COP-16 in Cancún: Day 1 Intlibecosoc Entering the city of Cancún—site of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change’s sixteenth Conference of Parties (COP-16), which began today—one is struck immediately by the number of ‘areas de revisión’—checkpoints, effectively—maintained by the Mexican police, with the support of the Mexican military. The checkpoints on the highway leading north from the coastal Yucatan cities of Playa del Carmen, Tulum, and Chetumal, like their counterparts throughout Cancún itself, seem for the most part to be mere formalities: drivers are asked to slow down but not stop and are then subsequently hailed on. The purpose for these checkpoints, beyond that of being able to project force and control movement, may then in part be to intimidate onlookers and passersby, to remind members of the subordinated classes of the presently ubiquitous power of the State: any other explanation for the stationing of Hummers that have soldiers manning machine-gun mounts in locations in which large numbers of people congregate would defy the imagination.

The Antagonistic University? A Conversation on Cuts, Conviviality and Capitalism Anja: Let me begin by posing three questions. Firstly, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that modes of labour are appropriating cognitive, communicational and affective skills. What does this mean to you for the political potential of academic and collaborative work? Secondly, given that there are massive cuts being proposed to the education sector through a regime of austerity measures, and given that the current labour paradigm is one that produces precarious, alienated, competitive and individualised relations between workers, do you think that the university as an institution (and the kinds of labour it engenders) is a potent site of struggle and strike? And thirdly, what kinds of collective relations between people and modes of organising do you think are possible for the university struggles, and where do you think we should place our emphasis? How can we negotiate a transversal between micro- and macro- political desires, anxieties, exhaustions, solidarities and hopes? (Please feel free to comment on strategies you think are useful for building more caring and collective common worlds in general as well if you like).

Comments on Li Minqi's The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy Lang Yan The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy attempts to fit the rise of China into the world-systems approach of Immanuel Wallerstein. Luckily Li is much more critical of the contemporary Chinese model of development for creating a post-capitalist world than Giovanni Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing. For all the talk about the rise of China and China’s relationship to the US-centered world economy, this is not something that has been well-theorized to date. The book, however, focuses more on introducing the world-systems approach than on contemporary China. The strongest chapter on China shows well the contradictions of socialist accumulation during the Maoist period. I wish there was an equally strong chapter on the political economy of the reform period, for such a chapter would surely support Li’s argument about China’s place in contemporary global capitalism. His section of China’s macroeconomic imbalances could benefit from a discussion of present attempts by the state to generate expanded internal demand, such as the New Socialist Countryside policy.

Gulf Coast Resistance: What Does Resistance Look Like? The Niger Delta Model Ray Boudreaux Calculated Risks When black plumes of oil began gushing forth from the silent bottom deep in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20th, everyone in South Louisiana reverted to the crisis mode we have all lived in for periods of time since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Our first question became “What can we do to help save our wetlands?” Thousands of willing Louisianians signed up to volunteer in the protection and cleanup efforts, and people began planning to carpool down the road to the coast to help out.

“Peak Oil” and “Resource Curses” from a Class Perspective George Caffentzis [From a presentation at the Historical Materialism Conference, CUNY Grad Center, New York, NY, Jan. 14-16, 2010.] The intention of these notes is simple: to strip both the peak oil hypothesis of its apocalyptic pathos and the “resource curse” conjecture of its apologetic halo and examine them in the light of historical materialist categories. This translation from the realms of apocalypse and apology to a class analysis is a modest but, I believe, necessary step in fashioning an anti-capitalist energy politics. I do this not because I am an adherent of what I call the “peak oil complex,” or of the “resource curse” hypothesis, but because they have become major features of contemporary energy politics, and in order to enter into the discussion, one must recognize the milestones along the way.

Emancipation under Conditions that the Left Didn’t Want: Generalized Resource Shortages as a Historical Crisis of the Social Andreas Exner, Christian Lauk & Konstantin Kulterer “If there is a lack of appropriate analysis of environmental processes and societal relations to nature because they don’t fit into the wishful thinking of ‘eternal capitalism,’ dangerous ways of ideologically processing the crisis can gain momentum.” Rising prices for food are increasing hunger, a global recession is waiting in the wings, and at the same time, energy is getting more and more expensive. Within only a few years, the terrain has changed dramatically for left movements. Nonetheless, many people are still holding on to well-known formulas. Unfortunately, they don’t fit the new circumstances.

"Government Cuts: As Stupid As They Seem?" Hillel Ticktin [There are a surprising lack of convincing explanations as to why the capitalist class is pushing through the present unprecedented austerity drive - even at the risk of provoking both mass opposition and a double-dip recession. The following excerpts, from Hillel Ticktin's recent articles in Critique, do offer an interesting partial explanation.] It remains very unclear why a section of the ruling class is going for these cuts. It is one thing to reduce government spending and raise taxes during an upturn, as Canada did in the 1990s, and quite another to do so today. The large scale unemployment consequent on such reductions in the public sector is being matched with substantial salary reductions. As there are often disproportionate numbers of female employees in the sectors being proposed for downsizing, the measures will bear heavily on women and families. There are suggestions that the poorest will be protected, but this is a fig leaf to provide a semblance of humanity. The poorest may be protected but most people are by definition not in that category, but are nonetheless scraping by, with incomes a fraction of the so-called upper middle class. Whatever their present views, they will be jolted into opposition to the government and ultimately to the system.

American Midterm Elections and Democracy A Video Interview with Noam Chomsky http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&I...

Bank of America Is in Deep Trouble, and There May Be Financial Disaster on the Horizon Joshua Holland, AlterNet Will Bank of America be the first Wall Street giant to once again point a gun to its own head, telling us it'll crash and burn and take down the financial system if we don’t pony up for another massive bailout? When former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was handing out trillions to Wall Street, BofA collected $45 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to stabilize its balance sheet. It was spun as a success story -- a rebuke of those who urged the banks be put into receivership -- when the behemoth “paid back” the cash last December. But the bank’s stock price has fallen by more than 40 percent since mid-April, and the value of its outstanding stock is currently at around half of what it should be based on its “book value” -- what the company says its holdings are worth. “The problem for anyone trying to analyze Bank of America’s $2.3 trillion balance sheet,” wrote Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil, “is that it’s largely impenetrable.” Nobody really knows the true values of the assets these companies are holding, which has been the case ever since the collapse. But according to Weil, some of BofA’s financial statements “are so delusional that they invite laughter.”

Turkey's Tattoo Politics Piotr Zalewski Every year on November 10, at exactly 9:05 a.m., Europe's biggest city comes to a halt. Air raid sirens begin to blare. Pedestrians freeze in their tracks. Schools, factories, and government offices suspend work to observe two minutes of silence. On Istanbul's massive thoroughfares, cars, buses and trucks screech to a stop, their drivers and passengers spilling out onto the street, many of them teary eyed, to stand to attention.