Vestival of Resistance

The Vestas occupation, meanwhile, goes from strength to strength.  See the Vestas section in the new Socialist Worker (hitting the presses even as I type) for more details, as well as the physically brilliant the-sauce blog (highlight: message in a battle from the hardcore car factory occupation in South Korea).  By all accounts the struggle has now [...]

Dave Against The Machine: Our Time Or Theirs

You wait months for one of these to come out and then bam, two at once.  But who am I to understand publishing?  Ho hum.  This week/month/quarter I call for smashing the BNP with our own response to the crisis.  I’m not massively happy with it – a bit ultra-left in its panicked socialism-or-barbarism message, and [...]

Dave Against The Machine: In Defense of Viruses

In which I argue that we don’t have to choose between sustainability and employment – the solution is a green revolution.

This just in: Vestas workers occupy factory

Workers at Vestas wind turbine plant on the Isle of Wight have occupied against the closure, in defense of 600 jobs and the future of the planet. They need your soldiarity. Messages to savevestas@gmail.com

Foxtrot Tango Alpha

A poll for the Guardian last week revealed that “42% are in favour of the immediate withdrawal of British troops, and a further 14% want them home by the end of the year” compared to only 36% who want troops to stay “as long as they are needed” – which they somehow interpreted, in the headline [...]

A World To Win

I’ve just come back from Marxism 2009: Festival of Resistance (and spent about 15 hours alternating between bed and the bath to recover).  Not sure I can express just how invigorating it has been to be part of something like this – thousands of people from all over the world coming together to fight for [...]

Crisis and the Zombie State

I’ve been reading War and an Irish Town, Eamonn McCann’s account of the “Troubles” – from a compelling first-person narrative of Free Derry and the Battle of Bogside through to an analysis of the material causes of sectarian violence.  I can’t recommend enough that you get your hands on a copy (or better yet, come [...]

Bread and Roses

watch the whole of this inspiring film on Youtube Cleaning is just one of the jobs, without which our day-to-day survival would be impossible, which is generally carried out by agency workers – on a low wage, with little to no protection or representation, out of sight and out of mind.  Often, these workers are migrant [...]