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 [...]

From today’s New York Times: Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen The Obama administration’s secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, [...]

Here is Sir Roger’s advice on asylum seeker/immigration policy for Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and the rest of Australia’s panicked, “pragmatic” [=unethical, immoral and stupid] political elite who are slavishly, and in terror, reacting to the unholy self-righteousness of the christian right, the egomaniacal commentariat and the ignorant unwashed. It comes straight from the bible [...]

  …pluck it out, and cast it from thee. – Mark 9, 47 You know … everyone knows … Rupert Murdoch is an evil genius. And this latest move is certainly worthy of his deep-seated amorality. If Murdoch believes in anything he believes in two things: nothing and money. His latest move is pure evil [...]

What a fucking load of motherfucking dickheaded bullshit those cunts in the Victorian parliament are, trying to impose old-fashioned tight-arsed, pursed-lipped, prune-faced, shrivelled-up, broomstick-arsed moral values on a free people, with their proposed laws against swearing in public. Goodbye barracking at fucking footie matches, for one thing. Or having a bloody beer in the pub. [...]

  Right around Australia – which is, you know, NSW and a couple of other fairly unimportant (albeit it occasionally charmingly old-fashioned) bits – Community Leaders are in panic over the impending loss of all essential local services due to proposed restrictions on the spending behaviour of pokie addicts. Particularly in rural areas. The most [...]

Julian Assange interviewed for 60 Minutes. Presented without comment. Come to your own conclusions (or not) – about Assange, Wikileaks, the US media, whatever.

Great article in Crikey today by Greg Barns, barrister and director of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, on the strong skeleton argument by Assange’s legal team

Sir Roger had thought there were just a few assassination plotters but there are many urging the murder of Julian Assange. Sir Roger unpacks the details.

GetUp needs 100,000 signatures for its Wikileaks petition before its ad goes in the NY Times. If you wanted to do something about Julian Assange this can be it

Having ejected Wikileaks from their servers, Amazon.com are selling “WikiLeaks documents expose US foreign policy conspiracies” as a Kindle e-book.

Google has released the results of its zeitgeist survey of the most popular search terms for 2010. This is the video.

Sir Roger is really glad that GetUp has is taking some action on Wikileaks and Assange. You can be part of that action if you wish

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?

I wish the whole lying, damaging, exploitative, self-serving, illusory, man-made pretence that is religion would go away so I didn’t need to talk about it