Radical media, politics and culture.
September 26, 2004 - 10:49am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Gender

hpwombat writes:

"Nihilism and Women"
High Priest Wombat, KSC

The practice of nihilism is to attack the totality without hope that progress will occur. We are not advancing into a better society, despite the rhetoric from the left. What are our options? Do nothing and accept the conditions that are given to us from one ideology or another? Pretend that working for reforms and creating social services will somehow make a difference as the present order recuperates our struggles? Wrap ourselves into roles of the victim or the martyr and push ourselves into the service of suffering and misery?


The present order is a failure, we cannot escape its totality, there is no where to hide. We have no hope in changing society as it is, so it must be destroyed. We must free ourselves from its perpetuation, it is in our interest to do so. All other options are acceptance, critical or not. We need not be limited in our struggle and our actions must expand to all aspects of life.

September 25, 2004 - 7:25pm -- Stenglander
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

Anonymous Comrade writes, "The following was posted by Christopher Day on the DailyKOS:"


"The Elephant in the Room:
What to do if the GOP Steals the Election (Again)?"

Christopher Day

People have rightly attacked the hand-wringing of some who are asking "what if Bush wins?" when we are still in the midst of the work of making sure that he doesn't. But there is another question that we need to be talking about NOW because if we don't all of the work we are doing may still be for nothing. That question is "what will we do if Bush loses and tries to steal the election again?" This is not a question we can put off until November 3 for the simple reason that if we are not mentally and organizationally prepared for this eventuality, we will lose.

1. The threat of a stolen election is real.

The 2000 presidential election was stolen through a combination of mob tactics and the collaboration of a right-wing Supreme Court. There are many imaginable scenarios in which Bush and Cheney might attempt to steal the election in 2004. These include massive election day disenfranchisement, rigged electronic balloting, electoral college shenanigans and undoubtedly some things we haven't thought of yet. The reality of this threat is attested to by the fact that both campaigns have lawyered up across the country in anticipation of major disputes.

September 22, 2004 - 1:01pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Seven Questions on Haiti"
Anthony Fenton with Derrick O'Keefe, Seven Oaks

1. We hear so little about Haiti in the mainstream media. Most networks don't even have correspondents there right now. What is the reality on the ground in occupied Haiti?

Tragically, the reality in Haiti is very much like the reality of Haiti in 1915, the Dominican Republic in 1965, and is similar in many ways to the long list of military interventions in the hemisphere since the U.S. became the dominant force. What’s being heavily suppressed is that, far from ‘bringing stability’ to Haiti, the imperialist intervention and subsequent installment and propping up of an illegitimate regime is having dire consequences for Haiti’s mostly impoverished masses. Continued political persecution of anyone, and specifically leaders, known to be associated with the Lavalas political party, or of those who are pro-Constitutionalist generally, is the norm. It has been reported that Haiti’s jails and penitentiaries are full of these types of political prisoners.

September 18, 2004 - 12:34am -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

rev. terry writes

THE YOUTH NEED A LIBERATION FRONT

Rev. Terry and Crudocrust of the DAAA Collective Modesto CA, Central Valley

From forthcoming and final DAAA Collective zine, NCAA (Northern Californian Anti-Authoritarian) #5.

Every business day a living creature is violated, condemned, coerced, biologically molested, and standardized to the point of misery between the hours 8:00am-3:00pm, preparing for a life full of preparing for life, or what they would tell us will be “our lives”. These creatures are made to feel inferior, and are forced through state sanctioned means of coercion and degradation, to compete and test against each other, creating newly formed class systems that in their earlier years never existed. Like a hunter gather thrust into a world of divide labor and complicated technology, we have be thrust from our world of play and fun into a world where suddenly things were serious. These creatures are children, around the ages 4-18. Chances are a child today has already witness a divorce, addiction, violence, and witnessed some one they love crushed by debt or job loss. Now they will have the experience of hearing that he/she is “not as advanced” or “ hyper active” because they cant sit throe 8+ hours of bland restricted teaching? As the problems increase, so do the pills. Where once a happy child bounced with the joys of young life, now a lifeshell now sits, digesting their drug intake. Some of our eyes are opening, and some of us our seeing that we are not supposed to fit into the mold that they are forcing us into. Schools have us training to be math wizes and track stars, but most of aren’t or don’t want the position if left to our own devices, and we are very, pissed off about it.

September 14, 2004 - 8:04pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

"Delving Into Democracy's Shadows"

Scott McLemee, Chronicle of Higher Education

The sociologist Michael Mann took a detour from his epic study of
power in human history. It led him straight to the horrors at the
center of modern life.

Scholarly books often resemble the pyramids erected for minor
officials in ancient Egypt. Impressive in their way — and built to
last — they are, nonetheless, difficult to tell apart. By contrast,
The Sources of Social Power, by Michael Mann, a professor of
sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles and a
visiting research professor at Queens University Belfast, is
"audacious in scope, ambitious in objective, and provocative in
challenge," as the American Sociological Association put it in
presenting Mr. Mann its 1988 award for distinguished scholarly
publication.

