Harry's Place

Hugo Chavez has finally come up with a convincing explanation for the downfall of his friend and comrade Colonel Gaddafi.
It didn’t really happen! At least not the way it appeared on TV. The rebels’ takeover of Green Square in Tripoli was staged in Qatar by professional actors. Oh, and the “Yankee empire’s” 1969 moon landing? [...]

Politico reports:
Responding to a POLITICO story headlined, “Is Rick Perry dumb?”, the Texas governor said Tuesday afternoon that what he considers “dumb” are President Obama’s policies.
“What’s dumb is to oversee an economy that has lost that many millions of jobs, to put unemployment numbers that over his four years will stay probably at 9 percent, [...]

This is a guest post by David M Abrahamson
In the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and its neighbouring countries, Israel’s Foreign Minister Abba Eban, arguably the world’s most eloquent statesman of the time, expressed the view that “the Arabs never miss an opportunity, to miss an opportunity”. Today this statement is [...]

Zimbabwe has decided to throw out Libya’s ambassador. Why? Because the Libyans gave up on Gaddafi.
Zimbabwe has given Libya’s ambassador to Harare 72 hours to leave the country.
Zimbabwe’s Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi said Tuesday the decision was made after the Libyan embassy declared its allegiance to Libya’s Transitional National Council [TNC].
Last week during a protest, [...]

Cross-posted from James Bloodworth at Obliged to Offend

Almost 40 years ago, on 28 January 1972, United States President Richard Nixon signed his war on drugs into law. Drugs are “public enemy number one”, said Nixon, and drug addiction had “assumed the dimensions of a national emergency”.
In the 40 intervening years, the US government has [...]

Short notice, but I thought some readers might be interested to know about a planned counter-demonstration at the Royal Albert Hall (you’ll need to scroll down to the bottom of the page) in response to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s planned protest against the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance tomorrow at the BBC Proms.
Where: By the main [...]

This coming Thursday and Friday, 1st/2nd September 2011, the Centre of Syrian Studies at St. Andrews University is hosting a postgraduate conference on Syria, entitled “Syria in a Changing World“.
The head of the CSS is Raymond Hinnebusch.
This is what he has written about his Centre’s work, and reform in Syria:
The work of the Centre focuses [...]

Antizionists like to speak of a total boycott of Israel. They are upset with mainstream supermarkets that sell Israeli goods.
There are many Muslim antizionists whose understanding of Islam motivates them, theologically, to oppose a Jewish state in the Middle East. They consider it a sin, or a crime against God and the ummah (the global [...]

Victory to the Intifada (VTI) is a group created by the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG), set up in order to protest “Zionism” in various forms, in the UK.
Here is a video of a typical RCG protest outside Marks & Spencer, as part of their Victory to the Intifada campaign:

The person running the VTI campaign is [...]

Cross-posted from Terry Glavin at The Propagandist

Because when the only alternative available to the poor is to overthrow the regime, that's exactly what the poor will attempt. 
In Syria: "The grossly uneven distribution of the national income has concentrated incomes and capital in the hands of a limited few. The share of wages from the national [...]