Category: Current Affairs
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Don’t Blame Bankers | What Alternatives Are ‘Occupy’ Proposing? | Article 38
One of the key questions that has been often asked about the ‘Occupy’ protests is ‘what are your proposed alternatives?’ This, I think, is often asked with a background attitude of ‘I really don’t think you have any alternatives, do you?’ The implication being, before you moan about how bad things are, make sure you…
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Shopping as Panic Suppressant | What to Really Fear this Halloween
I don’t want to be petty or anti-American, but one of the scourges of the past decade or so is the growth of Halloween as a fully marketable ‘festival’ to give supermarkets a little bump in the run up to Christmas. Halloween is big in the US, and it’s getting bigger…and more depressing here. It…
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Mutiny! Why St Pauls is the perfect place for ‘Occupy’ protests…
Rather than remain online, I thought I’d flyer-up some of the ideas I’ve been working on and hand them out at the Occupy demo in London today, camped at St Paul’s. You can download the PDF here: Mutiny Or just read the text… In May 1724, in a small bookshop just a stone’s throw from…
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Carnivals come cheap: Zizek Visits Occupy Wall Street… And Cannot Speak.
Interesting video here showing Slavoj Zizek at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York. His speech can be read in full here, but what I love about the video is that, for some technological reason no doubt, he cannot himself speak. The crowd around him who can hear directly have to shout out…
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Occupy Wall Street – Turning Pirate on Capitalism 101
The media coverage in the UK has been limited, but I think the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest is interesting, and I hope it turns out to be significant. There was comment on BBC radio the other morning suggesting variously that it was the Democratic equivalent of the Republican ‘Tea Party’ movement – though I’m not…
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Black History Month… But where are the British Blacks?
It’s Black History Month again, a festival I have expressed some concerns about in the past – not because I don’t think Black history should be celebrated and represented, but because giving it a ‘special’ place in a particular month may actually serve to reduce its representation, as we can compartmentalise it, rather than integrate…