The American Wikileaks Hacker Nathaniel Rich On July 29th, returning from a trip to Europe, Jacob Appelbaum, a lanky, unassuming 27-year-old wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan "Be the trouble you want to see in the world," was detained at customs by a posse of federal agents. In an interrogation room at Newark Liberty airport, he was grilled about his role in Wikileaks, the whistle-blower group that has exposed the government's most closely guarded intelligence reports about the war in Afghanistan. The agents photocopied his receipts, seized three of his cellphones — he owns more than a dozen — and confiscated his computer. They informed him that he was under government surveillance. They questioned him about the trove of 91,000 classified military documents that Wikileaks had released the week before, a leak that Vietnam-era activist Daniel Ellsberg called "the largest unauthorized disclosure since the Pentagon Papers." They demanded to know where Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was hiding. They pressed him on his opinions about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Appelbaum refused to answer. Finally, after three hours, he was released.

Voina, The Russian Art Anarchists, Explain Themselves" Marlon Dolcy The Russian art anarchist group Voina is known for drawing an enormous cock on a bridge opposite the ex-KGB offices, and instigating a sex party in a museum. Last week UK street art phenom Banksy declared that all profits from his current print sale would be gifted to the group's defense. We spoke to the group (half of which were replying from prison).

Thanks, But No Thanks, WikiLeaks! Saroj Giri Is ‘exposing power’ through ‘truth revelations’ set to become the new game in town? Is it a mere coincidence that Bradley Manning becomes no Rosa Parks but a mere conduit for ‘digital anarchism’ and ‘infoliberaton’, with WikiLeaks working in tandem with corporate media houses?

Beware of the State’s Anarchists ">Nihilist [re. 12-23-2010: "Anarchy in the EU; Today's mail bombings at the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome are thought to be the work of anarchists. Two employees who opened the packages are both ..."] Let's remember the last "anarchist" bombing... In the end of December 2003, various European Union (EU) institutions received a number of letter bombs. One of them is said to have exploded in the hands of the president of the EU Commission, Romani Prodi, but without causing any injuries. The press was quick to announce that this was the work of anarchists. The proof of this was a letter sent to the paper La Repubblica, where a so far unknown group with the name Informal Anarchist Federation claimed responsibility for two earlier bombs left near Prodi's home in Italy. Italian anarchists, however, take a very different view of whom are to blame: This was a provocation, they are convinced, meant to put Italy's anarchist in disrepute, and to give an excuse for increased repression against the country's strong extra-parliamentary left.

"The Death of Universities" Terry Eagleton Are the humanities about to disappear from our universities? The question is absurd. It would be like asking whether alcohol is about to disappear from pubs, or egoism from Hollywood. Just as there cannot be a pub without alcohol, so there cannot be a university without the humanities. If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute. But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and it would be deceptive to call it one.

Distributed Power in the 21st Century Brian Holmes Should information about the US government’s dealings with the rest of the world be free? A lot of European hackers and NGOs seem to think so — and let’s not forget all the people on the other sides of the globe who agree.

The Autumn of the Hegemon Louis Proyect This was the year that the war in Afghanistan became the longest in American history. It was also a year in which a jobless recovery was threatening to spiral out of control, turning into a double-dip recession. For those with even the most underdeveloped capacity for making historical analogies, it should be rather obvious that the U.S. is facing the same kind of intractable contradictions that brought down the USSR.

US Justice Department Prepares Expansion of "Anti-Terrorism" Law Targeting Activists Michael Deutsch In late September, the FBI carried out a series of raids of homes and antiwar offices of public activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Following the raids, the Obama Justice Department subpoenaed 14 activists to a grand jury in Chicago and also subpoenaed the files of several antiwar and community organizations. In carrying out these repressive actions, the Justice Department was taking its lead from the Supreme Court's 6-3 opinion last June in Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project, which decided that nonviolent First Amendment speech and advocacy "coordinated with" or "under the direction of" a foreign group listed by the Secretary of State as "terrorist" was a crime.

Telling the Truth about Class Gáspár Miklós Tamás One of the central questions of social theory has been the relationship between class and knowledge, and this has also been a crucial question in the history of socialism. Differences between people – acting and knowing subjects – may influence our view of the possibility of valid cognition. If there are irreconcilable discrepancies between people’s positions, going perhaps as far as incommensurability, then unified and rational knowledge resulting from a reasoned dialogue among persons is patently impossible. The Humean notion of ‘passions’, the Nietzschean notions of ‘resentment’ and ‘genealogy’, allude to the possible influence of such an incommensurability upon our ability to discover truth.

COP-16 Day 2: The Specter of Tragedy and Klimaforum Intlibecosoc The second day of the sixteenth Conference of Parties (COP-16) summit in Cancún follows much the same as the first, a day that saw Mexican President Felipe Calderón assert in remarks before the delegates assembled in Moon Palace—a highly exclusive hotel, center of the COP-16 talks—that the potential failure of the Cancún talks—that is, their failure precisely to look beyond dominant individual and national interests—would be a “tragedy,” and that climate-negotiators should act during the summit’s two weeks with the interests of humanity in mind. He stressed in particular the concern that should be evinced in Cancún for existing children and future generations. In his address to delegates on the same day, Mario Molina, a Mexican scientist awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995, declared it to be “necessary and urgent” that COP-16 produce a climate-agreement—this, amidst a widespread lack of confidence among country-governments and commentators that Cancún will produce any agreement at all.