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

[Frances Lengel]

Michael Foot studied PPE though. There's a special circle for those types Miliband, Cameron.

Here's PPE graduate Toby Young:

The journalist Toby Young, who read PPE at Brasenose College two years ahead of David Cameron, is a defender of the course and believes it offers a firm intellectual grounding for would-be leaders across the political spectrum.
"Among the 10 people reading PPE at the same time as me at Brasenose, you had everything from Monday Club fascists to revolutionary Marxists, plus every shade of opinion in between," he says.

 

[imposs1904]

These days, I live in two cities. In one of them, I'm a precariously employed young person. I associate with activists and jobless workers in squats and cramped, overpriced flats rammed with empty cereal packets and internet cables. People eat food out of skips and wear out their trainers running away from the police. In the other, I'm a media luvvie and mingle with people who take taxis to events that have name tags to make it clear something important is under way. TV and radio programmes are made, editorial meetings are held, and networking takes place in large glass buildings (Laurie Penny Diary in Evening Standard)

" . . . a precariously employed young person" who can afford regular flights to and from New York.

 

[DotCommunist]

enmeshed in a world of poverty

 

[DotCommunist]

" . . . a precariously employed young person" who can afford regular flights to and from New York.

but won't face a nicking by being at Occupy when the shit was in the fan. I don't put myself in the firing line except for the odd march (allowed protest that changes nothing ftw), but if you are going to pose as a radical journo then wtf- get down there and smell the tear gas.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Note that he was 'leading'. Always leading.

Well, he was born to it, being a child of the post-Raj elites.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I see that the indie have run a obit for nadezhda Popova*, another one who "sought to fight violence with violence"



* night witch and killer of fascists

The nachthexen. The German infantry were shit-scared of them, and rightly so. They flew their "sewing machines" low and slow enough to be able to bomb trenches, so unless you were bunkered, the witches could get you, usually silently too, as they'd cut their engines about 2k out from the target.

Much respect to the late comrade and her fellow witches.

 

[rekil]

The nachthexen. The German infantry were shit-scared of them, and rightly so. They flew their "sewing machines" low and slow enough to be able to bomb trenches, so unless you were bunkered, the witches could get you, usually silently too, as they'd cut their engines about 2k out from the target.

Much respect to the late comrade and her fellow witches.

Johnny Red had several storylines about them. Better than the history bukes at school.

 

[sihhi]

English dept of Wadham College, Oxford. Haters gonna hate...

To go back to this here Wadham's reputation is certainly the most left-wing college in the university (rest of the article is tripe):

It famously hosts Queer Bop, originally a celebration of all types of sexuality, and the quad around the college bar is officially called Ho Chi Minh Quad. All Wadham bops, by college statute, conclude with the playing of ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ by the Specials. Whilst I was in attendance, the Wadham SU banned Coca-Cola products from the college on ethical grounds and forbade the serving of beverages in glass receptacles, preferring biodegradable plastic on the assumption that it was more environmentally friendly.

Here is the student union description:

Wadham isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The patch of grass outside the common room is called the Bar Quad, not Ho Chi Minh Quad. The wine cellar is one of the largest in Oxford, while the majority of the college’s gardens are off limits to undergraduates. And you’re just as likely to find ‘I love Thatcher’ than ‘I love Lenin’ scrawled in the loos next door.

But note: just as likely. While at another college you might be strung up from the nearest chandelier for expressing any kind of feather-ruffling views, Wadham loves whatever you’re thinking, and is keen to hear it.

Here is a football-obsessed maths tutor, a student union that sends out emails addressed ‘Comrades!’, and a bar with both mounted rugby photos and an open-air patio for ‘al fresco dining’.

It’s true that the college shows a certain disdain for convention: there is no ‘formal’ hall (think gowns and suits at dinner) and a joint Student Union for both under- and postgraduates (the only one of its kind in Oxford). But as these examples suggest, in most of the areas it has chosen to differ, Wadham does so for a reason.

Wadhamites get fully involved in university life, and any newcomer will notice the difference this makes to accessing opportunities in drama, sport, journalism, politics and social organisations. It is rare for a year to go by without a handful of students in charge of major societies, taking top roles in plays that attract audience from across England, or heading up the university newspapers and magazines. <snip> the college library – open 24/7 – is an exceptionally well-conceived and operated asset.

It's officially the Bar Quad but Ho Chi Minh Quad retains a student irony following.

