News, gossip and opinion
CND plans to bring Faslane to a standstill tor the second time this year
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Singled out
Mogwai release longest Scottish single.
Words: Mark Robertson
I It will take real pioneering spirit from the producers of Top Of The Pops to find Glasgow guitar mentalists Mogwai a slot to perform their excellent new single. The reason: the song clocks in at a concise twenty minutes twelve seconds.
‘My Father, My King' is released on Monday 22 October on Rock Action. and has been ruled ineligible for the singles charts due to its length. despite The Orb enjoying a tOp twenty hit with their 39-minute space shanty 'The Blue Room' in 1992 (the rules on single charts have changed since then). Keen readers who suggest that Simple Minds' ‘Belfast Child' was the longest Scottish single, should know that it actually sauntered in at under five minutes and only felt like 30.
The M095 deliver
value for mong
riter slams anti-terrorist coalition
Tariq Ali hails Scottish campaign against war. Words: Mark Brown
“I ~ : he author and r Y,“ I broadcaster Tariq Ali
i recently visited Scotland as part of an
‘ extensive speaking tour
against the US/British led war in Afghanistan. Ali, who played a famously leading role in the campaign against the Vietnam War, addressed a meeting of more than 500 people held by the Scottish Coalition for Justice not War in Glasgow's Moir Hall.
The writer noted that numerous polls showed a narrow majority of people in Britain opposed to the war. He reminded the audience that no anti-war movement in this country had ever started out from such a strong position.
Restating his horror at the attacks in the US on 1 1 September, he accused Bush and Blair of deep hypocrisy in their response to it. ‘ls it the case that an American life is worth more than an Afghan life or an Iraqi life?‘ he asked. There had been no three minutes silence. he said, for the 1.2m Iraqis killed by western military action and sanctions over the last decade.
He argued that Bush and Blair's “anti-terrorist coalition' includes the leaders of governments which are responsible for acts of state terrorism. In particular he pointed to Vladimir Putin of Russia and Ariel Sharon of lsrael. ‘Putin has been waging a war against the people of Chechnya. who he calls terrorists,‘ he said. ‘Russian forces have wiped out the city of Grozny.‘
Ali then described the Israeli leader as a ‘war criminal'. Sharon, he said. 'presided over one of the
most brutal massacres in the Middle East. in Sabra and Chatilla (Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon) in 1982'. The only conclusion you could draw from
this, he argued. was that western policy was one of ‘punishing the crimes of our enemies and rewarding the crimes of our friends’.
Speaking on a platform alongside an anti-war student from the US. the author insisted that his comments were not ‘anti-American', but in line with the anti-war movement within the States itself.
Scottish CND has organised its second blockade at Faslane Nuclear Submarine Base on Mon 22 Oct. See Glasgow Life, page 103. The Edinburgh One World Festival runs Sat 20—Sat 27 Oct. See Edinburgh Life, page 105.
George's best is yet to come
Coming quite soon . . .
4 ‘fltl LIST 18 Oct-1 Nov 2001
The living legend they call George Olooney appears to be keeping himself busy. On the back of rumours that he's making a brief comeback as Dr Doug in ER, it seems that he may be teaming up again with the Coen Brothers. Into/erab/e Cruelty is the catchy title of their forthcoming romantic comedy in which he
plays a divorce attorney. Plus, he is making his own directorial debut with Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind . . . Believe Nothing is the working title of the new sitcom from Lawrence Marks 8. Maurice Gran (Birds OfA Feather, The New Statesman). It stars le Maysll as a university professor called. wait for it.
Adonis Cnut . . . The mad life of Grace Jones is to be turned into a movie with filming due to start next year in Jamaica. The lead role has yet to be filled . . . Wu-Tang Clan and Cypress Hill are both scheduled to release new albums before the year is out. Cypress are also continuing their rock/rap double
A-side singles policy which was so successful last year
. . . Fever Pitch is set to be reinvented in the US as a baseball movie with Arsenal being turned into the Boston Red Sox. And the movie of Nick Hornby's novel About A Boy will have a soundtrack penned by mad Mancunian Badly Drawn Boy.