Oct 30th 09: A Radical Burns Shindig (Sat 31st Oct, 7.30pm)

Still alive. Still kicking.

A RADICAL BURNS SHINDIG

With Janice Galloway, Don Paterson, Bashabi Fraser and Kevin Williamson.
Out of the Blue
30-38 Dalmeny Street
Leith (near Edinburgh)

Saturday 31st October
7.30pm-10.00pm

Music & Bar. No tickets required. Free entry.
Part of the 13th Independent & Radical Book Fair
More details at Word Power

Aug 29th: Bletherheids at Electric Circus

BLETHERHEIDS has a top class literary line-up this Saturday night at the Electric Circus in Edinburgh. I'm very pleased to be reading alongside AL Kennedy, Ewan Morrison, Alan Bissett, Tam Dean Burn, Rodge Glass, and all the other great writers on the bill. Doors open at 7pm. Come early. Come often. (For the tourists and visitors Electric Circus is right behind Waverley Station on Market Street. For the auld gadges it used to be Buster Broons!)

Aug 24th: Scottish Government Have Done Us Proud Over Lockerbie But They Need To Go Further

I'm proud that Kenny MacAskill and the Scottish government stood firm against US threats and bullying (albeit muted threats, and perhaps relief paraded as "outrage" that Megrhai's legal appeal against conviction has been stopped in its tracks before the conviction was overturned in court).

But the Scottish government have only done half the job. If there is no public inquiry into the 1988 Lockerbie bombing then the real bombers of Pan Am Flight 103 will have got away with it, the victims families will have been conned, and the Scottish government will have given in to the US/UK governments pressure to cover up what really happened.

The hidden agenda that led to the UK and US intelligence services framing of Al-Meghrahi and Libya is still being suppressed in the mainstream Scottish media. The real culprits - which most independent investigations have named very specifically as a Palestinian terrorist cell based in Germany and headed by Hafez Dalkamonim (part of Ahmed Jibril's PFLP group as it was back then) have never stood trial for this inhuman crime. Its about time they did if justice is to be done.

I hope the Scottish government press on and bring out the truth in court. It will mean embarrassing the UK and British governments for their complity in fabricating evidence and putting on a show trial in the Netherlands with a pre-arranged verdict. It will also mean putting the CIA and FBI in the dock and unmasking some fairly sordid power games being played out in the Middle East in the late 80/early 90s.

Have the SNP's minority government got the guts to do that in the teeth of international pressure? PLus relentless hostility from the entire Scottish, British and American corporately-owned media? I suspect not but the Scottish government have shown some remarkable resilience and independence of thought this last week so you never know.

A QUESTION...

Why has this important news story in yesterday's Scottish Sunday Mail- which exonerates Megrahi and Libya - been given almost no coverage by BBC Scotland, STV News, and today's Herald and Scotsman?

CIA spook says Megrahi was freed before appeal humiliated justice system (Sunday Mail, 22nd Aug 2009)

Even Murdoch's flagship Sunday smelled a rat: US blamed Iran for Lockerbie bomb (Sunday Times, 16th Aug 2009)

An excellent insightful column today from one of Scotland's best (of a bad bunch admittedly) political analysts: Open season on MacAskill after Megrahi’s release (The Herald, 24th Aug 2009)

Aug 18th: Year Of The Horse (with Tam Dean Burn)

There's so much on in Edinburgh in August that's its hard to choose what to go see. This show should be top of anyone's list. And a wee birdy tells me that if you buy The Scotsman tomorrow (Wed 19th) there is a voucher for half prce tickets to the show...

(From The List)

The cartoonist, Harry Horse presented a haunting, gothic vision of contemporary Britain in the Sunday Herald in the year before his tragic and early death in January 2007. These bare facts and a few more are communicated by Tam Dean Burn before he launches into a slide show of the artist’s work, reading Horse’s own text as each piece appears before us.

What emerges is a frightening vision, accompanied by Keith McIvor’s disturbing electronic score of a vacuous consumer society, fuelled by war and brutality and reified by the bromide of affluence.

Horse’s work is stunningly effective, both beautiful and ghastly in its exploration of the blood money appropriated in the Iraq war, and the grim moral vacuum of the spectacle that masked it. For him, our culture sleeps, glutted with the smug righteousness of its media, as an environmental and moral apocalypse approaches. It’s all strikingly presented by Burn, who in a white ‘hoodie’ voices the primal rage of the artist with a theatricality that contrives to arrest you long after the show, but never overwhelms the breathtaking visuals.

Assembly Rooms, 623 3030, until 31 Aug (not 24), 6.05pm, £10–£12 (£8– £10).

Aug 12th: Edinburgh Book Fringe starts today at Word Power .. and its all FREE!

When your favourite book shop puts on a festival of writing whose exuberantly eclectic programme of radical, international and Scottish writers includes Tom Leonard (above), Edwyn Collins, Alan Bissett, Rosy Barnes plus much more then you've got to support it, nay, sing its praises to the skies. Consider that done. And when all the events are FREE - aye, FREE! - then its Word Power 1 Charlotte Square 0. Check out the full programme here. As Frank Carson would say, its a cracker.

Aug 2nd: Venus and Jupiter both struck by massive impacts in less than a fortnight. Is it Earth's turn next?

It has been revealed today that a massive unexplained white spot has appeared in the cloudy atmosphere of the planet Venus. Scientists are unsure what has caused the spot - some are even speculating on the possibility of volcanic activity - but a massive impact from a comet or asteroid seems the more likely of the two.

This comes just two weeks after a massive scar appeared on Jupiter near its southern pole. The current scientific thinking/speculation suggests that this too may have been caused by a massive asteroid or comet plunging into the largest planet in the solar system.

To date no one has connected the two events. So should we ask the question: Is it possible that there have been some seriously violent collisions taking place in the asteroid belt - which lies between Mars and Jupiter - that have been sending huge asteroids out into both the inner and outer Solar System? And has the Earth been lucky so far in that two of its near neighbours have taken the worst of the impacts?

It's been a while since Earth was struck by a large impact from space. The last big one to strike the Earth's landmass was perhaps on June 30, 1908 when a comet or asteroid measuring some tens of metres across exploded 5-10km in the air over Tungsta, Russia. Although the explosion took place in the air it still had the blast power of a 5-30 megatons bomb (1,000 times that of the Hiroshima bomb) and caused massive damage on the ground.

There's been no such impacts in the age of mass communications and satellite TV networks - which may have created a false sense of security here on Earth. As Californians love to say - regarding the next quake - it may not be long before the next "big one". A sobering thought for a Sunday morning.

Aug 1st: Hibs 1 Preston North End 3

Back again at Easter Road. The sunshine was there, Zemmama and Riordan entertained us with their repertoire of skill, and Yogi showed he is suffering from a touch of the Mixus when it comes to picking a decent midfield.

The glaringly obvious truth is that Yogi's first pick midfield trio of McBride, Cregg and Rankin are three Johhny Average SPL journeymen who wouldnt get a game for any of the other top six contenders. Whereas a midfield trio of Bamba, Stevenson and Murray would hold their own against anyone. Get it sorted Yogi.