Dow Pays "Strategic Intelligence" Firm To Spy on Yes Men
Takeaway: movement is on the right track!
WikiLeaks begins to publish today over five million e-mails obtained by Anonymous from "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails, which reveal everything from sinister spy tactics to an insider trading scheme with Goldman Sachs (see below), also include several discussions of the Yes Men and Bhopal activists. (Bhopal activists seek redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India, that led to thousands of deaths, injuries in more than half a million people, and lasting environmental damage.)
Critique, Democracy, and Philosophy in 21st Century Information Society
Towards Critical Theories of Social Media
Uppsala University. May 2-4, 2012
The Fourth ICTs and Society-Conference
Abstract Submission Deadline: Wednesday, Feb 29th, 17:00 CET
Submission guidelines: http://www.icts-and-society.net/events/uppsala2012/
With plenary talks by Vincent Mosco, Graham Murdock, Andrew Feenberg, Catherine McKercher, Charles Ess, Christian Christensen, Christian Fuchs, Gunilla Bradley, Mark Andrejevic, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Peter Dahlgren, Tobias Olsson, Trebor Scholz, Ursula Huws, Wolfgang Hofkirchner.
This conference provides a forum for the discussion of how to critically study social media and their relevance for critique, democracy, politics and philosophy in 21st century information society.
An Absolute Refusal? Notes on the 12 February Demonstration in Athens
Pavlos Hatzopoulos, Ilias Marmaras, Dimitris Parsanoglou
1. The 12th February demonstration in Athens, consolidated, what is becoming clearer in the past weeks: a growing majority of the Greek people support the refusal of the memorandum no.2 no matter what. In spite of the fear mongering spread by the pro-memorandum forces that a negative parliamentary vote would entail an immediate euro exit and the ensuing Africanisation of Greece, the popular support for the new EU-ECB-IMF loans and the correlated austerity measures is waning significantly. The formal political debate is increasingly based on a politics of fear: the government’s and mainstream media’s principal argumentation is stripped, on the one hand, to the bare threat of what a disorderly Greek bankruptcy would entail -invoking often assumed similarities with Greece’s plight during the World War II occupation by German and Italian troops- with basic food and medicine shortages and a lack of basic public amenities like gas, heating, electricity; on the other hand even mainstream media cannot but be critical vis-à-vis the most dismantling provisions of the memorandum no.2 for any sign of consensual legitimacy, such as the automatic decrease by 22% of minimum wages, the content and scope of collective bargaining and so on, insisting however ‘in the final analysis’ that the dilemma posed leaves only one choice.
Save the Greeks from their Saviors!
Alain Badiou, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Étienne Balibar, Claire Denis, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Ranciere, Avital Ronell
[February 22, 2012. Translation into English by Anastazia Golemi.]
At a time when one Greek youth is unemployed. Where 25,000 homeless wander the streets of Athens. Where 30% of the population has fallen under the poverty line and where millions of families are forced to place their children in the care of someone else in order for them not to die of hunger or cold, where refugees and the new poor compete for trashcans at the public dump, the “saviors” of Greece, under the pretext that “Greece is not trying hard enough”, impose a new aid plan that doubles the lethal administered dose. A plan that abolishes the right to work and reduces the poor to the most extreme misery, at the same time as it makes the middle class disappear.
The Return of International Times
IT (International Times) – Europe’s first underground newspaper, founded in 1966, is back. Irish poet Niall McDevitt is its editor
IT is the only blog with two rooms at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The original newspaper has been archived at the V & A and also made available online. It covers four decades of alternative journalism, cultural criticism, and sheer art anarchism.
Mobilizing and Organizing From Below
June 1st - 3rd, 2012 Baltimore, Maryland * 2640
Mobilizing and Organizing from Below will be a gathering of activists and organizers, workers and parents, revolutionaries and militants and radicals and dissenters, dedicated to increasing our ability to come together and challenge the systems of exploitation and oppression that have taken hold of the world. The conference will be a weekend of intensive, horizontally-organized political education, in which we can share skills, analyze the problems we face, and pose difficult questions. It will also provide a space for people from different traditions to come together and recognize the depth of our similarities and the richness of our differences; a space for reflection and discussion, distinct from both the chaotic excitement of spontaneous mass actions and the intense demands of long-term organizing work.
