Chris Hurl

Who Owns Britain? How the radical experiment of privatisation transformed society and reshaped our lives.

Today, it’s the defenders of privatisation who are clinging to an out-of-date ideology. They’re out of touch & out of time.

Let’s end the rip-off & take back our future.

Explore our new project — Who Owns Britain? — at the link below.

www.common-wealth.org/interactive/...

OpenAI signs deal with UK to find government uses for its models Wide-ranging agreement with artificial intelligence firm behind ChatGPT comes after similar UK deal with Google

AI as consultants.

Has anyone else received a spambot invite from Springer to become editor of a "a Curated Literature Overview book"? They're asking us to give the seal of approval for AI-generated summaries of academic articles. And so the plagiarizing machine gains more credibility.

‘The Times’ archive holds a report from a nameless correspondent: “Their style of swimming is totally un-European. They lash the water violently with their arms like the sails of a windmill and beat downward with their feet, blowing with force and performing grotesque antics.” /2

Just learned that Europeans were not acquainted with the front crawl until the mid-19th century, when they were taught it by Ojibwe swimmers. A style of swimming that is now celebrated for its speed & efficiency, the standard that we learn as kids, was reviled, at the time, for its barbarity: /1

The fed gov cuts to pay for military and wealthy tax cuts have rapidly expanded. My new analysis shows that most of the cuts will now be on transfers to other govs, non-profits and people. A stunning 1 in 5 dollars is just cuts to FN govs for basic social programs. @policyalternatives.ca 🧵👇👇

This isn't about austerity. It's not Paul Martin redux. It's about the massive redistribution of public funds to the military. Higher train fares and reduced spending on local journalism are the direct result of a massive hiring spree in defense, unprecedented since WWII.

The federal workers I've spoken with emphasize it isn't just their substantive work that's suffering - basic organizational functions like payroll and IT are breaking down.

This comment from a recent NYT article haunts me. "It was only when he left that we truly realized his value..."

Snap out of denial—Mark Carney’s rightward-rushing agenda is just getting started ⋆ The Breach Mark Carney is slashing public service, supercharging military spending, and ramming through a right-wing agenda—while much of the country stays stuck in denial

It is becoming impossible to deny the brutal agenda of #MarkCarney's class war government
breachmedia.ca/mark-carneys...

Canadian export agency hit by £350mn loss on loans to Thames Water Agency said the losses, more than half of what it lent, were ‘part of the reality of doing business’

not really news today, but still crazy that Canada's idea of export promotion is to lend to Canadian public pension fund to 'invest' in - read privatise - a British public good that's now so badly run it discharged 300,000 hours of raw sewage into our rivers last year

www.ft.com/content/418f...

Exposing the Invisible - Resources and tools for journalists, researchers and investigators Access the latest investigative trends and learn new techniques and methods to strengthen your investigative skills. Through a series of short films, video interviews, guides and resources, Exposing t...

Their Exposing the Invisible toolkit provides a great resource for folks interested in doing investigative work on the internet. exposingtheinvisible.org

YouTube video by Data Justice Hub Tactical Tech

This week's Mobilizing Data for Justice podcast features interviews with Tactical Tech, a Berlin-based collective that engages with citizens and civil-society organizations to explore and mitigate the impacts of technology on society @datajusticehub.bsky.social

YouTube video by Data Justice Hub Visualizing Palestine

This week's episode of the Mobilizing Data for Justice podcast features interviews with Visualizing Palestine. @datajusticehub.bsky.social

Aesthetic Rebellions to Reclaim Anti-Authoritarian Futures - Concordia University Join us for an interactive workshop based on the new book Beyond Molotovs. A Visual Handbook of Anti-Authoritarian Strategies. The workshop will include an exhibition and discussion of how — using ima...

Workshop coming up this Friday in Montreal, featuring Inés Durán Matute from the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies.

YouTube video by Data Justice Hub Refugee Law Lab

The third episode of our Mobilizing Data for Justice podcast features Petra Molnar, from the Refugee Law Lab, who is investigating the rapidly growing surveillance apparatus at our borders. @datajusticehub.bsky.social

YouTube video by Data Justice Hub Bellingcat

The second episode of our Mobilizing Data for Justice podcast is now out, featuring the investigative collective, Bellingcat. @datajusticehub.bsky.social

Over the past few months, we have been doing interviews with social activists engaging with data in creative ways. Check out our first interview, featuring the Accountability Archive.

Mobilizing Data for Justice Podcast · www.datajusticehub.ca · Mobilizing Data for Justice is a podcast by the Data Justice Hube that looks at how activists gather and make sense of data.Data activists from around the world have ...

New podcast season launched today! Check out our interview with the Accountability Archive on Youtube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. open.spotify.com/show/4SdE490...

Trump’s Antisocial State - Dissent Magazine The administration is attempting to incapacitate the redistributive and social protective arms of the state, while exploiting its vast bureaucratic powers to silence, threaten, and deport.

Melinda Cooper on Trump, Doge, and the mutations of the neoliberal state.
www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

York has given the consultancy firm, Nous, millions to "create efficiencies." It then suspended admissions into 19 programs, including gender studies & indigenous studies. Here, we talk abt unis & consultants, equity implications & how to fight. #academicsky www.academicaunties.com/episodes/fig...

Progressive Publics: A Symposium Connecting Scholarship & Independent Media This event features an independent journalism summit, live variety shows, academic panels and more over two days at Concordia University.

The program for the Progressive Publics symposium (Feb 28-Mar 1) in Montreal is nearly finalized. Check it out. @datajusticehub.bsky.social @harbingermedia.bsky.social

Very sad to hear about Michael Burawoy. He was such an inspiration, not just in his academic work but also in his activism, and his conviction that we can and should be doing public sociology.

We're helping to host a symposium at Concordia connecting together independent media, academic research and social activism, Feb 28-Mar 1. Check it out. @harbingermedia.bsky.social @andremarrgoulet.bsky.social @iris-recherche.bsky.social @pivot.quebec @datajusticehub.bsky.social

Likewise, we could see this moment as an opportunity not just to oppose American imperialism, but to learn from one another, seeing how the emergent neoconservative agenda is impacting us all & building extra-parliamentary collective analysis and collective forms of praxis through those encounters.

In this sense, the early coalitions such as the Action Canada Network were not just opposing free trade through the affirmation of existing national identities; they were actively forging new ones, using these coalitions to learn from one another in ways that were profoundly transformative.

As one interviewee noted, “It was really about ... understanding that what we were trying to do in Canada, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, was a different project than what was happening in the US. That there was a different place for the corporate agenda of deregulation and privatization.”

But in our research we found that the people we interviewed did not frame Canada as an identity, so much as it was the potential for a fundamentally different sort of political project.

People remember the early movement as one of “left nationalism,” which was premised on the uncritical celebration of Canadian identities, a period before the left moved towards a more progressive internationalist standpoint.

Interesting parallels between today and the early struggle against free trade.

You're right, but that's not just because of Carney. It's also because mortgages were much more carefully regulated in Canada. There were no NINJA loans and the shadow banking sector was not as well-established. So, there was never the same degree of risk of mass foreclosures.