Harry’s Place is always very good value, you know. Each item posted is one you want to know more about. This one is certainly interesting.

At last week’s NUS conference, the AWL reports that the SWP joined the islamist Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) – a Muslim Association of Britain front – in a walkout when guest speaker Houzan Mahmoud addressed the Conference.
Why would the SWP join FOSIS in a walkout?…Her key error appears to have been that she is the UK head of the anti-occupation Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq which is a vocal opponent of Islamism. The fact that she has campaigned to bring human rights abuses by US and UK troops to public attention

Okay, we need a little amusement to cheer us up after hearing the news about the pope. Although some people are pointing out that it’s good news really: that it’s the Vatican shooting itself in the foot, that now people will realize how authoritarian it is after all. But I don’t know – I’m never very convinced by that kind of thing. Partly because it never seems to happen. People seem so happy to say ‘Oh how sweet, a nice authoritarian pope again.’

So we could do with a laugh. I know I could. I’m wrestling with revisions, and I’m finding this patch a struggle. Paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word, I’m having to drag them out … Read the rest

I listened to last week’s ‘Start the Week’ yesterday. (I always listen to it late, for some reason.) I like Andrew Marr, but I didn’t realize how much I like him until I heard Sue MacGregor filling in for him. Dang, she made a mess of it. She kept interrupting – no doubt it’s the presenter’s job to keep things moving along and on track, but Marr manages to do that without constantly cutting people off in the middle of a sentence. And worse than that, she kept getting everything wrong, misunderstanding the guests’ books and what they said to her, and saying the silliest thing she could think of. She contemptuously told Jeffrey Sachs, who’s just written a book … Read the rest