Harry's Place

Killing Zionists

After years of launching rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot in the Negev, Palestinian "militants" (as many in the media prefer to call them) finally got "lucky."

The Hamas’ military wing Izz al-din al-Qassam claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement issued the group said, “Four Kassam rockets bombarded the settlement of Sderot this morning and with the help of Allah, two Zionists were killed and a number of Zionist settlers were injured”.

The dead Zionists are a three-year-old boy and a 49-year-old man who had just taken his granddaughter to kindergarten.

The reference to Zionist settlers, of course, means that Hamas draws no distinction between Israel and the occupied territories.

For those who indulge in moral equivalence after events like this, please note that the Israeli government has never issued a statement celebrating the death of a Palestinian child.

So much for....

the all-Scandinavian final then. Well, it has to be the Czechs for Harry's Place now.

Yes, I know, backing the favourites but they have played the best football of the tournament.

Chavez's judicial takeover

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has agreed to proceed with an opposition-backed referendum to determine if he will continue in office until his term expires in January 2007.

But according to two human rights officials, "Chavez's own government threatens to undermine this country's fragile democracy through a political takeover of its highest court."

Chavez has won approval for a law expanding the Supreme Cout and making it much easier for him to add and remove judges. And he apparently is planning to pack the court with supporters before the August referendum, thus giving his side the final say on legitimating the results.

Writing in The Washington Post, Jose Miguel Vivanco and Daniel Wilkinson of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch warn:

Such a political takeover of the Supreme Court would compound damage already being done to judicial independence by the court itself. The Supreme Court has summarily fired lower-court judges after they decided politically controversial cases. It has effectively shut down the country's second-highest court by failing to resolve the legal appeals of its dismissed judges. And it has failed to grant 80 percent of the country's judges security of tenure, which is an essential ingredient of judicial independence.

Vivanco and Wilkinson are hardly apologists for US policy toward the Chavez government. As they write:

Washington has repeatedly expressed concern with the situation in Venezuela. Yet the Bush administration's ability to advocate democracy there was hurt in 2002 when it chose to blame Chavez for his own ouster rather than unequivocally condemning the coup.

So their concerns deserve to be taken seriously. I hope at least a few of Chavez's defenders do so.

The looong campaign watch

Is this a sign of early desperation by the Bush reelection campaign?

Adolf Hitler's image has surfaced again in the White House race. President Bush's campaign is featuring online video of the Nazi dictator, taken down months ago from a liberal group's Web site and disavowed, in a spot that intersperses clips of speeches by Democrats John Kerry, Al Gore and Howard Dean.

And, of course, bete noir du jour Michael Moore.

The video begins with the following message:

The following video contains remarks made by and images from ads sponsored by Kerry Supporters. John Kerry has denounced our use of these ads attacking the President. He has not denounced liberal supporters like Al Gore, George Soros, and many others who have made speeches comparing the President to Adolf Hitler.

Using images of Hitler in the Bush video is, at the very least, disingenuous. On one level, of course, the ad is attacking "the Democrats" for comparing Bush to Hitler-- although Kerry himself has never done so. And despite the Bushies' claim, I can find no evidence that Al Gore has either. (Soros did, and he was wrong to do so, but he wasn't speaking for Kerry.)

But the video's subtext becomes clear when these words appear on the screen:

The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party

The Coalition of the Wild-Eyed

The real point is slyly to compare the angry rhetoric of Democrats before cheering crowds to the rantings of Hitler. Or am I seeing something that isn't there?

I know the Bush campaign is in trouble. But putting aside questions of ethics, fairness and decency-- this is after all a campaign piloted by Karl Rove-- does it even make sense politically?

The focus will not be on the "message" of the ad itself but rather on the use of the Hitler images. Undecided voters are at least as likely to be turned off of Bush as they are to be turned off of Kerry. Or is the point simply to fire up the base?

Update: I think Al Gore's reference to "digital brownshirts" was out of line too. Emily Jones has some good advice on the use of Hitler imagery in contemporary politics.

Where are the eloquent insults of yesteryear?

What's sad about Dick Cheney's insult of Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor isn't that it was obscene, but rather that-- by historical standards-- it was so damned abrupt and unimaginative.

The Washington Post records some of the truly great Senatorial insults.

In 1856 the antislavery Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts accused South Carolina's Andrew Butler of taking "a mistress . . . who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight. I mean," he added, "the harlot, Slavery." That brought House member Preston Brooks in to defend Butler, striking Sumner about the head so furiously with a cane that the senator was carried bloody and unconscious from the chamber. (See picture above.)

