Radical media, politics and culture.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Banging Your Head into Walls"

John Chuckman, October 27, 2003

We've all met them, people who stubbornly hurl themselves in the wrong direction, stopping only when they violently collide with reality. It is a painful way to learn, but those afflicted with the disability seem unable to learn in any other way.


This way of learning characterizes much of America's effort at foreign policy since World War II. I was forcefully reminded of this by a news story with its searing memories of Vietnam.

An anonymous coward writes:

"The Flight to India:

The Jobs Britain Stole from the Asian Subcontinent 200 Years Ago Are Now Being Returned"
George Monbiot, October 21, 2003, The Guardian


If you live in a rich nation in the English-speaking world, and most of your work involves a computer or a telephone, don't expect to have a job in five years' time. Almost every large company which relies upon remote transactions is starting to dump its workers and hire a cheaper labour force overseas. All those concerned about economic justice and the distribution of wealth at home should despair. All those concerned about global justice and the distribution of wealth around the world should rejoice. As we are, by and large, the same people, we have a problem.

Karantina writes:

"Diebold Voting Systems"

Karantina

DIEBOLD! If “Perception is Reality” what is Diebold afraid of?

Recently a string of leaked e-mails has come to light that are creating
panic amongst the  executives of Diebold
Election Systems
. Diebold is the second largest, and fastest
growing electronic voting corporation in the world, and produces touch
screen voting stations used in 37 states in the country. Touch screen
voting booths will sound familiar to many Californian voters because
these were the same machines that were used throughout the state during
the Oct. 7th Recall Election.

"How the Anti-War Movement is Blowing It"

Bill Weinberg, World War 3 Report

Raining on a parade--or, in this case, an anti-war march--isn't likely to
win one popularity contests. But somebody has got to raise the alarm. The
upcoming Oct. 25 march in Washington DC is being billed as a
revitalization of the movement which made history with coordinated
worldwide protests against the looming US-led assualt on Iraq Feb. 15. But
the new mobilization actually represents a dangerous step backwards for
the anti-war forces in the US.

Maurice Nobert writes:

"The Phat in the Hat:

An Anti-Rap Rant in the Meter of Seuss"

Maurice Norbert


Yo… Em, 50 cent, Dre, Snoop, DMX
Roll down the window of that tricked up gold lex
Give me a minute to let me say thanks t’ya
For the career advice ya’ll gave to my wanksta
Son, who wasn’t sure what he would do
Was flailing around for his path as he grew
But finally found the Holy Grail that he sought
In the ciphers and videos of your songs that he bought
Now I know how to get his life on the right track
I can see how my old plan for him was just whack
You guys make so much more money than me
I saw you win gold on the MTV
You call women bitches and Hos when you please
Then find em all lined up backstage on their knees
All I had was some girlfriends then just my wife
For the last 25 years, that ain’t much of a life
I just know my boy can do better like you
When he’s a bit older and you’re older too
Maybe when you have daughters just about sixteen
He’ll be in his prime, you know just what I mean

renegado writes:

"Report on Condition of the Working Class in Iraq"
Ewa in Baghdad

The Most Powerful Men in the World, the Peroxide Spook and The 25c Armed Picket Line

Dodgy unions, ex-Baathist fascist bosses, spies monitoring the new ministries in Iraq and machine gun armed picket lines.

In the early morning rising smog, Baghdad's Daura Oil Refinery is a warping shadow. In a car, crossing the Tigris, the concrete suspension pillars of Daurra bridge axe my vision into rapid black and white box-frames; the smogged city; the Daura flame; the filfth river; the refinery warped. Nothing would be what it seemed today. I'm on my way to meet freshly 'liberated' and unionized workers, with an Occupation Watch delegation of US Labour Against the War and French Trade Union activists. Cameras click as our cars swerve through the rickety front gate and straight down a two-lane time-warp into a 1950s oil community nightmare.

"The Persecution of Sherman Austin"

Revolutionary Worker #1217, October 26, 2003


It was January 2002 when the government first came
after Sherman Austin because of his political
activism. On September 3, 2003, they locked him up for
it.


Sherman is the first person to be charged under 18
U.S.C. 842(p), a 1997 "anti- terrorism" law authored
by California Senator Dianne Feinstein. This federal
law mandates up to 20 years in prison for anyone
convicted of "distribut[ing] bombmaking information
with the knowledge or intent that the information
will be used to commit a violent federal crime"

"Money in the World Crisis:

The New Basis of Capitalist Power"

Christian Marazzi, Zerowork

This article is the preliminary result of discussion and collaboration among a group of comrades linked to Zerowork in London. John Merrington and Mike Sonenscher have made major contributions to the final result. Since this article was written in October 1976, many of the points have been developed further with a view to advancing the debate and publishing a collective book, forthcoming, with the title, Money and Proletarians.

One of the major difficulties in analyzing the current capitalist crisis and reorganization, whether on the national level or globally, lies in seeing how changes in the international monetary system fit in with changes at the level of the international division of labor and production. To approach this question we must grasp both the nature of the money-form as a social relationship of power within capitalism and the historical specificity of the particular organizational forms of that power.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

October 17, 2003

"Several Steps Closer to Armageddon"

John Chuckman

The United States apparently has fitted out the Harpoon missiles it previously supplied Israel to accommodate nuclear warheads. These missiles are carried on three German-built submarines, making a reality of Israel's grandiose plan for a nuclear-triad force, a miniature replica of America's land-air-sea nuclear force in a country with a total population smaller than greater Chicago. Perhaps more pertinent, the missiles' nuclear capability extends a threat towards Iran, bringing home to its leaders the possible consequences of "going nuclear."

hydrarchist writes:


"The dotCommunist Manifesto"

Eben Moglen

January 2003

A Spectre is haunting multinational capitalism -- the spectre
of free information. All the powers of "globalism'' have entered
into an unholy alliance to exorcize this spectre: Microsoft and
Disney, the World Trade Organization, the United States Congress and
the European Commission.

Where are the advocates of freedom in the new digital society who have
not been decried as pirates, anarchists, communists? Have we not seen
that many of those hurling the epithets were merely thieves in power,
whose talk of "intellectual property'' was nothing more than an
attempt to retain unjustifiable privileges in a society irrevocably
changing? But it is acknowledged by all the Powers of Globalism that
the movement for freedom is itself a Power, and it is high time that
we should publish our views in the face of the whole world, to meet
this nursery tale of the Spectre of Free Information with a Manifesto
of our own.

Pages