Radical media, politics and culture.
April 18, 2006 - 8:37pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Italian Communists Move Beyond Communism

Il Manifesto

Fausto Bertinotti, Secretary of the Italian Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), talks to Valentino Parlato, founding editor of the Communist daily Il Manifesto, about the challenges facing the next center-left government, the challenges to Marxist orthodoxy posed by the powerful rise of democratic mass movements, and the development of the Party of the European Left, a project which Bertinotti is leading in Italy. (Translated by Vittorio Longhi)

These days much has been said and written about Fausto Bertinotti, the political shifts he has taken, and his innovative and even daring approach to the problems faced by the Italian and European left. One afternoon recently, the editor-in-chief of Il Manifesto, Gabriele Polo, political editor Cosimo Rossi, and I went to talk with him. The result was a useful and thought-provoking conversation, full of interesting digressions.


Q: Let's try to divide our discussion in two parts. The first is about what we read in the newspapers: the idea of the individual replacing the concept of class, and bidding farewell to Communist symbols such as the "hammer and sickle," i.e. what we call "the shift," or a paradigm shift. Another question is what will happen after the vote: it looks like we will win these elections, but how will the Rifondazione deal with the centre-left government?


FB: Regarding the first aspect, the big shift, the corporate media tend to be misleading about this. It may be right to term it the completion of a political phase, which, as part of the movement of the European left, is a major shift. However, in terms of political culture as a whole, it does not constitute a major shift. On this plane, we are still awaiting the radical break with capitalism that is needed for such a shift to occur. Also, since this idea is a politically subjective one, there is a certain rashness in promulgating it. I view the “shift” as part of the process involved in founding the Italian wing of the Party of the European Left. In terms of political culture, the shift can be seen in terms of the development of certain points of discontinuity. The inspiration is always the same: extracting from the tough core of the anti-capitalist critique a basis on which to rebuild a political culture and theory of transformation, i.e. the overcoming of capitalism. Therefore, our first task is to make a complete break with Stalinism.Why is this break necessary? Because it is a definite encumbrance to the process of transformation.

April 18, 2006 - 8:37pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Italian Communists Move Beyond Communism

Il Manifesto

Fausto Bertinotti, Secretary of the Italian Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), talks to Valentino Parlato, founding editor of the Communist daily Il Manifesto, about the challenges facing the next center-left government, the challenges to Marxist orthodoxy posed by the powerful rise of democratic mass movements, and the development of the Party of the European Left, a project which Bertinotti is leading in Italy. (Translated by Vittorio Longhi)

These days much has been said and written about Fausto Bertinotti, the political shifts he has taken, and his innovative and even daring approach to the problems faced by the Italian and European left. One afternoon recently, the editor-in-chief of Il Manifesto, Gabriele Polo, political editor Cosimo Rossi, and I went to talk with him. The result was a useful and thought-provoking conversation, full of interesting digressions.


Q: Let's try to divide our discussion in two parts. The first is about what we read in the newspapers: the idea of the individual replacing the concept of class, and bidding farewell to Communist symbols such as the "hammer and sickle," i.e. what we call "the shift," or a paradigm shift. Another question is what will happen after the vote: it looks like we will win these elections, but how will the Rifondazione deal with the centre-left government?


FB: Regarding the first aspect, the big shift, the corporate media tend to be misleading about this. It may be right to term it the completion of a political phase, which, as part of the movement of the European left, is a major shift. However, in terms of political culture as a whole, it does not constitute a major shift. On this plane, we are still awaiting the radical break with capitalism that is needed for such a shift to occur. Also, since this idea is a politically subjective one, there is a certain rashness in promulgating it. I view the “shift” as part of the process involved in founding the Italian wing of the Party of the European Left. In terms of political culture, the shift can be seen in terms of the development of certain points of discontinuity. The inspiration is always the same: extracting from the tough core of the anti-capitalist critique a basis on which to rebuild a political culture and theory of transformation, i.e. the overcoming of capitalism. Therefore, our first task is to make a complete break with Stalinism.Why is this break necessary? Because it is a definite encumbrance to the process of transformation.

