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Analysis & Polemic

December 21, 2004 - 10:13am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

hpwombat writes:

"Why We Desire Destruction and Not Socialism"
Heretic and High Priest Wombat, KSC

What is Socialism?

The movements for socialism cannot exist without capitalism and their logic is that of civilization. Critiques of the totality cannot develop within the framework of these movements, only certain things are of value to be critiqued and these movements always have an alternative. If they are not utopian, which to some socialists is desirable, but not necessary, then they are progressive. Reduce pollutants but don't question the logic of work and the technology that drives it. We must put socialism to the question and its ultimate strategy for complete domination, rather than for the end of it.

First there is state socialism, a name we give to the movements and their strategies for achieving progress through state power. All of socialism is justified by some method or appeal to democracy and so participating in a democratic process, such as the election of representatives is just a move towards expanding democracy. According to many socialists, if the majority were given democracy, they would choose progressive policies and may even choose socialism over capitalism, should such a thing ever come to the ballot. Some state socialists are wary of democracy as it stands for one reason or another and opts instead to lead, as a vanguard, the movements for socialism towards their ascension over the state through undemocratic means, but not because they reject democracy but rather they fight for the future of democracy.

December 20, 2004 - 7:08am -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Local, Islamic and Global
The Petroleum Commons
George Caffentzis, Counterpunch

1. All land and natural resources (including mineral resources) within the Ijaw territory belong to Ijaw communities and are the basis of our survival.

2. We cease to recognize all undemocratic decrees that rob our
peoples' communities of the right to ownership and control of our lives and resources, which were enacted without our participation and dissent. These include the Land Use Decree and The Petroleum Decree. — The Kaiama Declaration (December 1998)

Introduction: Oil and Water

The struggles over the ownership of the two most important political liquids of this era, petroleum and water, have had different fates. Though water has been proclaimed to be either private, state or common property throughout history, the novel feature of this neo-liberal period has been the move by corporations to totally privatize it. The powerful struggles waged against the corporate privatization of water from Cochabamba (Bolivia) to Soweto (South Africa) have focused world attention on the question: Who owns water? The consequent efforts to keep water as a common property on a local and global level are now among the most important initiatives of the anti-globalization movement.


Petroleum, on the other hand, has in the last hundred and fifty years been considered exclusively as either private or state property. Thus, the pages of the history books on the petroleum industry have been filled with "magnates" like John D. Rockefeller or government "leaders" like Saddam Hussain and Winston Churchill. Similarly, the "struggle over oil" has been largely seen as a struggle between oil companies and governments, since its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century.

December 15, 2004 - 12:46pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

"Marxist-Lessigism"

Dan Hunter, Legal Affairs

Computer users of the world have united behind Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig — and what they're doing is much more important than his critics realize.


At Swarthmore College, the crowd is mostly students, and maybe a few professors and interested outsiders. It's a typical turnout for a public lecture by a well-known law professor.

But there is something different and a little odd about this group. Swarthmore doesn't have a law school, so the audience includes no young men in suits that still have the label attached, and no young women with high-heeled shoes so new the soles aren't scuffed. And there is something else, something funny about the T-shirts. Everywhere you look, there are T-shirts with slogans, not logos. No "Tommy Hilfiger" and "Ralph Lauren" here. Just shirts with references too obscure to parse. What is "Downhill Battle"? Or "Grey Tuesday"? One kid has a shirt with the picture of a skull and crossbones on it, and written boldly across it are the words "Home Taping is Killing the Music Industry." Look closer, and you'll see, in tiny type, "(And it's fun)."

December 14, 2004 - 8:22pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
War

"Internal Intifada: Workers' Struggle in Occupied Iraq"
Ewa Jasiewicz, Mute Magazine

In order to understand the present state of workers’ resistance in occupied Iraq we have to begin with the old regime. The Ba’ath dictatorship exterminated workers – both literally and ideologically. In 1987 Saddam liquidated all trade unions, transforming all workers into civil servants – state employees. Fake Ba’athist unions were set up, functioning in effect as tools of surveillance, repression and murder. But this denial of the existence of workers and repression of labour organisation did not end with the fall of Saddam. In June 2003 the US occupation administration passed its infamous ‘Public Notice on Organisation in the Workplace’. This innocuous sounding document effectively perpetuated the 1987 law: unions were still illegal and would not be recognised until ‘The Iraqi people’ – i.e. the puppet Governing Council – passed its new labour law. The Ba’athist managerial class, restored to their posts by the occupation, implemented the ‘Public Notice’ like an order: organisation in the workplace was still illegal. Bosses would look smarmily baffled when asked about workers’ rights and workers’ organisations, responding ‘But we do not have workers, only employees.’

