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Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

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copliker said:
There will be facilitators on hand to provide a running commentary and point out instances of privilege.
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Ahhh, but what if they're deaf too?

I could get to enjoy this intersectionality and identity politics - a chance to say a lot without saying anything, innit.
 
It's a great way to divert anything into an identity/privilege discussion.

I mean, the biggest boost it got was the debate over Lena Dunham's Girls and its lack of non-white characters. That's been rumbling on for 8 months or so, with the ire directed at Dunham, not examining why you don't get a lot of non-white writers/directors getting shows on television.

The Hulk puts it quite nicely...

BUT THE LARGER POINT IS THAT IT'S OFF TOPIC. ESPECIALLY WHEN THE SHOW IS REALLY TRYING TO FOCUS OTHER UNDERREPRESENTED IDEAS. AT BEST IT'S NOTHING MORE THAN A VALID QUESTION FOR THE SHOW'S FUTURE (AGAIN, ONE EPISODE). AT WORST? IT'S AKIN TO WONDERING WHY DO THE RIGHT THING DIDN'T DO A BETTER JOB COVERING THE INTRICACIES OF THE STOCK MARKET.
IT'S JUST NOT WHAT THE SHOW IS ABOUT. AFTER ALL, WE DIDN'T MIND THAT THE ENTIRE CAST OF FREAKS AND GEEKS WAS WHITE.
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http://badassdigest.com/2012/04/18/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs.-the-girls-criticism/

Now that's a stand up and knock it down one - television as a whole's got a problem with representation.

But it's the ability to be able to take an element of discussion, one not vital to the main point, and use intersectionality as a tool to widen the debate until it loses all structure and integrity. The question's a hard one for writers and artists to address without seeming exclusive. "Why doesn't your work include x group, of which you are not a member and exert privilege over" - "Because it doesn't, and addressing that group wasn't my point" - Well, your point is invalid unless you can include x group" - "Well go fuck yourself then".

Which goes back to Suzanne Moore's New Statesman article, which is not about wanting the body of a Brazilian transsexual - but is about feminism providing a platform for solidarity against the cuts. But the way the discussion got diverted into two words - that's a bit worrying.

What could have been bloggers, writers, journalists discussing how to better work together against a very real threat to society, is instead a discussion about privilege, identity and intention. About people inside and outside of the commentariat discussing what was meant by certain words, used in a certain context. How some people are no longer credible.

And the thing that poses the threat rumbles on, unabated.

Intersectionality is one hell of a weapon if you want to shut down, divert, dilute and de-orientate debate, discussion and action.
 
Delroy Booth said:
Oh god please tell me the welfare game is still available :D
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Nah, made in 1980, out of production shortly after I should imagine - still around on ebay occasionally though by the looks of things - one "near complete") went for $30 in October:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Public-As...me-offensive-rare-near-complete-/230863267665

I've seen a kickstarter in the past year or so for a game based on a demonstration/riot where on side plays the police and the other the demonstrators, looked kind of interesting but I can't remember what it was called.
There was also one based on the Seattle 99 WTO meeting: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4190/battle-of-seattle.

I'm vaguely working on a game called "Trot Wars" where each player plays as a trot, starting together in the same group. The game can be won under co-operative conditions (bring about revolution) or individual conditions (get the most glory for yourself and the group you are going to create through splits, mergers and more splits.).
Glory comes through selling papers and building the party obviously.

I have no idea about the mechanics of the game yet, I just like the tension you see in any political grouping really, but I know trot groups and it seems particularly bad there, between the aims and desires of the groups as a whole and the aims and desires of the individual groups within them.
So I'm envisaging a game which forces splits on people and then gets you points by doing things like hijacking other groups demonstrations, declaring losses as victories etc... people coming together in broad fronts on particular campaigns but then each trying to grab the glory of all the points available from that campaign and stuff.
 
Sounds like a decent scenario/theme for a game! The mechanics involved in even the simplest of games are complicated. Don't you have to use loads of algorithms n shit? (Sorry, maths is not my strong point)
 
Available from irregular miniatures in a variety of scales
"RIOT BATTLEPACKS - for revolting people from Watt Tyler to Watts.
(Riot Battlepacks do not include the rules, which you can buy separately)

RIOT RULES by Matthew Hartley

£3.00

6mm POLL TAX REBELS - PART I IN MEDIEVAL TIMES

Unhappy peasants, Lord and his forces, looting and fire markers

£6.00

6mm REVENGE - A NAPOLEONIC SOLO GAME

Lynchers, the local JP, the local security forces and a wagon and the "French" captives

£6.00

6mm REVOLUTION IN CENTRAL AMERICA

Lots of Revolutionaries and looters, Military Junta forces, fire and looting markers

£11.00

6mm URBAN STREETS IN MODERN TIMES

Lots of looters, Security Forces, reporters, Fire Engines and fire and looting markers

