by Phil Hall King Faisal is considered by Saudis – and by many others – to have been the greatest Saudi of the 20th century and a hero of the developing world. He paid for his heroism dearly with his life. The whole Arab world believes the USA had King…
An introduction to The Rights of Man and Fish by Paul Halas History is bunk, to quote Henry Ford – which, of course, ignores the wider context of what he said, but then he wanted to sell us motor cars and probably wasn’t all that interested in the truth of…
Criminal lunacy sans frontiers and the meaning of 9/11 by Tony Hall In 2001, just after the Twin Towers were hit, my brother-in-law, who was a minister in the Mexican government at the time, called me and asked me: ‘Phil, what do you think of what’s just happened?’ I thought…
An old Rosemary Russet in Wisley Gardens , Phil Hall 2021 by Phil Hall Eating an apple is like drinking milk. Apples come from a living organism, a relative. The original apple was a fig. Our ancestors co-evolved with fig trees. We are a by-product of fig tree ecology –…
Reviewed by Jon Elsby The Visionaries bears the subtitle “Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Salvation of Philosophy”, which suggests a possible kinship with other recent publications – for example, Metaphysical Animals by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman, Benjamin Lipscomb’s The Women Are Up To Something, and Nikhil Krishnan’s…
By Inge Colijn During my 27 years of work for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, I lived in many countries and they all became special to me. But some places like Afghanistan mean more. I was told at our headquarters in Geneva that people from abroad working in Afghanistan…
Visits to the Merlin of Coombe Hill By Phil Hall Con lives in the house he was born into more than 60 years ago. Everyone notices it from the street; partly because it looks run down and partly because there are sometimes cats in the front garden. One of the…
Stop the war in the Ukraine! ‘Do you know what I do to people who get in the way of me?’ asked the thuggish manager of a GAZOPROM plant sitting across the table from me. ‘No, what do you do to them?’ ‘I destroy them,’ He said. And he stared…
By Émile St Clair Fijians on 10 October 2022 celebrated their National Day, and looked forward to the 2022 general election, whose exact date at that time was yet to be announced. Fiji Day prompted at least two high-profile articles in Fiji’s national press, those of Mahendra Chaudhry and Dr…
Dan Pearce has done editorial work for many magazines and newspapers including New Society, Honey, 19, Oz, The Observer, The Times and Sunday Times, Mayfair and Penthouse. Dan has created book and record covers, political cartoons, comic strips and caricatures and he has written two graphic novels: ‘Critical Mess’ (against the nuclear industry)…
HAROLD VOIGT, SOUTH AFRICAN PAINTER 1st May 1939 – 9th October 2022 by Leigh Voigt How does one give an unbiased, honest appraisal of one’s own husband and have the gall to call it an obituary? Does one resort to clichés? Borrow words from the pens of others? No, one…
Bring the powerful to heel, don’t glorify monarchs and privilege by Philip Hall The idea that Charles III is divinely appointed to rule over us is ridiculous! Yet, ultimately, it is the metaphysical idea of the divine right of kings that gives King Charles III his legitimacy as the head…
By Paul Halas The democratisation of the image Art is everywhere, whether it’s highbrow gallery art, pulp, throwaway art, or the vast array of moving images available to us. Perhaps because my parents excelled in the production of animated films – possessing talents I sadly didn’t inherit – I was…
Reproduced by kind permission of the author, from Global Research The case of the poisoned underpants I think we are all curious about the political trajectory of Alexey Navalny. Clearly there is a big power play being made around him. He is a pawn in a great game most of…
By Felipe Elvira Imagine waking up in Uruapan. Many thousands of Uruapenses who have crossed the border over into the USA dream of doing just that. They make films about it. Uruapan, with its orchards and breathtakingly beautiful national park built along river banks. Uruapan’s park has hundreds of fountains…
Story-writing for comics By Paul Halas It’s surprising how often I’ve been asked how one becomes a comic strip story-writer. My first reaction is usually to try to figure out if the person asking me is a, just being polite, b, gobsmacked that anyone should ever dream of entering such…
by Phil Hall My first taste memory is of ripe apricots. The apricots had fallen onto warm sand, so the fruit was lightly dusted. Its flesh was soft and loose under a fine felt skin and underneath that flesh was a sharp-edged, black pip. Though hungry, I only took one…
Saudi Aramco trainees, Phil Hall, 2014 Do Gulf Arabs understand the UK better than the UK understands Gulf Arabs? by Phil Hall When I gave my opinion on some issue relating to what was happening in one of the Gulf states a Jordanian colleague challenged me. He asked: Do you…
John Singer Sargent | Joseph Jefferson as Dr. Pangloss | The Metropolitan Museum of Art PR is not a solution to the political impasse we face in the UK. by Phil Hall There is no gimcrack technical electoral fix to the problem of inequality. When I was a teenager at…
Martin Yip by Margaret Yip I met Martin in Whitehaven, where I worked for him. He was only 21. Martin had lots of energy. His restaurant was on three floors. The kitchen was in the basement. He could carry five or six plates in his left hand and on his arm…
Mandiac script, Carving by Tim Brookes, The Endangered Alphabets Project Writing Rights, Human Rights by Tim Brookes I had been researching, carving and speaking about endangered alphabets for a decade before it struck me that the few reference sources on the topic said nothing about why these Indigenous and minority…
by Phil Hall Karen Armstrong, the author who specialised in the Axial Age, when many of the religions of the world began, or at least, gathered speed, has come to the conclusion that all religions have compassion at their core and that they should all be looking for issues where…
The execution of Louis XIV Get real, they cry – as they fill their maws and dirty their snouts. by Phil Hall The agents of the United States maneuver and push the public’s pointiest point of perception as their preferred tactic. They want to influence policy, action, and generate passivity…
By Bry Willis There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;Sign was painted, it said private property;But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;This land was made for you and me. Woody Guthrie . “The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land,…
Photo of Isobal with her son, Joseph By Margaret Yip I left school in 1964 at the age of 15. It was a Friday. I needed a job. By Monday, I had an interview which took place in my home. The wife of a housemaster at a private boys’ school…
by J. W. Wood Before the contract came through, Ken McKenzie’s life was the same as it ever was: pretending to read Schopenhauer and Swedenborg, drinking tea, and wondering when his money would run out. Also, he loved scrolling through social media on his phone: lately, Ken’s self-image as a…
Episode 11 The Quixotesque misadventures of unreconstructed Marcher Morgan Jones-Jones, who has probably not heard of the suffragettes let alone second- and third-wave feminists. He exploded upwards, gasping and choking. “Once,” crowed Kerridwins, her hand on the top of his head. “Want to stay?” “Wait, wait—” Morgan did a quick…
by Zeek Fharkha Zeek Fharkha is an artist, musician, punk, with 2 masters and an honours degree. Fine arts, digital arts and an MBA. He is reading for a PhD at wits business school in Design thinking.
Embroidered cloth on Karl Rutlidge’s pulpit Karl Rutlidge Karl is a Methodist Minster in charge of a heterodox and lively congregation at the Wesley Church in New Malden. He is also an m-Theory physicist. He is currently writing his doctorate in theology about the origins of the universe and its…
The Black Hundreds march in Odessa in 1905 Without socialist reform, every capitalist country is primed for civil war – including Russia by Phil Hall Russians are good chess players, but life is not a game of chess. It is far more complicated. Putin and his confreres correctly identify the…
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