The best of the red web

Believe or not, not everything worth reading gets published on The Third Estate. Indeed, much has seized my interest of late around the rest of the red web.

One of my favourite newish things is The Big Smoke, an online magazine for London focused on community issues and London politics. It probably won’t tell you which manky east London bar is, despite outward appearances, really the place to be seen in. But its definitely a must-bookmark for any London politico. A recent article bids farewell to Occupy, and takes us beyond the usual left critiques – i.e. “why are the only talking about the bankers?!” – to offer an insightful and unexpected analysis of Occupy’s impact.

All too often the term “culture” is used as a euphemism for “the wierdness of brown people”, and is thus invoked to rather lazily explain complex social phenomena. Iman Qureshi cautions against making “culture” a scapegoat for sex selective abortions. Thought-provoking piece, although her conclusions on the issue differ from mine (and thus I say to her “boo and hiss”).

Bob from Brockley addresses an issue close to my heart when he asserts that Drunkenness is A Right Not Privilege. Cameron, he notes, is talking about the need for a minimimum alcohol price. “But what about the right to get drunk?” he asks, and “why should the rich be allowed to exercise that right so much more freely than the poor?”. An interesting discussion of the continuities between the patronising authoritarianism of New Labour’s Islington set, and the desire of Cameron and Co. to remould the “underclass”.

Random Blowe reported a few weeks back on the Counter Olympics Conference, which sounds like a bloody excellent initiative.

Finally Luna 17 offers a rebuttal to Norman Finkelstein’s much-trumpeted attack on the movement for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions.

To contact Reuben email reuben@thethirdestate.net