This year’s UK Eurovision entry was so forgettable that I have — less than 48 hours later — entirely forgotten it. It was sung by someone called Josh — I remember that bit — but I couldn’t tell you what it was called, or anything at all about how it went.
It’s good to read in tehgraun that “some of Italy’s most senior police officers have been given jail sentences of up to five years for what the prosecution called a “terrible” attack on demonstrators at the 2001 G8 meeting in Genoa and an attempted cover-up”, though sad also to read that, as with so many criminal trials with political ramifications in Italy, statutes of limitations mean that jail sentences are unlikely to be served.
Someone who may very well be unhappy with these verdicts is Tony Blair. British readers may remember what his spokesman said at the time, when reports of police brutality were beginning to circulate: “The Italian police had a difficult job to do. The prime minister believes that they did that job.”
Over the fold is a bit of eye-witness testimony of the events in question, from my friend Uri Gordon, an Israeli anarchist and G8 protester, which I was privileged enough to be able to publish nine years ago in The Voice of the Turtle:
Pierre Hadot, born 21 February 1922, died 24 April 2010.
UPDATE [28.4]: Le Monde.
A new blogmeme’s doing the round, to pick the theme-tune of your blog.
Here at the Virtual Stoa, there can only be one choice — this complex yet sensitive meditation on the dialectics of national identity in a globalising era, as performed at the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest by Scooch:
Asterix, series pictographica in toto orbe terrarum nota, mense Octobri exeunte quinquaginta annos complevit. Quod iubilaeum in Francogallia variis expositionibus, concentibus aliisque eventibus institutis, quin etiam propria tessera epistulari edita, publice celebrabatur. Ad honorem anniversarii semisaecularis etiam novus libellus pictus et divulgatus est, qui inscribitur: ‘Dies natalis Asterigis et Obeligis – Liber aureus’.
From Nuntii Latini [obviously]
Reading this reminds me of the slogan with which Life of Brian was marketed in Sweden: “The Film That Was So Funny, They Banned It In Norway.”
Do note, by the way, that today is the French Republican Calendrical equivalent of 29 February — it’s the leap-day that comes round in order to complete the quadrennial cycle, hence its magnificently appropriate name.
I’ve long thought that the EU got things the wrong way around when it mandated use of the (French Revolutionary) metric system and stuck to the old Gregorian Calendar. My offer to Mr Brown’s Government is that if they legislate to implement the French Republican Calendar in this country, I shall drop my opposition to the creation of British Values Day — especially if it gets held on the Jour de la révolution, which would mean not only that it’ll only come around every four years, but also that it’ll tacitly, or not-so-tacitly, identify British Values with French Republican Values, which would be a significant improvement on what’s otherwise likely to be on offer.
Year CCXVII kicks off tomorrow…
As everyone should know by now, today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day, so please feel free to Talk Like A Pirate in the comments box here, or, indeed, elsewhere. Suggestions over here. Ah, Jim lad.
It’s also the Jour de la raison, according to the version of the French Republican Calendar installed at this site, one of the holidays that brings the old year to a close — and it is appropriate, I think, that a day celebrating human reason should fall on International Talk Like A Pirate Day.
Ronnie Drew died earlier this afternoon, in Dublin (where else?). The BBC, over here.
Lennon-McCartney may have been only the second most significant musical collaboration in the 1960s, after that between Ronnie Drew and Luke Kelly at the heart of The Dubliners.
Le Monde, in one of its summer retrospective thingummies, over here.
According to the website, the Latvian pirate song “is a story about the historical endeavours of our ancestors, and tells of their backbreaking lives, rebellious spirit, freedom, masculinity and tenderness while showing their patriotism and love for the planet earth, and an unquenchable thirst for adventure.”
We have the first ever Eurovision entries from San Marino and Azerbaijan this time round.
Here’s San Marino, with “Complice” by Miodio:
Here’s Azerbaijan, with “Day after day” by Elnur Hüseynov:
Be aware that it’s possible that neither of these songs will get beyond this week’s semi-final stage.
I asked my friend Dan, who is an expert on (i) political philosophy concerning the rectification of historic injustice and (ii) pop music, and he reckons that Cliff Richard is the victim of historic injustice, having been cheated by Spanish fascists out of the 1968 Eurovision title that was rightfully his. I’m still not altogether clear who owes what, if anything, to whom. I was rather hoping we might blame Ruth Kelly, owing to her Opus Dei connections, but some people around me seem to think that’s a bit too tangential, all things considered.
The Gaping Silence on the Italian Left.
My brother Michael, over here.
A very strange clip here combining the Stoa’s interest in Monday Marseillaise Blogging, and Lego…
