First media digest with: #Keizergate, Vega/flexitarianism, the EU/Scotland/Ireland and Big Capital!

Media digest #1

The members of DWARS Amsterdam naturally chat a lot with each other; we do this at events and at drinks, but for a while now also in a special Whatsapp group. Often, these conversations are based on personal experiences, but mostly they are based on newspaper articles or essays. We therefore thought it would be fun to regularly share a selection of those articles on the website and on Facebook so that people who are not in the group can also see what we, DWARS Amsterdam, are up to. Therefore, here are the first media digest from DWARS!

• The Henry Keizer case naturally kept us very busy. Apart from “breaking news” about developments in #Keizergate, the strong column by Youp van ‘t Hek Discussed in NRC, we talked about the spoken column by Sheila Sitalsing in Buitenhof and became this analysis of the VVD's internal problems and wider implications for democracy shared by Marc Chavannes. I myself also wrote last week a blog on the subject.
• In addition, things got tough in the chat when the topic of vegetarianism was brought up. A number of DWARSers are teetotalers; others identify themselves as “flexitarians” and still others loved their doner too much to give up meat anyway, however hypocritical and morally reprehensible they themselves thought it was. I myself, at least, belong to a mix of the latter two categories. A strong article that was shared was ‘This made me vegetarian overnight (and maybe you too)’ by Rutger Bregman.
• Britain also came up several times: a fiery debate about whether Europe should just offer the Scots and the Northern Irish to join the EU if they became independent from the UK. This following this item In The Guardian. Also in The Guardian: ‘British power generation achieves first ever coal-free day’. We could obviously appreciate this article.
• There was also room for humour: Paul shared an article on how protesters at May 1 demonstrations threw Pepsi cans at police in response to the Kendall Jenner ad for Pepsi. Violence is obviously not OK, but if it has to be then this middle finger to big business is the best solution of course!

On that communist note, I end this media digest. These articles, and those in this media digest processed opinions are not those of DWARS, but of individual DWARSers. Especially my own, of course.

Jan, board member external communications

(Have questions/complaints about this post or these articles? Feel free to send an email to jan.amsterdam@dwars.org)