Just re blogging to emphasise whose side they are on !

Which of these would you target?

And which of these do you think the UK government is making scary ads about and targeting?

“I ain’t draft dodging. I ain’t burning no flag. I ain’t running to Canada. I’m staying right here. You want to send me to jail? Fine, you go right ahead. I’ve been in jail for 400 years. I could be there for four or five more, but I ain’t going no 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people. “If I want to die, I’ll die right here, right now, fightin’ you, if I want to die. You my enemy, not no Chinese, no Vietcong, no Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. Want me to go somewhere and fight for you? You won’t even stand up for me right here in America, for my rights and my religious beliefs. You won’t even stand up for me right here at home. “ - Muhammad Ali

Sceptics often wonder whether there will be enough income for everyone in a degrowth scenario. The answer is yes, by definition. Income is an abstraction that represents command over goods. It is simply the obverse of the total prices of all commodities produced and consumed in the economy. There is always exactly enough income to buy everything that the economy produces. So even in a degrowth scenario, where we are scaling down less necessary forms of production, as long as we are producing what people need, there will always by definition be enough income to buy it. The key is to ensure that purchasing power is distributed in such a way as to ensure that all people can access the goods they require. This will be accomplished automatically to some extent by the shorter working week, the climate job guarantee and universal public services, all of which would dramatically improve the bargaining power of labour and therefore allow the working class to claim a greater share of national income (i.e., a greater share of command over the nation’s goods). We can support this objective further by introducing living wage laws or minimum income standards, and progressive taxation policies such as maximum income thresholds and wealth taxes. Thomas Piketty has pointed out that taxing the rich is one of the single most powerful environmental policies we can deploy. This may seem radical, but in an era of ecological breakdown, it is irrational and dangerous to devote resources and energy to supporting an over-consuming class.

Jason Hickel, A New Political Economy for a Healthy Planet

We serve pumpkin soup in November and mince pies in January. The vegetables might be chopped by Ronnie, who trained as a chef after being trafficked to the United Kingdom. She put herself through cooking school before she had a fixed abode. Those same veggies might be roasted by Maz, who came to the café to fill the void of sudden widowhood, and served up by Sarah, who came to gain confidence and cooking skills to use back home for her two children. She’s a paid employee now, working as assistant café manager and running food workshops in schools.

There’s Tattoo Dave, our caretaker, who has stayed on for years after a probation-mandated community service placement; Fireman Dave, who drives the van; and Take-Away Dave, who brings his own Tupperware to reduce our reliance on single-use plastic.

Making tea and coffee behind the counter are a group of young people who joined us after one of our volunteers gave an assembly at their school. The group made a replica café using the online world-building game Roblox, and when the real café is closed they meet virtually instead.

Ours is a local project seeking to provide solutions to a global problem. The carbon value of the food we intercept is 440 tons annually, the equivalent of a gas car driven two million miles. Across a year the volume of food we handle is equal in weight to twelve double-decker buses.

This is a minuscule fraction of the food which is wasted globally. Between 30 and 50 percent of food produced around the world goes into bins rather than bellies – more than enough to meet international food demand.

We talk a lot about value at REfUSE: the holy task of recognizing the value of places, people, and food which the governing political, cultural, and economic systems have artificially drained of worth and designated as waste. We seek to acknowledge the carbon, time, labor, and natural resources that are expended before food can reach our plates.

The efforts of each of our two hundred volunteers are a challenge to the value judgments of large retail firms, such as Amazon, which devalue this food because its sell-by date is built into their retail model. Hanging by the till in our community café is a sign which reads “This food is not free! It’s valuable. And so are you, so ‘pay as you feel,’ in money, time, or skills.”

✨Look at the Night Sky Yourself at any Moment; …the Night Sky does Not Repeat Itself.

اُنظرْ(ي) إلى سماء الليل بنفسك في أيّ لحظة؛ …سماء الليل لا تكرّر نفسَها✨

Her ass could be twice the size but you get the idea !

“[I]f you are as I described, then surely there will be found in Russia at least ten people like you. If they have not yet been found, look for them and set up a new society with them on the following principles and mutual conditions:

To adopt fully, wholly and passionately the above-mentioned program in The People’s Cause (Narodnoe Delo), with additions and clarifications which seem necessary to you.

Equality among all members and their unconditional and absolute solidarity – one for all and all for one – with the obligation for each and everyone to help each other, support and save each other to the uttermost, in as mych as it is possible without danger of annihilation to the society itself.

Complete frankness among members and proscription of any Jesuitical methods in their relationship, of all ignoble distrust, all perfidious control, of spying and mutual accusations, the absence and a positive strict prohibition of all tattling behind members’ backs. When a member has to say anything against another member, this must be done at a general meeting and in his presence. General fraternal control of each other, a control which should not be captious or petty and above all not malicious. This type of control must take the place of your system of Jesuitical control and must become a moral education, a support for the moral strength of each member. It must be the basis of mutual fraternal trust on which rests all the internal and, therefore, external power of the society.

All weak-nerved, cowardly, ambitious and self-seeking people are excluded from the society. They can be used as weapons by the society without their knowledge, but on no account must they belong to its nucleus.

In joining the society, every member condemns himself for ever to be socially unknown and insignificant. All his energy and all his intelligence belong to the society and must be directed not to the creation of personal social strength, but to the collective strength of the organization. Each must be convinced that personal influence is powerless and fruitless and that only collective strength can overcome the common enemy and achieve the common positive aim. Therefore collective passion must gradually be substituted for personal passions within each member.

