Westway In The East Village

This may be my first New York exclusive but going by this mural featured on a wall in the East Village, I'm guessing that Sean Penn is going to be playing Joe Strummer in a forthcoming bio-pic. The suggestion that Mick Jones will be played by Steve Buscemi didn't come from me - right?

Thanks to Kara for taking the pic on her camera phone.

For Reidski

I know you have been asking about my whereabouts, and I promise to get back to regular blogging once I come to terms with the humidity, Hershey Bars and last night's hammering, but in the meantime here's a wee video for your enjoyment. I think you might need this crumb of comfort after last night's misperformance.

"Playing Like The Brady Bunch"

Christ, I turn my back for two minutes.

One Suitcase of Clothes and One Suitcase of Irn Bru

Yep, another post where I apologise for my slackness on the blogging front. I guess I've been doing other stuff, though I'm still a regular reader of all the blogs on my sidebar. (Whatever did happen to the Timid Maximalist? Perhaps he or she did join the SWP after all, and these last five months they've laid buried under their unsold copies of the Socialist Worker?)

Just to mention that I won't be blogging in the next few days 'cos I will be meeting up with Kara of Radio Active fame in New York. Of course, New York will be great and no doubt a couple of 'A Scotsman in New York' type posts will appear in the fullness of time, but seeing New York pales into comparison next to how much I'm looking forward to seeing Kara again. It could be New Malden for all I care. I'm really looking forward to my trip.

Speak to you soon.

Making Your Marx

"A penniless asylum seeker in London was vilified across two pages of the Daily Mail last week. No surprises there, perhaps - except that the villain in question has been dead since 1883."

I don't do Radio 4 unless it is this lot, but apparently the bloke with the beard won Radio 4 listeners greatest philosopher poll. Francis Wheen in today's Observer does his recurring Marx's is not dead, he's only sleeping piece, which helps pay the mortgage.

Canny Lad

Will Rubbish gets his moment in the sun via Normski. He didn't mention this blog by name, but I'm sure he had me in mind when he gave his answer to the question: 'Who are your intellectual heroes?'

Poetry Cornered

I like these. Dave also has a canny website here. I especially recommend his piece on David Widgery.

“With the hard disk full of socialism”

"Roza Javan continues to talk about her father and says that he always used to come home and curse the company. Since the company was owned by the state, his curses would also be directed against the state and the “Imam” which was Khomeini’s honorary nickname. “When I heard him swear, I used to tear out pages from my notebook and use them to make leaflets bearing the slogan “marg bar Jomhourie Islamie Iran”: down with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Then I would put them under the neighbours’ doors, ring the doorbell and run away. I have been political since I was a child. Here in Iran, children of the poor always talk about politics in school and at home, watch and follow the news and try to read the newspapers.”

Fascinating interview from the In Defence of Marxism website with Roza Javan, an Iranian radical growing up and being politicised in the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is no mention of Lenin or Trotsky in the piece but I'm guessing that she is affiliated to the Grant/Woods International, the CMI.

Hat tip to some bloke on Leftist Trainspotters.

Lazy Blogger

Spent the weekend at the various demos and events in Edinburgh surrounding the forthcoming G8 summit at Gleneagles. As a comrade mentioned to me, when we were discussing who would get the short straw and have to write a post to the SPGB email list detailing Party activity that weekend, you really don't always get a full sense of the what a demo is like and its mood when your expressed purpose in being there is to distributing literature and to make the Party better known. That may sound a tad cynical, but it is true nonetheless.

That means that I don't think I could do full justice in writing up a 'I was there' type post of the weekend, except to write that the sun was shining; Saturday's demo was good natured; put some faces to names, if that makes any sense; gave out lit to, amongst others, Jonathan Dimbleby, Bruce Kent and Billy Bragg; got into a daft row with a couple of Sparts who I'll probably have a daft row with again when I attend this event next weekend; debated the burning issue of who is less likey to take a leaflet with the word socialist on it - a christian or a lifestyle anarchist (the latter in my experience); thought Pink Floyd were the best of a bad bunch on the telly; had a drop dead gorgeous mutton pie and chips supper from a chippy in Pumpherston; saw Paddy's face light up when someone recognised him that film; and then had a ponder on how over a million could have come out for that demo on February 15th 2003 and over 220,000 in Edinburgh this past weekend but it's still the case that class politics are at such a low ebb in this country. I don't pretend to have any easy answers to that one - and no easy answers on a postcard either, please. I've never been one for going into all that: 'We sold ten extra Standards at this demo - the tide is turning' kidology.

A few reports of from people who attended various events over the past weekend are contained here, here and here.

As I'm Walking Out The Door . . . .

Via Buff's sidebar at Fear in the City of the Living Dead I discovered this marvellous post on John Cooper Clarke's '(I Married A) Monster From Outer Space', with downloadable mp3 to boot.

No idea who Dr Mysterian is, but it looks like I will have to be checking out his or her blog in more depth when I get back from the city of fur coats . . .

Back In Ten Minutes

I will be in Edinburgh this coming weekend with my Socialist Standards and my autograph book so, unless a laptop falls in my lap, I won't be blogging much over the next few days. In the meantime, here's a post on this weeks G8 summit from an impossibilist perspective.

I always feel so much better when I have a legitimate excuse for my slackness on the blogging front.

Download of the Day

I first heard about Sleater-Kinney a few years ago from an Irish CWI'er who used to haunt the various lefty yahoo discussion lists and as I was going through my 'if it moves, download it' phase, I *cough* sampled a few of their tracks from Winmx. At the time, I thought: 'Close, but no cigar', but after downloading the track Entertain* from their website, I'm prompted to ask: 'Sleater-Kinney, where have you been all my life?'

*Right-click, and save to your desktop.