Harry's Place

Last Saturday I had a piece on CiF arguing that Tony Blair should not be the next president of Europe:

There may be a more unsettling political prospect than Tony Blair as president of Europe but for the moment I really can’t think of one.
Imagine that rictus grin, that crack-jack-rabbit energy, that insatiable hunger for [...]

The BBC reports:
The UK’s chief drugs adviser has been sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson, after criticising government policies.
Professor David Nutt, head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis to Class B from C.
He accused ministers of devaluing and distorting evidence and said drugs classification was being [...]

Redmond O’Neil was an activist in the extremist group, Socialist Action. He was Ken Livingstone’s Chief of Staff. He was also married to another extremist: the Communist Party of Britain’s Kate Hudson.
He was buried this morning.
There have been a number of obituaries of the man published in the last week and a bit. One of [...]

This is a cross post by Alexander Hitchens from Standpoint
I have previously blogged about Scotland’s leading Islamist (and prospective MP for Glasgow Central), Osama Saeed, having to return more than half of the £200,000 he was given by his mate Alex Salmond to set up an event called Islam Fest.  The event never happened, and questions [...]

Two things.
Counter-Demonstrate against Al Muhajiroun
Join me on the British Muslims for Secular Democracy counter-protest against this man’s latest media stunt.
Here is the website for the protest:
http://www.seculardemocracy.org/

The counter demonstration starts this Saturday in Piccadilly Circus at 1 pm sharp.
So get there early.
I am told that there may be balloons.
Al Muhaj Online
Secondly, read the authoritative analysis of Al Muhajiroun’s [...]

Readers may be forgiven for not being aware that the once mighty Stop the War Coalition organised a march in London last Saturday against the presence of Western troops in Afghanistan.
With fewer than five thousand ill-clad misfits wearily trudging the streets of London only to have to listen to the badly amplified and poorly expressed thoughts of the [...]

Socialist Worker has become too windy according to a couple of members of the SWP’s national committee:
“The “style of the paper needs to change. Articles need to be written from the perspective of its core audience. They need to be shorter and written more simply. The paper should provide its audience with bullets they can [...]

In the US, the Church of Scientology have also lost a high ranking follower:
The Church of Scientology lost one of its most high-profile members when the Hollywood film-maker Paul Haggis quit the organisation in protest at its stance on same-sex marriages. In an explosive letter of resignation, Haggis claimed he could no longer “be a [...]

This is a Guest Post by Michael Ezra

Fariba Amini has an interesting article on Iranian.com. Below is an extract:
Once it began, the carnage never stopped. The mass executions at Evin have been well documented. The new regime eliminated those they disagreed with. In Kurdistan, summary executions took place; young men–future Pasdaran–shot to death many [...]

‘Workers of all lands unite’ is one of the more famous slogans in Marx and Engels’  joint effort of 1848 – the Communist Manifesto.
Here’s some socialist organisational tenets from that same publication:
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any [...]