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"We Are Negative"
Imaginary Fraction
1. Stop. Stop. Stop. It is time to say stop. It is time to become
negative. A break has occurred that forces us to refuse. We know very
well that there are no half solutions: We have to refuse and dismiss
the development occurring in Denmark right now. Stop, stop, stop.
Racism, cultural homogenization and criminalisation of alternative
lifestyles are official government policy. Stop this fucking madness.
In the current situation it is important to express our dissent in
the streets, but marching in Copenhagen is not enough and must not be
confused with the long dangerous fight where we challenge the basic
machinery of the state. The state is continuously shaping our lives
and our bodies though its biopolitical offensive. But it is possible
to discourage the state and break its will. This has happened many
times throughout history, it is happening in Iraq today and it can
happen here.
2. The state is a fragile mechanism, that’s one of the lessons learned
during the March events in Copenhagen. The confusion was evident: dark
rubber skinned elephants ran galloping through the blacked out streets
searching for their own shadows. They were not able to locate any kind
of frontline where they could mirror their crushing and destructive
power. We were not there. We had gone before the heavy movement of
their machinery eventually came to a halt. There was nothing else to
do for the police than to arrest coincidental bystanders; the need to
catch someone, just anyone, was evident. Going back empty handed was
not an option. Now we know it: the state suffers from a serious case
of sclerosis when reacting like this. It is desperately trying to hold
a divided and dissolved society together by creating images of deviant
subjects wearing veils, being pierced, throwing bricks or just saying
‘no’. If they don’t exist they are created. Stop, stop, stop.
Cerámica de Cuyo: A Profile of Worker Control in Argentina
Benjamin Dangl
From Upside Down World
In the worn out meeting room of worker-run Cerámica de Cuyo, Manuel
Rojas runs a rough hand over his face. The mechanic recalls forming the
cooperative after the company boss fired the workers in 2000: "We didn’t
have any choice. If we didn’t take over the factory we would all be in
the streets. The need to work pushed us to action."
After working at the ceramic brick and tile factory for nearly 35 years,
Rojas joined the other two dozen workers at Cerámica de Cuyo and began
to organize into a cooperative. These workers were part of national
movement at a time when Argentina was in an economic crisis. Across the
country, hundreds of factories, businesses and hotels shut their doors
and sent their employees packing. Many workers, like those at Cerámica
de Cuyo, decided to take matters into their own hands. As the stories of
these workers illustrate, the cooperatively-run road hasn’t been easy.
Cerámica de Cuyo is surrounded by vineyards and artists' homes in the
bohemian community of Bermejo, Argentina, right outside Mendoza. Dust
blows around the sun burnt factory yard as I sit down with Rojas and his
co-worker Francisco Avila. Rojas wears a weathered blue plaid shirt
while Avila has a baseball cap resting on a head of gray hair. We’re in
the Cerámica de Cuyo meeting room. The ancient chairs have crumbling
foam cushions. Phone numbers and Che Guevara slogans are scrawled on the
walls. It’s easy to sense the wear and tear that lifetimes of labor have
had on the place.
NOT BORED! writes: "Protest to the Libertarians of the Present and the Future
About the Capitulations of 1937"
An 'Uncontrollable' from the Iron Column
Preface "This appeal[1] from an unknown anarchist militia, part of the famous "Iron Column," appears to be — even to this day — the truest and most beautiful text that the Spanish proletarian revolution left us. The contents of this revolution, its intentions and its practice are coldly and passionately summarized in it. The principal causes of its failure are denounced: those that proceeded from the constant counter-revolutionary action of the Stalinists relieved the disarmed bourgeois forces under the Republic, and the constant concessions of the leaders of the CNT-FAI (here bitterly evoked by the term "our own") from July 1936 to March 1937. Those who proudly claimed the title, then insulting, of incontrolado [uncontrollable] proved to have the greatest historical and strategic sense. One had made the revolution half-way, forgetting that time does not stand still. "Yesterday, we were the masters of everything; today, they are." At that time, the libertarians of the "Iron Column" could no longer "continue until the end," together. After having lived such a great moment, it was no longer possible to "to separate us, to leave each other, to no longer see each other again." But all the rest had been repudiated and squandered."
"This text, mentioned in the work by Burnett Bolloten,[2] was published by Nosotros, an anarchist daily newspaper in Valencia, [in installments] on 12, 13, 15, 16 and 17 March 1937. On 21 March, the "Iron Curtain" was integrated into the "Popular Army" of the Republic under the name of the 83rd Brigade. On 3 May, the armed uprising of the workers in Barcelona was disavowed by its leaders, who succeeded in putting down it on 7 May. There would then remain two Statist powers of the counter-revolution, the strongest of which would win the Civil War." — Guy Debord
[1] Translator's note: Protest to the Libertarians of the present and the future about the capitulations of 1937, by an "Uncontrollable" in the Iron Column, was translated from the Spanish by "two aficionados without qualities," that is to say, Guy Debord and Alice Becker-Ho. It was published in French by Editions Gerard Lebovici in December 1979. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! June 2007.
