Y, authored by the brave and eloquent Cuban dissident Yoani Sanchez, is one of the finalists for Best Latino, Caribbean or South American Blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards.

Generation Y has previously won the 2008 Ortega y Gasset Prize
for Digital Journalism at the BOBs Award for Best Weblog. These honors are important because they let the the Cuban authorities know that the rest of the world is watching, thus giving Yoani and her blog just a bit more protection from the folks over at the Ministry of the Interior.

Go vote.

First Sean Penn interviews Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro for for a cover story in The Nation. Now Samuel J. Wurzelbacher (aka Joe The Plumber) is going to Israel as a war correspondent for pjtv.com, the video website of Pajamas Media, which seems to be sacrificing whatever credibility it might once have had.

When last heard from on the Middle East, JTP was agreeing with a McCain supporter that a vote for Obama was a vote for the death of Israel.

Here are some protesters at an anti-Israel rally in Eskişehir, Turkey.

Makes a nice change from No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish, doesn’t it?

The story is here and here, but unfortunately only in Turkish.

Here is a comment about it on an internet notice board.

Fascist,intolerant brainwashed wackos and their meaningless ignorancy and hatred at its best..Once again.

I found this article in Turkish Radikal and as a Turk i felt awful about it.These filthy artards attitude against Armenians and Jews disgust even Patriotic Turks like me.

Shame on them.

As for the article,it talks about an association in Turkish city of Eskisehir and it’s president saying Jews and Armenians cannot enter but dogs can,supposedly,he means to call them dogs.

Cute dog though!

(Hat tip AA)

In contrast to union activists with a perculiar obsession, the TUC is running a humanitarian campaign to help civilians in Gaza who are suffering in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas. Regardless of your views of the conflict, in particular the rights and wrongs of the various sides, it is a fact that Palestinian civilians are suffering. If you wish to donate, please click here.

We may not all be Hamas now, but we are all human.

All proceeds will be forwarded through the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) to support emergency humanitarian relief operations carried out by them in Gaza. All trade union relief operations are co-ordinated through Red Crescent in Jordan, Egypt and Gaza and focused on the identified needs of the people affected by the events. The first ITF-PGFTU humanitarian flight is due to leave for Gaza on 08 Jan 2009. The TUC supports an immediate ceasefire by both sides, and the pursuit of a political solution to the problems of the Middle East based on two states.

With thanks to DSTFW.

The image that came almost to define Obama’s campaign has found a home. The red, white and blue portrait of US President-elect Barack Obama, created by Los Angeles-based street artist Shepard Fairey, will become part of the permanent collection at the US National Portrait Gallery.

The BBC reports that curators at the Smithsonian Institution museum plan to hang it by Inauguration Day on January 20.

“What I think is so fascinating is the ubiquitous nature,” said Carolyn Carr, deputy director of the Portrait Gallery. “When people think of a portrait of Obama, they think of this image.”

Now Mr President elect tell us what you think about Gaza.

This is a guest post by Eamonn McDonagh of Z Word

We’ve already dealt with the ludicrous notion that Israel has acted disproportionately on numerous occasions. Let us now turn our attention to another argument that has been repeatedly used to criticize Israel in recent days and of which there’s a perfect example in this piece by Rami G. Khouri in El País.

Khouri says that Israeli politicians fail to realize that,

.. the more force and brutality that Israel uses against the Arabs the stronger their reaction will be, in the form of more effective resistance movements with more support from the population.

Think about that idea for a moment. The more damage and loss Israel causes to Hamas, for example, the stronger it becomes. If we follow this logic all the way home it would appear to mean that were Israel able to kill every last member of Hamas and destroy all its weapons, down to the last AK 47, then this would represent a defeat for Israel and victory for Hamas. Interesting notion, no?

Khouri would retort that what he means is that, were Israel able to destroy Hamas, it would indeed be a defeat for the Israelis; all it would be doing would be sowing the seeds for more efficient and ruthless resistance with greater popular support. But this doesn’t make any sense either. On what wells of ruthlessness, efficiency and support would a likely successor organization to Hamas be able to draw upon that Hamas itself has not been able to make use of?

There is talk here and there of a defeat for Hamas leading to favorable conditions for the growth of some sort of Palestinian version of Al Qaeda. I see no reason to think that this would occur, but if it did, what would there be to fear from it, that does not already have to be feared from Hamas?

Inflicting a smashing military defeat on insurgent organizations, provided that it is accompanied by a viable - not necessarily just or democratic - political strategy, tends to mean the end of serious resistance. Just look at Chechnya, Western Sahara and Tíbet. Not much evidence of renewed, more effective resistance in any of those places.

