Cities and new wars: after Mumbai Saskia Sassen Open Democracy The Mumbai attacks of 26-29 November 2008 are part of an emerging type of urban violence. These were organised, simultaneous frontal assaults with grenades and machine-guns on ten high-profile sites in or near the central business and tourism district.Also in openDemocracy on the assaults of November 2008 in Mumbai: This has affinities with the asymmetric street warfare waged by the gangs in Rio de Janeiro that every now and then announce they will take over a major central area of the city from (say) 9am to 5pm: the result is shuttered shops and empty streets. If the police try to respond, it is open warfare, and the police rarely win - this is a challenge for which the police are not trained. After 5pm the gangs withdraw. It is often said that all of this results from inadequate policing or crime waves. But that is too simple. There is a deeper transformation afoot. It is still rare but it is more frequently becoming visible. It is as if the centre no longer holds. Cities seem to be losing the capacity they have long had to triage conflict - through commerce, through civic activity. The national state, confronted with a similar conflict, has historically chosen to go to war. In my new research project - on cities and war - I am studying whether cities are losing this capacity and are becoming sites for a range of new types of violence.

Finance and Social Production Adam Arvidsson P2P Foundation I’d like to expand a bit on a number of ideas that came out of a discussion with Christian Marazzi on the financial crisis, organized by the student movement at the University of Milano, last Friday. Marazzi has done a lot of innovative and thought-provoking work on the role of finance within the post-Fordist economy and the deep structural roots of the financial expansion that has marked the last two decades (or since 1979 and Paul Volker’s monetarist turn at the Fed). Indeed, the growing size and importance of financial markets is one of the two important structural trends that have marked the transition away from industrial Fordism (to an ‘information economy’ a ‘knowledge economy’ an ‘ethical economy’ or simply ‘post-Fordism’ the exact denomination is not an issue here). Indeed, with Geroge Soros, we can argue that the current crisis is the end of a financial ’super bubble’ that has run its course since the early 1980s. This has built on a continuous expansion of credit (refinanced by a massive inflow of cash from emerging economies like China). The consequence has been a substitution of credit and financial rent for wages as the source of income of the US (and Western European) middle class. The most visible structural consequence of this financial expansion have been a financialization of a number of services related to the reproduction of everyday life: credit card debt, housing and mortages, pensions, insurance, health care and education. To this transfer of the responsibility for the reproduction of life from the public sector and the welfare state to financial markets has corresponded a massive securitization of life conduct, that is; the invention of a number of often very complex financial instruments, the risks of which are are in the end related to the life conduct of human subjects (their liability to pay their mortages, to get sick and so on). Indeed Christian Marazzi argues convincingly that this link between finance and life conduct is one of the defining elements of the neoliberal political order, tracing it back to the New York City bancrupcy in 1975. At that point, the City relied heavily on the issue of municipal bonds. In turn, its ability to repay those bonds was contingent on its ability to reduce costs for social services and crime. This way, the financial rent that the middle class (that had purchased the bonds through, mainly pension funds) could receive, came to rely on the life conduct of the underclass (who were the main recipients of costly social services) and, consequently, policing the latter became a way of securing the income of the former.

Spanish Bank Occupied by Workers Hildy Johnson In the southern Spanish city of Granada today, a powerful workers demonstration has been taking place. It includes the simultaneous occupation of the offices of a local developer/estate agents and the main branch of the BBVA bank. The Sindicat Andaluz de Trabajadores (Andalucian Workers Union) has been out in force on the streets of Granada today. This small activist union was formed in 2007 owing to disatisfaction with the representation offered by other larger trade unions. So far today city centre roads have been blocked and the offices of Osuna (major Spanish estate agent and developer) and BBVA bank have been occupied by several hundred protestors.

An Expose of the Abuse Perpetrated by Bob Black, Written by One of His Victims Bill Brown One of the worst things about abuse (physical, emotional or verbal) is that the victim can rarely be counted on to come forward, identify his or her attacker, and describe what he or she was forced to endure. The victim was originally chosen because of perceived weakness. There is shame in realizing this, as there is shame in the very fact of being abused. There are fears about being abused again. And so, many victims of abuse find it easier to suffer their abuse in silence. Unfortunately, many abusive people are aware of this all-too-human tendency, and take advantage of it. Not only do they remain unpunished; they become brazen. They know that their crimes won't be reported to the precise extent that these crimes are shameful; victims of shameful crimes are ashamed to come forward; thus their victimizers feel comfortable with attacking them again and again, for many years in some cases.

