Radical media, politics and culture.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Is Uncle Sam about to get caught...?"



"Between Iraq and a Hard Place:


An Anti-State Communist Perspective on the War"

Angyal Istvan

                 



As I write this, in early March 2003, the rulers of the United States are about to attack Iraq. If the prevalent guesses are correct, the American empire will rapidly defeat and destroy Saddam Hussein's regime, seize Iraqi oil fields, and occupy major urban centers. This will probably be accomplished with an initially low number of US military casualties, and a very high number of deaths among Iraqi civilians and military personnel. The United States will attempt to cobble together a client regime analogous to that of Karzai's in Afghanistan, and it will be at this point, the high-point of an apparently overwhelming and inexpensive US military victory, that a real, enduring defeat for the United States may begin.

hydrarchist writes

"Let's think about something else just for a little and not war, the propaganda, the pulverization of ethics, the despair..... Think of the new, the hopeful.... think about Free and Open Source Software and whether washing machines can be produced on a similar model, and whether it even matters."



The Two Economies

Graham Seaman

Or: Why the washing machine question is the wrong question

Introduction

Within capitalism, material goods are typically made:


o by people working for a wage


o for others who own the means of production


o in order to create profit


o by selling the product


The co-ordination between producers is indirect, through the market,
using money as a signalling mechanism.


Production of free software and other free goods can be contrasted
point by point with this list; non-material goods can be produced by
people:


o working because they chose to


o using their own means of production


o in order to create something useful or pleasurable


o which anyone can use


The co-ordination between producers is direct, mediated only by
technology.

Anonymous Comrade writes:


"Bring On the Spanners"

Arundhati Roy

Wednesday April 2, 2003
The Guardian

Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates...


How many children, in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words? And now the bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilisation

On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawl colourful messages in childish handwriting: For Saddam, from the Fat Boy Posse. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother's marbles.

dr.woooo writes:

"Intervention in the Vacuum"

By Chris Baden

Ever since the events of 1989-91, there has existed a historical vacuum. This vacuum has been filled by (depending on your world view) distinct descriptions such as End of History, Empire, Globalization. I am not so concerned over the correct definition of the current power structure, but I am concerned with how these power relations have shaped the current crisis in Iraq and what follows from there.

dr.woooo writes:
"The Same Old Empire (Oops, I mean Imperialism)...

by sasha k

Before September 11 2001, calling the US an Empire put one in the realm of the paranoid, the left or the academic, but now all that has changed. Everyone is using the word, both pro and con. It has been used so much that President Bush himself has had to respond:
"We have no territorial ambitions, we don't seek an empire," Bush remarked on Veterans Day, continuing, "Our nation is committed to freedom for ourselves and for others."

jim writes:

"Bush's Dream, America's Nightmare"

Jamal Mecklai




Having lived in -- and loved -- America for fifteen years, I have often found myself a lonely apologist as people everywhere made fun of America's shallow culture and shockingly thin knowledge levels, and were angered by its arrogant (and often violent) posturing in world affairs. Of course, since America was the worlds biggest market, since it had the best universities and made the best movies, most of the criticism was easy to deflect, since everybody -- or almost everybody -- also had a vested interest in the American dream.



The Bush government's immoral and illegal assault on Iraq this week has tormented me, more even that the attack on the World Trade Centers, since it has compelled me to confront the fact that a country I love(d) could pillage and rape in this manner.

The Bush Administration's Fear of War...and What Forces Them to Wage It


[Translated from the German, November 2002]


In Italy, France, but above all in the United States and England, many hundreds of thousands of people go in the streets in order to protest against the United States' forthcoming war against Iraq. They do this on different grounds and with varying ideas of why the Bush-Cheney-Rice clique wants this war no matter what.


In order to be against war, we don't need to know anything about their respective backgrounds. Wars are always massacres in the interests of the rulers. Whether Bush or Saddam Hussein, whether Schröder or Bin Laden, whether Sharon or Arafat--war and terrorist attacks serve them in the securing of their power and maintenance of the conditions on which their power rests. War is the sharpest form and demonstration of the force on which the capitalist order, the daily prison of labor and the power of money are based (see Wildcat: Global War for the World Order).

collettivo pace writes:

"Notes on the US' Attack on Iraq - For A New "Peace" Movement.

We don't live any more in a happy period where "no war" meant "peace" immediately…

by Collettivo Pace (Parigi)



1.

As some Latin-American counrtries' actual situations show us well, the neo-liberal globalisation begins to be rent everywhere on our planet. Further, there are some "drop-out" regions, which have never enjoyed any benefits from the neo-liberal globalisation and which will never enjoy them in the future. Iraq after the First Gulf War is one of these "drop-outs".

"Iraq as Trial Run"

Noam Chomsky, Frontline, India



Noam Chomsky, University Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founder of the modern science of linguistics and political activist, is a powerhouse of anti-imperialist activism in the United States today. On March 21, a crowded and typical - and uniquely Chomskyan - day of political protest and scientific academic research, he spoke from his office for half an hour to V. K. Ramachandran on the current attack on Iraq.


V. K. Ramachandran: Does the present aggression on Iraq represent a continuation of United States' international policy in recent years or a qualitatively new stage in that policy?


Noam Chomsky: It represents a significantly new phase. It is not without precedent, but significantly new nevertheless.




This should be seen as a trial run. Iraq is seen as an extremely easy and totally defenceless target. It is assumed, probably correctly, that the society will collapse, that the soldiers will go in and that the U.S. will be in control, and will establish the regime of its choice and military bases. They will then go on to the harder cases that will follow. The next case could be the Andean region, it could be Iran, it could be others.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Lead article in forthcoming April issue of News & Letters:

War on Iraq, Resistance, and the Shift in Global Politics



by Peter Hudis

Bush's insistence on launching a full-scale war against Iraq, replete with over 250,000 troops, hundreds of tanks, and thousands of bombs and missiles, threatens to wreak enormous destruction upon the people of Iraq while producing a major shift in world politics which we will all feel for years to come.

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