“I don’ think I leave this place so big open wit’ so many kaboodle around,” says Cookie, pointing at the oil paintings on the walls, the crystal chandeliers, the heavy silverware. Cookie said it was his understanding there would be no locks on the doors, and there weren’t. The street door was open, no concierge, a sign at the elevator, pointing everybody up here to the penthouse, which was wide open. “Rich guys don’t care,” the woman says.
Read the full excerpt here.
“Britain’s mainstream media, its Army and the Israel lobby all combined to ensure Jeremy Corbyn did not become prime minister, a new book argues.”
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“Journalist Asa Winstanley has been one of the most consistent and compelling voices exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam perpetrated against Jeremy Corbyn and the left to prevent a left-wing government – a weaponisation since confirmed even by the Starmer-commissioned Forde Report. In his new book, ‘Weaponising Anti-Semitism’, Winstanley provides a convincing history of the development of the smear before Corbyn was ever in the frame to lead the party – and the way it was used to help bring Corbyn’s leadership down after the left terrified the Establishment by coming close to winning the 2017 general election.”
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“FOR MANY AMERICANS, it is easier to acquire a new car than to find a rental apartment they can afford. But there is a high price, in sheer debt, to pay for getting that ride on the road. The average monthly loan payment for a new vehicle recently passed the $700 mark, a figure that does not include insurance and the steep costs of maintenance. Currently, Americans owe 1.52 trillion dollars in auto debt—a staggering sum that has doubled over the last decade, due in large part to the migration of subprime loans from the housing to the auto market.”
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Brian Francis Slattery
Dear Mari,
First: Jess, Efraín, Pete, Lucretia, Carlos, and Serena are all dead. I haven’t found Mya, Hugh, Will, Beth, Dolores, Tom, or Anabel yet, but I think they’re dead, too. I’m so sorry.
We were on stage when the first bomb went off. It was down the street and we were playing too loud to hear it. Efraín and Jess were playing so well, better than ever. You should have heard them. Efraín was breaking in a new kit. Jess had the same shitty guitar she’s always had, the one she’s made sound great. It was a big night, crowded from the stage to the back door. I remember someone screaming from the back. Then the second bomb went off, right outside.
There was a flash and the windows blew in, and the flames shot in right after them. The people near the windows were shredded and set on fire. The whole building shook and the ceiling above the bar collapsed. The power went out and the room filled with smoke. I grabbed Jess’s hand—I was standing next to her—and started to drag her toward the front door. You know it’s only five feet from the edge of the stage, but somehow in those five feet I lost her. I spilled out on the street with a pile of people. My bass was still strapped to me, but the neck had snapped. There was a scrap of bloody cloth hanging from the broken place. Maybe a dozen other people were on the street with me. We scrambled away from the heat and waited. No one else came out.
I read somewhere that there are people who don’t panic, and I guess I’m one of them. I watched Eight State burn. It scares me now what I felt then. I wish I could say I cried, or that all my sadness turned to rage. Instead I felt my blood pressure drop. The sound in the world got a little quieter. I looked down the street and saw a row of fires, bomb after bomb. I heard tires screeching and machine gun fire, and I knew—just knew—that there was nothing I could do for anyone at Eight State, and half my friends had been in there. But maybe if I got to Temple in time, I could save the other half.
You know on the news they said it was a paramilitary outfit. I say it was a bunch of assholes who decided to get a lot of guns, make a lot of bombs, buy up some Army surplus vehicles and make their own uniforms. The news said they came at our city because we said we were a sanctuary, because our mayor spoke out, because we marched. They said they did it in the name of law and order. But I didn’t see any order that night. I saw burning buildings, shattered glass, flames, and rising smoke. I heard people screaming and shooting, shooting that wouldn’t stop. I heard sirens everywhere. Police cruisers racing from block to block. An ambulance on its side, on fire, in an intersection. And body after body, ruined and run over, or smoldering, or just full of holes. The couple the police captured said they just attacked wherever the people were. It was a Friday night, so that meant clubs and restaurants, downtown streets. It meant us.
