Radical media, politics and culture.
October 17, 2005 - 2:56pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

Punkerslut writes:

"The Rights of Squatters"
Punkerslut

"The finder of something which the owner was probably sorry to lose, cannot take it up with the intention of withholding it from the owner when he comes to inquire. But when the owner does not appear, the finder has a right to retain it for himself." — Samuel Von Pufendorf, The Rights and Duties of Man and Citizen, Book 1, Chapter 13

I had always believed, before I was adoringly aquainted with the philosophy of Humanitarianism, Rationalism, and Justice, that squatting ought to be a right, and not a privilege. To see so many vacant houses, standing side by side like disease, and to hear of so many unemployed and so many houseless as though they were the worst lot of humanity — to see the present state of conditions as they exist, I had always believed that squatting is a right. On the one hand, there is an army of unemployed, houseless, starving, cold, freezing, without even the least sympathetic touch of humanity, not reaching out because of their pride, and they exist in the multitudes. And nobody can be blamed other than megacorporations, whose assets exist in the trillions.

Trillions of dollars, I say! As a close friend of mine tells me, in New York City, they can invest to have enormous television sets sitting on the sidewalk, yet every apartment is infested with vermin and cockroaches. We have delapidated buildings, beggars on the street, homeless children without even enough clothing to pass the decency laws. All this misery, this poverty, and this crime! Oh, and of crime! What shall I say of it!

When men are grown up in an environment where everyone around gathers their paycheck in the form of a possessed wallet or a confiscated purse, where their fathers are robbers and members of thieves guilds. Should we expect the children to grow up any differently? Should you take a child from the ghetto, and honestly ask him that he will grow up to be the CEO of a megacorporation, only that the megacorpration will be one that exploits and does nothing but destroy the environment and violate the rights of indigenous peoples!?

October 17, 2005 - 9:47am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

"In the Long Run…

…We Will All Be Indian"

Jamal Mecklai

Keynes was wrong. Darwin was right.


Keynes famously said, “In the long run, we will all be dead.” Of course, he was speaking just of himself and people around him. I am speaking of all humankind. Darwin, too, was speaking of the species of man, and he famously recognized that diversity is the basis for sustainability – something that environmentalists have been trying to sell the world’s populist leaders on.


Last week, I met an interesting gentlefella – American, venture capitalist with Sand Hill Road pedigree and investments in many diverse parts of the globe. His first time in India, though, and he was curious about several (to me) very obvious elements of the culture. Being men – all right, boys – we, of course, talked about women. He told me that he was amazed that when he (and his wife) had asked an Indian woman to take their photograph, the woman took his camera and handed it to the man with her, who, smiled at them and took the photograph. In America, he said, any woman would have taken the photograph thinking nothing of it. Even in China, where he had spent a lot of time, this would not have been an issue. He was surprised and curious, and wanted to know more about the difference between the sexes in India and whether it was different in the case of Hindus or Muslims and so on.

October 15, 2005 - 6:25pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Personal Debts and US Capitalism

Rick Wolff, Monthly Review

There is no precedent in US — or any other — history for the level of personal debt now carried by the American people. Consider the raw numbers. In 1974, Federal Reserve data show that US mortgage plus other consumer debt totaled $627 billion. By 1994, the total debt had risen to $4,206 billion, and by 2004, it reached $9,709 billion. For the second quarter of 2005, the Fed announced that the nation's debt service ratio (debt payments as a percentage of after-tax income) was 13.6%, the highest since the Fed began recording this statistic in 1980. Past borrowing now costs Americans so much in debt service that more borrowing is required to maintain, let alone expand consumption.


These facts raise two questions: what caused this mountain of debt to arise and what are its consequences? Answering these questions is an urgent matter since, as has been known for centuries, the risks of high debt include economic collapse.

October 9, 2005 - 9:05am -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

Creative Industries in Beijing: Initial Thoughts

Ned Rossiter

During a teaching stint at Tsinghua University in May this year, and then following the trans-Siberian conference organised by Ephemera Journal in September, I started preliminary research on creative industries in Beijing. What follows is a brief report on my experiences, perceptions and meetings in Beijing. My interest is to discern the constellation of forces that might be taken into consideration in future analyses as the research project develops. I should also state that this brief overview of Beijing’s creative industries is part of a collaborative project that undertakes a comparative study of international creative industries. The research seeks to go beyond economistic interpretations of creative industries by focussing on inter-relations and geo-political tensions between trans-local and global cultural flows as they manifest around issues such as labour conditions, intellectual property rights (IPRs), social-technical networks and cultural practices.

