Harry's Place

At Lenin’s Tomb, Socialist Workers Party cadre Richard Seymour mocks an eminently mockable and cringe-inducing video featuring some kids performing a song about the importance of respecting authority and obeying one’s parents, teachers and the teachings of Jesus. He calls it a “Hitler Youth Christmas Special” and sneers, “Jesus made these little fuckers and their [...]

In 2005, writing in the anti-Establishment and pro-workers Daily Mirror, the King of the Swingers, Tommy Sheridan eulogized a recently departed friend.  Michael Stewart died following a violent altercation, which may not be statistically surprising considering:
Mick did serious bird as a young guy for his part in a fight that resulted in another young man [...]

by Joseph W
Last week, the Belarus government officials met with “Israel Shamir“, the Holocaust-denying Wikileaks “gatekeeper” claiming to be Julian Assange’s representative in Minsk.
On behalf of Wikileaks, Shamir claimed to have never-before-seen documents which would allegedly prove ties between the Belarussian opposition and the US government. December 20 2010, President Lukashenko promised to publish these documents in [...]

Here’s the second element of my response to Bob, a list of five bad influences on the left.
Nostalgia I’m not at all attracted by the idea of returning to a simpler way of life.  Nostalgia might seem to have more to do with the right than the left, but there is sometimes a tendency for, [...]

Apparently, in a move to draw attention away from the movements of his willy, Assange has discovered that the cause of his troubles are not the dark forces of the CIA, but a fundamentalist movement:
Mr Assange regards himself as a victim of radicalism. “Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism,” he said. “I fell into [...]

I’m writing this in response to being  one of the people ‘tagged’ by Bob from Brockley to come up with five positive influential ideas on the Left, five bad influences and five ideas which are not influential enough. I am glad that Bob described this as an ‘impossible task’.   Here are the good influences – [...]

Those who present an alarmist vision of Europe being taken over by hordes of religiously obsessed Muslims often use polling data to back up their claims. Looking at such data, we will often find that Muslims seem far more religious than their non-Muslim counterparts, such as in this poll, which apparently reveals that 86% of [...]

Cross-posted from Jeffrey Goldberg
Last night, Christmas Eve (erev Christmas, as it is known in West Jerusalem), we spent Shabbat dinner with friends at the Inbal Hotel, which makes gefilte fish the old-fashioned way (by Arab cooks) and then we we headed to the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Christian Quarter of the Old [...]

Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik writes an interesting piece making the case that Diego Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” is the greatest work of art ever created in the Western world.
Has anyone seen it for real at the Prado in Madrid?
Here Gopnik explains why he believes other famous works of art aren’t quite as great.
The Prado’s [...]

The anti-Israel advertisements that were scheduled to be posted on Seattle-area buses won’t appear after all, KING-TV reports:
According to Metro officials, non-commercial advertising will temporarily be added to the list of currently restricted ad campaigns, except for certain government ads. Non-commercial ads that had already been cleared with Metro prior to the halt will not [...]