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January 13, 2002 - 1:02am -- autonomedia
News
In the Streets



Update #1 Reclaim the Streets Party Announced for February 2nd

Update #2 Drawing Resistanxce exhibition of Political Art in ABC NoRio

Update #3 Poster now available for the InterGalactic Anarchist Convention

Update #4 Schedule of events now available for the InterGalactic Anarchist Convention.

Update #5 Calendar of events during the WEF maintained by 'Another World Is Possible.'

Updates follow the main text of the article below.

Introduction


The World Economic Forum will hold its annual meeting in the Astoria Waldorf Hotel in New York City between January 31st and February 4th. The WEF is an entirely private forum without any direct relationship with a specific international trade treaty, yet each year, Presidents and Prime Ministers, Foreign Policy and Finance Czars, collaborationist Union leaders and phalanxes of CEOs(check out the list), make their way there for the great capitalist confab, and deep immersion in the mysteries of free market utopianism. Given the star studded list of attendees, we can only assume that the food is terrific and the conversation exceptional. But rather than passing you to prejudiced leftists for a description of the WEF, here is one from that pillar of bourgeois respectability, the Financial Times.


Check out the official WEF web site and their magazine!


Traditionally of course, this meeting has been held in the picture postcard setting of Davos, Switzerland. And it has been the habit of nay-sayers, refuseniks, dissidents, rejectionists, contrarians and ne'er-do-wells of all stripes to make the journey there too, and give them the stiff finger salute (read a report from last year to get an idea). True to form, news of the conference triggered a call to action by anarchists, amongst others.

January 7, 2002 - 7:59am -- Stenglander
News
Prisons & Prisoners

DaaaihLoong writes: "Your tax dollars at work:

'Not one inmate has escaped from the 210-acre Eastern Reception,
Diagnostic
and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, which was completed last summer
at
a cost of $105 million and is guarded by more than 130 video cameras.
Not
one inmate has been injured or gotten into a fight at this facility
designed to hold 2,684 of the nastiest characters around.
Not one inmate has felt the need to sue the state over prison
conditions at
Bonne Terre. Indeed, not one inmate has complained about the place.
Admittedly, not one inmate has stayed at Bonne Terre, either.

"Missouri is paying for the finished prison, mind you, to the tune of
lease
payments totaling $168 million over the next 20 years. The state's
prison
system is paying for its inaction as well, seeing as how its 28,641
inmates
are housed in 20 other institutions designed for roughly three-fourths
that
number.

"Finally, the shaky little city of Bonne Terre (population 4,000) is
really
paying, having no new revenue to cover the $14 million in capital
improvements and infrastructure expenses it incurred in gleeful
anticipation of the facility and the 800-plus jobs (and thousands of
visits
to prisoners) it was expected to bring.'

For the full article, go to:

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/issues/2001-12-26/r ay.html/1/index.html"

December 30, 2001 - 7:51pm -- hydrarchist
News
In the Streets

polo writes: "BUENOS AIRES -- Argentine demonstrators clashed with
police outside the presidential palace and broke down
the doors of Congress on Saturday in anger at the new
government's handling of a deep recession barely a
week after protests forced out a previous president.

At least two police were injured as they used tear
gas to break up what had been a peaceful demonstration
in which thousands of people took to the streets to
protest interim President Adolfo Rodriguez Saa's
decision to keep unpopular banking curbs and his
appointment of
some officials widely seen as corrupt.
."

December 24, 2001 - 3:11am -- Uncle Fluffy
News
Culture

hydrarchist writes: "Some readers will be aware that one of the Italian sections of the Luther Blissett Project encountered serious legal problems in 1998, owing to a book they penned named "Let the Children.....". The bad news is that the decision of the court has finally arrived, and they lost. The good news is that they remain undaunted, and the text remians available. You can enjoy the offending text at this location. Some of the individuals formerly involved in LB now animate the Wu Ming Foundation .


-----------------

Luther Blissett must pay compensation to the public official Lucia Musti and their book "Let the Children Play" must be destroyed. It's an outright victory, obtained by the magistrate that coordinated the investigations into "Satan's children", over the collective name signatory to the text. The civil tribunal found in her favor on all fronts, declaring that two chapters "Satan's children: Anatomy of a Frame Up" and the "The Dimitry case is closed" of the book edited and published by Castelvecchi and distributed on the internet "are damaging to her reputation". The sentence thus specifies the sentencing of the publishing company to the book’s "withdrawal from commerce and the destruction of the copies" ……... present in bookshops or in storage".....

December 23, 2001 - 8:47pm -- nomadlab
News
Technology

hydrarchist writes: " This article is taken from 2600.com.


