Radical media, politics and culture.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Lessons From Hell"

John Chuckman

Amid death and destruction, Bush not as Nero, but as Caligula's horse Incitatus

If he is alive, Osama bin Laden surely is enjoying some hearty laughter. Nothing he could imagine, short of the virtually-impossible task of obtaining a tactical nuclear weapon and detonating it in an American city, compares to the damage just inflicted upon the United States by its own President.

Ten thousand dead is the estimate of New Orleans' mayor. A morticians' emergency measures organization is ready for forty thousand corpses. We won't know for weeks, maybe months, as attics, basements, sewers, canals, and dumpsters are searched. The economic damage is nothing less than colossal.

"The Man Who Betrayed the Poor"

George Monbiot

Two months have not elapsed since the G8 summit, and already almost everything
has turned to ashes. Even the crustiest sceptics have been shocked by the speed
with which its promises have been broken.


It is true that they didn't amount to much. The World Development Movement
described the agreement as "a disaster for the world's poor". {1} ActionAid
complained that "the G8 have completely failed to deliver trade justice". {2}
Christian Aid called July 8th as "a sad day for poor people in Africa and all
over the world". {3} Oxfam lamented that "neither the necessary sense of urgency
nor the historic potential of Gleneagles was grasped by the G8". {4}

But one man
had a different view. Bob Geldof, who organised the Live8 events, announced that
"a great justice has been done ... on aid, ten out of ten; on debt, eight out of
ten ... Mission accomplished frankly". {5}

Peter Waterman writes:

"AFL-CIO and the White Man's Burden"

Peter Waterman

[Originally written in 2002 but unpublished at that time, this piece seems to me to have again become relevant in the light of the AFL-CIO's last (latest?) convention. Here its international relations came to be challenged on a national stage for the first time. Not for the last time. The 'boxes' referred to in the text have disappeared in the transmogrification from Word to this site. Interested readers or publishers can obtain the orginal from me. PW. September 1, 2005]

THE EMAIL DIALOGUES

Kim Scipes, a former trade unionist now living in Chicago, has been campaigning over the last years for an opening of the books on the international policy of the 'old' AFL-CIO, with respect to the Pinochet coup in Chile, 1973. Now he is questioning the policy of the 'new' AFL-CIO with respect to the attempted coup in Venezuela and, most-recently, to Cuba. (Scipes 2000, 2002a, b).

In response to such challenges, Stan Gacek, a leading International Department officer, issued a public response which later appeared on the AFL-CIO website (AFL-CIO 2002). The speed of this response, and its reproduction on the website is, in my experience, an innovation. But, apparently, an innovation of restricted application. In a further reply to Scipes on the Cuba funding, which has not been publicly circulated, Gacek declared that

'In response to…your e-mails, you should know that the Solidarity Center is NOT receiving any funding under the USAID/Cuba Program of May, 2002.' (Forwarded email, June 26, 2002)

Puzzled by this odd formulation, and wondering whether Kim might have maybe made a loose accusation, I re-read his email but then realized that the problem was not a loose accusation but, rather, a tight answer – a legalistic formulation which did not address the substance of Kim Scipes' question — or even the detailed US state funding data Kim had provided!

"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"

Mike Alewitz

Our fabulous New Orleans, one of the world's great cultural treasures, lies in
ruins. The destruction of this city's artistic life, just as with the loss of life and
property, is a tragedy of immense proportions.


New Orleans was a product of many influences – but it's character was
indelibly stamped by slaves and their descendants. Slavery was a holocaust
of such magnitude that it resulted in the deaths of millions of Africans and
enormous human suffering. It was a holocaust, as we see today, that never
really ended.


African-Americans responded to their cruel treatment by creating art and
music that ultimately became Americas great gift to the world. While the
former slave masters built a powerful empire based on military conquest and
exploitation, the former slaves fostered a unique culture based on their
African roots. New Orleans was a magical world where music was vibrant,
Tabasco flowed freely and human sexuality was celebrated in fantastic
spectacles.

Comrade Matt, T writes:

"The Forbes Convergence"

Comrade Matt, T

While in London during1862, Dostoevsky once wrote of that "apparent disorder that is in actuality the highest degree of bourgeois order”.


Jump forward to Sydney 2005 and there is disorder — not conducive to bourgeois order — in the streets. Over the last few days from the 30th of August through the 2nd of September there has been numerus anti-capitalist and anti-war actions carried out to coincide with the Forbes conference.

The Forbes conference was a meting of around 350 CEO’s and politicians of the neo-liberal or economic rationalist persuasion, Steven Forbes, Rudy Giuliani and John Howard were all present, which give you an idea of the politics represented.

Notes From Inside New Orleans
Jordan Flaherty

Friday, September 2, 2005

I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps.

In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.

How the Free Market Killed New Orleans


Michael Parenti, ZMag


The free market played a crucial role in the
destruction of New Orleans and the death of thousands
of its residents. Armed with advanced warning that a
momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that
city and surrounding areas, what did officials do?
They played the free market.

They announced that everyone should evacuate. Everyone
was expected to devise their own way out of the
disaster area by private means, just as the free
market dictates, just like people do when disaster
hits free-market Third World countries.


It is a beautiful thing this free market in which
every individual pursues his or her own personal
interests and thereby effects an optimal outcome for
the entire society. This is the way the invisible hand
works its wonders.

From the New Left Review:

What positive programme can the Left propose for a 'social Europe', against the Anglo-Saxon model? Robin Blackburn outlines first steps towards a new financial regime aimed at boosting resources for sustainable health and retirement provision, with a share levy on corporations, redistributed across the continent.

Capital and Social Europe

Robin Blackburn


The emphatic French and Dutch rejection of the proposed Constitution for the European Union creates an unstable situation in which, unless the European Left begins to define an alternative and rally support behind it, the neoliberal project will actually profit from votes that were, more than anything else, an expression of popular anger at the failure of the existing Euro-regime and its project of 'reform'. European monetary union has been accompanied by deregulation of financial markets, privatization of public assets and the cutting of social provision. At different times this is a programme that has been espoused by such varied sponsors as German Christian Democrats, German Social Democrats, German Greens, French Gaullists and Socialists, Italian former Communists and neo-conservatives, British New Labour and the Spanish Right. The project was flimsily disguised by attaching to it the phrase 'social Europe', but behind this was the drive to cut back collective provision and to commodify social protection.

phollings writes:

"Iran Next, By Way of Charleston?"
Peter Hollings

In the summer of 2002 . . . I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He . . . told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' — Ron Suskind

Last January an article appeared in the New Yorker by noted investigative journalist Seymour Hirsch. In his article, "The Coming Wars" Hirsch quotes a intelligence official as saying:

"This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone," the former high-level intelligence official told me. "Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah — we've got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism."

"In Praise of Looting:

Blaming Katrina's Victims For Not Being Rich"

Harry Looter, Infoshop News

"The Iberville Housing Projects got pissed off because the police
started to 'shop' after they kicked out looters. Then they started
shooting at cops. When the cops left, the looters looted everything.
There's probably not a grocery left in this city." — Live Journal

The devastation wrought on the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina is
clearly evident three days after the winds started blowing and the
journalists scampered out from their hotels. Most of New Orleans is
under water. The Mississippi and Alabama coasts are obliterated. The
situation in New Orleans is dire as thousands of people struggle to
survive and get out of the worsening toxic cesspool that the city is
becoming.

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