 

[caleb]

hahahaha:

 

[DotCommunist]

good jazz hands, poor oratorical style

 

[sihhi]

The (middle-class) whites fighting white privilege:

I'm going to initiate more discussions about my own privilege, and the privilege found both in my neighbourhood and in many parts of the Toronto yoga community.
I'm going to think about the ways that my life more closely resembles George Zimmerman's than it does Trayvon Martin's.
I'm going to think about more items that could be added to this list.
I'm going to start teaching Theo about racism and privilege in ways that are appropriate for his age.
Most of all, I'm going to try really, really hard to not make this about me. When people of colour raise their voice, I'm going to do my best to make sure that they get a megaphone, and then I'm going to hightail it to the back of the room and listen. I'm going to try harder to promote writing and thoughts and music and art that come from marginalized people. Rather than wearing a hoodie in solidarity or joking about starting riots, I'm going to talk about how I, a white woman, can do these things without fearing for my personal safety. I'm going to keep calling out racism and classism and sexism and ableism and homophobia and transphobia and all that other bad shit, even when I feel uncomfortable doing that. I'm going to be brave.

 

[DotCommunist]

Theo

 

[rekil]

Liking that young man's bobbing and weaving. Get in the ring motherfuckers.

*prays it's not a medical condition or something

 

[eoin_k]

That name could give you a God complex.

ETA i.e. Theo

 

[eoin_k]

Is it me or is there a contradiction that recurs with the white, liberal journalists who embrace privilege theory. First they tell their readers that racism isn't all about the privileged white reader and that they (i.e. the reader) needs to start listening to black people. Then the writer demonstrates how they have listened, how challenging this had been for them and what they are now going to do. There is something very narcissistic about the whole exercise.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

You mock, but which of us would be brave enough to challenge privilege in the Toronto yoga community?

 

[frogwoman]

Most of all, I'm going to try really, really hard to not make this about me.

A likely story.

 

[tufty79]

You mock, but which of us would be brave enough to challenge privilege in the Toronto yoga community?

*raises shaking but determined hand*

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I'm
I'm going to
my life
I'm going to
I'm going to
Most of all, I'm going to try really, really hard to not make this about me.
I'm going to do my best
and then I'm going to
I'm going to try harder
I'm going to talk about how I, a white woman,
I'm going to keep calling out
even when I feel uncomfortable
I'm going to be brave.

 

[eoin_k]

You mock, but which of us would be brave enough to challenge privilege in the Toronto yoga community?

Sorry comrades, I'm going to have to bail on this one. I feel like a toad, but comfort myself by thinking that it would be worse for me to let you down in the heat of the battle.

 

[DotCommunist]

They would hunt you like a rabid nazi dog, getting ever closer with that flying thing that in no way resembles flying. And they would catch you

 

[DotCommunist]

Sorry comrades, I'm going to have to bale on this one. I feel like a toad, but comfort myself by thinking that it would be worse for me to let you down in the heat of the battle.

christian?

 

[DotCommunist]

I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will bore you

 

[sihhi]

You mock, but which of us would be brave enough to challenge privilege in the Toronto yoga community?

I sense a special Proletarian Democracy mission for you, Fozzie, to produce a privilege-challenging in the Toronto yoga community special for the Workers Girder.

Why Toronto yoga clubs need an outreach policy to open space for Canada's Inuit youth.

Finding the oppressed but promoted yoga instructors of tomorrow?

Are Montreal's French-Canadian pilates classes part of the struggle against Anglo privilege or a determined policy to keep out Tamils who have learned just English but not French? Cdes Barry Mainwairing (Nuclear Physics for Socialists) and Billy Bragg (The Progressive Patriot) debate the issues.

Yoga with trainers - a spoke in the wheel of Hindu oppression?

The absence of 'burka-welcoming' yoga in Yorkville: Islamaphobia rears its white Torontan head?

 

[The Pale King]

More 'Prada-Meinhof'- style fakery aimed at enhancing the 'rebel sell' brand, I see.

from the video:

"something massive is happening all over the world...an enormous change on several levels is happening and em, i mean, i'm aware I only have five minutes, but I just wanted to...to bring people to the idea that...there is...that, let me put it another way..."

 

[treelover]

Worst game purchase I've made​

Worst game purchase I've made

​

Really should have researched it first but I saw a gameplay video online that made it seem enjoyable.

​

It's got everything I don't want:

​

Misogyny;

​

Kyriarchy;

​

Patriarchy;

​

Racism;

​

Classism;

​

♥♥♥♥ and ♥♥♥♥ excusation;

​

DRM;

​

Intermediary program required to play the game, fitting into DRM but also bogging the system and forcing it onto you by disallowing saving and deleting all of your data if you shut UPlay down;

​

the list goes on.

​

Essentially it was a shooter for rich white males that think of women as objects and anything other than rich white males as inferior. The character portrayed this and the game studio portrayed this. Had I realized it was Ubisoft, I wouldn't have made the purchase.

​

Don't buy this

​

Intersectionality/identity politics reaches PC Gaming/ Steam

he or she is on about Far Cry 3!

ffs...

 

[TruXta]

Kyriarchy? That one's new to me.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Kyriarchy? That one's new to me.

Clearly you have no commitment to this thread then

 

[killer b]

yeah, fuck off newb.

 

[TruXta]

Clearly you have no commitment to this thread then

No. I have not.