This is exactly why we need to build our campaigns with IMAGINATION at the heart of it. Because when we know another world is possible, we are motivated to build it.
The far right uses fear to make quick wins. But hope can really do the same. We are not powerless, we need something to believe in.
At the end of it, I was convinced - China is building a future. While most folks focussing on tech injustice tend to focus on America, the real challenge is going to be China.
And that's exactly what the narrative that the Spring Gala was spinning. It was showing the world a future.
As someone who openly speaks out against Generative AI and extractivism, I couldn't help but be deeply moved by the way in which the AI sets were designed, the stunningly choreographed performances and of course - the robots.
Well made propaganda makes you feel like you're seeing the future.
Having now watched parts of the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, I now totally understand why people in Europe were raptured by colonialism by World Fairs like the 1851 Great Exhibition.
It is incredibly emotionally impactful. It's not just awe & dazzle, but the magic of being part of something bigger.
My latest song obsession is this version of the Mongolian Drinking Song (酒歌) www.youtube.com/watch?v=axjN...
Are you on Upscrolled? They just added a text feature, combining Instagram, Tiktok and Twitter into a great well-moderated and independent-owned platform. Find me there: share.upscrolled.com/en/user/31b1...
Why are all the books on anti-capitalism coming out of the UK still being framed by the limitations of the nation state? How does that even work in relation to globalisation and international institutions? Anti-capitalist futures need you dismantle the infrastructure that makes capitalism the norm.
Has anyone done the maths on this claim? Sure seems like a lot of it depends on the so-called "hidden costs" on the NHS, the same NHS that is currently experiencing a labour shortage
We have to stop yearning for a past that never existed and putting into place new social infrastructures which allow us to start building the new world. Otherwise we will be caught in firefighting fascism until we are all completely broken and used up. Hope requires resources. Dreams need belief.
We fear for our lives with Trump's dictatorship, as if any American leadership was any different. The only reason Trump is able to do what he does is because of American interference in global politics and the US corporate capture of almost every nation state's infrastructure through "development'.
Now when I speak to colleagues and friends, we all seem stuck in the current Capitalist imaginary. In this time of Empire's collapse, we speak of trying to save 'democracy' & 'human rights' - as if those ever actually existed. We are nostalgic for a performance of global peace, not the real thing.
To dream beyond nation-states seems so farcical today, but it wasn't in post-colonial nations. There was collective Dreaming beyond Capitalism and Communism - into indigenous governances. It wasn't perfect, but people BELIEVED another world was possible - beyond the European imaginary.
Would Pan-Afrikan ideals have created new ways of being and thriving? Would Indigenous socialisms have paved ways for the end of settler-colonialism? Would global languages flourish instead of being killed? Would we have more sustainable and happier ways of living? Would we learn more and love more?
What could the world look like if, after decolonisation, newly independent peoples had been able to choose their own paths? What if the "Third World" wasn't the battlegrounds of the Cold War? What if these newly independent nations were allowed to thrive under their own collective sovereignty?
Clearly just another way of allowing for data sharing and mass surveillance infrastructure, supporting the Digital ID. Also a body to stop protest and political organising across counties. www.ft.com/content/0dee...
When we were young, we ate all the tastiest foods to bring us pleasure.
As we age, we avoid the tastiest foods so that we can still experience pleasure.
How grateful I am that I have memories of those small tasty pleasures, so much so that I only ever see them through the glaze of nostalgia.
Here's the recording of the @lighthousebks.bsky.social Radical Book Fair event on #WeirdPride, unruliness and 'outsider wisdom' with @acaciathorns.bsky.social and @cjdebarra.bsky.social who both had such excellent responses to my questions:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTW_...
A New Year's invitation to the political Left and anyone else who is dreaming and building a world that is designed for all of us.
Everyone is going to mess up sometime. How do we hold space with each other to allow people to make mistakes and learn from them? How do we hold each other when we make mistakes? How do we listen with our hearts and look beyond words to emotion, trauma and love? How do we better care for each other?
Healing comes in many ways. It comes in sharing our food, our spaces, our resources. It comes in community care work. It comes in holding difficult conversations, and finding pathways through them. It comes being able to disagree but still work with each other. It comes in seeing each other as human
I've never found those easy tasks. And in a world that is hyper-individualised, it's easy to fall apart than it is to hold each other up.
But when someone has disagreed with me with compassion, I have become better. We need to heal each other if we are to survive what is coming.
As the year closes, I invite to imagine how you might get along with people you disagree with better. How can you work with people who aren't perfect? How can you support learning and plurality? How can you communicate with empathy & compassion? How can you build bridges? How can WE do all of those?
The far right can shred us because they stand together, and they are better resourced. They have the media and institutions on their side. We (the left) only have each other, and the only way we can actually build the world we want is through supporting each other & accepting imperfection.
It's so much easier to pick at and tear apart individual people when they have integrity and believe in something better, and make a small mistake. It's much harder to do so when that person is integrated in community which allows people to learn from mistakes. I wish the Left better understood this
I don't have a solution to this. I thought if I lived by those values - of giving and gifting and caring I would be able to show another world was possible. But instead it just resulted in a exploitation and alienation. I had to learn to be selfish, and I know this harms me.
The problem also, I guess, is that people are told that the problem is them and not the system. So they spend all their time trying to prove themselves within that system. The question is, how do we show people pathways out when they refuse to see beyond that system?
There is this idea of challenging norms of "not being pragmatic" but isn't being pragmatic really about getting back to the basics and understanding what we actually need? Isn't being pragmatic about getting rid of what isn't going to help us? Why then must we accept things which make no sense?
Why do folks just accept things and not question them? It's like we're trapped by these systems and infrastructures because we simply refuse to see them. We don't have to live this way. We don't need nation states. We don't need AI. We don't need money. We do need food and shelter and care.
I find the whole defense of Israel's "right to exist" really bizarre because why do any States need to exist at all? And who gave them rights? This all falls back on believing that somehow Laws are Just and not just imaginary inventions without any justification.
MERRY CHIPMAS: I have a new @crikey.com.au piece about how a HUGE solar farm planned in north Aus planned to send power via cable to Singapore - but is now PIvoting To Data Centre
As hydrogen projects collapse all over the place, the green export dream is dying...
www.crikey.com.au/2025/12/23/d...
