An anonymous coward writes:

"The Conservative Praxis of Postmodernism"

Anonymous Coward

“That was the gift of the French. They gave Americans a language they did not need. It was like the Statue of Liberty. Nobody needs French theory.” — Jean Baudrillard (1)

In the post-May 68 intellectual climate postmodernism ascended from an emergent philosophy to a mainstay in university humanities faculties. These stars of the French intellectual scene were ironically titled the ‘new philosophers’ in reference to the French enlightenment philosophers. The new philosophers though set out to critique and deconstruct the enlightenment tradition. But as Foucault informed us we should not ‘blackmail’ a thinker into being either for or against the enlightenment. Therefore following this line it is not as simply to say that because a postmodernist critiques the enlightenment that the theorist represents a revolt of unreason against Webber’s iron cage of rationality.

The Precarious-Euro Insurrection

By Franco "Bifo" Berardi

A new European cycle

The fight of the French precarious cognitive workers can be the beginning of a new political and cultural cycle in Europe. They occupied the schools with the conscience of being together, students, cognitive and precarious workers in the fluid cycle of recomposing capital. And that represents a new fact, which was never expressed, with such clearness, in recent student struggles.

That this be quite clear: the French precarious cognitive workers raise a question which is directly European, even if it is true, as Villepin says, that the CPE is much better than the slave regulations which govern other countries, above all Italy. The Biaggi law and the Treu "package" are a hundred times worse than the CPE that the French students are fighting.

Thus it is clear that if they win, the question will be posed immediately in each European country.

If the French students defeat the CPE, this will certainly not mean that they will have beaten precariousness, this will only mean that they will have pushed back the legal formalization of precarity. And thus, they will have opened a new phase in the social history of Europe. A phase of struggle and social invention which, beyond neoliberal slavery, will make it possible to formulate new rules, new criteria of regulation of the labor-capital relation.

NOT BORED! writes

"Rene Vienet:
The Bad Boy of Sinology"

Helene Hazera

Rene Vienet is one of the only French Sinologists to have denounced the Chinese totalitarian regime and its nihilistic Cultural Revolution, at a time when, on the Right and Left, many looked favorably upon Mao Tse-Tung. Over the course of five broadcasts, A voix nue looks at this uncommon person.

Rene Vienet was born in the Havre, where his father was a dock worker. While a student, he seduced a Girl Scout who was the sister of the companion of Guy Debord; [1] when he showed up in Paris to study Chinese with Jacques Pimpaneau, he joined the Situationist International. Studying in China, he saw the beginnings of the "revo-cul" (the term is his). [2] He was expelled [from China] in 1966, and without difficulty he was among the first in France to denounce the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Sorry, Mr. Prime Minister, Afghanistan Is Not Canada's War"

John Chuckman

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he has trouble understanding Canadians who feel ardently that their country's soldiers should not be involved in Afghanistan." — Toronto Globe and Mail

Afghanistan is not our war, Mr. Prime Minister.

We are not threatened by voices in the Middle East opposing American policy, unless you believe one reference in a recording of bin Laden mentioning Canada along with other countries. That recording, along with other post-invasion recordings, was almost certainly a CIA fraud, for Osama bin Laden had to be killed in the heavy bombing of his mountain redoubt.

"Other Loves" in the "Other Campaign"- Oaxaca's Queer Community Looks for Common Ground with the Latest Phase of Zapatista Struggle

By Mark Swier

from Narco News

On his "Other Campaign" stops through Mexico, Zapatista
Subcomandante Marcos regularly invites the participation of
workers, farmers, indigenous peoples, women, youth and
elders in constructing a national anti-capitalist campaign,
"from below and to the left." But perhaps alone among
nationally-recognized political leaders he adds gays and
lesbians -- what he frequently refers to as the community of
"other loves" -- to the list of people who fight for a new
Mexico and who the Zapatistas seek to ally with in a larger
struggle. He has been met along the campaign trail by a
broad spectrum of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender
and Queer (LGBTQ) community, a vital sector of allies who
have shown support both organizationally and individually to
the "Other Campaign" and its goals.

