Presque vu XXXXI

Tony Blair made a 35 minute speech to 400 millionaire bankers in Las Vegas last week. The ex-prime minister’s fee for the event was £125,000. He urged his audience to support the policies of George Bush’s republican world view. Allegedly the Clinton’s were not too chuffed.
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The Tom Cruise indoctrination video that scientology tried to suppress [...]



Dear Senator Edwards:

It was good meeting with you yesterday and discussing my father’s legacy. On the day when the nation will honor my father, I wanted to follow up with a personal note.
There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of back and forth in the political arena over my father’s legacy. It is a [...]



It seems to be an easy combination these days, to be a politician and a liar. Maybe it was ever so? It’s one of those questions which trip you up. The guy’s always going to insist he’s not a liar, but is he lying about it?
Well, yes, usually.
But it’s sometimes funny as well.
Yesterday’s article in [...]



Kenya

Last week, Kenya held a national election tainted with vote-tampering. It ended in a claim of victory for incumbent President Mwai Kibaki over the challenger Raila Odinga who had led the polls - now Kenya’s future hangs in the balance. Violence has broken out across the country, with roving gangs of machete-wielding youth terrorizing the [...]






About Writing:

When I started writing that story, I didn’t know there was going to be a PhD with a wooden leg in it. I merely found myself one morning writing a description of two women I knew something about, and before I realised it, I had equipped one of them with a daughter with a wooden leg. I brought in the Bible salesman, but I had no idea what I was going to do with him. I didn’t know he was going to steal that wooden leg until ten or twelve lines before he did it, but when I found out that this was what was going to happen, I realised it was inevitable. Flannery O'Conner writing about her short-story 'Good Country People'

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