Category: politics
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UK General Election
Vote! 🗳️
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If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.
Up, Simba
David Foster Wallace -
Live election results watch-along: July 4th from 9:45pm - Freedom News
We will chart the winners and losers and assess the new political landscape with a panel of anarchist voices. Stick on a news channel, mute their mainstream noise, and have us on a second screen for up-to-the-minute anarchist news and views.
This could be an interesting watch/listen on Thursday night. A lot of time to fill though.
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Lankum: If microphones are put in front of us, we are going to talk about Gaza
“I think that if you have a platform,” Peat says, “and you don’t use it to speak what you believe about this, then it’s a waste of a platform. I also think that having a platform to only promote your music or yourself doesn’t sit very well for me. It’s horrendous what’s happening and if microphones are put in front of us, we’re going to talk about it. It’s really that simple.”
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Yesterday’s local election voting 🗳️ 😔
… there were low turnouts across Wales.
The highest was in Dyfed-Powys at 19.2%, while the lowest was 15.63% in Gwent. It stood at 17.19% in North Wales and 16.58% in South Wales.
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🔗 Some thoughts on International Women’s Day
Speaking truth to the power of the patriarchy is unimaginably difficult, even as I live a life of relative privilege. In the past, I’ve experienced deep levels of discomfort at writing one small truth because there’s the worry that I’ll be branded a troublemaker, a man hater, a difficult woman to work with. All of which heightens my respect for those women across global history who’ve had to fight like lions for the barest modicum of political and/or cultural change.
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Linkblog 🔗: Colin Ward: Everyday Anarchy - a Community crowdfunding project in Norwich by Patrick Bernard
An audio documentary to celebrate the life and work of the British anarchist Colin Ward and to mark the centenary of his birth in 2024.
This is a unique opportunity to tell the story of a rich and overlooked tradition in British thought – and a radical alternative to mainstream politics – which found its greatest advocate in the figure of Colin Ward.
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Linkblog 🔗: David Harewood on Blackface - a shocking, deeply moving piece of television
A little discomfort is a price worth paying to see Harewood, Lester, Linton and Olusoga speak truth to power on the same channel that was once broadcasting minstrels into their living rooms.
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🔗 Multicultural Man: On technology
As regular readers of this column know, I don’t think there is an anthropic solution to anthropogenic climate change
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Linkblog 🔗: Upcoming anarchist books in 2023
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Linkblog 🔗: Exarcheia, the subway station, and public space
What is crucial to understand is that this is all a question of politics: of who gets to shape our city – a handful of bureaucrats and capitalist investors, or the vast majority of a district’s inhabitants
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Linkblog 🔗: Ian McEwan’s long look back
British politics does not offer much more cause for optimism. Liz Truss becoming prime minister is “such a disaster”, he says. “She’s intellectually so vapid. I think her world-view is so tiny, so shrivelled, so ungenerous, so dry… Or maybe she’s just a highly ambitious politician who’s playing a very cynical game.” He sees an opportunity for Keir Starmer’s Labour – “I admire him in many ways” – but for McEwan, an ardent Remainer who wrote a satirical novella, The Cockroach, about Brexit, the Labour leader remains “tied to the Tories” until he “admits Brexit was a colossal error”.
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Cloudalists: Our New Cloud-based Ruling Class - Project Syndicate op-ed 🔗
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Spirited Away 🔗 – by George Monbiot
How the counterculture fell prey to the far-right’s conspiracy theories.
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🔗 Star Trek versus Imperialist Doctrine by Yanis Varoufakis
America’s liberal imperialist doctrine has been responsible for appalling carnage in places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Central America. But America has also produced a liberal anti-imperialist doctrine that remains ensconced in a TV series that has been captivating US audiences since 1966.
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Currently reading: How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature by George Monbiot 📚
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Compulsory worship of national symbols is the sure sign of a culture in decline - Article by Nesrine Malik, The Guardian 🔗
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The Weaponisation of Labour Antisemitism 🔗 — David Graeber
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Without Trace - George Monbiot 🔗
If you are not incandescent with rage, you haven’t grasped the scale of what has been done to us.
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The State of It – George Monbiot 🔗
The Conservative promise to shrink the state was always a con. But it has seldom been as big a lie as it is today. Johnson grabs powers back from Parliament with both fists …
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David Graeber, anthropologist and author of Bullshit Jobs, dies aged 59 🔗 — Excerpt: David Graeber, anthropologist and anarchist author of bestselling books on bureaucracy and economics including Bullshit Jobs: A Theory and Debt: The First 5,000 Years, has died aged 59.
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Currently reading: Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present by Yanis Varoufakis 📚
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Currently reading: Talking to My Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis 📚
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How maps in the media make us more negative about migrants 🔗 — Excerpt: It’s like one of those optical illusions: it looks like one face at first, but it’s actually two. Once you see the second face, you can never unsee it. In this case, the illusion is how we view migration – it’s the maps we see so frequently that visualise migration for us.
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Why Autonomy News? – Autonomy News 🔗 — Excerpt: The Autonomy News collective plans to produce original articles like this one on a fairly regular basis, as well as reposting content from elsewhere. In our first article we examine the current historical moment, and why there is a need for a site like this.
