Happy Birthday Muhammad Ali

18 days ago Ago, Muhammad Ali turned 70. So it seemed apt to comment on this most singular of professional athletes. Of course, unlike this man, I’ve never interviewed Ali, or like this guy, never fought with him either. So, instead, I’m going to relay 6 great Ali facts gleaned from Thomas Hauser’s excellent biography: [...]

Quote it Like You Stole It: Living in the End Times Part 3

Chapter 5: Acceptance The final chapter, excluding the paperback afterword – which I’ll not be covering – opens by discussing three sites of truth in contemporary life: political commitments, the economic sphere and scientific knowledge. Zizek points towards the inarticulation these generate; that, despite the wealth of information and significantion there is a distinct lack [...]

Quote it Like you Stole It: Living in the End Times Part 2

Chapter 3: Bargaining In Chapter 3, Zizek  ambitiously ponder whether Marx might not be divided into a later, non Marxist “Marx” and the earlier, less impressive version. Put another way, we have a problematization of utopian thought based around Marx’s theory of exploitation. It’s a shame that the reading of natural capitalism, found in afterword, [...]

Quote it Like you Stole it: Living in the End Times Part 1

With ‘Quote it Like you Stole it’ I want to go back a little to the original intentions of this blog: to disseminate and debate leftist theoretical ideas in the soundbyte age.  Here, I’m going to start again by talking about the ideas in Zizek’s Living in the End Times, a book that should have [...]

Taking UK Hip Hop Seriously

Somewhere along the line, I became a bit of a UK Hip Hop pusher. I don’t know when that happened, but it was probably somewhere between hearing Mic Righteous’ ‘Fire in the Booth’ and getting into Lowkey. Sending long, detailed, link-heavy e-mails to friends who have expressed even the slightest bit of interest – in [...]

Interview with Dub Phizix

From an interview I did with Dub Phizix for the Manchester MULE: http://manchestermule.com/article/interview-dub-phizix Dub Phizix is a Manchester based drum and bass artist, so this is not the most political interview in the world. Interesting stuff about the Manchester scene though. On 19 December Manchester’s own Dub Phizix and Skeptical released Marka. With it’s hypnotic, [...]

Michael Gove: Can You Buy my Mother a Boat as Well?

Like anyone would else who gets their kicks out of farce and absurdity, I have been gleefully following the saga of the royal yacht. Apparently, this has been on the cards since at least September, with a combination of royals and Tory MPs supporting the idea. Lately, it seems that Cameron is also keen, although [...]

Interrogating Non-Violence

Upcoming publication in the excellent Scottish Left Review. Reading Eurig Scandrett’s ‘Reactions to Violence’ last month raised a lot of questions for me. Mainly, it’s because the completely reasonable account of the non-violence movement that was presented there contrasts sharply with my on-the-ground experience of being scolded by ‘mature’ and ‘realistic’ voices within demonstrations and [...]

3 Issues Up for Grabs in an Independent Scotland

Credit where credit’s due: I’ve been enjoying Adam Ramsay’s strategic, arch-cynical updates on the current Westminster debacle around the independence referendum. I agree with his basic analysis that Salmond may well be trying to draw out Cameron and co. into a fight they are unlikely to win, at least north of the border, while positioning [...]

Thinking Seriously About Alternatives: Introducing Parecon

It’s a common refrain today that the left doesn’t have any new ideas. I think this is why, despite the blood and thunder on however many mass demonstrations, a certain sense of futility remains. A sense that, whatever we do, the best we can hope for is some shadow of the post-war settlement, at which [...]