Welcome! Newsletter number 69.
No new review on this site (no time, nothing in the queue), but there’s a short review of a German book about “Drugs and Capital” in analyse & kritik.
Most of August was spent traveling. Mostly private trips, but I did attend the summer school of the syndicalist German FAU at the end of the month. I was invited to speak about the SAC. I used the opportunity to present my criticism of the organization, which, I believe, was appreciated. Propaganda events are rather boring. There was a long discussion afterwards, and it was a pleasant weekend overall. I got to play table tennis.
On the second night, Labournet TV and the AngryWorkers showed their new film Every Acre, Every Factory. Well-worth viewing for anyone interested in how to keep a workers-controlled economy going during and after the revolution. Feelgood.
There’s more to recommend: Anthony T. Fiscella wrote an interesting piece about Sean Muttaqi, academic publishing, and intellectual property rights. It’s called “Against Copyreich” – now you’ll have to read it just for the witty title!
I also went to a punk gig as part of my semi-summer holiday, which hardly ever happens these days. But Oust played in Stockholm, with an old friend of mine on vocals. Great band, great fun, and folks keeping it real despite tackling 50. Very good to see.
I received copies of the second edition of Soccer vs the State in Indonesian. Sweet cover and layout! (I trust that the translation is good, too, but I wouldn’t know.)
Sports writing for junge Welt: A few neat topics last month; you gotta get crafty during the off-winter season: extreme endurance sports, changing of the guard at FIS (okay, gotta bring in a little winter), mountaineering and colonialism (in memory of Nirmal Purja), football on Robben Island, Double Dutch, Døds Diving.
A couple more articles related to the North Calotte trip from May: a longer piece on Kirkenes was published in Flamman, and another one on Kirkenes, but shorter and focusing on the labor union Nordens Klippe, in Arbetaren. (In fact, the Arbetaren article was already published earlier but, arrgh, I had forgotten to list it.)
Ninïan Sassarinis-McGowan and I challenged two articles published in the liberal-lefty journal ETC in Sweden – sensationalist stuff about the pro-Palestine movement and the autonomous left. ETC’s editor-in-chief Andreas Gustavsson responded, before we got the final word.
I believe that’s it. More next month. Stay safe!