Friday, 24 June 2011
Van Jones at Netroots Nation
Watch the speech that Van Jones gave at Netroots Nation 2011 announcing the American Dream Movement and issuing a challenge to debate Glenn Beck.
link
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The 14 HourTechnicolour Dream - Ally Pally 29th April1967 (Man Alive: What Is Happening? BBC)
Bonus:
Would be really grateful if anyone has a copy of Miles' 'Games For May' article from the NME...
Via
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Britain's first cyber-strike – How the June 30th strike may play out online
The participation of these groups raises old questions about how people not traditionally represented by and outside of trade-union structures and activities can appropriately take direct action if they cannot withdraw their labour. But it also raises other issues that need to be addressed; notably, how changing conditions of production and employment in a 21st century, late-capitalist economy have affected the viability of the mass strike alone as an effective tool of social struggle.
There is no doubt that the withdrawal of labour is still the primary tactic working people have in defence of their interests, and as a process that broadens understanding of the dynamics of a class society through praxis; that is, in the very act of striking we can begin to understand our position and our potential for re-imagining social relations outside of the wage relation. But society today isn’t encapsulated by the unionised mass worker, but rather by the short term contract, the service industry worker, the temp and those whose labour isn’t rewarded at all. How are those most badly affected by cuts- the single-mother and the unpaid carer- supposed to withdraw their labour? It’s simply not possible. The difficulties faced by those in precarious jobs, with short term contracts, alienated and disconnected from their workmates and threatened by aggressive management, are similar. Simply calling on them to “unionise! don’t work!” is rhetoric, not a tactic...
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(GB2011)
Throwing Muses – The Season Sessions (FREE DOWNLOAD)
Acoustic versions of songs from Rat Girl, performed by Throwing Muses
DIRECT DOWNLOAD:
FALL
WINTER
SPRING
SUMMER
via Kristin Hersh
Ciudad Juarez is All of Our Futures
War, as I came to report it, was something fought between people with causes, however crazy or honourable: like between the American and British occupiers of Iraq and the insurgents who opposed them. Then I stumbled across Mexico's drug war – which has claimed nearly 40,000 lives, mostly civilians – and all the rules changed. This is warfare for the 21st century, and another creature altogether.
Mexico's war is inextricable from everyday life. In Ciudad Juarez, the most murderous city in the world, street markets and malls remain open; Sarah Brightman sang a concert there recently. When I was back there last month, people had reappeared at night to eat dinner and socialise, out of devil-may-care recklessness and exhaustion with years of self-imposed curfew. Before, there had been an eerie quiet at night, now there is an even eerier semblance of normality – punctuated by gunfire.
On the surface, the combatants have the veneer of a cause: control of smuggling routes into the US. But even if this were the full explanation, the cause of drugs places Mexico's war firmly in our new postideological, postmoral, postpolitical world. The only causes are profits from the chemicals that get America and Europe high...
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Ed Vulliamy @'AlterNet'
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