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Electoral Landslide in Holland
Joost van Steenis
Fast change occurs.
We had in The Netherlands a stable political system in which the big traditional parties formed coalitions to rule the country. It seemed this this could go on for ages. But the last Town Council elections proved that people can suddenly change their minds. It is not yet a catastrophe but
nevertheless is again proved that stability is not eternal, that unexpected
things can happen.
Chuck0 writes
The Stars & Stripes: Killing for the Flag
Alternative Press Review,Vol 7, No.1/Spring 2002
The U.S. is the only nation-state to have been condemned by the World Court
for international terrorism.
The U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council
resolution calling on governments to observe international law. After
deliberately targeting the civilian public health infrastructure, the U.S.
military imposes a continuing economic blockade on Iraq which has directly
resulted in the deaths of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of children.
The U.S. government is the primary financier and arms supplier for the
decades-long Israeli war against the entire Palestinian people. The U.S.
armed forces and U.S. organized and/or financed ally or proxy forces have
killed millions upon millions of civilians since the end of World War II.
This is the not-so-hidden meaning of the Stars and Stripes as the vast
majority of people around the world understand it.
jim writes: I saw this on the web, it is worth a read:
"The New Empire Loyalists
Former Leftists Turned US Military Cheerleaders Are Helping Snuff Out Its Traditions of Dissent"
Tariq Ali
Saturday March 16, 2002, The Guardian
Exactly one year before the hijackers hit the Pentagon, Chalmers Johnson, a distinguished American academic, staunch supporter of the US during the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and one-time senior analyst for the CIA, tried to alert his fellow-citizens to the dangers that lay ahead. He offered a trenchant critique of his country's post-cold war imperial policies: "Blowback," he prophesied, "is shorthand for saying that a nation reaps what it sows, even if it does not fully know or understand what it has sown.
"Given its wealth and power, the United States will be a prime recipient in the foreseeable future of all of the more expectable forms of blowback, particularly terrorist attacks against Americans in and out of the armed forces anywhere on earth, including within the United States."
"In the US, Dreaming of Iraq:
The Political Economy of the 'War on Terrorism' "
George Caffentzis
"I am not a criminal.
I am new to Cairo. I live in Baghdad." He told the story
of his dream and the buried treasure,
and he was so believable in the telling that
the night patrolman began to cry. Always,
the fragrance of truth has that effect.
-- Rumi, "In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo:
In Cairo, Dreaming of Baghdad"(1260-1273)
(Rumi 1996: 210)
Preface, 2002: The Political Economy of "the War on Terrorism"
I wrote the following essay in March 1998, during the last major political-military confrontation of the US government with the Baathist regime of Iraq. It might be useful to review it now when the Bush Administration is preparing for an attack on Iraq to bring about a "regime change."
In it is an analysis of the political economic thinking that is at the basis of Bush's "war on terrorism" (stage two: "The Axis of Evil"). The key argument of this doctrine is very simple:
(1) Almost any advanced technological production process can be used to create "weapons of mass destruction."
(2) Any such production process not directly controlled by a multinational corporation (MNC) headquartered in the US (or Japan or Western Europe) can be used by a government to create weapons of mass destruction.
(3) No goverment outside a list agreed upon by the US government ought to have the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction. Hence,
No government (whether democratically elected or not) outside of the agreed list whose advanced technology is not controlled by an acceptable MNC can be allowed to exist.
The Return of Dr. Strangelove
By Jack A. Smith
The pro-war national political consensus that emerged after the Sept. 11 attack on the United States has produced one more big dividend for George W. Bush, in addition to bipartisan backing for his open-ended, ill-defined wars on terrorism, support for his decision to terminate the ABM treaty, and the impending passage of his astronomical defense budget, among other right-wing initiatives.
Anonymous Comrade writes "Johan Soderberg has a fine essay called "Copyleft vs. Copyright: A Marxist Critique". Here is the Abstract and Table of Contents. You can find the whole piece at soderberg.
