Kester Brewin

In the most high-profile action against the US Senate’s ‘Protect Intellectual Property’ Bill (PIPA) and the House of Representatives’ ‘Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Wikipedia has begun an English language black-out of its main site. As you’ll know if you read here often, I’m in the depths of a book-length piece on piracy. The aim [...]

Listening to the radio this morning I was struck by the odd similarity between three of the major news items. Firstly, ubiquitously, there’s the economic crisis – which more and more seems to boil down to the fact that people – that’s you, me and them – got greedy. With the boss of Barclays now [...]

It’s been interesting watching the argument over whether the England football team should be allowed to wear poppies for their international matches this weekend. The international governing body of the sport, FIFA, ruled that they could not have poppies on their shirts as this contravened their guidelines. The FA, the British body, cried foul and [...]

One of the key questions that has been often asked about the ‘Occupy’ protests is ‘what are your proposed alternatives?’ This, I think, is often asked with a background attitude of ‘I really don’t think you have any alternatives, do you?’ The implication being, before you moan about how bad things are, make sure you [...]

I don’t want to be petty or anti-American, but one of the scourges of the past decade or so is the growth of Halloween as a fully marketable ‘festival’ to give supermarkets a little bump in the run up to Christmas. Halloween is big in the US, and it’s getting bigger…and more depressing here. It [...]

Rather than remain online, I thought I’d flyer-up some of the ideas I’ve been working on and hand them out at the Occupy demo in London today, camped at St Paul’s. You can download the PDF here: Mutiny Or just read the text… In May 1724, in a small bookshop just a stone’s throw from [...]

  Interesting video here showing Slavoj Zizek at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York. His speech can be read in full here, but what I love about the video is that, for some technological reason no doubt, he cannot himself speak. The crowd around him who can hear directly have to shout out [...]

The media coverage in the UK has been limited, but I think the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest is interesting, and I hope it turns out to be significant. There was comment on BBC radio the other morning suggesting variously that it was the Democratic equivalent of the Republican ‘Tea Party’ movement  - though I’m not [...]

It’s Black History Month again, a festival I have expressed some concerns about in the past – not because I don’t think Black history should be celebrated and represented, but because giving it a ‘special’ place in a particular month may actually serve to reduce its representation, as we can compartmentalise it, rather than integrate [...]

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, and in the last few days how it might relate to the discussion of whether ‘newness’ is possible. This isn’t meant as an holistic critique or discussion of the events all those years ago, instead I’ve been drawn to thinking about the [...]