Radical media, politics and culture.

[Editor's note: Peter Linebaugh wrote this piece, in cuneiform, sometime back in a late-Soviet epoch of some previous millennium. We recycle, in warm digits.]


"The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day"

Peter Linebaugh

A Beginning

The Soviet government parades missiles and marches soldiers on May
Day. The American government has called May First "Loyalty Day" and
associates it with militarism. The real meaning of this day has been
obscured by the designing propaganda of both governments. The truth of May
Day is totally different. To the history of May Day there is a Green side
and there is a Red side.

Under the rainbow, our methodology must be colorful. Green is a
relationship to the earth and what grows therefrom. Red is a relationship
to other people and the blood spilt there among. Green designates life with
only necessary labor; Red designates death with surplus labor. Green is
natural appropriation; Red is social expropriation. Green is husbandry and
nurturance; Red is proletarianization and prostitution. Green is useful
activity; Red is useless toil. Green is creation of desire; Red is class
struggle. May Day is both.

Emrah Göker writes "

ON TURKS, ARMENIANS, AND IMPOSSIBLE ENCOUNTERS

Emrah Göker[1]

"There is no right life in falsehood."

Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia[2]

I am looking at my screen in a sad, though not perplexed, mood today. Allah knows, I want to get furious, but find myself unable to. I also feel embarrassed for not being shocked; the thought of getting used to all this right-wing nationalist bullshit is disturbing and embarrassing. One of the most adamant Turkish racist electronic venues diffusing hatred in English, Turkish Forum, invites me, along with many other citizens of Turkey currently residing in the US, to protest Armenian-American lobbies in front of the White House. I am told that the "enemy" wants to have the 1915 Genocide recognized, force Turkey pay $20 billion in reparations, have both countries open their borders, and claim a huge chunk of Turkish territory. Curiously, Armenians (I am warned) also want to steal the province of Trabzon. It is the only province mentioned in the text, where, recently, four left-wing prison activists were almost lynched by a 2000-strong, incurably masculine, deliriously nationalist crowd, who were led to believe that these pamphleteers were about to burn the Turkish flag.[3] This propaganda war of denial and falsification (shamelessly borrowing the US imperialist slogan, "United We Stand") is also advertising a hit list of "Turkish turncoats", some of them my dear friends and excellent scholars, who are accused to ignore Armenian atrocities against Turks and for being "bought" by Armenians. The language being used is homologous to the Aryan Power rhetoric about "self-hating Whites"; or the Zionist one about "self-hating Jews". It is strange that the nationalists are selling their version of McCarthyism in the US, at a time the neo-cons are busy brewing their own brand in the universities. Now, there was an English proxy of that Turkish proverb. Ah, of course. Birds of a feather, flock together.

StephNJ writes
Feminism and gender binaries

Feminists have often been accused of reinforcing gender binaries. When women-exclusive events take place, when an emphasis is placed on women’s issues, or even when the word “woman” is used, people from all over the political spectrum, including some feminists, denounce the event as holding us back by reinforcing the idea that women and men are inherently different. I have heard this argument from feminists a lot lately and find some basic problems with it, so I’d like to address this claim that an event exclusive to women reinforces gender stereotypes and is thus counterproductive.

Bernie Roddy writes "The following is an attempt to interpret for the prison activist the thinking typically taught in courses in business ethics, and to apply some of the language to the industry of imprisonment.

Advocates of a free market economy are generally social contract theorists. In defense of the free market, open competition is thought necessary to encourage innovation in production methods and a tailoring of production to meet demand. The result is supposed to be the best product at the best price, weeding out trivial products for which there is no need. All this serves the common interest. However, social contract theorists hold that obedience to law is required of anyone who would enjoy its protections and advantages. This means that if you agree to accept, say, a court's decision in your favor, you must also accept the one against your interests. Only by agreeing to abide by unfavorable rulings will others agree to abide by them when the decision of law favors you to their disadvantage. By refusing to sacrifice your own interests in some cases, you risk going it alone in what is called the "state of nature" and considered a terrible alternative.


