Gleanings

Here’s an excellent piece on Marx to celebrate his 188th birthday a few days ago, from The Pinocchio Theory.

Meanwhile,

Mountain Piano

A piano has been found near the summit of Britain’s highest mountain. Ben Nevis is only 4,418ft, but all the same, the fellows who found it – volunteer conservationists – can’t explain how it got there. The only clue is a wholemeal biscuit wrapper with a best-before date of December 1986 found with the instrument, which was missing its keyboard, however. Story and pictures. (Another report adds that a Model T Ford was taken to the summit in an advertising stunt back in 1911.)

Chavez in London

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! There was also Tariq Ali saying that the trouble is we haven’t got any politicians like him in Europe. Quite so. Here it’s the politicians’ answers that are stupid.

Are you pleased with the world?

‘Are you pleased with the current condition of the world?’ (Mr A to Mr B), or What did Ahmadinejad actually say?

Iran surrounded

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.

Acting up

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”.  

News junkie

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…

Bach in the slums

This is what they get up to in Venezuela… and Washington’s scared…

Bach in the slums – Morning Star
”The Venezuelan Youth Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle will be in Britain for the Proms in August – a concert not to be missed… “

Detroit sold for scrap

From The Onion: Detroit Sold For Scrap :

‘Detroit, a former industrial metropolis in southeastern Michigan with a population of just under 1 million, was sold at auction Tuesday to bulk scrap dealers and smelting foundries across the United States.

An event that didn’t quite happen

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).