April 17, 2006 - 4:16pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes:


"Social Movements and Progressive Governments:
The Current Veins of Latin America"

Claudia Acuña & Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar

Bolivia has Evo Morales. Mexico has the Zapatista movement. Argentina is Kirchner’s. Where do social movements stop when facing progressiveness that restores power? Are these governments the triumph, or the downfall of these movements? Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, a Mexican with vast experience in Bolivia, visited Buenos Aires to talk about these themes with local movements and with LaVaca.org, offering a deep look to look at the continent in its own mirror. [Translated by Kirsten Daub.]



Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar is a small and intense woman. With an academic background in mathematics and sociology, her C.V., nevertheless, focuses mainly on the unstable political sands of Latin American politics. She began in her native Mexico with exiled El Salvadorians of the FMLN, and 20 years later she continued her work in Bolivia, where she was arrested in April of ’92 on charges of armed uprising and numerous other charges, for having been part of the Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army (EGTK). In the raid, she fell alongside her companions, amongst whom were Felipe Quispe, current leader of the Pachacutik Indigenous Movement-MIP, and Alvaro García Linera, Bolivia’s brand new vice-president elect.


Raquel was released from jail on April 25, 1997, thanks to a hunger strike that forced her legal situation, and to an endless number of international protests that pressured for her liberation. In 2001 she returned to Mexico, where she currently lives and works along with a group of women, all former political prisoners. It’s logical therefore that her current work is that of linking processes so different from one another like the Mexican and Bolivian social movements.

April 13, 2006 - 2:30am -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Autonomism in Argentina in a new Governmentality

Graciela Monteagudo

Last summer in Mexico, a friend asked me how did the Argentinean people manage to avoid making a revolution? I had just come back from spending time among the social movements there. My answer was grim: cannibalism. The social movements have historically been unable to get together and overcome their differences to create an alternative to capitalism. That is true —but, as another friend gently reminded me later, there is Peronism to take into account.

Nestor Kirchner, a leftist Peronist back in the seventies, could be defined today as the monster child of the December 2001 insurrection. On December 19th and 20th, masses of people protested neoliberal politics. Although they were not able to create powerful decentralized popular structures, the rebellion signaled and created consciousness about the responsibility of the IMF’S structural adjustment for the economic and social crisis. The mass of people that fell under the poverty line (from 10 percent in 1975 to fifty percent in 2002) and the twenty six percent unemployment made the crisis of poverty self-evident, but the explosion of political activity in the months following the uprising created consciousness about the deep causes of the social disaster. Kirchner responded to that clamor. Attempting to offer an institutional solution to those issues he strengthened the State by co-opting the popular organizations and offering what appeared as practical solutions.

Throughout the Carlos Menem years (late eighties-early nineties) the country's resources were sold at wholesale prices to multinational corporations. These corporations immediately downsized their personnel, in some cases leaving 95% of them jobless. This, combined with an IMF policy of "opening the borders" to cheap imports, produced the highest rate of unemployment Argentina had ever experienced. It turned Argentina, a rich country by South American standards, into a poor, deeply dependent nation. The IMF poster child of the nineties collapsed.

April 7, 2006 - 11:02am -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

Passover Service

Rose Cohen

While traveling in foreign parts

Avoiding arrows dodging darts

And guided by some ancient charts

I bought from an Arab

I came across a manuscript

Half buried in a dusty crypt

Called exodus from old Egypt

Inscribed on a scarab

As I remember it the Jews

Built pyramids and sang the blues

So Pharaohs could forever snooze

Above the baking sand

Egyptian lords embalmed in spice

Lay in eternal Paradise

While Jews their lives a living sacrifice

Slaved in a foreign land

And one was born named tongue-tied Moses

One chosen by the God of the long noses

To free his people from the rubber hoses

The Pharaoh's men would wield.

By trick of fate he chanced to be

Raised in Egyptian luxury

Brought up within the Pharaoh's family

And one day God revealed…

But let's all drink a toast to Moses

To the God of the long noses

And one day God revealed his plan

To free His people from the Man

And thus to Moses he began:

“Early tomorrow morn

Rise up and go to Pharaoh's door

Take brother Aaron as your orator

Say let my people go we slave no more”

And deep as a French horn

God's mighty voice in anger boomed

God who appeared that day costumed

As bush that would not be consumed

Although it burned in flame

So Moses eighty years of age

Stepped up upon the Pharaoh's stage

To free his people from their prison cage

He called upon God's name

And gave his staff a little shake

And hurled it down as it would break

And lo it turned into a snake

Then Pharaoh gave a sign

And his magicians threw their rods

Which turned to snakes in writhing squads

But Moses' snake ate all the other bods

On each one did it dine

Let's drink to slavery's abolition

To Pharaoh's mummy's slow decomposition

But Pharaoh would not let them go

And thus the Lord spake unto Mo:

