"A Comment on the Question of Human Rights"

Alain Badiou

[During August and September, Christoph Cox and Molly
Whalen interviewed the French philosopher Alain Badiou
for Cabinet magazine. Shortly before the attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Cox and
Whalen asked Badiou to clarify his conception of human
rights. Shortly after the attacks, Badiou offered the
following response.]

Take the nearest example: the terrible criminal attack
in New York, with its thousands of casualties. If you
reason in terms of the morality of human rights, you
say, with President Bush: "These are terrorist
criminals. This is a struggle of Good against Evil."
But are Bush's policies, in Palestine or Iraq for
example, really Good? And, in saying that these people
are Evil, or that they don't respect human rights, do
we understand anything about the mindset of those who
killed themselves with their bombs? Isn't there a lot
of despair and violence in the world caused by the
fact that the politics of western powers, and of the
American government in particular, are utterly
destitute of ingenuity and value? In the face of
crimes, terrible crimes, we should think and act
according to concrete political truths, rather than be
guided by the stereotypes of any sort of morality.

"Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of
Multinational Capitalism"

Slavoj Zizek

It is as if we are witnessing today the ultimate
confirmation of Freud's thesis, from Civilization and
its Discontents, on how, after every assertion of
Eros, Thanatos reasserts itself with a vengeance. At
the very moment when, according to the predominant
liberal ideology, we are finally leaving behind the
"immature" political passions (the regime of the
"political": class struggle and other "out-dated"
divisive antagonisms) for the post-ideological
"mature" pragmatic universe of rational administration
and negotiated consensus, for the universe, free of
utopian impulses, in which the dispassionate
administration of social affairs goes hand in hand
with the aestheticized hedonism (the pluralism of
"ways of life"), -- at this very moment, the foreclosed
political is celebrating a triumphant comeback in its
most archaic form of pure, undistilled racist hatred
of the Other which renders the rational tolerant
attitude utterly impotent.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"... nabbed from Groklaw.... the original from Groklaw contains some other acknowledgements to those who produced the transcript. You canj find it (and 422 comments!) here.

Eben Moglen's Harvard Speech: A Transcript

Contributed by: PJ

[If accuracy is vital, do check with the Harvard video. If you wish to hear the talk to verify it or just to enjoy it, here it is. I am continuing to edit, so if you see any errors, can you please help me out by letting me know? I just didn't want you to have to wait for perfection on my part, as that might be a long wait indeed.

Moglen makes reference to two legal terms, dicta and holding, which I'll explain briefly, so you can follow his thought. Dicta, the plural of dictum, is, according to my law dictionary, "a statement, remark, or observation in a judicial opinion not necessary for the decision of the case. Dictum differs from the holding in that it is not binding on the courts in subsequent cases." You can extrapolate holding's meaning from the definition of dicta. So, with that introduction, here is the transcript.

nolympics writes:

This essay is from Confronting Capitalism, a new collection from Softskull edited by Eddie Yuen, George Katsiafikas and Daniel Burton Rose and to be published in the coming months.

"Insurgent Chinese Workers and Peasants:
The 'Weak Link' in Capitalist Globalization and U.S. Imperialism" (1)
John Gulick

The attacks of September 11 forced the worldwide movement against capitalist globalization into temporary retreat. But as the Bush II regime parlayed the mini-horror of Cold War blowback into the mega-horror of U.S. imperial conquest in Central and West Asia, savvier elements of the movement against capitalist globalization quickly regrouped. While the Cheney-Perle-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz axis in Washington plotted the invasion and occupation of Iraq, these elements of the movement appropriately preoccupied themselves with how to theoretically link capitalist globalization and U.S. imperialism, and how to recompose the movement accordingly. Given the urgency with which this reorientation had to be effected, and the tremendous stakes involved, it is no mystery why relatively obscure events unfolding in the "rust bowl" of northeast China in the spring of 2002 were missed by most opponents of capitalist globalization and U.S. imperialism. Yet these events that took place in the cities of Daqing and Liaoyang crystallized a much vaster pattern of events that may seriously wound both capitalist globalization and U.S. imperialism.

"Reverse Imagineering:

Toward the New Urban Struggles,

Or: Why Smash the State When Your

Neighborhood Theme Park Is So Much Closer?"

