Kester Brewin

With the recent furore over The Guardian and Washington Post’s revelations about PRISM, and the apparent willingness of pretty much every large tech company to give the US government direct access to its servers, I’ve been mulling on a great book that Barry Taylor recommended to me: Geert Lovink’s Networks Without A Cause. It’s perhaps [...]

Was a HUGE privilege to be invited to speak at TEDx Exeter in April this year. I was given 12 minutes to speak on piracy, so decided to take one aspect of Mutiny! and look at how pirates work to defend and enrich the commons. In preparing the talk it struck me that TED is actually [...]

It’s been a very very busy 10 days since the NicsFight campaign kicked off. For those of you who don’t know, my very good friend Nic died in October from cancer; his insurance company (Friends Life) have been refusing to pay out on a critical illness policy which would transform the lives of the widow [...]

As you may have read, my very dear friend Nic Hughes passed away last week. He was diagnosed with cancer of the gall bladder, with secondaries in his liver last December (see his very moving post from 18th June via link above.) The metaphor of ‘fighting’ cancer is a troubled one, but he fought hard [...]

Been a pretty crazy time leading up to this, but really excited to be flying over to the US this Friday for 10 days or so of events promoting Mutiny!, mostly with my fellow insurrectionist, Pete Rollins. I’m particularly pleased to be able to be bringing this book to the US, because one of the [...]

Really nice article by Gavin Mueller over at the Jacobin – a magazine of culture and polemic -asking if piracy has been a ‘radical force.’ Once the heroes of nations, pirates went from being state-sponsored champions to tolerated annoyances to the basest sort of criminals. Henry Morgan was knighted after plundering Panama in 1674; fifty years [...]

As I build up to coming over the US to speak about Mutiny in about a month’s time – details to follow soon – I’m going to be blogging a bit more about the book, and the wide themes that it covers. Reading Tad Delay’s blog today though, inspired me to mention a perspective on [...]

With more people reading Mutiny!, and some groups studying it in classes or reading groups, I thought it might good to have a discussion space where people can ask questions about the text and debate some of the issues in it. It’s a pretty old school solution, but thought I’d give some discussion boards a [...]

  One of the nicest parts about publishing a book is getting the feedback from people once they’ve read it. Not the reviews – that’s more distant – but actual readers on the ground. With Mutiny! (which is on special 25% discount for the next few days) what’s been interesting is hearing people’s reactions to [...]

Back in London for a few days after a great break in Italy. It’s been great hearing how much people are enjoying the book and being challenged by it. Keep the reviews coming – as tweets or blog posts or, if you’re able to, on Lulu and Amazon too. As I’ve said before, one of [...]