Kim Jong Il tests a nuclear weapon: he's crazy. The U.S. stockpiles nuclear weapons, uses them in Japan, and draws up plans with Israel to nuke Iran, and they're defending the free world? Kim Jong Il is a dictator who starves his own people; how many Iraqis have Bush and the neo-cons executed? How many American soldiers has Bush sent to their deaths? How many chemical weapons has the U.S. used? Some perspective people, please.

So, in these trying times, I like to find authors who express their feelings better than I do. Like André Malraux, the Communist-turned-Gaullist who, back in the 1920s, was a committed revolutionary. His most famous book, La Condition Humaine, tells the story of Soviet agents helping organize the Chinese revolution of 1927. I'll review it soon, but for now, here are some of my favourite quotes. They go some way towards explaining the mindset of communists - or me, at least.


Communist workers on strike in Shanghai, 1927, during the second Chinese revolution

"The convict, the epileptic, the syphilitic, the wounded, are not like other people. They cannot accept."

"During the [Paris] Commune, a fellow who was arrested cried: 'But I have never dabbled in politics.' 'Precisely.' And his head was broken."

"Eugh! The sight of all those faces that have never been convulsed by any outburst of rage! Oh! if one could only make people like that realize that something called 'human life' exists."

He discovered that what he hates is not the happiness of the well-to-do, but their self esteem.