"Capital, Empire and Revolution"

London, Oct. 9–10, 2004

As part of the preparation for the London European Social Forum, the journals Historical Materialism and Socialist Register, as well as the Isaac and Tamara Deutcher Memorial Prize Committee invite you to a two-day conference on ‘Capital, Empire and Revolution’ on Saturday 9 October–Sunday 10 October 2004, at Birkbeck College, London (Malet Street, Russell Square and Goodge Street Underground Stations).

"Doubletalk and Doublethink"

David Levi Strauss on Abu Ghraib and Images

Autonomedia author and critic David Levi Strauss is participating in four New York City area events in the next few weeks concerning Abu Ghraib prison and the media politics of the image.

The schedules of these events is below:

Biofeedback: Give Me Back My Lab and My Freedom of Speech!

A Benefit for Steve Kurtz and Critical Art Ensemble

Featuring Tony Conrad / HangedUp, Dj Olive / Toshio Kajiwara / Markus Miller / Dj North Guinea Hills, Tyondai Braxton, Services, New Humans, Dub Trio, Talibam, Martha Wilson

Thursday October 21, 8pm, $12 (two floors of music)

Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street (between Rivington and Delancy)

Contact: Dion Workman, 212-358-7501

The Benefit

"Biofeedback: Give Me Back My Lab and My Freedom of Speech!" is an energetic round-up of musicians, entertainers and visual artists who are creating loud and clear feedback in support of Steve Kurtz and Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). This benefit will help raise money for Kurtz's legal fees in a case of FBI harassment and silencing dissent. To date, the CAE Defense Fund has raised an impressive $30,000, but the total costs are estimated at $150,000. There is still hope that the court will realize the absurdity of the case and dismiss Kurtz of charges in December; if this does happen, the fund will be used to help others who may find themselves under similar political scrutiny.

"Fragility, Body, Love:

A Practical Lexicon for the Italian Effect, a
Conference in Sydney on the Influence of Radical Italian Thought over the
Past Decade"

Britt Neilson & Ida Dominijanni

[The following reviews of the Italian Effect conference (9–11 September
2004) were published in the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto on 28
September, 2004. These are collaborative translations, written after discussion between the
authors. The first is Britt Neilson's translation of Ida's piece in Il Manifesto. The
second is the English version of Neilson's piece, which has been slightly altered
after reading Ida's translation for Il Manifesto. They are both archived in Italian here and here.]

"From the Italian Laboratory of the 1970s

To the Global Laboratory of a
Politics Opposed to the Forms of War"

Ida Dominijanni

There is an effect of globalisation that neither its most enthusiastic
advocates nor its most apocalyptic critics manage to specify exactly; that
is, what it provokes on the plane of thought. As in other fields,
technology here tells us a lot but not everything. What we confront is not
simply improved ease of communication and the diffusion of ideas, sources,
and texts. With the exchange of experiences and direct contact with people,
contexts, places, times, and other seasons comes a different mode of
production of thought. Contrary to common belief, this effect is neither
one of bland homogenisation nor easy contamination. Rather there is a risky
but fruitful displacement that changes perspectives, alters dimensions,
adds importance to neglected particularities, forces a rough confrontation
with unfamiliar forms of otherness, and liberates mental associations that
have been held under the surface. In Sydney, in the course of an
international conference dedicated to the 'Italian effect' on radical
political thought, all of this occurred, thanks partly to the welcoming
environment of a 'global city' in which multicultural exchanges and
translations (linguistic, political, and artistic) are at once an everyday
necessity and a virtue.

Film Screening, Talk & Benefit for the Critical Art Ensemble

Organized by Autonomedia and Marianne Shaneen

Sunday October 3, 2004 at 7pm — Price: $6

Ocularis at: Galapagos Art & Performance Space

70 North 6th Street (between Wythe and Kent)

Williamsburg Brooklyn, NY 11211

nearest subway: Bedford Ave L Train

venue tel/fax: 718-388-8713

FILMS BY:

Manual DeLanda, the Critical Art Ensemble, Keith Sanborn,
Peggy Ahwesh, Eli Elliott, Dara Greenwald, Eric Henry, Rachel Mayeri,
and the United States Dept of Defense

WITH COMMENTARY BY:

Jim Costanzo, Greg Sholette, Keith Sanborn, and John Henry

RNC Arrestees Meeting w/NLG and PLC

Mon., 9/27/04, 7:00 pm, NYC Law School

Furman Hall, Room 216

245 Sullivan Street (at W. 3rd Street)

(Defendants' meeting with People's Law Collective to follow in the same room)

At this meeting you can ask general questions of lawyers from the National
Lawyers Guild about:


Status of criminal cases, and

How to be part of civil lawsuits regarding issues such as:

*Unlawful arrests

*Denial of access to attorneys

*Excessive use of force

*Mass preventive arrests

*Conditions at Pier 57

*Excessive detentions

"The Living Thought of Gilles Deleuze" Conference

University of Copenhagen, Denmark, November 3-4, 2005

One of the prominent themes in the writings of Gilles Deleuze is an
understanding of thinking as being alive. Thinking is conceived as an
affirmation of life, and life itself is affirmed by thinking as something
that is alive. In other words, the relationship between life and thinking
is an affirmative relationship, in which life is affirmed by thinking and
thinking affirmed by life. The notion of the double affirmation in
Nietzsche et la philosophie (1962) is revolving around such an affirmative
relationship between life and thinking.

Massachusetts Democracy School

Peter Kellman, Mary Zepernick and Adam Sacks

Boston, October 1–3, 2004

The POCLAD-inspired Center for Democracy & the Constitution is hosting a Democracy School at Boston College the first weekend in October.

Democracy School is a stimulating and illuminating course that teaches citizens and activists how to reframe exhausting and often discouraging single issue work (such as opposing toxic dumps, quarries, factory
farms, etc.) in a way that we can confront corporate control on a powerful single front: people's constitutional rights.

"Assessing the RNC Protests"

Open Community Discussion with Francesca Fiorentini, Gabriel Sayegh, Hany Khalil, Nana Soul, a Still We
Rise representative & Others

Wednesday, October 20, 7:30 pm

Brecht Forum (122 West 27th Street -10th floor)

You are invited to share your thoughts in an open and open-ended
discussion post- Republican National Convention to assess the mobilization
itself as well as the bigger picture relating to movement building and
left strategies here in the U.S. During the RNC protests we saw an amazing
breadth of participation on a full spectrum of issues and in a wide
variety of forms — labor/healthcare, global justice activists, peace
coalitions, alternative media, women, conferences and teach-ins, theater
and the arts, and the list goes on. We saw new structures and processes
arise — the RNC clearinghouse, the NY Uniting left strategy retreat, for
example — new kinds of solidarity, networks of coalitions, and new
relationships built across issues and tendencies and between local and
national mobilizations.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Books Against Borders"
St. Louis Independent Bookfair
Saturday, October 2, 2004, 10am-5pm

St. Louis, Missouri
3664 Arsenal St.

THIS EVENT IS FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

An open invitation...
to an all-day celebration and exhibition (a bookfair!) of independent and alternative publishers and distributors. The day will be anchored by tablers from dozens of North American publishers and distributors. Such notables as Left Bank Books, Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., Third World Press, Arsenal Magazine, Mama Specific Productions, the Denver Zine Library, and Midwest Books to Prisoners will be on hand. Come and check out independently produced books, zines, journals, newspapers, comics, poetry, and pamphlets that are all too elusive to be found in the mammoth chain bookstores that litter our landscape.