Radical media, politics and culture.

"The Criminal Bee"

Hakim Bey


Nietzsche says somewhere that the true, free spirit wil not wish to see the laws of the herd abolished, lest there exist nothing to struggle against and overcome. Litle danger of such an abolishment at this point, one might suppose.

Since Nietzsche's time law has perhaps mutated from a complex but many-dimensional tool of the oppresor class to the subtle, fratal, all-pervasive self-image of the spectacle. Law simulates the dictatorship of community, forever promising & forever withdrawing the utopia of justice.

Our founding myths here in America, which take the form of such texts as a declaration of independence or a bill of rights etc. prove so infinitely flexible as to become, like all myths, their opposites. The law no longer seems like a dialctical edge, as it was for Nietzsche, but rather a viral ooze, infecting the very fabric of language & thought.

"The Dinner Party"

Stephan Pearl Andrews

The highest type of human society in the existing social order is found in the parlor. In the elegant and refined reunions of the aristocratic classes there is none of the impertinent interference of legislation. The Individuality of each is fully admitted. Intercourse, therefore, is perfectly free. Conversation is continuous, brilliant, and varied. Groups are formed according to attraction. They are continuously broken up, and re-formed through the operation of the same subtile and all-pervading influence. Mutual deference pervades all classes, and the most perfect harmony, ever yet attained, in complex human relations, prevails under precisely those circumstances which Legislators and Statesmen dread as the conditions of inevitable anarchy and confusion. If there are laws of etiquette at all, they are mere suggestions of principles admitted into and judged of for himself or herself, by each individual mind.

"Evolution and Revolution"

Elisée Reclus


These two words, Evolution and Revolution, closely resemble one another, and yet they are constantly used in their social and political sense as though their meaning were absolutely antagonistic.  The word Evolution, synonymous with gradual and continuous development in morals and ideas, is brought forward in certain circles as though it were the antithesis of that fearful word, Revolution, which implies changes more or less sudden in their action, and entailing some sort of catastrophe.  And yet is it possible that a transformation can take place in ideas without bringing about some abrupt displacements in the equilibrium of life?  Must not revolution necessarily follow evolution, as action follows the desire to act?  They are fundamentally one and the same thing, differing only according to the time of their appearance.  If, on the one hand, we believe in the normal progress of ideas, and, on the other, expect opposition, then, of necessity, we believe in external shocks that change the form of society. 

"Colin and the Crazies"

Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian

The culling of the US secretary of state is symptomatic of a swing
even further to the right.

Colin Powell's final scene was a poignant but harsh exposure of his
self-delusion and humiliation. The former general held in his head an
idea of himself as sacrificing and disciplined. But the good soldier
was dismissed at last by his commander-in-chief as a bad egg. Bush,
Cheney and Rumsfeld regarded him either as a useful tool or a vain
obstructionist. They deployed his reputation as the most popular man
and the most credible face in the US for their own ends, and when he
contributed an independent view he was isolated and undermined.

"The Pot Thickens"

Dean Kuipers, Los Angeles CityBeat

Drug policy reform activist Rob Kampia explains why the election was a breakthrough for marijuana legalization.

If President George W. Bush's squeaky reelection is supposed to be a mandate on conservative moral values, how do you explain that 17 out of 20 pro-marijuana initiatives on ballots nationwide were approved?


For instance, look at Montana: Energized evangelical voters in this pro-Bush state led a charge that amended their state constitution to make gay marriage illegal, but they also approved of medical marijuana by a massive 62 to 38 percent. The churches obviously didn't mobilize against pot like White House Drug Czar John Walters urged them to do. In fact, this election may be the breakthrough on marijuana legalization in general: Conservatives nationwide came out in favor of pot as medicine.

Former Head of CIA's Bin Laden Unit Says the U.S. Misunderstands the Al Qaeda Leader

Nov. 17, 2004 — Michael Scheuer, a former CIA analyst who headed the agency's Osama bin Laden unit, tells ABC News' Peter Jennings in an interview that the U.S. government has a fundamental misunderstanding of the al Qaeda leader.

