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Analysis & Polemic

October 11, 2004 - 10:18am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

"The Resort to Force"

Noam Chomsky

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said while explaining the National Security Strategy (NSS) of September 2002 to a hostile audience at the World Economic Forum that Washington has a "sovereign right to use force to defend ourselves" from nations that possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and cooperate with terrorists, the official pretexts for invading Iraq. The collapse of the pretexts is well known, but there has been insufficient attention to its most important consequence: the NSS was in effect revised to lower the bars to aggression. The need to establish ties to terror was quietly dropped. More significant, President George W Bush and colleagues declared the right to resort to force even if a country does not have WMD or even programs to develop them. It is sufficient that it have the "intent and ability" to do so.

October 11, 2004 - 9:07am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"A Contribution on Foucault"

Toni Negri

Question 1
Are Foucault's analyses of actualité useful to understand the movement of societies? In which fields does it seem to you it that they should be renewed, readjusted, continued?

Answer 1
Foucault's work is a strange machine, it actually makes it impossible to think of history as other than present history. Probably, a great deal of what Foucault wrote (as Deleuze rightly underlined) should be rewritten today. What is astonishing — and concerning —, is that he never ceases to seek, he makes approximations, he deconstructs, he formulates hypotheses, he imagines, he makes analogies and tells fables, he launches concepts, withdraws them or modifies them… His is a thought of a formidable inventiveness. But this is not its essence: I believe that his method is fundamental, because it enables him to study and describe at the same time the movement from the past to the present and that from the present to the future. It is a method of transition where the present represents the center. Foucault is there, between the two, neither in the past where he does archaeology, nor in the future whose image he sometimes sketches — “comme à la limite de la mer un visage sur le sable.” It is starting from the present that it is possible to distinguish other times. Foucault has often been reproached for the scientific legitimacy of his periodizations: we I can understand the historians, but at the same time, I would want to say that this is not a real problem: Foucault is where the questioning lies, which always originates in his own time.

October 7, 2004 - 10:56am -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Sex

Sally Ramage Dabydeen writes

"Trafficking of Women and Children for Prostitution".

This article is a critical analysis of this transnational organised crime. It explores the problem through the business entity and illustrates how this could be researched so that its real extent is measured for the sake of history. The writer explains how traditional forensic techniques can be used to gather the evidence necessary to assess it rationally and to develop strategies and techniques to bring restitution to these women and to eventually eradicate it from the face of the earth.

Introduction
Trafficking of women and children is part of organised crime activity in which these women are transported from Africa, South America, Asia, Middle East and Eastern Europe to Western Europe and North America to be used as prostitutes and for child pornography, slave labour, automobiles couriers, body parts couriers, fauna and flora couriers, for thieving of nuclear material , drugs couriers , arms couriers, even ordinary thieving as pick-pocketing for gangs as part of transnational organised crime

October 5, 2004 - 7:21pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Between Disobedience and Exodus"

Flavia Costa Interviews Paolo Virno

Perhaps it is distance, combined with a doubtlessly original thought,
that allows Paolo Virno to see a link, a principle of
comprehension, that unites the Argentinian cacerolazos with
antiglobalization protests. "There is a line that connects the
Argentinian revolt with the protests in Seattle and Genoa in 1999 and
2001", he affirms. And he adds that, beyond the singular, the
Argentinian case shares with the antiglobal movement the eruption of a
new political subject, the multitude, which emerges with the
postfordist mode of production and resists delegating its powers to
the state.


"Unlike the people," explains the Italian philosopher, "the
multitude is plural, it refuses political unity, it does not transfer
rights to the sovereign; its resists obedience and is inclined to form
non-representative democracy."

October 5, 2004 - 12:22pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State


"Guide to the Patriot Act"

Century Foundation

The Century Foundation has just put out an
excellent, concise guide to the Patriot Act — what it does, to what degree
it's been enforced, and efforts in Congress to roll it back. It's
available in .pdf (here). The overriding concern that pops up again
and again in the text: While the provisions of the act themselves are bad,
what's worse is that the degree to which they're actually being used is
shrouded in mystery: The act itself contains language that allows the
Justice Department to hide what it's doing under the law, and what's not
in the act, Justice is managing to finesse anyway.

October 5, 2004 - 11:50am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Work

hydrarchist writes

Precarity and n/european Identity:
an interview with Alex Foti (Chainworkers)

…………..


