Anonymous Kumquat submits:

An Interview with Sadie Plant

Brett Stalbaum and Geri Wittig

(Sadie Plant is Research Fellow and Director of the Cybernetic Culture
Research Unit at the University of Warwick, UK. She is the author of Zeros + Ones: Digital Women + the New Technoculture and The Most Radical Gesture :
The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age.)

Brett Stalbaum/Geri Wittig: Your work tends to
challenge hierarchical orthodoxies in their varied
cultural manifestations, but your approach doesn't
challenge them with replacement hierarchies, but
rather with distributed models. How does this strategy
relate to emerging electronic activism?

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Busting up Biotech:

Mass Resistance in Sacramento to the Corporate Take-Over of Food"

Patrick Reinsborough, smartMeme project

From June 20-25, 2003 Sacramento became an unlikely frontline in the
ongoing clash
between the Bush administration's imperial agenda and the
diverse movements
demanding democracy, justice and ecological sanity. The
occasion was the
U.S. government sponsored Ministerial Conference and Expo on
Agricultural
Science and Technology, which was supposed to be another
opportunity for the
Bush administration to quietly push its corporate agenda in the
lead up to
the September World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun.

Take Back the Black and Green!

Ecological Anarchy at the Brink of the Future



For far too long the anti-authoritarian ecology movement has been limited

to two snobbishly opposed groups: so called Green Anarchy, influenced by

Deep Ecology and Zerzan primitivism, and Social Ecology, influenced by

biological science and classical radical left thought. These camps have

battled back and forth in public and publication for so long one can't

help but feel that the argument has become more one of childish pride than

intellectual curiosity or political action. Both groups seem now hackneyed

and are met, more often than not, with little but yawns and eye rolling.

The irrationality and churlishness of one bounces off of the dogmatism and

polemic of the other, catching in the middle those of us for whom the

matter is not so black and white (or green...). For those of us who see

advantages in both systems, who also see problems in both, there seems

little room for middle ground, and scorn on either side. For those of us

who wish to act, and who wish to move on, it is clear that this stubborn

bickering has gone on far too long. It is clear that we must synthesize

and erase, pick and choose, and advance our critique of this civilization

which stands so at odds with health, freedom, ecology and life in general.

With every condo built, every stomach left unfed, and every dollar spent,

the need for a cogent and rational ecological anarchy becomes more

immediate.



For more information write the 400th Generation Collective:

twelvethousandyears@riseup.net

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"America: Back in the USSR?

A Specter is Haunting the US"

Andrei K. Sitov

(Andrei Sitov is the Washington Bureau Chief for ITAR-TASS News Agency of
Russia. )

For the past 20 years I've been covering the US first as a Soviet and then
as a Russian reporter. Since the end of the Cold War my country has been
trying to become more like America. Meanwhile the US, especially after
9/11, increasingly resembles the old Soviet Union. Please consider:

- The US acts as if it believes it knows what's best not only for the
Americans but for the rest of the world and shows a willingness to force
this belief down other people's throats. For a while - until the terrorist
attacks - its "elite" even toyed with the ridiculous notion of an "end of
history". This is an idea common to all totalitarian regimes (some scholars
say it is rooted in the Armageddon prophecy in the Bible). At least
Fukuyama's version did not envision a blood bath.

"Puritanism: the haunting fear that somebody,
somewhere,
might be having a good time."--H.L. Mencken

"America's Incredible Shrinking Vacation"

Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe, August 7, 2003

CASCO BAY, Maine--BACK IN THE DAYS when Hector was a pup and the word
''e-mail'' was a typo, the ''working vacation'' was
nothing
more than an oxymoron. After all, you were either
vacationing or working. On the job or off. Now it's
become an emblem of the American economy and George
Bush, its current CEO, is spending this month as a
role
model on his 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch in
Crawford, Texas.

Science Fiction for the Multitudes

Interview with Christoph Spehr

By Geert Lovink

Much like Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zones and P.M. Bolo'Bolo,
Christoph Spehr's The Aliens are Amongst Us! is a classic in politcal
underground literature. None of the work of this German writer has yet
been
translated into English. Spehr's writing is a mixture of utopian
subversive
science fiction and a radical social analysis of today's global
capitalism.
Aliens are Amongst Us is a story for the post-deconstruction age where the
question What is to be done? opens up new spaces for the collective
imagination and action.

