Alternative news sources

Along with the Guardian, BBC and other well-known (but in my view deeply compromised) corporate news sources, I regularly check a number of other outlets that I feel are reliable, to provide other angles / takes on issues that seem to be so deeply dividing our species at present. Here are some of them, in no particular order (n.b. several are hosted on Substack):

404 Media (tech-focused “journalist-founded digital media”)

Zeteo (“independent and unfiltered journalism”)

Novara Media | New Media for a Different Politics (“independent media organisation addressing the issues that are set to define the 21st century”)

Drop Site News (“Independent news on politics and war”)

Daily Kos (independent media organisation since 2002 with a daily, US-focussed newsletter)

Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community | Common Dreams (reader-supported, independent US-based news outlet since 1997)

Breaking The News (from baha, an Austrian sort of Bloomberg equivalent)

Conservation and environmental science news – Mongabay (“independent, nonprofit media organization reporting on nature and planetary challenges”

Truthout | Fearless Independent Journalism (US nonprofit news organisation, since 2001)

Excluded Headlines (the majority (poorer) world is over 85% of global population, but a tiny percentage of news content)

China-Global South Project (“award-winning independent, nonpartisan multimedia initiative”)

GLOBAL SOUTHS HUB – A news and blog site for Global South Studies (news & resources)

Independent media sources (lists by topic & region)

Podcasts

I don’t often listen to podcasts but when I do it’s usually:

Bold Politics with Zack Polanski (Wiki article, also on YouTube and all the usual podcast platforms.)

Preferred (“mainstream media”) sources

I have near zero faith in the following

…but occasionally visit them to keep up with US/UK establishment thinking

Analysis, opinion, satire

  • Council Estate Media (comprising Dystopian Times and Anti-imperialist Nexus)
  • Grace Blakeley (“about the political economic systems that dominate our lives, and how we can resist”)
  • Jonathan Cook (“recovering British corporate media journalist” formerly of the Guardian and Observer)
  • Collapse 2050 (“Climate change. Economic collapse. AI takeover. Nuclear exchange. Class warfare.”)
  • Blood in the Machine (Brian Merchant: “tech journalist, columnist, critic, and author”)
  • Thin Ink (weekly publication on food, climate and where they meet)
  • Caitlin’s Newsletter (Caitlin Johnstone & Tim Foley “nerding out about war, philosophy, humanity, and how to save the world”)
  • Historic.ly (“historical media that attempts to decolonize history and debunk myths and misinformation taught to you in school and on corporate media”)

➡ See more of who I follow on Substack at https://substack.com/@cbrody/reads

Video

If you have some 3 hours to spare here’s some sobering analysis to cheer you up:

Richard Wolff: Israel, Ukraine, China, and the End of the American Empire

My socials are linked in the right column; feel free to follow me anywhere! See also my post with a list of Anthropocene reading

At risk of repeating myself, I’ve found Stephanie Harrison’s short form videos and writing very helpful:
The New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That’s Got It Wrong

n.b. I aim to update this page as I find new sources that I feel are worth sharing – please let me know what I’ve missed!

Anthropocene reading

I recently compiled a list of materials for a friend about the era in which humanity’s presence (and deleterious effect) on the planet we inhabit seems almost beyond comprehension. Here we go:

Books, reports

Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet (1972 report co-authored by IIED founder Barbara Ward)

The Limits to Growth (controversial but much-cited report, also 1972)

Histories / summaries

Global Environmental History: An Introductory Reader (essays)

Global Environmental History: 10,000 BC to AD 2000 (I.G. Simmons)

Climate Change in the Anthropocene (Kieran Ohara)

Biodiversity, food systems/big ag, speciesism

Biodiversity Loss: The Threat to Life on Earth (Anna Wainer, Odeta Grabauskaitė & Miriam Kennet, eds) 

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Elizabeth Kolbert)

Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters (Jennifer Clapp)

Animal Liberation (Peter Singer)

This is Vegan Propaganda (And Other Lies the Meat industry Tells You) (Ed Winters)

Political / economic

Invisible Doctrine: The secret history of neoliberalism (George Monbiot, Peter Hutchison)

chomsky.info (I used to be a fan of Noam Chomsky, but now think he was as much a tool of the imperialist establishment as anything else – cf. Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously with Noam Chomsky and the “licensed critic” (George Orwell))

In The Grip Of Necrocapitalism: The Making And Breaking Of A Psychonomy (George Tsakraklides)

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (Eduardo Galeano)

Articles, blogs & journals

Defining the Anthropocene (Simon L. Lewis & Mark A. Maslin)

