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Analysis & Polemic

October 30, 2004 - 11:02am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Mainstream Media

"Seymour Hersh: Man On Fire"

Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet

In an astonishingly candid and far-ranging interview, the journalist who exposed major stories from the My Lai massacre to the Abu Ghraib scandal, proves that his voice is every bit as powerful as his pen.


An interview with Seymour Hersh is never dull — to put it mildly. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist can be contentious, just as willing to challenge a question as answer it. He can be unpredictable, ever able to throw a hapless reporter off-balance with the unexpected. "Did you ever take a stewardess' course?" he might inquire just as you're trying to get him to discuss the role of the media.

October 29, 2004 - 5:30pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Electoral Politics

Rob Eshelman submits:

"The Middle East Cauldron:

The Next Five Years"
Immanuel Wallerstein

Whoever is President of the United States, the basic political dilemmas of the Middle East will be the same in the coming five years. There are three loci of crucial happenings and probable major shifts in the coming period: Iraq, Iran, and Israel/Palestine.

The issue in Iraq that will have most impact on the future of Iraq, the Middle East, and the world is when and under what circumstances U.S. military forces will quit the country. At this point, the U.S. military presence has come to be a surgical graft that the Iraqi body is rejecting, and rejecting definitively. Sooner or later, U.S. forces will have to leave entirely, including from the prospective permanent bases. There are only three manners in which U.S. withdrawal can take place: as an early autonomous decision of the U.S. government; at the later request of the Iraqi authorities; or ultimately chased by Iraqi insurgents.

October 29, 2004 - 10:01am -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

Territory and Deterritory:
Inside and Outside the ESF 2004,
New Movement Subjectivities

Rodrigo Nunes

1 — From Paris to London

The path that led from the ESF in 2003 to the following edition in London was a lot less straightforward than a mere crossing of the channel; it went through a lot more detours and accidents, and raises important questions as to the present situation of European movements in their processes of deterritorialisaton and reterritorialisation.

The London bid for the ESF was presented in Paris during the second edition as the result of an agreement between the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP) and the Greater London Authority (GLA). It was discussed and approved at a closed meeting, one of those that still abound in Social Fora everywhere – like those that prepare the agenda of the Social Movements’ Assemblies. The decision to present London as an alternative was never debated among British movements; in fact, the GLA (and the group behind, a small Labour tendency called Socialist Action, basically composed of advisers to the mayor, Ken Livingstone) had never shown any interest in the process at all, whilst the SWP, by means of its myriad front groups (Globalise Resistance, Stop the War Coalition, Project K etc.), although active in the WSF and the ESF, had made systematic efforts to stop the spontaneous process of organization of Local Social Fora, in places such as London, Manchester, Leeds and Cardiff. The GLA’s involvement was a demand made by certain key actors in the European process, such as Attac France, to make sure the event was financially viable. The beginning of the organizing process in December in London came as a surprise to many.

October 28, 2004 - 2:07pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Race Politics

"Black Vote Smothered by Electoral College"

www.blackcommentator.com

"I am convinced
that the black vote is going to be not only a bigger vote
than ever before, it is the swing vote." — Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., speaking
on CNN

Rev. Jackson is right about the raw numbers of African Americans who are
expected to go to the polls on November 2. However, most of the national
Black voting population will ?swing? neither their home states nor the
presidential election. Fifty-five percent of the Black population resides
in the South, and every four years their votes are drowned in a sea of
Republican red. For presidential election purposes, except for the besieged
Black citizens of Florida, the southern African American franchise is
negated by the Electoral College ? a true 21st century vestige of slavery.

