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This is the "Introduction" to Konrad Becker's new cultural intelligence manual Tactical Reality
Dictionary
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("What is this?" — Samuel Morse)
"Culture and Technologies of Control"
Culture is not just the expression of individual interests and
orientations, manifested in groups according to rules and habits but it
offers identification with a system of values. The construction of
cultural memory and establishing a symbolic order through setting up
mental and ideological spaces is a traditional practice of cultural
engineering; symbolic scenarios generate reality by mediating an implicit
political narrative and logic. Maps of the world radiating an aura of
objectivity and marking out the ways of life are exploited as cognitive
tools. An image of the world as simulation or map of reality can be highly
inductive and that explains the investment in cultural representation.
"A Virtual World is Possible:
From Tactical Media to Digital Multitudes"
By Geert Lovink and Florian Schneider, nettime
I.
We start with the current strategy debates of the so-called
"anti-globalisation movement", the biggest emerging political force for
decades. In Part II we will look into strategies of critical new media
culture in the post-speculative phase after dotcommania. Four phases of
the global movement are becoming visible, all of which have distinct
political, artistic and aesthetic qualities.
"The Anarchist Revolution"
By Nestor Makhno
1.
ANARCHISM — a life of freedom and creative independence for humanity.
Anarchism does not depend on theory or programs, which try to grasp man's life in its entirety. It is a teaching, which is based on real life, which outgrows all artificial limitations, which cannot be constricted by any system.
Anonymous Comrade writes:
"Insider Trading and George Bush:
Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise"
by Mitchel Cohen
The role of oil and insider dealing in the Bush White House is nothing
new,
but it is always startling. In late 1990, Mobil Oil took out an ad in
The
N.Y. Times claiming that the company was doing nothing more than
passing
along to consumers increased costs imposed on it, and was not profiting
at
all from the US military build-up in Saudi Arabia. "On average, the
price
of crude oil has risen 24 cents a gallon," Mobil stated, "[while]
gasoline
prices have also gone up an average of 24 cents a gallon."[Mobil Corp.
Ad,
NY Times, 1990.] The company said that the statistics "refute the
ill-conceived notion that there has been any 'price gouging' on our
part."
hydrarchist writes:
"Secrecy and Publicity: Reactivating the Avant-Garde"
by Sven Lutticken
The last decade has seen an increasing use by young artists of strategies and forms derived from neo-avant-gardes—Fluxus, Conceptual or Performance art. This has called forth charges of plagiarism from an older generation of artists, who feel the young brats are getting credit for ‘things we did thirty years ago’, without acknowledging and sometimes—even worse—without knowing their predecessors’ work. Are these repetitions, then, the blind, dumb survivals of forms long past their prime? There are indeed young artists making neo-Conceptual or Fluxus-type work that seems an exasperatingly minuscule variation on what has been done before: creating ‘social works of art’ by cooking dinners or spending the night with strangers; taking ‘jobs’ in non-art professions.
While many such strategies bear an uncanny resemblance to activities in the sixties that were far more marginal, and far less commercially successful, the fact remains that the repetition of a given practice within a changed historical and cultural context has a different meaning and function. Theory has not found it easy to come to grips with this phenomenon, in part because we still find it difficult to think about history in terms of survivals and repetitions—as what Hal Foster has called a ‘continual process of protension and retension, a complex relay of anticipated futures and reconstructed pasts’. [1]
"Respect Your Enemies —The First Rule of Peace:
An Essay Addressed to the U. S. Anti-war Movement"
By Midnight Notes
"The Passions that encline men to Peace, are Fear of Death; Desire of such things as are necessary for commodious living; and a Hope by their Industry to obtain them."
—Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
1. Introduction
There is now a fledgling anti-interventionist, anti-war movement in the US. It will have a lot of work to do in the near future, although the present threat of war on Iraq is the most pressing issue it faces. The question is: can the antiwar movement do its work effectively and successfully? At the moment it is not completely marginalized, if the votes in Congress are any indication. On October 9, between one-quarter to one-third of the congressional representatives voted against granting George W. Bush "war powers." But in order to show itself as expressing the majority perspective in this country, it needs new arguments, a new respect (as in "look again") for its opponents, a deeper understanding of the reasons for the actions of its opponents, and a realistic assessment of their weaknesses. For its old arguments do not seem convincing to the majority of US citizens, and its lack of curiosity about its opponents and their reasoning is dulling its strategic sense.
Can You Trust Your Computer?
By Richard Stallman
Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their
computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call
"trusted computing," large media corporations (including the movie companies
and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft
and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you.
Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan
would make it universal.
"Suburbia or Global Communities?
And the Next Mutiny on the Bounty"
By P.M.
[A longer article, presented in three parts.]
"I was more worried about myself then than I was at any other time of my life... You’ve fallen into something that’s so ugly and horrible. Instead of My Drugs Hell, it’s My Suburban Hell.That’s not being flippant. One thing I really fear is living that whole kind of home/garden/kids kind of suburban existence. DIY and all that. I’d much rather be selling my arse in King’s Cross than living that kind of life. It’s sick and sordid that people have set such limitations on themselves, thinking that’s all they’ll get.“ (Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, about his life after his drug-addiction)
"Paradise has been found.“ Bruce Steinberg, of Merrill Lynch, about the US. (Tages-Anzeiger 1-26-2002)
Suburban Utopia
At this moment everyone on the planet is watching the people of the USA and wondering how they are reacting to the present global crisis. For the most "dangerous" working class on this planet is the US working class. When its compliance with capital ends, US capital will collapse and thereafter, like dominoes, all the secondary capitals. Some of those lesser proletariates seem ready for such an eventuality, are even prepairing for the "day after“, expecting the big holiday. The Germans and the French are rehearsing work-free lifestyles for five to six weeks every summer, the Japanese have only been pretending to be part of the game for 100 years and seem to be about to quit now. The Italians, Spanish, Russians are ready to let go. The Chinese, the Indians and Argentinians are desperately looking for a way out. Many others never really tried.
But the US working class is not only potentially dangerous to world capital. If it keeps supporting it actively or passively, there can’t be an end to the world’s turmoil, destruction and misery. The key historic question of our age is therefore: why is the US working class not letting go? Why are they still putting up with capital’s arrogance and constant demands? What have they got to lose?
Try this: The US proletariate is living in a kind of continental "Truman Show“, in a consumers‘ paradise. They’re already living in near-paradise, in a state of bliss, in a virtual utopia, beyond, in non-capitalism, in suburbia. And they seem to love it. They’re disgustingly happy – or : they think they are. (Which is even worse.) As long as suburbia can exist or as long as there is at least a believable pretense or realistic hope for it to come true, there can be no change on this planet, just the defence of the status quo with all means. Nobody wants to lose paradise, especially not to crazy terrorists who are willing to die in order to get there.
Classics from the Archives:
"Revolt of the Scientists"
By Anton Pannekoek
(From Retort, Vol. 4, # 2, Spring 1948)
Panic pervades the intellectual layers of American society. Whereas the peoples of Europe were used to war and damage, to destruction and insecurity in life, Americans felt safe in being separated by oceans from dangerous foes, until the atom bomb fell upon Hiroshima; the first scientists, realizing what it meant, called themselves "frightened men."
hydrarchist writes: "This article was originally published in the journal Historical Materialism."
"Going in the Wrong Direction,
or,
Mephistopheles: Not Saint Francis of Assisi"
by John Holloway
Toni Negri’s work is enormously attractive, not only for its own merits,
but because it responds to a desperate need. We are all looking for a way
forward. The old state-centred model of revolution has failed
catastrophically, reformism becomes more and more corrupt and barren, yet
revolutionary change is more urgent than ever. Negri refuses to give up
thinking and rethinking revolution: that is the great attraction of his
work.
The problem is that Negri leads us in the wrong theoretical direction.
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