Anna Weekes writes "The South African state is moving against communities who fight not to be disconnected from their basic services. Over 100 Soweto residents from the Electricity Crisis Committee have been in jail for the past 24 hours after holding a peaceful protest outside the Johannesburg Mayor's home. The Mayor, ANC's Amos Masondo, was in Hawaai but his bodyguard kindly came out onto the roof and fired 8 live bullets at the protestors!! One protestor was injured, but still taken to jail! After the shots were fired, the protestors disconnected Masondo's water whereafter they were arrested. Please read the whole story on the South Africa Indymedia site. The Minister of Public Enterprises, Jeff Radebe, last December vowed to crack down on the SECC which he says is a gang of criminals and rats - most members are poor pensioners!!!!"

Michael Hardt "The Globalizers Block Globalization"

A German Interview with Stefan Krempl

What happens when a former disciple of the Italian terror movement Red Brigades and a fairly unknown American literature professor meet up and write a book together about globalization? In the case of Empire (Empire), Antonio Negri
(Negri) and Michael Hardt (Hardt) scored. Their opus stirred up quite a debate in left academic circles as well as in the so-called anti-globalization protest movements since its first publication in 2000. In fact, it became an early classic of neo-Marxist literature already.

Finally, a German translation
(German translation) has been released a few days ago. On his promotion tour, Hardt explained to the hip Berlin crowd in the equally hip Volksbuehne theatre as well as to guests of the British Council in the Deutsche Bank representation Unter den Linden the paradox of globalization and his utopian vision of a truly global citizenship. The soft-looking guy states that we
now have to reinvent democracy from the nation state to the global sphere and that we have to find new forms of representation. Of course, he also didn't spare with criticism on the Bush wars against the "axis of evil". In
his talk with Telepolis, Hardt clears up his position on al-Qaida,
anarchism, and on the new global organization of power.

Announcing the launch of a new not-for-profit organization:

DICTATOR WATCH AND THE ACTIVIST EXCHANGE

dictator watch

The mission of Dictator Watch is to keep track of the dictators of the world, and to see that they pay for their crimes. We seek the end of dictatorship, in all of its manifestations, including in all of our social institutions. Among these institutions we include political, military, religious, educational, economic, and media entities; and for dictatorship we refer to all of the ways in which they shape us -- manipulate us -- to get us to think and act so as to suit their purposes.

"Twentieth Century Most Murderous in History"

Eric Hobsbawm, Guardian [UK], Saturday February 23, 2002

The 20th century was the most murderous in recorded history.
The total number of deaths caused by or associated with its
wars has been estimated at 187m, the equivalent of more than
10% of the world's population in 1913. Taken as having begun
in 1914, it was a century of almost unbroken war, with few
and brief periods without organised armed conflict
somewhere. It was dominated by world wars: that is to say,
by wars between territorial states or alliances of states.