Bringing "Maximum Security" to Iraq

Yoshie Furuhashi

One of the most astonishing remarks that George W. Bush made in his Army War College speech laying out a five-step plan to re-engineer the occupation is his declaration that "America will fund the construction of a modern maximum security prison. When that prison is completed detainees at Abu Ghraib will be relocated. Then with the approval of the Iraqi government we will demolish the Abu Ghraib prison as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning" ("Transcript of Bush Speech on US Strategy in Iraq," Financial Times, May 25 2004). Then again, it is quite fitting that an empire built by a prison state -- "a nation that incarcerates 2.2 million people -- one-quarter of all the world's prisoners" (Alan Elsner, "If US Plays Global Prison Ratings Game, It Ought to Play by Its Own Rules," Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2004) -- will be a prison empire.

"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.

"Liar's Poker"

Representation of Politics/Politics of Representation"

Brian Holmes

Basically, what I have to say here is simple: when people talk about politics in an artistic frame, they're lying. Indeed, the lies they tell are often painfully obvious, and worse is the moment when you realize that some will go forever unchallenged and take on, not the semblance of truth, but the reliability of convention. In a period like ours when the relationship to politics is one of the legitimating arguments for the very existence of public art, the tissue of lies that surrounds one when entering a museum can become so dense that it's like falling into an ancient cellar full of spider webs, and choking on them as you struggle to breathe. Now, the mere mention of this reality will make even my friends and allies in the artistic establishment rather nervous; but it is a reality nonetheless. And like most of the political realities in our democratic age, it has directly to do with the question of representation.

"No Past? No!"

An Interview with the Italian Analyst of Post-Fordism, Sergio Bologna

Klaus Ronneberger & Georg Schöllhammer

The social upheavals of the past two decades have invalidated conventional professional and class identities. Traditional forms and resources of a collective solidarity arising from the common experience of work under alienated conditions are vanishing. Social resistance is having a hard time finding an answer to the new and flexible strategies of post-Fordian capitalism. While some want to rescue the national welfare state to counter the tyranny of the market, others feel that new forms of independence have been created along with the changed balance of power within society. From this point of view, union-oriented labor and social policies have few chances of being popular with »Arbeitskraftunternehmer« [people who act as entrepreneurs of their own labor. Tr.].

Sergio Bologna, one of the most important European analysts of this change, has given us the most comprehensive study to date of the circumstances and perspectives inherent in this form of work in his book on the »new self-employed« in North Italy. In the following interview, Bologna outlines the genesis of the »class« of the »new self-employed,« not only as the consequence of economic strategies and technological developments, but also as a reaction to subtle forms of in-house resistance and post-modern patterns of socialization.

The New York Times, in Editors' Note, Finds Much to Fault in its
Iraq WMD Coverage

Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher Online

NEW YORK — After months of criticism of The New York Times' coverage of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — mainly directed at star
reporter Judith Miller — the paper's editors, in an extraordinary
note to readers this morning, finally tackled the subject,
acknowledging it was "past time" they do so. Following the sudden
fall last week of Ahmad Chalabi, Miller's most famous source, they
probably had no choice.

While it does not, in some ways, go nearly far enough, and is buried
on Page A10, this low-key but scathing self-rebuke is nothing less
than a primer on how not to do journalism, particularly if you are an
enormously influential newspaper with a costly invasion of another
nation at stake.

"The Trail of Torture:

The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech"

Robert Fisk,
The Independent

I can't wait to see Abu Ghraib prison reduced to rubble by the Americans — at the request of the new Iraqi government, of course. It will be turned to dust in order to destroy a symbol of Saddam's brutality. That's what President Bush tells us. So the re-writing of history still goes on. Last August, I was invited to Abu Ghraib — by my favourite US General Janis Karpinski, no less — to see the million-dollar US refurbishment of this vile place. Squeaky clean cells and toothpaste tubes and fresh pairs of pants for the "terrorist" inmates. But now, suddenly, the whole kit and caboodle is no longer an American torture centre. It's still an Iraqi torture centre, and thus worthy of demolition.

"Your Bill for the War"

Sean Gonsalves, Cape Cod Times

Amount you owe for the war in Iraq: $4,000. Make check payable to Uncle Sam's Iraq Quagmire Fund. If you dispute any portion of this bill call 1-800-IMPEACH-THIS.

According to Doug Henwood, author of "After the New Economy," $4,000 is the amount that each household will have to fork over in taxes to foot the Iraq occupation bill.

"I feel a little callous about talking about the economic impact of the war in Iraq, which seems like an afterthought next to the human toll. But at a time when civilian budgets are being cut at every level, when clinics are closing and professors at our public universities have to pay for their own photocopying because there's allegedly not enough money, it's amazing how much we're spending," Henwood says.

"Searching for Truth on Monte Verità"

Dale Bechtel, Swissinfo

Ascona is Switzerland’s most popular southern resort, but
the cradle of European counterculture is only a shadow of
its former self.

Swiss-Germans and Germans come for a relaxing holiday on the
lakeside, most unaware that leading European anarchists once
tried to build a utopian society here.

"The Bush Doctrine"

Noam Chomsky Interview, BBC

If George Bush were to be judged by the standards of the
Nuremberg Tribunals, he'd be hanged. So too, mind you, would
every single American President since the end of the second
world war, including Jimmy Carter.

The suggestion comes from the American linguist Noam
Chomsky. His latest attack on the way his country behaves in
the world is called Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest
for Global Dominance.

Jeremy Paxman met him at the British Museum, where they
talked in the Assyrian Galleries. He asked him whether he
was suggesting there was nothing new in the so-called Bush
Doctrine.