Everyone was on the street in front of Temple. They hadn’t hit the place yet. I found Jacob there. He still had his guitar. We stood there and wondered what we were supposed to do. Nowhere felt safe.
Then we all saw it, a tan Humvee barreling down the street toward us. It ran over a dozen people and looked like it would plow through the rest of us, except that another car, racing in from a side street, crashed into it and knocked it on its side.
This is our city. You understand what it’s like. As soon as the Humvee stopped, we were all over it. We got two of the tires off. They’d locked the doors, so we broke the glass, dragged three of those motherfuckers out, and threw them in the street. They got shoved around a lot. One of them shouted at all of us: We’re the New Patriotic Army of the East and we are coming for you.
[to be continued in the book]
An extract from Luke O’Neil’s WELCOME TO HELL WORLD
The lie is what is known as objectivity and balance, a standard of journalism that insists no matter how obviously and comically vile one party in any given event may be, it is nonetheless necessary to consider things from their perspective as well, in order to triangulate some amorphous center of fairness.
None of this is news to you, obviously, you’re not stupid. But here we are, still doing this shit, day after day. Maybe we don’t have to be like this?
That was the idea behind my newsletter Welcome to Hell World, which started about a year ago, and then, much to my surprise, actually became kind of a modest sized thing, and was recently published as a book. As exhausting as it can be reading the traditionally neutered news model—that we all constantly complain about online now—it’s even worse having to write it. After a lot of years of in the freelance media trenches, I didn’t want to do that anymore.
Read the full extract here.
Sin-eaters: journalists devour the sins of others but to what end?
In 2010, a fundraiser was held to repair the grave of a man named Richard Munslow. In the century since Munslow had been buried in the town of Ratlinghope, about an hour outside of Birmingham, the stone that marked his life had fallen into disrepair.
After a few months, the £1,000 needed to hire a local stonemason was raised and the work was done. “This grave at Ratlinghope is now in an excellent state of repair,” the Reverend Norman Morris, the town’s vicar, told the BBC at the time. “But I have no desire to reinstate the ritual that went with it.”
The ritual in question was known as sin-eating, the art of which Munslow is believed to have been the last practitioner. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the surrounding area and up through Scotland and Wales, sin-eaters would have been a familiar sight if not one exactly sanctioned by the church. Having a monopoly on the redemption of souls, they would have seen such a practice as muscling in on their corner.
Read the full excerpt here.
Keep The Pressure on ICE
Zero tolerance is big business for US corporations. From private prisons to tech conglomerates, companies across the globe are scrambling for a piece of the pie. The Department of Homeland Security has awarded billions in federal contracts to surveil, detain, and terrorize immigrants.
Just a week after the 2016 election, stock prices for the nation’s two largest prison companies rose by nearly a third. In June 2018 they rose further on the assumption that they would benefit from the expansion of family detention facilities throughout the country amid the child separation crisis at the border.
Just what sort of company could bear to profit from the indefinite detention of children? Meet CoreCivic and GEO Group.
Read the full excerpt here.
In terms of our collective wellbeing, the politics of pillage has been an unmitigated disaster. In economic and social affairs, we’ve been regressing instead of moving forward. But this is hardly surprising: the model itself is designed to favor a small minority of corrupt politicians and white-collar criminals. The model does not seek to meet the needs of the people, or to avoid violence and conflict; it seeks neither to govern openly nor honestly. It seeks to monopolize the bureaucratic apparatus and transfer public goods to private hands, making claims that this will somehow bring about prosperity.
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At the higher elevations of informed American opinion in the spring of 2018 the voices of reason stand united in their fear and loathing of Donald J. Trump, real estate mogul, reality TV star, 45th president of the United States. Their viewing with alarm is bipartisan and heartfelt, but the dumbfounded question, “How can such things be?” is well behind the times. Trump is undoubtedly a menace, but he isn’t a surprise. His smug and self-satisfied face is the face of the way things are and have been in Washington and Wall Street for the last quarter of a century.