Brian Holmes

"What are the steps in the creation of a Disney attraction?
According to literature sent out by WDW [Walt Disney World], the steps are: storyboard, script, concept, show models, sculpture, show set design, graphics, interiors, architectural design, molds and casting, wardrobe and figure finishing, electronic and mechanical design and manufacture, show sets and prop construction, animation, audio, special effects and lighting, and engineering." [The Unofficial Walt Disney Imagineering Page (www.imagineering.org).]

On October 17, 2003, seven groups of some 20 to 30 persons descended into the Paris underground, with paint pots, glue, rollers, brushes, spray cans, sheets of paper and marking pens in their hands. Their aim? To overwrite, cover up, deface, subvert, recompose or simply rip to shreds as many advertisements as possible, without violence to any individual or to any piece of property other than the images which impinge on our most intimate desires.

"Democrats Nominate Hitler"

Ran Prieur

BOSTON -- After switching their allegiance from anarcho-communist Howard Dean to ultra-liberal John Kerry, and then to liberal John Edwards, on the final day of their convention Democrats switched one last time to extreme moderate Adolf Hitler, convinced that he's the man who has the best chance of beating Bush.

"This election has never been about issues," said Democratic Party spokesman Heinrich Himmler. "It's not about whether we go to war, about military spending, or taxes, or the federal budget, or the environment, or civil liberties, or even abortion. That's the kind of starry-eyed idealism that killed us in '72. This election is about one thing -- getting that bastard Bush out of there, that lying, draft-dodging, coke-snorting, beady-eyed, stupid, bad, bad person. Hate him! Hate him! Hate him!"

"The Resurrection of Total Information Awareness"

Kirt Nimmo

Remember when we were told that the TIA (Terrorism Information Awareness) program was terminated? The Senate supposedly cut funding for the program last September, according to the Congressional Record. This followed the ditching of retired Adm. John Poindexter, Iran-Contra criminal and mastermind behind TIA, due to his "terrorism futures" idea, or Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP). It was just too "unorthodox" for the folks in Congress.

Here's the bill supposedly eliminating TIA. Note the caveats. I recall thinking at the time: intelligence agencies simply don't get rid of ideas like TIA, especially after money and work has been poured into them. Instead, they transfer the research and money elsewhere and continue to develop the programs.

"A Breast That Changed the World"

Barbara Sumner Burstyn, dissidentvoice.org

In my living room in New Zealand, half-way through last
week's episode of the banal, overhyped The Osbournes,
it dawned on me what was so weird: you could hear every
word. Watch the same show in the US and you need to
lip-read your way round the almost continuous beeping-
out of bad words.

The same day I read yet another attack on Janet
Jackson. Across America her supposedly sexually
explicit breast baring has unleashed a torrent of moral
effluvia. Book-ended with the "outrage, anger,
embarrassment and serious injury" Super Bowl viewers
were said to have suffered was the so-called scandal
being fanned round John Kerry, the Democratic
presidential hopeful with the allegedly sleazy past.

An anonymous coward writes:
"The Bloody Price"

Tariq Ali, OutLookIndia.com

Sooner than anyone could have predicted the occupation has become untenable.
Regime changes in Washington and London would be small punishment compared
to what is being inflicted on Iraq.

The whole world knows that Bush and Blair lied to justify the war, but do
they know the price being paid on the ground in Iraq? First, the blood
price--paid by civilians and others this week as every week. More than 50
people died on February 12 when a car bomb ripped through Iraqis queuing to
join the police force. The US military blamed al-Qaida loyalists and foreign
militants for this and other suicide bombings. But occupations are usually
ugly. How then can resistance be pretty?

An anonymous coward writes:

"Open the Debates"

Ralph Nader, CommonDreams.org

Last week, Open Debates (see Opendebates.org), a
nonprofit, non-partisan organization, whose purposes I
support, filed a complaint with the Federal Election
Commission (FEC) against the Commission on Presidential
Debates (CPD) which was created and is controlled by
the Republican and Democratic Parties. Open Debates
charged, with documentation, that the CPD is not non-
partisan but is deeply bi-partisan, serving and obeying
the dictates of the two major Parties.

Open Debates argues that such control is a violation of
FEC debate regulations. Corporate contributions which
could go only to an educational association are instead
going to a bi-partisan political organization which is
unlawful.