So in the Cimitière Montmartre I found one of my heroes. Émile Zola   That is to say, I found the memorial. He is interred at the Panthéon. Why a hero? Amongst his many writings Emile Zola wrote this, which is as relevant today in our political discourse and climate as it was almost [...]

…and to yours, and to all of us.        Sir Roger is currently in the land of the poppy but not near Flanders fields. Yet there are poppies here in the South of France and the whiff of war and bloody conflict is inescapably faintly background to all. And so it was a cold and [...]

Urgent? What a joke! This morning Sir Roger explosively sprayed the breakfast linen with half-chewed soldiers, the boiled egg in which he’d been dunking them and the Dom he’d being trying to wash it all down with, before bursting into such loud and violent laughter that his butler was so alarmed that he stood behind [...]

We keep thinking of Jack Nicholson. “You want The Truth? You can’t handle The Truth!” Do we really need to be kept in the dark and fed bullshit like mushrooms?

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was asked to resign from his position as the Pentagon’s IT coordinator Monday.

Learning about Tony Blair’s book Sir Roger’s mind is flooded with lines from Macbeth: “It is an accustom’d action with him, to seem thus washing his hands”

How about a bit of slippery language? Forget that cynical “Pacific Solution” with the promise of Peace and Closure. Now it’s the “Regional Protection Framework”

We have to get past why we came here. Yes, forget the treachery of the players in the US, Britain and Australia. Let’s ignore the slaughter of innocent people.

It sends a shiver of disgust down the spine hearing Gordon Brown trying to put moral distance between himself and the million or so Iraqis he has helped to kill

I have no quarrel with individuals who have faith. But damned if I’m going to have the battles won by the Enlightenment abdicated by a new Dark Ages.

Can’t decide whether the Nobel Peace Prize Committee will now feel sorry for their choice of Obama, or vindicated by his speech.

Transparency International has released its Corruption Perceptions Index for 2009. There are some very surprising results

Forget World of Warcraft. This new game blasts it away for sheer ULTRA-realistic war experience – you feel as if you’re really there!
Onion News reports…

when you know you’re confronted by a pile of shit – politicians’ lies, corporate propaganda and media trivia for example – it’s refreshing when there’s someone who has the guts and the intellect to name it for what it is

Who can forget the hilarity of the Spanish Inquisition? The Taliban’s side-splitting public executions of women in the Kabul soccer stadium?