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.

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.

Adios Chalmers Johnson Brian Holmes For those who know that Empire exists as deliberate policy and believe that it is deadly for any kind of democracy, Chalmers Johnson was not just an inspiration but a primary source. Johnson was an establishment insider and an academic heretic whose studies led him to our side and set the example of an ethical position at the heart of power. His work on the Japanese developmental state debunked neoliberal free-trade ideology and then, more importantly, his Blowback trilogy, launched before September 11, revealed the consequences of the Pentagon’s black budgets and its swollen network of overseas bases. I refer directly to Johnson’s work in my article on Dongducheon and the system of American military bases in South Korea; but he has influenced eveything I’ve written for the last decade, he helped me grasp the architecture of the postwar world order and its evolution since 1989. Thanks, man. Here are some initial obituaries, the last one goes the furthest. I will look for some more in-depth hommages later on. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/world/24johnson.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Cha... http://www.thenation.com/article/156596/remembering-chalmers-johnson http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2010/11/the_impact_toda/

"The Revolutionary Moment" James Howard Kunstler I overheard a conversation between two employees over at the Price Chopper supermarket last week. (The Price Chopper logo is a picture of a Mercury dime with an ax cleaving into Mercury's head; in other words, an ax murder.) The supermarket employees were both middle-aged women. First: "I'm going home to a cold house." Second: "Why don't you turn up the heat?" First: "I don't have no money for fuel." Meanwhile, 175 miles south in Manhattan somewhere, Lloyd Blankfein's personal shopper is trying to figure out whether to buy Lloyd's favorite niece a Faberge egg themed Memories of Azov or a Jaguar XK convertible.

The Autumn of the Hegemon Louis Proyect This was the year that the war in Afghanistan became the longest in American history. It was also a year in which a jobless recovery was threatening to spiral out of control, turning into a double-dip recession. For those with even the most underdeveloped capacity for making historical analogies, it should be rather obvious that the U.S. is facing the same kind of intractable contradictions that brought down the USSR.

"They Rule" Josh On "They Rule" aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 500 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations. http://www.theyrule.net/html/about.php

Warhol Foundation Threatens to End Financing of Smithsonian Exhibitions

The Andy Warhol Foundation is threatening to stop its financing of Smithsonian Institution exhibitions if the institution does not restore a work of art that was removed from an exhibition after it drew attacks by the head of the Catholic League and some Republican members of Congress. The Warhol Foundation gave $100,000 to the Smithsonian for the exhibition, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,”
at the National Portrait Gallery, from which the work was removed.

http://tinyurl.com/26htcfa

US Justice Department Prepares Expansion of "Anti-Terrorism" Law Targeting Activists Michael Deutsch In late September, the FBI carried out a series of raids of homes and antiwar offices of public activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Following the raids, the Obama Justice Department subpoenaed 14 activists to a grand jury in Chicago and also subpoenaed the files of several antiwar and community organizations. In carrying out these repressive actions, the Justice Department was taking its lead from the Supreme Court's 6-3 opinion last June in Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project, which decided that nonviolent First Amendment speech and advocacy "coordinated with" or "under the direction of" a foreign group listed by the Secretary of State as "terrorist" was a crime.