[2] Translator's note: The Great Camouflage by Burnett Bolloten (1961), published in 1977 by Ruedo iberico under the title The Spanish Revolution, the Left and the Struggle for Power.
Protest to the Libertarians of the Present and the Future About the Capitulations of 1937
I am one of those who was rescued from San Miguel de las Reyes, the sinister penitentiary that was elevated by the monarchy to bury alive the men who — because they were not cowards — never submitted to the infamous laws that the powerful dictate to the oppressed. They took me down below, like so many others, for having committed an offense, for rebelling against the humiliations of which an entire village was the victim: in other words, for killing a "leader."[1]
I was young, and I am young now, since I entered prison at 23 and I left — because anarchists opened the doors — when I was 34. Eleven years submitted to the punishment of not being a man, of being a thing, of being a number!
saroj giri writes: "Radical, Subversive Acts
Or, the Myth of Contingency, Freedom"
Saroj Giri
What makes individual cases of excess catapult from the particular to the universal? How is it that one particular event or person gets so highlighted at the expense of all other (counter-factual) particulars, so that the one universalised particular blocks our view of the rest? Isn’t this a prime ideological move in a commodity economy, under capitalism?
So often when we see someone achieving something under capitalism, when we find that somebody has made it big or has been successful in something we usually as a matter of habit perhaps associate it with the person’s individual abilities, luck, sense of enterprise, willingness to take risk etc.
This tendency to take up what is actually an effect of larger social relations to be just an individual thing is a widespread tendency under commodity fetishism. So we see only the individual and refuse to see the overall relations in which the individual exists. If the individual fails, that is due to the personal inability, bad luck etc of the person. If the person succeeds that is due to hard work and sense of enterprise etc of the individual. In either case, the individual is important, apparently.
"Unlikely Bedfellows" [Editor's Note: Oh Yeah?]
Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and higher education as a whole
have enjoyed a decidedly un-cozy relationship since the Vietnam War –
a fact that many in academe have found to be just fine with them,
thanks.
But if the FBI and higher education still aren't the best of friends,
they appear to be interacting a lot more. Reports this week about a
nationwide FBI outreach program in which agents set up meetings with
college leaders to discuss strategies for safeguarding academic
research from unfriendly foreign interests have fueled growing
concerns that the two entities are cozying up in uncomfortable ways
these days in the name of national security.
And yet the reports have also raised awareness of the agency's
potential value as a resource as colleges confront the vulnerability
inherent in an open system producing reams of research on topics
intimately tied to America's economic and physical security.
Anonymous Comrade writes:
"On Lice and Fleas:
Observations Starting from the Conflict Between Iran and the USA"
Wayne Spencer
“Johnson, for sport perhaps, or from the spirit of contradiction, eagerly maintained that Derrick had merit as a writer. Mr. Morgan argued with him directly, in vain. At length he had recourse to this device.
Translocales writes: "On the Road to the US Social Forum:
Thinking from the Movements"
Translocal Productions: Sebastian Cobarrubias + Maribel Casas
With the USSF less than a month away, we thought now was a good time to let rip a couple of general reflections on our experiences in US social movements. Supposedly, despite the many and often justifiable critiques, the Social Forum processes are times to reflect on where we have been collectively as social movements, share tools and analyses, and start to beat paths into the uncertain future. What follows then are a few things we noticed time and time again in US-based social movements but which we rarely hear discussed, other than as side comments among a few companions. While we have heard excellent critiques and ways to deal with things such as- privilege and supremacy issues within movements, exclusionary forms of activism, linking local community struggles to global questions (war, capitalism), what follows are a few things that we rarely see discussed but which we believe could be something useful for some organizations, collectives and activists to dig their teeth into.
V annon writes: "World Options: Apocalypse or Resistance"
V Annon
Too bad there is no radical press in the West
nor even a free press .
If there were then you would not read this here.
There would be many articles like this
in your local newspaper, TV and national magazines…
Too bad no one really reads and so very few are radical
or else there would be a market for such articles…
Alas…
Colony Collapse: Do Massive Bee Die-Offs Mean an End to Our Food
System as We Know it?
Scott Thill, AlterNet
The joke may have fallen flat, but this time no one could blame Bill
Maher. Sure, it happened on the May 4, 2007 installment of his show
Real Time With Bill Maher, but CNN personality and senior medical
correspondent Sanjay Gupta was the one delivering the punch line, and
it seems he was the only one in the room who believed the issue of
Earth's mysteriously vanishing honeybees was a joke. And while some
may argue that he stayed on message, promoting his May 19 documentary
called Danger: Poison Food, he nevertheless fumbled for answers when
Maher asked him about what could be killing a major component of the
nation's food supply.
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