Harry's Place

In a welcome move, the House of Lords has ruled that caste should be deemed a protected characteristic in a new clause in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill.  This follows an earlier defeat for this amendment in the House of Commons. Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, commented:
We are delighted [...]

Shimon Peres travelled to Paris’s Gare du Nord on March 8 for discussions relating to the Middle East peace process.  It is claimed that black and North African workers were discriminated against in efforts to ensure that “no Muslim employees … welcome the Head of the State of Israel”.
The SUD-Rail statement called on SNCF to [...]

I do recommend this very interesting BBC Radio 4 programme, presented by Jenny Cuffe. The title is perhaps slightly misleading as this is a wide-ranging survey of Muslim extremism in France, including an analysis of antisemitic attacks – as well as the Merah murders, there is a discussion of the discovery of a terrorist plot following [...]

I was interested to read that France’s interior ministry was (apparently) attempting to shut down a website which draws attention to allegations of violence and discrimination by the French police against Muslims, citing defamation as the reason behind this step. A Press TV report is the main source for this story, but here is a link [...]

That would appear to be the message of Seumas Milne and the Stop the War Coalition to the people of Timbuktu and elsewhere in northern Mali recently liberated with the help of French forces from the rule of Islamist extremists.

Cross-posted from Tendance Coatesy

A Just Man.
The Independent reports,

The oldest brother of the Toulouse scooter killer, Mohamed Merah, denounces the role of his own father, mother, sister and brother in spawning a “monster” in his new book.
Abdelghani Merah, 36, says the youngest of his four siblings was raised in an “atmosphere of racism and hatred” but [...]

‘Some people attack Islam as a way of attacking Muslims’ asserted @TellMamaUK on Twitter recently.  I expect they thought their point had rather been proved when their interlocutor replied ‘it’s like rabies, doesn’t mean we hate the rabid’.  You could argue that, strictly speaking, that statement does indeed differentiate between Muslims, who might be ‘cured’ [...]

Labour MP Denis MacShane writes for Haaretz about the 70-year commemoration of the roundup of 13,000 Parisian Jews, who were taken to the Vél d’Hiv cycle racing stadium for transport to death camps in Poland.

The Jews were left in the stands of this revered velodrome to swelter in the summer heat. The glass roof had [...]

Equal-opportunity haters march in Paris.

Now that Socialist Francois Hollande has been elected president of France, two great questions come to mind:
1. Will he be able successfully to reverse Sarkozy’s austerity program, reduce unemployment and produce sustained economic growth?
2. Is the woman at the left of the photo playing the clarinet and the accordion at the same time?