Three Dimensions of Occupy
The Occupy movement seemed to spring out of nowhere in the autumn of last year. First we saw the Occupy Wall Street camp in New York’s Zuccotti Park – which was swiftly renamed Liberty Square in homage to Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Here [...]
The Politics Of Common Sense
In the early months of 1776 a pamphlet called Common Sense became a sensation in the English-speaking colonies of North America. Its author, Tom Paine, called for the end of British rule, on the grounds that kings were ridiculous and crooked: [...]
Occupying Occupy 2.0
CONNECT <-> Occupy began as an original, direct, popular and spontaneous response to a world crisis that is destroying individual lives and the natural environment. Occupy challenges the inequality and the division by which unfathomable [...]
Occupation is a Stinking, Putrid, Agent of Decay
At a recent meeting at the Bank of Ideas I overheard one keen contributor hailing the ‘death of capitalism’ – a worthy aspiration perhaps, even if capitalism might have answered back, to borrow Mark Twain’s quip, that ‘reports [...]
Flee the State, Don’t Seize it! A response to the Idea of ‘Citizen Politicians’ in UK Government
Andreas Whittam-Smith recently wrote about the possibility of ‘a group of like-minded citizens running for election for one term only’ in order to bring about the requisite change that is patently needed within British politics and which, [...]
Building to Win: Reaching Beyond the International Anti-Capitalist Elite
Recently had the good fortune to interview Newsnight economics editor Paul Mason at a comedy gig. His message wasn’t funny. He drew analogies with the 1930s – the descent to fascism – and with Europe’s failed revolutions of 1848: “When [...]
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