Random Notes

…aka, an excuse to dump some of the hundreds of sites I have bookmarked…

Politricks

Promissory Notes : From Crisis to Commons
Midnight Notes Collective & Friends
April 2009
[PDF]

Huh. Something new from Midnight Notes.

An Invertebrate Left
Perry Anderson on Italy’s Squandered Heritage
London Review of Books
March 12, 2009

Perry provides a potted history of the post-WWII Italian (Marxist) left, “once the largest and most impressive popular movement for social change in Western Europe”, now up shit creek without a paddle… or is it? Naturally, Anderson ignores anarchism, but curiously avoids referencing Operation Gladio or the ‘strategy of tension’.

Bloggy

A neat-o blog I recently discovered is called Poumista, ‘Against Stalinism and Fascism’, written from the perspective (one assumes) of a follower of Nin who escaped 1930s Spain via his/her own personal TARDIS and is now wreaking their revenge by blogging furiously. Poumista’s first blog entry (June 2008) concerns Communist hack Claud Cockburn: I still gotta copy of his writings on the conflict in Spain lying around somewhere.

Reading the Maps. Great stuff from some islands to the south-west (I think). In March, the fine volk @ Reading had a red-hot go at the conspiracy cranks associated with Uncensored zine. Whether excoriating anti-Semitic propaganda or examining history, literature or politics, Reading is hours of fun for the whole family!

The Deliverators is a blog by Andrew Dobbs, Matthew Gault & Robert Kelly. It can has neat-o disco. On stuff: Johnson was right to lose the Crusader wannabees, for example.

Film

Slaughterhouse: The Task of Blood is a brilliant BBC doco released in 2005:

“The vast majority of people in Britain eat meat but have little knowledge of how that meat ends up on their table. In a powerful observational documentary, Slaughterhouse: The Task of Blood reveals the day-to-day workings of a small, family-run abattoir and attempts to get inside the minds of the people who work there. It’s a hidden part of British life, but the reality is that thousands of animals are slaughtered every day in abattoirs. This film shows the process of meat production as animals are killed, butchered and stored in fridges before being transported to retail outlets. It reveals the attitudes of the workers to their task, their colleagues and life. Slaughterhouse: The Task Of Blood is produced by BAFTA award winning film-maker, Brian Hill.”

Speaking of films, radicalfilms.co.uk is a good resource for all kindsa moving images.

Finally, hello to my readers from Cayman Islands, Tonga, Botswana, Mauritania, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Cook Islands, Swaziland, Lesotho, Kyrgyzstan, Chad, Tajikistan, Djibouti, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Cape Verde, Mali, Suriname, Samoa, Turks and Caicos Islands, Mayotte, Belize, Andorra and Madagascar.

Bonus!