Author & critic of things essential, sometimes in the form of
e.things -see In Ramallah, Running (2012) for example. In muddy flight…
#riveringGiven how McSweeney's Labour party has been pandering to Reform voters more or less since they gained power, Labour must think racism and bigotry are core British values.
Keir Starmer attacks the racism of Reform and Matt Goodwin but then adds that "Britain has also been let down by a mindset on the left of politics that is too slow to defend core British values"
Robin D. G. Kelley - Department of African American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Podcast Episode · The Black Studies Podcast · 02/04/2026 · 1h 10m
‘Unbroken: In Pursuit of Freedom for Palestine, by Marwan Barghouti, will be published by Penguin on 5 November this year, the publisher has told the Guardian.’
www.theguardian.com/books/2026/f...
Marwan Barghouti, ‘Palestine’s Mandela’, to publish book from prison
Unbroken: In Pursuit of Freedom for Palestine is a collection of writings by the Palestinian political leader, who has been held in Israeli prisons since 2002
[describes my writing ‘method’ mas o menos]
Oulipo constraint: write a novel with AI suggestions on, running ahead of the text in faint projections, and turn away, reject, deny every single one.
This was the justification for the UK gov’t to proscribe Palestine Actions who, unlike the UK gov’t, OPPOSE genocide. Not one only but as such.
The same UK govt’ that is ending jury trials because juries are independent, juries aquit, juries oppose genocide too!
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
Palestine Action activists cleared of aggravated burglary at Israeli defence firm site
None of the six activists were convicted of any offence over break-in at Elbit Systems factory near Bristol in 2024
Splitting Yair’s.
#GenocideMobIn light of a ridiculous profile of Golan in a Western newspaper today
If we're going to win this by election, we need all hands on deck.
If you're able to, please sign up to one or preferably more of the action days below:
greenparty.org.uk/get-involved...
National Action Days - Green Party
Now is the time to get involved and get Greens elected. See below for action days across the country and sign up now to be part of a winning team.
When some Na'amodniks went to the West Bank last month, local settler militias harassed us & the local Palestinian population every day.
This article exposes how these violent, under-reported, and unaccountable militias work as extensions of the Israeli state.
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
Settler-only IDF units functioning as ‘vigilante militias’ in West Bank
Exclusive: ‘Regional defence’ settler units are escalating violent displacement of Palestinians, Israeli reservists and activists say
Such an important initiative.
Media coverage of Gaza has plummeted. So today on
@thenation.com, we're doing something pretty special: we're only running pieces by people in and from Gaza.
We're calling it "A Day for Gaza." You can find links to all of the incredible pieces here. Please read!
www.thenation.com/article/worl...
A Day for Gaza
Today, The Nation is turning over its website exclusively to stories from Gaza and its people. This is why.
‘Change for the better often reqs l’ship that goes beyond what councils alone are prepared/able, to deliver…
We need political l’ship that empowers & partners w communities, values local initiative, & supports groups already driving tangible improvements on grd’ 🌱
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
Council and community could join up on housing | Letters
Letters: Local councils are not the only answer to improve the lives of residents, writes Dr Piers Taylor, while Martin Wicks says council housing remains the key to resolving the crisis
Something like that anyway…
Not talking localism haha or merely CLTs… closer to an enabling connective body for ground up, community & commoning w an ethos, a strong but light umbrella or whatever under & within which to respond collectively to climatic intrusion. Equitably. Not a side show but everything & -where…
🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
Journalists should be asking the Labour candidate at the Gorton & Denton byelection - and any senior Labour figures who turn up to campaign - whether they support these proposals or not.
If they are genuinely serious about rejecting Goodwin/Reform's racism and bigotry, there's only one answer..
Apple & Google removed ICE tracking apps in their app stores.
TikTok reportedly suppressed videos criticizing ICE & the shooting of Alex Pretti.
Meta blocked Facebook groups tracking ICE & links to a database of agents that the government wants to keep secret.
Big Tech is enabling Trump's regime.
Trees, too: post-glacial ‘native’ species are struggling in Ldn at least. Kew’s Future Species (based on 2090 projections) is introducing Caucasian/other species or seeds of ‘native’ species. It resurrects the black locust, ex-Municipal ‘weed’ now essential species for ‘resilience’. Rooted/routed…
“Plants keep time in their bodies but it’s not the same as what this new, warped version of spring allows them to keep. Things are changing too fast for plants’ evolutionary time-memories to keep up.”
in Imperial histories of course, linked directly to Jamestown, genocide, etc. Now in favour again as a saviour of liveability in London. Anyway! There must be plant equivalents? We should all talk more about these materialised forests and future forests, emerging from within the former, no? Etc.!
Hirons & Martin, 2025.
Live in Gorton and Denton? Could you join the huge
#GetGreensElected -
#VoteGreen push?
We can get a Vote Green poster or poster board to you soon! It's easy
actionnetwork.org/forms/want-a...“The public sphere is so debased that saying anything true is a breach of etiquette.”
– Robert Glück, About Ed
[This post could not be retrieved]
Every time I (re)read this book, I get amazed once more for the beauty of these words.
I simply love this. So very much.
———
~ Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return
Labour have blown it. This is it. Time to take on Reform.
Manchesters first Green MP is coming. Join us to help get them elected on Saturday.
actionnetwork.org/events/a-gre...McKenzie Wark was right to ask "capital is dead, is this something worse?"
I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win.
this photo. minneapolis. 💜
📷️ Alex Kormann/Star Tribune
Belgium joins Spain in banning aircraft carrying weapons and military equipment to Israel from using the country's airspace or making technical stops, making it the second EU state to do so after Slovenia.
Belgium imposes arms embargo on Israel
Foreign Ministry confirms decision to Anadolu, which aims to prevent transportation of arms, military goods to Israel - Anadolu Ajansı
10/ Politicians igored them because warnings alone do not compel action in the face of organised vested interests.
Fossil capital.
Extractive industries.
Short-term political incentives.
Institutional inertia.
These were always the real obstacles, not a lack of credibility.
My ancient thoughts in relation to this minute (of dirty Utopianism) from a 2001 essay in AAFiles (42), called Forting, about the massive mud and turf and cannoned barricades that Londoners put up to keep out Royalists in the 1640s (& the uncanny relation of those forts to imp social housing sites)🤸♂️
“‘Because of you I will remember this minute. We’re friends in this minute and from this minute on. It’s how it is. Because you can’t change the past.’
I don’t know if he’s ever thought of that single minute because of me, but I have always thought of him.”
-Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar Wai, 1990)
Hope or endless obscenity?
Starts or ends in a choice/choices.
The mad wealth differential in the UK are* obscene. Be honest. Be brave enough to admit it & say it out loud.
Obscene like kiddie-porn. Obscene like spousal/wife abuse & violence.
Ugly, consequential, cruel, crude.
Take a risk on hope?
Help us make hope normal again.
Join the Green Party now.
And yet it's NOT Israel! Where this is a daily reality decade in decade out...
#IsraeliNorthAmericanAntiCivilisationThis guy went to work today, put a mask on, kidnapped a 5 year old child, and then used him as bait so both he and his father could be sent behind bars
The US has given Israel $352 billion since its founding.
After uncovering over $7 billion in previously unreported funds, this is the most accurate tally of US aid to Israel to date:
www.stephensemler.com/p/how-much-a...[This post could not be retrieved]
One small but notable sign of the rightward shift in UK politics in recent years is the use of “illegal migrants” for asylum seekers who arrive unofficially. It’s a dehumanising term which was popularised by the hard right and is now - as here - used repeatedly in Home Office press releases.
'Beijing, New York, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro & Delhi are among those facing extreme stress, while LONDON, Bangkok & Jakarta are classed as being highly stressed'.
On every water/river measure London is amongst the world's most systemically vulnerable🏜️
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Half the world’s 100 largest cities are in high water stress areas, analysis finds
Exclusive: Beijing, Delhi, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro among worst affected, with demand close to exceeding supply
From this introduction by
@guymannesabbott.bsky.social, for
Midnight and Other Poems by Mourid Barghouti (translated from the Arabic by Radwa Ashour)
www.arcpublications.co.uk/books/mourid...Arc Publications - Books
Arc Publications, contemporary poetry publishers
“‘Because of you I will remember this minute. We’re friends in this minute and from this minute on. It’s how it is. Because you can’t change the past.’
I don’t know if he’s ever thought of that single minute because of me, but I have always thought of him.”
-Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar Wai, 1990)
"'I gather flowers on the brink of subsistence,” wrote
Walter Benjamin from Ibiza in 1933.
It was the beginningof years he spent as a refugee which ended on the Spanishborder in 1940, when he took his own life rather than be returned to occupied France."
What was Benjamin’s line (that I used to call Mourid Barghouti the Brinkman in Midnight Intro) about picking flowers on the brink?
And then also in Wong Kar Wai’s Days of Bring Wild that snatched stolen minute of broken down (dirty) utopian possibility, to act?!
What a beautiful poem🙏🌼
What was Benjamin’s line (that I used to call Mourid Barghouti the Brinkman in Midnight Intro) about picking flowers on the brink?
And then also in Wong Kar Wai’s Days of Bring Wild that snatched stolen minute of broken down (dirty) utopian possibility, to act?!
What a beautiful poem🙏🌼
I will share and share and share this poem until we all flower.
