Comrades!

The Voice of the Turtle is in full-throated song this May Day weekend, and its song is one of fraternal greetings to the workers of the world. The first of May marks the anniversary of a bloody Chicago strike of 1886, and the day was appropriated by the international Left as its major annual festival round about the time of the founding of the Second International at the centenary celebrations of the French Revolution in 1889. Globalisation remains a phenomenon of which the Turtle remains both suspicious and generally critical, but the celebration of May 1st on every continent makes him (or her!) swell up with pride inside her (or his!) shell.

It is fitting, therefore, that the Turtle has made progress on more than one front this weekend. The major technological hurdle standing in the way of the full implementation of the New Turtle Technology has now been overcome, and we owe many thanks to Ryan Ismert for his expertise, and for his immense patience. The immediate fruit of these labours is the installation of the Permanent Random Slogan Generator: visitors to the Turtle will now be greeted by a random slogan drawn from our Adage Archive, and clicking on the "Reload" button will bring up a different one every time. At first, the majority of our slogans will be familiar Bolshevik Soundbites from the back catalogue; but over the coming weeks we will seek out new and more diverse sources of inspiration to further our project of cultural education. With this stride forwards, the way to CGI scripting is wide open, and we hope to set up our Turtle Guest Book Feature quite soon to make the site increasingly interactive.

We have also continued to add to the Turtle's treasure trove of articles. We will shortly be publishing Dominic Sandbrook's debut article a little later this month, with his essay on Eugene McCarthy, the Benedictine monk who became a United States Senator. And we have recently posted Caroline Brooke's article on the President of Kazakhstan, which those who seek to manipulate public opinion will do well to study with care. Indeed, The Voice of the Turtle is delighted to nominate Caroline as the Stakhanovite of the Month for May 1999, for her support of the Turtle during its first year in cyberspace has been both steady and stirring, and it is clear that she has more than amply fulfilled her quota. Her full citation can be read on our Stakhanovite Page, and she is a worthy successor to Martin O'Neill, the Inaugural Stakhanovite of the Month.

We received a variety of entries for the Communist-themed logic problem, and the Turtle is delighted to announce that Steve Pugh is its official winner. This means that Steve is the first person to win Turtle competitions in both paper and electronic formats, which is a remarkable achievement. A new puzzle has been set and posted: this is, in fact, a creative writing competition in the field of evolutionary biology, and Turtle HQ awaits your entries with interest.

The future, of course, begins now, and it remains a bright one. Half a dozen writers claim to be working on new material, on which the Turtle will feed over the months to come, and we encourage everyone else to plan their own contributions. Two small ways to help immediately present themselves: we are especially interested in receiving your favourite socialist slogans and soundbites to go into the Permanent Random Slogan Generator, and we would like to overhaul our Links page, which has stagnated somewhat of late, and your suggestions on this front are most welcome. These, of course, must supplement and can never wholly replace the articles, reviews and Dictionary entries on which the health of the Turtle hangs, and we look forward to receiving and publishing your historical analyses, cultural criticism and political commentary for the Voice, Review or Dictionary of the Turtle. The usual work of propagating our URL, http://fly.to/the-turtle, and recruiting new subscribers and readers goes on, and we welcome any assistance you can offer.

Avanti popolo!

The Editors