In fact, the EZLN has a long history of drawing connections
between the struggle for dignity and survival of indigenous
people in Chiapas and movements for liberation around the
world. There are plenty of beautiful words that stand as
evidence. The poetics of Marcos have referenced queer
movements at different times for the past 12 years, last
year even challenging Italian soccer giant Inter Milan to a
match, claiming that the Zapatista squad would be
representing with a lineup of queer and transgender players.

However, even in the "alternative media" very little
attention has been paid to the relationship between the
Mexican queer community and the Zapatista struggle. The
Other Journalism decided to begin our coverage of "other
loves in the other campaign" in the majority indigenous city
of Juchitán, Oaxaca, where Marcos visited on February 6, and
where a visible and very "out" queer and transgender
population has long played a significant role in the city's
social, cultural, economic and political life.

Custodians of chaos

Kurt Vonnegut

"Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, five hundred years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula forgunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.

"Hey You! Stop!"

Dave Segal

NYC activist Dave Segal reported to prison Monday, March 13th, where he will serve six months for actions he took to protest the war in Iraq. These are his words about the experience that took him there.

"Hey you! Stop!"

Those words marked the beginning of a year and two month journey that will end in three days when I report to the Fort Dix Federal Prison. In the dark, early hours of January 31st, 2005, I found momentum pushing me to go ahead with an action that I had very poorly prepared for. I had come to the Bronx that night after having scouted out an Army recruiting station next to Westchester Square in the eastern part of the borough. With a few lighter fluid soaked rags, I hoped to put some small dent in the huge military machine. I failed pretty miserably.

I arrived that night with no lookout and a poorly thought out escape plan. The feelings in my stomach, which I should have seen as a warning to turn back, I interpreted as general nervousness. I would just go ahead with the action and any kinks would work themselves out. After hammering out a section of the glass door of the building, I took out one of the rags, lit it, and tossed it inside on the carpet. I like to think it was the adrenaline that made me think that lighting the carpet on fire would burn the place down. No matter the reason, I was very, very wrong.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"The Parable of the Hatchet:

or, the Nonsense of Nation-Building in Afghanistan"

John Chuckman

Nation-building is a term created by people living off Pentagon contracts. It is one of those queasy political expressions with no hard meaning yet its use raises few eyebrows. The term sounds as though it means something, and it is treated as though it were something you might study. At least this is true in the United States where people are hypnotized by hype and substance-lacking words, where inflating nothing into something is an everyday art.

"Clausewitz on the Pampas:
An Argentine Snapshot as Latin America Moves Leftward"

Loren Goldner

(The following is based on a visit to Argentina
(February 2006) It makes no pretense to be comprehensive or anything beyond impressions. Most of it is based on conversations with militants and intellectuals. The main discovery of the trip was the current of the radical piqueteros,
who for nearly ten years have been grappling with the problem of strategy and tactics in the epoch of de-industrialization, precarious employment, temp jobs and mass unemployment, a period in which the old workplace-centered strategies no longer seem viable. The main aim of the article is to bring the rich Argentine experience of strategy and tactics to an international audience, to hopefully stimulate further discussion of its strengths and weaknesses.)

A left-ideological haze hangs over Argentina, and presumably much of Latin America. Figures as diverse as Castro, Guevara, Chavez, Sub-Comandante Marcos, and Evo Morales are viewed across the spectrum in a warm and fuzzy way, expressing an omnipresent populism, even by people who are critical of them politically. Argentine nationalism, and beyond that a palpable Latin American “continentalism”, are delicate subjects, laced with the hurt of centuries of imperialism, as is/was the 1982 Malvinas war. Even an older woman, self-professed anarchist and ex-lover of the (now deceased) interesting anarcho-Marxist theorist Abraham Guillen bristled when I suggested that Che Guevara had been a Stalinist. And Guillen’s life had been threatened by Castro and Guevara and he was forced to flee Cuba (ca. 1960) after falling out with them over their commitment to a rural foco guerrilla strategy (Guillen argued for an orientation to the urban working class).

Inviting Anarchy Into My Home

Liz Seymour,