What makes Spehr, a historian and political scientist, unique is his free,
non-academic style of writing. As a theorist, Spehr brings together
contemporary social science, practicalities of everyday life with
strategies
for autonomous movements. Spehr has the ability to load up concepts with
new
meaning. In The Aliens are Amongst Us! Spehr makes a distinction between
three social categories: aliens, maquis and civilians. Much like in a
science fiction novel, all three have their own civilizations. It would be
too easy to describe 'aliens' as evil capitalists. Aliens, in Spehr's
view,
are first and foremost friendly parasites, post-1945 creatures that are
interested in any type of surplus value they can extract from humans.
Aliens
don't do this in an old manner by attacking or surpressing people but by
'assisting' them. Power is no longer personal but abstract and can no
longer
be reduced to characteristics of individuals. Alien power is free, open
and
most of all: on the search for creative, new ideas. Typical aliens would
be
intermediates such as cultural enterpreneurs, social democratic welfare
state officials, NGOs or (ruling) green party members that all live of
movements, events, ideas and expressions of others. What these aliens have
in common is their good intentions. Alien hegemony is politically correct,
multi-cultural, feminist, ecological and almost impossible to defeat on a
discoursive level. In Spehr's 'science friction' the antagonists of the
aliens are the 'maquis', French for bush, a term used by the French
resistance to describe zones not occupied by the Nazis). I would suggest
that maquis can be read as a synonym for 'multitudes'. It is the maquis
that
experiment with post-economic models of 'free cooperation'-a topic that
Spehr further explored after finishing his political novel and brought him
in contact with the free software movement in Germany that discusses ways
to
establish a 'GPL-society.'

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"The Painful Horrors of Political Autism"

John Chuckman, August 8, 2003

I've read that severe autism involves receiving a storm of sensory perceptions, literally assaulting a mind unable to properly sort them out. It is a terrifying experience, driving sufferers to avoid human contact. That description of autism resembles what I briefly sometimes experience from the passing parade of political events.

The Subversion of Everyday Life

1 [Work]

2 [Capital, Gender, the State]

3 [Class Struggle]

4 [Tendencies]

5 [Revolution]

6 [Revolutionary Struggle]

Rob writes:

A Home of Our Own

by Rob Eshelman



The ten-agorot coin has a map on it. Take a close look though and the map is not of Israel contained within its 1967 boarders. It is a map of a nation extending from the Nile River in the east to the Euphrates River in the west. This is 'Eretz Yisrael' which includes all of Jordan and parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Along the left curve of the coin the word “Israel� appears in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.



I'm told that sometimes when an Israeli home or road is being constructed these coins are dropped in the ground. Thus, the coin is both a reminder during every economic exchange of a people's homeland, and insurance that future generations will know whose land we are standing on.

Ytzhak writes "Victoria Independent Media Center

(Vancouver island, British Columbia)

Original article is at http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2003/07/15769.p hp

DIA: blacks and our depression #3
A note from Fernwood/The Hood/New Palestine
==============================
by  
Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite
An author in North America

There has been essays written concerning Blacks and depression (one of which is by Dalani Aamon entitled "Blacks and Depression") and one of the causes of this depression having come the residual effects of the African Americans Experience starting with slavery. Not all of us have been slaves or from a slave background nor were we raised in the US psychic landscape but we have been assaulted by it. A great deal of us are Diasporic and so the effects of the affected African American psychology has invaded our domes. The US racism and the Canadian supremacy has had a damaging impression on our lives and mental health. I am certain that there are those who suffer from chemical imbalance which render them privvy to mood swings on various scales. However, the state of dread and downpressor inwhich most of us have to exist offers us little moments of true being and I'm afraid prolonged exposure to the madness and twisted logic of North America only brings more pain and collapse.

We must realize that mental illness in Black people, on our continent, is not tolerated. Not by the medical profession nor our own peoples. When it comes to Blacks, especially Black men with mental illness, we have not progressed from the Restoration period and William Hogarth's depiction of Bedlam. Our Bedlam can be either the mess of North America, the ghetto, or the state found in the etched imprints in our mentals (minds).

