Harry's Place

From AP:
Farouk Hosny was defeated on Tuesday by Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova in a tight race for the position of UNESCO chair.
“It was clear by the end of the competition that there was a conspiracy against me,” Hosny told reporters at the airport upon his return from Paris.
“There are a group of the world’s **** [...]

AFP reports:
France on Wednesday led a walkout of a dozen delegations, including the United States, to protest a fiery speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the UN General Assembly.
“It is disappointing that Mr Ahmadinejad has once again chosen to espouse hateful, offensive and anti-Semitic rhetoric,” Mark Kornblau, spokesman to the US mission to the [...]

Andy Newman reports:
Chris Bambury has apparently resigned as editor from Socialist Worker, after a journalists revolt; and there have been unexpected changes on the central committee. Dramatic events on a scale not witnessed since Khruschev’s coup deposed Beria? or a storm in a tea-cup  of interest only to political anoraks?
Well, it interests me.
… Oh!

This is a guest post by Al-Qanaas Al-Masri
I was reading IPPR’s new report ‘Building bridges, not walls’ last night, when I suddenly felt unaccountably drowsy and fell asleep. When I awoke I found the following notes scrawled feverishly on the back of the report, in a hand-writing inexplicably like my own. I have transcribed these [...]

This is a cross post by Adam Holland

The blog Counterpunch, which is edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, has published an article which alleges that the blood libel is true and is related to purported Israeli thefts of human organs from Palestinians. The blood libel, the charge that Jews ritually murdered gentiles and [...]

Muammar Gaddafi appears not to have read David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories:
”Please pay attention!” he said at one point during his 96-minute speech, his first to the General Assembly in his 40 years as a leader.
Clad in a flowing cloak with a black pin in the shape of Africa sparkling on its front, Mr Gaddafi did [...]

Blogger Adam Holland has received an email from Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, where his family attends services and where his 4-year-old son attends preschool:
The email concerns plans by a hate-group to demonstrate outside the synagogue. I’ve written frequently about anti-Semitism on my blog for the past three years. Now it has come [...]

This is a guest post from MixTogether
As has been widely reported in the media, ACPO and the CPS are today launching a new initiative aimed at increasing prosecution rates for so-called ‘honour’ crimes .
This is a welcome initiative, but it gets no closer to tackling the real root of the problem. It is just the [...]

This is a cross post by Mark Gardner from the CST Blog
The British far Left comprises many diverse groups, bitterly divided by ideological detail and factionism. There are, however, certain things upon which they all agree. And one of the things upon which they all agree: is that they all oppose antisemitism.

But wait, catch your breath and hold those [...]

A week or so after Obama’s victory, I spoke to a colleague of mine in the United States. He was pleased with the result, but apprehensive.
“You have no idea of the tidal wave of insanity and hatred that is going to be unleashed, now. It will take a few months to get going, but it [...]