October 28, 2004 - 9:46am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

sgb writes:

"From Capital-Labour to Capital-Life"
Maurizio Lazzarato

Abstract

"The most important element for anyone who looks at my objects is my fundamental thesis: each human being is an artist. It is even my fundamental contribution to the history of art (…). Within each human being lies a virtual creative ability. This is not to say that everyone is a painter or a sculptor, but that there is some latent creativity within each domain of human work… each type of work has a connection to art; and art is no longer a type of activity or an isolated group, with people able to do art whilst the others have to do another type of work. …
October 28, 2004 - 9:45am -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
All Topics

nolympics writes

Weird Anti Germans


There have been rumours circulating for a while that anti-fa groups in Germany have invented a new kind of anti Germanism. It seems to consist of being pro imperialist, that is supporting the US and UK in their various international efforts but also in expressing solidarity and support for Israel, presumably as a way of denying anti-semitism. Theres an old gag about Germans loving to carry a burden, particularly when its as light as a feather. We could rephrase it for this bunch of anti German leftists and say that they enjoy a burden if they can have the Palestinians carry it for them. Anyone know anything about this scene?


check out the photos

October 27, 2004 - 12:28pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"The Festival of General Intellect"

Paolo Virno

In the '70s, May Day was a rancid and miserable celebration. Rancid,
because workers' struggles and politics, like life in general, were
tightly dilated. In those days — totally devoid of happiness
— there was only the union, the weak point of the Keynesian state.


The unions found their voice, sometimes rabid and solitary, in their role as legal representatives of the
commodity 'labor power': the sole true strategist in modern
industrial societies. But the workers in struggle, who wanted to abolish
precisely that commodity (inflating its price until it
exploded), did not march in the name of a new model of
development. As adults, it scarcely seems reasonable to lose more time behind
these Wisemen.

October 27, 2004 - 8:39am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Independent Media

warpunk-dept. writes:

"Warporn Warpunk!
Autonomous Videopoiesis in Wartime"

Matteo Pasquinelli


Warpunk is a squadron of B52s throwing libidinal bombs and radical images into the heart of the Western imagery.


Grinning Monkeys



How do you think you
can stop war without weapons? The anti-war public opinion that fills squares
worldwide and the cosmetic democracy of International Courts stand powerless in
front of the raging US military. Against the animal instincts of a superpower
reason cannot prevail: a homicidal force can be arrested only by another,
stronger force. Everyday we witness such a Darwinian show: history repeating
itself through a cruel confrontation of forces, whilst what rests is freedom of
speech exercised in drawing-rooms. Pacifists too are accomplices of instinctive
forces, because animal aggressiveness is inside us all. How do we express that
bestiality for which we condemn armies? Underneath the surface of the self-censorship belonging to the
radical left (not only to the conformist majority), it should be admitted
publicly that watching Abu Ghraib pictures of pornographic tortures does not
scandalize us, on the contrary, it rather excites us, in exactly the same way
as the obsessive voyeurism that draws us to videos of 9/11 videos. Through such
images we feel the expression of repressed instincts, the pleasure rising again
after narcotized by consumerism, technologies, goods and images. We show our
teeth as monkeys do, when their aggressive grin looks dreadfully like the human
smile. Contemporary thinkers like Baudrillard and Zizek acknowledge the dark
side inside Western culture. If 9/11 has been a shock for Western
consciousness, Baudrillard puts forward a more shocking thesis: we westerners
were to desire 9/11, as the death drive of a superpower that having reached its
natural limits, knows and desires nothing more than self-destruction and war.
The indignation is hypocrisy; there is always an animal talking behind a video
screen.

October 26, 2004 - 11:59am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

Icon of Death...

...composed from one thousand portraits of American soldiers killed in the Iraq war...


October 26, 2004 - 8:50am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes: FYI... Negri trashing par excellence...

"Antonio Negri: The Nostalgic Revolutionary"

Johan Hari, London Independent

Now his prison days are over, the notorious Italian 'philosopher-terrorist' Antonio Negri, accused of leading the Red Brigades, is taking on London. But when Johann Hari meets him, he proves to be a slippery customer. August 17, 2004

In the late 1980s, the Italian President Francesco Cossiga described Antonio Negri as "a psychopath" who "poisoned the minds of an entire generation of Italy's youth". Negri has been accused of murdering Italy's former Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, and of being il grande vecchio — the grand old man — behind the Red Brigades, one of the most notorious terror groups to attack post-war Europe until al-Qa'ida. In prison he co-wrote an anti-globalisation bible, Empire. Now he's out, and he's heading to London. I am waiting patiently at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in the shadow of Buckingham Palace, to have my mind poisoned.

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