Donkeyshott & Xuitlacoche

THAT is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees- Those dying generations - at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any n...

Mexican government recommendations 1. Wash your hands frequently with liquid soap 2. Do not congregate in public places. 3. Do not make physical contact when you meet people. 4. Do not share food. 5. Avoid touching your eyes nose or mouth. 6. Cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze. 7. Stay at home if you are sick. 8. Don’t get on public transport if you are ill. 9. Disinfect and clean anything touched by someone with the virus (e.g. plates, mugs, telephone sets, towels, bedding). 10. Inform the medical authorities if you think you may have the virus. 11. Don't spit on the ground. 12. Use disinfectant and try and keep you home as clean as possible. Clean basins, bannisters, doors, tables etc. 13. Keep your house as well ventilated as possible. 14. Use a handkerchief or a face mask when you talk. Danger signs If in addition to the standard symptoms of flu: 1. you have difficulty in breathing; 2. you have a pain in your chest; 3. you have blood in your snot or...

I'm not sharpening my snickersneer on the Guardian anymore. I've deleted the "Ishouldapologise" posting persona. Perhaps the Guardian will still accept the occasional peevish little piece from me, but there's not much point to posting on Comment is Free any more. I've shot my bolt. My fellow blogger Wordy's comments concentrated my mind. "Stopped in at Xuitlacoche earlier and was almost as puzzled, there, by your caring so passiionately about whether or not Cif wins prizes. Why? " I was under an illusion, given my long posting history, backstory, and contributions, that I was a minor stakeholder of sorts in the success of the CiF - Guardian blogs enterprise, but I was a little deluded and the right course of action for the deluded is to withdraw and desist. The right course of action perhaps when Wordy says: "Congratulations, @ISA, since that almost reads like an announcement of breaking away from a nasty addiction. " Perhaps s/he is...

If Vanga is right World War Three begins next year. By Yannis Vaks In 1923, in the village “New Selo” not far from the town “Petrich” 3 young girls were walking along the village road towards the stream when suddenly the sky turned black, the wind picked up and a frightening storm begun. The girls were immobilised with fear, The wind knocked two of the girls onto the ground and blew one of them off her feet and into the sky. The two remaining girls were so frightened so they ran home and were so shocked by what had happened that they couldn’t speak - they came back without their cousin. When the storm calmed down, people went out to search for the12-year old and within an hour they had found her. She was lying in a field in shock with her eyes full of sand. Slowly Vanga went blind. The first time I heard her name was in early childhood. Vanga is the most famous psychic in Russia and the former Soviet republics Ordinary people know who she is. If you ask someone: "Who is Nostra...

J. G. Ballard's decomposition Of course I came to Ballard through science fiction, but I could never finish his books. I started them well enough and ploughed on. But the subtext said to me. No. This isn't it really. Not yet. The Drowned World The Wind from Nowhere The Drought The Crystal World And then came: Crash , which was an artificial and stellar conjunction of his obsessions. And I read it when it came out in 1973 and I read: The Terminal Beach The Day of Forever The Best Short Stories of J G Ballard And Empire of the Sun much later, (after the movie) What do you think of books when you are 13? What do you think of the "textures" of Hal Clements, John Wyndham, Arthur C. Clark, Ray Bradbury, Brian Aldiss, Aldous Huxley and J. G. Ballard? And then what do you think of books like Crash . Or when you inadvertantly pick up the biography of Frank Harris or after having heard Suzanne try to read Leonard Cohen's Beautiful losers or scan through John Updike'...

Give up the act Nick Cohen: You are a right winger advocating a return the Thatcherism and cuts. If we read a flood of articles we see that massive amounts have been given to "restart lending". But this money that our government has freely given to rescue the richest amongst us could have gone into public services. The austerity programme of the Tories following on (in a worst case scenario in a year or so) is the direct result of this gift of tax revenue to the rich. We know this. Cohen says that the governmet wastes money and there goes the deictic reference to the conventional wisdom the right have put so much money and column inches and air time into building up: that the public sector is inefficient and that, by implication, it should be sold off to the rich to run efficiently for profit. Why should I have to argue against this ridiculous notion: the case for the public sector? Why should anyone have to argue the case for the obvious? It's o...