Terrorism or Tragicomedy Giorgio Agamben Free the Tarnac Nine On the morning of November 11, 150 police officers, most of which belonged to the anti-terrorist brigades, surrounded a village of 350 inhabitants on the Millevaches plateau, before raiding a farm in order to arrest nine young people (who ran the local grocery store and tried to revive the cultural life of the village). Four days later, these nine people were sent before an anti-terrorist judge and “accused of criminal conspiracy with terrorist intentions.” The newspapers reported that the Ministry of the Interior and the Secretary of State “had congratulated local and state police for their diligence.” Everything is in order, or so it would appear. But let’s try to examine the facts a little more closely and grasp the reasons and the results of this “diligence.” First the reasons: the young people under investigation “were tracked by the police because they belonged to the ultra-left and the anarcho autonomous milieu.” As the entourage of the Ministry of the Interior specifies, “their discourse is very radical and they have links with foreign groups.” But there is more: certain of the suspects “participate regularly in political demonstrations,” and, for example, “in protests against the Fichier Edvige (Exploitation Documentaire et Valorisation de l'Information Générale) and against the intensification of laws restricting immigration.” So political activism (this is the only possible meaning of linguistic monstrosities such as “anarcho autonomous milieu”) or the active exercise of political freedoms, and employing a radical discourse are therefore sufficient reasons to call in the anti-terrorist division of the police (SDAT) and the central intelligence office of the Interior (DCRI). But anyone possessing a minimum of political conscience could not help sharing the concerns of these young people when faced with the degradations of democracy entailed by the Fichier Edvige, biometrical technologies and the hardening of immigration laws. As for the results, one might expect that investigators found weapons, explosives and Molotov cocktails on the farm in Millevaches. Far from it. SDAT officers discovered “documents containing detailed information on railway transportation, including exact arrival and departure times of trains.” In plain French: an SNCF train schedule. But they also confiscated “climbing gear.” In simple French: a ladder, such as one might find in any country house.

The Double Crisis of the University and Global Economy 28/11 London FRIDAY 28 November 2008 at 3pm QUEEN MARY University of London Physics 602 with: Paolo Do – Stephen Dunne – Matthew Fuller – Gerard Hanlon – Stefano Harney – Celia Lury – Noortje Marres – Matteo Pasquinelli – Nirmal Puwar – Gigi Roggero – Stevphen Shukaitis – Tiziana Terranova For a number of weeks in Italy the entire education system – from universities to elementary schools, from students to researchers and from parents to teachers – has been mobilizing. Marches, occupations, demonstrations, pickets and blockages of the metropolitan flow have replaced the dreary rhythm of school timetables and university courses. The protests are directed against the new budget cuts implemented by Berlusconi’s government last summer, which seriously undermine the public nature of education and research. The university movement – self-named the “Anomalous Wave” – acts within a specific context, such as the long crisis and decline of the Italian higher education system. However, it also critically underlines common trends in the transformations affecting the university at the European and transnational level: i.e. the Bologna process, the corporatization of education and the changes of the welfare system, the central role of knowledge in the mode of production, the rise of casualized labor, the emergence of a new type of student-worker figure.

Zapatistas Call for Worldwide Festival of Dignified Rage Mexico, September of 2008 To the adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign: To the adherents of the Zezta Internazional: To the People of Mexico: To the Peoples of the World: Compañeras and Compañeros: Brother and Sisters: Once again we send you our words. This is what we see, what we are looking at. This is what has come to our ears, to our brown heart. I. Above they intend to repeat history. They want to impose on us once again their calendar of death, their geography of destruction. When they are not trying to strip us of our roots, they are destroying them. They steal our work, our strength. They leave our world, our land, our water, and our treasures without people, without life. The cities pursue and expel us. The countryside both kills us and dies on us. Lies become governments and dispossession is the weapon of their armies and police. We are the illegal, the undocumented, the undesired of the world. We are pursued. Women, young people, children, the elderly die in death and die in life. And there above they preach to us resignation, defeat, surrender, and abandonment. Here below we are being left with nothing. Except rage. And dignity.

Opening the Doors to autonomy: Worried about the credit crisis, rising rents, food prices and mortgage repayments? Ever wondered about DIY alternatives this mayhem? On the 29th of November Bristol Space Invaders present a day of workshops, activities and artwork on urban survival – credit crunching strategies for getting through hard times - from the legalities and practicalities of squatting and resisting repossession/eviction, to urban foraging, radical recycling, a bike workshop, Tai-Chi & self defence, screenprinting and DIY wireless internet and much more - this will be a day of sharing skills and building the networks to not only survive the current economic crisis but to begin to collectively shape what may replace it. Food and kids area will be provided. Come along, learn and share skills. We've tried leaving it to the experts and 'authorities' - it didnt work - its time to rescue ourselves. Event Details: Where: The Red Factory, Cave Street, St Pauls. (Just off Portland Square) When: Saturday the 29th of November 2008, 11am - 6pm Cost: Free Children Welcome.

Subversive Action Films presents a documentary about the legacy of the military dictatorship in the territory known as Chile—from the student revolt and neighborhood conflict to the Mapuche resistance in Wallmapu. The collective tells a story about fallen combatants in struggle, a narrative about yesterday and today. People with an older system may need to turn HD off, but we recommend keeping it on if you can. The trailer SubversiveActionFilms.org

Hope in Common David Graeber We seem to have reached an impasse. Capitalism as we know it appears to be coming apart. But as financial institutions stagger and crumble, there is no obvious alternative. Organized resistance appears scattered and incoherent; the global justice movement a shadow of its former self. There is good reason to believe that, in a generation or so, capitalism will no longer exist: for the simple reason that it’s impossible to maintain an engine of perpetual growth forever on a finite planet. Faced with the prospect, the knee-jerk reaction—even of “progressives”—is, often, fear, to cling to capitalism because they simply can’t imagine an alternative that wouldn’t be even worse. The first question we should be asking is: How did this happen? Is it normal for human beings to be unable to imagine what a better world would even be like?