From the start, there are many factors and variables that make it questionable to even invoke the term “creative industries” in the Chinese context. Such complications amount to a problematic in translation of the creative industries concept. For the most part, there is little variation at a policy level as governments internationally incorporate the basic ingredients of creative industries rhetoric (clusters, mapping documents, value-chains, creative cities, co-productions, urban renewal, knowledge economies, self-entrepreneurs, etc.) into their portfolio of initiatives that seek to extract economic value from the production of cultural content and provision of services. This would suggest that creative industries, as a policy concept, is divorced from the materialities that compose cultural economies as distinct formations in national and metropolitan settings.

October 7, 2005 - 11:09am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

nolympics writes:

Haiti’s Biometric Elections:

A High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion
Andréa Schmidt

Port-au-Prince, Haiti — A lot of people agree that the upcoming elections in Haiti—the first since Aristide and his government were expelled in the February 29, 2004 coup d’état—are important.

Members of the international community who supported the coup agree: Canada’s special advisor to Haiti, Denis Coderre, has called them “a crossroads,” and “a historical turning point.” The Haitian business elite who orchestrated the coup—and who are referred to here without irony as “civil society”—also agree. They see the election as a process through which their people can consolidate power. And many Lavalas activists in both rural and urban parts of the country believe that now that the election is underway, it is a critical moment to demonstrate that they are still the party that represents the poor majority in this country.

October 7, 2005 - 11:02am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

antiproperty writes:

Whose Class Struggle?
Floyce White

The struggle over semantics is one facet of the overall struggle against capitalism. The conflict over wording does not "go away" no matter what well-intentioned temporary truce you make before a meeting. Pro-capitalists treat your acquiescence as gullibility, and redouble their efforts to impose their terminology. To "play politics" with what you believe to be true is to tell a lie.

October 6, 2005 - 10:14am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

John Doraemi writes:

The
Butcher of New Orleans:

9-11 Insider & Director of "Homeland Security"
Michael Chertoff's Crimes of the State

How
many dead babies and grandparents does it take to earn one the title of "butcher?"

A handful should be sufficient,
if the killer is a common nutcase. Dozens of dead bodies aren't required in
our mainstream sensationalist culture, certainly not hundreds, or thousands!

The buck stops where?

LA
TIMES: "Under the National Response Plan, the Homeland Security
secretary is deemed the 'principal federal official'— the overall manager
— for all major natural disasters."

Knight-Ridder:
"But Chertoff — not Brown — was in charge of managing the national response
to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal
government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters
or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned
that responsibility to the homeland security director."

Clearly Michael Chertoff
was in charge the entire time. Which means that when FEMA actively
blocked every conceivable manner of aid and rescue from arriving — or entering
into — New Orleans and Jefferson Parishes, Michael Chertoff was directly responsible
for the needless deaths that resulted. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
should be arrested immediately for murder, or at least for "manslaughter."

October 6, 2005 - 9:12am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

The Politics of Revolution:
Learning from Autonomist Marxism

Gary Kinsman, Autonomy & Solidarity

Based on a presentation given at a public forum organized by Sudbury [UK] Autonomy & Solidarity in Feb. 2004.

Introduction: Not All Power to Capital

Autonomist Marxism can be seen as a form of Marxism that focuses on developing working class autonomy and power in a capitalist society that is constituted by and through class struggle. One of the strengths of autonomist Marxism is its critique of political economy interpretations of Marxism that end up reifying the social worlds around us, converting what people socially produce into social relationships between things.

Most “orthodox” Marxist political economy gives all power to capital and considers workers as victims without power or agency. In my work and writing I have tried to recognize the resistance and agency of the oppressed and how this agency and action obstructs ruling relations, often forcing the elaboration of new strategies of ruling. For me, autonomist Marxism has provided a much firmer basis for this very different reading of Marxism.

October 6, 2005 - 8:56am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

Fired Up in Texas writes:

You Make Me Join The Minutemen

You people are supporters of terrorism... I wouldn't support you if you held a gun to my head!

You should be ashamed of yourselves. Have you ever heard of entering this country legally? You have just compelled this household to join the Minutemen.

October 5, 2005 - 8:10pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Independent Media

Anonymous Comrade writes:

What the Gruesome Images Say

John Chuckman

There is an Internet site that displays extraordinarily gruesome photographs taken by American soldiers in Iraq. Apparently, the owner of the site exchanges access to pornography for soldiers sending him their war pictures.


Digital cameras and the Internet are now providing a real glimpse of war to an American public that still daydreams about fresh-faced boys and girls marching off to do brave deeds on behalf of democracy.


The Pentagon has become concerned about the site, and rightly so. It is a public relations disaster, especially in the Arab world where such pictures must burn deeply.

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