About this blog

This is a site for (armchair) travelers with an interest in the politics of places they may never visit. I am pictures person, too, and Leica content can be found through Labels using the Photography tag.

As for the politics, these are my own, unloosed thoughts on the storm. The people have crossed the Potomac, the Thames and the Moskva and the siege has begun. The ropes have been slashed and the clowns are about to vacate the circus tent.

Elis Regina -  O Bêbado e a Equilibrista - The Drunk and the Tightrope Walker

I've travelled by accident and design, living in many different countries, as a journalist and editor for Reuters, the BBC, Sky News and several of the new international English-language television channels. Also some wonderful local newspapers. 

My second conscious existence was in Brazil of the late 1960s, a country seething under military dictatorship. Despite wondrous natural surroundings, life gradually turned inwards. Eventually even the privileged lived under a form of house arrest for their own safety. Friends would vanish: we couldn't see them again. Some years later, Elis Regina sang a song about those Brazil days.

I've always carried that with me an incommunicable experience of dead weight and leadenness.  Inexplicable to friends and family in the U.S, Canada or Britain. I would look for signs of dread and kick myself for it. I could not shake a habit to flinch at the too-brazen display of a flag, the chant of a crowd, or at condemnations stated in unison. All things must pass, I thought. It is not relevant to nowadays and certainly to worth poring over. I never expected to share it with you.