Copyright was invented by and for early capitalism, and its importance to that system has grown ever since. To oppose copyright is to oppose capitalism. Thus, Marxism is a natural starting point when challenging copyright. Marx's concept of a 'general intellect', suggesting that at some point a collective learning process will surpass physical labour as a productive force, offers a promising backdrop to understand the accomplishments of the free software community. Furthermore, the chief concerns of hacker philosophy, creativity and technological empowerment, closely correspond to key Marxist concepts of alienation, the division of labour, deskilling, and commodification. At the end of my inquiry, I will suggest that the development of free software provides an early model of the contradictions inherent to information capitalism, and that free software development has a wider relevance to all future production of information.
full story is here"
Phuq Hedd writes "There's a really good, detailed review of Hardt & Negri's "Empire" tome by a member of the Workers Solidarity Movement. Central points in the review include:
1. Criticism of Empire's assertion that empire isn't really more of the same old US Imperialism dressed up in fancy new clothes (paras 18-25)
2. Commentary on the use of Foucauldian inspired ideas about "the multitude" as a replacement for Marxist ideas about the proletariat. The impetus to create this new terminology is noted to arise solely out of the problem of Marx's elitist rejection of lumpenproletarians and peasants. (circa para. 35)
3. Criticism (circa para. 38) of Hardt & Negri's denial of something that they take to be anarchist because it is "not materialist"!
4. A call for empirical evidence to prove some of Empire's claims, for example that Capitalism has lost its ability to use Imperialism to harvest 3rd World labor to the detriment of 1st World labor.
Anyway, read the rest of the review for yourselves. It's very clear and attempts to be positive where that is justified.
Phuq Hedd"
Sakhra-l'Assal Interviews Peter Lamborn Wilson
SA: Can you tell us something about the current state of affairs in the
USA? What do you make of this general idea that the "world will never be
the same"?
PLW: That's practically the first thing I heard on Sept. 11th --
"Everything has changed -- now, everything's going to be different."
Everyone was saying that (except me, I wasn't saying that...) I'm still
not convinced that that's true. I mean obviously, in some way it's true,
it has to be, it's a big event, so things change. But in a broader
s ense, a philosophical sense, if you want to put it that way, in a
philosophy of history sense, is anything different? Has anything
changed? It's not clear to me that it has. For example we can say that
in 1989 and '91, with the fall of Communism, that history came to a
stop. This is the expression of people both on the left and the right
who saw the dialectic of the social as essentially synonymous with
history. So when that came to an end, history came to an end. Alright,
let's accept this for a moment as a hypothesis and ask -- I mean,
obviously there's some truth to it, whether you take it literally or
not, some sort of history came to an end -- so, let's look at the event
of 09/11 and ask whether history begins again. As someone said to me,
'Oh, I guess you'll agree that history has started up again.' No, I'm not
sure I do agree.
Steven Duane Wilson writes " In the course of human evolution, an event takes place that awakens all senses to realize that the next step is to be taken now. In the past year things have taken place all around the world that leads me to believe now is the time for the next evolutionary step. If you are looking for truth and freedom, the only way to achieve those things is through anarchy. No longer can mankind ignore the evils of civilized existence.
We must acknowledge the fact that this society is too dangerous for it's own good. We must put down the weights of past glories and climb higher beyond dreams. The human needs change, because if things do not, our being will end with a war over oil or economy or religion or political agenda. The call for intellectual anarchy that I am making is for all to move towards a better day. To understand what is wrong with man and to see how man can change. We need revolution to keep ourselves alive.
The government must go and let man be a world of self-rule, where responsibility isn't a curse but a challenge, and logic and reason will lead. Compassion and peace will be our new world order, and no one will deny us this claim, that I will not fight for Uncle Sam, I will not pay taxes to support a war I do not believe in, I will not vote for federal or state offices to be filled by puppets of pain, I will not obey the lady of justice, and I will not live in this world anymore! Revolution is a piece of evolution, and it is a natural thing. We must think ourselves free, and then move to change a world that was never meant to be. Freedom must be absolute, or it does not exist at all. If your destination is truth and freedom, the road you travel is called anarchy."
"Twentieth Century Most Murderous in History"
Eric Hobsbawm, Guardian [UK], Saturday February 23, 2002
The 20th century was the most murderous in recorded history.
The total number of deaths caused by or associated with its
wars has been estimated at 187m, the equivalent of more than
10% of the world's population in 1913. Taken as having begun
in 1914, it was a century of almost unbroken war, with few
and brief periods without organised armed conflict
somewhere. It was dominated by world wars: that is to say,
by wars between territorial states or alliances of states.
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