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April 24, 2003 - 6:47pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Peter Linebaugh: Magna Carta and the Commons, part two.


Click here for the first part of this article.


Edward Coke's "Fine Fetch"



Four centuries later the 17th century crisis of political legitimacy began. From the Tudor autocracy at the beginning of the century to the Whig oligarchy at the end, and passing through civil wars among the 'four kingdoms' and the bourgeois revolution in between -- the crisis was conducted in terms of Magna Carta. Edward Coke was the hero of Magna Carta's chapter 39 and its myth-maker. [26] Dismissed as Chief Justice of King's Bench, imprisoned in the Tower, he helped draw up the Petition of Right of 1628. Charles I heard he was working on a book on Magna Carta. As Coke lay dying, his chambers were ransacked and his manuscripts were confiscated. At the beginning of the English Revolution Parliament ordered their recovery and they were published posthumously in 1642.

April 24, 2003 - 6:30pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Ben_Meyers writes: Here is the first section of an essay in two parts by Peter Linebaugh. The second can be found here.

"MAGNA CARTA AND THE COMMONS, Or, How Bad King John Pretended to Launch a Crusade against Islam in order to better Conceal his Robbery of the People's Hydrocarbon Energy Resources which at the time (1215) took the form of Woodlands; and, Whether the Hydrocarbon Energy Resources which in our day (2003) take the form of Petroleum can be Restored to the "communa tocius terre," or not." *

Peter Linebaugh



Since 9/11 we have suffered losses of liberties derived from Magna Carta. Habeas corpus has suffered particularly. Justice by trial by jury has suffered a mounting, attack; the prohibition against torture wilts; and more and more domains of action fall outside the rule of law altogether. In the bill of particulars which we, the powerless, imagine will accompany the indictment of the usurper, George Dubya Bush, for the crimes of war and riches, reference may be made to Magna Carta. What is Magna Carta? A voice from the jungle helps to explain.

April 24, 2003 - 9:11am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Workers Solidarity Alliance writes

"Reclaiming May Day"

Workers Solidarity Alliance


May 1st, International Workers' Day, commemorates the historic struggle of
working people throughout the world, and is recognized in nearly every
country except the U.S. and Canada. This despite the fact that the holiday
began in the 1880's in the U.S., with the fight for an 8-hour workday.

April 11, 2003 - 12:01pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Robert Walker writes

"BLOODY TYRANTS WE HAVE KNOWN
(AND A FEW WE’VE EVEN LOVED)

For more than one hundred years US foreign policy has employed armed intervention in countries around the globe as a way to further US commercial interests and expand our sphere of influence. We have installed, supported and shored up a long list of dictators and tyrants in order to get what we want. The effects of our policies on the fate of peoples ruled by “our” despots have never been of concern to American policy makers. In the aftermath of his betrayal of Iraqi Kurds in the 1970s, Henry Kissinger made the cynical observation: "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work."

April 10, 2003 - 11:25am -- hydrarchist
News
The State

nolympics writes:
The Media and the Movement at the Oakland Docks"

David Martinez

I don't see any difference between one TV station and the next, all corporate
media is the same, and they are all our enemy, he tells me angrily. I?m talking
to a young radical, while we are both marching in a picket at the port of
Oakland, just after dawn, both of us stomping our feet to shake off the wet
chill that is still rolling in from of the bay.

The man I am talking to has just slashed the tires of a television van. I am
arguing that we, the radicals in the antiwar movement, should have a stance not
opposed to ALL ?corporate media?. We should instead focus our efforts on the
?worst? stations, those who are renowned for their shoddy and unfactual reporting.
For my comrades and I, those stations are channel two, the local Fox
affiliate, and CNN. The other stations we should try and cultivate, as if to
say: if you screw us over, this will be your punishment. Be warned.