Inflicting a defeat on Hamas of sufficient proportions to make Gaza as docile as Chechnya is well within Israel’s military capabilities. It’s not going to happen though. The Israeli public doesn’t have the stomach for either the casualities on its own side or the mass slaughter of Palestinians that would be necessary to achieve it. Oh, and if you think that mass slaughter is exactly what Israel has been inflicting on Gaza in recent days, then you haven’t been paying much attention to world history over recent decades.

Hamas exudes the will to destroy Israel and all who live in it from every last pore of its collective body. Israel has the means to crush Hamas but only the will to deliver hard jabs and the occasional uppercut. There’s no chance of a knee in the groin followed by a few hard kicks to the head. Regardless of the forthcoming ceasefire, the conflict is thus certain to go on. This is to be both deplored and welcomed.

On the UCU Activists List, 2009 began with a polite request:

Can I make a personal plea, notwithstanding what is going on in the world, that 2009 sees this list more focussed on supporting activists in their activities representing members? We have challenging economic circumstances inside and outside of HE/FE. In HE we have just had the RAE results, which may just be the excuse some institutions have been waiting for to close departments and we also need to sort out pay negotiation and pay claims.

Some chance!

Up pipes Keith Hammond, a professional trot from Glasgow who “tutors in European philosophy and the postcolonialist writings of Edward Said in adult education”

Thanks Matt,

Can I ask how members of the list are seeing the horrendous work of Israel right now?  How does this fit with the debate on the list about Zionism?  Can the boycott work not now go much further?  I think real ‘events on the ground’ have made the case clear enough …

Where are all these right thinking Israeli academics?  I know … they are in the army as reservists doing God knows what because there are no international observers or members of the free international press in Gaza to watch what they are doing …

If ever there were a case for stepping up our boycott campaign it is now.  Various trade union groups are now looking at how they can put some muscle behind the campaign …  Surely we should be in there arguing with the other unions for a broadening of boycott action …

There is no holding back Israel.  It will only be in a complete rejection of their whole Zionist state in a boycott - that is argued right across the trade union movement - that there will be real peace.

All the best,

Keith

… followed by a postalanche of similar I/P emails from Mike Cushman of the LSE, Sue Blackwell of Brum, Shirley Franklin the Vice-Chair of London Region UCU, Terry Brotherstone the UCU Scotland President, Ruth Aylett of Heriot-Watt University, Gavin Reid of Leeds, and of course our old friend Haim Bresheeth, Professor of Watching TV at the University of 6th Form College.

This is what happened:

Nine gay men in Senegal have been sent to jail for “indecent conduct and unnatural acts”.

Homosexual acts are illegal in Senegal but lawyers for the men said the sentence was the harshest ever handed down to gay men in the country.

The judge added three years to the maximum five-year sentence after ruling that the men were also members of a criminal organisation.

Most of them belonged to an association set up to fight HIV and Aids.

“This is the first time that the Senegalese legal system has handed down such a harsh sentence against gays,” said Issa Diop, one of the men’s four defence lawyers.

…

The head of a gay rights organisation in Senegal told AFP news agency that the situation for gay people in the country was getting worse.

“Many gays are already fleeing to neighbouring countries because of our living conditions,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Senegal is a predominantly Muslim country and gay men and women remain socially marginalised.

The pro-Hamas demonstrators were opposed last night at the Israeli Embassy.

Photos (c) Adrian Korsner, Sound Images Photography

The pro-Hamas demonstrators threw eggs. The police found some of those demonstrators had brought knives and bricks. High Street Kensington Tube was closed, as a result of the disorder.

This is what the Trotskyite-Hamas alliance is planning for future demonstrations:

Think of 100,000 descending on one building. If they decide to go inside the police will need extra forces. There are only, roughly 30,000 officers in London.

That’s why they’re panicking. Good.
Roobin | Homepage | 7 Jan, 10:48 | #

you only need to get within throwing distance
Antonovich | 7 Jan, 10:49 | #

It is vital that Hamas keeps up the fight until the Israelis are forced to end the action. On no account must they accept a ceasefire on Israel’s terms.
attila | 7 Jan, 11:22 | #

Just got this:

Can everyone who is coming to the protest in London on 10th Jan please bring balloons filled with RED paint/dye/powder so we can paint the israeli embassy in red. This is just another stunt like the shoes that were thrown last saturday, we will fly red balloons to outline the bloodshed.
Dave S | Homepage | 7 Jan, 13:58 | #

And here are the pro-Hamas demonstrators outside the Israeli Embassy last week:

Some comments: