Ecstatic Terror

"If you don't like the changes that we've made, I say the door is open and you can leave"

Wonderful news. What bliss to be alive and watch the Genocide Party die. Bravo Hannah.

What a great set of resources!

Do you want to learn cuneiform but don't know where to start? Check out my website for a list of resources and some study materials that will help you get started! In just a few weeks, you too can read the Hammurabi Code in the original! selenawisnom.com/learning-cunei…

Anarchist Santa mural seen in New York City’s East Village.

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

60 nautical miles? Wow. If ordinary citizens of the world, with small and underresourced boats can do that, why states don't break the blockade with their navies? Is this the world we live in? No, we do not accept it. Go, go Flotilla! Sail safe. God's wind.

This is a terrific photo and a beautiful figuration of authoritarian failure.

Up in London📍

“If you don’t like the changes that we’ve made, I say the door is open and you can leave” - Keir Starmer, Feb 2023.

🚨 BREAKING UPDATE Labour has FINALLY accepted defeat in our legal challenge of anti-protest powers We won this case in court twice under both Conservative and Labour leadership Gov should now review ALL arrests made under these unlawful powers lbc.co.uk/news/exclusive…

I joined the emergency protest outside Downing Street tonight demanding the UK government acts urgently to free the detained Madleen crew, condemn Israel’s illegal attack on a UK-flagged aid ship, end the blockade, stop all arms sales to Israel, & end its complicity in genocide.

17 hours after its unlawful seizure and capture, the #Madleen crew remains held offshore, reportedly near Ashdod. I call on: – Israel to release them immediately, and let them sail unimpeded to Gaza; – The UK to act under its Article 94 UNCLOS duties as flag-state to ensure the safety of the crew; – Crew members’ home states (Brazil, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Turkey), to intervene to ensure the safety of their citizens. There is no legal basis for Israel’s actions. All states must uphold their obligations under the Genocide Convention—to prevent further acts of genocide and end Israel’s impunity. It should never have fallen to ordinary citizens to do what states refuse to.

Tariq Ali, what is your attitude when dictators are toppled  in Iraq, Libya and now Syria? There is no cause for celebration when these acts are carried out by Western imperialisms under the leadership of the United States.When they are toppled by their own people I celebrate. The West removes the people it doesn't like at a particular moment. Saddam of Iraq was a hero when he acted for the US and started a war with Iran. He became a 'Hitler' only when he invaded Kuwait imagining he had a green light from the US. Then after 9/11 they finished off him and a million other Iraqis. Five million orphans. Then they lynched Saddam,. Cause for celebration? I wrote against him produced a documentary mocking him when he was alive. In Libya NATO killed over 30,000 Libyans to push through regime change and lynch Ghaddafi. 'We came, we saw, he died' was Hilary Clinton's celebration. French and British politicians took money from him. The LSE  begged for a big donation and its professors wrote young Ghaddafi's PhD for him. Lord Giddens compared his work to Tony Blair's own great ideas. The same people supported NATO's assault. I criticised him severely for many years.  I did not celebrate his death. What is there to celebrate in the antics of Western imperialism. The same for Syria where an internal Ba'ath coup toppled Assed and they're stitching up a deal with the US and Turkey. Iraq has not yet recovered. Libya is a wreck, ruled by rival jihadis. Syria has already been divided. The huge triumph of the West in the 90's is still playing itself out. They are no longer ashamed of displaying their double standards as we observe in the Israeli genocide in Palestine, but NATO's useful idiots in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, adornments of the bourgeois media and their supporters in the barely existent left, still pretend that advances are being made. In one of his remarks on theatre, Brech stressed that he preferred to start withe new bad things not the old good ones. There are no longer any good ones left. Centuries before him, Spinoza who has just had his sentence of expulsion rescinded by the Synagogue in Amsterdam offered his own advice: 'Neither to laugh nor to cry but to understand'. NATO liberals should reflect on it.

For everyone who likes Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape, and also likes Christmas, here is the Stone-Tape-themed Xmas song by my group Ebbing House. It's haunto-glam-ological fun. ebbinghouse.bandcamp.com/album/eddie-an…

Hola, os paso este enlace a una reunión del Centre for Myth Studies que tanto ha colaborado con nosotros en estos años. #like-5102" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">essexmyth.wordpress.com/2024/10/25/rou…

Labour delivers.

Robert A. Segal (1948-2024) ha sido uno de los grandes investigadores sobre las relaciones entre mitología y religión (‘Universidad de Aberdeen’). Falleció hace unos meses. Me pidieron de la revista ‘Folklore’ un obituario, que acaba de ser publicado y aquí os dejo.

Enormous crowds of anti-racist demonstrators in Walthamstow.