£24.00"
 
chess-board.jpg


The only party with the correct theory and analysis for the working class has produced the only range of board games suitable for the toiling masses. This Proletarian Democracy chess set combines intellectual fun with the Leninist theory of the revolutionary vanguardist party. The pawns represent the footsoldiers of the Party carrying the paper to the other side of the board, and thus to revolution, the knights represent ultra-left reformist opportunists swerving from one position to the next, the king represents the Central Committee, all-important but vulnerable to being checkmated. The queen represents the all-important theory of entryism while the bishops stand for dogmatic petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, seemingly long-ranging but limited to one colour of square. The rooks stand for the straightforward Marxist road, rejecting the twin perils of opportunism and reformism.​
​
Hours of fun for all new recruits!​
 
I found a folder of broadsheet left-wing journalism from the 1990s (I knew it was somewhere - LOL).
This was Nick Lezard going on holiday to investigating Poland in 1992.


A few minutes later, one of the young crooks challenged me to a game of pool. In any country, the fine details of the rules of pool vary from bar to bar, and Pawel didn't know any of them. The people I was playing pool with didn't know any English, so Pawel was translating terms he didn't even know in Polish. We played two bizarre games until the young crooks started beating each other up.
''Does this happen often?'' I asked Pawel later on. ''I mean, do Polish people often talk to strangers in bars?''
Pawel shrugged and looked off into the middle distance. ''This is the first time in my life this has ever happened to me.'' I felt slightly guilty, as if I had brought a curse with me.
The next night, which was Shrove Tuesday, Pawel took me to a party. It is a popular night for parties in Poland, but I got the impression that Poles will throw parties at the drop of a hat. It was identical to the student parties I used to go to: the music was an eclectic trawl through rock and dance music history, the kitchen was packed, no one touched the food until a mass attack of the munchies at about midnight and the most beautiful girl in the room didn't even look at me. I also complained a lot about the recession in England.
The next day I had to go to Krakow to meet my next assignment. I'd picked Elizabeth, art historian, born in 1960. ''I am single and I have a lot of free time,'' she said. As she firmly advised me to stay in a hotel, rather than stay at her place, I guessed that she wasn't using the book as a Lonely Hearts column. The express train to Krakow takes only two and half hours, but leaves at 6.50am. The taxi Pawel had ordered never showed up, but there were plenty at the rank near his flat. (A word about Polish taxis. You will first meet them at the airport, where you will be surrounded by about a hundred men all saying ''Taxi, taxi'' at you until you're actually on the bus. Drivers have to learn the Knowledge the way London cabbies do, but a million zlotys - about £50 - is, for most examiners, a respectable substitute for experience. They are pricey, even for Westerners, and, as most of Warsaw's suburbs look identical, a trip from one flat to another by taxi needs patience, money, and someone who knows the way. You learn to try and do without taxis whenever possible.)
Click to expand...

Poles mostly prefer the free market. I saw a Warsaw tram painted in shocking pink, advertising Barbie dolls. Along the streets there are mini-markets selling virtually anything. Shop displays are so eclectic as to suggest a horror vacui, a hangover from the bad old days of communism, when you displayed anything you had to sell. In Krakow I saw a shop window with (next to each other) a pair of braces, a bottle of two-stroke oil and a doctor's stethoscope, all of them apparently brand-new. Meanwhile, Camel and Marlboro slug it out for the soul of Poland. Everything is covered in their livery: trams, newsagents, shop-fronts, billboards. Western companies are interested in Poland, but sometimes it seems as if it is only the companies selling rubbish who are really interested. And if you have been living off undercover received images of the West for half a century, you become more vulnerable to the most easily assimilated, decadent and virulent form of Western culture there is: kitsch. Maybe you can tell how at ease a country is with itself by the tenacity of its cuisine; a Martian in Warsaw or Krakow could conclude that the Polish national dish is pizza. I spent what seemed like hours in Krakow trying to find kazsa - a delicious black pudding - and kaszanka - buckwheat - and had to give up. For good authentic Polish cuisine you will have to find a family that will cook it for you or go to the Daquise in London. Back in Warsaw, Pawel decided to give a party. It was his name-day - the anniversary of his christening - which is as important a day in your calendar as your birthday. He invited only about eight or nine of his friends, but they were the kind of friends who make you think that there are, in fact, about 30 people there instead. I invited everyone back to England so they could see how terrible the recession was. The next day, Pawel took me to see the Jim Jarmusch film Stranger than Paradise. Jarmusch is popular in Poland. Poles are industrious ironists - the ground for irony, is, after all, fertile - and they like the idea of films which make America look like what most Westerners think Poland looks like - grainy, monochrome and sad. Pawel's friend Malgorzata, a beautiful girl, had just returned from nine months away and seemed to be in shock. ''This city. Warsaw. It looks horrible. Everything is grey-green. What is that word that means earth mixed with water?'' ''Mud,'' I offered. ''Yes,'' she said, ''that's it. Everything looks like mud.'' She had been in England and had inadvertently overstayed her visa by a month. She was almost in tears as she said how this meant she would probably never be able to go to England again. Of course, she suggested, I could always marry her. I showed her Poland: People to People. ''I think I should put my name in the next edition,'' she said. Jim Haynes's book is, I had to conclude, a little work of inspiration. In Europe, Europe Hans Magnus Enzensburger spent three baffling days in Warsaw before he admitted the need for a guardian angel, and you will need one, too, as you stumble against the Polish language's sloshed phonetics (a little German might help if you're ever marooned). Whenever I showed people the book in Poland, I asked if they'd have minded being in it themselves. No, they said. These people are nicer than us. The only miserable thing that happened to me in Poland was my departure. I wondered if there was some way of swapping the Polish and British populations. Imagine if Britain was full of people who would walk a mile in tight shoes to do you a favour. (It's not simply economics: several times I had to argue tiresomely with them just to buy them a drink.) Maybe I should take up Malgorzata's proposal after all.
Click to expand...
 
