Harry's Place

Joined by her friend Trout, who brought the nachos.

Probably as good a way as any.
Best wishes for 2012.

Earlier this week in Homs, citizen journalist Khaled Abu Saleh– one of many courageous Syrians who are documenting the Assad regime’s brutal and murderous crackdown on opposition protesters and providing the world with a view from Syria that foreign media are denied– confronted Mohamed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, the Sudanese head of the Arab League’s monitoring [...]

As it’s the end of the year – perhaps HP readers would like to let us all know the best book you’ve read this year (not necessarily a new book – just new to you), best film, and best CD.

An observation on another thread that the comments on Harry’s Place seemed more ‘personal’ than those on Liberal Conspiracy has prompted me to think about the effects that the blogging – and particularly the commenting – physical interface can have on the tone of the discussions.
The front page of Lib Con is quite busy – [...]

Norman Finkelstein was recently hosted by Leeds PSC, whilst on a UK tour with the Palestine Return Centre (PRC). The PRC is a Hamas front network who have previously courted Hungarian fascist Krisztina Morvai. Finkelstein toured with the pro-fascist London Hamasniks of the PRC.
Finkelstein has previously been hosted by the PSC in the UK. I saw him appear [...]

I recommend that you take a half-hour to listen to this BBC Radio 4 report about Iranian “soft power” in the UK and focusing mostly on the the Iranian regime-controlled English-language broadcaster Press TV.
Much of the report will be neither new nor surprising to regular Harry’s Place readers. Press TV employees George Galloway and Yvonne [...]

Sorry if this disturbs anyone committed to the “decline/death of European social democracy” trope, but I think this chart (comparing hourly compensation for manufacturing workers in 34 countries) is most revealing.

As you can see, the USA ranks 14th and the UK ranks 17th. But what’s interesting are the 13 leading countries. Most of them are [...]

I was interested to read, over on Andrew Gilligan’s blog, that Val Shawcross, Ken Livingstone’s running mate, has spoken out against his support for Qaradawi, and has also asserted that he should have apologised sooner to the journalist, Oliver Finegold, whom he compared to a concentration camp guard.
Gilligan doubts that this should be seen as [...]

For a so-called Trotskyist party, the SWP do act in very Stalinist fashion. Splintered Sunrise has published a lengthy guest post on the historical experience of factions within the SWP and its forerunner, the IS.
The culture of the Party is thoroughly exposed by this interesting passage:

What cannot be denied is that at the time of [...]

…. the audience leaves. That’s how it goes.