We have become driven by this madness as did Tom Rakewell (an 18th century playa) who, disassociated with his home, becomes enveloped in the underlying message of greed and status orientated London, England (or as is refered to as being a "demented Britannia"). However, Rakewell, has little knowledge and absolutely no overstanding of the true makeup and motivation of the libertine rakish society inwhich he falls into and is seduced by. He only sees what is considered successful and acceptable and then follows through hoping that --no -- thinking that this will make him and remake him in the eyes of the new society. Rakewell's efforts lead him to riches, poverty and then madness.

We, as Black people, whether ghetto or yuppy or middle-class, are caught up in this disassociation of place and context. We cannot, although we may front on the matter, make sense of the cognitive dissonance that is this demented America. It as if we are children or men caught in an abusive household each one of us or as a collective have fallen into the familial role of those in an abusive home'
The perfect one,
The peace keeper,
The clown,
The rebel
But no matter how much we struggle in our roles we still fail to achieve the overstanding and remove ourselves from the situation. The house must fall. We must cease to help it exist with all it's secrets and past abuse. Our presence fuels it. It legitimizes it. The abusers knows, far more than we ever will, under these circumstances, how to push every button and manipulate us with status, money, power and maybe even a kind word and genteel touch here and there.

Right now, and for a longtime, a world has been fighting back to end this abuse or to stop the abuser from incorporating them in the vicious circle of this madhouse. We, as Black peoples, don't seem to overstand this -- fully. Which is why we assist in the assaults or close our doors (selves) to our own. We point fingers and take pleasure watching each other fall. We invent new philosophies and transforms ancient faiths to fit them into the demented American landscape. First on the list of blame is each other and then comes this metaphysical white man (a devil or snake or yacob). But very little is done to actualize our anger and redemption except when it comes to attacking each other (the lost, the mental slaves, the 85, the uncivilized, the gutter negro, the country nigger, the 10, the sellout...) we have many names for the understandably confused and depressed Black peoples and we are swift to attack each other and kill each other, especially in the most cruel of fashions, and that is in the willful destruction of a human beings aspiration -- our spirit our Black souls. It would be easier for us to achieve peace and overstanding of the system of downpressor than it would for us to overstand each other and accept out weaknesses and strengths and victories. So we hunt for leaders to lead us (because of slavery and this endless Moses metaphor). We choose dead heroes (silent and well printed posters on college walls or in house holds. Maybe a PBS documentary they offer us during a now infamous Black history month). Last we follow puritan inspired ranting fascist who distort philosophies and faiths for the purpose of power and control. But what we lack is a revolution of all our own. Where Blacks can finally be peoples with all the faults and greatness that most people know over this planet and are willing to starve and die for.

If you look at it this way who wouldn't be depressed. And if a Black man has a mental illness then it will certainly become magnified to the point inwhich it becomes madness -- as William Carlos Williams wrote of the Black peoples of North America "true products of America go crazy".

This pandering to abuse and the constant blaiming of each other is a suicide. It is a slow and cruel suicide as most true suicides are. Forget what you've heard and what you think or read or have been taught. A true suicide is not a call for help and the failed attempts are not failures. They are practice sessions to insure that when the time comes and the right mixture is found that it will have the perfect effect/affect -- it has become the a hard Science combinding proper elements. It has, unfortunately become true M.A.D.ness = Mathematics of the African Diaspora. That would be the North American obsession with the crossing, the passing, the otherside, what most humans call simply death. For it is in death, we are taught, once by this physical and now metaphysical slavemaster and now by each other that we truely achieve rest, perfection, peace and blessings and sometimes greatness.

Of course we have the right to sing the Blues. But I'm afraid that it has been optioned and copyrighted for pub houses and biker soundtracks. But so has every diasporic invention of art.

So that would make anyone sad or as Rod Serling once wrote a line in "Requiem for a Heavyweight", "don't it just make you want to lay down and die." ...or can it Bee, as Lauryn Hill once wrote, "Die for me/you said you'd die for me/live for me/why don't you live for me".

The future is ours if we remain what Marcus Garvey once called "The Nation" and we truely believe -- in each other = the original peoples, with all our faults; cease to submit to the effects of hypocrites/munafiquns in this "demented America".

 ___
Stay Strong

"The Fire Next Time"

http;//www/ilovepoetry.com/search.asp?keywords=bra ithwaite&orderBy=date

What We Teach (Redux)
Fernwood/New Palestine
http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2003/07/15444.p hp

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