International School for Bottom-up Organizing

The International School for Bottom-up Organizing (ISBO) had its first meeting in
October, 2008, with representatives from five countries present.

Ours is an international struggle that must be led by the poorest and
darkest, especially women. We all need the same freedom and equality; we
all have the same oppressors, worldwide. Our movement will work toward an
internationalist, egalitarian world. We foresee a world in which the genius
and creativity of humanity is unleashed, in which all humans share and

Theorizing Wikileaks
Los Angeles, Feb. 12, 2011

Call for Papers

[“The notion of “heterology” refers to the ways in which the meaningful fabric of the sensible is disturbed: a spectacle does not fit within the sensible framework defined by a network of meanings, an expression does not find its place in the system of the visible coordinates where it appears. The dream of a suitable political work of art is in fact the dream of disrupting the relationship between the visible, the sayable and the thinkable without having to use the terms of a message or a vehicle. It is the dream of an art that would transmit meanings in the form of a rupture with the very logic of meaningful situations. As a matter of fact, political art cannot work in the simple form of a meaningful spectacle that would lead to an “awareness” of the state of the world. Suitable political art would have a double effect: the readability of a political signification and a sensible or perceptual shock caused, conversely, by the uncanny, that which resists signification.” -Ranciere, The Politics of Aesthetics/The Distribution of the Sensible]

Julian Assange describes a "corrosive servility” that has come to infuse present day life and our resignation towards the established political order. As we, as bourgeois bohemians, buy organic at Trader Joe’s, dutifully download Democracy Now episodes and make sure to buy the next Arundhati Roy bestseller as glib gestures of a boutique liberalism in between lining up recommendations for our MFA applications, a tacit acceptance of our impotence in the face of a repugnant sociopolitical order, verging on involuntary complicity, is so hackneyed so as to not even need to be stated.

Thanks, But No Thanks, WikiLeaks! Saroj Giri Is ‘exposing power’ through ‘truth revelations’ set to become the new game in town? Is it a mere coincidence that Bradley Manning becomes no Rosa Parks but a mere conduit for ‘digital anarchism’ and ‘infoliberaton’, with WikiLeaks working in tandem with corporate media houses?

Distributed Power in the 21st Century Brian Holmes Should information about the US government’s dealings with the rest of the world be free? A lot of European hackers and NGOs seem to think so — and let’s not forget all the people on the other sides of the globe who agree.

"They Rule" Josh On "They Rule" aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 500 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations. http://www.theyrule.net/html/about.php

Cablegate: Operation Avenge Assange Begins Tech Herald Anonymous responded to Assange's arrest by taking down Swedish government site www.aklagare.se, the hive at 13:15 EST has hit more than 600 users. This is more than enough to cripple a given domain, considering that aklagare.se has minimal infrastructure support. There are calls in the IRC channel to target MasterCard, Visa, as well as PayPal. However, most of those in the room who are active in the attacks are sticking with a single target.

Submit to "Upping the Anti" Pitches due December 3, 2010; first draft due January 7, 2010 UPPING THE ANTI: A JOURNAL OF THEORY AND ACTION is a radical journal published twice a year by a pan-Canadian collective of activists and organizers. We are dedicated to publishing radical theory and analysis about struggles against capitalism, imperialism, and all forms of oppression. In our first ten issues, we've published articles by and interviews with renowned activists and intellectuals, including Aijaz Ahmad, Himani Bannerji, Grace Lee Boggs, Ward Churchill, Michael Hardt, John Holloway, Sunera Thobani, Andrea Smith, and many more.

Borderlands and Breaking Points: Tension Across the 49th Parallel Edited by Kyle Conway and Timothy Pasch For a certain class of phenomena, the logic of the national border—that is, the logic of the controlled passage from one side to the other—does not hold. Crime operates by definition outside of the legal frameworks on either side of a border. Rivers flow across borders, regardless of the actions of the governments whose territories they affect. Native communities, in particular those on the U.S.-Canadian border, enjoy sovereign status that gives their members special rights when crossing the border.

Turbulence 5 'And Now For Something Completely Different' Released Until recently, anyone who suggested nationalising the banks would have been derided as a ‘quack’ and a ‘crank’, as lacking the most basic understanding of the functioning of a ‘complex, globalised world’. The grip of ‘orthodoxy’ disqualified the idea, and many more, without the need even to offer a counter-argument. And yet, in this time of intersecting crises, when it seems like everything could, and should, have changed, it paradoxically feels as though very little has. Individuals and companies have hunkered down to try and ride out the crisis. Nationalisations and government spending have been used to prevent change, not initiate it. Anger and protest have erupted around different aspects of the crises, but no common or consistent reaction has seemed able to cohere. We appear unable to move on. For many years, social movements could meet and recognise one another on the *common ground* of rejecting neoliberalism, society’s old *middle ground* -- those discourses and practices that defined the centre of the political field. The crisis of the middle has meant a crumbling of the common. And what now? Will neoliberalism continue to stumble on without direction, zombie-like? Or, is it time for something completely different?

PHOSPHOR: a surrealist luminescence No.2 on the theme of Phantom Objects Andrew Boobier • Gareth Brown • Eugenio Castro • Stephen J. Clark • Kenneth Cox • Jan Drabble • Guy Ducornet • Kathleen Fox • Bill Howe • Michaël Löwy • Sarah Metcalf • Peter Overton • Mike Peters • Noé Ortega Quijano • Michael Richardson • Franklin Rosemont • Bruno Solarik • Jan Švankmajer  • John Welson • John Hartley Williams