April 8, 2003 - 4:47pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

"Bush, Greed, God's Millionaires"

John Kenneth Galbraith, TomPaine.com

Unsettling times call for comfort from those experienced in coping with

challenges. Throughout World War II, John Kenneth Galbraith helped Franklin

D. Roosevelt run the economy. Now 95, this venerable veteran of troubled

times, former presidential advisor and speech-writer, ambassador and

longtime Harvard professor, shared his thoughts on the economy and more with

TomPaine.com's Sharon Basco.

April 5, 2003 - 11:52am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

From the New Statesman, London, England:

"The Weird Men Behind George W Bush's War"
Michael Lind, New Statesman

America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the
United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to
achieve? Quasi-Marxist explanations involving big oil or American capitalism
are mistaken. Yes, American oil companies and contractors will accept the
spoils of the kill in Iraq. But the oil business, with its Arabist bias, did
not push for this war any more than it supports the Bush administration's
close alliance with Ariel Sharon. Further, President Bush and Vice-President
Cheney are not genuine "Texas oil men" but career politicians who, in
between stints in public life, would have used their connections to enrich
themselves as figureheads in the wheat business, if they had been residents
of Kansas, or in tech companies, had they been Californians.

April 5, 2003 - 11:33am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

jim writes:

"The War That May End the Age of Superpower"

Henry C.K. Liu (05.04.2003)

The United States, like ancient Rome, is beginning to be
plagued by the limits of power. This fact is tactically
acknowledged by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and
Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard B Myers that the war
plan should not be criticized by the press because it has
been framed in a diplomatic and political context, not merely
pure military considerations in a vacuum. They say that it
is the best possible war plan politically, though it may be
far from full utilization of US military potential. America's
top soldier has criticized the uniformed officer corps for
expressing dissent that seriously undermines the war effort.
Such criticism is characterized by Myers as "bearing no
resemblance to the truth", counterproductive and harmful
to US troops in the field.

April 4, 2003 - 8:18am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Anonymous Comrade writes:

This text from The Commoner is written by the editor of Autonomedia's new book Revolutionary Writing.

"Against War and the Preconditions of War"

Werner Bonefeld, The Commoner

On Sundays, holidays, there's naught I take delight in,

Like gossiping of war, and war's array,

The foreign people are a-fighting.

One at the window sits, with glass and friends,

And sees all sorts of ships go down the river gliding;

And blesses then, as home he wends

At night, our times of peace abiding. (Goethe, Faust I).


I

Goethe's depiction of the saturated bourgeois to whom war is a Sunday entertainment and for whom the times are bliss, has an eerie contemporary ring: war as televised entertainment. Even Hollywood can not compete for this is the real snuff movie. Since 1945, wars have been fought mostly in those areas of the world where the integration of populations into the world market society of capital is precarious, that is, where capitalist forms of social reproduction are deemed underdeveloped. Between 1945 and the early 1990, Latin America has had 396.000 war death, Africa 5.3 million, the Middle and Far East, 1.8 million, Asia 4.6 Million and Europe 238.000 (Gantzel and Schwinghammer, 1995, p. 150). This development has continued unabated. How many wars have been fought since the end of the Cold War? How many will be fought, not in years ahead, but in the next few months? Afghanistan has again been transformed into rubble. Iraq is to follow soon, and where next?
April 1, 2003 - 10:37am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
The State

The Bush Administration's Fear of War...and What Forces Them to Wage It


[Translated from the German, November 2002]


In Italy, France, but above all in the United States and England, many hundreds of thousands of people go in the streets in order to protest against the United States' forthcoming war against Iraq. They do this on different grounds and with varying ideas of why the Bush-Cheney-Rice clique wants this war no matter what.


In order to be against war, we don't need to know anything about their respective backgrounds. Wars are always massacres in the interests of the rulers. Whether Bush or Saddam Hussein, whether Schröder or Bin Laden, whether Sharon or Arafat--war and terrorist attacks serve them in the securing of their power and maintenance of the conditions on which their power rests. War is the sharpest form and demonstration of the force on which the capitalist order, the daily prison of labor and the power of money are based (see Wildcat: Global War for the World Order).

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