Words Dept.

Help me. I’m worried I may be one of those “Morrissey apologists” you sometimes hear about. None of my best friends are Morrissey, yet I can’t help empathise with the erstwhile Smiths frontman. To make matters worse, I’ve got form in this area. Three years ago when, in an NME interview, Morrissey expressed some rather [...]

Here’s Sharon Stone spouting forth on the Chinese earthquake. Sharon, you see, is a friend o’ Lama and believes in, like, karma and shit. I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else… I don’t like that. I’ve been concerned about, [...]

A couple of very awful things have got me riled this weekend and I can’t work out which is the more dreadful. One is China’s human rights record and the fact that many of its worst aspects, such as detention without trial, aren’t being reformed despite claims that the Olympics would bring about change. Which [...]

George W. Bush is clearly disturbed. He grins like a post-coital bonobo on Prozac for the duration of his BBC interview with Matt Frei. Perhaps it’s understandable, considering Frei is asking him about such rib-tickling topics as AIDS in Africa, “genocide” in Darfur and China’s human rights record. Bush, as we know, finds it difficult [...]

World Architecture News claims its servers have been attacked by the Chinese government after “ruffling some feathers” over its reports on Beijing. The London-based news service this week ran a comment piece by editor Michael Hammond, which suggested the Chinese are “deliberately courting controversy” by hiring Frankfurt-based AS&P, to redesign part of Beijing. The practice [...]