Donkeyshott & Xuitlacoche

Cameron's reforms will roll back the gains of 1945 Under the cover of social entrepreneurship and community the Tories and Cameron plan to privatise all aspects of state service provision and send us back to pre-war Britain . The devil quotes scripture and Cameron is sweetening his plans to sell off the whole state apparatus of Britain, with the possible exception of the army and the police, under the cover of rhetoric about the importance of community. Like Thatcher in the 80s he hides behind words. But he can tell Sid and the Neighbourhood Watch to get lost, as far as I'm concerned. Do you remember Thatcher's bribes to the populace? That they could buy shares in British Gas and British Telecom and buy their own homes and buy shares in the public utilities. Where have those shares ended up? In the pockets of the wealthy. In the pocket of Cameron's mob: the establishment with its sinecure on power through the self selection procedure of money, elite public sc...

David Cameron the Tory estate agent Trust me I am a posh estate agent, yah. The badly hidden agenda of the Tories is to sell off state sector institutions to the highest bidders, to slash the public sector's share of Britain's GDP and privatise everything that moves. Today the headlines read that the Tories will put tax reduction at the centre of their policy making and start cutting public spending immediately. Of course this is quite natural for a party that represents the well-off. The well-off have private health insurance, the well off send their children to public schools, the well-off don't need state pensions and unemployment benefits, instead they have share portfolios which often include lucrative investments in the banking and financial sector, in the armaments industry and in US controlled companies like BP. The rich feed off the profits accruing from financial speculation. How many sharks out there benefited from the privatisation of BT, the Railroads, the wa...

Jawid Sharif - Amelaket Ba Gardan

Years later, Chernobyl, photo by Evilviking When I was 19, I tried to convince Leon Kreel that Chernobyl was like a "red berry" eaten by one of Eugene Marais ' more limber-minded chimpanzees, and I suggested to him that a planned economy with a head on its shoulders, unlike the soul-swallowing Yog Sothoth that is pre-sentient capitalism, should be capable of learning not to repeat the same poisonous mistake of building up a reliance on nuclear power. He called me Kugel and then challenged me. "If you have Jewish in you, as you say you do, then tell me what a Kugel is?" I said: "A cake." "Not bad, not bad." he said, smiling. But I think his offbeat response had less to do with my politics and views on nuclear power and much more to do with the way I continued to lust after his younger daughter, who was 17. So Andy went to Chernobyl for a haunting. He went to a place that felt like Tarkovsky's "Zone" in the film "Stalke...

For N.P. First dream Pyramidal, funereal and Earthen Born like shadow and aimed in vain Like the raised point of an obelisk Set towards the sky. Climbing and striving in vain for the stars Which, though beautiful , Sparkle and are exempt, Far from the vapour of war, From it's fugitive shade They mock at a distance. The frowning bronze of their rays Failing to touch the convex surface of this globe. Property of the of the Goddess, Who is thrice beautiful, And Boasts three beautiful faces And who owns the air that she blots and soaks With the denseness of her breath. So that in this quiet and contentment In this imperial silence, Even the voices of the night birds, So dark and grave That even the silence won't interrupt them, Consent. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz [ my translation ]

Biblical scenes from the Ethiopian famine of 1974 Do we see famine as it is? An eyewitness in northeast Ethiopia 1973/4 By Tony Hall For someone who wandered about, as Oxfam's Communications Officer , among rural calamities in two continents, for a few years, and had a good hard look at one major famine, the question is interestingly framed, and stirs me to a kind of mosaic of answers, from my own observations and experiences. This commemoration means a great deal to me, more as a 20th than a 10th anniversary, as one of the earliest visiting witnesses and international bell-ringers on the 1973 famine in its full scope. The occasion should honour government officials, and aid workers , who struggled and sacrificed to sound the alarm and tackle the crisis, months before any outsiders: they were the 1,500 peasants from Wollo who staggered into Addis to explain how bad things were, back in February 1973 leading to government roadblocks after their expulsion, t...

John / Chix is third from the front

This is an odd double exposure of one of my daughters at the beach in Mexico over the picture of a port. I didn't go with them that holiday. She looks like a goddess, smiling, bathed in light and set against the stars.

