NOT BORED! writes:

"The Deception of Strategy"

Bill Not Bored

"We want them [the Iraqis] to quit, not to fight, so that you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but minutes." -- Harlan Ullman, creator of the "Shock and Awe" tactic, January 2003.

"As we move toward a new Middle East, over the years and, I think, over the decades to come . . . we will make a lot of people very nervous. We want you [Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the leaders of Saudi Arabia] nervous. We want you to realize now, for the fourth time in a hundred years, this country and its allies are on the march and that we are on the side of those whom you -- the Mubaraks, the Saudi Royal family -- most fear: We're on the side of your own people." -- ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, 3 April 2003.

Today, 25 June 2004, just five days before the US military is scheduled to "hand over" political control of Iraq to a provisional governing body, it became official: the Bush Administration has lost the support of the American people for its "humanitarian" war against Saddam Hussein. A public opinion poll conducted by CNN-USA Today-Gallup has found that a majority (54 percent) of the 1,005 Americans who responded think that going to war in the first place (no matter what the justification) was a mistake; they are increasingly disappointed with the results, which are appalling and grow worse every day. They are also increasingly disillusioned with George W. Bush, whose disapproval ratings are higher than they have ever been.

Al Jazeera's "Control Room"

Ronda Hauben

The documentary "Control Room" [1] opened in NYC on Friday night May
21, 2004. The opening weekend shows were sold out, and the reviews in
the NY press encouraged people to see the film and to take it
seriously. On the surface, "Control Room" appears to be a film about
the Arab language media organization Al Jazeera and their coverage of
the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The actual focus of the film
is, however, considerably more profound.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"‘Marxing Read Ontologically?’
Jason Read’s Autonomist Post-Structuralism"
Senequetc.

[Reviewing Jason Read, The Micro-politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present (State University of New York Press, 2003), and retrospectively of Jean Baudrillard, Le Miroir de la Production: ou l’illusion critique du matérialisme historique (Editions Galilée 1975).]

A l’instar de la valeur d’échange et de la marchandise, selon Marx, les formes abstraites apparaissent à travers des choses, comme propriétés des choses, en un mot naturalité. La forme sociale et la forme mentale semblent données dans un « monde ». — Henri Lefebvre, La Vie Quotidienne Dans La Monde Moderne

Quite at the beginning of his writing life, Jean Baudrillard has observed that a certain type of Marxist can only see the world of capital as a multiplication of self-moving social forms. This type of Marxism (which used to be more widespread than it is today), by grace of its limitations, is caught in these forms, rather than hacking a theoretical path through the jungle, following the lead of actual struggles.

In order to grasp the ontology of capital’s forms, i.e. their social being, Marx himself argued we have to descend into what he called the ‘hidden abode’ of production, and into (as Italian feminists have added) the ‘arcane’ of reproduction of labour power. Descending willfully down all these rickety staircases and ladders, sweeping away the dust and cobwebs of years, we find ourselves knocking on a door strangely well-oiled, to encounter an old figure: the worker, left in a place that remains even after history has "ended" — the workplace.

"The Knee Jerk Review of Books"

Louis Proyect, Marxmail

In the winter of 1962-63, during a strike of the NY Times, Robert Silvers and a few close friends decided to launch the New York Review of Books, which is considered the premier intellectual print journal outside of academia.

When I first joined the SWP in 1967, I was a regular reader of the New York Review. Once when I was sitting at party headquarters thumbing through its pages, an old-timer named Harry Ring raised an eyebrow and said, "Oh, you're reading the social democratic press." Of course, I practically took the magazine out and burned it after hearing that. As I began shamefacedly apologizing for reading it, Harry reassured me that if he had the time, he'd read it too since it is important to keep track of the social democracy. These words were hardly reassuring. Did I have so much time on my hands because I was one of those half-digested petty-bourgeois elements that James P. Cannon railed against during the Shachtman-Burnham fight?