Words Are Wind
In this episode Dave @withsobersenses takes a moment to think about how and why COVID-19 is impacting the capitalist mode of production, what are the drivers of the looming recession and depression and why various Keynesian arguments get it wrong.
You should read Social Contagion
Music by Assück
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In this episode, Jon (@JonPiccini) has a long delayed conversation with Shan Windscript (@ShanWindy), Phd student at University of Melbourne and organiser, who has played key roles in the fight for casual workers in the tertiary sector and the rights of international students. We talk about how the Coronavirus has served to weaponise long standing fears about China in Australia, how supporting movements for change in Hong Kong is not incompatible with working for political and economic rights on the mainland, and how Shan’s research on the inner lives of everyday activists in Maoist China undermines attempts to present the present CCP regime as omnipotent.
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Shan’s writing includes
Can Chinese Students Abroad Speak? Asserting Political Agency amid Australian Nationalist Anxiety
How to Write a Diary in Mao’s New China: Guidebooks in the Crafting of Socialist Subjectivities
Music by RE-Tros
One of the contributions from Gong Commune to the recent snap action in response to the bush fire crisis:
I would like to Acknowledge that we are gathering here today on the lands of the Dharawal and Yuin People. To acknowledge that since invasion the struggle for sovereignty, community, Country and dignity has never ceased. The successful, careful custodianship for millennia that First Nations people have practiced here in so-called Australia, on the very lands we now stand, across the beautiful Yuin Country down south and across the entire continent, throws into stark relief the fundamental violence of settler colonial capitalism. In but a couple of hundred years, this system has wrought such deep destruction on these lands, of which the current fire crisis is just one aspect. I want to pay respects to all First Nations people present here today. Pay my respect to all elders past present and…
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Lauren Tynan of Koori Country Firesticks and Gong Commune gave this contribution to the bush fire snap action in Wollongong on the weekend:
Acknowledge Country
My name is Lauren Tynan and I’m a trawlwulwuy woman of tebrakunna country in northeast Tasmania and live here in Wollongong.
I’m a Director of Koori Country Firesticks Aboriginal Corporation, a cultural burning organisation based in NSW.
I’m also conducting a PhD on relationships with Country through fire and cultural burning practices.
Because our relationships with country have changed.
Today we’re talking about change – we’re talking about these wildfires in relation to climate change. Climate has changed but the real change we can see in this place over…
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‘Understanding the world we live in requires a bit of observation and a bit of imagination. A bit of science and a bit of magic. Changing the world will require the same.’
I’ve always been one of those people (you know, the artists,
religious believers and flat-earthers) who believes not everything can be
explained by science. Science is good for understanding the mechanics of how
things work, but not necessarily why we should care how they work. Scientific
studies are rarely unburdened by the individual biases and influences of the scientist,
and a “scientific worldview” carries its own preconceptions.
Like any ideology, it can be used to avoid debate and blind us to other possibilities (“it’s simple science!”), and can be frustratingly conservative, like when evolutionary psychologists give answers to explain why we act in certain ways with no acknowledgement of the very human (evolutionary) urge to explore and progress.
In recent years, in the struggle to stop catastrophic
climate change, one of the repeated catchcries has been to “listen to science”
and its studies of climate impacts. Like some kind of…
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In this episode of Living The Dream Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) catch up with Tash Heenan (@tashellenheenan) and Jeremy Poxon (@JeremyPoxon) to discuss the Green New Deal. Jon, Tash and Jeremy are partisans of the Green New Deal, seeing it as a way of addressing immediate concerns and opening pathways to more radical transformations whilst Dave remains something of a half-reformed ultra-left curmudgeon who can do nothing more than yell ‘but the value-form’ at worried passer-bys.
We chat about what a Green New Deal may or may not be, if it is an attempt to save or destroy capitalism, its relationship or not with creating communism, the hard limits the environmental crisis imposes, the disappearance of the commons as a concept, and a whole lot more.
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Writings we reference include:
Australia Needs A Green New Deal, Not More Centrism
We need a Blak New Deal to fight the climate crisis
Three Ways a Green New Deal Can Promote Life Over Capital
Responsible minerals sourcing for renewable energy
Trade Unions for Energy Democracy
Between the Devil and the Green New Deal
Music by Meatraffle
I was just one of the crowd in the Brisbane leg of the 20th September Climate Strike. I have no privileged insight into the inner workings, debates or mechanics of the day. These reflections are offered to help to understand where we are at and where we are going inspired by Noel Ignatiev’s readings of CLR James’ practice: ‘As a person who had decided to devote his life to revolution, my job was to Recognize and Record the new society as it made its appearance…’
Continue reading “Reflections on the Global Climate Strike! Friday September 20th Brisbane”
Now that the hot-takes have gone cold and are stale as bricks @JonPiccini and @withsobersenses take out their artisanal slow-cooker take on the recent Australian Federal election. Why did we get it so wrong? Why did #changetherules suck? What will a Morrison Coalition government look like and what does it mean for our strategy?
CW: This show contains a discussion of misogyny and domestic violence.
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Stuff we mention includes:
Elizabeth Humphrys – We Live in Anti-Political Times
Amy Thomas – Federal election 2019: What the hell just happened? Five arguments
Jeremy Poxon, Tash Heenan & Jon Piccini – Australia Needs A Green New Deal, Not More Centrism
Music by Class War
[Edit – the audio file was replaces at 4pm 15/5/2019]
In this episode Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) try to work out if we have anything useful to say about an election that is all hype but actually a snoozefest. What does it tell us about the state of Australian society, what can anticapitalists draw from it? Are we about the #Changetherules or will Clive Palmer be leading us into a Kangaroo Reich? What happens the morning after?
We also address some criticisms we have received and try to muddle through some blindspots in our thinking.
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Stuff we mention includes:
Anti-politics and how to watch election night
Fully Automated Luxury Communism? | Ash Sarkar meets Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi
Sojourner Truth Organisation: Understanding and Fighting White Supremacy