Everyone’s personal intelligence vanishes like a river in the sea in the collective intelligence and all members obey unconditionally the decisions of the latter.

All members are equal; they know all their comrades and discuss and decide with them all the most important and essential questions bearing on the program of the society and the progress of the cause. The decision of the general meeting is absolute law.

In priciple each member has the right to know everything. But idle curiosity is forbidden in the society as is aimless talk about the business and aims of the secret society. Knowing the general program and the general direction of affairs, no member asks or tries to find out details which are not needed for better execution of that part of the enterprise with which he is entrusted and, if it is not necessary in practice, will not talk with any of his comrades about it.

The society chooses an Executive Committee from among their number consisting of three or five members who should organize the branches of the society and manage its activities in all the regions of the Empire on the basis of the program and general plan of action adopted by the decision of the society as a whole.

This Committee is elected for an indefinite term. If the society – I shall call it the People’s Fraternity – if the People’s Fraternity is satisfied with the actions of the Committee, it will be left as such; and while it remains a Committee each member of the People’s Fraternity and each regional group have to obey it unconditionally, except for such cases where the orders of the Committee contradict either the general program of the principal rules, or the general revolutionary plan of action, which are known to everybody as all the Brothers have participated equally in the discussion of them.

In such a case members of the group must halt the execution of the Committee’s orders and call the Committee to judgment before the general meeting of the People’s Fraternity. If the general meeting is discontented with the Committee, it can always substitute another one for it.

Any member and any group is subject to judgment by the general meeting of the People’s Fraternity.

Since each Brother knows everything and knows even the personnel of the Committee, the acceptance of a new member among them must be conducted with extreme caution, difficulties and obstacles. One bad choice can ruin everything. No new Brother can be accepted without the consent of all or at the very least three-quarters of all the members of the People’s Fraternity.

The Committee divides the members of the Fraternity among the Regions and constitutes Regional groups of leaderships from them. This leadership could consist of one Brother alone, if there are too few members.

Regional leadership is charged with organizing the second tier of the society – the Regional Fraternity, on the basis of the same program, the same rules, and the same revolutionary plan.

All members of the Regional Fraternity know each other, but do not know of the existence of the People’s Fraternity. They only know that there exists a Central Committee which hands down to them their orders for execution through Regional Committee which has been set up by it, i.e. by the Central Committee.

As far as possible the Regional Committee is composed exclusively of People’s Brothers appointed and replaced by the Central Committee, with at least one People’s Brother. In such a case this Brother, with the consent of the C.C., will appoint the two best members of the Regional Fraternity to act jointly with himself as a Regional Committee; but these will not have equal membership rights in so far as only the People’s Brother will be in contact with the C.C. whose orders he will pass on to his comrades of the Regional Committee.

People’s Brothers or Brothers in the regions will seek out from among members of the Regional Fraternity people capable and worthy of being admitted to the People’s Fraternity, and will introduce them through the C.C. to the general meeting of the People’s Fraternity.

Each Regional Committee will set up District Committees from members of Regional Fraternity and will appoint and replace them.

District Committees can, if necessary and only with the consent of the Regional Committee, set up a third tier of the organization – District Fraternity with a program and regulations of the People’s Fraternity. The program and regulations of the District Fraternity will not come into force until they are discussed and passed by the general meeting of the Regional Fraternity and have been confirmed by the Regional Committee.

Jesuitical control and a system of entanglement by police methods and lies are totally excluded from all three tiers of the secret organization, likewise from the District, Regional, and People’s Fraternities. The strength of the whole society, as well as the morality, loyalty, energy and dedication of each member, is based exclusively and totally on the shared truth, sincerity and trust, and on the open fraternal control of all over each one.

Here you have the main outline of a plan for the society such as I conceive it to be. Obviously this plan must be developed, supplemented, and sometimes altered according to circumstances and the character of the environment and should be defined much more clearly. But I am convinced that its essence must remain, if you wish to create a real collective power which is capable of serving the cause of people’s liberation and not initiate a new exploitation of the people.

The system of entanglement and of Jesuitical lies is totally excluded from this plan as being harmful, divisive, and corrupting principle and means. But parliamentary chatter and ambitious fussiness are also excluded. Strong discipline of all members in their relations with the Committees and all individual Committees in their relation with the C.C. are retained. The right of judgment and control over members belongs to Fraternities and not to Committees. New executive power is in the hands of the Committees. The right of judgment over Committees, including the Central, is the province of the People’s Fraternity alone.

According to my plan the People’s Fraternity will never consist of more than fifty to seventy members. At first it will probably consist of ten men or even less and will grow slowly, accepting one man after another, submitting each one to the strictest and most thorough study and, if possible, accepting him only with the unanimous consent of all members of the People’s Fraternity, but in any case not less than three-quarters of the Fraternity.”

–Mikhail Bakunin, Letter to Sergey Nechayev, June 2, 1870

Netflix wants to chop down your family tree

Netflix has unveiled the details of its new anti-password-sharing policy, detailing a suite of complex gymnastics that customers will be expected to undergo if their living arrangements trigger Netflix’s automated enforcement mechanisms:

https://thestreamable.com/news/confirmed-netflix-unveils-first-details-of-new-anti-password-sharing-measures

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

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Irish solidarity with Palestine.

by Brendon Burton