Radical media, politics and culture.

hydrarchist writes:

The following essay was recently published by the Bureau d'Etudes and subsequently translated by Brian Holmes. The Bureau d'Etudes operate the Research center about autonomous knowledge and power.

autonomous knowledge and power

in a society without affects


(introduction)



Walking through cities connected to world distribution networks, we shift from one
imaginary to the next, from Monoprix™ to UGC™, from Friskies™ to the Guggenheim™
or Pinault™ foundations to MacDonald's™. Each time we activate fields of relational,
communicational or sensational possibilities, equivalent and interchangeable. The
commodity-possibilities© offered by world supermarket culture are born of desires
and needs conjured up by advertising and the media. They can only be actualized with
the money we have at our disposal, through our work and our credit at the bank. The
richest has a good chance of being right, because he's got the cash for it. He can
create his own commodity-possibilities©, and impose them on everyone else. An
equation associating truth, money, technology and power takes form: it allows you
to work on your own indoctrination, your own subjection. Foucault speaks of "regimes
of truth" by which he means the self-tightening circle in which the subjection
of individuals and the production of subjectifying truths reinforce one another.

hydrarchist write:"The following article was written in the context of the Carnival against Capitalism in London in 1999. That said, the themes which this critique evokes have obvious relevance to the general culture, and impediments to, agitation of recent years. This piece was published in Do Or Die number 9. Enjoy

Give Up Activism

In
1999, in the aftermath of the June 18th global day of action, a pamphlet called
Reflections on June 18th was produced by some people in London,
as an open-access collection of "contributions on the politics behind the events
that occurred in the City of London on June 18, 1999". Contained in this collection
was an article called 'Give up Activism' which has generated quite a lot of discussion
and debate both in the UK and internationally, being translated into several languages
and reproduced in several different publications.[1] Here we republish the article
together with a new postscript by the author addressing some comments and criticisms
received since the original publication.

[See also the Postscript
to this article]

One problem apparent in the June 18th day of action was
the adoption of an activist mentality. This problem became particularly obvious
with June 18th precisely because the people involved in organising it and the
people involved on the day tried to push beyond these limitations. This piece
is no criticism of anyone involved - rather an attempt to inspire some thought
on the challenges that confront us if we are really serious in our intention of
doing away with the capitalist mode of production.

Anonymous Comrade writes "Middle East News Online has posted an examination by Ray Hanania of the curious, destructive and symbiotic relationship between the Palestinian HAMAS organization and the Israeli Likud Party: How Sharon and the Likud Party Nurtured the Rise of Hamas.

An Excerpt: In 1978, [former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud founder Menachem] Begin sought to undermine Arafat's influence by funding a program of pacification to win over the hearts and minds of the Palestinian masses. Years later, Begin would unleash his war-mongering defense minister on Lebanon to finish Arafat.



Over the objections of many Palestinian Islamic leaders including the Commissioner of the Muslim Waqf in the Gaza Strip, Rafat Abu Shaban, Israel registered the newly formed 'Islamic Association' which [religious leader Sheik Ahmad] Yassin founded.

hydrarchist writes

Here's a nice article from the UK based direct action eco-journal 'Do Or Die'. The mag is also notable for its creative critique of recent political effort coming from a perspective that appears part Reclaim the Streets, part Earth Firts and part Bakhtino-Situationist.

It's All Kicking Off!

The Radical History of Football


There are some questions
about football that may remain forever obscured by the murky, swirling mists of
Years Gone By. Like who exactly decided that Bob Wilson was a natural TV
presenter. Or how it ever came to pass that Chris Sutton thought he was too good
for the England B team. Or how much exactly Man. United have to pay the referee
for every minute of Mystery Stoppage Time. Oh yeah, and there's a few other bits
and bobs as well. Like why did football ever happen in the first place, how did
it end up like it is today and what has any of it got to do with Doing or Dying
for the global resistance movement?

Anonymous Comrade writes: Foreign Policy has posted Immanuel Wallerstein's 'The Eagle Has Crash Landed'.

The United States in decline? Few people today would
believe this assertion. The only ones who do are the
U.S. hawks, who argue vociferously for policies to
reverse the decline. This belief that the end of U.S.
hegemony has already begun does not follow from the
vulnerability that became apparent to all on September
11, 2001. In fact, the United States has been fading as
a global power since the 1970s, and the U.S. response
to the terrorist attacks has merely accelerated this
decline. To understand why the so-called Pax Americana
is on the wane requires examining the geopolitics of
the 20th century, particularly of the century's final
three decades. This exercise uncovers a simple and
inescapable conclusion: The economic, political, and
military factors that contributed to U.S. hegemony are
the same factors that will inexorably produce the
coming U.S. decline.

