nolympics writes:

Reflections on the Case by the U.S. Justice Department against Steven Kurtz and Robert Ferrell
Claire Pentecost[1]

Many people have asked us why the Justice Department is pursuing this case.

Meaning, when the Buffalo Health Department affirmed that there was nothing dangerous in the Kurtz home and that Hope Kurtz died of natural causes, when the FBI saw that the possession of scientific equipment and materials in Kurtz's home studio was completely consistent with his practice as an artist and that his practice has a long, public and institutionally validated record, then, why didn't they drop the case? When it became clear even through the Grand Jury investigation that this was not a case of bioterrorism, why did they pursue it? Couldn't they see that this is art?

"The Real Problems With $50 Oil"

Henry C K Liu, www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GE26Dj02.html ">Asian Times

After oil prices peaked above US$58 a barrel in early April, and stayed around
their current $50 range, the White House announced that it wanted oil to go
back down to $25 a barrel.

There is a common misconception in life that if
only things could go back to the ways they were in the good old days, life
would be good again like in the good old days. Unfortunately, good old days
never return as good old days because what makes the old days good is often
just bad memory.

The problem with market capitalism is that while markets can
go up and markets can go down, they never end up in the same spot. The term
"business cycle" is a misnomer because the end of the cycle is a very
different place from the beginning of a cycle. A more accurate term would be
"business spiral", either up or down or simply sideways.

Oil is a good example whereby this market truism can be observed. When oil
rises above $50 a barrel and stays there for an extended period, the resultant
changes in the economy become normalized facts. These changes go way beyond
fluctuations in the price of oil to produce a very different economy. Below
are 10 new economic facts created by $50 oil.

"Late Capitalism"

Bert Stern

I got the last box off the shelf but it was empty.

No mouse holes or telltale top torn open

just the sealed box with nothing in it.

At the meat counter, more of the same,

but this time, feathers for chickens

and for swine the slop that fed them.

I thought, depilatory, I thought

old men shrinking in their bones,

April past, then the summer gone.

Meteors stop for lunch. The wheel

grinds to a stop. Here and there,

like detritus, a man hammering,

the inviting space of a sky

with high clouds scudding

north, the bewildered jetstream

strayed from its path, sunshine

pale and lethal. In the street

you are watched by 78 eyes

that love you after their nature.

You are a blind and frightened mouth,

that believes what it is told and eats

what it is given. What else is man

that anyone should be mindful of him?

Give us back our sky

and constellations, our fiery courses,

our bloom in languages that open

and close like a rose.

nolympics writes:

"Vigilante Man"

Mike Davis

"The local people whipped themselves into a mold of cruelty. Then they formed units, squads, and armed them -- armed them with clubs, with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can't let these Okies get out of hand." -- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

The vigilantes are back. In the 1850s, they lynched Irishmen; in the 1870s, they terrorized the Chinese; in the first decade of the twentieth century, they murdered striking Wobblies; in the 1920s, they organized "Bash a Jap" campaigns; and in the 1930s, they welcomed the Joads and other Dust Bowl refugees with tear gas and buckshot.

Vigilantes have always been to the American West what the Ku Klux Klan was to the South: vicious and cowardly bigotry organized into a self-righteous mob. Almost every decade, some sinister group of self-proclaimed patriots mobilizes to repel a new invasion from some subversive threat or other.

Prisoners of Conscience
Peace Doesn't Come Easily
By Camilo Mejia
Counterpunch

Just about a year a go I was tried by a special Court-martial at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The charge: desertion with the intent to avoid hazardous duty. My case received a lot of attention from the media, mainly because I was the first Iraq veteran to have been to combat, returned on a two-week furlough, and publicly refused to return to Iraq while denouncing the war as illegal, and who then surrendered himself to military authorities. For the first time since the invasion of Iraq the military had to deal with the delicate issue of public dissent within the ranks.

"Iraq: A Message From the Insurgents"

David Baran & Mathieu Guidere

Le Monde diplomatique (France)

The occupying forces in Iraq have managed to set up a national assembly, government and presidency; yet they are making little headway against armed resistance fighters. Who are these fighters, what do they want and how do they operate? There are some clues in their videos and texts.

IRAQ'S armed opposition, though routinely accused of speaking only the language of terror, makes a priority of communications strategy. Combatant groups produce an astonishingly large and varied range of texts and images, not limited to the visions of brutality we have seen on television.

stevphen writes

"In Support of David Graeber"
Andrej Grubacic

Recently David Graeber and I wrote an article together attempting to explain why anarchist ideas have received almost no attention in the academy. When you think of it, academia is full of Marxist radicals, but only a handful of professed anarchists. We came to a conclusion that it must have something to do with anarchism's concern with forms of
practice; with its insistence that one's means most be consonant with one's ends; with its stubborn rejection of the idea that we can create freedom through authoritarian means, embracing instead the position that we should embody the society we wish to create. All of this does not square very well with operating within a university. The university has survived in much the same form since the middle ages, waging intellectual battles at conferences, re-enforcing class distinctions, making cabalistic decisions in secret rooms. As we stated in our article: "At the very least, one would imagine being an openly anarchist professor would mean challenging the way universities are run and that, of course, is going to get one in far more trouble than anything one could ever write".

"The Problem With Music"
Steve Albini, negativland

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke". And he does of course.

Corporate Watch writes:

"Bringing The G8 Home"

Corporate Watch

"Corporate Watch's new hard-hitting report, 'Bringing the G8 home: corporate involvement in and around the G8 in Scotland 2005' is now on the web, available to read, print and distribute. Go to Corporate Watch and follow the links.

The report brings together a lot of relevant information and exposes the links between corporate power, poverty and climate change. It also focuses on the summit's location this year in Scotland and includes an analysis of "Scotland Plc" as a microcosm of the current global capitalist system.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

The Peculiar State

John Chuckman

A lawyer gave a brief opinion piece on Canada's public radio, the CBC, in which he flatly said that criticism of Israel is a form of anti-Semitism.

I guess we should be grateful that people in Canada are much less violent in their opinions than people in the U.S. where one lawyer wrote an essay, published on the Internet, seriously advocating the execution of the families of those who commit terrorist acts in Israel. Another American lawyer, a very prominent one, has advocated protocols governing the legal use of torture in the United States.