Radical media, politics and culture.

An anonymous coward writes:

Mondo2000 alum R.U. Sirius has posted a fascinating interview with author and boingboing editor Cory Doctorow.

A Year of Silence Since Rachel Corrie Died

Elizabeth Corrie, International Herald Tribune, Thursday, March 4, 2004

Atlanta, Georgia -- Only a year ago, the month of March would have held the same positive associations for me as it has for many -- the beginning of the end of winter, the promise of springtime and even summer. This year, and for every year for the rest of my life, the approach of March will mean something else entirely -- the anniversary of the brutal death of my cousin, Rachel Corrie.

"President George Bush and the Gilded Age"

Yoshi Tsurumi (Professor of International Business, Baruch College, the City University of New York )

Something really strange has happened to the U.S. under the Bush Administration. With her ever bulging budget deficits and foreign debts, America's skewed income distribution is rapidly making the U.S. resemble Argentina or Mexico. The "Jobless Recovery" is not a political mirage, but a serious problem. America's GDP is increasing at an annual rate of about 4.0% this year. But, only those Wall Street "money gamers" and self-dealing "management aristocrats" of Corporate America are dizzy with their huge bonuses, padded salaries, and self-dealt stock options. The remaining hard working Americans cannot eat "GDP." The U.S. has widening income gap between a few "haves" and many "have-nots."

"Bush or Kerry? No Difference"

John Pilger, New Statesman, 8th March 2004

The man who, after Super Tuesday, is all but certain to become the Democrats' candidate for president is as dedicated as any Republican to the American empire.


A myth equal to the fable of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is gaining strength on both sides of the Atlantic. It is that John Kerry offers a world-view different from that of George W Bush. Watch this big lie grow as Kerry is crowned the Democratic candidate and the "anyone but Bush" movement becomes a liberal cause celebre.

"Feminism: A Male Anarchist's Perspective"

Pendleton Vandiver

"I myself have never been able to find out what
feminism is: I only know that people call me a
feminist whenever I express sentiments that
differentiate me from a doormat" --Rebecca West, The Clarion, 1913

Most people in the current anarchist milieu -- female
or male -- would disagree, at least in principle, with
most of the following statements: there
are two immutable and natural categories under which
all humans are classified: male and female. A male
human being is a man, and a female human being is a
woman. Women are inherently inferior to men. Men are
smarter and stronger than women; women are more
emotional and delicate. Women exist for
the benefit of men. If a man demands sex from his
wife, it is her duty to oblige him, whether she wants
to or not. A man may force a woman to have sex
with him, as long as he has a very good reason for
making this demand. Humans are to be conceived of, in
the universal sense, as male ("man"), and only
referred to as female when one is speaking of
particular individuals. Women are a form of property.
To demand rights for women is tantamount to demanding
rights for animals and just as absurd.

"Bush's Martyrs"

Michael Lynd, New Statesman

Who is really fighting in Iraq? Southerners who, unlike the secularised Puritans of the American north-east and the Pacific coast, believe in dying for their country.

''Keep the soldiers happy," the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, on his deathbed, reportedly advised his successor. At the moment, this is a challenge that President George W Bush is struggling to meet. Most US military officers were opposed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a project concocted and supervised by civilian appointees such as the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and the staff of the vice-president, Dick Cheney. Prolonged deployments of National Guard units are making the families of America's "weekend warriors" angry and stressed, and morale is reportedly low among America's overstretched career soldiers. As American and coalition casualties climb day by day in Iraq, Bush's boasting on the flight deck of the USS Lincoln looks ever more like hubris. And the likelihood of Bush's Democratic opponent in the November presidential election being a Vietnam veteran who was decorated for bravery at a time when Bush avoided combat duty in Vietnam by serving in the National Guard in Texas and Alabama makes things even more difficult.

"Argentina's Piqueteros and Us"

Jim Straub, Nation Institute

In 1999, the global justice movement first captured mainstream attention in the U.S. when, on the streets of Seattle, it protested and shut down a meeting of the World Trade Organization. The motley, if energetic, collection of groups ranging from environmentalists to trade unions to anarchists to farmers who coalesced into a single movement at that time were taking on nothing less than the preeminent economic development of the age: corporate globalization.

Since then, the forces of global justice have become perhaps the largest and most inspiring progressive movement seen in North America in three decades.

"Seeing Past the Outpost of Post-Anarchism"

Sandra Jeppesen

I am excited that there is a debate, if not raging,
then at least taking place, about the politics of
contemporary anarchist theory. Rather than engage in
any of the particulars of the debate, however -- by
asserting, for example, that the postanarchism debate
is not rooted enough in the contemporary anarchist
movement, or that it seems to be neglecting important
aspects of anarchist culture, or that it generalizes
'anarchism' and 'post-structuralism' according to the
needs of the debate rather than the particulars of the
authors from whom specific ideas have emanated, or
that actually anarchism is not somewhere between
liberalism and Marxism, or that actually there is no
crisis in representation in the anarchist movement
today, or that 'traditional anarchism', anarchism as
the centre of the anti-globalization movement,
anarchist administrative bureaucracy, or the anarchist
a priori on power, are all oxymorons, etc. -- I would
like to take a different approach to the debate on
contemporary anarchist theory (or what some people are
trying to call postanarchism).

"Globalization"

Joseph Addison

The celebratory rhetoric of cosmopolitanism of commodities was
already perfected nearly three centuries ago:


There is no Place in the Town which I so much love to
frequent as the _Royal-Exchange_. It gives me a secret Satisfaction,
and, in some measure, gratifies my Vanity, as I am an _Englishman_,
to see so rich an Assembly of Country-men and Foreigners consulting
together upon the private Business of Mankind, and making this
Metropolis a kind of _Emporium_ for the whole Earth. I must confess I
look upon High-Change to be a great Council, in which all
considerable Nations have their Representatives. Factors in the
Trading World are what Ambassadors are in the Politick World; they
negotiate Affairs, conclude Treaties, and maintain a good
Correspondence between those wealthy Societies of Men that are
divided from one another by Seas and Oceans, or live on the different
Extremities of a Continent.

"The Deal: Pakistan Keeps its Nukes and Bush Gets Osama"

 Seymour M. Hersh

On February 4th, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is revered in Pakistan as the father of the country's nuclear bomb, appeared on a state-run television network in Islamabad and confessed that he had been solely responsible for operating an international black market in nuclear-weapons materials. His confession was accepted by a stony-faced Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's President, who is a former Army general, and who dressed for the occasion in commando fatigues. The next day, on television again, Musharraf, who claimed to be shocked by Khan's misdeeds, nonetheless pardoned him, citing his service to Pakistan (he called Khan "my hero"). Musharraf told the Times that he had received a specific accounting of Khan's activities in Iran, North Korea, and Malaysia from the United States only last October. "If they knew earlier, they should have told us," he said. "Maybe a lot of things would not have happened."

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