Harry's Place

This is a press release from Peter Tatchell
“Shocking insensitivity”

Invitations should be withdrawn
“It is deplorable that the Queen has invited royal dictators from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Swaziland, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei and Abu Dhabi. All eight royal families preside over severe human rights abuses, such as detention without trial, torture, denial of free speech and [...]

It’s a holiday weekend and the sun (at least where I am) is shining.  But if you can’t keep away from your keyboard you might like to think of examples of words which you find so annoying, which reflect a mindset so completely incompatible with your own, that they make you stop reading a blog [...]

(It started that way, admittedly.) I have already written about tensions between the Roma and Hungarian militias in Gyöngyöspata.  There seems to have been some further intensification of the problem, although different news sites and blogs offer conflicting reports of events which took place on Friday.   According to Lolo Diklo: Rromani against Racism the Hungarian [...]

This is a guest post by Peter Tatchell
I am no fan of saints or sainthood. But we can and should celebrate St George – or just plain George – as a symbol of freedom, dissent and multiculturalism.
It is time we ditched the myths surrounding St George and celebrated the more likely reality of his courageous [...]

This is a guest post by Ben Cohen
He appeared suddenly on the east side  of Eleventh Avenue, bobbing and weaving under the hardening gray sky, drawing stares from the construction site workers and a chuckle from the guy manning the hot dog stand a few yards on. A car hooted its horn appreciatively, then a [...]

The proprietor of Lenin’s Tomb will appear at Marxisme 2011 in the Netherlands next month, before his appearance at Marxism 2011 in the UK.
According to the Dutch website:
De organisatoren van Marxisme 2011 zijn er trots op om te kunnen aankondigen dat naast sprekers uit Egypte, Griekenland en Ierland, ook Richard Seymour zal deelnemen aan het [...]

Demonstrations and destruction of Assad icons in other cites.
But… but…
Bashar al-Assad lifted the State of Emergency (without actually changing his regime’s brutal approach to unarmed demonstrators).
The US funded the Syrian opposition.
Kevin Ovenden has warned that there are several political forces seeking to hegemonise the Syrian protests.
Assad is the last Arab ruler, and Syria is [...]

by Joseph W
Who killed Jesus?
How you answer to this question might reveal the way you think about Jews, Christians, or religion in general.
This is my answer, based on the way I understand the New Testament narrative, the overall message of the Gospel accounts, and the wider political context of Jesus’ day.
For centuries, the “Christ-killer” tag has [...]

This week The Times has been running a series of features about Christianity in the modern world. Today Michael Binyon writes (£) about the plight of Christians who are marginalised and persecuted. His main focus is on the Muslim world; readers are reminded of the attacks against Coptic Christians in Egypt, of the [...]

Cross-posted from James Bloodworth at Obliged to Offend

In the early 1990s the Cuban economy was in trouble. The collapse of the Soviet Union saw a 35% decline in the country’s GDP almost overnight. Shops were increasingly bare and food was scarce. Stories abounded of cats and dogs being cooked and eaten in central Havana out [...]