Alexei Navalny’s suicidally courageous return to Russia after recovering from an attempted assassination by poisoning brought tens of thousands of his supporters out onto the streets in unsanctioned demonstrations. They were adding their voices and feet to his protests against high level political corruption, spotlighted in a YouTube film, released a few days ago and … Read more
Vincenzo Muccioli was the charismatic leader of a drug rehab community in Italy, curing heroin addiction by offering community support and craft training in a model farm. His followers regarded him as a saviour though he did practice ‘tough love’ on the addict inmates. How tough only became evident after a brutally beaten dead body … Read more
‘Suffer little children to come unto me’ – for a religious organisation that flag-waves compassion as a guiding light, the Catholic Church in Ireland spectacularly failed to walk its talk. The brutal and inhumane treatment of unmarried mothers over decades has been exposed in a heart-rending report. Overall 60,000 women over 80 years were put … Read more
“A mean, cruel, hard, unlovable, unloving human being … relentlessly ugly. … But her books? Brilliant.” So said Patricia Highsmith’s publisher. And PD James remarked that without the catharsis of fiction she wondered whether Highsmith might have become one of the murderers she wrote so lovingly about. A new biography relating the chaos and degradation … Read more
The Dutch government is another one in turmoil. In this case over an escalating scandal in which thousands of parents were wrongly accused by tax officials of fraud, plunging many families into debt by ordering them to repay childcare allowances. They were pursued through the courts, ordered to repay benefits and denied the right to … Read more
A new Martin Luther King film – MLK/FBI – is certain to raise controversy since it does not shy away from his frenetic sex life. The director Sam Pollard, an African-American who has worked many times alongside Spike Lee and produced an epic PBS series about the long battle for racial equality in the US, … Read more
Behind the shocking scenes at Capitol Hill this week were several supremacist militia groups, all given the green light by Trump and treated with kid gloves by the security staff. The largest of them, the Oath Keepers, an armed right-wing organisation with 30,000 law enforcement officers, soldiers and military veterans as members, say they will … Read more
Screen goddess Sophia Loren, one of the last true stars of the movies, has returned to the screen aged 86 in the Netflix The Life Ahead directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. Dispensing with any pretensions at glamour or likeability, she appears angry, defeated and cynical as Madame Rosa, a former sex worker and Holocaust … Read more
The UK will be more buffeted by the transiting Uranus square Saturn than many countries (except the EU – and now that I think about it India, Pakistan and China). Tensions will run high over restrictions to freedom as well as the fallout from economic disruptions. Tr Saturn will square the UK 8th house … Read more
A shell-shocked USA, battered by rancour over Trump’s presidency and his chaotic, vengeful exit, never mind the pandemic, could be forgiven a sigh of relief at the hope of quieter times ahead. With no mid degree Fixed signs on the USA 1776 chart the disruptions of the prevailing 2021 tr Uranus in Taurus square tr … Read more