Workers across Iraq ignored the notice and began forming unions and collectives while taking direct action against their recycled Ba’athist bosses.

December 14, 2004 - 4:03pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

"After the Empire — What?"

Kirkpatrick Sale and Thomas H. Naylor

[A call to a Radical Consultation in Middlebury, Vermont, to discuss issues involving secession, November, 2004.]

No empire has ever survived the test of time — Greek, Roman, Chinese, Ottoman, French, British, or Soviet. Is there any reason to believe that the United States will prove to be an exception to the rule?


Our government's dogged, mean-spirited, zero-surn pursuit of the war on terrorism, and a foreign policy based on full spectrum dominance and imperial overstretch, appear to be leading us into a death spiral. So too is its unwavering commitment to globalization and environmental degradation at any cost. There is resounding evidence that it is only a matter of time before corporate behemoths implode and then the fragile house-of-cards economy and its otherworldly stock market collapses.

December 14, 2004 - 3:28pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Independent Media

"An Independent State of Mind"

Joel Senesac, Vermont Guardian,

[Special to the Verrnont Guardian, November 5—11, 2004. Tom Naylor of Charlotte is one of the founders ot the Second Vermont Republic, an organization that is promoting the idea of having Vermont secede from the US.]

CHARLOTTE — Throughout history, every great empire has eventually met its demise. According to economist Thomas Naylor, the United States may soon prove to be no exception because it has grown too big to sustain itself. That's why Naylor helped form the Second Vermont Republic, an organization dedicated to the peaceful dissolution of the country, starting with the secession of Vermont.

December 14, 2004 - 3:10pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

"The Constitutionality of Secession"

Thomas H. Naylor, Second Vermont Republic

Few words are perceived to be more politically incorrect in America than the s-word, secession. Thanks mostly to Abraham Lincoln, secession is considered to be a complete anathema by liberals and conservatives alike. Although most Americans believe the Civil War proved once and for all that secession is illegal and unconstitutional, nothing could be further from the truth.

December 14, 2004 - 3:02pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

"Free Vermont!?"

Peter Lamborn Wilson

Should Vermont secede from the USA and declare itself independent again (as it was from 1777 to 1791) under the name Second Vermont Republic? This question was posed to attendees at a conference and a town meeting, both held in Middlebury, VT on the weekend after the national election, Nov. 5–7; and in both cases the answer was a nearly unanimous YES.


The conference — Rad.Con 2 — was organized jointly by the Second Vermont Republic (SVR) and the UK-based Fourth World Organization (publishers of Fourth World Review), which sponsored the first "Radical Consultation" in Britain in September, 2001. American historian Kirkpatrick Sale contributes regularly to Fourth World and made the keynote speech at Rad.Con 2 in Middlebury.

December 11, 2004 - 5:54pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Drug War

"A New Opium War"

Yoshie Furuhashi

If you look at the changes in the political economy of Afghanistan, you may conclude that this is neither a "war on terror" that Washington says it is nor a pipeline war as some of its critics allege. It looks as if it is the latest Opium War, regardless of intentions of all parties (Afghans, Americans, Europeans, and others) involved.


According to the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2004 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium cultivation has increased 64% since 2003. The opium industry now employs 2.3 million in Afghanistan (compared to 1.7 million in 2003), i.e., 10% of the Afghan population. The export value of Afghan opium is estimated to be $2.8 billion, a 22% increase since 2003. The opium export today accounts for more than 60% of Afghanistan's Gross Domestic Product.

December 11, 2004 - 5:01pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Saroj Giri writes:

"Against ‘Reality’
The Maoists in South Asia"

Saroj Giri


In his essay "After the Orgy", Jean Baudrillard, the French post-modernist philosopher, talks about the coming into circulation of revolutionary forces and ideas and their subsequent castration into another marketable social configuration or politically correct idea. So lots of once-revolutionary ideas have today become part of daily parlance, completely punctured of not just their original force but also their meaning. Rather, the perverse recycling of these ideas into the melting pot of liberal discourse has gone on to provide it with an undeserved moral strength and legitimacy. Thus today, with everything from feminism and gay rights to post colonial discourse having gone on to serve the liberal multicultural consensus of global capital, we see that we are living in a hegemonic world order where any attempt to go beyond and concretely envision another world is dismissed by invoking the spectre of 'totalitarianism': that any project for radical transformation of society will almost invariably lead us to totalitarianism.

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