September 14, 2004 - 1:25am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

"War Crimes and Imperial Fantasies"

Noam Chomsky Interviewed by David Barsamian

Noam Chomsky, internationally renowned MIT professor, practically invented modern linguistics. In addition to his pioneering work in that field he has been a leading voice for peace and social justice. He is in such demand as a public speaker that he is booked years in advance. And wherever he appears, he draws huge audiences. The New Statesman calls him, "The conscience of the American people." He is the author of scores of books, his latest is the bestseller Hegemony or Survival. He has done a series of books with David Barsamian. The most recent one is Propaganda & the Public Mind. David Barsamian is the director and producer of the award-winning Alternative Radio in Boulder, Colorado. He interviewed Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge on June 11, 2004.

 

Q: I want to ask you about a painting that hangs in your office. It’s rather gruesome. You’ve commented to me that mostly U.S. citizens don’t seem to know who it is, but most foreigners that come to visit you and see it recognize it immediately.

September 13, 2004 - 1:41pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Mainstream Media

"No Fears: Laptop D.J.'s Have a Feast"

Jon Pareles, NY Times

Downloading music from the Internet is not illegal. Plenty of music available online is not just free but also easily available, legal and — most important — worth hearing.

That fact may come as a surprise after highly publicized lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America, representing major labels, against fans using peer-to-peer programs like Grokster and EDonkey to collect music on the Web. But the fine print of those lawsuits makes clear that fans are being sued not for downloading but for unauthorized distribution: leaving music in a shared folder for other peer-to-peer users to take. As copyright holders, the labels have the exclusive legal right to distribute the music recorded for them, even if technology now makes that right nearly impossible to enforce.

September 13, 2004 - 7:56am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"The Collaborator and the Multitude:

An Interview with Michael Hardt"

Caleb Smith and Enrico Minardi, the minnesota review

A major event in political and critical theory, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire (Harvard, 2000) turned orthodox thinking about imperialism around, proposing a decentered global network and redescribing capital, in the poststructuralist terms of Deleuze and Guattari, as a dynamic pattern of breaks and flows. The book is one fruit of the continuing collaboration of Hardt, a literature professor at Duke, and Negri, an Italian radical theorist; previously they co-authored Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State Form (Minnesota, 1994) and most recently they have written Multitude (Penguin, 2004), which develops a concept of cooperative resistance to the reimagined global order as an alternative to the idea of national liberation.

Before joining the faculty at Duke, Michael Hardt did his graduate work at the University of Washington. He is also the author of Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy (Minnesota, 1993) and numerous pieces of political journalism and criticism. In addition, he has translated Negri’s The Savage Anomaly (Minnesota, 1991) and coedited Radical Thought in Italy (with Paolo Virno; Minnesota, 1996) and The Jameson Reader (with Kathi Weeks; Blackwell, 2000). Relevant to this interview, see also Michael Hardt's essay "Prison Time" in the Yale Review 91 (1997): 64-79. This interview took place on 5 March 2004 in Hardt’s office at Duke. It was conducted by Caleb Smith, a doctoral student in English at Duke, and Enrico Minardi, a lecturer in Romance Studies.

Smith: Most people will know you as Antonio Negri's collaborator in the authorship of Empire. Your new project, again with Negri, grows out of that book and the promises made in its final chapters. Did you have the sense from the beginning that Empire was unfinished?

September 10, 2004 - 8:11pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
War

Financial Times commentary writes

Time to consider Iraq withdrawal

September 10 2004

This week a macabre milestone was passed in Iraq. More than 1,000 American soldiers have now been killed since the US-led invasion of the country began nearly 18 months ago. The overwhelming majority lost their lives after President George W. Bush declared major combat operations over in his now infamous "Mission Accomplished" photo-opportunity in May last year.

In that time, an unknown number of mostly civilian Iraqis, certainly not less than 10,000 and possibly three times that number, have perished, and hundreds more are dying each week. After an invasion and occupation that promised them freedom, Iraqis have seen their security evaporate, their state smashed and their country fragment into a lawless archipelago ruled by militias, bandits and kidnappers.

September 9, 2004 - 12:56pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

Keith Wigdor writes:

"Surrealism in 2004"

Keith Wigdor

My name is Keith Wigdor and I am a Surrealist! Surrealism is a movement that involves all forms of mental activity intended to destroy logic. There is no orthodox tradition when it comes to a Revolution of the Mind, an overwhelming desire to embrace chance, and contempt against hypocrisy most of all! There are no leaders here, there exists no groups, no closed doors. There exists the need to free humanity from its own predispositions toward conformity and enslavement to thought control, to eliminate all rational states of mind, to overcome subordination to the social order and to exorcise all the demons of tradition from one's life.

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