"Free Trade Is War"

Naomi Klein, The Nation, September 12, 2003

On Monday, seven antiprivatization activists were arrested in
Soweto for blocking the installation of prepaid water meters. The
meters are a privatized answer to the fact that millions of poor
South Africans cannot pay their water bills.

"The Global Economy in Transition"

Henry C.K. Liu

An economy is not an abstraction. An economy is the material
manifestation of a political system, which in turn is the interplay of
group interests representing, among others, gender, age, religion,
property, class, sector, region or nation. Individual interests are not
issues of politics. Therefore, the politics of individualism is an
oxymoron, and by extension, the Hayekian notion of a market of
individual decisions is an ideological fantasy. Markets are phenomena
of large numbers and herd instinct where unique individualism is of
little consequence. The defining basis of politics is power, which
takes many forms: moral, intellectual, financial, electoral and
military. In an overcapacity environment, company executives lament
about the loss of pricing power. The global economy is the material
manifestation of the global geopolitical system, and global
macroeconomics is the rationalization of that geopolitical system.

BUZZFLASH: Many of our readers don't realize that you are an economics
professor at Princeton. How did you come to write a column for The New
York Times op-ed page?

KRUGMAN: Well, they just called me out of the blue. Actually it was
Tom Friedman who acted as intermediary, because I'd met him. But it
was just out of the blue. It was 1999, and at the time, it seemed like
our problem was: "How do we deal with prosperity and all the
interesting things that were happening in the business world?" They
thought that they needed somebody to write about that, and somehow had
learned that in addition to regular professor-type stuff, I'd actually
been writing journalistic pieces for Fortune and for Slate, and they
asked me to come on. It seemed like it might be interesting and fun,
and of course we figured that the U.S. policy would be sensible and
reasonable, and I'd be writing mostly about disasters elsewhere of the
new economy. And what do you know? It turned out to be something
quite different from anything we imagined.

"Learning To Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash"

Luciana Bohne, 12 August 2003

You might think that reading about a Podunk University's English
teacher's attempt to connect the dots between the poverty of American
education and the gullibility of the American public may be a little
trivial, considering we've embarked on the first, openly-confessed
imperial adventure of senescent capitalism in the US. Bear with me. The
question my experiences in the classroom raise is why have these young
people been educated to such abysmal depths of ignorance.

Full moon over Richmond writes:

"Connecting the Imperial Dots:

San Francisco WTO Solidarity Action"
Patrick Reinsborough

As thousands descended upon Cancun to prepare for the week of actions against the WTO, a diverse group of nearly 400 of us gathered in a park in Point Richmond, California. People from all walks of life were united by a common opposition to corporate globalization, war and the destruction that our addiction to oil wreaks on communities and ecosystems around the world.

"Cancun: Kyoung Hae Lee Is Dead"

Starhawk

Kyoung Hae Lee is dead. I don't yet know his
story, only that he came with the Korean workers'
contingent. I videoed them forming up in the march,
carrying their proud banners, beating their drums and
bells. They marched up at the front, with the
campesinos and the other workers. When the march
reached the police barricade, they split off, marched
up to the fence, and Kyoung Hae Lee took his own life,
stabbing himself in the heart in an act of ritual
suicide.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Some Theses on the Use of Words"

Council for the Use of Words

in 1: the introduction of an old idea;
in 2: critique of separation by words;
in 3: three questions;
in 4: the pleasures of bodies and minds gathered, making art as space;
in 5: the purpose of the use of words, the quest by posing of questions;
in 6: the use of words in organizations, and the ways to judge them;
in 7: what the poets do, practically, if not nothing;
in 8: the relation between users of words, organized life, and research;
in 9: a formulation and a dissolution.

1. We are definitely not the first, and perhaps not the last in a historical series of poetic groups that have suggested the route elaborated in this vulnerable text. But that is not the point. The route proposed has all the characteristics of a modern, that is to say a romantic movement. It is romantic because we place in the forefront our urgent desire at the present moment, and its practical form. And it is modern because we have no desire at all to return to, or reproduce in new forms the poverty and endless repetitions of this world. Instead we have chosen to surpass it completely, starting from the present state of things in order to realize a world of poetry, and through it to realize our desires for a new life made by none other than ourselves. It is not a new idea…

"Notes on the Civil Society:

The NGO Nexus on the Eve of the WSIS"

Soenke Zehle, Nettime

To approach the dynamic of so-called civil society organization in the
context of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), it might make
sense to attempt to identify some of the trends occuring across what is
often referred to as the 'NGO community' or 'international civil society'
more generally.

Anonymous Comrade submits "A chapter from curious george brigade's new book, Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs. To get a copy check your local infoshop or visit the web-site www.ageofdinosaurs.net or www.yellowjack.mahost.org

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THE INEFFICIENT UTOPIA OR HOW CONSENSUS WILL CHANGE THE WORLD

Over and over again, anarchists have been critiqued, arrested, and
killed by "fellow-travelers" on the road to revolution because we were
deemed inefficient. Trotsky complained to his pal Lenin that the
anarchists in charge of the railways were 'inefficient devils'. Their
lack of punctuality will derail our revolution." Lenin agreed, and in
1919, the anarchist Northern Rail Headquarters was stormed by the Red
Guard and the anarchists were "expelled from their duties." Charges of
inefficiency were not only a matter of losing jobs for anarchists, but
an excuse for the authorities to murder them. Even today, anarchist
principles are condemned roundly by those on the Left as simply not
efficient enough. We are derided because we would rather be opening a
squat or cooking big meals for the hungry than selling newspapers. These
criticisms from the larger activist scene have had scurrilous effects.
More disturbing than these outside attacks, anarchists have begun to
internalize and repeat this criticism. Some have attempted to gain
efficiency with such means as officers, federations, and voting. All of
this is done to scare away the hobgoblin of inefficiency that has dogged
anarchism for so long.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"This War on Terrorism Is Bogus"

Michael Meacher, The Guardian, September 6, 2003

Michael Meacher, MP, was UK Environment Minister from May 1997 to June 2003.

Massive attention has now been given -- and rightly so -- to the reasons why
Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused
on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too.
The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit,
retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step
in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein
was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass
destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this
theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.