Being!
“It is genocidal propaganda and incitement to violence, Guy Hochman is not only an inciter; he is also a perpetrator of war crimes who filmed himself while committing them.”
Pursue every single one of them to the end of time
#NeverForget www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
Canada briefly detains Israeli comedian after complaints over conduct in Gaza
Guy Hochman says he was interrogated for six hours after legal group filed complaint accusing him of war crimes
‘Over the past two decades, seaweed blooms have expanded by a staggering 13.4% a year in the tropical Atlantic and western Pacific, with the most dramatic increases occurring after 2008’
Greenocean arguable a bigger deal than Greenland…
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Scientists warn of ‘regime shift’ as seaweed blooms expand worldwide
Study links rapid growth of ocean macroalgae to global heating and nutrient pollution
Excited to share this conversation with Randa Abdel-Fattah about her remarkable new novel DISCIPLINE. A book about language, silence, complicity, solidarity and so much more
Audio:
tinhouse.com/podcast/rand...
Randa Abdel-Fattah : Discipline - Tin House
Randa Abdel-Fattah’s new novel Discipline is set in Sydney, Australia in 2021 during Ramadan. Discipline follows two Palestinians there, one in media and one in academia, where each has to confront qu...
As Mancuso writes, we are evolving into a species specialising in urban life. Pretty clear where each sits on that trajectory!
🚗: I hope I find parking.
🚴🏽♂️: I hope I don’t die.
We’re not the same.
I love good news about clean energy too, but there is only one scoreboard for climate and this is it and we are losing.
This is not defeatism, this is a call to action.
(via
@rhg.com)
Good morning, I am once again reminding you all that we are going to keep pushing and we are going to win:
Holy shit.
Renee Good was alive when the bystander physician asked to check her pulse. She was alive when ICE refused to let him help. She was alive when they told him “I don’t care.”
www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01...
Live Updates: Newly Released Records Detail Chaos During Fatal ICE Shooting in Minneapolis
And many going further:
join.greenparty.org.ukSee The Voice of Hind Rajab at you first opportunity. Brilliant film-making that holds with the original 70 minute recording second by second. Also a very painful, desolating, act of re-witness. Symbolic of so much of what has taken place, but pregnant with Palestinian warmth, wit & real humanity.
The hunger strikers have ended their 73-day strike after forcing the cancellation of Elbit’s £2 billion contract. This is a people-powered victory—but it comes at a horrific, lifelong cost.
See The Voice of Hind Rajab at you first opportunity. Brilliant film-making that holds with the original 70 minute recording second by second. Also a very painful, desolating, act of re-witness. Symbolic of so much of what has taken place, but pregnant with Palestinian warmth, wit & real humanity.
Three UK hunger strikers end their hunger strike after the MoD meets one of their demands: The MoD has denied a major new £2 billion contract with the Israeli defence firm's subsidiary, Elbit Systems UK, for an Army training program..
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
Three Palestine Action protesters end their hunger strike
Four more who had paused opt not to continue after government opts against giving contract to Elbit Systems UK
Good morning & good night.
14 Jan 2026.
Quakers urge parliament to curb increasingly repressive protest laws
Quakers in Britain have urged politicians to curb increasingly repressive protest laws, warning that recent and proposed legislation is preventing them from practising their faith.
www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...
Quakers urge parliament to curb increasingly repressive protest laws
Quakers in Britain have urged politicians to curb increasingly repressive protest laws, warning that recent and proposed legislation is preventing them from practising their faith.
‘Counting all trees on Earth, the total global surface area of bark covers an area roughly the same as all seven continents combined," he said. "This microbial activity across this massive 'bark continent' is potentially removing millions of tons of climate-active gases every year.’
Hmmm, actually (fake) controversial to say so but Netanyahu and the Israeli regime is the closest, most seasoned and complete analogy here.
A dominant theme of Hitler's speeches in the late 1930s is that Germany was surrounded by threats. These threats were imaginary: it was Nazi Germany that threatened other nations. But they were used to justify pre-emptive attacks. Trump is following this script.
‘The answer is a resounding “no”. Just look at the international criminal court, which ditched Microsoft Office for a European alternative after Trump sanctioned its officials for issuing an arrest warrant for the génocidaire Benjamin Netanyahu.’
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Trump may be the beginning of the end for ‘enshittification’ – this is our chance to make tech good again | Cory Doctorow
The US president is weaponising tech, but his tariffs and Brexit provide a surprising opportunity to gain back digital control of our lives, says science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory D...
No interest in working with Keir Starmer. The public know who he is.
We're replacing Labour - and taking on Reform.
No vested interests. Just standing with the 99%. And that's powerful.
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...
