Blog P2

Years ago I was always fascinated by the cartooning ability of Giles, always a dry and cockney accented wit of observation, and THE image of his, that is indelibly printed in my grey matter, is of an arab sheik in a Cadillac convertible, followed by a fleet of totally veiled wives on motor scooters, and his shouting 'once more around the block oh loved ones, we've got to use this stuff up somehow'...... and of all the mixed up images I hold in my head, the promotion of Dubai as a sports venue, with western women, especially, in their regular clothing, going about their professional golf and tennis for staggering amounts of prize money, while the wives of any spectators of a local variety will be invisible by their absence, and if you are so lucky as to see one, she'll be head to foot in black; a prospect of 'interest' I place at the absolute bottom of my scale of things I must see in my life. I've been to Egypt, Aden, and a fair whack of muslim countries elsewhere too, and nowhere do I see the woman so morbidly represented as in the oil rich countries. I love watching WTA Tennis; there are few 'steroidal' sights there, and I love track and field, and have watched it with interest for fifty years; I've seen Abebe Bikila, Kip Keino, and Heike Drexler, and where and when are these arab nations going to show us that their women measure up to ours? Every time you fill up your tank you are supporting repressive regimes; largely Muslim in nature, though I haven't assessed Brazil yet and THEY'RE getting bigger in oil; how about repression? I think they can't control the beaches, if you watch the volleyball, but the rest of the nations in oil are absolutely no fun; and I mean NO FUN. I used to hang out with anyone; numbered South Afrikaaners, arabs, knuckle hard South Carolinians, Kiwi motorcycle riders, Australian cons and car salesmen, black soul singers, Singaporean electronics aces, ethical drug salesmen, AND a Mr Big, (who ended headless and handless in a Yorkshire quarry) and all had that element of fun in their lives, but nowhere did I see an arab woman in any social context, and while the odd Balkan lady raised an eyebrow to me, in an only slightly Muslim atmosphere, the majority of my life has been denied the prospect of a dialogue with an arab woman. Power. It's another form of fascism. It's alive and well, despite heavily subsidised acts of world war to eliminate it, and everytime I think of Giles' picture, or Dubai Golf Classics, I realise very little is changing, and it needs to, I'm afraid. Nuff said.

Blog N2

Since my first 'news' blog, there's been another classic snafu in Bangladesh; people dying like flies, unaided, unreported, unadministered, villages with '70 daeths' have over 500 dead, unburied, or perhaps in a shallow grave in a nearby field; have you seen the Bangladeshi Parliament? Go look. I say, give the people cellphones, let them call their own salvation, as there is more good stuff happening with cellphone technology in third world countries than between ALL the ears of the administrators. Give these people a voice; not CNN. Give them a way of calling out; you'd be amazed what a peasant can do with a cellphone, and don't give me any shite about 'support'; check the number of cellphones in the hands of peasants now, and check what they are achieving with them. I'm not going to give you the references; you go look; you go get involved; you be amazed. Nuff said.