Decolonising the Anthropocene: The Mytho-Politics of Human Mastery (Karsten A. Schulz)

On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene (Heather Davis, Zoe Todd)

https://worldlyir.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/decolonising-the-anthropocene/ (Audra Mitchell)

Decolonizing the Anthropocene, Cosmopolitanism in the Anthropocene (Noah Theriault)

Private Sufficiency, Public Luxury: Land is the Key to the Transformation of Society (George Monbiot)

Field Guide to the Anthropocene (Jason Anthony’s weekly essay/letter exploring the fundamental changes we’ve made and are making to the Earth)

TWQ Special Issue on Decolonising Epistemology: Intellectual Imperialism and the Coloniality of Knowledge

Solutions-focused

Biocultural Heritage: Protecting interconnected nature and culture for a just, sustainable and resilient world (Krystyna Swiderska et al.)

Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy (Audrey Tang et al.)

Drawdown, The Book (Project Drawdown)

Natural Solutions to Climate Change (The Nature Conservancy)

Natural Capital: Valuing the Planet (Dieter Helm)

Caring for the Earth: A strategy for sustainable living [PDF version] (IUCN)

An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It (Al Gore)

Decolonising Ecological Knowledge (service design by Sakshi Mathur)

NEON – New Economy Organisers Network

From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World  (Duncan Green)

Community Weaving Framework (Fabian Pfortmüller, Sascha Mombartz, Nico Luchsinger)

Solutions Journalism Directory

Rev21: Revolution isn’t just possible; it’s inevitable (founded by Roger Hallam and Robin Boardman)

Reasons for hope?

Humankind: A Hopeful History (Rutger Bregman)

The Green Party (making hope normal again)

And last but by no means least:
The New Happy (book and newsletter by Stephanie Harrison)

See also: my post on alternative news sources

Fascism v2

I sometimes use the f-word as shorthand, but I don’t mean directly to associate the ideology of the times we’re moving into with that adopted by Mussolini, Hitler and others, which contributed to the vast destruction and holocausts in Europe and beyond last century.

In recent conversations with family and friends, I’ve tried to avoid getting drawn into how a self-defining group of humans in various corners of nation states of particular northern continents believe that their personal safety and “rights” are under threat from another group of humans with different coloured skins and who may worship different idols (religious or not), with specific rules for their adherents’ about what kinds of behaviours, dress, interactions and physical abuses (of humans and non-human beings) are deemed acceptable.

To me the battle that’s whipped up between “Islam” and “the West” (for example) is a distraction from the larger war, as it’s between people with very limited access to the things they need to survive and thrive in their communities, and those with just about enough to keep them in fear of the “other” taking these things away.

For Islam and the West try substituting Black and White, Trans and Cis, queer and straight, female and male, “economic migrants” and “ex-pats”, and I hope this is clear.

The vast majority of us are powerless in the wars of control over capital and resources, waged by national governments under the direction of mega-wealthy individuals and globalised corporations. Their aims include turning us against each other for their own financial gain (“competition”), and maintaining the soul- and planet-destroying neoliberal “democracies” that we light-skinned people of the global North invented, developed and continue to impose on those who live in the territories that we claim is ours, and whose people (not to mention all the other species) we keep in subordination with our advanced technologies and corporate control over global communication networks, including most of what we call the press and mass media.

We’re led by the algorithmically-selected media we consume to blame and hate each other for our differences. Meanwhile, the love and care we naturally feel for our fellow beings (when we don’t believe they’re a threat), together with our innate desire to build sustainable communities out of shared resources, are gouged out of us by the system we live within.

To me this gouging of our humanity makes me think of how money-poor darker-skinned children and adults in the majority world dig up the critical minerals that we in the “developed” North need for our rampant energy consumption, and also how massive, indiscriminate bombs and other destructive technologies made and deployed by “civilised” imperialist regimes gouge out human populations, pre-extant cultures and whole living ecosystems from parts of the world that are – seen as – strategic to global corporate interests.

The places currently off-limits to the global capitalist vultures are those where Western-led media and (NATO) military power hold little or no sway. A person who appears to be a severely emotionally damaged man has taken over the US presidency, with similarly-traumatised “tech bros” now in positions of extreme power. It’s clear that a key part of their programme is to accelerate US colonialist extraction, feeding their desire for power, personal wealth and dominance over “lesser” beings, in a bid to meet their (real) needs for love, recognition and community. As this programme is doomed to fail, partly due to ensuing environmental catastrophes, the next few years are going to be interesting.