The only party with the correct theory and analysis for the working class has produced the only range of board games suitable for the toiling masses. This Proletarian Democracy chess set combines intellectual fun with the Leninist theory of the revolutionary vanguardist party. The pawns represent the footsoldiers of the Party carrying the paper to the other side of the board, and thus to revolution, the knights represent ultra-left reformist opportunists swerving from one position to the next, the king represents the Central Committee, all-important but vulnerable to being checkmated. The queen represents the all-important theory of entryism while the bishops stand for dogmatic petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, seemingly long-ranging but limited to one colour of square. The rooks stand for the straightforward Marxist road, rejecting the twin perils of opportunism and reformism.

Hours of fun for all new recruits!
 
Orang Utan said:
Sounds like a decent scenario/theme for a game! The mechanics involved in even the simplest of games are complicated. Don't you have to use loads of algorithms n shit? (Sorry, maths is not my strong point)
Click to expand...

You can if you want, quite a lot of games are based on maths and algorithms, sometimes these just feel like they have a theme pasted on top. It's not the only way to do it though, because you can play test through to finding the balance you need in a game. Getting it right isn't easy, but I've made a couple of games that are quite decent just by working from the theme down to the mechanics and then back up again, tweaking, changing and removing stuff. (that probably doesn't make sense but I don't know how else to express it...)

So with Trot Wars, I'm imaging that it's going to be a card based game, with cards that let you do stuff like arrange paper sales, demonstrations, meetings along with other things like denouncements, splits, hijacks and so on. You collectively work towards revolution but also towards personal glory. Points are accumulated for yourself and the party through selling papers and attracting new members. But those points are split between all the players in that group, so split and take members with you and you'll get more points from each paper sale etc..

I dunno, it's very embryonic, what I need to do is write out a load of these cards and just play a game with very few rules, just a turn order and how you score points and see what comes to mind. Anytime I'm thinking about a game I want the mechanics to reflect the theme so although I'm never aiming for realism, it does feel somewhat like whatever the theme is about. The mathematical approach produces very balanced games (and I will use it at times if there are asymettries in the game (eg: different players having different powers - so if there are cards that could only be used by a particular player, there needs to be the same number of cards available specific to each player - or those cards need to be worth the same number of points or whatever).
Algorithms can also be useful for looking at starting/finishing player advantages - there are I'm sure really interesting games where one player/strategy has the advantage in the early game but a different player/strategy has it in the late game - by the end they are balanced but in mid game it appears highly biased in favour of one player/strategy. I can't think of an example at the moment though.

btw, an explansion pack for Trot Wars will be "Liberals and Anarchists" ...

frogwoman if/when I get it worked out, one of the reasons I wanted to do it as a card game rather than a board game is that it's easy to do it as a print and play / print on demand version and make it freely/cheaply accessible. I think that if it was well done and fun and played in a way that those on the left recognised in their own groups and poked the right amount of fun at it, then there'd be a few people who'd like to play it.
 
BigTom said:
Nah, made in 1980, out of production shortly after I should imagine - still around on ebay occasionally though by the looks of things - one "near complete") went for $30 in October:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Public-As...me-offensive-rare-near-complete-/230863267665

I've seen a kickstarter in the past year or so for a game based on a demonstration/riot where on side plays the police and the other the demonstrators, looked kind of interesting but I can't remember what it was called.
There was also one based on the Seattle 99 WTO meeting: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4190/battle-of-seattle.

I'm vaguely working on a game called "Trot Wars" where each player plays as a trot, starting together in the same group. The game can be won under co-operative conditions (bring about revolution) or individual conditions (get the most glory for yourself and the group you are going to create through splits, mergers and more splits.).
Glory comes through selling papers and building the party obviously.

