Warning! This man does not speak for Britain

British politician Nigel Farage has illusions of grandeur addressing a conference in Washington. Americans should not be taken in by his shameless hate-mongering.

Ukraine: A question of identity

The struggle in Ukraine echoes the country’s past, but should not be allowed to cloud its future. If Russia and Ukraine are to live as peaceful neighbours, they must find a way to live with each other’s history too.

It’s all gibberish to me!

Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Jabberwocky” in Alice in Wonderland is a well known example of gibberish. But no one is quite sure where the word gibberish comes from.

The world we live in

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a series of hearings held between 1996 and 1998, allowed perpetrators of heinous crimes under apartheid to be pardoned as long as they confessed and could prove they were politically motivated.

Dresden 1945 – Kobane 2015

Two photos. No comment.

Pluto’s revenge

Between 1979 and 1989 Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were aligned in such a way that the space probe Voyager 2 was able to visit each one in turn. Pluto, at that time the ninth planet in our solar system, missed out on this interstellar rendezvous.

Making music in hell

In Tel Aviv, in a basement redolent with sawdust and varnish, is a workshop where violins played by Jewish victims of the Holocaust are lovingly restored.