Robert Hunter

The Guardian view on the BBC World Service: this is London calling | Editorial Editorial: With just seven weeks before its funding runs out, the UK’s greatest cultural asset and most trusted international news organisation must be supported

The Guardian view on the BBC World Service: this is London calling | Editorial

That which is for me through the medium of money - that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) - that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money's properties are my - the possessor's - properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness - its deterrent power - is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has [In the manuscript: "is. - Ed.] power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?

A bit long but here’s Marx from the 1844 manuscripts providing an exposition of Goethe and Shakespeare on the power of money that all happens to sum up exactly where we are right now. (Reminded of this passage by Epstein’s capture of prominent academics.)

Trump’s toxic, racist video surpasses previous levels of debasement Video deleted by White House breaks through numbness barrier and raises further questions about fitness for office

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
There are no unplumbed depths to Trump. He's the Mariana Trench of politics.

SMS. Selective memory syndrome.

Bullock’s Wager: An atheist choosing to believe in God for the sole reason that it opens the door to the possibility of beelzebub and all his little devils spending an eternity going to town on fascists who hid their venal lust for power and inflicting misery behind disgusting appeals to faith.

Mamdani Forces Delivery Apps to Pay Back $4.6 Million Cheated From Drivers New York City's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has already scored a major win for deliveristas working for three delivery giants.

The main business model of Silicon Valley from Uber to AirBnB to Spotify is: skim profit off others' goods and labor. Often in ways that are exploitative of individuals or destructive of larger forces (as with Amazon and the retail that kept people heading out in public).

ASLEF condemns the Russian drone attack that killed at least 5 people on a passenger train in Ukraine.

Targeting civilian passengers is abhorrent and unjustifiable.

Solidarity with Ukrainian workers, millions of whom are without heating or electricity in the middle of winter.

Hundreds of clergy descend on Minneapolis and go on lookout for ICE MINNEAPOLIS (RNS) — The faith leaders, who hail from across the country and represent a range of religious traditions, deployed to neighborhoods with significant immigrant populations, where DHS agent...

"'What did we learn from the Holocaust? We have to act and we have to resist,' Tracht said, running out of breath as the car turned the corner. 'If I’m not going to act and resist now, then I shouldn’t call myself a rabbi and I can’t be a proud Jew.'"
religionnews.com/2026/01/22/h...

Stalin notorious for making sure you could walk to the shops

On passing through the veil into fascism

I’ll say it again: social media destroys reading comprehension. It’s depressing how often seemingly intelligent people misread even short posts. And it’s not down to education because schoolkids do get taught how to interpret tone, context, word choice, etc. It’s brainrot

Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic.

The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.

Done

Who funds the Free Speech Union? Toby Young’s outfit went to court to hide its donors. Today we reveal that funders include US anti-abortion groups, Brexit politicians and Tufton Street insiders.

It will not surprise you to learn that Toby Youngs 'Free Speech Union' has obtained a High Court injunction banning the publication of a list of its donors open.substack.com/pub/democrac...

Robert Jenrick is like someone who was planning to leave his wife for his mistress but got kicked out first and had to turn up at his mistress's house in the middle of the night with a suitcase pretending it was his decision

This is simply a lie. There was no “open borders experiment” and what he’s talking about affected legal migration, not illegal. The attack seems to be that this racist used to be insufficiently racist

Statement on the struggle in Iran from Ukrainian democratic socialist organisation Sotsialniy Rukh. And you can read a longer article / statement on their website, linked from this thread.

I stand with Ian Byrne on this. The government must fulfil its promise to introduce the full Hillsborough law. No half measures.

For non-German speakers:

“Dear media, I can’t stand the headline "No agreement between the US and Denmark” any longer. If an armed man storms a bank, you don't run the headline: "Robber and cashier can't reach an agreement on money transfer." Stop framing imperial aggression as normal diplomacy.”

Still see quite serious people saying “Nah, he’d never *actually* invade and occupy Greenland.”

That’s fine if it’s just for diplomacy’s sake.

But the real answer to any question of whether he would actually do something extreme, stupid, ignorant, harmful and beyond the pale is *always* yes.

Ibsen!

Guess it shouldn’t surprise us that the richest man in the world should agree that apartheid and white minority rule represent “high civilization”.

Trump Administration Live Updates: Noem Says ‘Hundreds More’ Agents Will Be Sent to Minnesota Over ‘Corruption’

We have cleaned up the crime scene and blocked a local investigation and hidden the perpetrator and invaded the state and that is how you know that we are acting in good faith and that everything was the victim’s fault.
www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01...

The She Made Him Do It Theory of Everything The rhetoric and logic of the abuse of power operates similarly at all scales, which is why I've found feminism such useful equipment for understanding authoritarians in public and political life. Bec...

As I was saying: "The two parties are unconsciously regarded as akin to a husband and wife in a traditional marriage in which it's the job of the wife to placate and soothe the husband and help him realize his goals or be held responsible for his outbursts and outrages."

If you don’t want your people to be called murderers, instruct your people not to murder people and prosecute them as murderers if they do, so as to further discourage the rest from going around murdering people like that Ross guy did when he murdered Renee Good.

He lucidly explains why the first targets of fascists have been (and still are) 'the left' (communists, socialists, social democrats) and why the traditional right is very happy to side with fascists if that means they eliminate the power of the left.

YouTube video by Jennifer Warnes - Topic Famous Blue Raincoat (Digitally Remastered)

Thanks Tim!
youtube.com/watch?v=T3tO...

YouTube video by Jennifer Warnes - Topic Famous Blue Raincoat (Digitally Remastered)

Thanks Tim!

youtube.com/watch?v=T3tO...

Text card reads: Thinking about... Venezuela: The Precedents At the moment, it looks much more like an American attempt to remove a rival for power and clear the way for an American imperialism directed not so much against Maduro as against Venezuelans as a people. It was striking to hear Donald Trump describe the extraction of Maduro as an “extraordinary military operation,” since this is essentially the same language that Vladimir Putin used in his speech announcing the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Read more at Snyder.Substack.com

Trump is weak at home, and he can be stopped – so long as the domestic political logic of foreign intervention is recognized and turned against him. This act of war is about regime change in the United States. It only succeeds if Americans allow it to do so.

Really sorry to hear of Gerry's death. A true giant of antifascism and a lovely man, I last met him when he spoke at Max Levitas's memorial almost exactly seven years ago. RIP