Read the full excerpt here.
The desert that extends toward the south of this city is an immense graveyard. Thousands and thousands of Mexicans and Latin Americans have been left to die of hunger, thirst, or exposure. Miguel Méndez, born here, in Arizona, to Mexican parents, migrants from Sonora, spoke of the border thus.
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Fifty years ago this coming June, the Stonewall uprising occurred in Greenwich Village — an event that marked the coming-out of New York’s gay community and a refusal by gays to accept underground status that was as important in its way as the Montgomery bus boycott was to the civil rights movement..
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To understand why Western news outlets proffer narratives about Palestine-Israel that favor Israel, it is necessary to consider these media outlets’ political function. Joseph Uscinski explains that, “There is no doubt that systemic economic forces such as the need to sell advertising space and manage expenditures, determine the actions of news firms.”
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An old Persian fable – The Devil’s Syrup – highlights the purpose of the Devil: to disrupt, create chaos and gain power through anarchy. An honest man enters a confectioner’s shop. The Devil quietly drips a drop of sugar syrup on the confectioner’s balding head. A fly sits on his head and begins to suck the syrup. The honest man sees the fly, takes off his shoe and whacks the fly on the confectioner’s head. The confectioner is angry. He doesn’t believe that the honest man was merely hitting the fly. The honest man says that was the only reason, but the confectioner does not believe him. A fight ensues. Others arrive. The shop is destroyed.
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While some general election results, like 1970 and 1992, are surprising, 2017 was genuinely astonishing. Labour’s result did not just defy all media expectations and assumptions, it reduced Theresa May’s Conservative Government to a minority administration. Labour won over 12 million votes, a 40% share of the vote — 10% up on Ed Miliband’s score in 2015 and higher than any in the last forty years, except Blair’s two landslide victories.
Jon Snow confessed live on Channel 4 News: “I know nothing. We, the media, the pundits, the experts know nothing. We simply didn’t spot it.” This was perhaps the starkest, although by no means last, admission of failure from commentators and politicians alike.
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News media outlets frequently present outbreaks of large-scale violence in Palestine-Israel in terms of “Israel’s right to defend itself.” This narrative says that whatever Israel may be guilty of, the state is justified in using military force to respond to Palestinian attacks.
But such media narratives about Israel’s “right to defend itself” mislead readers by ignoring the permanent violence of Israel’s colonization of Palestine and the aggressive pursuit of ethnic supremacy that this colonization entails.
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Raymond Carver had a hero and role model: Chekhov. After Carver died, many obituaries suggested Carver was “America’s Chekhov.” The accolade would have likely thrilled, if embarrassed, the humble Carver. He loved Chekhov, even inserted some of the Russian’s poems into his own book of poems, never claiming they were his own, merely happy to see Chekhov there beside him, in print. Carver said, “Chekhov is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.” “Anyone who reads literature,” said Carver, “anyone who believes, as one must, in the transcendent power of art, sooner or later has to read Chekhov.” Tess Gallagher wrote how “Ray had somehow won permission through a lifetime of admiration [of Chekhov] to take up his work with the audacity of love.”
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In the middle of the 2017 general election campaign, disaster and tragedy struck with the Manchester terror attack. In this extract from the second edition of The Candidate, Alex Nunns tells how the Corbyn campaign responded this time last year with a speech that was careful, but radical.
Read the full excerpt here.
Read the full extract here.
Trump angered Brits when he cited London’s increasing knife violence recently, saying a city hospital there was “like a war zone.” In this excerpt from Tales of Two Londons, the authors describe the joys and threats in a London neighborhood..
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Although Labour did not win the June 2017 general election, its result was astonishing. The party increased its share of the vote by 9.5 points, the biggest gain between elections since 1945 — all the more impressive as it had only been two years since voters last went to the polls. Jeremy Corbyn became the only Labour leader other than Tony Blair to break the 40 per cent barrier since 1970. A dizzying 12.9 million people voted for the party. Apart from the 1997 landslide, Labour had not won so many votes since 1966.