The New York Times Supports Thought Control:
The Massad Case

Edward S. Herman, ZNet

The New York Times has never been a very courageous newspaper in times of
political hysteria and threats to civil liberties. When Bertrand Russell was
denied the right to fill his appointment at CCNY in 1940, following an ugly
campaign by a rightwing Catholic faction opposed to his positions on divorce
and marriage, the paper not only failed to defend him, its belated editorial
called the appointment "impolitic and unwise" and criticized him for not
withdrawing when the going got hot ("The Russell Case," April 20, 1940).
Russell pointed out in a published reply something the editors had missed:
that there was a serious matter of principle at stake; that a withdrawal
would have been "cowardly and selfish" and would have "tacitly assented to
the proposition that substantial groups should be allowed to drive out of
public office individuals whose opinions, race or nationality they find
repugnant" (April 26, 1940).


During the McCarthy era also the Times failed to stand by its ex-Communist
employees who were willing to tell all to the Times officials, but not turn
informers. They were fired, and in its news and editorials the paper failed
to oppose the witchhunt with vigor and on the basis of principle. Publisher
Arthur Hays Sulzberger himself wrote an editorial assailing the use of the
Fifth Amendment in appearances before the House Committee on UnAmerican
Activities (August 6, 1948).


We are in another period of escalating attacks on civil liberties, with the
Patriot Act, a lawless rightwing administration, open threats to retaliate
against judicial failures to follow rightwing dictates, and perpetual
aggression to create the justification for repressive policies at home. An
important additional factor is the steadily increasing aggressiveness of
pro-Zionist forces, both in the United States and elsewhere, who have fought
to contain criticism of Israeli policies by any means, including harassment,
intimidation, threats, boycotts, claims of "anti-semitism," occasional
resort to violence, and other forms of pressure. While sometimes allegedly
based on the need for fairness, balance and truthfulness, these campaigns
are completely one-sided and are invariably aimed at suppressing alternative
views and inconvenient facts.

s0metim3s writes:

"The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses"

Fred Moten and Stefano Harney

"To the university I'll steal, and there I'll steal," to borrow from Pistol at the end of Henry V, as he would surely borrow from us. This is the only possible relationship to the American university today. This may be true of universities everywhere. It may have to be true of the university in general. But certainly, this much is true in the United States: it cannot be denied that the university is a place of refuge, and it cannot be accepted that the university is a place of enlightenment. In the face of these conditions one can only sneak into the university and steal what one can. To abuse its hospitality, to spite its mission, to join its refugee colony, its gypsy encampment, to be in but not of—this is the path of the subversive intellectual in the modern university.

NOT BORED! writes:

"All the World's A Prison"

NOT BORED!

Hamlet: [...] what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison thither?

Guildenstern: Prison, my lord!

Hamlet: Denmark's a prison.

Rosencrantz: Then the world is one.

Hamlet: A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons.[1]

No doubt many of my readers, even those who are well-educated or widely read, think that the prison -- the place where dark deeds are darkly answered[2] -- is an ancient institution, a barbaric hold-over from barbaric times. In fact, the prison is of relatively recent origin, and this tells us a great deal about the pretentions and realities of modern times, and the wisdom and high degree of development of the ancients.

"Power and the State"

John Holloway

[The following is a transcript of John Holloway’s speech to the London Social Forum in October 2004. Other speakers in the debate were Fausto Bertinotti, Hilary Wainwright and Phil Hearse.]

1. I assume that we are here because we agree on two basic points. Firstly, capitalism is a disaster for humanity and we urgently need a radical social change, a revolution. Secondly, we do not know how such a change can take place. We have ideas, but no certainties. That is why it is important to discuss, respecting our differences and understanding that we are all part of the same movement.

hydrarchist writes: this is from the most recent issue of the multilingual webzine republicart themed around guess what... the Precariat.

A Callcenter In London — A Montage


Marion Hamm


Republicart

"Precarisation" is what the mobilisations for EuroMayday (1) and many publications (2) about the issue of precarity come up with in their search for a missing link between very different life situations in neoliberalised Empire – and maybe even a basis for a shared, radical consciousness. The picture emerging from writings about cognitariat and migration, from the struggles of the US-based "Justice for Janitors" campaign and the intermittents in France, from the intoxicating demonstrations (3) of the EuroMayday Parades and their connectedness with mobilisations for migrant rights, seems to lend justification to the more theoretical reflections.

Nate writes:
Long live the Great Precariat Alliance... and long live the social
precariat's european bio-union




The demonstration saturday [November 6] in Rome has marked the
beginning of a new campaign of union and social mobilization. This
campaign has a transeuropean reach, it breaks with the traditional
sectorial unionism, making the new contradictions of political social
action manifest.


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