I woke up a three times in the night to subject my mooring lines to the indignity of a recount. Two bow lines, bow spring, mast line. Plenty of redundancy if any of them go. Four o’clock and all is well. It had been a wild and windy night with gales out in the English Channel. But all was still well when I awoke to a wet cloudy dawn and took myself off to town with my laptop over my shoulder. On the programme was a Purton weekend and anticipations of design work on the Radical Consultation Conference website.
A day of impeccable logistics. 0730 - to Jempson’s Coffee Shop on foot from the Rye Yacht Centre. 0950 - the Southern service from Brighton to Ashford International. 1028 - the Southern service to London Charing Cross. 1130 - atop a number 11 London Transport bus to Victoria. 1200 - half an hour on the internet across from Victoria Coach Station. On the dot of 1400 - a number 403 National Express coach departs to head west along the M4 motorway to pick up a full payload at Heathrow. 1500 - taxi ordered by mobile phone to Swindon Bus Station. 1630 - taxi heads west for the village of Purton. 1650 - arrive at 26 The Close to be greeted by a delighted Tempe at the back gate.
1730 - to the local Seven Eleven with my host. 2100 - to The Angel to hear the sad news that Vic…a stalwart of three-card brag and father of another player Rob…had died suddenly during the week at the age of seventy one of a massive heart attack. Breathing problems had started two years ago. 2100 - to bed…perchance to dream.
Return cost for trains and coaches and taxis - £50…taken from the wall at 0745 hours…all footwork free and comfortable courtesy of two Clarks shoes purchased earlier in the week at the Ashford Designer Outlet for the grand sum of £28…a great extravagance by any standards. Broke even on cards after scooping the last kitty of the evening.
An article in the latest issue of The Ecologist on John Papworth’s kitchen table informed me that the Bush-Blair Iraq War Project has been a complete success. The project really was all about oil. Iraq is back inside the OPEC Producer Cartel. Oil prices are far and away the best ever. And Oil Company Profits are going through the roof.
Don Palast’s article didn’t talk about the cost. So here it is…starting with the Brits. A hundred British soldiers dead, three or four times that number injured, many times more poisoned with depleted uranium and multiple vaccinations. And scheduled to manifest themselves in the years ahead are the traumas and the mental illnesses when the soldiers return home and seek to reintegrate themselves into civilian life. Go talk to some Vietnam Veterans if you think I’m making this up. That’s just the Brits. Next the Farm Boys from Iowa and the Niggers from the Delta.
Over a thousand Yankee soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Increase this for Private Contractors…the Off-Balance Sheet Mercenaries (OBSMs)…and you get yourselves a factor of 15-20 on the British figures. But these Casualty Counts are dwarfed by those for innocent civilians…otherwise known as the Iraqi people. Remember them? The Iraq War Project was all about liberating them.
Start with the estimates in The Lancet a year ago after a group of doctors visited hospitals and spoke to Iraqi families. Their figures were of a different order of magnitude to the statistics being issued under duress by the Pentagon. A year ago…before Faluja… the Medics reckoned that at least a hundred thousand Iraqis had been killed by the war.
We have not reached Jewish Nazi Holocaust numbers yet or the millions that vanished off the face of Mother Russia in Uncle Joe’s Purges. But we are heading that way if nothing gets done to stop the madmen in Washington, Wall Street and The City of London. Bechtel and Halliburton are doubtless working on their Faustian Contracts as I write…redesigning Dante’s Hell…an additional level here…a little more eternal torment space over there.
But Cheney & Co will be just fine. They have God on their side after all. This I know because they told me so. I also read it in The New York Times and The Independent…so it must be true. God works in mysterious ways. Nature is raw in tooth and claw. And who are we to questions this best of all possible worlds? We must trust Our Leaders. Ours Is Not to Question Why - Ours Is Just to Do and Die. But I do wonder what Kipling and Dickens would have said.
An official portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong that served as a model for the giant painting of the former Chinese leader in Tiananmen Square will be auctioned in Beijing next month in the hope of raising a few million dollars for the heirs of an anonymous resident of the United States who owns it. The work is the sole surviving portrait of Mao by Zhang Zhenshi, the artist chosen by the Chinese Authorities in 1950 to produce templates of the Great Leader’s image for the next three decades of portraits. Mr Zhang also painted portraits of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. It must be enough to make Andy Warhol cry his heart out.
Huachen Auctions' timing takes advantage of the runaway prices in the market for Chinese Art where prices for both modern and traditional Chinese Art have soared in recent years as a new generation of millionaires has sought outlets for their wealth and foreign buyers have began showing an interest. Huachen shareholders include a branch of the Ministry of Culture.