Child's drawing in Terezin: From the Jewish Museum in Prague The Butterfly "The Butterfly" The last, the very last, So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow. Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing against a white stone. . . . Such, such a yellow Is carried lightly 'way up high. It went away I'm sure because it wished to kiss the world good-bye. For seven weeks I've lived in here, Penned up inside this ghetto. But I have found what I love here. The dandelions call to me And the white chestnut branches in the court. Only I never saw another butterfly. That butterfly was the last one. Butterflies don't live in here, in the ghetto. - by Pavel Friedman   The Christians are wrong. And considering the fact that the present Pope was a member of the Hitler youth and that the Catholic church played an ignominious role during the war, that institution is deeply tainted with the crime of the holocaust and continues to be so. There can be no forgiveness, there ...

Still from the 1920s film, The Golem The legend of the Prague Golem is one of the most well known old stories closely linked to the Prague Jewish community. The Prague Golem was a creation of a Rabi Low ben Bacalel, who had made the Golem in order to protect the Prague Jewish community from the more violent and prejudiced Christians who oppressed Jews of the Prague Ghetto. According to legend, Bacalel created his Golem in 1580 together with a 'sem' (a small ball which brought the Golem to life). Although Golem served his master and the Prague Jewish community well, after an accident in 1583, Bacalel decided to bury his creation and remove it from the world. During one of Jewish celebrations, Bacalel forgot to take the sem out of Golem's forehead and, without its master's supervison, the Golem became violent and attacked the people whom he was meant to protect. Today, the the legend of the Prague Golem is mostly known thanks to a famous Czech comedy film 'Cisaruv Pe...

I'm startled by the iron chimes of church bells echoing off the moon. by Dave Loffman In my opinion, one of the best Haikus

Take it easy, Looking East Trouble no more Goin up the country Keep it to yourself All my love in vain Highway 49 This wheel's on Fire Power to love I ain't superstitious, but.. Cold shot Cold Turkey Plastic factory Mystery train Room to move Everything is broken Every grain of sand May you stay forever young The lonely Shepherd She's not there

Steph was going on a trip into the war zone in Guinea Bissau and she needed to get in training for it. She was writing a book about the role of women in the liberation movements. The attitude of some people inside the national liberation movements was that the struggle for woman's equality was a distraction and disruptive when what was needed was unity. The argument seemed to make sense until you saw that in

Mom was incredibly proud of Andy in her last months, because one of Andy's daughters had anorexia and Andy went full blast to save her, and together with Kate they both did. The daughter decided to save herself. Mom on the phone said to me passionately: "Andy is a saint! He is an absolute saint! He is wonderful!"

I remember Josiah from Tanzania. Did Mom and Dad know him from S.A. days? I don't know. I'll ask Pam. What I remember, and what I think Andy and Chris remember, is that he laughed a lot and that whenever Mom and Dad was there with Josia and the ANC comrades he often brought with him, they all quickly relaxed. And both Mom and Dad were always happy when Josiah was there and they were constantly joking about people and places I knew of, but didn't know and Josiah's laugh was very deep and infectious. Mom and Dad said that he had been torured by the special branch in South Africa and we looked at him with great respect. But being together in the evening with Josiah was just so much enjoyment for Mom and Dad. The best fun we had was at Imjinwayma beach. There, together with Florence (Flo) Mposho, the ANC rep. and Pam and Marcelino and Ilundi and Geoff, Barbara and Lisa Lamb and Josiah and other freinds, we would go in convoy anong a dusty road. Somehow the coconut sellers w...

Mom with Bertie, Anne and Chris's Spaniel This picture was taken 4 months before Mom died and 7 before Dad died. In the middle of all her pain and discomfort Mom basically said "Fuck it! I want to see my children and grandchildren," (she knew it was possibly for the last time, but we didn't want to know). And so they both flew economy to the UK and carefully managed the cancer, and they were both with my family for a few days and with Chris's family and Andy's family and it wasn't really about saying anything except that when she was alone with me for what I realise now was the last time, I cried and then she comforted me .