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Covid-19 surveillance tech explained: 6 ways governments are monitoring the virus – and you 🔗 — Excerpt: Governments across the world face the same dilemma: how to contain the spread of Covid-19 while at the same time re-opening their shuttered societies. The stakes are immense. Open up too early and the death toll could sky-rocket, putting health systems under enormous strain.
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Brace yourself for the most dangerous idea yet: most people are pretty decent 🔗 — Excerpt: Right now, more than ever, we need a hopeful view of human nature. While we’re right to keep our physical distance from those around us to stop the spread of the virus, we also need to believe that it’s these same people who will get us through it. We need to trust them.
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UK General Election. Polling stations open from 7am to 10pm. 🗳️
You don’t need your polling card or ID to vote. You just need to turn up!
A wet and breezy morning at our polling station.
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Labour’s Manifesto is fit for purpose. So, why are the middle classes so hostile to it? – link at The New Statesman 🔗
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Media misrepresentations of the Labour party are being used strategically to create left wing folk devils and moral panic – link from Politics and Insights 🔗
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He may be an anarchist who has voted only once in his life, but the comics legend Alan Moore is calling on his fans to oppose the “rapacious, smirking rightwing parasites” currently in government and join him in voting Labour.
Alan Moore drops anarchism to champion Labour against Tory ‘parasites’ – link 🔗
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There’s a really good explanation of a Green New Deal for the UK on the Labour for a Green New Deal website, with a number of detailed policy documents packed with information. Also nice to see that the site itself is well designed. The Green New Deal Explained – link 🔗
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Politics and social media
An interesting article on The Correspondent about social media and politicians - If a politician can say something in 280 characters, perhaps they shouldn’t say it at all.
I’m not sure that I agree with the conclusion that politicians should not engage with social media but there are certainly a number of valid examples of how it (or at least Twitter) can and has been misused.
The comments on the article are also interesting, comparing social media to newspaper headlines, soundbites and a TL;DR culture. I have more sympathy with some of those points of view.
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The Great NHS Heist, a documentary film that I supported on GoFundMe, is being released online on 30th November.
The Great NHS Heist is a powerful account of how the nation’s proudest achievement, the National Health Service, has been fundamentally reshaped and undermined by successive governments in preparation for privatisation. The evidence of the heist is presented with a stark warning of the risks ahead through interviews with health care professionals, patients and experts in England and America.
A trailer is also available on YouTube.
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Trying a Labour Party Webinar
Last night I took part in a Labour Party video webinar with Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Faiza Shaheen. Both were impressive speakers, coming across very well and appearing passionate and knowledgeable about the issues of the current election campaign.
There were around 3000 people taking part, using Zoom video conferencing software - it worked well.
The format was a half hour discussion by the two main panellists plus a couple of guests, a 15 minute presentation of some Labour Party campaigning software, then a short Q&A session with John and Faiza answering questions raised by participants. Text chat was enabled for all participants.
It was good to see a new way of electoral candidates presenting their ideas in a political campaign. I only had two criticisms - the Q&A session could have been longer and the chat needed some moderation (it was spammed sporadically by a few users).
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A New Financial Order - Aaron Bastani Meets Yanis Varoufakis – link 🔗
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Caroline Lucas & Yanis Varoufakis search for what went wrong with democracy — link 🔗
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Wildcat and the Egghead: The life of Donald Rooum — link 🔗
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Ne Travaillez Jamais! ca. 1965-66 - Situationniste Blog 🔗
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🔖 There is no leftwing justification for Brexit. We must fight it to the last.
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HT @lohang@mastodon.social 🔖 War, censorship, and the invention of “fake news”
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Mentioned this in a previous post, but just seen this in The Guardian, which has a little more detail – Never mind GDP – make free time the measure of UK wellbeing
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Sian Berry, the Green Party’s co-leader, made some really good points on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning - Free time should be measure of UK’s well-being
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Good article by Owen Jones in The Guardian today – 🔖 Protest against what Donald Trump represents, not who he is
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Nice little quiz, in a format I haven’t seen used before – NHS at 70: how well do you know the health service?
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Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth
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Supporting The Great NHS Heist Documentary via @gofundme
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An Illustrated Guide to Guy Debord's 'The Society of the Spectacle'
From Hyperallergic: An Illustrated Guide to Guy Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’
Guy Debord’s (1931–1994) best-known work, La société du spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle) (1967), is a polemical and prescient indictment of our image-saturated consumer culture. The book examines the “Spectacle,” Debord’s term for the everyday manifestation of capitalist-driven phenomena; advertising, television, film, and celebrity.
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Early to vote in the rain
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Just seen Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis speaking at Hay Festival - very impressed! #HayFestival
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I’ve been polled! #vote
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Adults in the Room by Yanis Varoufakis review – one of the greatest political memoirs ever?
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Yanis Varoufakis: Europeans should be excited about Benoît Hamon winning the French presidency https://t.co/ik55XMRfuS
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fin de Spectacle? - another edition of Spectacular Times found and displayed online at http://t.co/iQBoEVjP - http://t.co/DDl9h1wh