I have no idea about the mechanics of the game yet, I just like the tension you see in any political grouping really, but I know trot groups and it seems particularly bad there, between the aims and desires of the groups as a whole and the aims and desires of the individual groups within them.
So I'm envisaging a game which forces splits on people and then gets you points by doing things like hijacking other groups demonstrations, declaring losses as victories etc... people coming together in broad fronts on particular campaigns but then each trying to grab the glory of all the points available from that campaign and stuff.
Click to expand...

not suitable for children under 10?
 
frogwoman said:
chess-board.jpg


The only party with the correct theory and analysis for the working class has produced the only range of board games suitable for the toiling masses. This Proletarian Democracy chess set combines intellectual fun with the Leninist theory of the revolutionary vanguardist party. The pawns represent the footsoldiers of the Party carrying the paper to the other side of the board, and thus to revolution, the knights represent ultra-left reformist opportunists swerving from one position to the next, the king represents the Central Committee, all-important but vulnerable to being checkmated. The queen represents the all-important theory of entryism while the bishops stand for dogmatic petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, seemingly long-ranging but limited to one colour of square. The rooks stand for the straightforward Marxist road, rejecting the twin perils of opportunism and reformism.​
​
Hours of fun for all new recruits!​
Click to expand...

Genius :)
I've had a very quick look and I'm surprised that I can't easily find a chess set like the norn ireland one for marxists - marx and engels as the king and queen, Gramsci and Lukacs as knights, Luxembourg and Lenin as rooks etc.. you could do that for the back line whilst keeping paper sellers as the pawns.

The PD Games and Theory Division is growing nicely!
 
Nick Lezard on Nepal in 1991:

A farewell to Freak Street; Nepal, once the hippies' paradise, is now the haunt of climbers and trekkers. Nicholas Lezard gets high without the hashish
Click to expand...

When you arrive in Kathmandu and look at what most restaurants have on offer, you would be forgiven for thinking the national dish is apple strudel. Nepal might be one of the world's poorest countries, but the people do know how to make Westerners feel at home. Nepalis love tourists: the words ''wel come'' (invariably spelt like that) appear above every shop, restaurant and guest house.
Click to expand...

A word about rickshaws: these pose problems for sensitive Westerners.
Click to expand...

A rickshaw ride is also morally exhausting. You are torn between compassion for the driver, whose effort on your behalf makes you feel like a Bolshevik caricature of a capitalist, and compassion for yourself. Half-way to your destination you get off and pay him slightly more than the sum you agreed before setting off. And the moment you do get off, you are surrounded by other rickshaw drivers, all going ''Rickshaw, rickshaw,'' at you until you give up and get on one all over again.
Click to expand...

Try not to take high-tech Goretex walking boots: if you travel by Aeroflot they will be stolen. This is more of an annoyance than a disaster as there are plenty of shops in town where you can rent all conceivable kinds of mountaineering equipment.
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On the return journey, which is downhill, you will probably fall off while swerving to avoid a child selling you a melon - so wear stout clothing. I didn't, and got to see the Nepali emergency medical service at first hand. Treatment is quicker than the NHS, the doctors are excellent and you can haggle with them over the number of stitches they are going to put into your knee. He wanted four, I asked for two, we settled for three.
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Even in the deserted areas, the plant life has a kind of urgent, energetic purpose that you scarcely see anywhere else. Nepal's countryside looks like the English countryside, cubed.
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Many of the hotels are run by former Gurkhas, comfortably Anglophile and capable of making a mean cup of tea. Lakeside has an extraordinary, tropical shanty-town atmos- phere: the buildings are made of tin and straw thatch, with fairy lights strung about.
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The place is almost like an unspoilt Bali, if you can accept that an unspoilt Bali would have Mexican restaurants. (I would not recommend eating in one of these, by the way. There was something in my cheese and bean burrito that left me half-dead for three days. It gave me a chance to rest my knee.)
If you find the idea of Western restaurants serving apple strudel depressing, comfort yourself with the thought that the best treks start from here, and the beaten track, whether you are in the middle of Kathmandu or Pokhara, is never hard to get off.
Click to expand...



Nepal is at an interesting stage in its development. It might not have an infrastructure left over from a colonial past, but the Nepalis make up for it in the lengths they will go to in order to make visitors welcome, even though they have only been doing it since 1959.
Click to expand...

With return flights costing as little as £450 and a chance to experience a lifestyle that is almost free once you get there, the country is all set to be the next big, hip tourist destination: less frenetic than India, less ideologically suspect than taking advantage of Tibet. Already tourists come back complaining that the place is not what it was. It is worth going now, while you can still say you were there when the country was unspoilt.
Click to expand...
 
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