CIA accidentally overthrows democracy

O-SPAN Classic: CIA Accidentally Overthrows Costa Rica

American foreign policy in its full glory. (Follows a short trailer.)

More brilliant stuff from The Onion. Hat tip John Booth via The Lobster.

To rewatch it you have to either reload this page or click through to The Onion site — sorry, it's their strange set-up.

CIA accidentally overthrows democracy

O-SPAN Classic: CIA Accidentally Overthrows Costa Rica

American foreign policy in its full glory. (Follows a short trailer.)

More brilliant stuff from The Onion. Hat tip John Booth via The Lobster.

To rewatch it you have to either reload this page or click through to The Onion site — sorry, it's their strange set-up.

Ode To A Detox On Returning From St Ives: poem

RIGHT!!! Self-imposed boot-camp for me. Cutting out or down on salt, sugar, no alcohol (except for Dunkerton's cider on special occasions), no preserved meat full of nitrates, and less meat, anyway. Less wheat bread and pasta. More fruit including berries and grapefruit, salad, veg. Drink lots of water and green tea.

And this is why. Like my diet, it's a work in progress (or regress).

Ode To A Detox On Returning From St Ives

I thought I'd grow old like Lauren Bacall
Elegant, willowy, tall
Tight arse, tons of class
An enigma on a pedestal

Once slender and tasty
In a thin thong and pasties
The pasties are now Cornish pasties
And I can't thing the thame thong without crying.
My legendary six-pack is now a six-pack of cider
My overactive mandibles leave love handles
The size of trees
I love my food
But my food hates me
Treacherous, it deposits clues
In my jelly belly
(it's a jelly belly, it's a jelly belly, it's a jelly belly, it's a jelly belly)
I tried sleeping with the fishes
Even they didn't fancy me
They flashed their fins and went upscale
And threw me out of the sea

A whale washed up,
A chubby angel after the Fall,
I roll across the land, a shapeless fog,
Devouring all in an epic trawl
I wish the fog was a pea-souper
Cause I could scoff that an' all
Scarf the lot like a hog.
Nom, nom, nom.
No! This lardy bard should recall
Lauren Bacall was no butterball

Fat threatens to settle in folds
The make-up thickens
Like clotting cream,
Like two inches of plasticene
Like fossil strata from the palioscene
My bags are now luggage
My breasts are baggage
In body angst overdrive
My reflection is savage
I will rivet closed my gaping maws
My beak snaps shut
My greedy paws
Gathering greenery
My jaws chewing up the scenery
Filling the hole inside me
Coz I recognise the metaphors
Grimly I scan the vision before me
And understand why no-one adores me
I do not enthrall like Lauren Bacall
Tons of flaws, open pores
I'm growing old like Diana Dors

Anna Chen — September 2010

Live performance from Anna here

Ed Miliband a safe pair of hands for the US

So, Miliband Minor gets the job. No surprises there considering he's been falling over himself to prove that he's as much in the US's pockets as Tony Blair was.

The whole filial conflict in the Labour Party leadership contest has been one big pantomime to me with Ed rebranding himself as a lefty to mop up the votes generated by a nation wanting real progressive politics and who would never stomach Blair Mk II. To paraphrase the hippies, whoever you voted for, a Miliband was always getting in to continue business as usual. Just how left do you think Ed will be when he's in Number Ten?

There's an interesting blogpost I half agree with at Liam Macuaid's.

Any Daily Telegraph readers worried that Ed Miliband’s election as leader of the Labour Party means that it’s likely to move sharply left will be reassured by his performance at last year’s climate change talks in Copenhagen. Obama had flown in and demanded that a last minute deal be forced through which he’d stitched up with China, India, Brazil and South Africa. Many of the countries of the global south were opposed, rightly saying that it was a charter for richer nations to carry on pumping carbon into the atmosphere. Miliband stomped into the room where they were meeting at 4am and ranted that if they didn’t sign up they’d be denied access to a putative $30bn fund. The high drama of this bit of blackmail was lessened slightly by the fact that he was in his pyjamas at the time. It’s hard to be a moral titan in your jimjams but it’s easy to be the message boy of the rich and powerful.

Almost. As I commented at the time, the Danish Text produced in secret by the rich nations led by the US at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit last year was in OPPOSITION to the position of China, India, et al. It would have left the US producing carbon emissions at four times per capita that of the Chinese.

But Liam is right in that Ed made his bones and proved himself a safe pair of hands just when the scandal of the Danish Text was about to hit the headlines. Ed yelled, "Look over there" and blamed the Chinese for wrecking the talks.

