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 [...]

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

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.

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

Things are not looking very good for the Magic Costumed One. The graph is beginning to resemble a …

Latham-infested Action-Contract-Man, as he got down and dirty amongst hoi polloi in the Not-a-Debate, lied that he would be straight with the Australian people

Who in their right mind would pay all the enormous expenses of a promotional tour for the “Holy Father” to come to your country to spruik his snake oil?

Israel quotes the “San Remo Accord” as if it gave them legitimate right to board civilian craft in international waters. But it does not and you’ll see why.

Cherie Blair, wife of the notorious war criminal, suspended the sentence of a man who broke another man’s jaw in a bank queue, because he is “religious”.

Tony Abbott wants Peter Garrett to be charged with “Industrial Manslaughter”. But has he always felt so strongly about the appropriateness of this concept?