Instead of losing seats, Labour gained a net 30 (the first time the party had added to its tally since 1997), while the Tories lost 13 along with their overall majority. The resulting hung parliament — with the Conservatives occupying 317 seats and Labour 262 — gave Corbyn’s party great political clout in the House of Commons, reflected in the immediate dropping of noxious parts of the Conservative manifesto such as grammar schools and a vote on fox hunting.
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Three decades of Israeli-imposed closure have wreaked havoc on the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure, natural resources, economy, and, most importantly, its people, who are denied the right to engage in dignified, productive work. Factory equipment and skills atrophy as raw materials are banned, markets are cut off, and power shortages make production too expensive. Universities are isolated from the cosmopolitan exchange that is their lifeblood. High-tech entrepreneurs are constrained by Israeli restrictions on 3G smartphone technology and the inability to meet clients face-to-face. Families are separated. Patients struggle to access adequate care.
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It’s widely recognised that Jeremy Corbyn’s success, along with that of Bernie Sanders in the US and Pablo Iglesias and Ada Colau in Spain, is a product of a deep and widespread disaffection – to the point of anger and contempt – with the political class, and politicians themselves. ‘They are all the same’ is the response that party canvassers hear from every other house they visit. Corbyn, Sanders, Iglesias and Colau are popular precisely because they are different. They do not behave like normal politicians. They are clearly not conventional politicians.
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One summer day in 2003, the local residents of Hackney, north-east London, were invited on a tour of the abandoned site of London Fields Lido. Although closed since 1988, the pool was not empty. Squatters had moved in, and held raves in the old pool tank – much to the annoyance of campaigners, who had cleaned it up for community events. The tour was to introduce locals to a bold new redevelopment plan for the lido: to reopen the pool, install a cafe and evict the squatters.
As the locals were shown around, the squatters sat in front of the changing rooms, where purple buddleia had begun to grow above the doors, and watched them. One woman on the tour, meanwhile, enquired whether she would have to swim if she wanted a coffee. It was a moment that seemed to capture the extremes of life in Hackney: young homeless people facing eviction, and an affluent new resident who saw an opportunity for a latte.
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What could possibly go wrong? A 67-year old politician going on stage at a Libertines gig… in front of 20,000 young people… on a Saturday night in a tough Northern town… in the middle of a general election.
It is 20 May 2017, just over a month since Theresa May shocked the political world by calling a snap election. There are 19 days until polling day. Jeremy Corbyn is in the Wirral. He has just addressed a rally of thousands of Labour supporters on the beach in West Kirby. In nearby Prenton Park stadium, the home of Birkenhead’s Tranmere Rovers Football Club, a music festival is underway. Rumours are buzzing around social media that Corbyn is going to appear with the headliners. “If Corbyn comes out with the Libertines then this could possibly be the best gig ever,” tweets one attendee. “Gonna vote Tory if Jeremy Corbyn comes out with Libertines. Not even joking,” posts another.
Read the full extract here.
With contributions from 41 poets, Women of Resistance: Poems of a New Feminism moves across race, age, gender identity, class, sexuality, and life experience to present a full, complex picture of the true diversity of contemporary womanhood that’s too often overlooked.
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Before I met Rosalind Hibbins, I had heard about her. I was buying an attic flat in North-West London and I had just exchanged contracts with its former owner, Holly, when she mentioned the woman who lived downstairs.
She spoke of Rosalind with such strained diplomacy.
‘She’s a character!’ she said with a nervous laugh. ‘Every street’s got one.’
I was moving from a large Thirties block where my neighbours had been too many and too fluid to get to know beyond the briefest of hellos in the lift. It suited me that way. I had grown up on a housing estate in Primrose Hill, after my parents returned to London from Pakistan, and as the only non-white family in our council block, we tried to live as quietly as we could amid the curiosity and occasional hostility.
As the post-war generation died off, our neighbours became far more unknown and indifferent to us, and we to them.
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