Five Browserdays Later - An Interim Report

Interview with Mieke Gerritzen

By Geert Lovink

A lot has happened since the Amsterdam-based designer Mieke Gerritzen and I
came up with the idea to do a 'Browserday' in early 1998
(browserday). After the design competition took place three times in
Amsterdam (1998-2000), the event moved to New York (March 2001) and Berlin
(December 2001). On May 17 2002 Browserday will be back in Amsterdam. Four
years after we had the initial idea Mieke and I sat behind our laptops and
had an e-mail exchange to re-assess the concept.

Initially a team of people organized the Browserday, with Jeanine Huizinga,
David Garcia, Eric Kluitenberg, Michael van Eeden and Marleen Stikker
(amongst others) in the core team. The Browserdays 1998-2000 were a
collaboration between the Dutch organizations such as the Society for Old
and New Media (waag), De Balie (balie), Paradiso
(paradiso), with involvement of the Rietveld, HKU and Sandberg design
schools. In 2000 Mieke Gerritzen, the main force behind Browserday, took the
competition on board of her new company, nl-design, and pushed the
competition in an international direction.

Even though the event from the
start had the label 'international' it took some time to get design schools
outside of the Netherlands interested. The next step was to try and see if
the concept would also work outside of the safe and cozy environment of
Amsterdam.

Anonymous Comrade writes"Apology for the algerian insurrection
I started a (very bad) translation of the book in French "Apologie pour l'insurrection Algerienne" written by Jaime Semprun and published in 2001. The whole book in French: http://bibliolib.net/Semprun-Algerie.htm

If i have time i'll translate an article published in a french anarchist paper "Le Monde Libertaire" (weekly of the Federation Anarchiste Francaise). In the article they give updates and also criticism to this algerian insurrection for its lack of social-class claims and perspectives.

Karim Al Majnun

APOLOGY FOR THE ALGERIAN INSURRECTION

Jaime Semprun

Paris
Edition de l'encyclopedie des Nuisances
60, rue de Menilmontant, XXe arr.

2001

Quevedo said about Spanish people: " they haven't been able to be historians but they deserved to be ".
This is still right concerning the 1936 Spanish revolution: others have written the history of the events. It's too early to write the history of the insurrection that started in Algeria during spring 2001, but it's not too late to defend it; in other words to fight the deep indifference, puffed up with historic recklessness, as we see it in France.

polo writes

What Is A Terrorist?

by Jeff Cohen

ter·ror·ist (ter'er-ist) n.

1. One who engages in acts or an act of terrorism.

2. One who leads an armed group that kills civilians as a means of political intimidation -- unless he terrorizes Haitians while on the CIA-payroll, as did 1990s death squad leader Emmanuel Constant, in which case the U.S. refuses to extradite him to Haiti, even after Sept. 11, 2001.

3. One who targets civilian airliners and ships -- unless he blows up a Cuban civilian airliner, killing 73 people, and fires at a Polish freighter, like Orlando Bosch, in which case he is coddled and paroled by the Bush Justice Department in 1990, and his extradition is blocked.

4. One who leads a group that engages in kidnapping and murder -- unless the victims are Hondurans attacked by CIA-backed death squad Battalion 316, in which case Battalion architect Gustavo Alvarez becomes a Pentagon consultant, while the then-ambassador to Honduras who downplayed the terror, John Negroponte, is appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations days after Sept. 11.

5. One who uses rape and murder for political purposes -- unless the victims are four U.S. church women sexually assaulted and killed in 1980 by members of El Salvador’s U.S.-backed military, in which case excuses and distortions pour forth from then-U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick (“these nuns were not just nuns; they were also political activists”) and Secretary of State Al Haig (the nuns “may have tried to run a roadblock”).

6. One who designates civilians as “soft targets” to be attacked in the cause of political transformation -- unless the targets are Nicaraguans killed by Contra guerrillas armed and directed by the U.S who, according to Human Rights Watch, “systematically engage in violent abuses…so prevalent that these may be said to be their principal means of waging war.”

7. One who facilitates a massacre of civilians -- unless the victims are 900 Palestinians shot and hacked to death in the Sabra and Shatila camps by Lebanese Christian militia as Israeli soldiers stood guard, in which case Israel’s then-Defense Minster (now Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon remains a U.S. “War on Terrorism” ally after being censured as indirectly responsible for the massacre by an Israeli commission of inquiry."

