Radical media, politics and culture.

Analysis & Polemic

November 28, 2004 - 2:45pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
The State

"Steve Kurtz and the CAE Defense Fund Still Need Your Help!"
Toni Nelson Herrera

Back in May of this year, like many of you, I read about the case of an artist in New York whose wife had suddenly died and he was subsequently suspected of being a bio-terrorist. I first caught the story on the AP wire, so as you can imagine it wasn’t immediately sympathetic so much as sensationalistic, but I picked up on the fact that an artist was being hassled by the state so I turned to Counterpunch to see if anyone had the real story. Sure enough, in the pages of Counterpunch, I found the kind of analysis I was looking for.

Steve Kurtz was an artist being hounded under the Patriot Act and feeling the full effects of the dangerous changes we’ve all seen in civil liberties during this bogus War on Terror. I read the story, was again angered by all that now passes for “normalcy” in this country, but ultimately the story slipped out of my mind as the daily news keeps piling up on one’s mind. I believed, perhaps foolishly, that most likely this would be cleared up— after all it was totally preposterous for the government to persecute an artist who was just doing art— “that doesn’t happen that often does it?” I consoled myself. But of course, any time is one time too many, and “an injury to one…”

November 28, 2004 - 2:18pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
War

"What Palestinians should do now"
Ali Abunimah Electronic Intifada

The first priority for Palestinian leaders now must be to defend their people against Israel's relentless colonization and violence and not to negotiate with Israeli guns to Palestinian heads. They must formulate a national strategy to regain Palestinian rights enshrined in UN Resolutions, clearly explain this strategy, and organize Palestinians and allies everywhere to struggle for it, starting with full implementation of the ICJ decision on the West Bank wall. Palestinians should seek to emulate the success of the African National Congress that freed South Africans from apartheid by confronting and defeating injustice, not seeking to accommodate it.

November 27, 2004 - 7:42pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Reviews

"Chapter 39, Order 30:
Torture and Neo-Liberalism with Sycorax in Iraq"
Peter Linebaugh, Counterpunch

Reviewing:
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
By Silvia Federici
Autonomedia 2004

The new U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, disregarded torture in his infamous, post 9/11 memorandum to Bush: "In my judgment, this new paradigm [the 'war on terrorism'] renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

"Quaint," eh?

It might more aptly be applied to Magna Carta, the epitome of quaintness, though Professor Huntington of Harvard tells us in his screed to rid the nation of Hispanic cultural influence that the American creed, its cultural core, is Anglo, "going back to Magna Carta," which he thinks is somehow Protestant (Magna Carta 1215, Protestant Reformation 1517)! Furthermore, although it is such a quaint part of the Anglo core, it is not even written in English. Its most powerful part is chapter 39:

Nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur aut disseisietur de libero tenemento suo, vel libertatibus, vel liberis consuetudinibus suis, aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum, vel per legem terræ.

Edward Coke provides the classic translation.

November 27, 2004 - 2:37pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Work

eh writes:

Chavez Meets Workers in Madrid

Emilia Lucena, El Militante

It is nearly five o’clock. A shy autumn sun bathes the
Prado Avenue on our way to the headquarters of the
Workers’ Commissions (CCOO) in Madrid. When we arrive
there are already more than 300 people queuing to get
into the meeting hall. They patiently wait to attend
the meeting with Chavez which is scheduled for 7 pm.

November 25, 2004 - 10:27am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"J20 Inaugural: A Day of Vulnerability for Power"

No one needs reminding that the latest episode in the demolition of American “democracy” has been a hard blow to those in that unfortunate land who are still awake and clinging to sanity, as well as to everyone in the rest of the world, for whom this election is obviously no laughing matter either. However a day of real and unavoidable vulnerability for the Bush junta and its claim to a popular mandate is approaching.

Inauguration day — January 20 — is that moment of condensed, ritualized spectacle toward which all the machines for the production of consent and legitimacy still have to aim. On this day the succession of power — and thus the processes behind it — must expose itself to view in order to become its own self-affirming image, and this moment of exposure cannot be avoided. For this reason January 20 is a real opportunity to denounce that which threatens us and possibly to do it damage on its own symbolic terrain.

