It's just not cricket!

This is hilarious.

If there was ever a case where the Daily Fail earns its nickname, this article must be it.

Daily Mail journalists Kate Loveys and Eleanor Harding - got to give them a namecheck in the hope they google their own names - sex up the threat of the tomorrow's impending student walkouts with the revelation that the ICC ARE INVOLVED!!!! (An exclamation mark for each member of the ICC.)

Yep, Eleanor and/or Kate must have attended a recent student organising event in London, picked up an ICC leaflet and decided to run with the red scare story that impressionable students with legitimate concerns are being manipulated by a shadowy organisation with links to the historical bunfight that was Paris '68. Suburban parents choke on their morning cornflakes as they discover that Tarquin and Jemima's strings are being pulled by an organisation called International - that must mean swarthy foreigners are involved - Communist - a sealed train is travelling down to Esher and it's Bordiga on board - Current - it's happening NOW!!!!

In response, the ICC cancel cadre activity for tomorrow. They have to now totally rewrite December's World Revolution to include a four page response to this attack by the bourgeois press; call an international plenum - make sure to send out an invite to that bloke in Venezuela and to their pole of regroupment in East Asia - to discuss the burning question of whether or not having a picture to accompany the article is a concession to Centrism; and, finally, issue a complaint to both the PCC - this lot, not that lot - and the National Union Students for Aaron Porter's suggestion in the article that students are "‘aligning themselves with anarchists’.

The ICC's complaint will be turned down by the Press Complaints Commission's chair, Baroness Buscombe, whose pithy response will be, 'If you will insist on sniffing around the Anarchist Bookfair year after year after year, you can't really complain when people mistake you for members of the Solidarity Federation.'

Hat tip to Tendance Coatesy, who got the story from Entdinglichung.

TinTin and Come the Fuck On

My plan to get Spielberg and Jackson to hitch Peter Watkins to the TinTin Rollercoaster Ride continues apace.

No confirmation email back yet from the Political Bureau of the ICC to follow up my suggestion of them sending a delegation to DreamWorks to do the dual activity of a paper sale on the WGA's picket line and to do a pitch of 'Breaking Free' to TinTin's producer, Kathleen Kennedy. (I know Laurie and Pierre can't do Los Angeles next weekend 'cos they've got that paper sale outside Brixton Tube Station that they have to do.)

No response yet from Will to my fax that he should audition for the part of Captain Haddock if and when DreamWorks do decide to go ahead with developing 'Breaking Free' for the big screen.

OK, need to see if the Makem/Geordie match is on FSC this morning. I'm guessing a 3-2 win for the Makems, with Wallace scoring the winner in the last five minutes.

ADDENDUM

And maybe Luke Akehurst as TinTin? But only if he loses the glasses.

I'll get my coat . . . it's cold in the wilderness

"If Moffat doesn't feel he is properly up to the task of giving full justice to the spirit of the Attack International text, Jackson and Spielberg can always pass his typewriter onto Stewart Home or Mark Shipway or maybe even to the ICC's 'Melmoth'.

I can't believe that I could have written a sentence in my last post that included the words 'ICC' and 'typewriter', and not gone for the obvious sectarian gag.

This blog has now officially jumped the shark.

TinTin and the Lure of the Swamp*

How come I'm always the last person to hear about these things?

Turns out Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg have plans to work together on a TinTin trilogy, with both directing a film apiece but no news as yet of who will get to direct the third film in the series.

The latest news on a project that is a couple of years away is that the British tv writer, Steven Moffat, is the hired pen on one of the scripts. I can't help feeling that it would have been more interesting if Paisley's other son had got the writing gig. I'm sure he would have done something special with the character of the Captain.

But what would be more interesting would be if Jackson and Spielberg hired Peter Watkins to take the helm of the third film, with the intent of adapting for the screen my all time favourite TinTin novel, Breaking Free. (See image above.)

If Moffat doesn't feel he is properly up to the task of giving full justice to the spirit of the Attack International text, Jackson and Spielberg can always pass his typewriter onto Stewart Home or Mark Shipway or maybe even to the ICC's 'Melmoth'.

What with the sub-prime mortgage crisis, Bush getting in a bit of sabre rattling towards Iran and Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, forecasting hard times ahead for the American economy, I think Hollywood (and capitalism) is finally ripe for that ultra-left communist blockbuster that it's never got round to making. Paul Schrader's 'Blue Collar' was maybe a bit too left-field for its time. More of a bumper double issue of Aufheben, as opposed to the suggested broad strokes of a Aurora-like 'Breaking Free'.

We've had the anarcho-mysticism of the V for Vendettas and the Matrix Trilogy, the reheated social democracy of the Norma Raes and the Bulworths, but now's the time for a bona fide ultra-left movie blockbuster. With titles as big as a 'World Revolution' headline and a goodies versus baddies plot line that could have been ripped wholesale from the editorial pages of the bordigist press, the worldwide proletariat is ready for its close-up.

Hat tip to Mars Hill blog for the (late'ish) news about Jackson and Spielberg indulging in their childlike fantasies. And a doctors note from Porcupine Press in Kings X for the paper dust inhaled in its basement all those years ago whilst thumbing through old copies of Red Menace, Communist Bulletin, Communist Headache, World Revolution, Revolutionary Perspectives and Collective Action Notes.

*A 1957 classic.