Greens could join pact with Labour – but not while Starmer’s in charge, Polanski says
Exclusive: Zack Polanski tells The Independent that doing a deal with a Starmer-led Labour Party would ‘lead to a worse version of Nigel Farage’
Mixed forests of migrating/ed species is the way to have gone. Heygate Legacy Forest did this in N Southwark, Ldn a decade ago (+a seasoned tree team).
But Europe, the ‘west’, even US should have pushed HARD to drop oil, gas, all fossil fuels long ago. Look now!?!
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Germany’s dying forests are losing their ability to absorb CO2. Can a new way of planting save them?
Vast swathes of the country’s trees have been killed off by droughts and infestations, in a trend sweeping across Europe. A shift towards more biodiverse cultivation could offer answers
The Palestine hunger strikers have been on hunger strike for over 60 days and are close to death.
They have not even been convicted of a crime - they are being held on remand (pre-trial) for more than twice the max time allowed, and counting…🧵
shoutout cameron rowland for getting the exhibition to exhibit its core failing
Same for the academy: a factory of theories about labor and liberation and refusal — and an embodiment of the very conditions those theories critique, incapable of operationalizing them
[This post could not be retrieved]
UK MUST* confront this, if it hopes for an infinitisimal shred of credibility.
“Construction in E1 is intended to create irreversible facts on the ground leading to a one-state reality, which all indications suggest would take the form of an apartheid regime”
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
Israel pushes ahead with vast illegal settlement in heart of West Bank
Tender posted for construction of 3,401 homes in settlement designed to ‘bury idea of a Palestinian state’
Leave oil in the ground.
56
“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been…”
Rainer Maria Rilke, in a letter to his wife, the sculptor Clara Rilke, on January 1, 1907
(Translated by Jane Bannard Greene and M.D. Herter Norton)
#everynightapoem #januaryVisited an old friend today, haven’t seen them in years. Used to visit regularly. ‘Used to’ being a different century. Strange privilege, partly as a result, of showing, discussing & discovering w 13yr old A.
And yes, Perec ofc, so Bellos, MacLehose, Paris centenary ‘92, Perec’s BN buddies’ archive😊
Oh and had forgotten or never known that Antonello was 21 when he painted this, 2 years before his death in 1479.
www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/an...Antonello da Messina | Saint Jerome in his Study | NG1418 | National Gallery, London
Antonello da Messina, Saint Jerome in his Study, about 1475. Read about this painting, learn the key facts and zoom in to discover more.
Spot on from the brilliant
@rebeccasolnit.bsky.social 👇
Fiddling (expensively) while Earth burns?
"If all the stars align — which is to say that government policy is supportive, industry delivers and the technology works — there could be a global fleet of 1,000 SMRs with aggregate capacity of 120 gigawatts by 2050"
120 gigawatts by 2050 is a rounding error in the global energy system.
Mini nuclear reactors are already losing their glow
Several studies suggest SMRs will produce higher levels of nuclear waste than traditional plants
Shocking but unsurprising: "Amount poorest households have left over after bills & essential spending has fallen by 2.1% since Labour came to power. The most affluent households have seen their discretionary incomes rise by 10.3%"
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...
Poorest have got poorer under Labour while richest are better off
Prime minister Keir Starmer pledges to ‘wage all out war’ on the high cost of living
‘One direct consequence of having allowed genocide, though, is that, in order to excuse it, you have to pass all kinds of laws that destroy democracy from the inside.’ -Alice Oswald✨
From The Paris Review Winter 2025
Would love a single consequence.
Wow, ten yrs ago? Still almost unbearably moving to witness. I laugh (at myself!). I - or my bone marrow - cry. It’s Aretha more than the song, tho the song’s ok ; )
Tnx for putting me through it one more time!
What the KENNEDY Center used to be…
Remember that time Aretha Franklin performed at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors, paying tribute to Carole King, who co-wrote “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman,” and it brought a tear to Obama’s eye and everyone to their feet? And Carole King’s reaction. Wow.
For a government that is led by a former human rights lawyer, the treatment of these hunger strikers is truly debased
🤑🤮
The top 0.1% hold nearly 6x as much wealth as the bottom 50%.
That is expected to reach nearly 7x in 2026.
Happy New Year to people whose minimum wealth is going to increase from $38m to $45m in one year.
There needs to be an end to greed.
Starmerquo:
1/Wholly reactive as ‘project’ AND reactive to laughably delegitimised ex-Tory rabble. No prog of governance.
2/Genocide. I know! None will agree! Does have that right, denial AND unapologetic participation, terrorism proscription/ending juries that acquit on conscience. Pervades whole.
“The public sphere is so debased that saying anything true is a breach of etiquette.” – Robert Glück, About Ed
