A friend recently recommended Winstanley the 1975 film by Kevin Brownlow with Andrew Mollo. The film offers a glimpse into the life and times of Gerrard Winstanley, 17th century English Protestant religious reformer and political activist.
In his time Winstanley was famous for his pamphlet ‘The New Law of Righteousness’. For those disenfranchised after the English civil war and the enclosure of common lands Winstanley’s writing were a source of inspiration.

“1649. With poverty and unrest sweeping England, a commune is formed to assert the right to cultivate and share the wealth of the common land. Led by Winstanley, the ‘Diggers’ are met with crushing hostility from local landowners and government troops.” – filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_22552.html

The struggle of Winstanley and the Diggers is echoed today, when people world over responsd to the ongoing crisis of neo-liberal enclosures of our natural and cultural heritage. Like the Diggers we seek solutions, building through solidarity a shared vision of life lived in common.

The film was recently remastered and is available to buy on DVD and Blu-Ray, you can also watch it online at the British Film Institutes site and in other places too

via Film: Winstanley – A look into the life and times of the Diggers

According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington's stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine's poor. It is Greece all over again. Before anything approaching stability and legitimacy has been obtained for the puppet government put in power by the Washington orchestrated (...) - Controversies / Ukraine via The Looting Of Ukraine Has Begun, by Paul Craig Roberts

Acting CEO and President of Sony Computer Entertainment Jack Tretton has recently informed the community that he'll be stepping down after nearly two decades of commitment to the PlayStation brand.

The post Sony executive Jack Tretton to step down at the end of March appeared first on VR-Zone.

The GTX 750 Ti isn’t the fastest card on the block with its kh/s rate, but it offers a very competitive price-performance ratio. AMD Radeon R9 290X has been a sellout success, but not necessarily because of enthusiasm from gamers. Because of the way AMD designs its shaders — more simple shaders that run at [...]

The post Maxwell will bring Nvidia back into the cryptomining game appeared first on VR-Zone.

Qualcomm has another manufacturer to contend with, as benchmarks reveal that Huawei’s eight-core Kirin 920 SoC is almost as fast as the Snapdragon 805. It looks like Huawei’s upcoming eight-core Kirin 920 SoC will pack a punch. The SoC has four Cortex-A7 and four Cortex-A15 CPU cores in a big.LITTLE arrangement and an ARM Mali-T624 GPU. It [...]

The post Huawei’s eight-core Kirin 920 could be as fast as the Snapdragon 805 appeared first on VR-Zone.

// Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - Carnegie Publications

// All Things Nuclear
China has a new leader. By all accounts, and according to most Chinese friends, colleagues and acquaintances I have asked— and I have asked many— Xi Jinping is the most impressive political figure to appear in China since Deng Xiaoping. This assessment seems to be based on the perception that after a single year in office, Chairman Xi has consolidated his control over the Party, the Army and the State bureaucracy.
Opinions differ on what Chairman Xi will do, both at home and abroad, with his exceptional political authority. But the appearance of a single individual who is willing to take personal responsibility for the national condition, instead of deferring to the collective leadership of his colleagues in the Standing Committee of the Politburo—China’s most powerful political institution— is a noticeable and important change in the status of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
One thing Chairman Xi’s ascendance has not changed is how the CCP tries to carry out its policies.
Two Types of Chinese Communist Propaganda
While the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy are a mystery to everyone who is not a part of it, the CCP still relies heavily on what it calls “propaganda” to govern the rest of the country. The English definition of the word implies deceit, and when reporting on domestic accomplishments or international conditions, less-than-honest manipulation of the words and images the Party presents to the Chinese public is not uncommon.
However, in a still-communist China—self-consciously more “red” under Chairman Xi than under his recent predecessors—there is a second type of Chinese propaganda that must be true to be effective. The CCP uses this form of political communication to articulate goals and expectations for the approximately 80 million Party cadres, including the senior-level officers of the Chinese military, who are responsible for making sure, to the best of their ability, that everybody around them understands what China’s political leaders want done. Communicating that intent is essential to the CCP’s ability to govern.
Every Chinese bookstore contains a well-stocked section of the pamphlets through which this second type of propaganda is routinely distributed. A lot of it is still presented in the same yellow covered, red-lettered publications that carried the selected sayings of Deng Xiaoping when I first arrived in China in 1984. The great thing about the continued use of this form of political communication is that it allows foreign observers to get a very clear picture of what Chairman Xi is telling his own cadres about where China is headed.
The Status Quo Holds
The guiding concept of Chairman Xi’s propaganda line is “Realizing the Chinese Dream.” This is a new turn of phrase that sounds like a cheap knockoff of “the American Dream.” But it isn’t. The full articulation, which serves as the title of the propaganda pamphlet meant to communicate the core of Xi’s policy agenda, reveals that the content of Xi’s “Chinese dream” is not new at all. On Realizing the Chinese Dream of the Great Renaissance of Chinese National Culture (pictured below) is a dressed up version of the long-term objectives articulated by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. The overriding goal, to which all others are subordinated, is to achieve a “society with modest and broadly distributed prosperity” and in doing so create the economic conditions for a renaissance of Chinese culture. The former idea was a concept from the Confucian classics resurrected by Chinese intellectual Kang Youwei in the 1880s. China’s first President, Sun Yatsen, popularized the idea of a Chinese national renaissance during his successful effort to overthrow China’s last imperial dynasty and establish the Republic of China in 1911.
Other familiar Chinese revolutionary phrases, such as “the people are the creators of history” and “the masses are the real heroes” can be found in Chairman Xi’s pamphlet. But he also sets some rather explicit goals, such as doubling 2010 national GDP and per capita income levels by 2020. A longer term objective is to “build a prosperous, strong democratic civilization” and a “harmonious modernized socialist nation” by mid-century. The phrasing is slightly updated, but these are the exact same objectives set by Deng Xiaoping when he started the process of “reform and opening up” in the late 1970s.
Most importantly for U.S. observers is that Chairman Xi tells his CCP cadres that in order to make the Chinese dream come true, “China must have a peaceful international environment.” This was another pillar of Deng Xiaoping’s thinking. This does not mean China will, in Xi’s words, “give up our sovereign rights” or “sacrifice core national interests.” Deng made this clear to Margaret Thatcher in 1984, when he compelled the “Iron Lady” to surrender Great Britain’s perfectly legal claim to perpetual sovereignty over the island of Hong Kong, which was based on the Treaty of Nanjing. Chairman Xi is asserting sovereign claims in the South China Sea and in China’s island dispute with Japan, but these claims are not new, nor is Xi’s effort to make sure they are well-understood by those who dispute them. But the idea that China’s new leader is attempting to change a domestic or an international status quo that has served Chinese communist objectives since Deng Xiaoping ruled the country three decades ago is not borne out by the political directives he distributes to Party cadres.

Limited Edition Adidas Bombtrack Bicycle
bikerumor.com - Adidas has been hard at work creating a beautiful new line of bags and accessories, and to celebrate they approached Bombtrack Bikes about doing a collaboration. The limited edition bikes will be on display in a select 32 flagship stores across Europe and Asia.The track bike has a two tone muted green colorscheme and neon striping to mimic the dynamic sporty look of the Adidas brand.Subtle detailing throughout bring the rest of the build together. The complete bike boasts custom bar ends, stem, headset cap, saddle, and more…

RT television network released a wiretapping of Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, in which he is heard saying that the mysterious Maidan square snipers were linked to the pro-European opposition. Without taking a personal position, the Liberal Minister phoned the High-Representative of the European Union, Lady Catherine Ashton, to inform her of his perplexity. The authenticity of the leaked call, dating from one week ago, was confirmed by both parties. The fairly annoyed Minister (...) - News in Brief / Communication, Ukraine via Anti-Ukrainian propaganda and the mysterious snipers

Microsoft will give away a digital download code for Forza 5 with every purchase of the Xbox One in the U.S. for a limited time. Major Nelson announced on his blog that Microsoft will be offering Forza 5 for free with the Xbox One for a limited time in the U.S. The bundle will only [...]

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Nokia is expected to continue focusing on Windows Phone-based hardware despite dipping its toes in Android’s openness recently, and the next WP handheld is likely called Lumia 630. Did anyone ask for a budget-conscious Nokia Lumia with slightly superior specs compared to the 520 and 525? Then it’s time to rejoice, as the Lumia 630, [...]

The post Presumed Nokia Lumia 630 handheld visits the FCC, may debut April 19 appeared first on VR-Zone.

Rumors from two known NeoGAF sources claim that Sony has much more content to unveil over the next few months, including the possibility of AAA PS4 games coming to PS Plus.

The post Rumor: Sony has ‘plenty of new PS4 announcements’ on the way, AAA titles may come to PS Plus appeared first on VR-Zone.

via The Instructional http://www.theinstructional.com/

One of the major reasons behind this could be the possibility that Siri might be used as the primary input method for the much rumored iWatch. Launched back in October 2011, Siri has been a staple on the iPhone since then and has also made its way to other iOS devices. Its feature set is [...]

The post Siri may start playing nice with third-party apps in the future appeared first on VR-Zone.

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Articles, blog posts and news selected from all around the web.
All rights reserved to respective authors.
via scoop.matteorossini.eu