News/Politics

The priest shoved me to the ground, lay on top of me and whispered filthy language in my ear. I could smell his tobacco breath and feel his spittle. It only lasted a moment, I think, but stuff like that you remember for a lifetime. At the time I was a twelve-year-old schoolboy at a […]

The locals allowed the hapless refugees to return but they had to buy back their looted possessions as part of their ‘reintegration’.

Julian Assange may well be a real life James Bond. His hair certainly fits the part, and his swagger is telling of a man with a penchant for the virtuously shaken and virulently stirred could ever dare. But it’s his decidedly Jacob Zuma air that is most striking. Yes, you read right. Take away the […]

Today marks the end of the 16 days of activism for no violence against women and children. It is also International Human Rights Day commemorating the day that the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is also … a Friday. Tomorrow will be a Saturday and then comes Sunday and then comes […]

Remember when Julius said that a woman who stays for breakfast and asks for taxi fare obviously enjoyed herself? Basically implying that the girl who accused Zuma of rape was a lying slut. Do you remember that? Do you remember how we all got angry with him? And said that in a country where women […]

If you’re on Twitter you’ve seen all the questions about the rape allegations against Julian Assange. People are asking — is what he did rape-rape? Conspiracy theorists scream that it is extremely convenient that these charges came up now, and others are saying that it’s not rape because all he did was lie about using […]

Man, the world we live in now works in nanoseconds. Up-to-the-minute Julius Julian Assange T-shirts are available for ordering here. He has barely been jailed and T-shirts saying “Free Julius Julian Assange” are already available. (My favourite is still “Julius Julian Assange is my homeboy”.) Sure, no doubt the T-shirt was available well in advance […]

As I wrote this I felt I’d been given a challenging advertising brief: write a campaign that will convince zealous feminists to happily subscribe to pornographic magazines for men and make those women look forward to savouring the contents. In other words, I’m inclined to think most will sneer at this piece. But that’s what […]

One of the better observations made by a local commentator in the wake of the WikiLeaks disclosures, was offered by Richard Calland, who suggested that the “purely nation-state, Westphalian view of the world” was increasingly in question. Calland wrote of a compelling anarchist narrative informing WikiLeaks’s direct action. He is quite right but the point […]