Unfortunately we had already published several historical articles on Mayday when this arrived, thus an apology for the delay. Below you can find writings from Marx, Luxemburg, Jackie Dana, the Spanish FAI and ..... Lenin! Enjoy.

HotSauce! writes....."another May Day is upon us and every year I like to review what lead up to this world wide holiday that still remains unacknowledged HERE, where the struggle began......

May Day IS OUR HOLIDAY.... the holiday of people everywhere who are fighting to
create a new world. It is a day to re-affirm our commitment to international
working class solidarity, but it is also a day to pay honor and tribute to
the revolutionary struggle of the people against all types of
oppression, a day when we should continue to stand firm in our opposition
to this unjust society, to its managers and their collaborators. .

Below are a few articles about May Day's origins and history.--TOPLAB

May Day: The REAL Labor Day

by Jackie Dana

"Workmen, let your watchword be: No compromise! Cowards to the rear! Men to
the front! The die is cast. The first of May, whose historic significance
will be understood and appreciated only in later years, has come." --Albert
Spies, May 1886

hydrarchist writes

Extracts from

WHOSE ASTRONAUTS?

Imagination and the Multitudes in Italy in the Days of the Global Cacerolazo

by Wu Ming, February 2002



[the following essay was featured in /Giap/ - 2nd Series - #7, February 10th,
2002. It was reviewed by French magazine Les Inrockuptibles <http://www.wumingfoundation.com/italiano/rasse gna/inrockuptibles_wm.html>]





It is true that the "movement of the movements" - albeit sorely-tried - has
survived the 2001 butcheries of Genoa, Gothenburg etc. Indeed, it has started
over in spite of the many attempts at wiping it out, in Italy and possibly
the rest of the planet.

It is true that even September 11th and the following Fifth Reich ideological
flocking failed to stop the mobilization of myriads of people. Indeed, the
opposition to the enduring global war provided one more reason to take the
streets and organize.  

It is true that millions of exiles from the old "official" left are crowding
on the borders of this manifold movement. These people are demanding to take
part, they need issues, ideas, words and action to restore their hope in the
opposition to the present and allow them to figure out the future.

It's all true. That's why we have found ourselves facing a lot of new problems.


The first and bigger one is the problem of imagination, i.e. the relationship
between this movement's imagery and its imagination, the way the movement
thinks of itself and the way it figures out that new, possible world it talks
about [...]

So far, nobody has managed to interpret the multitude. At best we managed
to evoke the multitude, as happened in Genoa [July 2001], always semi-consciously,
the way apprentice sorcerers do.

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss stakes eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key a type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me straight a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect awl the weigh

My chequer tolled me sew.

Enjoy the poem

Author unknown

THE ORIGINS AND TRADITIONS OF MAYDAY

By Eugene W. Plawiuk

The international working class holiday; Mayday, originated in pagan
Europe. It was a festive holy day celebrating the first spring planting.
The ancient Celts and Saxons celebrated May 1st as Beltane or the day of
fire. Bel was the Celtic god of the sun.

Historic Antiwar Demonstration

By Jack A. Smith

One of the most extraordinary antiwar manifestations in the long history
of peace activism in the United States took place in Washington April 20
when up to 100,000 people participated in different gatherings and then
joined for a unified march to a concluding rally in front of the
Capitol. The police estimated at least 75,000 demonstrators were in the
streets. The numbers alone were not historic, though the crowd was huge
by any standard. But three other factors contributed toward the
uniqueness of this action:

Anonymous Comrade writes "This is a technical critique of Mike Albert's theory, I point out the positive aspects of his reinterpretation of Marxism, then tell what I think is wrong, and then offer a few suggestions for viewing his contribution in context of what I've said. This is technical but hopefully not BS

The article's legitmacy depends on the truthfulness of a certain type of perspectivism,
but I really hope that it rises above what latter day Nietszcheans have produced. But like them it focusses a lot on the roots of the percieved problems, hopefully the roots are not contradicted too much by the leaves, as it were.

Anonymous Comrade writes "When the U.S. Navy announced it would again practice bombing on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in April 2002, most Puerto Ricans were stunned. The Navy had practiced in Norfolk, VA the last time and few thought they would return. It was particularly strange given that the Navy would bomb Vieques during the 3rd anniversary of the death of David Sanes (April 19, 1999), the security guard that died as a result of an errant Navy bomb that set off the most recent massive movement against the Navy in Vieques.