Accelerationism: A Symposium on Tendencies in Capitalism
December 14, 2013, 10-20hr, Berlin Alexanderplatz

http://xlrt.org/

Contemporary capitalism is an object of high abstraction. The symposium is an invitation to discuss and disclose the anonymous and inner tendencies of capitalism, to study its monetary, algorithmic and energetic viscera. How can one grasp the living drives of financial markets and technological innovation? And more importantly: who really produces and controls those drives and how could any alternative political subject emerge without such a complex knowledge?

The recent debate on accelerationism and the philosophical scene of Speculative Realism just reminded of an old question posed by Deleuze and Guattari: Which is the real revolutionary path? To withdraw from the world market or, on the opposite, to go further and "accelerate the process", as Nietzsche already suggested long before the current Stillstand? For example today Germany finds itself in the eye of the storm: a mild social democracy at the center of Europe watching neoliberalism freely devastating the rest of the world.

Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin:
G. T. Miasnikov and the Workers' Group
Paul Avrich

During Lenin's years in power, from October 1917 until his death in January 1924, a number of groups took shape within the Russian Communist Party-the Democratic Centralists and the Workers' Opposition are the best known-which criticized the Bolshevik leadership for abandoning the principles of the revolution.

The revolution, as sketched by Lenin in The State and Revolution and other works had promised the destruction of the centralized bureaucratic state and its replacement with a new social order, modeled on the Paris Commune of 1871, in which the direct democracy of the workers would be realized. The cardinal feature of this "commune state," as Lenin called it, was to be its repudiation of bureaucratic authority. The workers themselves would administer the government through grass-roots organizations, of which the soviets were the foremost example. Workers' control, through factory committees and trade unions, would function similarly in economic life, replacing private ownership and management with a system of industrial democracy and self-administration in which the rank and file would shape their own destiny. Mistakes would be made, Lenin conceded, but the workers would learn by experience. "The most important thing," he declared, "is to instill in the oppressed and laboring masses confidence in their own power."' Such was Lenin's vision before October.

Once in power, however, he saw things from a different perspective. Overnight, as it were, the Bolsheviks were transformed from a revolutionary into a governing party, from an organization that encouraged spontaneous action against existing institutions into one that sought to contain it.

Reproductive Justice: From Birthing Behind Bars to Breaking Down Barriers

3-5 pm, October 19, 2013
Interference Archive
131 8th Street, Brooklyn, NY

Join us for a discussion on reproductive justice with organizers who are reframing reproductive rights within a social justice context. Reproductive justice reflects a shift away from the focus on legal access to abortion and individual “choice”, to address the ways that systemic inequalities and oppression affects people’s ability to control their own bodies and lives.

Bristol Radical History Group Autumn Program

Bristol Radical History Group have announced their autumn programme of talks, gigs and meetings. Full details can be found from the links below or at http://www.brh.org.uk/site/events/

Hope to see you at some of these events....

CeDEM14 Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government
Danube University, Krems, Austria
May 21–23, 2014

www.donau-uni.ac.at/cedem

The international Conference for e-Democracy and Open Government brings
together e-democracy, e-participation and open government specialists
working in academia, politics, government and business to critically
analyse the innovations, issues, ideas and challenges in the networked
societies of the digital age.

Seder in the Streets
March 20, 2013, New York City

It's time for Seder in the Streets - a raucous action connecting the Exodus from Egypt to the struggle for justice against discriminatory policing. Through protest and performance, JFREJ will connect the celebration of Passover to our campaign for real police accountability.

Seder in the Streets!
Wednesday, March 20 fr/ 4:00pm - 7:00pm
Foley Square (between Lafayette, Worth, and Centre Street)

Full Schedule

Spacebank, Microfunding and Alternative Currencies
Fran Ilich interviewed by Artistic Bokeh in Vienna, Austria

A video recording of an interview with Fran Ilich about Spacebank, microfunding and alternative currencies, conducted by Artistic Bokeh (Wien, Austria), is available here: Spacebank

Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident
New York City, March 11-12, 2013

The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 5th Ave. btw. 102nd & 103rd St.

Monday & Tuesday, March 11-12, 2013

Two day registration: $60

For more information: Fukushima.

Largest Mass Execution in US History: 150 Years Ago Today
Jon Wiener

December 26, 1862: thirty-eight Dakota Indians were hung in Mankato, Minnesota, in the largest mass execution in US history–on orders of President Abraham Lincoln. Their crime: killing 490 white settlers, including women and children, in the Santee Sioux uprising the previous August.

The execution took place on a giant square scaffold in the center of town, in front of an audience of hundreds of white people. The thirty-eight Dakota men “wailed and danced atop the gallows,” according to Robert K. Elder of The New York Times, “waiting for the trapdoors to drop beneath them.” A witness reported that, “as the last moment rapidly approached, they each called out their name and shouted in their native language: ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ ”

Fusion Arts Manifesto
Shalom Neuman

“There is nothing new under the sun,” goes the old adage. What does change, however, is configuration. That change, as another well-known adage has it, “is constant”; in human terms, it is often the agent of modification, of perception.

Resulting technologies emerge, creating opportunities for broader methodologies of utilization: illumination, sonics, motion, communication, architectonics. Hand-in-hand with science - the imperative of which is the observation and manipulation of phenomena - is the artist who sits at the center of this shifting maelstrom of perception. The artist is part magician and part town-crier, busy with the invention and employment of tools meant to facilitate various modes of articulation.

Fusion arts, in the tradition of artists of the Bauhaus, seeks a closer relationship with science as well. Its manifesto is as follows: