It’s not yet eight but already hot. In shorts and t-shirt I sit at the corner where Zhili 2nd Road crosses Ming Sing Street in Khaosiung, Taiwan’s second city. I’m in the shade outside a 7/11 store – I should … Read More »
Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz is the only Arab to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Even in translation his was a wonderful voice, as distinctive as that of all great writers from Chaucer to Twain and Wodehouse. It was … Read More »
I’ve been saying for a long time that the USA (its rulers, not its people) is the most reckless and aggressive nation on earth. And I’ve been saying for a long time we’ve been lied to on an epic scale … Read More »
I’ve had a couple of exchanges of late with a supporter of what the mainstream calls the far left – the vanguard or Leninist model. Having read pieces from Socialist Workers Party (US), cited to straighten out my wayward thinking, … Read More »
Given an alarming intensifying of Russia bashing on virtually every front, however ridiculous, I recommend Kit’s piece today in OffGuardian: The alleged poisoning of ex-MI6 agent Sergei Skripal has caused the Russophobic MSM to go into overdrive. Nowhere is the … Read More »
Readers of my posts on Syria know that my views on its seven year ordeal could not be further from those of mainstream media. They aren’t much closer to those of their audiences, though of late I’ve noted a growing … Read More »
My denunciations of America – with “the planet’s most rapacious capitalism” at the kinder end of the spectrum – refer to its ruling class, not its people. But here’s a thought. Their country’s diversity of climate, and plethora of mind-blowing … Read More »
Capitalism frequently embarrasses its more thin-skinned defenders: a group that, I kid you not, can include leading Conservative politicians. I’m sure Ted Heath, the Tories’ first non aristocratic leader, really meant it when in 1973 he castigated a sanctions-busting Lonhro, … Read More »
1996 interview of Noam Chomsky by the BBC’s Andrew Marr. Transcript below. (I’ve done a light edit to filter out vocal redundancy from someone else’s transcript, and added a few links.) Introduction by Marr Do you believe what you read … Read More »