In the 1880s Maine Republican James Blaine took on New York Republican Roscoe Conkling, his longtime nemesis:

"As for the gentleman's cruel sarcasm," Blaine said, an eye to the galleries, waving dismissively at his opponent, "I hope he will not be too severe. The contempt of that large-minded gentleman is so wilting; his haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkeygobbler strut has been so crushing to myself and all members of this House that I know it was an act of the greatest temerity for me to venture upon a controversy with him."

He was just warming up. Seizing on a newspaper story that had compared Conkling to a deceased great statesman, Blaine used it for ridicule. "The gentleman [Conkling] took it seriously, and it has given his strut additional pomposity. The resemblance is great. It is striking. Hyperion to a satyr, Thersites to Hercules, mud to marble, dunghill to diamond, a singed cat to a Bengal tiger, a whining puppy to a roaring lion. Shade of the mighty [Henry Winder] Davis? Forgive the almost profanation of that jocose satire!"

And all Cheney could come up with is "Fuck yourself"? How the mighty have grown inarticulate!

So who are you supporting now?

Having made the post below I can't possibly start to go into the reasons why I am nearly always left cold by England at major tournaments can I? Oh go on then.

Let me get one thing straight - I'm not one of those lefties that refuses to back the national team, the anyone-but England brigade, who actually hope they lose and support the opposition. But for some reason I never manage to get enthusiastic about the three lions.

I suppose if I were to attempt to analyise my lack of football patriotism it would have to touch on the fact that the English national team has always seemed to be a bit, well, you know, a bit Southern. It all comes down to identity and for one reason or another Englishness is well down my list. Nor am I one of those lefties who thinks any degree of pride in the community you belong to is some sort of concession to reaction. I'm Lancastrian, I'm Northern, I'm British, I'm European and I was born in England.

Still I want England to do well in tournaments, I'm happy when they win but I wasn't gutted when they went out. I do get animated by football though - I have travelled thousands of miles to watch Burnley, I have bought the shirts and worn them with pride. I have never had an England shirt though and I never will.

In this I am well aware I am in a tiny minority. I'm not going to pretend that there is a North-South divide over the national team because there simply isn't. The overwhelming majority of Northerners have the same feeling about England as the Southerners - just for some reason I don't.

Anyway, to get to the point, England are out now and I don't really like watching football as a neutral. Sure there is a lot to enjoy in Euro 2004 as a dispassionate observer but it is more fun if there is someone to root for isn't it?

So who? Well Portugal don't need any extra backing and I don't like seeing the hosts in tournaments doing too well. It raises too many doubts about the advantages they enjoy. Nice side though and Scolari is a star.

It was great to see France beaten by Greece but supporting the underdog is just a bit too obvious. The Dutch team have something potentially exciting and anarchic about them but are also a just a tad too arrogant for me.

I've always had a soft spot for the Czechs and would be delighted if they won it but when I adopt a team I like to be able to pretend there is some deeper reason for backing them than just liking the way they play football. Sure it would be great for an East European team to win the tournament for loads of reasons but it wouldn't really stir my soul.

So its got to be the Scandinavians for me - our Northern brothers, who offer us a glimpse of what Northern England could be like if it had enjoyed decades of almost uninterrupted social democracy. The first time I ever went to Copenhagen I felt instantly at home and was left wondering if this wasn't what Manchester or Liverpool could be like in different social and economic circumstances. Is it just a coincidence that Jan Molby and now Thomas Gravesen so easily picked up scouse accents? And aren't we Northerners a bit Scandinavian anyway?

And both Sweden and Denmark play good, positive and above all honest football as well - so that's sorted.

I'm hoping Sweden beat Holland and the Danes beat the Czechs. Then they won't meet in the semi-finals, the Danes can beat the Greeks and the Swedes will break Portuguese hearts. There is a realistic and glorious possibility of an all-Nordic final.

And just to really piss off the Italians it can end 2-2 after extra time.

Then the two sides will refuse to take penalties and just shake hands and walk off the pitch.

Well, its all about dreams isn't it?

Hilarious

Anyone fancy an email exchange about whether stereotypical middle-class Guardian-reading liberals should be banned from expressing any opinion at all on football?

Thursday night was the pain and the catharsis of great theatre. This is as near as most men will ever come to Oedipus Rex. It is a privilege to care so deeply about something that you can weep for sorrow at its loss.

Read it and weep.

Sapping the morale of the nation

Omar at Iraq the Model translates more mostly heartening comments from the BBC's Arabic website forum. This time the commenters discuss the fate of Abdul Rahman al-Shaghouri, a Syrian sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for downloading pages from "forbidden" websites (run by Syrian exiles) and sending emails including excerpts of those pages.

He was accused of "publishing false news that saps the morale of the nation."

As Omar writes:

I’m sitting now in my living room expressing my feelings, posting my thoughts about any subject and criticizing anyone without fear while our neighbors still encounter serious risks when they want to *read* what someone else wrote in the internet.

