Friday, December 03, 2004



“Real news,” said Richard Reeves “is the news you and I need to keep our freedoms.” I am reminded of that line from the news photographer in Tom Stoppard’s play Night and Day : “People do terrible things to each other, but its worse in places where everybody is kept in the dark.”
"Something there is," wrote Robert Frost, "that doesn't love a wall."
The Wizard of Oz, Bert Lahr asks: "What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the ape in apricot? What have they got that I ain't got?" The answer, for Lahr's Cowardly Lion, is courage

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: How to Tell a Terrorist From a Freedom Fighter
The "rebels" or "freedom fighters" are part of a nationwide "resistance movement." While many of them are local, even tribal, and fight simply because they are outraged by the occupation of their country, hundreds of others among the "resistance fighters" – young Arabs -- are arriving from as far away as "Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan," not to speak of Saudi Arabia and Algeria, to engage in jihad, ready as one of them puts it, to stay in the war "until I am martyred." Fighting for their "Islamic ideals," "they are inspired by a sense of moral outrage and a religious devotion heightened by frequent accounts of divine miracles in the war." They slip across the country's borders to fight the "invader" and the "puppet government" its officials have set up in the capital in their "own image. The invader's sway, however, "extends little beyond the major cities, and even there the….
Freedom fighters often hold sway by night and sometimes even by day ; [Orange, chestnut, rose, daisy, velvet, singing - peaceful, popular demonstrations in Eastern Europe get the best names. Popular demonstrations in Eastern Europe get the best names]
• · The republic, citizenship and the politics of culture
• · · Hot War Politicians split over revealing communist secret files after 15 year ; [ Slovakia remembers victims of communism and fascism ]
• · · · · Jump ship! Jump ship! with the Golden Parashute: Outgoing Telstra chief executive Ziggy Switkowski has revealed he was pushed out after a split with some board members Degree of death and inevitability that other heads will roll; [Pat Sajak is surprised at the nearly universal lack of outrage over the murder of Theo van Gogh]
• · · · · · The city's crippling train crisis and drastic service cuts under proposed timetable changes have prompted a group of civic and business leaders to demand an immediate start to A light-rail mass-transit network.