This interview took place in July 2004 at the Mill Squat in Amsterdam, during the period it was liberated from the destiny of selling 'traditional' Dutch parephenalia to tourists. Merijn Oudenampsen and Gavin Sullivan from the Greenpepper magazine spoke with Milano-based organiser Alex Foti - formerly of the Italian flexwork syndicate ChainWorkers (www.chainworkers.org) - about precarity, european labour conflict, and the spread of new syndicalist modes of subvertised collective action across Neuropa. Alex Foti is guest written editor for the upcoming Precarity issue of the Greenpepper Magazine and will be part of the PrecarityPingPong! launch and critical debate during the London ESF at Middlex University, White Hart Lane Campus, Tottenham on 15 October 2004 between 3:00 – 5:00 pm. See www.greenpeppermagazine.org for details.


…………..

GreenPepper: Alex, can you introduce yourself, and the Chainworkers?

Alex Foti: I am a union and media activist from Milan, Italy and have been part of the ChainWorkers CreW since it’s inception in 1999 - 2000. Most noteworthy, we are associated with the MayDay parade - which this year reached its fourth edition, bringing around 100,000 temp workers, partimers freelancers and other types of non-standard workers onto the streets in a joyful (but angry) expression of dissent around sub-standard conditions of work and living. This year the MayDay parade took the form of a major picket line throughout the shopping arteries of Milan. In fact, within the city limits of Milan, no major chain store or retail outfit was open for trading – either because they had become scared by the campaign we had developed in the months prior to MayDay, or because of the flying pickets that 2000-3000 people did in the morning prior to the start of the MayDay parade. This year, the parade was a EuroMayDay parade because it was done together with sisters and brothers in Barcelona, and organised in assemblies that took place throughout Milan, Barcelona, Rome, and (most crucially) Paris - with the participation of the Intermittents: the temp stagehands and part-time actors that recently blocked the Cannes film festival.

October 5, 2004 - 10:20am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

Radha Vij writes:

"The Colonization of Perception:
Government Seduction Blocks Visions of Truth"

Radha Vij

Over two hundred and fifty thousand voices sung over fifty different protest songs in discordant harmony at the RNC in New York City, opposing what some have termed the Bush Dictatorship. Torn t-shirts, designer handbags, good will bargains, high heel stilettos, jeweled necks, and college hemp-wear paraded from Midtown to Union Square defying conventional “convention behavior.” Though there were umbrella concepts tying together the rally — the end to the war, a women’s right to chose, gay rights, the failing economy, etc. — the protesters were just as diverse in their political opinions as they were in their background and fashion style — testament to the fact that the true beauty of New York City is its insuppressible diversity.

October 5, 2004 - 8:53am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Electoral Politics

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Strange Victory"

John Chuckman

Nothing tells us more about the odd political state of America than the recent presidential debate and reactions to it. The American debates, of course, are not debates at all. They are more a set of joint press conferences, a staged opportunity for both candidates to repeat memorized lines in a cozy environment, protected by elaborate rules and an always-undemanding moderator. Still, once in a while, something manages to happen.

October 2, 2004 - 3:16pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Health

"The Monster at the Door"

Mike Davis

As in a classic 1950s sci-fi thriller, our world is imperiled by a
terrifying monster. Scientists try to sound the alarm, but politicians
ignore the threat until its too late. Indifference ultimately turns into
panic.


The monster, of course, is H5N1, the lethal avian flu that first emerged
in 1997 in Hong Kong and is now entrenched — in an even more lethal
strain — in a half dozen Southeast Asian countries. It has recently
killed scores of farmers and poultry workers who have had direct contact
with sick birds.

October 2, 2004 - 2:58pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Electoral Politics

Putting the Right Under a Microscope:

An Interview with Chip Berlet, Political Affairs

[Editor's note: Chip Berlet is a senior analyst at Political Research Associates and has written, edited and co-authored numerous articles on right-wing activity and government repression for The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Progressive, The Nation, The Humanist, and The St. Louis Journalism Review. Berlet edited Eyes Right! Challenging the Right-wing Backlash (PRA and South End Press, 1995). He is also co-author with Matthew N. Lyons of Right-wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (Guilford Press, 2000).]

PA: What are the main political forces that compose the right?


CB: You can probably divide up the right into three broad categories: the secular right, the Christian right, and the xenophobic right. Everyone to the right of the Republican Party is sometimes lumped together in a variety of ways. And although they overlap, they really make up different sectors that sometimes can agree on an agenda and sometimes can’t. So coalition-building is crucial to their success.

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