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Variant 25 Spring 2006
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Front cover: Metaphrog
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www.metaphrog.com
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Editorial
Extract from Harold Pinter’s Nobel Lecture, ‘Art, Truth & Politics’.
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
Brief overview of Scotland Culture Minister’s response to the Executive’s £500,000 Culture Commission’s 131 recommendations.
A correction to the press omissions on François Matarasso’s appointment as Chair of Arts Council England, East Midlands.
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Letters
The Faction that Fools the World www.variant.org.uk/24texts/lmnetwork.html
Watching Human Rights Watch www.variant.org.uk/21texts/HRW.html
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Mr Hebbly (Not a Golfer)
Metaphrog
“you have to be crazy... welcome to the world of grey cubicles and desk tidy tedium.”
Accompanying illustration by Metaphrog
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www.metaphrog.com |
They all belong to Glasgow
Conversation with Ahmed Khan, who on humanist grounds has been protesting Glasgow’s Brand Street detention & removal centre, where the immigration snatch squad is based that conducts dawn raids on asylum families.
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Photography by Gareth Harper, www.photoecosse.net
http://www.openborders.org.uk
http://www.paih.org
http://www.ncadc.org.uk
http://www.standup4children.org
http://www.sacc.org.uk
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From Precarity to Precariousness and Back Again Labour, Life and Unstable Networks
Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter
What promise does the meme of the moment “precarity” offer as a strategy and why has it emerged at this precise historical moment as a key concept for political thought and struggle?
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With drawings by Stuart Murray http://www.stuartmurray.co.uk/
http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue5/neilson_rossiter.html
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Guardians of Power
Gabriele Zamparini interview with Media Lens, “a UK-based media-watch project, which offers authoritative criticism of mainstream media bias and censorship, as well as providing in-depth analysis, quotes, media contact details and other resources."
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http://www.medialens.org
http://www.thecatsdream.com
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Comic & Zine Reviews
Mark Pawson casts his eye over: Karen Magazine, Imperfect Sense, Six Hundred And Seventy-Six Apparitions of Killoffer, Salamander Dream, Films in America 1929-1969, Stamps of Mass Destruction and Other Postal Disasters Vol 2., We Are The Target People, They Quickly Ran From The Enormous Finger, Embryo Boy, The Flower Shop, Super F*ckers.
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Constructing Neoliberal Glasgow: The Privatisation Of Space
Friend of Zanetti
The emergence and prosecution of neoliberalism in Glasgow as it impacts on the urban realm. Drawing on urban and social theory, suggesting Glasgow conforms to a model of urban land revaluation whereby discourses of ‘blight’ and ‘obsolescence’ are mobilised to justify wholesale redevelopment and capitalist accumulation strategies based primarily on rent extraction.
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At the Crossroads
Tom Jennings
“Through a survey of trends in last year’s urban recording releases, this review of the state of hip-hop asks whether the cultural and political movement pursued for three decades really is finally at a standstill in the cul-de-sac of the spectacle.”
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http://www.tomjennings.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
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Hatred and Respect: The class shame of ned ‘humour’
Alex Law
Public discourse in the UK has been awash with denunciations of ‘hooligans’, ‘yobs’, ‘hoodies’ and ‘chavs’. In Scotland this circulates as a vicious discourse of neds. ‘Ned culture’ has become the object of middle class fear and fascination, blamed for Scotland’s unenviable crime rates. Bolstered by humour, this helps to legitimise hateful talk about the poor.
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Political Islam’s Relation to Capital and Class
Ardeshir Mehrdad and Yassamine Mather
“Political Islam [has grown] to the extent that it is an undeniable reality on the contemporary world stage ... [P]roponents of political Islam profess themselves ‘seekers of justice’ and aim their propaganda at the poorest and most deprived sections of society, rivalling traditional socialism. The formulation by the left of a strategy to respond to this challenge requires an understanding of these developments; outlined here are some preliminary theses, based on a necessarily limited consideration of the characteristics and peculiarities of Islamic movements.”
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http://www.critiquejournal.net/islam.html |