Matt Seaton should give us the below the line low down, asap . But the strange and sad thing is that this is the first year that CiF itself has not been nominated as a top political blogging site when it obviously is. If we thought about it we would have to think about the weaknesses of the present arrangement on CiF. 1. The terminal 5 -type screw up of the redesign. 2. The fact that posters are no longer equated with bloggers. Bloggers post in big fat thundering letters , while posters write in a tiny little squeaky type face and disappear from view after 50 comments. 3. Then instead of really tackling the big issues face on what we get is a constant polling of the Guardians market segment: "readers". Us. That's why Charlie Brooker and David Mitchell excite the Guardian, because we get the celebrity fan clubs posting (the kind of "Oh David, I love you," swoon, swoon thing.) and the Guardian believe a new posting dawn has arrived. It hasn't. You build up ...

Somalia 1993: Snafu Americana The US troops' Mogadishu beach-landing was a PR comedy of Forrest Gump proportions, ending in tragic PR disaster – but it was again, more an effort, initially, at peacekeeping than imperial aggression. The capital of Somalia had totally imploded, and had been in complete anarchy for many months. So again, in the absence of an effective UN army which the post cold-war world so badly needs – not one more blue-beret detachment to monitor buffer zones – some force would sooner or later go in and try to restore basic order. Remember, the implosion of Mogadishu was in no way the immediate or even medium term fault of any outside power. It happened like this: sub clans of the Hawiye – the main original clan of the city and surrounding countryside – having driven out president Siad Barre and his Marehan clan and their allies, in weeks of brave house-to-house and street battles, after years of increasing oppression – started to turn their RPGs and their AK47s ...

It's the ungovernability... Obama should act as Clinton did in 1993 to try and bring order to Somalia under the auspices of the UN. Robert Fox in the Guardian says: Current orthodoxy sees piracy as a product or symptom of failed or rogue states. The inference from Obama's statements is that the world must fix the Somali pirate problem at source, by fixing the anarchy of Somalia itself. Well yes. " Black Hawk Down " and all that. The US intervention in Somalia in 1993 was initially quite a selfless action. There was no benefit to the US in intervening in Somalia. It was a humanitarian intervention aimed at creating a secure environment for the delivery of aid. UN resolution 794. Of course in the end they fucked because they were incapable of reading the situation in Somalia correctly and supporting the man on the spot. The UN negotiator UN special representative Mohamed Sahnoun . The US didn't succeed but their attempt was initially brave and principled and...

Respect Jacob Zuma!   ... and hope that he will do the job Thabo Mbeki didn't do. Yes, Jacob Zuma was tried for rape, but he was acquitted. Yes, he was accused of corruption, but the charges were dropped – again and again - and many ordinary South Africans celebrated when they were. They did so because, despite the ten year vendetta against him, Jacob Zuma earned the respect of the majority of ordinary South Africans the hard way. Jacob Zuma was jailed for 15 years on Robben Island from 14th February 1964 to March 1979. After his release he organised internal resistance for two years and then, after setting up ANC intelligence networks, he joined the Central Committee of the ANC. In comparison to Nelson Mandela, Jacob Zuma is, what the Chinese would call “an uncarved block”. Although Nelson Mandela, was a high ranking member of the Tembu Royal House , he rejected tribal customs, ran away from an arranged marriage, studied law at the University of Witwatersra...

First draft As the world financial system started to fall apart we came together and linked arms and together we shall overcome. Let our enemies, who sew doubt and fear and mistrust in our global financial system at the cost of immense human suffering show their faces. Because here we are the leaders of our world, acting in the interests of our world and ready to stamp them down. When the money that we give to international financial institutions starts to flow and the money that we have invested in restarting our economies starts to flow life will inevitably come back into the world economy. The institutions we have commended with the task of protecting our suffering economies will have the funds to ease the flow of international credit and trade. You have the right to hope for and expect prosperity and you have the right to expect your government to identify the enemy of our prosperity and destroy it. And we know that enemy and I tell you now we will destroy it with our combined mig...

Cold war gloating in space is unseemly American space dreams were too grandiloquent. Tiles flaked off their space shuttle, but in the '60s and '70s they dreamed of colonising the LaGrange points. Rebellion for this "Golden Age" of Science Fiction often meant author's freedom to boldly express misogyny and racism in a sort of "Look Up in Anger." Golden Age Science Fiction wore a quiff and ripped up cinema seats. And admit it. Ender's game was trashy Mormonia. Most Mormons learn to bullshit after two years of Mission work. Ender's Game is Orson Scott Card's megalomaniac Mormon crap. And speaking of hot piss and pissoirs. In the former communist countries a pissoir was just a pissoir, not a "Grand Design". A jar of jam was a jar of jam. And no permanently looped gif; no snarky comedian or ten million dollar advert could have morphed those dusty-brown, label- less jars full of sour plum, plonked onto the shelves of warehouse-like super...