Kester Brewin

Category: Politics

  • ‘Sometimes the Burned Landscape Blooms Most Lavishly’ | ‘All This Is Temporary’

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    Beautiful – and important words here from Rebecca Solnit, via Robert Macfarlane. Something all writers – and politicians – need to digest: On that same plane, I’m really grateful to Barry Taylor for sharing this talk given by Mark Fisher in February 2016, in which he gives a rather brilliant summary of his thinking… and,…

  • ‘No Speed Limit’ – Accelerate

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    Great quick overview of accelerationism. Terrifying, but hugely relevant.  ‘For decades longer than more orthodox contemporary thinkers, accelerationists have been focused on many of the central questions of the late 20th and early 21st centuries: the rise of China; the rise of artificial intelligence; what it means to be human in an era of addictive,…

  • Trump vs The Prince

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    ‘It is not reasonable that they know how to rule, having always lived as private citizens… the first bad weather kills them.’ Reaching for something to read before bed the other day, I pulled down Machiavelli’s classic book on the dark art of state-craft, The Prince. Chapter VII begins thus: 500 years before Trump, it…

  • From Russia, With Chaos

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    Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been re-reading Peter Pomerantsev’s book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, each page pushing me towards the same, slightly counterintuitive conclusion: if you want to understand Trump’s America, you need to look to Putin’s Russia. I first read the book when a colleague – a history teacher I’d…

  • Atheist Prayers – When ‘Thoughts’ Are Not Enough

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    As the events of the horrible attack on Westminster unfolded, the journalist and activist Laurie Penny sent a tweet that read, ‘thoughts and atheist prayers with everyone in Westminster right now. What a horrifying situation.’ And with that, the twittersphere erupted. Atheist prayers?! Atheists and prayers united in a vicious chorus of righteous indignation at…

  • Monsters vs Aliens | Immigration, Space Travel and Becoming Syrian

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    Through a discussion club I run at school I got to thinking about the coincidence of two recent major news threads: immigration and space travel. I know, never a dull day in teaching. In the back of my mind were good friends in a sea-side village about 200 miles from London who have been getting…