Donkeyshott & Xuitlacoche

Stop your foolish baying! In response to Polly Toynbee's article in the Guardian. These personal attacks are just laying the scent for a massive Tory fox hunt. The Jacqui Smith scandal is designed to make subsequent attacks on the public sector acceptable. The orchestrated Tory attack is nasty and vicious attack aimed at preparing us for a massive campaign of cuts. This is how it works. Shadowy Tory groups with the help of friendly newspapers, spindoctors and top flight PR companies, look for the weakest links: the weak sisters, of the public sector and then attack them. First they attack social services for making mistakes and play on the salary of the person forced to resign, then they look for a poorly performing hospital and attack it, then they look for at MPs expenses and attack them. Freindly newspapers start publishing planted articles about over paid public sector bosses and then, it never fails, they find a juicy little sex tidbit and link it to their attack on the public...

Antonello: African baptisms 1971 - 72 I met Tony and Eve at the end of 1971 when I arrived in Nairobi, sent by Philip Jackson, director of OXFAM’s media department, to cover Tony’s articles with my photos. I had already been in East Africa in ’69 as (terrible) personal assistant of Leslie Kirkley OXFAM’s Director, but that journey was just like throwing a quick glance. The mission very short and all the travelling done by plane. The plan for my second journey instead was completely different. I had proved to be a good photographer, so Philip decided it was worth trying me with that task. I was asked to stay for about two or three months, travel around East Africa and take as many pictures as I could. I actually met Tony on an evening of mid December and the next morning we were already heading towards Garissa and the North East of Kenya, to reach MadoGashi and Wajir. Maybe for this reason I don’t have a strong memory of Eve from that first quick encounter, preparing to leav...

A Mexican muddle The US has no choice but to develop a constructive and supportive relationship with southern neighbour Phil Hall Mexico and the United States share the problems of violence and drug trafficking just as they share the other problems and benefits of such a close relationship . Understanding of the issues involved in bilateral Mexican–US relations can boost a politician's career. In 1997, William Weld even gave up the governership of Massachusetts for the chance to be appointed ambassador to Mexico. John Negroponte was ambassador to Mexico and subsequently rose to become the first Director of...

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Majakovskij.face.jpg In a way Futurism is a basic instinct. A lust of the blood for the modern. For progress. For clean lobbies and antibiotics and heart transplants and aircraft travel and genetically modified crops and embryo screening and Hotol and fusion. We eat Futurism for breakfast. In a way I like Futurism because it holds faith with technology. It says: Fly that airplane! Burn holes in the atmosphere until you can burn cleaner holes, because progress and modernity will solve the problems that arise from that valiant act. I suppose it is the masculine principle. At its heart futurism is human because it is Utopian. What is the problem with William Morris , for example? Isn't his vision of the future revolting - horribly cloying with his fussy wallpaper and his arts and crafts and his false ideas of femininity. How much more interesting Le Corbusier's futurist city , his contemporary city for three million people. Futurism may not ...

Why doesn't the world remember Takhti? By Ali Hosseyni Gholamreza Takhti's name is all over Iran and in ever city and town there are wrestling clubs with Takhti's smiling photograph hanging on the wall in a position of honour. There is even "Takhti" wrestling club in each every town in Iran. Takhti was a supporter of the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh , and an enemy of the Pahlavi regime, which overthrew the democratically-elected government of Mossadegh in 1953 with the help of Britain and the US . In 1968 on the 7th January 1968, the Shah sent Savak to kill the legend. They said it was suicide. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi wept crocodile tears when he heard the news. It was not suicide. Mohammed Reza had ordered his death. Takhti was the greatest wrestler in the world in the 1950's and early 60s. He won a silver medal for Iran at the Olympics in Helsinki in 1952. He won a gold medal at 1956 in the Olympics in Melbourne and a Gold in Tokyo...

FLASHING THE GUARDIAN -- A BOOKS BLOGGERS' REBELLION :  The unheroic censor with a death wish Part 1: In which Norman Mailer stars in an experiment in search engine optimisation By ACCIACCATURE 3 February 2009 When Norman Mailer died in 2007, informed opinion – in the blogosphere, people who had read at least two of his books – was split. The army of readers who saw him as one of the most despicable misogynists writing fiction in the 20th century was perfectly matched by warriors on the other side, who raged that the label wasn’t just unwarranted but tantamount to heinous calumny. Before commenters returned to bitching-as-usual, tempers were lost on literary sites all over the net in debating temperatures high enough to bring to mind tiles burning off space shuttles re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. After I'd agreed to a spontaneous suggestion by our good friend Sean Murray -- a pioneer and stalwart of the comments section of The Guardian’s books blog – that we re-...

Obama promises the USA Rawlsian balls Obama will be cowed into compromising over any plans to tax and spend on the poor unless that spending is merely strategic, focused and highly limited - and he suggested as much in his speech. I had an hour long conversation with my brother on the phone who had flown over to be at the inauguration. He thinks I am being offensively ungenerous. Isn’t Obama better than Bush, Phil? Obama is such a well meaning sincere chap. A gent. A sincere man who deserves the benefit of the doubt. I’m sorry, but the right way to see Obama, Chris, is as the face of a massively expensive marketing exercise on behalf of US corporate capitalism. You’ve heard of “greenwash” well isn’t Obama a kind of “blackwash”. My brother described the inauguration as an African American’s day out. A day when the dreams for African American equality came much closer. Point taken. And what a salutory effect the Obama must have on a racially divided country and a traumatised African Amer...