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"Why We Need a Multilateral Magna Carta"
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
It is becoming increasingly clear that a unilateral or “monarchical” arrangement of the global order — centred on the military, political and economic dictation of the United States — is undesirable and unsustainable.
The crisis of this arrangement presents the opportunity for the proposition of a new global order by the “global aristocracies” — that is to say, the multinational corporations, the supranational institutions and the other dominant nation states.
From the excellent
Electronic Intifada
"As in Tiennamen Square"
Tanya Reinhart
An extensive discussion has already taken place in Israel regarding the cost-benefit ratio of Yassin's assassination. But the question of justice has hardly been raised.
According to international law, the execution of any person in an occupied territory is not allowed. The Geneva Convention, born out of the horrifying experience of the second World War, sets limitations on the use of force even in times of war. The convention distinguishes between war and a state of occupation. Its fundamentals are, first, that occupied people are "protected", and that the occupier is responsible for their safety. Second, it determines that the occupied people have the right to fight for their liberation. International conventions are one of the means people have developed for self-preservation. Without them, there is a danger that the human race would annihilate itself - first the strong would wipe out the weak, and then each other.
nolympics writes The Phonenix Program
was a CIA project in South Vietnam from 1967 which set out to eliminate popular support for the Viet Cong through assasination, kidnapping, torture, psychological operations, propaganda and general terror. The link above provides some original documents and some analysis of the operation.
What with Blackwater and the pressing need for counterinsurgency, as well as a voracious appetite for the usual slaughter, there is little doubt that Cheney, Bremer and dracula man Rumsfeld will be leafing through its archives.
"Blues For Kurdistan"
David Martinez
We blow through Turkey in one day by car and plane, flying over the eastern regions’ snowy mountains…it looks beautiful down there and I want to return some day and see more. But not this trip, we only stop for lunch in TK, historically the capital of Kurdistan, and then we are into a car headed east, passing ancient towns built on hills that poke up from the green plains. We cross the border at Zakhu, into Iraqi Kurdistan, spend the night there and then go to Erbil.
The area is beautiful, with rolling hills and wide rivers swollen with snowmelt, craggy mountains looming behind capped with snow. The people here look more Central Asian, with wide windblown faces and red smiles, the men wearing the billowing pants tied with wide sashes that are the traditional outfit of the Kurds. They remind me of Palestinians in their pride and welcoming spirit. “You are American? You are welcome in Kurdistan.” The area has enjoyed a decade of semi-autonomy, with its own armed forces and passport controls, and has a sense of tranquility and happiness that is the polar opposite of Baghdad’s misery and social chaos.
Tacitus writes:
"In this fine article, probably familiar to some, HST looks at the ferment of declassed drop-outs that 'Mr. Mulford' (lawmaker) considered to be the ones causing all the trouble in Berkeley, Cal. at the time of the Free Speech movement... It seemed useful, and I couldn't find it anywhere online.
"The Nonstudent Left"
Hunter S. Thompson
BERKELEY, September 27, 1965 — At the height of the “Berkeley insurrection” press reports were loaded with mentions of outsiders, nonstudents and professional troublemakers. Terms like “Cal’s shadow college” and “Berkeley’s hidden community” became part of the journalistic lexicon. These people, it was said, were whipping the campus into a frenzy, goading the students to revolt, harassing the administration, and all the while working for their own fiendish ends. You could almost see them loping along the midnight streets with bags of seditious leaflets, strike orders, red banners of protest and cablegrams from Moscow, Peking or Havana. As in Mississippi and South Vietnam, outside agitators were said to be stirring up the locals, who wanted only to be left alone.
"Nietzsche and the Dervishes"
Hakim Bey, (Spring Equinox, 1989)
Rendan, "The Clever Ones." The sufis use a technical
term rend (adj. rendi, pl. rendan) to designate one
"clever enough to drink wine in secret without getting
caught": the dervish version of "Permissible
Dissimulation" (taqiyya, whereby Shiites are permitted
to lie about their true affiliation to avoid
persecution as well as advance the purpose of their
propaganda).
"On Security and Terror"
Giorgio Agamben, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 20, 2001
Security as leading principle of state politics dates back to the the birth of the modern state. Hobbes already mentions it as the opposite of fear, which compels human beings to come together within a society. But not until the 18th century does a thought of security come into its own. In a 1978 lecture at the College de France (which has yet to be published) Michel Foucault has shown how the political and economic practice of the Physiocrats opposes security to discipline and the law as instruments of governance.
Existential Marxism in Postwar France
Mark Poster (originally published in 1975)
My purpose in this study has been to trace the relationship of Marxism and existentialism as the dominant theme in recent French social thought. My thesis is that the two doctrines converged in Sartre and in the Arguments group, establishing the beginnings of a social theory of the New Left. Starting from the period right after World War II, when Marxism and existentialism were competing doctrines, I have described the movement of Sartre and his circle toward Marxism and the movement of Marxists away from Stalinism. By the mid-1960s there had been various attempts at a synthetic existential Marxism, all of which should be seen as tentative beginnings that might result in a major new social theory. In the final chapter, I test the new theory by using it to help us comprehend the events of May-June, 1968.
Existential Marxism emerges as a social theory suited to comprehend the conditions and the contradictions of advanced industrial society, to articulate the situation of various groups in this society, and to provide a new kind of theory for the human sciences that sees the scientist not as value-free or objective but as implicated in the object of his knowledge. Existential Marxism might thus be considered both as the "ideology" of an emerging radical coalition and as a theoretical advance in its own right.
My disciplinary orientation is that of the history of ideas which describes changing intellectual patterns with more concern for the relation of ideas to society than for the logical consistency of the ideas themselves. Hence I have not attempted a systematic exposition of New Left social theory, but have restricted myself, with minor exceptions, to articulating the theories of the French. It will be clear to the reader that I am sympathetic to the effort of the existential Marxists, although I am not committed to any particular version of their thinking. I adhere to their commitment to a radical restructuring of relations and institutions in advanced industrial society, and I am especially convinced of the value of their efforts to redefine the nature of the human sciences.
My study of their positions has challenged me to consider the limitations of intellectual history, but I have not deviated very far, in this work, from its traditional methodological boundaries. Finally, it is my hope that the study of the theoretical advances of the French will be of value to all those concerned about the present state of social theory in the human sciences and to all those in the United States who are beginning to confront their situation on a theoretical level.
This whole book is available online here.
"Peasant Power in Bolivia"
Héctor Tobar, Los Angeles Times March 31, 2004
A fragile government in La Paz is further weakened as more and more
indigenous people rise up and take control of their villages.
SORATA, Bolivia — The police won't return to this village in the Andes
unless the peasants promise not to throw rocks at them.
The peasants rose up and chased the police out months ago, along with
the local representative of the provincial government, the judges and
even the army. The authorities fled Sept. 20 in the face of a crowd of
Aymara Indians armed with little more than sticks and stones, enraged by
an insult uttered by an army general hours earlier, and moved by
centuries of pent-up frustration.
"Iraq's False Promises"
Slavoj Zizek, Foreign Policy, January/February 2004
If you want to understand why the Bush administration invaded Iraq, read Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, not the National Security Strategy of the United States. Only the twisted logic of dreams can explain why the United States thinks that the aggressive pursuit of contradictory goals-promoting democracy, affirming U.S. hegemony, and ensuring stable energy supplies-will produce success.
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