Anonymous Comrade writes

Empire, Neo-Imperialism and NATO?

NATO will be gathering in Istanbul on June 28-29 2004. It is evident that this meeting is not only a routine one. This meeting should be interpreted as the constitution of a new global sovereignty within the power mechanism of capitalism; hence it seems to have reached an important moment throughout this unfinished, ongoing process. We call this form of global sovereignty that is in the process of constitution as Empire. The ontology of Empire, being immanent in its action, is constituted through the third world war. The spaces of compromises entirely take place within the ontological extension of war. The analysis of the form of sovereignty courses through clarifying the war politics or how the constitution policy is militarized. NATO summit is the explicit declaration of the militarization of the politics of Capitalist Empire that is the new form of global sovereignty, with the Greater Middle East Project as the policy document of twenty-first century. This summit and the policy document, in its economic, social and political entirety, is the declaration of war against global labour. Empire has started a new McCarthyism with its discourse of democracy and security

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.

NOT BORED writes "Comrades:

We disagree with Malcom Imrie, the translator of Debord's "Comments on the Society of the Spectacle" (1988): footnotes would definitely help many readers to better understand this book, in part because some of the historical events to which Debord refers or alludes aren't well known (have been suppressed, obscured or completely forgotten) in English-speaking countries; and in part because Debord himself "take[s] care not to give too much information to just anybody." In the absence of such explanations, Debord seems paranoid (which he wasn't) and his references seem figural (when they are in fact historical).

Momentum Journal writes "*New Journal of Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Authoritarian Politics Out Now!*

Momentum is a forum where diverse radical voices come together to discuss political analyzes, social theory, movement history, alternative visions, and strategies for change. Momentum aspires to provide a dynamic and interactive space for internal movement reflection, dialogue, and debate among anti-authoritarian anti-capitalists on the key issues we encounter as we work for a free society.

hydrarchist writes....from australia......this is a translation someone did for the State of Emergency conference of a recent article to multitudes, previously unavailable in english as far as i know.also might be worth putting up on autonomedia...

The State of Emergency as the Empire's Mode of Governance.

by Jean-Claude Paye

translated by Patrice Riemens

Originally published in Multitudes 16, March 2004.

The atrocities of September 11, 2001 caused an unprecedented acceleration
in the transformation of the corpus of criminal and criminal procedure
laws in Western countries. In the months following the outrage, and
sometimes within days, governments have enacted measures curtailing public
and private liberties. In our opinion, a real break is taking place,
because it is the very existence of the rule of law as we know it which is
at stake.

Johan Forsberg writes:
The Swedish journal "Riff-Raff – communism and class struggle theory" has a new web domain [http://www.riff-raff.se and http://www.riff-raff.se/english/ for the english version]. The old website will cease to exist in short. Please update your links and bookmarks!

The new website is also updated with a fortunately more user-friendly design. Here you will find some of our own material from the journal, but also texts not before on the internet as an excerpt from "The American Worker" by Ria Stone and "On Organization" by Jacques Camatte / Gianni Collu.

"Dangerous Philosophy:

Threat, Risk, and Security"

Irving Goh, CTheory

"We have seen [the State war machine] set its sights on a new
type of enemy, no longer another State, nor even another regime,
but the 'unspecified enemy'; we have seen it put its
counter-guerilla elements into place, so that it can be caught
by surprise once, but not twice... Yet the conditions that make
the State or World war machine possible, in other words constant
capital (resources and equipment) and human variable capital,
constantly recreate unexpected possibilities for counterattack,
unforeseen initiatives determining revolutionary, popular,
minority, mutant machines. The definition of the Unspecified
Enemy testifies to this... 'multiform, maneuvering and
omnipresent... of the moral, political, subversive or economic
order, etc.,' the unassignable material Saboteur or human
Deserter assuming the most diverse forms." — Deleuze and Guattari [1]

"We plan a comprehensive assault on terrorism. This will be a
different kind of conflict against a different kind of enemy.
This is a conflict without battlefields or beachheads, a
conflict with opponents who believe they are invisible." — George W. Bush [2]

"Words can be turned against me." — Jean Baudrillard [3]

Questions of Philosophy

If Deleuze and Guattari were to write and publish their philosophy of
the nomadological war machine today, in the still dark light of the
omnipresent retaliatory and aggressive political discourse that has
emerged from the ruins of September 11, would their philosophy have a
chance?

"Deconstruct to Reconstruct:

An Interview with Maurice Godelier

Paul Eiss and Thomas C. Wolfe

At the end of March, 2004, Maurice Godelier spent a week at the University as a guest of the Institute for the Humanities. Professer Godelier is currently the Directeur de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and Professor of Anthropology. It is safe to say that he is one of the two most famous anthropologists in France, along with his former teacher, Claude Lévi-Strauss. Professor Godelier gave several formal lectures, met privately with students and faculty, and he agreed to let Paul Eiss, a graduate student in the Program in History and Anthropology, tape a lunchtime conversation.

"Trots in Space"

Matt Salusbury

We think of UFO cults, typically, as being naïve, fancy-dress Californian affairs, scary religious Doomsday sects, or even neo-Nazi groups convinced that flying saucers operate from a secret Antarctic base. But there was one UFO cult at the opposite end of the political spectrum: a Trotskyite UFO cult.

They called themselves the Posadists after their founder Juan R Posadas and, like many UFO cults, they bore a fierce loyalty to their “dear master”.1 They believed that close encounters were evidence of superior socialist civilisations from Earth’s future. Their bizarre belief in flying saucers was not channelled to them by some tackily-named space entity but “theoretically informed” by Marx and Trotsky, and was for them a logical extension of Marxist dialectical materialism. Posadas wrote: “We will travel to planets millions of light years away under a Socialist society.”

Full story is here.

Anonymous Comrade writes

"The Two-Fold Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg"
Peter Hudis, News & Letters

[The following is a talk delivered at a panel on Rosa Luxemburg sponsored by Monthly Review Press at the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York City in March 2004, on the occasion of the recently published The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, edited by Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson.]

Far from being any distant memory, the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg continues to impact the major ideological and social struggles of our time. One reflection of this was the debate which broke out a year ago, in April 2003, over the Cuban government’s decision to impose jail sentences (ranging from six to 28 years) on 75 dissidents and to summarily execute three Black Cubans who tried to commandeer a boat to Florida.

In response to these actions, Eduardo Galeano, the longtime anti-imperialist activist and theorist who has long supported the Cuban Revolution, wrote:

"The Cuban government is now committing acts that, as Uruguayan writer Carlos Quijano would say, 'sin against hope.' Rosa Luxemburg, who gave her life for the socialist revolution, disagreed with Lenin over the project of a new society. Her words of warning proved prophetic, and 85 years after she was assassinated in Germany she is still right: 'Freedom for only the supporters of the government, however many there may be, is not real freedom. Real freedom is freedom for those who think differently.'"

Galeano also quoted Luxemburg’s statement from the same work, The Russian Revolution, that "Without general elections, without freedom of the press and unlimited freedom of assembly, without a contest of free opinions, life stagnates and withers in all public institutions, and the bureaucracy becomes the only active element."(1)

Galeano’s comments helped ignite a firestorm of controversy inside and outside of Cuba.