Radical media, politics and culture.
April 21, 2005 - 2:20pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Sex

"Homosexuality"

Punkerslut

It was once remarked by Dr. Laura, "What I did say is that when an individual is not so drawn to a member of the opposite sex, in biology, that's some kind of error." Dr. Laura's distaste of Homosexuality is nothing new, and there has been much advocacy against her on part of these views. Others, who hold similar views, have defended her opinions. However, what she said her, it may hold some kernal of truth. It may very well be truth, that biologically, it is an "error," if such a term has any real meaning, for someone to be Homosexual. By pursuing an individual of the same sex, procreation cannot occur. It becomes an impossibility in this scenario. If the natural purpose of every organism is to procreate, that their offspring may also procreate indefinitely, then I have no argument. If it happens to be true, that the purpose of life is simply procreation, of reproducing the old generation, then I cannot deny the truth of the statement, that Homosexuality is "some kind of error." I can present no argument that I genuinely believe, no objection that I sincerely hold as truth. That is, at least, if it is true, that life holds no purpose than creating offspring.

April 18, 2005 - 3:54am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
War

Indyrad writes:

Cyber-movement Against The War
By Adam Roark

On February 15, 2003, 10 million people simultaneously rallied in protest of the pending U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was the largest coordinated protest in the history of the world,(1) kicking off nearly 2 years of mass demonstrations culminating with the 400,000 – 1 million-strong Republican National Convention protest in New York City on August 29, 2004. The swift rise and demise of this movement leads one to question its strength and function; both the spectacular scale of these protests and the coordination of them are noteworthy. The U.S. peace movement in particular largely failed to present itself as ungovernable and effective, acting rather to reaffirm the legitimacy of a political system which had lost substantial credibility following the 1998-2000 crisis.

April 16, 2005 - 12:14pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

s0metim3s writes:

The New Protestant Ethic

Arthur Kroker, CTheory

One hundred years after the publication of Max Weber's classic text,
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the fateful
relationship between Protestantism and capitalism has been renewed in
American political discourse. Except this time it is no longer the
original convergence theorized by Weber between the spirit of
Calvinism and acquisitive capitalism whereby Christianity was
destined to be ultimately secondary to the unfolding historical
project of capitalism, but the opposite. In a contemporary political
climate marked by the resurgence seemingly everywhere of faith-based
politics, capitalism and its historical correlate — modernism —
have actually folded back on themselves, quickly reversing modernist
codes of economic secularism and political pluralism, in the
interests of being reanimated with the evangelical spirit of
religious fundamentalism. What Weber foresaw as a primal compact
between Calvinism and acquisitive capitalism — this migration, first
in Europe and then in Puritan America, of Puritan attitudes towards
personal salvation based on giving witness by habits of frugality,
hard work, and discipline into the essentially acquisitive spirit of
capitalism — has been renewed in new key. On the centennial of The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the political
universe is suddenly dominated by the spirit of what might be called
the 'New Protestant Ethic' as the ideological reflex of the age of
networked capitalism and empire politics.

April 15, 2005 - 8:22am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

"Corporate Conquest, Global Geopolitics:

Intellectual Property Rights and Bilateral Investment Treaties"

Aziz Choudry, Seedling, January 2005

Since the breakdown of World Trade Organisation talks in Cancun in September 2003, there has been much talk of the rise of bilateralism. But bilateral trade and investment agreements aren’t so much replacing the multilateral agreements that have foreshadowed them in the last decade as working with them to create a ratcheting system to increase the levels of intellectual property protection worldwide. Interestingly, and perhaps more significantly, bilateral trade and investment agreements are also proving to be quite effective in pushing the foreign policy goals of the US and EU.

April 14, 2005 - 3:09pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

nolympics writes:

"New New Holland?"
Peter Lamborn Wilson, The Brooklyn Rail


Not for the first time in New York City’s history, a buzz about Secession has begun to be heard—or perhaps a serpentine hiss, depending on your point of view. Several local papers (including NY Press, The Nation, and the Brooklyn Rail,), have recently run articles boosting secession and independence for NYC. People seem to be thinking: “Secession… hmm…What a good idea!”