As a cis, het, white English-speaking man I may remain safe with most of my basic needs met, as our empire of fake dreams implodes in an orgy of destruction. However, if you don’t share my personal characteristics you might not do very well, along with the majority of beings on this planet. Fascism 2.0 is similar to the first version, but with better tech as autonomous drones, resource-hogging artificial intelligence and a super-powered propaganda machine, manifested by the walled gardens of our corporatised internet, enable authoritarian governments everywhere to manufacture consent for their escalating atrocities.

The universal needs that separate us emotion-feeling human animals from the tech bro’s machines, such as love, friendship, compassion and community, are what we’ll have to put all of our efforts into to be able to remain alive and sane in the unfolding landscape.

Further reading

You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism
Betrayed by Green Capitalism, Here’s How We Can Build a Livable Future
We need to connect
How To Be Both Happy And Well-Informed

Would you cast a vote for Jill & Butch please?

Image

I want to vote for the Green party, but because of where I was born I can’t do this without risking a win for Trump/Vance. Who among my readers in safe blue states would be willing to cast a Green vote on my (and the planet’s) behalf?

The Veil of Ignorance

I started reading Daniel Chandler‘s “Free and Equal” when I was at a chamber music weekend with friends at an idyllic spot in what little remains of England’s temperate rainforest in Exmoor. Unfortunately the combination of wilderness, aspirational politics, good company and Brahms sextets was too much for me and I ended up being hospitalised (once again) for my bipolar affective condition. The book is based on philosopher John Rawls’ work and presents practical ways to move towards a just world. The opening pages stayed with me and I fully intend to return to it. One of Rawls’ core thought experiments, the veil of ignorance, is nicely summarised by Kai here:

Imagine that you have been given the task of drawing up the basic principles of justice that would govern a new society in which you yourself would have to live. Before you begin, you are covered with the Veil of Ignorance, stripping you of all knowledge of your personal characteristics, social status and historical circumstances. 

This means that while you are under the Veil of Ignorance, you do not know your age, gender, race, faith, intelligence, abilities or any other personal attributes. You have no idea of your position in society, your wealth or your social status. Only after you have created your guiding principles, the veil is lifted and you find out your place in society.

Since you have no way of tailoring the rules to your advantage, what guiding principles would you choose?

via https://www.densediscovery.com/issues/278

It’s questions like this that feed and inspire my desire to make real change in this world.

The future is Green: 2024 and beyond

I’ve just donated to – and volunteered for – Jill Stein‘s 2024 campaign.

The failed two-party system in the USA (and UK) provides me with very little hope for the future of our imperilled planet: this year’s elections have a near-zero chance of installing suitable leadership on either side of the Atlantic.

So, I ask those who value peace, freedom and the immense diversity of life on this earth that we share: please donate, volunteer, and raise your voice for those making a difference:

Green Party (US)
Green Party of England and Wales

There is hope: if Stein gets more than 5% of the vote in November, the next Green candidate will be eligible for $millions in public funding. And in the UK, despite our indefensible electoral system and media bias, there’s a good chance of quadrupling Green representation in Westminster, as well as making big gains locally. It’s a long haul, but I’m confident that inclusive, holistic, crowd-sourced politics can trump tribalism, greed and destruction.

We need radical change – please join us in making it happen!

*** PSA ENDS ***

Time for a UK constitutional assembly

The United Kingdom has a new Government, Prime Minister and King as head of state, none of whom were appointed via a transparent process or free vote. As we mourn the passing of a much-loved figurehead, now is the time to call for a people’s assembly to create a written constitution: a living document that reflects the values and traditions that we as a nation hold dear (including freedom, democracy and fairness) and which takes us forward into the 21st century.

A series of meetings, both online and in person, formed of demographically representative citizens chosen by lottery, would have the remit to consider root and branch reform of our electoral and governmental systems. This would include the monarchy, houses of parliament, judiciary and police. Without attempting to prejudge the outcome, by using techniques pioneered in Iceland and Ireland, these constitutional assemblies could remake our institutions to be fit for purpose both today and in the future.

Areas of discussion and concepts such as proportional representation, elected head(s) of state, upper and lower legislative chambers, randomly chosen representatives, expert councils, political party funding, direct democracy, etc. would be debated and decided in a transparent manner, televised and broadcast to the nation, and the results put to the test by a referendum or series of votes.

The assembly would consider the needs of the people and the living environment of our country and planet, and provide a model way forward towards a universal system of governance that could lead to fewer conflicts between and within nation states that currently rule this divided, threatened world.

#UKAssemblyNow #PeoplesAssembly

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