November 24, 2004 - 9:09am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Mainstream Media

"A Very Haitian Story"

Edwidge Danticat, New York Times

Miami — On Sunday, Oct. 24, United Nations troops and Haitian police forces launched a military operation in Bel-Air, one of the poorest and most volatile neighborhoods in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. Their stated goal was to oust armed gangs, some of which are still loyal to Haiti's deposed president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

November 22, 2004 - 7:04pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Race Politics

duckdaotsu writes

No Thanksgiving at My House
Remembering
Wesley BadHeartBull

Hot Springs, South Dakota is a small town located in the southernmost tip of the Black Hills. Wesley BadHeartBull started the sixth grade at Hot Springs Junior High School; he died just outside of town at the hands of a couple of cowboys — stabbed to death because he had the audacity to ask for drink at the bar. He was 22 years old.

Wesley's murder was not the first Native American murder I had heard about. It was just the first one that had happened to my friend and classmate. I was in that sixth grade class with Wesley BadHeartBull. Wes and I grew up together. We partied with the rest of the kids in town, drove recklessly on back country roads together like the other kids, and sat out for endless nights under the Black Hills sky counting stars and talking about our futures.

November 22, 2004 - 7:57am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Trashing Georges Bataille, 'Accursed' Stalinist"

Not Bored!

Born in France in 1897, Georges Bataille was a very
creative, controversial and strange person. A
librarian by profession, he wrote a great many poems,
essays and books during his life (he died in 1962).
Some of these writings were novels; most were works of
critical theory (non-fiction writings on society and
politics). Bataille's name is often closely associated
with Freudian psychoanalysis, Surrealism, Marxism and
the occult.


Because of the very strong and mostly acknowledged
influence of Bataille's various concepts and
methodological approaches on the writings of such
younger and sometimes better known critical theorists
as Guy Debord ("potlatch"), Jean Baudrillard ("gift
exchange"), Michel Foucault ("the order of things"),
and Jacques Derrida ("nonlogical difference"), almost
all of Bataille's many books have been published in
English translations by university presses in America.
No doubt many of these books are required reading in
courses in literary theory, the history of modern art,
sociology, political economy, psychology, and
ethnology.

November 21, 2004 - 12:38pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

Anonymous Comrade writes:


"Fall of the American Empire"


I found myself facinated by C-Span's coverage of the Senate today. A HUGE bill hit the desks of Congress and the Senate this weekend. Actually, the Omnibus Appropiations Bill is over 3000 pages filled with varied legislation of all kinds that requires just one vote, yes or no. It includes everything from funding for charities that sound strangely like Bush supporters to appropriating money for education, cops and all those important community services. As some of you are aware, this is a political ploy to sneak through laws hoping no one will notice or forcing them through along with the necessary laws. In fact the Congress has already passed this bill and sent it to the Senate urging them to pass it right away so they could adjourn for the holidays.


Funny thing....somebody DID notice that included, or should I say, slipped in at the last minute, was something called "Provision 222" This little ditty would allow the govt...read carefully...to assign an agent of their choice (anyone) to have access to any citizens tax returns, make them public and use the information against them, (ex: in a political campaign) and NOT HAVE TO PAY ANY PENALTY OR BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE for this disclosure.

This law would SUPERCEDE any previous laws on our rights to privacy. On top of this outrage, the government would have access to all personal records, political associations, charitable donations and just about everything we do including the internet. I heard words like, "Big Brother", "Soviet Union" "Stripping citizens of their right to privacy" coming from our senators. If you hear about this not passing it is because of the few sane senators that voted against passing this ridiculous provision included in the massive Omnibus bill. If it does pass....be afraid, be very afraid.

November 20, 2004 - 10:33am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

"Central Europe: 'Ostalgia' for the Communist Past"

Victor Gomez, Transitions OnLine


Why Central Europe’s young are dancing, dressing, and drinking as their parents did before 1989.


When they were young, they longed to wear real Levi’s blue jeans and thirsted for Coca Cola. Today, many East-Central Europeans are switching back to the brand names of their youth. They wear communist-era sneakers, dance to the synth-sounds of aging 1980s pop bands, and drink cheap Coke imitations.


A wave of nostalgia for the cheap and often shoddily made consumer products of the long-gone communist era is sweeping across this region. In eastern Germany, they call it Ostalgia, a play on the German word Ost, for East. But the trend is obvious in practically every country of the region.

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