“Stretch out thine hand you and your bro

And wherever waters flow

They will be turned to blood” and lo

It came to pass exactly so

Before the peoples' eyes, before Pharaoh

And still his word was No

And so the Lord sent frogs, then lice

Then flies, then cattle paid the price

All of them dead to be precise

Then boils on everyone

Then hail, then locusts filled the air

But still the Pharaoh didn't care

He'd say “Go free” caught up in his despair

Then when a plague was done

He'd change his mind insist they stay

Then God sent darkness every day

So thick Egyptians felt it weigh

Upon their every breath

Until the Pharaoh cried: “Go free

But leave your herds right here with me”

“We need our herds” “Then stay in slavery

And it will be your death…”

Let's drink to innocent Egyptians

To God who caused Pharaoh conniptions

“If once again you see my face

On that day shall your death take place

You'll disappear without a trace”

And then the Lord dealt out

Of all His punishments the worst

The land of Egypt was accursed

It came to pass that night he killed the first

Born and a tremendous shout

A shout throughout the land a cry

Went up from every mouth unto the sky

Because in every house at least one did die

Except among the Jews

For God had given strict instruction

On how they could avoid destruction

And more important than mere reproduction

He said they must forever fuse

The image of this holy day

Upon their souls and never stray

In the least detail from this holy way

For God said: “Kill a lamb

And smear its blood upon the door

Tonight when I do what I swore

And smite Egyptian first born by the score

I God of Abraham…”

We must drink up for Abraham

To the blood of the sacrificial lamb

To the God of those who eat no ham

“I shall Passover the marks of red

While filling Egyptian homes with dead

This night eat ye unleavened bread

And ye must eat in haste

There is no time for dough to rise

Eat bitter herbs to symbolize

The pain of bondage and to memorize

Forever slavery's taste”

And Pharaoh called for Moses in the middle of the night

“Begone with all your people thou accursed Israelite”

And so six hundred thousand folk on foot began their flight

And then the manuscript

Went on: “And this day shall be unto you for a memorial”

Spake God unto His children God the incorporeal

“And ye shall keep it as a feast for time immemorial

How I brought you out of Egypt

And went before to lead the way

By night a flaming pillar, a ray

In a pillar of cloud I led by day

I led you in my glory

Remember how I divided the sea

Gave you water from stone, from the sky toast and tea

Gave you a commandment on adultery

But all that's another story”

Now eat we this unleavened bread

With bitter herbs as the Lord said

And drink to God the fountainhead

That's why we celebrate the miracle

Of Passover it's just empirical

And sometimes the Lord likes to hear it told lyrical

So remember

The Lord of Hosts lays down some heavy shit

And He insists that all ye mortals hearken unto it.

April 6, 2006 - 10:49am -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
The State

30 Years after the Coup

Marie Trigona

This March 24, Argentines commemorated the 30 year anniversary of the nation's 1976 military coup and the brutal nightmare of state terror that followed. Throughout the week, human rights groups remembered the 30,000 people who were disappeared with a series of rallies and cultural events.


Without a doubt, anniversary commemorations were much larger this year than in the past. Massive crowds could barely squeeze into the Plaza de Mayo and tens of thousands spilled over into the connecting avenues during the demonstration on March 24. Along with the masses that returned to the streets for the first time in decades, polemic debate among human rights groups accompanied this year's commemorations.


Terror that Ushered in a New Model
The military coup took power at exactly 3:20 a.m. on March 24, 1976. The military dictatorship immediately released an ultimatum warning that if military or civil police witnessed any suspicious subversive activity they would administer the “shoot to kill” policy. In the days leading up to the coup, representatives from the Catholic Church met with leaders of Argentina's armed forced and witnesses report they left each of these meetings smiling. Two days after the coup then-U.S. Secretary Henry Kissinger ordered his subordinates to “encourage” the new regime by providing financial support, according to newly declassified U.S. cables and transcripts relating to the coup. Washington approved $50 million in military aid to the junta the following month. During Jorge Rafael Videla's official visit to Washington in 1977 President Jimmy Carter expressed his hope for Argentina's military government. Kissinger said in a television interview


“Videla is an intelligent man doing the best for his nation.”


