Radical media, politics and culture.
December 19, 2002 - 9:05pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Mainstream Media

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Marx's Intellectual Legacy

Marx After Communism

From The Economist print edition, Dec 19th 2002

As a system of government, communism is dead or dying. As a system of ideas, its future looks secure

When Soviet communism fell apart towards the end of the 20th century, nobody could say that it had failed on a technicality. A more comprehensive or ignominious collapse -- moral, material and intellectual -- would be difficult to imagine. Communism had tyrannised and impoverished its subjects, and slaughtered them in the tens of millions. For decades past, in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, any allusion to the avowed aims of communist doctrine -- equality, freedom from exploitation, true justice -- had provoked only bitter laughter. Finally, when the monuments were torn down, statues of Karl Marx were defaced as contemptuously as those of Lenin and Stalin. Communism was repudiated as theory and as practice; its champions were cast aside, intellectual founders and sociopathic rulers alike.

December 18, 2002 - 3:28pm -- nomadlab
Analysis & Polemic
Sex

hydrarchist writes "This interview was published in Issue 59 of Organise, a journal of the Anarchist Federation in Britain and Ireland.Please see the article Interview with the International Union of Sex Workers as well.


Interview with an anarchist
dominatrix


For two years Mistress
Venus was a
professional
dominatrix in central
London. She’s also an
anarchist communist.
So, we at Organise!
thought we’d take the
opportunity to ask her
a few questions about
this.



Organise!: There’s a popularly-held
belief, also prevalent among the left
and some anarchists, that anyone
(particularly female) who works in the
sex industry, is in some way a victim
and has been forced into that
situation. How realistic is this view?


Mistress Venus: I think it’s very
important to make distinctions
between workers in different areas of
‘the sex industry’. The role played by a
girl working the streets is very
different from the role (as that’s
exactly what it is) played by a
professional dominatrix. Speaking from
personal experience, my decision to
work as a dominatrix was purely my
own choice and was something I
wanted to do. It was an extension of
having spent years going to fetish
clubs and performing as a fetish
model. I knew the scene, the roles
played and exactly what was involved.
I had no illusions about it and I was in
no way coerced into it.I kept my day
job (working in a shop), worked when I
wanted to and unlike many, had no
monetary pressures I was forced into
supporting.

December 18, 2002 - 1:25pm -- Uncle Fluffy
Analysis & Polemic
Work

hydrarchist writes "Here's another interesting piece on organising in the sex industry, once again its from Issue 59 of Organise pubnlished by the Anarchist Federation.


Not in my backyard


This article sets out some of the main problems faced by sex workers in their
relationship with the State, and concludes with a brief interview with Jenn
Clamen of the International Union of Sex Workers.


You’re self-employed, running a legal
small business on a tight budget and
want to advertise your services. For
most, a card in the local shop window
or phone box might be just the ticket.
But not if you’re a sex worker, it
seems.



Clamp down

Though prostitution is legal, soliciting
on the streets isn’t. Until the Criminal
Justice & Police Act came into force in
2001, the prostitute’s tactic of
advertising sex by putting cards in
phone boxes was legal too - not
anymore. It’s estimated that 13m
cards are distributed across Britain
each year and in 2001 BT removed
150,000 from phone boxes in central
London alone - though it didn’t stop
schoolboys swapping cards in
playgrounds when the Pokemon craze
died down! Apart from the waste of
money, carding is now attracting
severe penalties as the police and local
councils clamp down.The police pose
as clients and get the addresses of
people selling sex. They are visited,
warned, often the landlord is informed.
With most landlords afraid of being
charged with abetting prostitution,
such a warning usually ends in
eviction. The woman (and it usually is
a woman, sometimes with children) is
moved on again and again. Their
livelihoods are lost as it takes time to
re-build your client base. Immigration
officials often accompany police, and
women working illegally are issued a
deportation order and dumped at the
nearest airport. Sometimes the only
way they can raise the airfare is to
head back into town and go back on
the streets. If they have been
trafficked (smuggled into the country)
they may still owe the traffickers their
fare and be in immediate danger here
and in their home countries. Cards at
flats are confiscated and the card boys,
if caught, face heavy fines, up to
£1,000, or 28 days in jail.

December 18, 2002 - 10:30am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Mainstream Media

hydrarchist writes:


"Global Elites Must Realise that US Imperialism Isn't in Their Interest"

Michael Hardt

The Guardian, Wednesday December 18, 2002

Some of the worst tragedies of human history occur when elites are
incapable of acting in their own interest. The waning years of ancient
Rome, for example, were full of misguided political and military adventures
that brought death and destruction to the elites, their allies and their
enemies alike. Unfortunately we are again facing such a situation.
It seems inevitable that the United States will soon conduct a full-scale
war in Iraq. The US is also engaged in a war on terrorism that may extend
to all regions of the globe. And, most importantly, the US has embarked on
a foreign policy of "security" that dictates that it not merely react to
threats but anticipate them with pre-emptive strikes.

December 18, 2002 - 10:22am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

hydrarchist writes: This article was found on the excellent Class Against Class site.