Orwell at 101

When I joined the Harry's Place gang a year ago, one of my first posts was a tribute to George Orwell on what would have been his 100th birthday.

One of the frustrations of being a left-wing admirer of Orwell is dealing with those on the Right who-- because of his devastating depictions of Soviet totalitarianism-- try to claim him as one of their own, a sort of proto-McCarthyite.

On the more obscure occasion of Orwell's 101st birthday, Martha Bridegam at Demisemiblog tries to set things right:

Orwell was solidly a democratic socialist, sure enough of his membership in the independent left to go public with his anger at the Stalinists, and angry at them in the first place, not for their professed belief in equality, but because he was a genuine egalitarian himself and saw them betraying his dream. The right can only claim Orwell by turning his politics upside down and pretending that the political tendencies he criticized "in-house" were the ones he opposed first or primarily. The fact is, of course, that he wrote his first five books against the Tory money snobbery of his upbringing, fought fascism with everything he had in two wars, supported the British Labour Party clean through to the end, and wrote 1984 against totalitarianisms regardless of label.

Hope amid the violence

After yesterday's murderous attacks by Iraqi insurgents trying to disrupt the transfer of sovereignty set for June 30, it's reassuring to find that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis utterly reject their efforts.

Contrast their unhappiness with the US occupation of Iraq-- an attitude for which the Bush administration bears more than a little responsibility-- with their enthusiastic and hopeful outlook toward the future of their own government.

Among the findings of a recent poll:

--68 percent of Iraqis have confidence in their new leaders.

--73 percent of Iraqis polled approved of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to lead the new government, 84 percent approved of President Ghazi Yawar and almost two-thirds backed the new Cabinet.

--Four out of every five Iraqis expected that the new government will "make things better" for Iraq after the handover, with 10 percent expecting the situation to remain the same and 7 percent anticipating a decline.

--Two-thirds of Iraqis believed the first democratic elections for a new national assembly -- tentatively set for December or January -- will be free and fair.

--Seventy percent of Iraqis polled supported the new army, and 82 percent supported the police.

Let's hope that after June 30 the US has the sense to make itself (militarily at least) as scarce as possible-- even at the risk of allowing some "mistakes" by the new leaders of Iraq.

al-Sudais update

A followup to the underreported anti-Jewish comments of Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al-Sudais, who preached at the opening of a Muslim community center in East London:

A Harry's Place reader writes:

...The London listing magazine Time Out covered the London Muslim Centre opening briefly last week, and this week the letters page sees a "Name and address supplied" reader drawing attention to Imam al-Sudais's anti-Semitic remarks. Time Out passed the letter straight on to the LMC, and there's a rebuttal by Dr Muhammad Abdul-Bari of the East London Mosque that reads, in its entirety, as follows:

I'm glad to see the invitation to dialogue. However, what disturbs me about this initial response is one comment and one absence of comment. The absence of comment is, of course, the lack of any suggestion that al-Sudais's reported remarks were mistranslated, selectively quoted, or otherwise misrepresented, or of any acknowledgement of their disturbing nature if true. The comment that disturbs me is the line "No one would *dare* to open their mouth if Catholics invited the Pope to Britain." The word "dare" suggests, to me, a certain lack of respect for free speech. Moreover, while I don't remember the Pope's last UK visit, I'm sure that a visit today would be used as an opportunity by many commentators to make some fairly trenchant criticism of various aspects of the Church's policies and behaviour under the present Pope.

I'm certain that's true. But what if the Pope had spoken about Jews in the same terms as al-Sudais did-- or, for that matter, about Muslims, Hindus, Protestants, dissident Catholics or atheists? Can anyone doubt the outrage and mass demonstrations that would follow?

Easy, Dick. Remember your heart condition

In a frank exchange of views with Democrat Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor this week, Vice President Dick Cheney told the Vermont senator to, uh, fuck himself.

Cheney was upset that Leahy had raised the issue of Cheney's connections to Halliburton.

This may mark the first time The Washington Post has ever spelled out the f-word in print.

Update: The Center for American Progress has turned up the following declaration by Mr. Cheney from the 2000 Presidential campaign: "Governor Bush and I are also absolutely determined that [we] will restore a tone of civility and decency to the debate in Washington."

Yeah, whatever.

Time to Say Farewell to Sven

I didn't agree with the appointment of Sven Goran Eriksson as England manager four years ago which apparently made me a member of a xenophobic minority of bigots. But now I am sure that it is time England turned elsewhere.

When the Football Association decided that there was not a single coach or manager in England capable of running the national side, they made an astonishing admission of failure. After all it is the FA which is responsible for the development of coaches and managers and their choice was a demoralising insult to every domestic manager in the game.

There was also the historical fact that no national team has ever won anything with a foreign coach. That might change in a week or so however.

But that is irrelevant now. The main point is that I didn't have much confidence that Eriksson, nice man that he is, would be able to transform England from being eternal under-achievers. He has had a good generation of players at his disposal, much better than those Kevin Keegan had to work with, yet his cautious approach doesn't work with English players. Their instincts tell them to attack and battle and perhaps a coach does need to reign them in a little but Eriksson has managed to do little more than that.

The supreme irony of Euro 2004 is that the style of football England should be playing has already been successfully demonstrated by - the Scandinavians. The cliches about Denmark and Sweden being kick and rush merchants has long been out of date. They combine energy, strength and an impressive workrate with tactical nous and a classy touch where it matters most. England have better players than both those countries but are unable to get the best out of them.

I have nothing against importing ideas and approaches from other countries, in fact it is the only way to stay competitive in any sport, but England have taken the wrong kind of medicine. You will never turn English players into Italians
Eriksson is a Swede by birth but as a coach he is Italian by nature.

Its time for a change.

The Clinton version (continued)

As I mentioned previously, Bill Clinton puts the blame for the failure of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2000 squarely on Yasser Arafat.

But here's something interesting-- and inconvenient for those inclined to dismiss the former president as an apologist for Israel, and therefore to doubt his version of what happened at Camp David and afterwards:

Clinton largely faults Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for the breakdown of peace talks between Israel and Syria. Though Barak was the driving force behind the summit with Syria in Shepherdstown, W. Va., in January 2000, he didn't have the will to make concessions, Clinton writes.

But the former president saves his real anger for the Palestinian leader:

Clinton reflects angrily on Arafat's statement, nearly a year after Clinton left office, that he finally accepted the parameters of Clinton's plan.

"Apparently, Arafat had thought the time to decide, five minutes to midnight, had finally come," Clinton writes. "His watch had been broken a long time."

Problems of Blogging

Apologies for the recent technical problems which caused the site to disappear for a few days. - there really was nothing we could do about it as we don't own the webspace that we rent second hand.

Also thanks very much to everyone who emailed in with suggestions, complaints, advice and information. It was very much appreciated and special thanks to Norman Geras for his kind assistance in passing on suggestions from his readers.

At one stage it looked as though we had lost the whole thing including most of the archives which gave me rather a fright - thankfully that isn't the case.

However I am still getting mail from people saying they can't access the site. The problem seems to be affecting people who use NTL. Anyone any ideas about that one?

Anyway, cheers again and enjoy the game tonight.

The relationship between fascism and homosexuality

It's not what you think. Here's an extract from a piece I've written about this for the gay mag Attitude:

When the British National Party – our own home-grown Holocaust-denying bigots – announced it was fielding an openly gay candidate in the European elections this June, dedicated followers of fascism should not have blinked. The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement that ever was – including the gay-gassing, homo-cidal Third Reich. With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay. It’s time to admit something. Fascism isn’t something that happens out there, a nasty habit acquired by the straight boys. It’s a gay thing, baby, and it’s time for non-fascist gay people to wake up and face the marching music.

You can read the whole thing here.

Harry's Place lives! Mwah-hah-hah!

Hurrah.

Radio Free Arabia?

The BBC is to launch a 24-hour news channel broadcasting in Arabic across the UK, Europe and the Arab world which will offer competition to al-Jazeera.

Moonstruck

As we and a handful of other blogs reported last March, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church, announced at a gathering in Washington that he is the Messiah and that the spirits of Hitler and Stalin have mended their ways as a result of his teachings.

Now The Washington Post has finally caught up with the story-- to the embarrassment of some members of Congress who were on hand for Rev. Moon's historic announcements.

Adam Michnik on Iraq

In an interview last January with the US democratic socialist magazine Dissent, Adam Michnik-- a leader of the Solidarnosc movement who spent a total of six years as a political prisoner for his opposition to Poland's Communist government-- voiced his critical support for the American overthrow of the Baathist regime in Iraq.

As Michnik explained:

It's simply that life has taught me that if someone is being whipped and someone is whipping this person, I am always on the side of those who are being whipped. I've always criticized U.S. foreign policy for forgetting that the United States should defend those who need to be defended. I would object to U.S. policy if it supported Saddam Hussein, and I have always criticized the United States for supporting military regimes in Latin America.

Michnik makes many of the same points we at Harry's Place have made in supporting the Iraq war. But with one difference. He says one reason for his support is that he was able to look at Saddam Hussein's regime "through the eyes of the political prisoner in Baghdad."

(Thanks to Martha Bridegam for mentioning the interview in our comments box.)