Radical media, politics and culture.

Venezuela 2008: A Libertarian Proposal for the Current Situation

* The Collective Editorship of El Libertario, www.nodo50.org/ellibertario, expounds its vision of which path to follow in the current situation in Venezuela, summed up in the slogan, “Against the (B)oligarchy, demagoguery and corruption: Autonomous struggle of the underdogs!

7 March 2008

Friends,

Team Colors is pleased to announce our partnership with Journal of Aesthetics and Protest to produce a publication titled In the Middle of a Whirlwind: 2008 Convention Protests, Movement, and Movements, which will seek to intervene in and around the upcoming protests against the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

From Ken Knabb:

Dear Friends,

You might find of interest the two webpages linked below.

"2007 and I" is a text by a British contact of mine, Wayne Spencer, recounting his recent personal and political trajectory.

"A Discussion with Ken Knabb" is an email exchange between us that followed.

http://significantfailure.blogspot.com/2008/02/2007-and-i.html

Feliz Año Cabrones: On the Continued Centrality Of the Zapatista Movement After 14 Years

mck for El Kilombo Intergalactico

Japanese Activist Says About G8-Protest, "Police in Japan Act More Subtly“ http://www.taz.de/1/politik/asien/artikel/1/polizei-in-japan-agiert-subt...

Go Hirasawa mobilizes against the G8-summit in Japan with the group "No G8! Action“. Is the protest culture there very much different (than in Europe)?

Go Hirasawa says that in Japan, open violence is not that common.

http://westerncapeantieviction.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/background-to-de...

Background to Delft evictions 19

02

2008 Thoughts provoked by being interviewed by Keketso Sechane, Heart 104.9 radio, 19/2/2008

This article gives a useful overview of the exciting shack dwellers' movement in Durban which, together with the Anti-Eviction Campaign in Capetown, has created a powerful challenge to the managerial state. There is also a 5 minute YouTube film on this struggle at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZWIZX_8ub8

http://abahlali.org/node/2814

The University of Abahlali baseMjondolo

Presidential Candidates Prepare to Gang-up on Post-Castro Cuba Jack A. Smith, Hudson Valley News

After almost a half-century of Washington's gratuitous hostility toward socialist Cuba, after an abortive invasion, after over 600 failed attempts to assassinate President Fidel Castro, after decades of a draconian economic embargo, after severe travel restrictions, after an endless barrage of anti-Havana propaganda, after efforts to sabotage Cuba's agricultural crops, after all this and more, it is clear following Fidel's

NOT BORED! writes:

"From a Dinner of Ashes to the Embers of Satin"

(On the Riots of November 2005 in France)

Les Amis de Nemesis

No more tomorrows,

Embers of satin,

Your intense heat

Is the [only] duty.[1]

— Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

Many of the remarks made by the inhabitants of the banlieus, rioters or not, and related by the press, hit the bull's eye with respect to the crisis that comes to manifest itself in their cities and forces one to perceive that in these remarks there is an unusually well-developed degree of lucidity.

The "dump-city" phenomenon is so clear and massive that no one can be deceived on the subject -- without wanting to be so, for more or less shameful reasons. But here one touches upon a class of things that capitalist society, if it can prevent one from understanding them, can in no way modify them. Any "amelioration" implies fundamental transformations that are incompatible with the very nature of this society; this is why it is absurd to speak of the "creation of new job markets" at the moment when the old ones are disappearing very rapidly in all of the industrialized countries; or of "raising the level of individual development," while more developed individuals have more needs and desires, which will be even more difficult to satisfy, and such people would be capable of expressing their anger in a more diversified and contagious fashion; or of "raising professional education higher," while education does not provide employment and thus one would simply have unemployed workers who are more specialized than before; etc. etc.

One cannot "improve the lot" of a population condemned by the movement of value (that is to say, by the rarefaction of economically necessary human labor and by the necessity of only exploiting faraway and cheaper laborers) and [condemned] by the "political ideas" that see to the perpetuation of these necessities (the "ideas" that are no longer ideas and the "political men" who no longer have the right to have ideas, since real ideas would necessarily set aside the business plan [2] of "society," that is to say, of capital). If these durable and intangible impasses demonstrate anything, it is the fact that the question is no longer changing society but changing societies.

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