The Working-Class Struggle
Against the Crisis:

Self-Reduction
Of Prices in Italy

Bruno Ramirez

(BRUNO RAMIREZ, was an editor of Zerowork, in which this article, written in February 1975, first appeared. This version is from Radical America Vol. 10 no. 4)

With an inflation rate of over 25%, widespread unemployment, and increasing repression, Italy's current economic crisis shows how far capital is willing to push its attack against the living conditions of the working class.

December 15, 2002 - 12:43pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

hydrarchist writes:

The links to the articles indexed in this story were malfunctioning. They have now been fixed. Thanks to the AC who made us aware of the problem 17.12.02.


Earlier this year, the Italian journal and publishing house Derive Approdi issued an "Open Letter to the European Movements" requesting description of the social conflict in their countries and regions, and posing some specific questions that they felt merited attention. The desire was to conduct an "inquest" by which new contacts would be formed, experiences exchanged and the first steps of a common international discussion could be set out.

December 15, 2002 - 9:37am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

dr.woooo writes "From: "David Bedggood (FOA SOC)"

"Empire and the Multitude: the Case of Argentina."

David Bedggood, Sociology Department, University of Auckland.
dr.bedggood@auckland.ac.nz

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire has posed a challenge to right and
left to rethink the nature of the global economy. However, the main concepts
of 'Empire' and 'Multitude' are difficult to define and apply to the
realities of class exploitation and oppression. This paper is part of a
research project that attempts to put these concepts to the test in the case
of Argentina -a country currently undergoing a major economic and social
crisis. Can it be said that Empire is able to explain the momentous events
in Argentina better than other theories including that of the Marxist theory of Imperialism?

Michael Hardt and Toni Negri's book Empire (2000) has created a stir in
academia in the last two years on both right and left. It argues that today
world capitalism has entered a new stage of development. 'Empire' is
different from imperialism and is bigger than any particular country
including the US. 'Empire' is opposed by the 'multitude' which is different
and yet has greater potential for resistance than most former conceptions of
class organisation.

December 14, 2002 - 1:57pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

Anonymous Comrade writes "This article was printed in issue 222 of the British magazaine 'Black Flag'


The campaign "Against the Europe of the Capital" was a network of
activist groups, indymedia, and actions against the European summits in
Spain during the Spanish presidency of the EU from January to June
2002. The most important summits were Barcelona, Madrid and Sevilla.
However the campaign appears to have been a step back for the
anticapitalist movement after Prague and Genoa. Reformism, a lack of
direct action, failure to use blockades and a lot of police were some
reasons for this retreat.

December 9, 2002 - 2:38pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Science

Donald Nicholson-Smith writes "[The following is a translation of an article by Hervé Kempf that appeared in Le Monde for 25 November 2002 following a number of inaccurate reports on former enragé and situationist René Riesel's sentencing, his refusal to request a presidential pardon and his earlier break with José Bové and the Farmers' Confederation. The article gives a brief history of the affair and outlines Riesel's current positions.--Reuben Keehan]

WHY SHOULD SOLDIERS BOVÉ AND RIESEL BE RESCUED?

The resignation that has greeted the Court of Appeals' confirmation of the sentencing of José Bové and René Riesel to fourteen months in prison testifies to a singular amnesia on the part of French society and its political representation. For, in an astonishing paradox, France is prepared to lock up agitators for actions in Nérac and Montpellier that it has since itself acknowledged to be well founded. In order to understand this, we have to look at the recent past.

December 9, 2002 - 2:34pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Science


Born in 1950, René Riesel is a veteran of 1968 and a
sometime anarchist, enragé, and situationist. Since
1973 he has lived in the country, and for a dozen or
so years he has been a sheepfarmer. Invited to join
the Confédération Paysanne (Farmers' Confederation) in
1991, he was on its national secretariat from 1995 and
resigned from all his functions in March 1999. For
his role (along with José Bové and Francis Roux) in
the sabotage of transgenic maize in Nérac
(Lot-et-Garonne) in January 1998, he received a
suspended eight-month jail sentence. This suspension may be annulled, however, for on 20 December
2001, Riesel and codefendants
José Bové and Dominique Soullier, charged with
destroying experimental transgenic rice plants in
Montpellier in June 1999, were sentenced on appeal to further prison terms and heavy fines. Appeals to a higher court are pending.

See also Why Should soldiers Bové and Riesel be rescued? by Herve KEMPF (le Monde Diplomatique) and Biotechnology Public and Private by René Riesel.

Donald Nicholson-Smith writes:

SUPPORT RENÉ RIESEL!


Assuming failure of the very last remaining judicial recourse, namely a request that the Nérac suspended sentence not be revoked, then the decision handed down on 19 December 2002 by the Appeals Court means that Joseph Bové and René Riesel will each, as expected, serve fourteen-month prison terms. In addition, they must each pay a fine of 7,622 euros and damages, interest and costs of 12,103 euros. The sentence is in accord with Articles 475-1 and 618-1 of the Code of Legal Procedure and Article 1018A of the General Tax Code. The crime was the organizing, on 5 June 1999, of the destruction of experimental transgenic rice at a state-run agronomic research facility, the CIRAD of Montpellier.

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