Scheuer, who published the book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror" under the name "Anonymous," started profiling bin Laden in the mid-1980s. He resigned from the CIA this month so he could speak freely about what he regards as a general failure to understand bin Laden.

Following is an excerpt of the interview:

Peter Jennings: Can you tell me, first of all, what do you think of Osama bin Laden?

Michael Scheuer: He is a dedicated pious Muslim. An apparently devout family man. He is also that odd combination of a 12th century religious person, and a modern, almost the CEO-type, officer. He manages an entirely unique multinational organization and does it very well. His actions, of course, are reprehensible in our perception. And we need to kill him and defeat him.

Jennings: Why is his "piety," or his "religion," if you will, relevant to our security?

Scheuer: It's relevant, sir, because, many Muslims in the Islamic world regard as an "assault on their religion" — certainly our presence on the Arabian peninsula remains a grievous offense to many, many Muslims, whether they support bin Laden or not.

Jennings: Because that's where two of the holy places are located.

Scheuer: And the homeland of the prophets, sir. It's the first holiest place in Islam. With the war in Iraq, we now occupy the second holiest place in Islam. And with the Israelis holding Jerusalem, they occupy the third holiest place. So in a sense, we have managed to portray ourselves as the "invaders of Islamic sanctities."

"Falluja 101"
Rashid Khalidi, In These Times

“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster. Our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad but the responsibility, in this case, is not on the army which has acted only upon the request of the civil authorities.” — T.E. Lawrence, The London Sunday Times, August 1920
There is a small City on one of the bends of the Euphrates that sticks out into the great Syrian Desert. It’s on an ancient trade route linking the oasis towns of the Nejd province of what is today Saudi Arabia with the great cities of Aleppo and Mosul to the north. It also is on the desert highway between Baghdad and Amman. This city is a crossroads.

"Dollar's Decline Is Reverberating"

David Streitfeld, Los Angeles Times

During a routine sale of U.S. Treasury bonds in early September, one of the essential pillars holding up the economy suddenly disappeared.

Foreigners have been regularly buying nearly half of all debt issued by the U.S. government. On Sept. 9, for the first time that anyone could remember, they stayed home.

"Thoughts of panic flickered out there," said Sadakichi Robbins, head of global fixed-income trading at Bank Julius Baer.

"Henri Lefebvre’s Youthfulness of Heart"
Andy Merrifield, The Brooklyn Rail


I never met Henri Lefebvre, the French Marxist philosopher, nor saw him lecture. Some of my friends who did said he was a real knockout. Others who had contact with him recall his warm, slow, melodious voice, his boyish passions, his virility—even in old age—and the posse of young, attractive women invariably in his train. Portraits cast him as a Rabelaisian monk and Kierkegaardian seducer all rolled into one. I’m sorry I missed this act, missed the man himself, en direct, live. But I did see him on British TV once, back in the early 1990s. The series, “The Spirit of Freedom,” was strictly for insomniacs and appeared in the wee hours. Each of the four programs tried to assess the legacy of Left French intellectuals during the twentieth-century. The cynical tone throughout wasn’t too surprising given that its narrator and brainchild was Bernard-Henri Lévy—BHL, as the French media know him—Paris-Match’s answer to Jean-Paul Sartre. The night I watched, an old white-haired man sat in front of the camera, dressed in a blue denim work shirt and rumpled brown tweed jacket. In his ninetieth-year, it was obvious to viewers Lefebvre hadn’t long left to live. Even Lévy described his interviewee as “tired that afternoon. His face was pallid, his eyes blood-shot. I felt he was overwhelmed from the start and clearly bored at having to answer my questions…I’d come hoping he would play a certain role, and this he did with a show of goodwill I hadn’t expected. I have to admit he also did it with elegance and talent.”

"UK Media and 100,000 Iraqi Civilian DeathsS"
Media Lens


Part 1
The Nicest Guys You Can Imagine

In their film, The Corporation, Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan describe how in the mid-1800s the corporation was declared a "fictitious person" in law and granted the same legal rights as real individuals. So what kind of 'person' is a corporation?

The filmmakers assessed the corporate 'personality' using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organisation and standard diagnostic tools of psychiatrists and psychologists:
"The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social 'personality': It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism... Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a 'psychopath.'"

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