First Series
Gleanings
22/05/06 12:12
Here's
an excellent piece on Marx to celebrate his 188th
birthday a few days ago, from
The Pinocchio Theory.
Meanwhile, Blog from Bolivia writes: Read More...
Meanwhile, Blog from Bolivia writes: Read More...
Mountain Piano
17/05/06 12:11
A
piano has been found near the summit of Britain's
highest mountain. Read
More...
Chavez in London
15/05/06 12:11
Just
seen on Channel Four News: a snippet from Chavez's
news conference in London today. A senior
journalist asks him why he isn't seeing Blair, and
he replies, you appear to be an experienced
journalist, and yet you ask such a stupid
question! Read
More...
Are you pleased with the world?
13/05/06 12:10
'Are
you pleased with the current condition of the
world?' (Mr A to Mr B), or What did Ahmadinejad
actually say?
Very few Western news sources have published or analysed the recent letter by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the US President George W. Bush. (Now available from various sources including here.) Read More...
Very few Western news sources have published or analysed the recent letter by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the US President George W. Bush. (Now available from various sources including here.) Read More...
Iran surrounded
07/05/06 12:05
Needlenose
says "if you're wondering why the Ayatollahs are
acting a touch, um... cagey about their military
plans, then perhaps this handy pictogram of the
region with countries where the
U.S. has military bases
(or has been granted overflight rights by a
friendly regime) might help clear things up.
Read
More...
Acting Up
29/04/06 11:59
Back
in February, actors starring in Michael
Winterbottom's politically-charged
The Road To Guantanamo were
held by British police under anti-terrorism
legislation on their return from Berlin where the
film premiered. One of the actors, Rizwan
Ahmed, said
he was verbally
abused, had his mobile phone was taken away, told
he could be kept in police custody for up to
48 hours without access to a lawyer. He also claims
a police officer asked him if he planned to star in
any more "political films".
Read
More...
News Junkie
28/04/06 11:58
If
you’re a news junkie and you’re working at home and
so you listen to the news at intervals during the
day, you can sometimes see it evolving, from the
moment a fresh item first arrives until it’s been
properly incorporated into the ideological agenda.
This happened last Monday with a press conference
by Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, except that they
couldn’t quite cope... Read
More...
Bach in the slums
11/04/06 11:56
This is what they get up to in Venezuela... and
Washington's scared... Read
More...
An event that didn't quite happen
05/04/06 11:54
Been to see 'Greenwich Degree Zero', the
installation by Rod Dickinson and Tom McCarthy at
the
Beaconsfield Gallery
in London (and later, Rod tells me, in various
other venues), which reconstructs an event in 1894
when a French anarchist was killed when the bomb he
was carrying detonated outside the Royal
Observatory in Greenwich. Except that in this
version, he also succeeds in blowing up the
Observatory, which he didn't achieve in 1894
(assuming that's what he was aiming to do).
Read
More...
Memories of an opinion poll
26/03/06 11:53
A bunch of recent television programmes about
Harold Wilson brings back to mind an experience I
had in 1965, when I had a job between school and
university with National Opinion Polls.
Read
More...
Not ciivil war?
20/03/06 11:52
Iraq: maybe it isn't civil war, but then it's
anarchy. Absence of law and order. That's what Bush
and Blair have achieved.
O What a Lovely Democracy
15/03/06 11:51
If
the treasurer of the Labour Party didn't know about
those loans; and if the people who loaned the money
were then put up for peerages; and if peerages are
given by No.10; then the conclusion is obvious: who
knew was No.10. Adorno used to speak about the
coincidence which is not just a coincidence.
Read
More...
First Entry
15/03/06 11:49
If
I'd started this blog a few weeks earlier, I would
no doubt have used it to report on my recent trip
to Tehran for the Fajr Film Festival, but since
not, my diary of the visit has instead been
published in the first
online edition of Vertigo
Magazine.
I still find it difficult to read magazines
on-line, but this is an unashamed plug for a
publication about independent film and video
throughout the world - the print edition has been
going since the early 90s - which is one of the
happiest projects I've been associated with, and
from which I've learned the most. Vertigo is one
place where I don't kibbitz... Read
More...