iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

My latest book review looks at a brilliant history of a village in west Donegal, that shows the class struggle inherent in the transformation of rural Ireland. Breandán Mac Suibhne's "The End of Outrage: Post-famine adjustment in rural Ireland". resolutereader.blogspot.com/2026/10/brea...

Breandán Mac Suibhne - The End of Outrage: Post-famine adjustment in rural Ireland

In April 1856, Patrick McGlynn, a school teacher in Beagh, a very small village in the isolated far west of Donegal, wrote a letter. It was ...

Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My latest book review is of Seán Mitchell's extraordinary study of Protestant & Catholic unity: "Struggle or Starve: Working-Class Unity in Belfast's 1932 Outdoor Relief Riots". Much to learn from the role of the left in the 1930s unemployed campaign. resolutereader.blogspot.com/2026/10/sean...

Seán Mitchell - Struggle or Starve: Working-Class Unity in Belfast's 1932 Outdoor Relief Riots

By chance I began reading Struggle or Starve on the same weekend that, for the first time in nearly three decades , the Orange Order tried ...

Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair.

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

My latest book looks at Patrick Joyce's "Remembering Peasants: A personal history of a vanished world", a disappointing study of the "peasantry" which fails to explore how capitalism destroyed peasant society. Instead it ends up lamenting a lost world. resolutereader.blogspot.com/2026/09/patr...

Patrick Joyce - Remembering Peasants: A personal history of a vanished world

Remembering Peasants is an intriguing book. It is a study of peasants and their culture, mainly through a sort of comparative study of Iris...

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Reposted by Martin Empson

Socialist Worker @socialistworker.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Restore Britain: a party on the road to fascism ⭐️Don’t wait for Restore Britain to become a fully-fledged fascist party to smash it off the streets socialistworker.co.uk/anti-racism/...

socialistworker.co.uk

Restore Britain: a party on the road to fascism

Restore Britain is not just a more racist version of Reform UK. Nor is it a fascist organisation as the British National Party (BNP) was—yet.

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

"No matter how you slice it, the new record is a sign of what experts say will be a brutal El Niño. “This is probably going to be the superlative El Niño event of our lives so far,” says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the Uni of California" www.scientificamerican.com/article/this...

scientificamerican.com

This year’s El Niño just broke another sobering record

“This is probably going to be the superlative El Niño event of our lives so far,” a climate scientist says

Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

My latest book review, the remarkable account of Tété-Michel Kpomassie's incredible 1960s trip to Greenland from Togo: "Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland". Definitely one of my reads of the year. resolutereader.blogspot.com/2026/09/tete...

Tété-Michel Kpomassie - Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland

As a young man in the 1950s in a small village in Togo, West Africa, Tété-Michel Kpomassie was bitten by a snake while climbing a tree for ...

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

This is a significant victory that other trade unionists should study and emulate. 17% average, but 52% wage rise for the lowest paid and other demands about working conditions also won. Well done to the ICR strikers. Let's learn their lesson on how to fight back.

Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Reposted by Martin Empson

I am very excited to be speaking at the online Africa launch of the new edition of John Molyneux's book "The Real Marxist Tradition" More info 👉 eventbrite.com/e/africa-boo...

Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I am very excited to be speaking at the online Africa launch of the new edition of John Molyneux's book "The Real Marxist Tradition" More info 👉 eventbrite.com/e/africa-boo...

Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Ian Angus curates a list of recent publications to help us understand the far-right in the 21st century. climateandcapitalism.com/2026/09/18/e...

climateandcapitalism.com

Ecosocialist Bookshelf: October 2026 | Climate & Capitalism

Eight left-wing books on the rise, ideas, and goals of the new far right…

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The Uprising, a Paul Greengrass film about the English Peasants' Revolt, comes out next month. Socialist journalist Paul Foot's classic talk on the 1381 revolt was republished as a booklet a few months ago by Redwords including a new introduction by me. bookmarksbookshop.co.uk/product/the-...

