Marx and Makhno Meet McDonald's Loren Goldner Over the last several years, a revolving network of militants in Paris, France, have developed a strategy and tactics for winning strikes by marginal, low-paid, outsourced and immigrant workers against international chains, in situations where the strikers are often ignored by unions to which they nominally belong, or are actually obstructed by them. While some of these methods benefit from aspects of French labour law that are more favourable to strikers than one finds in the backward U.S. of A, the overall strategy can certainly find its uses in other countries.

Football and Class Struggle In Italy, catenaccio was class struggle! In June of 2006, Negri talks with Renaud Dely and Rico Rizzitelli, journalists from Liberation. Football, Fordism and class struggle are some of the topics which come up throughout the interview. Q: How can it be that you, a Marxist philosopher, radical thinker and theorist of the alterglobalization movement, support AC Milan, club owned by Silvio Berlusconi? That is precisely why I cannot leave! I am a slave to my passion! It is like when you have a friend who is a prostitute: you love her no matter what! Before, people on the right and on the left would support Inter and Milan respectively. It was parallel to their political commitments. It is much more confused today. It is not necessary to take the economic organization of the club very seriously. I love AC Milan because it is my father’s club and of my children. I participated in the creation of the Brigate Rossonere,(1) which have nothing to do with the Brigate Rossi; it was before, in the 1960’s. We were followers of the left and we installed ourselves in the south end of the stadium. I have three children and they are all ‘Milanistas’. My daughter married a ‘Interista’, which caused a lot of problems. (jokingly) It made me happy when they separated. At any rate, football is nothing more than a game….

More Optimistic Today Than Ever: A Talk with Pete Seeger David Kupfer in conversation with Pete Seeger, Reality Sandwich "There is hardly anything bad in the world that doesn't have something good connected to it." Pete Seeger is one of the world's quintessential activists, having played such an important role in singing the songs and engaging in the struggles of the civil rights, free speech, human rights, anti-Vietnam War, environmental, peace, anti- nuclear, and social justice movements. He spans musical eras, from those who inspired him, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, to those he inspired, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bruce Springsteen, Dave Mathews, and Ani DiFranco.

Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits from Jobs Robert Reich Second-quarter earnings reports are coming in, and they're making Wall Street smile. Corporate profits are up. And big American companies are sitting on a gigantic pile of money. The 500 largest non-financial firms held almost a trillion dollars in the second quarter, and that money pile is growing larger this quarter. Profits that plummeted in the recession have bounced back. Big businesses have recovered almost 90 percent of what they lost. So with all this money and profit, they'll start hiring again, right? Wrong - for three reasons.

"Art-Producing Objects" Metamatic Research Initiative Call For Entries The Métamatic Research Initiative is launching a call for entries to commission six individual art works in line with its mission. The initiative welcomes proposals from visual artists working in all disciplines. The Métamatic Research Initiative's mission is to stimulate research into ideas stemming from the work and philosophy of the French-Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925-1991). Specifically, the research initiative focuses on Tinguely's exploration of the relationship between the artist, the art work and the viewer as expressed in his Métamatic sculptures. The call for entries is part of a broader effort of the initiative, in which funding will be given to both academic and artistic research activities, ranging from educational projects for young people to the commissioning of individual art works.

Apple Loses Big in DRM Ruling: Jailbreaks Are "Fair Use" Nate Anderson, arstechnica.com Every three years, the Library of Congress has the thankless task of listening to people complain about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA forbade most attempts to bypass the digital locks on things like DVDs, music, and computer software, but it also gave the Library the ability to wave its magical copyright wand and make certain DRM cracks legal for three years at a time. This time, the Library went (comparatively) nuts, allowing widespread bypassing of the CSS encryption on DVDs, declaring iPhone jailbreaking to be "fair use," and letting consumers crack their legally purchased e-books in order to have them read aloud by computers.

Jailbreaking Your iPhone: Now Perfectly Legal Josh Levy, FreePress.net The Library of Congress made a big, unexpected decision today, announcing that users who unlock or jailbreak their mobile phones are within the legal clear — they're not violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It's a big win for openness. This decision is a first step toward opening up wireless networks and releasing the stranglehold that companies have on consumers who, until now, were legally restricted from doing whatever they want to their phones.

Militarization of Central America and the Caribbean: The U.S. Military Moves Into Costa Rica Mark Vorpahl Nestled between Panama to its south and Nicaragua to its north, Costa Rica is a Central American nation roughly the size of Rhode Island. If another nation were to send Rhode Island a force of 7,000 troops, 200 helicopters, and 46 warships in an effort to eradicate drug trafficking, it is doubtful that the residents of Rhode Island would consider this offer "on-the-level." Such a massive military force could hardly be efficiently used to combat drug cartels. The only logical conclusion is that the nation whose troops now are occupying this other country had another agenda in mind that it didn't want to share.

Midnight Special Law Collective Disbands Dear Friends, Midnight Special has been engaging in months of discussion and critical analysis about the role of law collectives, both amongst ourselves and with other members of the law collective movement. We have also been looking at our own internal process as an anti-authoritarian collective. We have reached various conclusions: that we have been unable to break out of the service provider model; that we are dissatisfied with jumping from action to action, and leaving little infrastructure behind; that we often emulate the oppressive structures we seek to change; and that these problems are much harder to solve than we had believed. Our final conclusion is that, because of the state of the movement and ourselves, Midnight Special will not be able to overcome those challenges. So it is with sadness and hope that we write to you today. After 10 years of work, we, the members of the Midnight Special Law Collective, are closing our doors.

Luca Tornatore, Copenhagen Detainee, Petition Online Please sign the petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/freeall/petition.html Luca Tornatore isn’t only our friend. He is a scientific researcher at the Department of Physics at the University of Trieste. He is a scientist, one who combines passion and a desire to change the world to his scientific skills. These are the ingredients that pushed him to go to Copenhagen together with hundreds of Italian environmentalists. Luca is in Copenhagen to demand climatic justice, to participate in the Climate Forum and to network with others who believe that the environmental emergency must be faced beginning from a democratization of decision-making and not through delegating the question to those who started the problem in the first place or to those who are worsening it.