Louis Lingg writes: "The United States General Accounting Office has posted the testimony given by Robert F. Dacey,
Director of Information Security Issues, GAO, to the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Energy and Commerce:

'Critical Infrastructure Protection: Significant Homeland Security
Challenges Need to Be Addressed'

An excerpt: As proposed, the functions of the Information Analysis and
Infrastructure Protection division would include receiving and
analyzing law enforcement and intelligence information, assessing
cyber and physical vulnerabilities of critical infrastructures, and
taking measures to protect them.

"G-8 EPILOGUE: Movement at the Crossroads"

Garth Mullins

VANCOUVER: Given the blanket prohibition on public assembly, and the largest
peacetime deployment of the repressive apparatus of the Canadian state, it is a
victory that our movement defied authorities and held a series of anti-G8
events in Calgary and Kananaskis. However, this is a qualified victory -- we
cannot paint a sunny face on a movement that is at a crucial moment in its
development. We face some serious political questions and are at a strategic
crossroads. The limited numbers and support we were able to mobilize against
the G8 reflects our slow recovery from the conservative backlash and
political disorientation of 9/11, as well as internal contradictions and
weaknesses that were only exacerbated by the September attacks.

Tom Keefer writes

"THE ANTI-G8 PROTESTS IN CALGARY:

SOME CONTRIBUTIONS TO A CRITIQUE OF THE ANTI-GLOBALIZATION MOVEMENT

By Tom Keefer, July 2nd, 2002. (tom@tao.ca)

[Synopsis: An analysis from an anarcho-communist perspective of the
anti-globalization movement in the context of the G8 protest in
Calgary
with a special focus upon the impact of Sept 11th, and
contradictions
between the movement's reformist and revolutionary tendencies.
Contains a
discussion on the weaknesses of the concepts of "anti- capitalism"
and
"diversity of tactics" as expressed by the movement's radical wing.
Tom
Keefer is a member of the North -Eastern Federation of Anarcho-
Communists
(NEFAC) nefac]

THE LONG SHADOW OF THE TWIN TOWERS

It is clear that after a string of successes (beginning with Seattle
and
carried on in Washington and Quebec City), that the anti-
globalization
movement has lost ground in its ability to mobilize large numbers in
North
America in the wake of September 11th and the attendant "war on
terrorism"
launched by US imperialism. The forces of reaction have been
strengthened
by the attacks of Sept 11th, and many of those we would seek to
rally to
our cause have lined up behind the flags of patriotism or have been
intimidated into silence by a dramatic increase in state
surveillance and
repression in conjunction with the mass detention and deportation of
"suspect" Muslims, Arabs and undocumented immigrants.

hydrarchist writes:

The Gamer-Refugee: searching 'Autonomy' in Gamespace(Revised)

[J.J.King / jamie@jamie.com]

In the 1944 text Homo Ludens, the Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga argued that Homo Sapiens was no longer an appropriate name for our species: now the playing, rather than thinking, man had become key to a proper understanding of civilisation. 'All play means something,' claimed Huizinga. He attempted to invigorate a philosophical interest not only in the games of children, but also in ‘adult’ games: chess, sport, theatrical plays, plays on words and so on. Games were an acknowledgement of the existence of ‘mind’ in the world, a force that intervened in (what would otherwise be) ‘the absolute determinism of the cosmos’ (1).

Huizinga would presumably be pleased that this interest in games is finally stirring in the world of the academy – and yet, since his text was produced, the idea he advances in his final chapter about the increasing ‘systematization and regimentation’ of play seems increasingly potent (2). How would Huizinga have seen the computer game, for example, one of the most popular forms of play today, and one produced by corporations for the enjoyment of consumers – one, in other words, in which play takes place as a commodity form? And is the philsopher right to suggest, as he does at the end of Homo Ludens, that this form – insofar as it is a ‘profane’ and ‘unholy’ form of play far removed from the original ludic impulse - ‘has no organic connection whatever with the structure of society’ whatsoerver? (3)

Leviticus Arenga writes:
Subject: Fakes...

To: info@autonomedia.org

There is something extremely wrong with every single
person in this world. They seem to be part of a
pointless simulation.

"The Matrix" has portrayed this idea somewhat, yet we
watch it and go back to our daily lives. Yet in this
very life, underneath the seeming diversity in
people's opinions, values, talents, and interests,
there is something that makes everyone the same. It
is as though this planet is populated only by mindless
fakes, objects that provide the appearance of
intellect on the surface but are based on only
mechanical reflexes and primitive thought patterns.

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