Anonymous Comrade writes

"State of Emergency"

A Convergence of Ideas, Actions and Experiments

Melbourne, May 21-24, 2004

Armed guards patrol 'civilian' aircraft. Travellers from suspicious
states entering the USA are fingerprinted and photographed. Anti-terror laws
allow anyone to be arrested without warrants or legal representation. Arms
budgets inflate. The US runs a police state in Iraq while Australia becomes the
'sheriff' of the Asia-Pacific: interning its unwanted visitors here,
providing military intervention there. Fear of the 'invading hordes' is
the law. For the rulers of the global empire, the time since 9/11/2001 has
been a 'state of emergency'.

But for the exploited, the poor, the different, the disenfranchised,
nothing much has changed. Capitalism has always manufactured panics. It has
always exploited our bodies, our minds, our time, our creativity, the planet on
which we live. It has always forced us to move or given us no choice but
to flee, reclassified us as illegal to suit its needs, barricaded itself
against our strength and life and designed ever more spurious 'threats'
to the state in order to shut down its people. Our daily lives are just as
difficult as before. The state of emergency is not the exception, but
the rule.

hydrarchist writes:

Proposal to form a maillist/network of antiauthoritarian groups to coordinate issues concerning ESF2004

We, activists in different Nordic anticapitalist movements, would like to propose to our "colleges" of anticapitalist/antiauthorian/zapatist/disobedient groups and collectives all over Europe to initiate some kind of coordination of our intervention in the European social Forum2004, - in the preparatory process as well as in the Forum event.

Bindlestiff Family Cirkus

New York City, February, 2004

The Cirkus Is In Town!

Only 21 more days until the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus
must close the doors of the Palace of Variety at chashama,
NYC's last vaudeville/variety house. If you have not visited this 42nd Street legend, make plans immediately.

The New Formulation

Volume Two, Number Two -- Winter Spring 2004

Contents include (see below):

"Desiring Dissent": Bodies and/ of/ in Resistance

A Conference organised by the Essex Management Centre,

University of Essex, UK, 5-6 May 2004

"What are the new types of struggle, which are
transversal and immediate rather than centralized
and mediatized? What are the ‘intellectual’s’ new
functions, which are specific or ‘particular’ rather
than universal? What are the new modes of subjectivation,
which tend to have no identity? This is the present
triple root of the question: What can I do, What do
I know, What am I?...What is our light and what is our
language, that is to say, our ‘truth’ today? What powers
must we confront, and what is our capacity for resistance,
today when we can no longer be content to say that the
old struggles are no longer worth anything? And do we not
perhaps above all bear witness to and even participate in
the ‘production of a new subjectivity’? Do not the changes
in capitalism find an unexpected ‘encounter’ in the slow
emergence of a new Self as a centre of resistance?
Each time there is social change, is there not a movement
of subjective reconversion, with its ambiguities but also
its potential?" (Gilles Deleuze, Foucault)

One of the key aspects of academic thought is the analysis and
questioning of the ideological orders of social reality that have come
to dominate specific times and spaces. The aim of such an endeavour is
to produce concepts which are able not simply to describe such orders
but dissent from, interrupt and resist the techniques and desires that
produce and sustain them. Indeed a focal point of academic debate over
the past decades has been to conceptualise the MULTIPLE forms of
resistance that are mobilised against different BODIES OF ORGANISED
POWER. While the realisation that resistance is a multiplicity that
takes all sorts of shapes and forms is, without a doubt, an important
one, it seems that what has been somewhat celebrated in recent times is
a conception of resistance that can take place simply everywhere. That
is, what can sometimes be observed is that any difference or otherness
is fetishised for its PARTICULAR form of resistance without assessing
its EFFECTIVENESS within larger formations of social struggle.

"Fourth Annual Anarchist Theory Conference"

BASTARDs (Berkeley Anarchist Students of Theory And Research and Development)

Berkeley, March 14, 2994

The BASTARDs (Berkeley Anarchist Students of Theory And Research and Development) proudly announce the Fourth Annual Anarchist Theory Conference at the close of Anarchy week, Sunday March 14, 2004.

The theme for this conference is Organization: Beyond False Dichotomies. The anarchist community has a long tradition of organizing according to both anarchist and non-anarchist principles. We are interested in exploring the many forms of organization that anarchists have created and taken part in over the years. Through theoretical overviews of various forms (federations, councils, networks, coalitions, affinity groups, households and other) and active discussion about the tools we use to organize (including decision-making processes: direct democracy, mandated delegates, consensus, etc.) we hope to further discussion about what kinds and forms of organizing are helpful and sustainable. Our purpose is not to engage in the debate about whether organizations in the abstract are good or bad, but to engage in helpful and insightful criticism of the organizations we form, our historical patterns and our current and future efforts.

debbie writes

"Could you help get the word out? Thanks, Debbie, Caring Activist Against Fur"

Anti-Fur Protest

34th Between 7th and Broadway, NYC

Noon, Saturday, Feb. 14, 2004

Hello to all the animal lovers.

We need to unite against the fur wearing freaks in NYC!! Fur coats and fur trim are everywhere!! Lets let them know we don't approve of this murder of innocent animals!!

"OVNI 2005"

Axius de l’Observatori / The Observatory Archives

[OVNI - Observatori de Vídeo No Identificat] [UFO - Unknown Frame Observatory]

"OVNI 2005" will be held at the CCCB from the 25th to the 30th of January 2005, with screenings of some of the works recently added to the Archives. The entire Archives collection will also be available for public consultation during OVNI 2005.

The Observatory Archives are intentional in nature and organised around specific themes, bringing together material that supports a critique of contemporary culture through different approaches such as video art, independent documentary and mass media archaeology.

"Blanchot, the Obscure"

A conference on the French critic and author Maurice Blanchot
Organized by the journal Colloquy
under the auspices of
The Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
and The School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash
University
and Alliance Française Melbourne

Dates: 19-20 August 2004

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Kevin Hart

Despite the enormous influence of his work, for many Maurice Blanchot
remains an obscure figure. His fiction is regarded by some as
impenetrable, his critical comments gnomic. His reclusive habits shroud
decisive events of his life, most notably his brush with death during
the occupation of France. For others, Blanchot's work is anything but
obscure, his reticence to reveal the details of his life being only a
proper extension of his lucid, critical thought.
Nevertheless, the adjective ‘obscure’ can function as a lens onto a
series of ideas appearing throughout Blanchot's writings. The mysterious
and the enigmatic feature prominently in terms of the il y a, death,
désoeuvrement, the event, the gaze, the negative, the neutral, madness.
Perhaps what remains most obscure is the work of writing itself, both in
practice and in theory. The obscurity of the work of writing brings to
the fore the relation between fiction and philosophy.

hydrarchist writes

"Wealth by Copyleft:

Creativity in the Digital Age"

3. Oekonux Conference


Vienna, Austria, May 20-23, 2004

Department of Philosophy at Vienna University

Project Oekonux

In Project Oekonux and in the neighboring Open Theory different people with different opinions and different methods study the economic and political forms of Free Software.

An important question is, whether the principles of the development of Free Software (without exchange in the core, self-organized, common and unlimited participation in the production knowledge) may be the foundation of a new economy which is no longer based on the dogma of economic scarcity. New economy may also mean the basis for a new form of society. So Oekonux is not only concerned with Free Software but with the relation of Free Software and transformation of society. From the far ranging Oekonux debate new views on past transformation processes of society and a completely new theory of transformation of society emerge -- e.g. the germ form hypothesis.