Radical media, politics and culture.

"Liar's Poker"

Representation of Politics/Politics of Representation"

Brian Holmes

Basically, what I have to say here is simple: when people talk about politics in an artistic frame, they're lying. Indeed, the lies they tell are often painfully obvious, and worse is the moment when you realize that some will go forever unchallenged and take on, not the semblance of truth, but the reliability of convention. In a period like ours when the relationship to politics is one of the legitimating arguments for the very existence of public art, the tissue of lies that surrounds one when entering a museum can become so dense that it's like falling into an ancient cellar full of spider webs, and choking on them as you struggle to breathe. Now, the mere mention of this reality will make even my friends and allies in the artistic establishment rather nervous; but it is a reality nonetheless. And like most of the political realities in our democratic age, it has directly to do with the question of representation.

"No Past? No!"

An Interview with the Italian Analyst of Post-Fordism, Sergio Bologna

Klaus Ronneberger & Georg Schöllhammer

The social upheavals of the past two decades have invalidated conventional professional and class identities. Traditional forms and resources of a collective solidarity arising from the common experience of work under alienated conditions are vanishing. Social resistance is having a hard time finding an answer to the new and flexible strategies of post-Fordian capitalism. While some want to rescue the national welfare state to counter the tyranny of the market, others feel that new forms of independence have been created along with the changed balance of power within society. From this point of view, union-oriented labor and social policies have few chances of being popular with »Arbeitskraftunternehmer« [people who act as entrepreneurs of their own labor. Tr.].

Sergio Bologna, one of the most important European analysts of this change, has given us the most comprehensive study to date of the circumstances and perspectives inherent in this form of work in his book on the »new self-employed« in North Italy. In the following interview, Bologna outlines the genesis of the »class« of the »new self-employed,« not only as the consequence of economic strategies and technological developments, but also as a reaction to subtle forms of in-house resistance and post-modern patterns of socialization.

The New York Times, in Editors' Note, Finds Much to Fault in its
Iraq WMD Coverage

Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher Online


NEW YORK — After months of criticism of The New York Times' coverage of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — mainly directed at star
reporter Judith Miller — the paper's editors, in an extraordinary
note to readers this morning, finally tackled the subject,
acknowledging it was "past time" they do so. Following the sudden
fall last week of Ahmad Chalabi, Miller's most famous source, they
probably had no choice.

While it does not, in some ways, go nearly far enough, and is buried
on Page A10, this low-key but scathing self-rebuke is nothing less
than a primer on how not to do journalism, particularly if you are an
enormously influential newspaper with a costly invasion of another
nation at stake.

"The Trail of Torture:

The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech"

Robert Fisk,
The Independent

I can't wait to see Abu Ghraib prison reduced to rubble by the Americans — at the request of the new Iraqi government, of course. It will be turned to dust in order to destroy a symbol of Saddam's brutality. That's what President Bush tells us. So the re-writing of history still goes on.

Last August, I was invited to Abu Ghraib — by my favourite US General Janis Karpinski, no less — to see the million-dollar US refurbishment of this vile place. Squeaky clean cells and toothpaste tubes and fresh pairs of pants for the "terrorist" inmates. But now, suddenly, the whole kit and caboodle is no longer an American torture centre. It's still an Iraqi torture centre, and thus worthy of demolition.

"Your Bill for the War"

Sean Gonsalves, Cape Cod Times

Amount you owe for the war in Iraq: $4,000. Make check payable to Uncle Sam's Iraq Quagmire Fund. If you dispute any portion of this bill call 1-800-IMPEACH-THIS.


According to Doug Henwood, author of "After the New Economy," $4,000 is the amount that each household will have to fork over in taxes to foot the Iraq occupation bill.


"I feel a little callous about talking about the economic impact of the war in Iraq, which seems like an afterthought next to the human toll. But at a time when civilian budgets are being cut at every level, when clinics are closing and professors at our public universities have to pay for their own photocopying because there's allegedly not enough money, it's amazing how much we're spending," Henwood says.

"Searching for Truth on Monte Verità"

Dale Bechtel, Swissinfo

Ascona is Switzerland’s most popular southern resort, but
the cradle of European counterculture is only a shadow of
its former self.


Swiss-Germans and Germans come for a relaxing holiday on the
lakeside, most unaware that leading European anarchists once
tried to build a utopian society here.

"The Bush Doctrine"

Noam Chomsky Interview, BBC

If George Bush were to be judged by the standards of the
Nuremberg Tribunals, he'd be hanged. So too, mind you, would
every single American President since the end of the second
world war, including Jimmy Carter.


The suggestion comes from the American linguist Noam
Chomsky. His latest attack on the way his country behaves in
the world is called Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest
for Global Dominance.

Jeremy Paxman met him at the British Museum, where they
talked in the Assyrian Galleries. He asked him whether he
was suggesting there was nothing new in the so-called Bush
Doctrine.

hydrarchist writes:

"Cognitive Capital Contested:

The Class Composition of the Video and Computer Game Industry"

Nick Dyer-Witheford

Version originale en langue anglaise de Composition de classe de l'industrie des jeux vidéo et sur ordinateur , Multitudes 10 : octobre 2002


1. Introduction [1]

If cognitive capital is a regime commodifying digitalized and networked processes, video and computer games are amongst its most important components. Over three decades digital play has transformed from a whimsy of bored Pentagon researchers into the fastest growing sector of the entertainment industry. The US interactive-game business is now larger than the Hollywood box-office. Lara Croft, shapely neo-colonial heroine of Tomb Raider, is a hot celebrity ; playgrounds are swept with Pokemon epidemics ; virtual communities coalescing around games like Quake, Counter-Strike and Everquest are e-commerce's last hope. In many ways, interactive game enterprises are the poster boys of information capitalism's « new economy, » for, as Nicholas Garnham notes, they « are in fact the first companies . . . to have created a successful and global multimedia product market. » [2] This paper analyses the class composition of the video and computer game industry, the new forms of contestation emerging within it, and the ideological valence of the virtual worlds it generates. But first, a sketch the history and organization of the sector.

"Venezuela's Oligarchy Imports Soldiers
Because It Cannot Recruit Them At Home"

Marta Harnecker

If anything has become clear following the discovery of
an incursion of a significantly large paramilitary group
into the country, it is that the 'anti-Bolivarian and
anti-Venezuelan oligarchy and its masters in the north'
have not been able to recruit Venezuelan soldiers for
their subversive objectives and 'have been forced to
recruit them in another country,' as expressed President
Chavez in front of tens of thousands of people, who
gathered in Caracas this past Sunday, May 16th, to
demonstrate their rejection of paramilitary activity and
to express their support for peace.

"How Fascism Starts"

Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate

AUSTIN, Texas — It's pretty easy to get to the point where
you don't want to hear any more about Abu Ghraib prison and
what went on there. But there are some really good reasons
why Americans should take a look at why this happened.


I suspect the division here is not between liberals and
conservatives (except for a few inane comments made by some
trying to be flippant), but between those who are following
the story closely and those who are not. I particularly
recommend both Sy Hersh's follow-up piece in the current
issue of The New Yorker and the investigative piece in the
current issue of Newsweek. What seems to me more important
than the "Oh ugh" factor is just how easy it is for standards
of law and behavior of slip into bestiality.

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