CFP Affinities Challenging the rhetoric of non-State actors, political violence and ‘terrorism
Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action
Affinities, a journal of contemporary radical politics, is now accepting submissionproposals from individuals or collectives interested in contributing to a special edition focused on non-State actors, political violence and ‘terrorism.’ The purpose of this special edition of Affinities is to reengage critical anti-authoritarian scholarship with themes that challenge Statist attempts to control discourses around violence. Who is a terrorist?
What is terrorism? When does resistance become violence? How does one label direct action movements? This special issue seeks to create space for an evolving discourse beyond the ‘violence versus non-violence,’ debate. How can we move stagnant conversations about tactical efficacy, the ethics of non-violence, the strategy of economic sabotage and direct action forward?
Towards a Workers' Organisation
Gurgaon Workers News
In this and the following issue of GurgaonWorkersNews we debate the question of 'workers' organisations': how do workers' bodies formed in the daily struggle relate to 'political' coordinations of workers, in continuity with the struggle against the existing social system?
This debate has to be firmly based on an analysis of a) the actual current workers' experiences of struggle and the problematic and promising tendencies within; b) the relation between particular struggle and general conditions of the capitalist cycle; c) the changing composition of work-force and the relation of workers to the immediate and social production process - as material basis for self-organisation.
This first part consists of general political theses concerning the question of workers' organisations and, in relation to this, we present six longer reports on recent struggles in Delhi-Faridabad-Gurgaon industrial areas. The second part will focus on current developments at Maruti Suzuki and its supply chain regarding the re-composition of workers' collectivity after the struggle in 2011. On this background we will raise general questions on the relation between workers' organisations and workers' inquiry. Please contribute to the debate.
New issue of ephemera on 'the atmosphere business' released
The contributions collected in this special issue of ephemera question the underlying ideologies and assumptions of carbon markets, and bring to light many of the contradictions and antagonisms that are currently at the heart of ‘climate capitalism’. They offer a critical assessment of the political economy of carbon trading, and a detailed understanding of how these newly created markets are designed, how they (don’t) work, the various actors that are involved, and how these actors function together to create and contest the ‘atmosphere business’. In 5 notes, 6 articles, 1 interview and 3 book reviews, some of the most prominent critical voices in debates about the atmosphere business are brought together in this special issue.
Slovenian Anarchist Bookfair Maribor May 25-26
Pekarna magdalenske mreže, Maribor, Slovenia
An open call for participation to anarchist groups/organizations and individuals, anarchist publishers and distributions Federation for anarchist organizing (FAO), an anarchist federation in Slovenia, is organizing Anarh, anarchist book-fair and festival for the second year in the row. Following the idea of decentralization this year’s event will take place in Maribor, the second largest city in Slovenia, at Pekarna magdalenske mreže (Ob železnici 8), during 25 and 26 of May 2012
The main concept of our event is a book-fair with anarchist literature/materials and other autonomous production, cultural events, public kitchen, different workshops and public discussions with guests from Slovenia and abroad about open issues of capitalism and anarchist alternatives to it.
Report from France:
Recent Developments in the Class Struggle
Friday, May 11, 2012, 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
The New School, Room 716, 6 East 16th Street, NYC
The speakers are militants of the Groupe d'Action pour la Recomposition de l'Autonomie Proletarienne (GARAP), based in Paris but with some members elsewhere in France. Founded recently, this small formation and its revolutionary perspective are primarily inspired by anti-statist and anti-authoritarian Marxism. Its members are blue, white-collar and unemployed workers, as well as students.
The group believes that the struggle of the proletariat in France is contained by the left and far-left parties (in the first case, the Stalinists and the Social Democrats and, in the second case, the Trotskyists)--the latter being well placed in institutions and especially at every level of the major trade-union federations. Only struggles that confront those forces of containment have the potential of confronting capital effectively.
Back to 1911
Temporal Autonomous Zones
Peter Lamborn Wilson
Reversion to 1911 would constitute a perfect first step for a 21st century neo-Luddite movement. Living in 1911 means using technology and culture only up to that point and no further, or as little as possible.
