The Rusty Wire Service

“Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price.” When war correspondent Marie Colvin made these remarks ; addressing an audience at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street, London back in November, 2010, she was speaking as the seasoned veteran of global conflict.  Since losing her left eye to shrapnel from a  Sri Lanka n army hand grenade in 2001, her black eye patch bore stark testimony to the courage of her convictions.   It may have lent her a swashbuckling demeanour but it's clear she questioned constantly her motives and judgment in pursuit of the news: " We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?" she asked of her listeners in St Bride's, as they remembered and paid tribute to the courage of their fallen journalistic comrades. On 22 February 2012 in the Syrian city of Homs, Marie Colvin died as sh...

By  Cristina Brooks ­­As the EU rushes to pass a law allowing government searches of smartphones and laptops for copyrighted text, protests are breaking out across Europe.  Protesters are worried about the passing of a law couched in terms so broad it could put anyone who shares a chicken soup recipe in jail. In summary, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) creates a new international organization, run by the US and copyright holding corporations, to demand trials for anyone anywhere in the world believed to be sharing corporate-owned written text on the internet. The impact this could have on journalists and educators is huge. ACTA began in the US government. In response to a lobby by US politicians with film industry funding, the Bush administration pushed it in an unalterable form onto trade partner nations in the attempt to make it enforceable worldwide. As late as 2009, members of press, government, civil liberties, interne...

I’m always suspicious of anyone who professes an absolute philosophy. If you tell me that God exists with absolute certainty then I’m afraid I have to question your dogma. But on the other hand, if you tell me you believe in the existence of a benign higher power, I respect your right to believe in such, particularly if it gives you hope and optimism. By the same token, if you sit there and tell me that it is a matter of absolute fact that God (whoever she might be) doesn’t exist, then frankly, you are every bit as much of a donkey as any Alabama Creationist or hatred-inciting Imam. Usually, our secular bredrin who unyieldingly profess atheism, rely on science to show us how absurd it is to believe in the existence of a supreme deity.   In their efforts to ridicule faith which they usually conflate with organised religion, these advocates of the scientific approach usually pick soft targets such as the aforementioned creationists or reliquaries such as the Turi...

I wish I could muster a greater sense of opprobrium and indignation at the news that we, the put-upon tax-payers of this disunited kingdom, are subsidising the meals of our elected representatives to the tune of £5.8m per annum . Chris Huhne’s present paramour Ms Carina Trimingham I don’t even give a weeping fig for the £370,000 bill for hiring trees for Portcullis House (or as the Daily Mirror helpfully pointed out: the equivalent of “the salary of 21 soldiers or 18 midwives – or £438,250 including VAT”) The denizens of Westminster Village are riding us like donkeys? It’s hardly  a ‘hold-the-front-page’ revelation now is it? Where I come from, there’s an old adage that springs to mind at times like this; evincing a complete lack of surprise at the bad behaviour of a person or a class of people: What would you expect from a pig but a grunt? There are, however, a couple of aspects of this story that do give some pause for thought at least. On 6 February, noto...

The so-called beautiful game has been having a torrid old time of it over the past few weeks. Barnes and the Banana: we've come  a long way  since these days...haven't we? The festering sore of racism continues to dog football and the unedifying behaviour of Liverpool’s Suarez in the recent cup tie with Manchester United and the club’s subsequent failure to display anything approaching joined up thinking on the matter is bringing into serious disrepute one of the great European club sides. Liverpool seems happy enough to make an example of bigots on the terrace but the club seems rather less surefooted when it comes to the censure of its multi-million pound mary-boys and their unreconstructed views on race relations. As for Chelsea’s John Terry... But just in case you thought this was just an issue on the terraces or in the dressing room, the shame of the game’s establishment is further evidenced by the paucity of black managers in the Premiership. Black f...

It was heartening to read today that veteran sci-fi comic book 2000AD was celebrating its 35th birthday party at a sold-out SFX Weekender in Prestatyn. For a few fleeting seconds, I was right back in the 1970s, watching a TV ad (on a black and white set) for an exciting new comic book. It cost eight of your Earth pence, came with a free ‘Space Spinner’ and promised it would be ‘in orbit every Monday’.  Like the sudden warmth of remembrance for a long-forgotten old friend, I had happened on a piece of the future from way back in my past.  (Vivid memory as ‘Future Shock’ or perhaps ‘ á la recherche de l’avenir perdue ’.)  In February 1977 when 2000AD was launched, the year sounded ever so modern and far off in the glittering 21 st century.  Before 2000AD’s launch, comic books for me had meant Beano , The Beezer , Warlord or Action .  Naturally, I was a member of Desperate Dan Pie Eaters Club, not to mention being a fully-paid up and Lord Peter Fl...