Meanwhile, there's been no proper debate about green technology and renewables so that, for example, while Britain invented carbon capture technology for coal powered stations, we have built precisely zero while China has built a slew of 44% carbon capture stations, as well as revolutionising green energy technology. F'rinstance, although outstripping the rest of the world in the use of those big expensive wind turbines, China is developing smaller machines using far more efficient electro-magnetic energy. Plus an entire city has its domestic appliances powered by solar energy. And China is reforesting areas the size of Wales. But young Ed, minister for such affairs, shied away from these facts and avoided the debate, saving Obama's hide at Copenhagen.

I'm taking to them thar hills and wish to live as a Maroon, rifle in hand, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou, whoever'll join me. Who's up for it?

Top o' the world, Ma: return from St Ives

Roof of the Tate St Ives (pic by Jan Jefferies)

Return from St Ives. And this time it's personal.

Arrived tired, weary and achy from a seven-hour drive this evening, and missing the town and friends already. Two weeks is never enough.

But it was an eventful couple of weeks. Apart from regular festival activities — poetry recitals and music at the lunchtime sessions in Norway Square — we saw dolphins vying with local fishermen for mackerel in the bay, and one of them receiving a thump from a revved boat, possibly on porpoise, upsetting the crowd of onlookers.



Watched the annual Shakespeare open-air performance on the Island: this year it was Much Ado About Nothing. (Featuring Chris Lanyon's naked bum with only a surf board to protect Benedick's modesty.) The Tate screened John Waters' original Hairspray movie on Porthmeor Beach. And we saw the fabulous Hamsters plus a rather dreary headliner Robin Trower at The Guildhall thanks to Hamsters guitarist, Snails' Pace Slim, sorting us out with freebies. That was a heart-pounding version of Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner, Slim.

Patrick Heron's studio at Porthmeor, St Ives

Had a final look around the Porthmeor Studio complex before it receives its long overdue makover, now that it's got a grant to fix the leaking roof, windows, flaking plaster and a undergo a complete remodelling. Resident artists leave in October and come back, hopefully, in the spring. The photo is of me and Jan Jefferies in Studio 5, the late Patrick Heron's studio, where I used to hang out as a teenager while he painted and fed me mugs of tea. I remember with great fondness those little masterclasses — Bonnard, British influence on the American modern school of painting, why the quality of light in St Ives has always attracted so many artists (a peninsular/isthmus, the town is surrounded on three sides by the sea, reflecting lots of ultra-violet light), the joy of colour, stripes, planes and the surface of the canvas as opposed to the frame as a window ...

Morris Dancers and Angels in St Ives

Peace and lurve, ma-a-an! Here's a sight rarely seen. Morris dancers watched by ice-cream-chomping Angels. The St Ives effect has the lion lying down with the lamb and purring.

Farewell, St Ives. Hope to see you in the spring.

Sun setting over Porthmeor Beach

Top o' the world, Ma: return from St Ives

Roof of the Tate St Ives (pic by Jan Jefferies)

Return from St Ives. And this time it's personal.

Arrived tired, weary and achy from a seven-hour drive this evening, and missing the town and friends already. Two weeks is never enough.

But it was an eventful couple of weeks. Apart from regular festival activities — poetry recitals and music at the lunchtime sessions in Norway Square — we saw dolphins vying with local fishermen for mackerel in the bay, and one of them receiving a thump from a revved boat, possibly on porpoise, upsetting the crowd of onlookers.



Watched the annual Shakespeare open-air performance on the Island: this year it was Much Ado About Nothing. (Featuring Chris Lanyon's naked bum with only a surf board to protect Benedick's modesty.) The Tate screened John Waters' original Hairspray movie on Porthmeor Beach. And we saw the fabulous Hamsters plus a rather dreary headliner Robin Trower at The Guildhall thanks to Hamsters guitarist, Snails' Pace Slim, sorting us out with freebies. That was a heart-pounding version of Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner, Slim.

Patrick Heron's studio at Porthmeor, St Ives

Had a final look around the Porthmeor Studio complex before it receives its long overdue makover, now that it's got a grant to fix the leaking roof, windows, flaking plaster and a undergo a complete remodelling. Resident artists leave in October and come back, hopefully, in the spring. The photo is of me and Jan Jefferies in Studio 5, the late Patrick Heron's studio, where I used to hang out as a teenager while he painted and fed me mugs of tea. I remember with great fondness those little masterclasses — Bonnard, British influence on the American modern school of painting, why the quality of light in St Ives has always attracted so many artists (a peninsular/isthmus, the town is surrounded on three sides by the sea, reflecting lots of ultra-violet light), the joy of colour, stripes, planes and the surface of the canvas as opposed to the frame as a window ...

Morris Dancers and Angels in St Ives

Peace and lurve, ma-a-an! Here's a sight rarely seen. Morris dancers watched by ice-cream-chomping Angels. The St Ives effect has the lion lying down with the lamb and purring.

Farewell, St Ives. Hope to see you in the spring.

Sun setting over Porthmeor Beach