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March 22, 2002 - 1:56pm -- nomadlab
Analysis & Polemic
News

Snufkin Moomintroll of Daybreak Anarchist Collective and a couple of anonymous comrades have submitted an article titled "Viva Anarquia! A North American Anarchists account of Barcelona anti EU mobilizations!"


Read the article and comments on infoshop.org

the intro is printed below:


It´s difficult to sum up in one statement all the stuff that´s been happening in Barcelona during the last week of mobilizations that led to Sundays manifestation of 500,000 people, the largest anti-globalization march in our movements history. The momentum has been noticably building for a month; posters and graffiti spontaneously appearing, newspapers buzzing of police plans and presence, media threats that dangerous foreign agitators are coming to Barcelona (that´s us!), and much more. In the last week before the summit the police presence of 8,500 smothered the city, and later in the week shut down major streets, transportation, and neighborhoods in order to safeguard the summit (yes, again they had to meet in an occupied zone). Homeless people were cleared out of sight, young people were cleaned from the streets and plazas, and some parts of inner barcelona became a surreal playground of militarized police and tourists in bad shirts. Yes, the name Franco was mentioned more then once.

March 22, 2002 - 8:37am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

Thomas Seay writes: Here is my translation of Casarini's surprizing statement on the Biagi assasination. Please
circulate. The original can be found at:
Casarini

To All Civil Society by Luca Casarini

(translated from the Italian by Thomas Seay)

What happened in Bologna is a horrible pro-regime homicide. I reaffirm this and I will continue to state this with all my might along with thousands and thousands of people, knowing that this thought is shared by a lot of people.

What does this mean? It means that it is not the "terrorism", as the term is being used, of a previous time in this country.
Nor is it the "strategy of tension", which was inaugurated in 1969 with a state-planted fascist bomb in Piazza Fontana. Those two settings were completely different from today, as were the culture, the political and social climate in Italy as in the rest
of the world. The needs of the various state apparatus were different, the "field of action", the nation-state was different. The thinking of thousands of youth, who wanted to fight with arms, was different.

March 21, 2002 - 12:45pm -- nomadlab
Analysis & Polemic
News


Anonymous Comrade writes "Scientific American, April 2002
full: http://www.sciam.com/2002/0402issue/0402bales.html


The Social Psychology of Modern Slavery


Contrary to conventional wisdom, slavery has not disappeared from the
world. Social scientists are trying to explain its persistence


By Kevin Bales


For Meera, the revolution began with a single rupee. When a social worker
came across Meera's unmapped village in the hills of Uttar Pradesh in India
three years ago, he found that the entire population was in hereditary debt
bondage. It could have been in the time of their grandfathers or
great-grandfathers--few in the village could remember--but at some point in
their past, the families had pledged themselves to unpaid labor in return
for loans of money. The debt passed down through the generations. Children
as young as five years old worked in quarry pits, making sand by crushing
stones with hammers. Dust, flying rock chips and heavy loads had left many
villagers with silicosis and injured eyes or backs.


Calling together some of the women, the social worker proposed a radical
plan. If groups of 10 women agreed to set aside a single rupee a week from
the tiny sums the moneylenders gave them to buy rice, he would provide seed
money and keep the funds safe. Meera and nine others formed the first
group. The rupees slowly mounted up. After three months, the group had
enough to pay off the loan against which Meera was bonded. She began
earning money for her work, which greatly increased the amount she could
contribute to the group. In another two months, another woman was freed;
the following month, a third came out of bondage."

March 20, 2002 - 1:06pm -- nomadlab
Analysis & Polemic
News

David McReynolds writes

"A Thousand Coffins at the United Nations


Mar 19, 2002


Let's see if I can pull the words out at this hour, and
write this in one flow.


Today, shortly after 1 p.m., I got to Dag Hamaskold
Plaza near the United Nations, to look at the "Coffin
Display" arranged by Israeli and Palestinian Bereaved
Families for Peace. (Two groups cooperated in this
project, the Parents' Circle of 200 families in Israel
and National Movement for Change in the Palestinian
Authority).

March 20, 2002 - 11:45am -- jim
News
News

Italian Government Aide Murdered, Political Motive Suspected

BBC News

Marco Biagi, a close aide to Italian Labour Minister Roberto Maroni, has been shot dead outside his home in Bologna. Eyewitnesses said two people on a
motorbike approached the 51-year-old
economist and law professor as he cycled
home, and gunned him down. Police have begun an investigation into
what is being seen as an act of political
terrorism.

March 19, 2002 - 10:28am -- jim
News

Noam Chomsky, MIT Linguist, Critiques U.S. Foreign Policy

Jonathan Curiel, San Francisco Chronicle, March 18, 2002

When Noam Chomsky takes the stage today at the University of
San Francisco to give a speech titled "Human Rights: Global
Change and Continuity, " he'll be greeted by an audience
that sees him as the antidote to U.S. leaders who back the
military campaign in Afghanistan and want to expand the war
on terrorism to Iraq and other countries.

