Last Week of "House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence," May 5-7, 2009 The “House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence” informational exhibit on European squatted social centers finishes its final week of programming at ABC No Rio. Then it will be boxed up and moved to Queens for the summer. After this week we'll be working on the catalogue zine, which will be a PDF posted in June.

Academic Freedom Controversy at the University of California Santa Barbara Leading Radical Scholar Accused of Anti-Semitism Professor William Robinson, a world renowned Jewish scholar, is facing charges of Anti-Semitism at the University of California Santa Barbara. A list of his publication and other information about his work can be found at: http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/robinson/

‘‘A Laughter That Will Bury You All’’: Irony as Protest and Language as Struggle in the Italian 1977 Movement (Anonymous Submission) Summary Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the Italian ‘‘1977 Movement’’ in its conflict with the grey, humourless political system was its use of irony to ridicule its opponents. Irony was central to the identity of the movement and its cultural and political break with the institutional old and vanguardist new lefts. Its use, particularly by the ‘‘Metropolitan Indians’’, the transversalists and other ‘‘creatives’’, marked a social revolt by mainly marginalized young people, who invented a new political counter-culture based on linguistic experimentation in circumstances far from the optimism of 1968. The paper, based directly on primary sources from the movement and on interviews with former participants, reassesses a movement usually characterized as ‘‘violent’’ by Italianist social history. It concludes that the movement’s ‘‘ironic praxis’’ contributed to a fundamental change in Italian society in the late seventies and has influenced the political style of contemporary alterglobalist and anti-capitalist movements.1 Introduction ‘‘The revolution is over. We have won.’’ (Zut/A/traverso, Bologna, June, 1977)2 The 1977 Movement (known as settantasette – ‘‘Seventy-Seven’’ – in Italy) marked the end of Italy’s ‘‘long sixty-eight’’, which had lasted for a decade, as compared to a few weeks in France and elsewhere. While the iconoclastic punk movement screamed ‘‘No future’’ in Britain, perhaps the main weapon of the revolt of ‘‘Year Nine’’3 against the austere, humourless, bureaucratic authoritarianism of the Italian Communist Party (ICP), and its ‘‘Historical Compromise’’4 with the corrupt Christian Democrat regime, was its caustic irony and satirical wit. This was particularly the case with the ‘‘Metropolitan Indians’’ (indiani metropolitani: largely non-violent demonstrators who used face paint and headdresses to signify their break from the ‘‘seriousness’’ of politics and emphasize the theatrical and ludic aspects of protest.

"Resisting Degradations and Divisions" in South Africa S’bu Zikode interviewed by Richard Pithouse S’bu Zikode is the elected president of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a radical and radically democratic shackdwellers’ movement in South Africa that has committed itself to waging its struggles independently from party-political and NGO control.[1] Richard Pithouse: What is your understanding of a living politics?

Reclaim the Heights! Bury the G8! Bring Your Shovels! The Diggers 2.0 APPEAL TO THE GLOBAL MULTITUDES: Seize this chance to build sustainable autonomous community structures! Capital merely engineers destruction and myths of future prosperity. Its crisis should be met with the shock and awe of the full energies of the multitude. Break your backs creating a post-industrious commons! A call to the global multitude to descend upon Abruzzo for July 7-11, and help rebuild it in the image of the future! We've negotiated, we've demanded, we've blockaded, we've gone global, we've tried being glocal. We've smashed -- now it's time to build the commons -- our future. Ten years after Seattle what we build is what matters. Let's ignore the spectacle of the summit. Let them see how it's done. A sustainable form of life, where solidarity issues out of the rubble like bluebells in the spring. Build a self-renewing power.

"OVNI 2009: Rhizomes, Liberated Spaces" Abu Ali, OVNI 2009 Barcelona [Editor's Note: This text introduces Barcelona's OVNI ARXIUS DE L'OBSERVATORI (Observatori de Video no Identificat) radical documentary film festival, May 26-31, 2009. Click above for archive and schedule of screenings.] "OVNI 2009: Rhizomes, Liberated Spaces" lays bare the subterranean, rhizomatic points of contact between worlds and experiences that seem very different from each other. The remembered image (1) is that of a rhizome, or rhizomes, it doesn't matter which because it is both at once, the singular and plural do not affect it.

"Bail Out the People" Movement Announces Three Important Projects ATTENTION ACTIVISTS AND ORGANIZERS! The Bail Out the People Movement is announcing three important projects: Endorse the call | Become a local organizer/volunteer FIRST: PROTEST THE G20 SUMMIT IN NEW YORK CITY! Saturday, September. 19 & Sunday, September 20, 2009 (tentative dates) ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE– BUT WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT! Bail Out People - Not Banks Money for Social Needs - Not War and Greed Jobs, Housing, Healthcare & Education are a Right Organize - Mobilize - Resist - Unite - Fight Back! The third G20 summit is going to be in NYC on or around September 20, 2009. The G20 summits are taking place in response to the greatest worldwide economic crisis since the 1930s. However, the purpose of these high-level meetings of governments and bankers is not to rescue the people of the world from depression level unemployment, evictions, homelessness, poverty, social and economic inequality and war. These summits are about fixing the economic and financial order that puts profits before people-and fixing that system by creating more poverty, misery and suffering. The last G20 Summit held in London in early April was met with massive protests both in London and throughout Europe. Now that the G20 is coming to the U.S., it is up to activists and organizations here to take up the challenge of uniting and working together to organize the widest protests possible. BOPM urges activists and organizations to endorse the call for protest at the G20 Summit in the fall, and to begin organizing for it. The potential for mass mobilization in September is truly infinite. So let’s begin the work required to realize that powerful potential.

Seven Greenpeace Activists Arrested in Banner-Hanging at Major Economies Forum Matt Leonard @ Greenpeace.org Hello everyone. At the Major Economies Forum this morning, 7 Greenpeace activists were arrested hanging a giant banner from a construction crane above the State Department. The banner remained up for several hours, including while Hillary Clinton was scheduled to address the MEF, and while Obama was speaking across the street at the National Academy of Sciences. The 7 arrested were charged with misdemeanors, and include Phil Radford, who begins his first day as the new Executive Director of Greenpeace today. This meeting is a major step in the lead up to Copenhagen. While not officially part of the UN process, the need for urgent action from the world's biggest polluters makes this meeting (today and tomorrow) a very important international event. There is also a large coalition rally happening now (with hundreds expected from Greenpeace, 350, AVAAZ, CCAN, Friends of the Earth and many more).

"On Failure and its Possible Remedies" Wayne Spencer In June 2007, when my text 'On Lice and Fleas' first appeared, one of the members of the partnership that writes under the pseudonym Monsieur Dupont asked me what I would do in the event of defeat. It would seem too soon to talk of defeat, but perhaps it is time to acknowledge and confront some measure of failure.