April 2012
49 posts
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“I have watched the Conservative Party for the whole of my life. They take every...”
– Tony Benn
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The night I saw Jeremy Hunt hide behind a tree... →
The title really says all that needs saying, to be honest.
But the party wasn’t up to much; it was just a lot of people trying to get a word with James Murdoch, presumably to say how riveting his speech had been. I snaffled a drink, wandered around for 20 minutes or so, talked to a few people I knew, was introduced to James Murdoch’s charming wife and then decided to go out to get...
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“The official Olympic iconography has become just another bit of background...”
– Charlie Brooker, Not Excited by the Olympics? — Thank God for the Sponsors
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HOW TO SPEAK AND WRITE POSTMODERN
stickyembraces:
by Stephen Katz, Associate Professor, Sociology, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
Postmodernism has been the buzzword in academia for the last decade. Books, journal articles, conference themes and university courses have resounded to the debates about postmodernism that focus on the uniqueness of our times, where computerization, the global economy and the media...
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The Daily Mail Headline Writer: The Daily Mail... →
Easy to waste a bit of time on. Chris Applegate seems to have the Daily Mail’s formula down; Paul Dacre ought to be worried.
WILL TEACHERS MAKE PENSIONERS IMPOTENT?
WILL MUSLIMS BURGLE YOUR MORTGAGE?
WILL FERAL CHILDREN GIVE ENGLAND CANCER?
All this and more fun.
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“Whether we fall by ambition, blood or lust; like diamonds we are cut with our...”
– Ferdinand, The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
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Definitions Explained Better Than I Ever Could.
racismschool:
This is an exert from the article Why There’s No Such Thing as Reverse Racism. It is a fantastic article and I encourage you to read it in it’s entirety. For now, I want to highlight the explanation/definition of three specific words.
Prejudice is an irrational feeling of dislike for a person or group of persons, usually based on stereotype. Virtually everyone feels some sort of...
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“Class for Marxism, rather like virtue for Aristotle, is not a matter of how you...”
– Terry Eagleton, Why Marx was Right (via brunomarconi)
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Anders Behring Breivik's Trial
The trial of Anders Behring Breivik for the murders of 77 people – mostly young members of the Norwegian Labour Party – has been refreshing in one small way: there’s been no demand for retribution; no call to execute him, nor to reinstate capital punishment. Norway, unlike seemingly every other country in the world, has reacted to an act of terrorism with openness, democracy and justice, rather...
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Charlie Brooker on top form again. →
It must be awful, being a homophobe. Having to spend all that time obsessing about what gay people might be doing with their genitals. Seeing it in your mind, over and over again, in high-definition close-up. Bravely you masturbate, to make the pictures go away, but to no avail. They’re seared onto your mental membranes. Every time you close your eyes, an imaginary gay man’s imaginary penis...
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The Charming Attitude of Slavoj Zizek
marxandsparks:
streetyoga:
The Charming Attitude of Slavoj Zizek
Greenstreet: What makes you depressed? Žižek: Seeing stupid people happy. Greenstreet: What do you owe your parents? Žižek: Nothing, I hope. I didn’t spend a minute bemoaning their death. Greenstreet: What does love feel like? Žižek: Like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small...
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Creeping Christian Conservatism
It was a pretty short-lived scandal, all told; at about 4pm the Guardian broke a story that Anglican Mainstream had booked adverts to run on 26 London buses that read ‘Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!’ Leaving aside the fact that ‘post-gay’ sounds like it was coined not by a homophobic Christian group, but by a pretentious, obfuscating ‘queer theorist’ who was...
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“They keep saying, we have to have a conversation about race in this country....”
– Toni Morrison, on the Trayvon Martin shooting and institutionalised racism.
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Staff deporting foreigners out of UK 'loutish and... →
Firm hired by Home Office to deport refused asylum seekers and foreign prisoners admits its guards lack respect for minorities and women
Well, who’d have thunk it?! — Like our immigration policy, the people who enforce the deportations are racist and sexist.
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“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not...”
– Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
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Virgin Healthcare - The Telegraph →
Virgin Care has won a £500 million contract to provide community services across Surrey and began running these services, as well as the county’s prison healthcare, on April 1.
This was no April Fool’s joke, though I had to smile at the thought of Virgin managing sexual health clinics. In reality, the joke may be on all of us, as Richard Branson’s company becomes one of the first of many...
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Rick Santorum proves what we'd already learnt from...
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So what did the troll actually say? →
So, I can understand why people were pleased to see Liam Stacey, the student who posted a nasty Twitter comment about Fabrice Muamba and replied in racist language to those who criticised him, go to prison for it. I can see why newspaper columnists have spent the last week cheering the sentence and the lost appeal.
What terrifies me is that people are nodding happily all over the country,...
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“Britain’s Windsors are like an interface between two worlds , the mundane...”
– Tom Nairn, The Enchanted Glass
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The Boat Race
Shocking scenes on Saturday afternoon as some poor guy’s swim in the Thames was spoiled by a load of Hooray Henrys in boats. Words, as you may’ve gathered, really cannot express how little I care about the annual Oxford v. Cambridge boat race. In fact, even in my rather torn up family in which I could swear people have picked between Oxford and Cambridge to spite other family members, the boat...
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Anonymous asked: What's worse.. A cum bucket or a cum cave?
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The British Government and the Torture Flights →
What the Guardian has uncovered is something that I think we all knew would eventually come out: evidence that the British Government - Jack Straw, David Miliband and Tony Blair especially, knew of torture. The Guardian found that and more - they found evidence that the British Government wasn’t just complicit in CIA torture flights, turning a blind eye as the CIA refueled their planes at...
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“Like anyone else, the British look into a mirror to try and get a sense of...”
– Tom Nairn, Introduction to The Enchanted Glass
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Anonymous asked: what course do you want to do/are doing at uni? :)
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Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear?
It seems that the old aphporism is true, and the Tories really are always more liberal in opposition than in government. The Government recently announced that legislation would be brought forward in the Queen’s Speech that would allow GCHQ access to the public’s internet browsing and communication as well as SMS messages and phone calls in real time. The most obvious and striking resemblance is,...
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Anonymous asked: where can w find that survey you just posted?
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“As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future,...”
– Leon Trotsky (via youruniverseislovelyhubble)
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“[Ken Livingstone is a] Trotskyist, car-hating, Hugo Chávez idolising,...”
– Boris Johnson, succinctly explaining why I shall vote for Ken Livingstone on May 3rd
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Little Respect for George
For Labour to lose one seat to George Galloway (my home constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005) would be bad luck; to lose a second – Bradford West – by an even larger margin seems careless. George Galloway is a man who likes nothing more to divide opinion and to be the centre of attention, but I suppose I’ll indulge him, and write about a by-election that will surely leave Labour licking...
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“April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing ...”
– T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland 