Editorial Edition One

Download a copy of Edition One We follow rules, we obey laws, we adhere to social codes. At other moments we disobey the law, we break and bend the rules, we act outside of norms. In order to know when to obey and when to dissent and how to do these things together, we need to […]

Letters

Letters and news from down the road and across the water made its way to us this month. — I don’t know who this Dave Riddle character thinks he is, but he seems blissfully unaware of his reproduction of neo-liberal ideology in his naive defense of post-Keynesian ‘workfare’ social policy. Is this supposed to be […]

Too much news in the world? Lets make some more!

JOHN HUTNYK We all cross swords on what we’re fighting against, but what do we want to rally for? This is an invitation to counter the ‘news’ of the now with forecasts for alternative futures. If only this rally were not just today, and not just from here to there – but all day, all […]

Strike Together, March Together

The 10 November demonstration kick-started the biggest student revolt since the late 1960s. It also inspired the Universities and Colleges Union to ballot for strike action over jobs, pay and pensions. Mark Bergfeld from the Education Activist Network reports on the strike. At first sight, the UCU strike may have seemed very ‘economistic’ but in […]

Den Plirono – I won’t pay!

SASKIA FISCHER A widespread movement against austerity in Greece is alarming governments and making markets tremble. The tactic that’s so threatening to the IMF, the EU and the Greek government? A simple refusal to pay. Since the IMF-EU austerity plan was launched last May, average Greek salaries have shrunk by 20 per cent and unemployment […]

artwork: chris jones

Lines in the campus sand: lecturers across picket lines

In Edition Zero of The Paper, Morten Paul asked ‘what do academics do, when they go on strike?’. The answer offered by one of his professors was that ‘they use the time to work on their research’. The answer offered by other academics, it seems, is that they cross picket lines, strike break and carry […]

Fear that Stops Thinking

LES BACK The Germans were over this house last night and the night before that. Here they are again. It is a queer experience, lying in the dark and listening to the zoom of a hornet, which may at any moment sting you to death. It is a sound that interrupts cool and consecutive thinking […]

Fear and precarity

LAURA SCHWARTZ Most fear is banal, everyday and relentless. Some days I fear the cops and the fascists. But most days I just fear not being able to pay my rent, not having a job next year. The dreary fear that comes with only having just enough money to get by is the kind that […]

Wisconsin: The Struggle Against 21st Century Wage Slavery

GEORGE CAFFENTZIS The return of struggles against wage-slavery in the US makes for some strange alliances, and introduces an entire generation to the inspirational education of the extended strike. Wisconsin and the ‘bad surprise’ Many predicted that the financial crisis beginning in 2007 constituted the end of the neoliberal phase of capitalism in the US. The trajectory from […]

A revolution against neo-liberalism?

‘ABU ATRIS ’ Two observations about Egypt’s history as a neo-liberal state are in order. First, Mubarak’s Egypt was considered to be at the forefront of instituting neo-liberal policies in the Middle East (not un-coincidentally, so was Ben Ali’s Tunisia). Secondly, the reality of Egypt’s political economy during the Mubarak era was very different than […]

An end to the occupation

NIC BEURET Complicity, Duplicity, Monstrosity, Let me count the ways. A numerate response to the apparitions of neo-liberal confinement. 1. The violence comes in waves of shock, panic and terror. As the waves crash, outrage emerges as the universal emotional condition: so commonplace as to become another affliction like an obsession with the weather. People are outraged […]

Re:Generation

THE FREE ASSOCIATION This is an edited extract from Moments of Excess, a Free Association anthology published by PM Press. There’s a great clip on YouTube (http://tinyurl.com/lubwkq). A young man at a festival is performing a crazy freak-out, oblivious to anyone and anything apart from the music. After a while he’s joined by another reveller, and […]

Research Project

SASKIA FISCHER Okay, I’m ready for part two. No. No wait. Let me get myself a drink, if I can find anything. Can’t drink the water here, it’s poison. So it’s the little pink or purple freckly potions instead. ‘Less your slick enough to get your hands on a bottle of the real thing. Think […]

The Marquis de Sade in London

FRANCESCO SALVINI & VITTORIO BINI I am exactly what you see – the mask proclaims – and everything you fear is behind. / Elias Canetti On this island, when you deal with politics, first of all you deal with rules, absolute rules. It looks like rules were there before everything else. You either obey the State, or you […]

What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?

ALICE SPENCER Part one: It’s a long way to the top I started working in a brothel called Top of The Town. I rang up the number listed in the directory, went in for an interview and I started the next day. I told management a fictional story about being a single mum, but gave […]