Comrades!
This is the first missive
since our October revolution, which saw a wholesale redesign and reorganisation
of the People's Turtle. Since then, however, the Turtle has been quiescent,
owing to a potent combination of incessant struggle with George W.
Bush and indolence. This month's missive
marks a triumphal return to form. The Turtle is pleased to step, belatedly,
into 2001 with a tricontinental editorial troupe, writing from Africa,
Europe and North America. (Busy fighting elections in Sri Lanka, our
Asia correspondent hasn't been as prolix as he would have liked over
the past few weeks.)
Our arsenal of articles
this month has something for all the family. Our first Stakhanovite
deathmatch is in full swing, as Chelonian Laureates Dominic
Sandbrook and J.
Carter Wood tear strips off each other's interpretations of recent
American politics, and the latter has sent us his reportage from the
Bush
Inaugural. Karel Jenczek and Ivan Vetvicka join our contributors'
ranks with useful supplements
to our Siege of Prague section. And Raj Patel castigates
himself, not for the first time, for his part in an ongoing World
Bank fiasco.
The Turtle, ever mindful
of the dialectic between art and revolution, is pleased to vaunt the
verse of P.
J. McMahon. After much unhappy delay, tales of his latest encounters
with UK Left have successfully arrived on the pages of our poetry
section. McMahon, the acknowledged Bard of the
Hanger Lane Gyratory System, is one of many contributors whom the
Turtle, albeit stealthily, saluted last month.
Careful readers will notice
that the vast majority of our contributors in 2000 were boys. Happily,
this disturbing trend will be interrupted, we hope permanently, later
on this month with the Turtle's Second Symposium. Linnie Rawlinson's
fine critique of Naomi Klein's No Logo will soon be posted
in
the reviews section, and Naomi herself may join the fray when she
returns from Porto Alegre. And it is from Porto Alegre that our guest
salute hails this month. Prof Walden Bello has written effusively
from the dirt floors of the World Social
Summit.
More on this can be found
in our newly revamped links section where
we have plucked and anthologised the most succulent sites of struggle.
We're looking for help from our subscribers to hone this part of the
site, so if you've pet places to go on the web, please email
the Editors. Of course, the Turtle is always looking for help
-- the Turtle is borne by the breezes that waft from our subscribers'
cooling fans. So please send your prose, verse and bile to the editors
-- together with your personal\ideological problems for Uncle
Rosa to solve -- and we shall all go together when we go, arm
in arm, towards the horizon of the Turtle's Inevitable Triumph over
all the rest of cyberspace put together.
Avanti Popolo!
The Editors