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The 1999 book Who Paid the Piper?, Frances Stonor Saunders’s exposé of CIA-funded cultural espionage during the cold war, “single-handedly established a new branch of sub-history”, according to the novelist Ian McEwan. www.theguardian.com/books/2026/s...

theguardian.com

Frances Stonor Saunders obituary

Author and documentary-maker best known for her 1999 book about CIA-funded cultural espionage Who Paid the Piper?

Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

What can I say about tonight's movie? Laura (1944). Wild, but compulsive, not least due to the cast throwing themselves into the script.

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

"Many tinned mackerel products sold in British supermarkets no longer contain any of the oily fish, as concerns over sustainability have pushed retailers to replace it with a different species of lower nutritional value." www.ft.com/content/980a...

ft.com

UK canned ‘mackerel’ now contains no mackerel

Critics say switch to tins comprising more sustainable species risks confusing consumers

Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Today I'll be remembering the thousands of Chilean victims of Pinochet's CIA backed coup which began on 9/11/73, and saw the murder of the democratically elected Salvador Allende.

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

My latest book review looks at Rebecca Wragg Sykes' (@lemoustier.bsky.social) "Kindred". A remarkable account of Neanderthals in all their varied lives & culture, across huge distances & 200,000+ years. A fantastic work of science and history that I loved resolutereader.blogspot.com/2026/09/rebe...

Rebecca Wragg Sykes - Kindred: Neanderthal life, love, death and art

One of the least interesting things about Neanderthal's is why they vanished. This is ironic because almost from the time when the first Nea...

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Fascists having a go at the Daily Mail. What would Lord Rothermere have said?

Socialist Worker @socialistworker.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Reposted by Martin Empson

Alex Callinicos: The far right remains a dynamic force ⭐️If Andy Burnham dashes the hopes he raised to get into 10 Downing Street, Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe and Tommy Robinson will rush to capitalise 👇 socialistworker.co.uk/alex-callini...

socialistworker.co.uk

Alex Callinicos: The far right remains a dynamic force

If Andy Burnham dashes the hopes he raised to get into 10 Downing Street, Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe and Tommy Robinson will rush to capitalise

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

"A horse cannot be replaced bit by bit, but only by another horse." Marx, Capital II, Penguin, p250.

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

In 1990 the Canadian state attacked an Indigenous community resisting a golf course being built on their land. My book review looks at Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel's "When the Pine Needles Fall: Indigenous Acts of Resistance", an account of that struggle resolutereader.blogspot.com/2026/09/kats...

Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel with Sean Carleton - When the Pine Needles Fall: Indigenous Acts of Resistance

In July 1990 the Canadian state laid siege to an Indigenous Mohawk community near the town of Oka in Quebec. The 78 day siege saw violent co...

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

In difficult times I often reach for my Serge.

The broad outlines of history now in the course of realisation are breaking clear from the chaos. It is no longer the revolutionaries who are making the world’s tremendous revolution; it is the tyrannies that have set it going, it is the actual technique of the modern world that is breaking brutally with the past and throwing the peoples of entire continents into the necessity for starting life afresh on new foundations. That these foundations must be of social justice, of a rational organisation, of respect for the individual, of liberty, is for me a wonderfully evident fact which, little by little, is asserting itself beyond the inhumanity of the present time. The future seems to me to be full of possibilities greater than any we have glimpsed throughout the past. May the passion, the experience and even the faults of my fighting generations have some small power to illumine the way forward!

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Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

My new introduction to the reprint of John Molyneux's book "The Real Marxist Tradition" has been translated into Danish. Thanks to the comrades. socialister.dk/ny-introdukt...

socialister.dk

Ny introduktion til bogklassiker: Molyneaux´s “Hvad er den virkelige marxistiske tradition”? | Internationale Socialister

Martin Empson @resolutereader.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

The terrible disaster in Nepal isn’t a one-off event, but a harbinger of things to come. There will be more catastrophes of this kind as mountainous regions around the world continue to warm fast, researchers warn. www.newscientist.com/article/2587...

newscientist.com

Mountain warming means there will be more disasters like the Nepal flood | New Scientist

Mountainous regions across the planet are warming especially fast, melting the ice that glues rocky slopes and glaciers together