April 10, 2005 - 1:58am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

Jelloul writes:

"Ali Versus Chomsky"

Jelloul

The debate, between supporters of conflicting (either-or) perspectives on Iraq; Sunni Arab versus Shi'i sympathizers, is being increasingly brought into the open — needless to say that our protagonists cannot conceive of any consociational-patriotic alternative.

For example, in a Stockholm conference yesterday evening (April 4, 2005), New Left Review’s Tariq Ali expressed views about the Iraqi Shi’a and the Iranians as "US collaborators;" in particular, he didn’t enjoy the idea of al-Sistani being a Nobel Prize nominee.

Tariq Ali didn’t exactly name Chomsky, whose posture is the opposite in those matters, but the latter’s idea of betting on a Shi’a Crescent-like geopolitical alternative to US domination in the region has been questioned, if only indirectly.

More here.

April 9, 2005 - 7:56pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

"Poetry as Revolutionary Praxis:

Philip Lamantia & the Surrealist Movement in the United States"

Franklin Rosemont

"Poetry is neither tempest nor tornado.
It is a majestic and fertile river."
— Isidore Ducasse

"The deepest river makes the least noise."
— Jean du Vergier de Hauranne

The recent passing of our close friend and fellow surrealist Philip Lamantia calls to mind the “difficult first steps” of surrealism in the United States sixty years ago. More importantly, it reminds us of Lamantia’s own dynamic, inspired and inspiring role in the current and ongoing struggle for surrealist revolution — that is, for freedom now and poetry made by all.


Back in the early 1940s — shortly after his expulsion from a San Francisco junior high school for “intellectual delinquency” — Lamantia at fifteen was the first major voice of surrealism in the U.S. André Breton, author of the Surrealist Manifestoes, then living in New York as a refugee from Nazism, wrote him a letter saluting him as “a voice that rises once in a hundred years.”

April 4, 2005 - 8:38pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

"A Visit with John Holloway:

How to Change the World Without Taking Power"

John Ross, Counterpunch

Puebla de Los Angeles, Mexico — One evening recently, a U.S. correspondent with a lengthy left-wing lineage sat down to dinner with two old comrades. Luis Cota had been a charter member of the long-defunct Mexican Communist Party and visited Moscow several times where he was enrolled at Patrice Lamumba University during the Brezhnev years. Pedro P. is a 40-year veteran of the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina whose travels on the left are encyclopedic. He had visited with Lenin's mummy four times (once each with Mao's and the Bulgarian Georgi Dimitrov's), he recounted.

April 4, 2005 - 2:52pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Hanoi Jane and the City of God"
John Chuckman

A while back Jane Fonda found a new ally in her battle with being a decaying cutie-pie. Injections, face lifts, dye, flaky philosophy, and many hours a day of aerobics were no longer enough to hang on to even an out-of-focus resemblance to the poochy-lipped mannequin of Roger Vadim's "Barbarella."


Jane found Jesus. Not just any Jesus, but America's Jesus, the one who lets you be "born again," becoming a child again, a strong sales point where adults are obsessed with youth and living forever. Jane effectively committed herself to spending eternity with the likes of Franklin Graham, Tammy Faye, and George Bush — punishment enough I should think for far more than all her past errors.

April 4, 2005 - 2:42pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

stevphen writes:

"Physiognomy of Civilisation"
Angela Mitropoulos

Until recently, Sydney University was to hold a conference called 'Physiognomy of Origin'. Keynote speakers were Adrianna Cavarero and Antonio Negri, who were to open a discussion on the resurgent questions of embodiment, origin and potentiality — questions that, as it turns out, are quite central to what transpired.

In the Sydney Sun-Herald in January, Miranda Devine denounced Sydney University for inviting the 'suspected terrorist mastermind Antonio Negri' rather than offering students 'intellectual enlightenment'. Keith Windschuttle elaborated on that viewpoint in The Australian newspaper — 'education in the humanities was once supposed to be a civilising experience' — and repeated the accusation of 'terrorist' against Negri. He concluded his case against free speech by arguing that universities should not 'accommodate people with so little concern for civilised values'. (It is an irony that, in 1971, Australian Security Intelligence (ASIO) spies similarly vilified the then-leftist Windschuttle, whom they reported as giving 'the impression of being a violent revolutionary'.)

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