Radical media, politics and culture.
March 17, 2003 - 12:05pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

A Short History of Franco-US Discord

Paul-Marie de la Gorce, http://MondeDiplo.com/2003/03/07franceusa


The current frost between France and the United States is not new. They have often disagreed over the past 45 years: France refused to allow US missiles stationed on its soil, withdrew from Nato's command structure, and recognised communist China even though it horrified the US.

March 16, 2003 - 9:59am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

"Who is in Charge?"

Edward Said


The Bush administration's relentless unilateral march

towards war is profoundly disturbing for many reasons,

but so far as American citizens are concerned the

whole grotesque show is a tremendous failure in

democracy. An immensely wealthy and powerful republic

has been hijacked by a small cabal of individuals, all

of them unelected and therefore unresponsive to public

pressure, and simply turned on its head.

March 15, 2003 - 12:30pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

"International Future Humanity"

Franco Berardi (Bifo)

Some days ago I witnessed a debate on the USA/conflict on the Italian TV

current affairs programme the Infidel by Gad Lerner. There was an interview

with Dani Cohn Bendit that impressed me. The position of Cohn, Bendit,

Fischer, Sofri, and Liberation has recently undergone a mutation, that makes

of it the most interesting nucleus of contemporary Europeanism, an evolution

of the culture of 1968 that connects the liberal and reformist legacies in

order to combine them in a form of cosmopolitan and humanist

neo-enlightenment.

March 15, 2003 - 11:54am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

"The Intellectual Property Meme"

David Reed



Every time you utter the words "intellectual property" you

buy into the idea that all information bit patterns are or

should be inherently "owned" by somebody.

March 15, 2003 - 7:55am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

Anonymous Comrade writes

"Bush's Ultimate Thule"

By Mike Davis



In the early summer of 1951, a group of Inuit hunters, guiding a French anthropologist, returned to their homes at Thule in the northwest of Greenland after a daring expedition to Canada's Ellesmere Island. When they had left the year before, Thule was one of the most remote communities on earth: twenty igloos and a trading post established in 1910 by Greenland's national hero, Knud Rasmussen, to provide a base for his famed

ethnographic explorations.

March 13, 2003 - 12:27pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

Louis Lingg writes

"BuzzFlash.com has posted an interview with Daniel Ellsberg.

An excerpt: 'I remember reading once that George III said, "I desire what
is right. Therefore anyone who disagrees with me is a traitor." And that was the exact attitude and attribute
of kingship that our founders wanted to get away from and sought to do so by the way they designed the
Constitution. And we're moving away from their concept back to that of George III. In fact, when I look at
George Bush -- would that be George IV or V?

March 10, 2003 - 4:40pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
News

nolympics writes:

The Special Treatment of Iraq


By Perry Anderson

The prospect of a second war on Iraq raises a large number of questions, analytic and political. What are the intentions behind the impending campaign? What are likely to be the consequences? What does the drive to war tell us about the long-term dynamics of American global power? These issues will remain on the table for some time to come, outliving any assault this spring. The front of the stage is currently occupied by a different set of arguments, over the legitimacy or wisdom of the military expedition now brewing. My purpose here will be to consider the current criticisms of the Bush Administration articulated within mainstream opinion, and the responses of the Administration to them: in effect, the structure of intellectual justification on each side of the argument, what divides them and what they have common. I will end with a few remarks on how this debate looks from a perspective with a different set of premises.

read the rest at
http://counterpunch.org/anderson03082003.html"

March 7, 2003 - 8:21am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

Anonymous Comrade writes

"This one from British satirist Chris Morris:


Bushwhacked!


The surrealism, and applause,
is particularly fine.


Enjoy!"

March 5, 2003 - 5:40pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Independent Media

hydrarchist writes:

"A snippet of history. Political media is pretty dull and earnest as a rule, but the years since 1968 are peppered with exceptions that have broken the strictures of discourse and allowed individuality and subjectivity to break through. In Bologna, Italy, Radio Alice, although short-lived was a crucial experience in this regard for an important part of the movement of '77. In comparison with the other radio stations of the 'movement', Alice allowed voices of youth and difference to emerge over the air in ways that were not possible for broadcasters operating with a narrowly ideological agenda. Here is a taste of their own inimitable collective style. Enjoy."


"Radio Alice--Free Radio"

Collective A/Traverso

After the events of March 1977 - Radio Alice
became the symbol of the free radios. It was
emitted from Bologna, one of the strongholds
of the ICP and the explicit showcase for the
Historical Compromise.

March 5, 2003 - 3:44pm -- Uncle Fluffy
Analysis & Polemic
Work

hydrarchist writes "This interview was published in 1983, the year following publication of the book of the same name.


Farewell to the Proletariat


Andre Gorz


Q: In 1958, in your book The Traitor you said the ultimate objective for any intellectual was to join the Communist Party, and now you've issued your Farewell to the Proletariat. So who changed, you, the Communist Party or the proletariat?


Andre Gorz: Everything's changed: the structure of the economy, society, the working class, the means of production and therefore the future. And it's no surprise that the labor movement, formed by the historical past, is weakened rather than radicalized by this crisis. If we are searching for a noncapitalist outcome to this crisis, and even more crucially what potential it holds for the construction of a different kind of society, the labor movement, with its parties and its unions, has little to offer. Obviously nothing can happen without it, but it is no longer the inner sanctum for the elaboration of postcapitalist ideas, practice and values.

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