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Analysis & Polemic

December 3, 2004 - 8:31am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Resistance or Retrogression?

The Battle of Ideas Over Iraq"
Peter Hudis, News & Letters

The U.S. occupation of Iraq has turned into a quagmire of nightmarish proportions, with many now calling it the most serious setback for U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War. This is seen in everything from the way western Iraq has come under the control of Taliban-like fundamentalists to the fact that jihadists from neighboring lands are flocking to Iraq to take advantage of hatred of the U.S. occupation and to further their effort to create a reactionary "Islamic state" upon its ruins. Clearly, the U.S. occupation of Iraq — which would have continued even if Kerry won the presidential election — created fertile ground for reactionary and terrorist forces to take root and flourish.

December 2, 2004 - 7:24pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Gender

"Caliban & the Witch" Presentation
Silvia Federici

Listen to Silvia Frederici's talk about her new book, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation.


This is an audio recording from Federici's presentation at Fusion Arts in New York City on November 30, 2004. It's in five parts.

December 2, 2004 - 7:04pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

sgb writes:

"Who Killed God Pan?"
Christian Marazzi

Pan is a Greek God who lives on the zone between nature and culture, between beasts and humans. He inhabits the space that is neither that of history or community nor that of pure nature: the fields and meadows just outside the city walls are his dominion. He is two-formed and two-natured, human and animal, a man and a goat. When humans live inside the house and beasts in their dens or in their nests, Pan like a herdsman sleeps in a cowshed. And the herdsman is big, tall and a good warrior.

He is a messenger between the city and the fields. Plato equates Pan with language; like Pan, language has a snake’s tongue; it is good both in lying and in saying the truth. Pan declares all things and he is the perpetual mover of all things. Panic and the disorder that leads to panicking are due to the growing distance between the Gods and men. They destroy or deny communication between the Gods and the human community and between men and lead humans back to bestiality.

Pan transforms human being into a gregarious animal and lets the herd instinct proper to humans free so that it is possible to reorganize the community using ‘human nature’ as a tool in the reorganization. Panic, like terror, has been a privileged instrument in modern politics because it spreads fast without discussions and it is impossible to contest or go against it.

December 2, 2004 - 1:11pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Prisons & Prisoners

"Moving Forward In Palestine: Free Marwan Barghouti"

Zeev bin Natan

Palestinian freedom fighter Marwan Barghouti is Arafat's likely popular successor. He has been Fatah Secretary-General since 1994 and played a key role on the street in both the first Intifada and the present Intifada al-Aqsa. Marwan sits in Nafha prison in the al-Naqab/Negev desert, sentenced last June 6 and now serving five life terms plus 40 years on trumped-up charges of 'complicity' in multiple murder. He is kept in solitary confinement, separated from all other prisoners in Nafha, most of them Palestinian freedom fighters like himself. Marwan has repeatedly denied any involvement whatsoever with the deaths. During the proceedings against him, which began in 2003, he denounced the "show trial" as illegal, the Israeli court without any right to try him.

December 1, 2004 - 2:42pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Independent Media

"Making Another World Possible?
The European Social Forum"
Les Levidow,
Radical Philosophy



The European Social Forum (ESF) has been inspired by the global slogan ‘Another world is possible’, expressing the need to create alternatives from out of the resistance to neoliberalism. Since its inception in 2002, the ESF has provided an opportunity to debate methods and strategies for turning that slogan into reality. Nevertheless the organizational process itself has become a site of conflicting political philosophies about progressive social change. At issue is how ‘another world’ can be made possible and thus how to shape the aims of the ESF. Although such conflict could be creative and instructive, it has largely marginalized alternative futures from the ESF itself. How did this happen? Such conflicts have been integral to Social Forum events and they were intensified in the preparations for the London event this year.

November 30, 2004 - 1:21pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Economy

"China's Rising Reserves Are a Growing Problem:
Beijing May Be Wasting the Fortune It So Quickly Amassed"
Mark O'Neill, China Study Group

If China were to distribute its foreign exchange reserves to its 88 million poorest citizens, each would receive the equivalent of 78 years of their annual income of 625 yuan.

That astonishing statistic illustrates both the success and failure of how China has within two short years built up the biggest reserves in the world, second only to Japan.

At the end of September, forex reserves excluding gold stood at US$ 514.5 billion, triple the US$ 165.6 billion at the end of 2000 and more than double the US$ 212.2 billion at the end of 2001. They are likely to reach US$ 700 billion by the end of next year.

November 29, 2004 - 12:55pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Mainstream Media

"Georgia Goes Full Throttle With Privatization:

Former Soviet Republic Hopes Sales Will Raise More Than $1 Billion"

Selina Williams, Wall Street Journal


As Georgia celebrates the first anniversary of its bloodless revolution, its leaders are telling foreign investors that nearly everything is for sale.

Airports, seaports and the country's entire telecommunications network are among 1,800 state-owned assets that will go on the block in the former Soviet republic over the next two years.

November 29, 2004 - 9:02am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Independent Media

"UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw Rants Against Trotskyism"

Ann Talbot, World Socialist Web Site

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sent an extraordinary letter to the Independent newspaper on November 16. It was in reply to an article by Robert Fisk the previous Saturday. In a description of Yassir Arafat’s funeral, Fisk had disparagingly referred to Straw, who attended on behalf of the British government, as a former Trotskyist or “an old Trot.”


Straw responded to Fisk’s factually incorrect aside like a man accused of a heinous crime, stating that to call him a Trotskyist was “a malicious libel.” Far from being a former Trotskyist, Straw indicated that his political sympathies and training could be traced back to Stalinism.

November 29, 2004 - 8:31am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

"25,000 US Casualties in Iraq; 9% of Troops Put in Hospital or Killed
Over 2000 Iraqis Killed in Fallujah"

Juan Cole

CBS has elicited from the Pentagon the real figure of US casualties in Iraq, which is more like 25,000. That number includes the 1230 or so killed and the 9300 classified as "wounded in battle," but also 17,000 classified as non-combat sick or injured, of whom 80 percent do not return to their units in Iraq. Although some of the 17,000 are victims of disease, some unspecified number have actually been injured as a result of being in a theater of war. If you have an "accident" while guns and bombs are going off all around you, is it really an "accident"?

November 28, 2004 - 8:06pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

"Who Needs Ends When We’ve got Such Bitchin’ Means?"
Andy Cornell

The years since the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks have been an incredibly difficult time and context for radicals of any stripe to organize in. The situation has been that much more difficult for the global justice movement, emerging and picking up steam, as it did, little more than a year before 9-11. Since that time, the movement has been working—albeit slowly—to reconstitute itself and rearticulate its purpose. However, it has retained a focus on mass mobilizations, continuing to rely on direct action tactics despite their dwindling effectiveness. Unfortunately, instead of honestly assessing the diminishing returns wrought of this narrow focus, many global justice activists have incrementally lowered their goalpost, redefining success to match their modest accomplishments. Hence the ass whooping delivered by Miami’s finest in November 2003 became, in Starhawk’s words, “a dangerous victory.”

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