flambingo

against forgetting

more oral history: german memories of the second world war.

"The school has already been closed. One scarcely dared to go out to the street let alone go out of the village. We children therefore hung around the village. An aircraft crashed here; a man lay with a striped suit, shot beside the railway embankment; and the tension of the adults very likely rubbed off onto us."

"The time starting in 1933 was a bad time. Suddenly there were "races", Aryan and non-Aryan. Mixture was at least frowned upon even if not prohibited. During the war it was especially difficult for the Jews, Poles, and gypsies. They were not allowed in public baths, parks, theatres, and so on. Nordic was trump card: blond, blue-eyed, tall, slim, with a narrow skull. Roundheaded perons wer tolerated if need be,if they could prove their aryan descent till the crusaders."

darling.....our first spoof

barking

http://lordrich.newmail.ru/ican/

from the telegraph letters page

Re: No real threat
Date: 26 October 2003

Does Gene Robinson, the gay cleric from New Hampshire, really threaten the global unity of the Anglican Church, or is he just a louche canon?

From:
Marvin Rose, East Kilbride, Glasgow

medicinal ice cream: future flavours

i have been laid up at home with this dreadful cold for what seems like days and with a terrible sore throat i've been guzzling gallons of ice cream.
what is needed is medicinal ice cream.

future flavours:
honey and whiskey ice cream with dispersable asprin and fizzy vit c chunks
lime and mint with menthol decongestant and honey pieces.
cherry brandy and echinacea.

flambingo industries is in negotiation with our favourite stalking object chef pastry paul young of contemporary cup cake fame.

ican beta

so, after 14 months work, we are live and in glorious betacolour
www.bbc.co.uk/ican
go play.

christopher hitchens on mother theresa

a welcome return of hitchens' spleen venting on the evil mother theresa

"Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions."

silver cup!

i am now womens' novice foil champion of sussex! (meaning i am no longer a novice and now a fully fledged intermediate) and that silver cup is the first sports trophy i've ever won. the horrid (yet proud-making) marble blocks are my awards for first in foil and third in epee. i am swaggeringly pleased.

This Is Camp X-Ray

camp x-ray in manchester city centre. more from the UHC collective

no sleep

the fencing world cup is on. unfortunately its on british eurosport, who appear to have a wholly random approach to thier EPG. watching fencing now involves staying up at all hours waiting for the only chance i'll get this year of seeing international class fencers. eurosport, aside from getting possibly the worlds worst commentator in also only publishes reports on the championship in french. ok, so fencing is not a popular sport in britain and british fencing is not of the same level as french or german or in fact pretty much anyone else....but....sigh.
instead we must rely on whatever results and comments people are making on message boards.

but however bad eurosport is at least on it you can see some of the less popular (read less lucrative) sports. its not just fencing that suffers as part of the total neglect on terrestrial television of anything thats not (male) football (male) cricket, there are a host of minority sports - each attracting a devoted following (and a participation that can only be increased by exposure) that never see the light of day. with the sole exception of international athletics the chances of seeing any sport on television that doesn't attract either subscription viewing or have vast advertising spend is minimal - where has the womens football world cup been (aside from eurosport: final sunday at 5pm). the point i guess, aside from my pique at not being able to see the worldchampionship except by camping in front of channel 43 all night is that the eclipsing of all other sports before mens football encourages an environment where the national game is the only game. its no wonder children are getting fatter and people are getting less and less fit when the only exposure to sport is the glittering soap opera of top flight football; which this week at least seems less like a sport at all than the decline of a saturnalian empire built by rapists in terrible suits. The dictates of advertising is only part of the problem, after all in other parts of the world advertising on sailing or womens football or womens cricket isn't small, its just here where the total dominance of premiership football is such that theres little money or time left for other sports.

in the meantime i shall be up all night watching the team epee event.

babylon

a history of iraq entirely told in lies

poster paradise

patriotic posters from the whitehouse

Please, burn and distribute this CD!

i've been looking at this recently, its a toolbox of good, sensibly organised information for activists and covers all the main bases in group formation and protest. produced by UHC art collective the toolbox has advice on everything from share-buying to surviving prison, taking meeting minutes to tunneling.
how to pie (you know you want to)

on a similar tip: some time ago adbusters re-wrote Ken Garlands 1964 design manifesto
"Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact."

while on the subject of manifestos, Chtcheglovs 1953 Formulary for a New Urbanism is quite my favourite bit of polemic ever, both on urbanism and on politics.
"Presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit."

from the top

tower bridge down to canary wharf from the top of the london assembly building - yes the one i said was like a shitting dwarf....its better inside. tower bridge on the other hand......

idiots guide to plume

"The burgeoning flap over the leaking to the press of the name of a CIA agent - a clear and serious violation of federal law - is a serious, serious legal and political problem for the Bush White House."