"Sex, Lies, and Videotapes"

John Chuckman

Among the hoard of pictures from Iraq viewed by members of America's Senate in a top-secret, eavesdrop-proof room — a rather grandiose version of one of those smelly little, stained booths for which patrons of Times Square shops used to pay to watch "hot stuff" — were pictures of a young female soldier, already recognized worldwide for her smiling-Nazi poses with abused prisoners, having sex with a gang of fellow soldiers.

One of the exalted Senator spectators, with all the dignity he could summon, was quoted, "She was having sex with numerous partners. It appeared to be consensual. Almost everyone was naked all the time."

"What Do We Do Now?"

Howard Zinn, The Progressive

It seems very hard for some people — especially those in high places, but also those striving for high places — to grasp a simple truth: The United States does not belong in Iraq. It is not our country. Our presence is causing death, suffering, destruction, and so large sections of the population are rising against us. Our military is then reacting with indiscriminate force, bombing and shooting and rounding up people simply on "suspicion."

Let Us Hope the Darkness Has Passed

Arundhati Roy, The Guardian

India's real and virtual worlds have collided in a humiliation of power

For many of us who feel estranged from mainstream politics, there are rare, ephemeral moments of celebration. Today is one of them. When India went to the polls, we were negotiating the dangerous cross-currents of neo-liberalism and neo-fascism — an assault on the poor and minority communities.

None of the pundits and psephologists predicted the results. The rightwing BJP-led coalition has not just been voted out of power, it has been humiliated.

"Un-Liberating the Airwaves:

WFMU's Ken Freedman on the Post-Janet Jackson FCC"

Dave Mandl, Brooklyn Rail

Dave Mandl (Rail): How have things changed for radio broadcasters in
the wake of Janet Jackson's Super Bowl performance?

Ken Freedman: Things have changed drastically in recent months. As
recently as last fall, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued
a series of decisions that loosened their language rules
considerably — ruling, for example, that the word "fuck" was permissible if
used non-literally, as an adjective. Things have now not only reverted to
the way they were before, they've become much more rigid than ever.

"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.

"Changing Copyright"

Negativland

In an attempt to suggest a culturally sane solution to the continuing legal confrontations between owners of copyrighted cultural material and others who collage such material into new creations, we advocate a broadening of the copyright concept of Fair Use. We want the Fair Use statutes within copyright law to allow for a much broader variety of free, creative reuses of existing work whenever they are used in the creation of new work.

"Tourists and Torturers"

Luc Sante, New York Times

So now we think we know who took some of the photographs at Abu Ghraib. The works attributed to Specialist Jeremy Sivits are fated to remain among the indelible images of our time. They will have changed the course of history; just how much we do not yet know. It is arguable that without them, news of what happened within the walls of that prison would never have emerged from the fog of classified internal memos. We owe their circulation and perhaps their existence to the popular technology of our day, to digital cameras and JPEG files and e-mail. Photographs can now be disseminated as quickly and widely as rumors.

hydrarchist writes... well here is a report from an organizer with the Dublin Grassroots Network, protagonist of the demonstrations and actions "Against the Europe of Capital/No to Fortress Europe" which took place simultaneous with the official celebrations of EU enlargement that took placfe in Ireland on the Mayday Weekend. For the record, I was present myself but am not the author ;-)

The long march on Farmleigh

In terms of the development of a libertarian movement in Ireland
the march on the EU
summit at Farmleigh will probably be seen as a turning point. For
the first time the movement mobilized large number of people from
outside its own ranks, in a demonstration that was in direct defiance
of the Irish governments attempt to ban such demonstrations.

JZB writes:

"Art of Darkness:

The Abu Ghraib Effect"

J. Bratich

The average duration of an afterimage on the human eye is generally no more than a few minutes. What is less measurable is an afterimage on an entire culture, much less on global public opinion. So what can we say about the lingering effects of the traumatic images of Abu Ghraib?

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"The Thing With No Brain"

John Chuckman

I had an unpleasant moment on the day Bush decided to address "the Arab world." He is a man I cannot stand hearing, so when his voice comes on the radio, I always switch it off. Well, this time I was too far away and necessarily heard a couple of sentences, the ones starting with "People in Iraq must understand…And they must understand…."