TRAVOL 2011: Volunteer Summer Camp An autonomous gathering of people, organizations, and community experiences Second World Forum of Applied Knowledge January 10th to February 20, 2011 TraVol will take place in the village of Polpaiko, which is located at the edge of the municipality of Tiltil in the northern part of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile.

"Government Cuts: As Stupid As They Seem?" Hillel Ticktin [There are a surprising lack of convincing explanations as to why the capitalist class is pushing through the present unprecedented austerity drive - even at the risk of provoking both mass opposition and a double-dip recession. The following excerpts, from Hillel Ticktin's recent articles in Critique, do offer an interesting partial explanation.] It remains very unclear why a section of the ruling class is going for these cuts. It is one thing to reduce government spending and raise taxes during an upturn, as Canada did in the 1990s, and quite another to do so today. The large scale unemployment consequent on such reductions in the public sector is being matched with substantial salary reductions. As there are often disproportionate numbers of female employees in the sectors being proposed for downsizing, the measures will bear heavily on women and families. There are suggestions that the poorest will be protected, but this is a fig leaf to provide a semblance of humanity. The poorest may be protected but most people are by definition not in that category, but are nonetheless scraping by, with incomes a fraction of the so-called upper middle class. Whatever their present views, they will be jolted into opposition to the government and ultimately to the system.

American Midterm Elections and Democracy A Video Interview with Noam Chomsky http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&I...

Bank of America Is in Deep Trouble, and There May Be Financial Disaster on the Horizon Joshua Holland, AlterNet Will Bank of America be the first Wall Street giant to once again point a gun to its own head, telling us it'll crash and burn and take down the financial system if we don’t pony up for another massive bailout? When former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was handing out trillions to Wall Street, BofA collected $45 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to stabilize its balance sheet. It was spun as a success story -- a rebuke of those who urged the banks be put into receivership -- when the behemoth “paid back” the cash last December. But the bank’s stock price has fallen by more than 40 percent since mid-April, and the value of its outstanding stock is currently at around half of what it should be based on its “book value” -- what the company says its holdings are worth. “The problem for anyone trying to analyze Bank of America’s $2.3 trillion balance sheet,” wrote Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil, “is that it’s largely impenetrable.” Nobody really knows the true values of the assets these companies are holding, which has been the case ever since the collapse. But according to Weil, some of BofA’s financial statements “are so delusional that they invite laughter.”

Insurrectional Anarchism vs. Class-Struggle Anarchism Wayne Price There has been a spurt of interest in a small radical book titled "The Coming Insurrection" ("TCI"), with authorship attributed to the "Invisible Committee" (IC). It was originally published in France in 2007. That country's police cited it as evidence in a trial of "the Tarnaq 9," radicals who were accused of planning sabotage. The French Interior Minister called it a "manual for terrorism" (quoted on p. 5). A U.S. edition got an unlikely boost by the far-right tv talk show clown Glen Beck. He has repeatedly identified it as a manual for a take-over of the U.S. by the left, by which he means everyone from the mildest liberal Democrats leftward. "This [is a] dangerous leftist book....You should read it to know what is coming and be ready when it does" (Beck, 2009). The interest of many on the left has been piqued; Michael Moore is reported to have read it. From the perspective of revolutionary-libertarian socialism (class-struggle anarchism), I believe that many things are wrong with this pamphlet. But it is right on some very big things. That is a major part of its attraction, despite its opague style (the authors have studied French radical philosophy and it shows). The IC members say that, on a world scale, our society is morally rotten and structurally in the deepest of crises. They denounce this society in every way and oppose all reformist programs for trying to improve it at the margins. They say that a total change is necessary and that this can only be achieved through some sort of revolution. Their goals are the right goals: a classless, stateless, ecologically-balanced, decentralized, and self-managed world. These views are well outside the usual range of acceptable political conversation. Unfortunately, I believe that the tactics and strategy which they propose are mistaken and unlikely to achieve their correct goals.

The Two-Percent Putsch: Crisis at Pacifica Iain A. Boal Capital’s most severe crisis in seventy years ought to be a moment of significant opportunity for the left. But as the right mobilizes disgruntled Americans via its vast radio, television, web, and print empires, the one mass medium available to the left—Pacifica Radio—is driving out its best and brightest. A network that has the potential to reach a quarter of the US public is opting for irrelevant and unlistenable programming at a time when competent and genuinely radical journalism is urgently needed, and justifying its warped choice with the Thatcherite mantra: there is no alternative.

Turkey's Tattoo Politics Piotr Zalewski Every year on November 10, at exactly 9:05 a.m., Europe's biggest city comes to a halt. Air raid sirens begin to blare. Pedestrians freeze in their tracks. Schools, factories, and government offices suspend work to observe two minutes of silence. On Istanbul's massive thoroughfares, cars, buses and trucks screech to a stop, their drivers and passengers spilling out onto the street, many of them teary eyed, to stand to attention.

Slavoj Zizek Is a Bourgeois Snob! Christian Lorentzen A long line of fans formed around the stage at Cooper Union to have Slavoj Zizek sign books. They rattled off their names for the philosopher's dedication.

Thousands Protest in Seoul Before G20 Summit Reuters SEOUL - Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Seoul on Sunday in a largely peaceful protest against this week's G20 summit as the city went on heightened alert for the meeting of world leaders. Authorities ramped up security at the weekend in preparation for the arrival of 10,000 participants, including 32 heads of government and leaders of international organizations, for the summit on Thursday and Friday. South Korea is concerned about the risk of violent anti-capitalist protests -- a common feature of summits involving the world's leading economies -- and anxious its rival North Korea may try to stage an incident to embarrass it. Security forces have been put on high alert, anti-aircraft missiles are at the ready, shipping and air routes are under heightened surveillance and airport screening has increased.

Submit to "Upping the Anti" Pitches due December 3, 2010; first draft due January 7, 2010 UPPING THE ANTI: A JOURNAL OF THEORY AND ACTION is a radical journal published twice a year by a pan-Canadian collective of activists and organizers. We are dedicated to publishing radical theory and analysis about struggles against capitalism, imperialism, and all forms of oppression. In our first ten issues, we've published articles by and interviews with renowned activists and intellectuals, including Aijaz Ahmad, Himani Bannerji, Grace Lee Boggs, Ward Churchill, Michael Hardt, John Holloway, Sunera Thobani, Andrea Smith, and many more.