Harry's Place

Sina Motallebi, well-known Iranian blogger and journalist was arrested on Sunday. He is accused of threatening national security by giving interviews to Persian language radios outside Iran, writing articles both in newspapers and his weblog. See here for more details and Jeff Jarvis has begun a campaign.

This has really cheered me up for all kinds of reasons. The first newspaper to hit the streets of Baghdad since the fall of Saddam is the paper of the Communist Party see news story. Many had suspected that there was little left of the once very powerful CP after the repression they suffered at [...]

Jeff Jarvis reflects an understandable and widespread reaction to the anti-US protests in Iraq when he asks why in Friday prayers the religious leaders didn’t thank the US for liberating their country.
He is referring specifically to religious leaders, not exactly famed for rationale and logic, but the issue does beg the broader question of how [...]

Most of the reaction to Tony Blair’s interview with The Sun has focused on the supposed revelation that he “put his job on the line” over Iraq and even took steps to prepare for possible loss of office. That’s the spin of course as the PM seeks to quash his image as a follower-of-polls and [...]

The horrific story of the torture of Iraqi footballers is told by Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian today. Terrible though this story is it is no shock that Saddam’s son Uday took the game under his grip - football has always had an irresistible attraction to dictators and their sons.
Nicola Ceacescu’s village team managed [...]

The BBC’s Reporters’ Log, a kind of centralised, official Beeb warblog, which was very useful as a resource and an interesting sign of the relevance of a blog-style approach, has now been closed. The reporters give their last reflections and the final contribution comes from their most senior war correspondent John Simpson:
The assumption was that [...]

Forgive the self-promotion but I have just discovered this blog comes in at number 10 in Technorati’s Top 50 Interesting Newcomers category. Links and visits have increased noticably in the past few weeks with the average daily readership trebling over the past month - many thanks to those who have helped spread the word.
By the [...]

When North Korea is eventually opened up – when 200,000 people are released from a single gulag – the effect on world opinion will be like the opening of the gates of Auschwitz. We will ask in agonised introspection how we could have stood by and done nothing while this level of suffering was inflicted [...]

Good piece from Polly Toynbee on the state of play in the trade union movement, which draws a clear distinction between the two types of new left leaders.
The difference between the awkward squad - Crow, Rix, Gilchrist - and the Curran, Prentis, Dromey sensible left is simple. The sensibles are fiercely focused on what matters [...]

David Aaronovitch was right. The Weekly Worker, newspaper of the 40-strong ‘Communist Party of Great Britain’ is essential reading. It is top class comedy and certainly provides a better laugh than Mark Steel or any of the other official Trot comedians can manage.
Take this week’s edition, where the Party’s guru ‘Jack Conrad’ says “the Iraq [...]