This essay was originally published here in early february, but without footnotes due to technical difficulties. Please find herein the full text.(h.)

Anonymous Comrade writes.... This essay takes a critical look at the role Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) play in the growing movement against global capital. It is part of a collection published this week by Soft Skull press in NY. "The Battle of Seattle; The new Movement against Capitalist Globalisation" Eds Eddie Yuen, Daniel Burton_Rose and George Katsiafikas, published by Soft Skull Press (February, 2002)

"This Is What Bureaucracy Looks Like.
NGOs and Anti-Capitalism(1)

by James Davis

"I'm aware that it's a lot more glamorous to be on the barricade with a handkerchief around your nose than it is to be at the meetings with a briefcase and a bowler hat, but I think that we're getting more done this way"(2) -- Bono

This essay takes a critical look at the role Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) play in the growing movement against global capital. The movement, which made its spectacular US debut in Seattle, has lent NGOs unprecedented political influence. Leading thinkers and institutions of capitalist planning are desperate for allies to appease their critics. As we will see the impulses of the NGOs and those of the movement are politically at odds. While much discussion has concentrated on tactical differences, a more profound problem lies beneath. Lacking in imagination and caught between the many-headed street movement and an impulse to negotiate directly with power on its behalf, the specter of NGOs, as a device for the containment of political dissent, arises(3).

Thomas Seay writes: Here is my translation of Casarini's surprizing statement on the Biagi assasination. Please
circulate. The original can be found at:
Casarini

To All Civil Society by Luca Casarini

(translated from the Italian by Thomas Seay)

What happened in Bologna is a horrible pro-regime homicide. I reaffirm this and I will continue to state this with all my might along with thousands and thousands of people, knowing that this thought is shared by a lot of people.

What does this mean? It means that it is not the "terrorism", as the term is being used, of a previous time in this country.
Nor is it the "strategy of tension", which was inaugurated in 1969 with a state-planted fascist bomb in Piazza Fontana. Those two settings were completely different from today, as were the culture, the political and social climate in Italy as in the rest
of the world. The needs of the various state apparatus were different, the "field of action", the nation-state was different. The thinking of thousands of youth, who wanted to fight with arms, was different.

john perry barlow writes "The Accra Manifesto
Accra, Ghana
Tuesday, March 12, 2002 (revised Wed. March 13, 2002)

Since its beginnings, Cyberspace has provided new approaches for the
benign ordering of human affairs. As we begin to develop institutions
to govern the digital world, we must avoid returning to industrial
models that have generally failed in the analog world to assure
equity, liberty, and human inclusion. Instead, let us build upon the
promise of what has already proven effective in this social
experiment.

Anonymous Comrade writes "Scientific American, April 2002
full: http://www.sciam.com/2002/0402issue/0402bales.html

The Social Psychology of Modern Slavery

Contrary to conventional wisdom, slavery has not disappeared from the
world. Social scientists are trying to explain its persistence

By Kevin Bales

For Meera, the revolution began with a single rupee. When a social worker
came across Meera's unmapped village in the hills of Uttar Pradesh in India
three years ago, he found that the entire population was in hereditary debt
bondage. It could have been in the time of their grandfathers or
great-grandfathers--few in the village could remember--but at some point in
their past, the families had pledged themselves to unpaid labor in return
for loans of money. The debt passed down through the generations. Children
as young as five years old worked in quarry pits, making sand by crushing
stones with hammers. Dust, flying rock chips and heavy loads had left many
villagers with silicosis and injured eyes or backs.

Calling together some of the women, the social worker proposed a radical
plan. If groups of 10 women agreed to set aside a single rupee a week from
the tiny sums the moneylenders gave them to buy rice, he would provide seed
money and keep the funds safe. Meera and nine others formed the first
group. The rupees slowly mounted up. After three months, the group had
enough to pay off the loan against which Meera was bonded. She began
earning money for her work, which greatly increased the amount she could
contribute to the group. In another two months, another woman was freed;
the following month, a third came out of bondage."