These are things I hope will happen in the coming year. They are arranged in no particular order – the numbers are arbitrary. It’s all good. You will note a certain degree of optimism, at least from my perspective, in all of these predictions. It’s why I’ll add this caveat here: these aren’t so much […]
Saloth Sar goes to Paris
So the islanders loved my goddamn story so much, the big kahuna said he would give me whatever I wanted. I could have had John Daiquiri put to death if I so desired, but I had enough blood on my hands for one lifetime. Instead, I asked for Daiquiri’s boat, the one he sailed to […]
The normalisation of Cuba-US relations was long, long overdue
Yesterday, The United States of America normalised relations with Cuba, fifty-five years after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power and twenty-five years after the Berlin Wall fell. That last figure tells the story of how overdue this move really was. The trade embargo still has yet to be lifted, and hopefully it will […]
Hooray for the Foreign Aid Bill clearing the Commons
Yesterday, a bill guaranteeing that 0.7% of national income will be spent on foreign aid in perpetuity cleared the Lower House. It remains to be seen if it makes it through the Lords in one piece, but considering it was a Private Members’ Bill, albeit one that had the full backing of one of the […]
Zaire, 1973
Zaire was a weird place to say the least. The Belgians, when they ruled the country, called the capital city Leopoldville, after the Belgian king. Domiano Ndege, during his brief reign, called it Africana. He thought that one day he’d rule all of Africa from the place, the deluded narcissist. Mobutu ended that dream real […]
Carlos Fanta: interview with a Chilean psychopath, reel one
The tape begins to roll. I ask Carlos to speak clearly into the microphone (translated from the original Spanish)…. He was born in Concepcion, just like I was. His pictures adorned my wall as a child. He was, as the Americans like to say, my hero. He virtually created the nation of Chile if you […]
Holiday in Beirut, part three
Returning to sleepy London town after a week in Beirut was really quite strange. Living in Zone 2, I never thought where I lived was particularly peaceful. However, on a relative scale compared with the centre of the Lebanese capital, I may as well be living in the middle of Siberia in terms of sound […]
Holiday in Beirut, part one
We arrived in Lebanon on Wednesday evening. A car had been booked for us, but as we emerged from Customs none of the signs appeared to be obviously ours. There was one that I thought as worth a try though; it read “POLLOW”. Sure enough, we were Pollow. Even though we’ve only been here three […]
The Lone Satsuma
I’ve always hated New Year’s Eve. That’s not correct, actually; I’ve only truly hated the last evening of the year since 1990. That was the first in what was to become a long string of moribund nights out that I have had to endure come December 31st. On that occasion, shortly following my eighteenth birthday, […]
The war against ISIL cannot be won in Iraq alone
As someone who is a member of a small pot of people arguing for military intervention in Syria, pretty much since the civil war there kicked off in2011, hearing this week that the UK government is finally getting serious about trying to tackle a problem that has spun so wildly out of hand, i.e. ISIL, is […]