On December 20, a ruling was issued denying Ford's complaint against 2600. Last April Ford Motor Company sued 2600 Enterprises for pointing fuckgeneralmotors.com at their website. The judge's decision reaffirms the right of domain name holders to point their websites where they choose. While the court avoided ruling on important First Amendment issues, it flatly rejected all of Ford's trademark infringement claims. "This is a decisive victory and we are absolutely delighted," said attorney Eric Grimm who argued the case for 2600. "The court ruled consistently with the law and all precedent."

December 21, 2001 - 11:46pm -- nomadlab
News
Rants

Well, we dont have a category for stuff like this, but I thought it was slightly entertaining. -nomadlab

Anonymous Comrade writes: "February 3, 2047


U.S. Federal Government to Move Offshore


NASSAU--In a bid to cut costs and enhance security the House of
Representatives voted Tuesday to approve a Senate bill relocating both
Congressional bodies to an unnamed offshore banking and tax haven. "The
move is sure to result in immediate cost savings to the American people,"
notes Senator Janet Rent (D-Calif). "By moving to a tax haven we can cut
payroll costs dramatically because we can reduce salaries without reducing
take-home pay."

December 18, 2001 - 11:19pm -- jim
News
Prisons & Prisoners

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A federal judge on
Tuesday threw out the death sentence imposed
nearly two decades ago on Mumia Abu-Jamal,
revered by supporters worldwide as a crusader
against racial injustice but reviled by others as an
unrepentant cop-killer.


U.S. District Judge William Yohn cited problems
with the jury charge and verdict form in the trial
that ended with the former journalist and Black
Panther's first-degree murder conviction in the
death of a Philadelphia police officer. The judge
denied all of Abu-Jamal's other claims and refused
his request for a new trial.

December 18, 2001 - 4:13pm -- jim
News
News

Alex LoCascio writes:

Comrades,

I'm very saddened to announce the passing of a veteran of American radicalism.

Martin Glaberman, professor emeritus of Social Science at Wayne State
University in Detroit, passed away on Sunday. An autoworker, shop steward,
and union comitteeman for twenty years, Marty was one of the greats of the
generation of radicals who had come to politics through the American
Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s.

A comrade of the West Indian Marxist C.L.R. James, Marty had left the
Socialist Workers Party twice with his political co-thinkers. When they
broke with the Trotskyist movement definitively in the early 1950s, they
set about to reinvent Marxism in light of conditions in post-WWII America.
Inspired by the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, they had an unflagging faith
in the revolutionary potential of the working class, and denounced the
bureaucratic societies of the Eastern Bloc as simply another form of
capitalism.

December 18, 2001 - 1:38pm -- jim
News
News

Seeing With One Eye

By Sabine Brandt

Orbituary from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

FRANKFURT. In spring 1996, about the time of his 83rd birthday, the writer
Stefan Heym had his last book published. The work titled Der Winter unseres
Mißvergnügens. (The Winter of our Discontent) described what had gone on
behind the propaganda scenes when the singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann was
expelled from East Germany in 1976. In the introduction, Heym wrote,
"Looking back, I wish to say that this was the writing on the wall that
announced the end of real Socialism -- there were good reasons why this
precise term had been coined -- the end of this failed revolution, this
republic with no legitimacy."

Over four decades, Heym had repeatedly criticized the East German state,
sometimes acidly, that he had once deliberately chosen as his home, but he
always professed loyalty to it. It was only in this late diary, written at
the end of his life that he completely rejected the construction that would
always respond to his offer of solidarist comradeship with distrust, and in
the end, with blatant enmity.

December 17, 2001 - 2:29pm -- jim
News
News

javier writes: "
Several black communities in the pacific coast of Colombia are being killed
and displaced by paramilitaries in this very moment, in an operation which
will continue in the next days and weeks. This is happening in the same
region where between 100 and 300 people were massacred last Easter, with
the complicity and cooperation of the Colombian army, which is happening
again this time. The objective is to make room for transnational investment
in a region where black and indigenous communities have preserved the
highest density in biodiversity of the world, strategic oil reserves and
projected interoceanic transport megaprojects for international trade.



Below you will find an edited version of the letter that the
Colombia-Canada Solidarity Campaign has sent to the Canadian minister of
foreign affaires, already adapted to be used as model for European groups.
There is also a letter to Pastrana (in Spanish only), sent in another
message. Obviously, non-European groups are also strongly encouraged to
write to your minister, you will have to get rid of the parts that are
specific to Europe.


We know that this sort of lobbying is not the usual form of action
discussed in these lists, but in this very urgent case it is a matter of
life or death; there are no guarantees that it will work, but it is better
than doing nothing. However, actions in (front of) Colombian embassies
and/or companies involved in business with Colombia are surely more effective.

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