March 19, 2002 - 9:45am -- jim
News
News

German Hermeneuticist Hans-Georg Gadamer, 1900-2002

Julian Roberts, Guardian , Monday March 18, 2002, Gadamer obit

Hans-Georg Gadamer, who has died in Heidelberg aged 102, was one of the outstanding figures of German 20th-century philosophy. He was not just astonishingly long-lived, but his frenetic philosophical activity continued until his death.

March 18, 2002 - 11:45am -- Uncle Fluffy
Analysis & Polemic
News

Chuck0 writes

The Stars & Stripes: Killing for the Flag

Alternative Press Review,Vol 7, No.1/Spring 2002

The U.S. is the only nation-state to have been condemned by the World Court
for international terrorism.

The U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council
resolution calling on governments to observe international law. After
deliberately targeting the civilian public health infrastructure, the U.S.
military imposes a continuing economic blockade on Iraq which has directly
resulted in the deaths of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of children.
The U.S. government is the primary financier and arms supplier for the
decades-long Israeli war against the entire Palestinian people. The U.S.
armed forces and U.S. organized and/or financed ally or proxy forces have
killed millions upon millions of civilians since the end of World War II.
This is the not-so-hidden meaning of the Stars and Stripes as the vast
majority of people around the world understand it.

March 18, 2002 - 9:01am -- jim
News

Bill Weinberg's World War III Report, #25, March 17, 2002

Bill Weinberg with David Bloom, researcher

Vigilant, Independent Sentry of Truth in the War on Terrorism

UN ENDORSES PALESTINE; ISRAEL PULLS BACK IN WEST BANK; ALLIES BREAK RANKS ON IRAQ--WORLD FINALLY CHILLING OUT?

THE AFGHANISTAN FRONT

1. US "Mopping Up" in Operation Anaconda

2. Despite 8 Dead, Media Plays Up US Troops Gloating

3. Russians Warn Not to be Deceived by Early Victories

4. John Podhoretz Prepares Public for Quagmire

5. Pentagon: Osama Irrelevant

6. Hekmatyar Capitulates

7. Ex-King Backs Expansion of "Peacekeeping Force"

8. Scramble for Afghanistan's Electric Grid; Pipeline Interests Lurk in Background?

9. Desperate Afghans Scavenge Kandahar "Ground Zero"

10. Media Rewrite History of Taliban Opium Crackdown

THE PALESTINE FRONT

1. UN Resolution 1397 Endorses Palestinian State

2. Massive Israeli Invasion of Ramallah; Bush: "Not Helpful"

3. More Raids on Refugee Camps; 32 Dead

4. Israel Pulls Back as Zinni Arrives

5. Abuse of Palestinian Detainees Evokes Auschwitz

6. Israel Building "Concentration Camp" Near Hebron?

7. Summary Execution of Captured Palestinian?

8. Loophole in Israeli Ban on House Demolitions

9. Italian Journalist Killed in Ramallah

10. Mysterious Attack Near Lebanon Border

11. Cabinet Hardliners Resign, Plug "Right-Wing Peace Plan"

12. Hardliners Rally in Tel Aviv

13. Israeli Mayors: We Won't Hire "Refuseniks"

THE IRAQ FRONT

1. Allies Break Ranks With US in Iraq Attack

2. ...Except Britain, Of Course

3. US Support of Saddam Genocide Down Memory Hole

4. Does Saddam Have Weapons of Mass Destruction?

5. "Taliban-Like" Group in Iraqi Kurdistan?

XENOPHOBIA WATCH

1. Pat Robertson Disses Islam

2. Rehnquist Fears Headwraps?

3. Summary Expulsion of Somali Refugees

WATCHING THE SHADOWS

1. Appeal Denied in Lockerbie Conviction

2. ISI Link to Pearl Kidnapping?

3. Student Visas Posthumously Issued for 9-11 Hijackers!

March 17, 2002 - 2:15pm -- Uncle Fluffy
Analysis & Polemic
News


jim writes: I saw this on the web, it is worth a read:

"The New Empire Loyalists


Former Leftists Turned US Military Cheerleaders Are Helping Snuff Out Its Traditions of Dissent"


Tariq Ali

Saturday March 16, 2002, The Guardian


Exactly one year before the hijackers hit the Pentagon, Chalmers Johnson, a distinguished American academic, staunch supporter of the US during the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and one-time senior analyst for the CIA, tried to alert his fellow-citizens to the dangers that lay ahead. He offered a trenchant critique of his country's post-cold war imperial policies: "Blowback," he prophesied, "is shorthand for saying that a nation reaps what it sows, even if it does not fully know or understand what it has sown.


"Given its wealth and power, the United States will be a prime recipient in the foreseeable future of all of the more expectable forms of blowback, particularly terrorist attacks against Americans in and out of the armed forces anywhere on earth, including within the United States."

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