Solid Workers

I remember well seeing Sonic the Hedgehog running for the first time. It was at a long defunct Japanese import emporium in Derby, it was on the MegaDrive, and it looked every bit as pretty as the magazine screenshots promised. I just had to have it, and at some point in the Autumn of 1991 that's exactly what happened - for the princely sum of £34.99 it became the third game added to my trusty collection, where it resides to this day along with the first two . Much fun was had to the point where my brother developed a deathly obsession, going into debug mode and playing it in every way it was never intended to be. And then came something of a surprise. This supposed MegaDrive exclusive conceived to trounce Nintendo's Mario and sell the machine, which it did (for a time) ended up getting an outing on the Sega Master System. And, truth be told, it was well worth the effort. Naturally, Sonic in its new surrounds could not match the premium product of Sega's flagship console...

There isn't much more depressing than watching the Amazon burn. And is there anything more infuriating than watching Jair Bolsonaro trolling the world about it? The crooked, clownish creep has argued NGOs are torching the jungle because he cut their funding, and feeding off the blowback he's moved in to false contrition. Brazil doesn't have the resources to fight the fires he claims , and that's that. The sun rises in the morning, and rain forests are getting reduced to ash. Such is the order of things and he can't do anything about it. It's tempting to blame Bolsonaro for all that is rotten in Brazil, as if this uniquely evil/stupid individual turns everything to shit with his touch. Tempting, but far too simplistic. Like his many analogues elsewhere - Trump, Duterte, Orban, Netanyahu to name several - Bolsonaro and friends will, if there's any justice, get their time in the dock. Yet they cannot be separated from the power bloc who put them there and the p...

By now you will have heard about Caroline Lucas's emergency all-female cabinet in response to the looming no deal Brexit. And the derision has proven to be near universal. From proposing a cross-party alliance among politicians with little in common to the essentialist supposition that women are bound to do a better job of negotiating Brexit because, well, they're women (um, Theresa May?) and to the noted exclusion of black and minority ethnicity women from her fantasy cabinet. An absence compounded by her clarification/apology that all the leading women in British politics happen to be white. So quite how did the very Brexity backbench Yvette Cooper get selected for Caroline's gang over the very remainy actual Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott? Readers can speculate about this oversight. Unfortunately for the Green Party's sole MP, this crass initiative has pretty much trashed her reputation among a left who've happily given her the time of day. Despite the...

Growing up in the 1980s, communism didn't have a lot going for it. The taming of Siberia and the stellar achievements of the Soviet space programme were never talked about, and its depression-busting economic performance was long forgotten. The crushing conformity of Soviet life, its concrete vistas and secret police, and the queues in Moscow supermarkets for a single loaf of bread did a better job of queering the pitch for communism than voluminous anti-communist polemic and occasional speeches from Margaret Thatcher. Communism was poverty stricken, dictatorial, and backward - so much so the good people of the Eastern bloc countries wanted a piece of the capitalist action, and duly got it as the so-called "people's democracies" and the USSR came tumbling down. Capitalism, at least in the advanced West and Japan was dynamic, modern, raising living standards and appeared the wave of the future (or, if you like, the end of history ). Communism was dead. Its presence as ...

In this episode of Politics Theory Other, Alex interviews Roger Hallam, the principal theorist of Extinction Rebellion. Roger is asked about XR's mass arrest tactics , the movement's attitude toward the police, and a number of other positions taken in his recently published manifesto, Common Sense for the 21st Century . Once again, new left media is done on a shoe string, so if you have a few quid to spare (or, indeed, a multimillionaire with an Engelsian bent), please support Politics Theory Other here .

Is there anything more to be said about Extinction Rebellion ? Probably not, except it deserves the left's unequivocal solidarity, encouragement and support. There's little more to be added to takes by Richard Seymour and Lewis Bassett . Not that it's going to stop me from having my two penneth worth. 1. Extinction rebellion is both timely and untimely . Timely, because it's very much of the moment. David Attenborough and the BBC are spearheading programming on climate change, species loss, and environmental degradation. The public are prepped for it, and young people particularly are concerned - as the magnificent displays of climate school strike marches make clear. But this week's rolling non-violent direct action is untimely too. It's inconvenient for politicians more concerned with Brexit than environmental emergency, it's inconvenient for the hundred global companies responsible for 71% of emissions , and it's inconvenient for a government utterly...