For example, you can have a player-piano and phonograph, but no radio or TV; an ice-box, but not a refrigerator; an ocean liner, but not an aeroplane, electric fans, but no air conditioner.
You dress 1911. You can have a telephone. You can even have a car, ideally an electric. Someday, someone will make replicas of the 1911 “Grandma Duck” Detroit Electric, one of the most beautiful cars ever designed.
1911 was a great year for Modernism, Expressionism, Symbolism, Rosicrucianism, anarcho- syndicalism and Individualism, vegetarian lebensreform, and Nietzschean cosmic consciousness, but it was also the last great Edwardian year, the twilight of British Empire and last decadent gilded moments of Manchu, Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian, French and Ottoman monarchy; last “old days” before the hideous 20th century really got going.
April 25th is “1T Day”: Occupy Student Debt
Ann Larson and Malav Kanuga
“We work and we borrow in order to work and to borrow. And the jobs we
work toward are the jobs we already have. Meanwhile, what we acquire isn’t education; it’s debt.”
— Communiqué from an Absent Future
(from the UCSC occupation barricades September 2009)
In the United States, two-thirds of college graduates leave school with student loan debt, an average of $25,000 each. Debt rates have increased 500 percent since 1999, and there are more and more of us across the country facing six-figure loans who will make monthly payments for the rest of our lives. Those of us who are low-income and working-class students often incur debts for degrees we will never complete because it is especially difficult balancing school and employment in this precarious economy. Student debt will burden us and our families for years to come. It will be the breath down our neck at every life choice and the clock that disciplines our present and future labor time. Debt is profoundly alienating and individuating. It separates us from each other and the commonwealth of our education gained from generations of social movements.
Riseup Server Seized By US Federal Authorities
Riseup
FBI seizes server providing anonymous remailer and many other services from colocation facility.
Contacts:¶
- Riseup Networks, Devin Theriot-Orr, 206-708-8740, sunbird@riseup.net
- May First/People Link, Jamie McClelland, 917-509-5734, jm@mayfirst.org
- ECN: Isole Nella Rete, inr@riseup.net
Attack on Anonymous Speech¶
On Wednesday, April 18, at approximately 16:00 Eastern Time, U.S. Federal authorities removed a server from a colocation facility shared by Riseup Networks and May First/People Link in New York City. The seized server was operated by the European Counter Network (“ECN”), the oldest independent internet service provider in Europe, who, among many other things, provided an anonymous remailer service, Mixmaster, that was the target of an FBI investigation into the bomb threats against the University of Pittsburgh.
“The company running the facility has confirmed that the server was removed in conjunction with a search warrant issued by the FBI,” said May First/People Link director Jamie McClelland. “The server seizure is not only an attack against us, but an attack against all users of the Internet who depend on anonymous communication.”
Our Operaismo
Mario Tronti
The italian operaismo of the 1960s starts with the birth of Quaderni rossi and stops with the death of Classe operaia. End of story. Thus goes the argument. Or alternatively—si le grain ne meurt—operaismo is reproduced in other ways, reincarnated, transformed, corrupted and . . . lost. This text originally sprang from the urge to clarify the intellectual distinction between operaismo—‘workerism’ the inadequate but unavoidable English translation—and post-operaismo, or the autonomia movements of the late 70s and after. Then the sweet pleasures of remembrance did the rest. Whether this ‘rest’ is in good taste or of any use today will be for its readers to judge. This is my truth, based on what I believed back then and which I only see more clearly today. I don’t want to provide a canonical interpretation of that project; but this is one of the possible readings, one-sided enough to support the good old idea of partisan research, that indigestible theoretical practice of ‘point of view’ that formed us.
An Evening on Communisation: Presentations and Release of Sic Volume 1: International Journal for Communisation
Friday April 20th – 7pm
16 Beaver Street 4th Floor New York, NY 10004
We invite you to join us for an evening of presentations and discussion on the theme of communisation with the release of Sic: International Journal for Communisation.
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