The 1976-1983 military dictatorship ushered in unimaginable methods of terror—drugging dissidents and dropping them from planes into the Atlantic Ocean in the “vuelos del muerte,” using electric prods or “picana” on the genitals of men and women who entered the clandestine detention centers, raping women and forcing husbands, wives, parents, brothers, and compañeros to listen to the screams of their loved ones who were being tortured.

April 3, 2006 - 5:41pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
Ecology

Peak Opportunity!

Earth Liberation and the Oil Endgame

Acornista, Peak Oil Anarchy

[Also published in Earth First! Journal,
Eostar (March–April) 2006.]

By now, all radical environmentalists—if not all humans—should be aware of the fatal ecological effects of civilization’s unsustainable energy binge. Yet many of us have been slow to grasp the true gravity of what our rapid depletion of non-renewable fossil fuels portends.


We must recognize three essential points about civilization’s imminent energy future: First, the unfolding “energy crisis” is real and will soon manifest as chronic oil scarcity. Second, industry is seeking to quickly and quietly implement a nightmarish swarm of ultra-dirty oil “substitutes,” ranging from coal-to-oil “liquefaction” in Appalachia to nuclear-powered “heavy oil” mining in northern Canada and biofuel plantations in South America. Rather than presenting feasible solutions, these “alternatives” are unsustainable and ecologically destructive. Third, we cannot cling to the hope that scientists will unveil a magical cocktail of clean, oil-free “alternative” technologies that will power a benign “new civilization.”

April 3, 2006 - 2:06pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

An anonymous coward writes:

"The Conservative Praxis of Postmodernism"

Anonymous Coward

“That was the gift of the French. They gave Americans a language they did not need. It was like the Statue of Liberty. Nobody needs French theory.” — Jean Baudrillard (1)

In the post-May 68 intellectual climate postmodernism ascended from an emergent philosophy to a mainstay in university humanities faculties. These stars of the French intellectual scene were ironically titled the ‘new philosophers’ in reference to the French enlightenment philosophers. The new philosophers though set out to critique and deconstruct the enlightenment tradition. But as Foucault informed us we should not ‘blackmail’ a thinker into being either for or against the enlightenment. Therefore following this line it is not as simply to say that because a postmodernist critiques the enlightenment that the theorist represents a revolt of unreason against Webber’s iron cage of rationality.

April 3, 2006 - 5:39am -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

The Precarious-Euro Insurrection

By Franco "Bifo" Berardi

A new European cycle

The fight of the French precarious cognitive workers can be the beginning of a new political and cultural cycle in Europe. They occupied the schools with the conscience of being together, students, cognitive and precarious workers in the fluid cycle of recomposing capital. And that represents a new fact, which was never expressed, with such clearness, in recent student struggles.

That this be quite clear: the French precarious cognitive workers raise a question which is directly European, even if it is true, as Villepin says, that the CPE is much better than the slave regulations which govern other countries, above all Italy. The Biaggi law and the Treu "package" are a hundred times worse than the CPE that the French students are fighting.

Thus it is clear that if they win, the question will be posed immediately in each European country.

If the French students defeat the CPE, this will certainly not mean that they will have beaten precariousness, this will only mean that they will have pushed back the legal formalization of precarity. And thus, they will have opened a new phase in the social history of Europe. A phase of struggle and social invention which, beyond neoliberal slavery, will make it possible to formulate new rules, new criteria of regulation of the labor-capital relation.

April 1, 2006 - 11:44am -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

NOT BORED! writes

"Rene Vienet:
The Bad Boy of Sinology"

Helene Hazera

Rene Vienet is one of the only French Sinologists to have denounced the Chinese totalitarian regime and its nihilistic Cultural Revolution, at a time when, on the Right and Left, many looked favorably upon Mao Tse-Tung. Over the course of five broadcasts, A voix nue looks at this uncommon person.

Rene Vienet was born in the Havre, where his father was a dock worker. While a student, he seduced a Girl Scout who was the sister of the companion of Guy Debord; [1] when he showed up in Paris to study Chinese with Jacques Pimpaneau, he joined the Situationist International. Studying in China, he saw the beginnings of the "revo-cul" (the term is his). [2] He was expelled [from China] in 1966, and without difficulty he was among the first in France to denounce the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."

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