What can I say. My son John. Is anyone prouder of their son than I am? I love my son.

Video by Chris

Video by Alice Hall

Richmond upon-Thames College main entrance From a distance, Richmond upon-Thames College looks and occasionally smells, like a bread factory. It is a machine for learning in. Our students leave baked, not half baked. Watch us on a fire drill. There's the staff and then there are 6,500 students, including part-timers. Take this example; we have seven different restaurants on campus, including Merits Training Restaurant, run by the catering students, the Appletree Cafe , run by our students with special needs, and there's our staff restaurant. Crowded into colleges like these there are still some of the idealists and disaffected casualties of the Thatcher years. They take cover between the time-servers and jobsworths like marijuana plants growing under tobacco leaves. Perhaps colleges like ours shelter a people's intelligentsia in waiting. If Jerusalem ever did come, these irritatingly self- deprecatory colleagues of mine might be among the leaders of a cultural renais...

Carlos Saura

Andy Hall: John and Carmen as Altar servers in 2001 At the top of calle Tokio was the church where my family went every Sunday . Tere's brother was baptised there and in the 1950s Teresa's grandparents lived nearby, in the Colonia Roma. Mexico City was still one of the most beautiful places on Earth in the 1940s and 50s. The Indian saint, Yoganada visited it and describes Xochimilco , (now rather unkempt), in his Autobiography of a Yogi as the most beautiful place on Earth.  Mexico City was a decorous Queen of cities. The crime rate was low. The broad central avenues, modelled on the Champs - Élysées , were passable, and the clear air allowed a view of distant snow-covered volcanoes.  Family members sigh over the lost beauties of Mexico City . Xochimilco by Vladmix We lived in Calle Tokyo in the Zona Rosa   in an Art Deco 1930s house with wooden floors, white pillars and a marble staircase - the set of a Miroslava Stern movie, perhaps. ...

Chris in the Metro with Lucy Journeuax and Karina MGuire Chris is a senior Captain with Virgin Atlantic and he's doing something that would make Mom and Dad proud. He's collecting funds for charities in Kenya. I am sure that if Mom and Dad were alive today they would be 100% behind you Chris.  Good for Virgin that it puts its money where its heart is! Mount Kenya is incredibly beautiful. I would love to go with Chris. I think Andy was thinking of filming it, but so many Virgin crew are up for a climb for charity that there were no places. Lucky that Anne does netball competitively too. What I love about Mt Kenya is it is so dramatic. It looks sharp and unclimable, like the Matterhorn from certain angles. Of course it's much higher than the Matterhorn but there is an easier way up. How much easier, I wonder? How much easier it is to say "easier" from an armchair and not from a craggy slope thousands of metres up? Mt Kilimanjaro is shared, but Mt Kenya re...

Is sleep a form of consciousness? Plainly, it is. Usefuly, Donald J. DeGracia (1997) discusses the different approaches to the consciousness of sleep for us as the scientific, parapsychological and occult accounts. To the nub. The question is then, is sleep consciousness, in all its complexity, a different form of consciousness to waking consciousness. Or is it merely qualitatively different? The inkling of a useful answer is probably out there somewhere in the literature. Now I know I'm being selective here but many authors locate this dream consciousness primarily in one hemisphere of the brain. According to them it is lateralised in the right hemisphere.     https://www.dmt-nexus.com/Files/Books/General/degracia_paradigms_of_consciousness.pdf

Morden around 1969 My brothers and I arrived wearing sailor jackets with brass buttons. John and Nola, who were there for our arrival, propped us up against the Charing Cross monument, and, in the weak sunlight, took our picture. Our rented house in South London was claustrophobic. None of us knew to consistantly wipe our muddy shoes clean on the doormat, remembered to always hang our duffle coats up and make our beds and we were always losing our gloves and spatting. Dad bought a green Riley Classic  which was difficult to start in the mornings and which made us late. It smelled of peeling leather and of the stuffing that burst through rips in the seats. In winter, once we had scratched the frost off the window pane at the front and off the window at the back with a knife, the car needed cranking and the choke needed pumping before it would go. Primary...