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November 8, 2001 - 5:54pm -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

Guerrilla News Network has posted an interview with Noam Chomsky: The Fifth Freedom: Gangster Pimping in the Culture of Terrorism.

An excerpt: "The first operation against Afghanistan was called ‘Infinite Justice’ and they withdrew that when it
was pointed out to them that the only ‘infinite justice’ is God’s justice, and they were being
interpreted as regarding themselves as divinity. And they didn’t want to do that for obvious reasons,
so they changed it to some other phrase. The phrase they did pick is interesting. The campaign is
now called ‘Enduring Freedom’. Well, a number of comments about that...

If you want to look at the kind of ‘freedom’ they have in mind, there’s an ample historical record of
the kind of freedom they impose. The other point is, nobody seems to have noticed it but, the word
‘enduring’ is actually ambiguous. It can mean ‘lasting’ or it can mean ‘suffering from’. So, I’m
enduring pain is another interpretation of ‘enduring’ and, in fact, if you think of the kind of freedom
they impose and enduring freedom in the other sense, that is: ‘somehow living with the horrendous
consequences of it,’ is not an inaccurate description.

Nobody’s pointed that out to them yet so they’re still using this phrase, but if someone does maybe
they’ll make another one up."

November 7, 2001 - 8:31pm -- autonomedia
Rants

Anonymous Comrade forwards from the Cultural Studies Central list:

"I'm astonished to find that no one has mentioned the FDNY (Fire Dept. of New York) revolt last Friday. I waited patiently for somebody to take this up, but so far I don't see anything. And you're talking about praxis! (Though few, if any, have actually used the word.) This is too important to overlook, so I will sum up the circumstances. (Forgive the New York slang; it just seemed appropriate for a description of Gutsy-Firefighters' Who-Punch-Out-NYPD-Cops. And it just sort of spilled out rather naturally. Their articulation of theory is my theory, in this context.)

November 4, 2001 - 3:55am -- jim
Rants

Anonymous Comrade writes: "

The Munich Volksbad Declaration
http://make-world.org


We met at the make world festival in
Munich,
October 18-21. The participants came from different parts of the world,
Australia, India, Bangladesh, Korea, South Africa, the United States,
Mexico, and all the countries of Europe from Finland to Italy, from
Spain to Estonia. We are involved in media activism, migrants'
struggles, global mobilization movements, new forms of social protest,
net art, and artistic experiments of all sorts.


Over the last few years we have seen many changes: Managers, migrants
and social movements are on the move. Borders have shifted, unfolded,
and moved from the outside to the inside. New technologies have been
democratized; in return, they democratize society from beneath.

October 27, 2001 - 7:24pm -- nomadlab
Rants

Anonymous Comrade writes: "Peshawar, Pakistan's Frontier Post has published a 'open letter to President Bush' from white supremacist David Duke. A similar screed can be found on Duke's website at www.duke.org/dukereport/10-01.shtml."

October 11, 2001 - 6:33am -- Stenglander
Rants

The following is a leaflet written by some people in France and Belgium.

AGAINST CRUSADE AND JIHAD !

FOR CLASS STRUGGLE !

The suicide attacks on September 11 against the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon have led to stupefaction, horror, reprobation, but also created, among some, a satisfaction mixed with joy before the spectacle of the first global power finally paying in blood, for its imperialist policy, especially in the Middle East and in Central Asia.

An attack against workers and class struggle


Not laughing, nor crying, but understanding: it is important not to give way to the effects of terror but to go on thinking far outside the ready made schemes which the two camps which are fighting have prepared for us.

October 10, 2001 - 1:48am -- Stenglander
Rants

The War Resisters League has posted a statement by seven recent Nobel laureates: Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize 1976;
Betty Williams, Nobel Peace Prize 1976;
Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize 1980;
Desmond Mpilo Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize 1984;
The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), Nobel Peace Prize 1989;
Joseph Rotblat, Nobel Peace Prize 1995; and
Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize 1997.

October 9, 2001 - 3:04pm -- autonomedia
Rants

9/11 and the Crisis of Meaning

Peter Lamborn Wilson (Sept. 18, 2001)



A few days after the "event," the NY Times ran an interesting article on the advertizing "industry" and its crisis. Not only zillions of dollars a day etc. etc., but a weird effect: suddenly it seems impossible to have advertizing at all. It seems massively "inappropriate" to move product as per usual with shrieking & insinuating, mocking & sneering, prurience & peeping; with hate & envy masked as fashion, with greed thinly disguised as freedom of choice.



Death and tragedy occur every day, every minute, not only in the former Third World, even in New York, even in America. Why hasn't advertizing ever seemed shameful> to anyone ever before? The media -- which cannot utter a sound without puking up a cliché -- speaks now of the waking of a sleeping giant (meaning that we will no longer tolerate terrorism etc.) -- but what was this sleep? And what does it mean to wake into a feeling of shame?

October 8, 2001 - 6:06pm -- autonomedia
Rants

DOHA, Qatar (CNN) -- The Arab television news network al Jazeera broadcast a speech from Osama bin Laden Sunday after the United States and Britain launched their attack on Afghanistan. It is unclear when the videotaped statement was recorded, but it does refer to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The following is a transcript of the translated statement:

October 5, 2001 - 11:08pm -- nomadlab
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

Anonymous Comrade writes: "Basis of Unity

"In all wars the object is to protect or to seize money, property
and power, and there will always be wars so long as Capital rules and
oppresses people."
- Ernst Friedrich, War Against War (1924)



1. The Boston Anarchists Against Militarism (BAAM) is a coalition of
social anarchists committed to building an anti-war resistance
movement in the greater Boston area.



2. We believe that it is not enough to act as a defensive response to
military conflict. To bring an end to the global cycle of militaristic
violence we must develop a resistance movement that attacks the root
causes of war: capitalism, the State, and all forms of exploitation and
oppression.

October 5, 2001 - 2:01pm -- autonomedia
Rants

hydrarchist writes: "... to any of our readers who have links or resources relating to the suppression of leftist movements in the middle east, to which Jameson refers, please contribute ...


I have been reluctant to comment on the recent 'events' because the
event in question, as history, is incomplete and one can even say that it has not yet fully happened.


Obviously there are immediate comments one can make, in particular on
the nauseating media reception, whose cheap pathos seemed unconsciously dictated by a White House intent on smothering the situation in sentiment in order to demonstrate the undemonstrable: namely, that 'Americans are united as never before since Pearl Harbor.' I suppose this means that they are united by the fear of saying anything that contradicts this completely spurious media consensus.

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