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End of the Recession? Who’s Kidding Whom?
Immanuel Wallerstein
The media are telling us that the economic “crisis” is over, and that the world-economy is once more back to its normal mode of growth and profit. On December 30, Le Monde summed up this mood in one of its usual brilliant headlines: “The United States wants to believe in an economic upturn.” Exactly, they “want to believe” it, and not only people in the United States. But is it so?
First of all, as I have been saying repeatedly, we are not in a recession but in a depression. Most economists tend to have formal definitions of these terms, based primarily on rising prices in stock markets. They use these criteria to demonstrate growth and profit. And politicians in power are happy to exploit this nonsense. But neither growth nor profit is the appropriate measures.
The American Wikileaks Hacker
Nathaniel Rich
On July 29th, returning from a trip to Europe, Jacob Appelbaum, a lanky, unassuming 27-year-old wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan "Be the trouble you want to see in the world," was detained at customs by a posse of federal agents. In an interrogation room at Newark Liberty airport, he was grilled about his role in Wikileaks, the whistle-blower group that has exposed the government's most closely guarded intelligence reports about the war in Afghanistan. The agents photocopied his receipts, seized three of his cellphones — he owns more than a dozen — and confiscated his computer. They informed him that he was under government surveillance. They questioned him about the trove of 91,000 classified military documents that Wikileaks had released the week before, a leak that Vietnam-era activist Daniel Ellsberg called "the largest unauthorized disclosure since the Pentagon Papers." They demanded to know where Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was hiding. They pressed him on his opinions about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Appelbaum refused to answer. Finally, after three hours, he was released.
Voina, The Russian Art Anarchists, Explain Themselves"
Marlon Dolcy
The Russian art anarchist group Voina is known for drawing an enormous cock on a bridge opposite the ex-KGB offices, and instigating a sex party in a museum. Last week UK street art phenom Banksy declared that all profits from his current print sale would be gifted to the group's defense. We spoke to the group (half of which were replying from prison).
Almost Telegraphic
Franco "Bifo" Berardi
Many things to say and little time to say them.
1. A look at the scene late in the first decade. The hope Obama is dissolved and the European crisis erupts. A new logic is installed in the heart of European life from the Greek financial crisis: Merkel, Sarkozy and Trichet have decided that European society must sacrifice their current living standards, the public education system, its civilization, to pay the debts accumulated by the financial elite. A kind of directory has been taken over the Union, reaffirming the bankrupt dogmas of neoliberal monetarism: reduced labor costs, cuts in social spending, privatization of education, impoverishment of everyday life. Projecting the shadow of a long-term recession on the future of the last generation it has become blackmail. While the horizon looks dark in the European theater events are also produced unpredictable, disturbing and exciting at the same time. I see the horsemen of the apocalypse and I like the sound of galloping horses.
Thanks, But No Thanks, WikiLeaks!
Saroj Giri
Is ‘exposing power’ through ‘truth revelations’ set to become the new game in town? Is it a mere coincidence that Bradley Manning becomes no Rosa Parks but a mere conduit for ‘digital anarchism’ and ‘infoliberaton’, with WikiLeaks working in tandem with corporate media houses?
Beware of the State’s Anarchists
">Nihilist
[re. 12-23-2010: "Anarchy in the EU; Today's mail bombings at the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome are thought to be the work of anarchists. Two employees who opened the packages are both ..."]
Let's remember the last "anarchist" bombing...
In the end of December 2003, various European Union (EU) institutions received a number of letter bombs. One of them is said to have exploded in the hands of the president of the EU Commission, Romani Prodi, but without causing any injuries. The press was quick to announce that this was the work of anarchists. The proof of this was a letter sent to the paper La Repubblica, where a so far unknown group with the name Informal Anarchist Federation claimed responsibility for two earlier bombs left near Prodi's home in Italy. Italian anarchists, however, take a very different view of whom are to blame: This was a provocation, they are convinced, meant to put Italy's anarchist in disrepute, and to give an excuse for increased repression against the country's strong extra-parliamentary left.
"The Death of Universities"
Terry Eagleton
Are the humanities about to disappear from our universities? The question is absurd. It would be like asking whether alcohol is about to disappear from pubs, or egoism from Hollywood. Just as there cannot be a pub without alcohol, so there cannot be a university without the humanities. If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute. But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and it would be deceptive to call it one.
Wikileaks Beyond Wikileaks?
Saroj Giri
Wikileaks’ close collaboration with big corporate media and the ‘redactions’ raise serious doubts over whether information is actually flowing freely (Michel Chossudovsky, ‘Who is Behind Wikileaks?’ Dec 13, 2010, Global Research). And yet the Wikileaks’ intervention cannot be cast away in a cynical manner – the only way to welcome it however is by saving it from Wikileaks itself, in particular from its liberal slide. Let us problematise the kind of politics or the ‘attacks on power’ which Wikileaks represents, even as stories circulate about corporate-funding and CIA-backing. Indeed one gets deeply suspicious when for example The Guardian reports that, for the hackers, ‘the first global cyber-war has begun’, ‘the first sustained clash between the established order and the organic, grassroots culture of the net’. On the other hand, for someone like Jemima Khan typical of a whole swathe of liberal supporters, Wikileaks stands for something far less dramatic. In her already apologetic piece, ‘Why did I back Assange?’, she states that it is only about ‘a new type of investigative journalism’, about freedom of information and so on. What is it really?
The Student Loan Debt Abolition Movement in the U.S.
George Caffentzis
Debt has had a crushing impact on the lives of those who must take student loans to finance their university education in the US. For tuition fees that have been so notoriously high in private universities now are rising in public universities so quickly they are far out-pacing inflation. Student loan debt in the US has been much higher than in Europe (with the exception of Sweden), though recent developments there would indicate that this gap may soon no longer exist (Usher).
We should also take into account the fraudulent way in which the loans have been administered by the banks and the vindictiveness with which those who have been unable to pay back have been pursued by collection agents. The most frustrating aspect of student loan debt being the legally toothless position the debtor is in, because government policy has relentlessly vested all the bargaining power in the hands of the creditors.
But however agonizing the situation of the indebted, the debt is growing. As of September 2010 total student loan debt amounted to $850 billion, having just surpassed credit card debt by about $20 billion for the first time. And it is rising at a catastrophic rate, e.g., by 25% in 2009 to meet the rising cost of tuition and other college fees. Even the Great Recession has not put an end to this financial explosion. On the contrary, while credit card debt has leveled off, student borrowing has continued to grow to cover the rising costs of living as well as the tuition fees, especially by unemployed workers who are “going back to school” to get a “better,” or at least some, job in the future.
Distributed Power in the 21st Century
Brian Holmes
Should information about the US government’s dealings with the rest of the world be free? A lot of European hackers and NGOs seem to think so — and let’s not forget all the people on the other sides of the globe who agree.
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