Queering Anarchism
Michael Truscello
review of Jamie Heckert and Richard Cleminson, eds. Anarchism and Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships and Power. Routledge, 2011. 232 pp.
It may surprise some people outside of the study of anarchism that, alongside race, sexuality is perhaps the least studied subject within anarchist scholarship. This absence in the scholarly literature is often mirrored in practice, and as such the recent publication of Jamie Heckert and Richard Cleminson’s Anarchism and Sexuality provides a necessary intervention. Judged on the basis of the editors’ intent "to craft a queer book, both in style and in content" (1), the result is an overwhelming success. Stylistically, the anthology darts from personal memoir to social scientific survey to literary analysis. In this sense, the anthology achieves what most interdisciplinary projects only gesture towards: a collection of writings (I intentionally avoid essays here, because the anthology includes "poetic interludes") that illustrate the dynamics of activists and intellectuals, public agonies and private abuses, philosophical excursions and tactical reminiscences. This may be the most diverse collection of writings I have ever read under one cover.
Do the right thing. 11 thesis on the conflict to come and the world to invent
Libera università metropolitana
1. «The world is all that is the case». Let’s start from Oakland.
On November 2nd a new era began for the #occupy movement and, more in general, for the indignados movement. The occupation of streets and squares –following the Spanish model and the example of Zuccotti Park – was accompanied by an extraordinarily powerful general strike. The port was blocked, public offices closed. Road transport and production came to a stop. Even the police folded their arms. Tens of thousands of people took to the squares, picketing the city, strengthening the paralysis of the port.
We look, with great admiration, to Oakland as to a prototype. It is no doubt an incomplete one, partially immature, yet capable of giving shape temporarily to much needed conflict, able to square with the new composition of labour and with the financial violence. Trade unions are not sufficient to organize a fragmented and widely precarious work force, immersed in the communication flow and forced to slavish job performances. If present day exploitation takes place on the grounds of financial accumulation, class struggle must involve social reproduction, life and extra-labour cooperation, entirely. However, as we feel part of the #occupy movement, we think that much more could be done. Its strength shows the crisis of liberal democracy before the arrogance of financial dictatorship, but does not yet indicate the way to “hurt the masters”, to hurt the bankers. It’s necessary to speak out and start “telling the truth to power”, but power must be sought in the net of metropolitan exploitation, in the theft of surplus value.
In this respect Oakland is a prototype, and in this sense we re-discover our republican inspiration with no shyness.
"Anarchy Can't Fight Alone"
Kuwasi Balagoon
Of all ideologies, anarchy is the one that addresses liberty and equalitarian relations in a realistic and ultimate fashion. It is consistent with each individual having an opportunity to live a complete and total 1ife, With anarchy, the society as a whole not only maintains itself at an equal expense to all, but progresses in a creative process unhindered by any class, caste or party. This is because the goals of anarchy don't include replacing one ruling class with another, neither in the guise of a fairer boss or as a party. This is key because this is what separates anarchist revolutionaries from Maoist, socialist and nationalist revolutionaries who from the onset do not embrace complete revolution. They cannot envision a truly free and equalitarian society and must to some extent embrace the socialization process that makes exploitation and oppression possible and prevalent in the first place.
"Ron Paul, Libertarianism, and the Anarchist Connection"
Joel Sucher
Let's face it, the dogged Republican quest to find the one "true
conservative" is beginning to look more and more like the search for the
Holy Grail. It's an article of faith for most Republican stalwarts that
there should be some such animal; but, it seems, the voters can't make
up their mind just which contender fits that bill of particulars. Mitt's
devotion to the ideal scores high in one primary; Santorum's in another;
then enter Newt, managing to capture some piece of primary fame and
glory. The series of Republican debates has become, in essence, the most
entertaining variety show since Ed Sullivan.
Standing quirkily apart, is Ron Paul: one time Libertarian Party
Presidential candidate (1988), gone mainstream Republican. I've always
thought of him as something of a cross between the kindly TV icon, Dr.
Marcus Welby, and the infinitely patient Fred Rogers, star of Mr.
Roger's Neighborhood. Except in Ron Paul's neighborhood, bankers don't
get bailed out and if you've got a prescription to be filled, don't
count on Medicaid to pay.
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