stevphen writes "CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS AND INTERVENTIONS

Making Global Civil Society:
Grassroots Practice and Academic Theory of Globalisation from Below

A weekend gathering for activists and academics.

November 4, 5 & 6 2005
Lancaster University, North West England.

With support of the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at Lancaster University, the “Knowledge Laboratory on Globalisation from Above and Below” is happy to invite you, your affinity group, your collective, or your organisation to contribute to its first event.

The aim of the gathering is to discuss key aspects of the historical development of the capitalist economy that drives globalisation from above such as enclosures, (precarious) labour, structural violence, colonialism, and their justifying cultural imagery – and to make visible alternative architectures of social organisation emerging through the processes of globalisation from below, that is, through grassroots movements cooperating to create a global civil society based on human rights and mutual aid, and to restore the (intellectual) commons, in the street, on the land, and in cyberspace.

Marxism and Communications Conference

Boston, Nov. 16, 2005

"Marxism and Communication Studies: Key Debates and Core Concepts"

Announcing: A one day Preconvention Seminar Conference at the National Communication Association Annual Meeting

8:30 a.m. - 4:45 p.m.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005, Boston, MA

Seminar Leaders: Lee Artz, Purdue University, Calumet; Dana Cloud, University of Texas, Austin; Stephen Macek, North Central College

Seminar Description: The current explosion of critical communication scholarship would be unthinkable without the achievements and insights of classical and Western Marxist thought. Notions derived from the Marxist tradition — "ideology," "hegemony," "reification," "commodification," "the dialectic," and "imperialism" — are regularly deployed in NCA conference presentations and journals such as Critical Studies in Media Communication and Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. They even show up from time to time in textbooks on rhetorical and communication theory. Yet far too often such concepts are used in ways that obscure their Marxist roots and divorce them from any hint of materialism or recognition of class conflict.

stevphen writes:

Guide for Social Transformation in Europe:
European Social Forum and Surroundings
Euromovements Action Research Update

The action research network: euromovements is pleased to announce you that the newsletter on activist research: practices challenging the investigation is online (here) and we would like to thanks all of you for your cooperation and participation. We wish you to enjoy the newsletter and to spread it around. For any comment please contact us at this email!! Take care and good reading!!

alexandra and mayo from euromovements
http://www.euromovements.info
info_euromovements@pangea.org

Robert Smigel Animation

When the President needs help diverting a scrutinising but manipulatable press, there's just one man to call: Divertor

"The Fight to Stop the Patriot Act Expansion Begins Now"

ACLU Action Network

The debate around the Patriot Act is approaching a crucial moment of
decision. Will we sit back while the Bush Administration sacrifices
our liberty, or will we answer freedom's call and help Congress
bring the Patriot Act in line with the Constitution?

SWARM the Minutemen writes:

SWARM the Minutemen - Post Action Update May 30th, 2005 (Spanish below)


SWARM would like to offer a sincere thanks to the more than 78,500 people from around the world who joined the Electronic Disturbance Theater’s virtual sit-in against the MinuteMen. It seems that in a time when almost all the space in the United States has been privatized and free speech zones have been reduced to cages topped with barbed wire, the internet can still serve as a commons where people can gather together to create positive social change.

Deleuze, Marx and Politics

Nicholas Thoburn

Available online here .

A critical and provocative exploration of the political, conceptual and cultural
points of resonance between Deleuze's minor politics and Marx's critique of
capitalist dynamics, Deleuze, Marx and Politics is the first book to engage
with Deleuze's missing work, The Grandeur of Marx.

stevphen writes

Finance, Attention and Affect
With Christian Marazzi

The Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process (Goldsmiths College),
University of London, invites you to a session of the Economies and Technologies of Affect seminar series, summer term.
Thursday 2nd June 4.30-6.00pm, Room 137, Main Building

With Christian Marazzi, Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland

(Closest tube/train stops: New Cross/New Cross Gate)

Christian Marazzi is a Swiss Italian economist who used to be close to the journals Zerowork and Primo Maggio and has had immense influence on the debate over immaterial labour and language.

Anonymous Comrade: writes

"Memorial Observance 2005"

New York City, May 29, 2005

New York City -- Veterans and military family members will conduct
a memorial observance on Sunday May 29th beginning at 1:00 PM at
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at 55 Water Street, at the end of
the FDR Drive, in lower Manhattan.

The program will start with an invocation by Joe Cross of the
Caddo Nation. Speakers include military family members Dante
Zappala and Debbie Anderson, and veterans David Cline, Alex
Ryabov, Greg Payton, and Ricky Singh. After laying a wreath at the
memorial, Iraq veterans and Gold Star family members will lead a
solemn and silent procession to the water's edge in Battery Park.
There participants are invited to cast flowers into the harbor in
memory of the dead, and to speak briefly about the nature and
meaning of their losses. The program will end with a rendition of
Taps.

"This year again we see our soldiers fighting, killing, and dying
every day in Afghanistan and Iraq," observes David Cline. "We
ended the second world war sixty years ago. Now we have a third
world war, this time a campaign for global military domination by
our own government. We ended the American war in Vietnam thirty
years ago. Now we have once again sent our young men and women
into a brutal and pointless occupation of once sovereign nations,
which posed no military threat to the United States."

stevphen writes
:The Free Society Collective’s
SEMINAR SERIES

Cosponsored by the Institute for Anarchist Studies and Black Sheep Books

The Free Society Collective’s (FSC) seminar series aims to provide an independent space for ongoing inquiries into social, political, cultural, economic, historical, and other fields of study from an anti-authoritarian left perspective. The seminar series draws on a variety of radical traditions, revolutionary histories, contemporary social movements, and social and political analyses, including anarchism, Western and autonomous marxisms, and other libertarian left tendencies. By exploring the past as well as the present, these weekend-long seminars are meant to deepen our understanding of dynamic social phenomena such as capitalism, statecraft, racism, gender, and the devastation of the natural world, to name a few. The seminars are also a way of reclaiming our own education and scholarship -- by mentoring, learning from, and challenging each other in a highly participatory setting. And over time, it is the FSC’s hope that this seminar series will contribute to the development of public intellectuals, theoretical insights, and sophisticated forms of praxis as well as social organization in our struggle for a nonhierarchical, egalitarian society.