Post-Anarchism at NAASN

Michael Truscello has graciously provided us with an audio copy of the panel "Visions of Post-Anarchism" from the first ever North American Anarchist Studies Conference. Panelists included Michael Truscello and Thomas Nail. For more information (bios) please visit the website.

Audio File: Visions of Post-Anarchism

Thanks for the file. The presentations and discussions were excellent and insightful. Both speakers have chapters in the book "Postanarchism: A Reader", forthcoming 2010 from Pluto Press.

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Saul Newman: Postanarchism between Politics and Anti-Politics

I would like to share a string of videos of a Saul Newman talk from Sept 2 - 4 at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. I would also like to apologize that many of these posts are exceedingly long. I am working on hacking the blogspot template to allow for a "Read More" link. Enjoy.

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Post-Anarchism at NAASN

Please join us at the first ever North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference. Our panel is called "Visions of Post-Anarchism":

Roger Farr, Michael Truscello, Thomas Nail, (Duane Rousselle)

In a yet to be released essay from Lewis Call (author of “Postmodern Anarchism”, Lexington Books, 2002), it is argued that a sort-of “post-anarchist” moment has finally arrived (Post-Anarchism: A Reader, forthcoming) and yet equally, there appears to be growing sentiment that the post-anarchist critique has been somewhat internalized in the minds of many anarchist researchers and therefore rendered stagnant as an independent position that one can argue either 'for' or 'against'. What is the place of post-anarchism today? Can it still be defined largely by its critique of traditional anarchism or are there other ways of interpreting it? Have we possibly moved beyond post-anarchism and, if so, does it continue to cast a shadow on the way we study anarchism? This panel begins with three paper presentations on particular post-anarchist interventions and then moves into a discussion on their points of connection and difference (between the panelists and the participating audience). The Visions of Post-anarchism panel represents an attempt to outline what post-anarchism means for anarchist researchers today and what it may mean tomorrow.

Individual paper outlines follow:

Michael Truscello will examine the concept of necessity as a reference to the means by which revolutionaries could survive in the context of continuing revolution. This meaning of necessity divided the earliest socialists and anarchists. As Murray Bookchin writes, “The problem of dealing with want and work—an age-old problem perpetuated by the early Industrial Revolution—produced the great divergence in revolutionary ideas between socialism and anarchism. Freedom would still be circumscribed by necessity in the event of a revolution. How was this world of necessity to be 'administered'? (2004: 46). Marxists proposed the state as the means by which necessity could be administered and revolution could persist, and anarchists offered the solution of free communities (Bookchin, 2004: 46). “The problem of want and work,” writes Bookchin, “was never satisfactorily resolved by either body of doctrine in the last century" (2004: 47). Bookchin's own solution was "social ecology," which required technology to "replace the realm of necessity by the realm of freedom" (2004: 48), a proposal met with derision by anarcho-primitivists. The problem of necessity in the period of late capitalism is intimately bound to the problem of technology, since most people who live in industrial societies depend on massive technological systems for sustenance, and since the current population of the planet greatly surpasses the number that could be supported by living as hunter-gatherer societies, the primitivist ideal. To revolt against these technological systems from within industrial societies would seem to be an act of self-destruction; to preserve these systems would be equal folly. For anarchists, the problem of the technological society therefore necessitates a paradoxical solution. I will discuss the possibility that this paradoxical solution might resemble Saul Newman's concept of "unstable universalities."

Thomas Nail argues that poststructuralist philosophy, anarchism, and radical politics share a similar commitment against statism, capitalism vanguardism, and economic reductionism, but share an ambivalence toward more positive visions of today's radical and anarchist organizations. If, following Todd May, one understands post-anarchism as the dual commitment to “anti-authoritarianism” and the “affirmation of difference,” how are we to understand the concrete consistency of political experimentations beyond their mere potentiality to “become different than they are.” That is, what would a post-anarchist political analysis look like took seriously the concrete analysis of specific anarchist practices and their organization? In this paper I argue that while anti-authoritarianism and potentiality are crucial for understanding the core of radical politics today, they are ultimately insufficient for understanding the consistency and organization of today’s actual alternatives to capitalism and domination. What I will begin to develop in this paper instead is a vision of post- anarchism amended by a philosophical constructivism of the concrete conditions, elements, and agencies that compose post-anarchist political experimentations. In particular I will exemplify this analysis in the case of one of the first post-anarchist revolutions: Zapatismo.

Roger Farr investigates the increasingly common demands in various anarchist periodicals for greater clarity and accessibility in movement discourse. A recent issue of Rolling Thunder, for instance, argues that the “exclusive language” of certain milieus is unable to “make a welcoming space for a broad range of participants,” and that these “obscurantists” should rather express themselves “in the language they use when they talk with their neighbors or relatives.” While debates around language use have been, and continue to be, critically important for anarchists, we need to move beyond the “clarity good / jargon bad” binary that too frequently provides a structure for the discussion, which in the end usually leads to vague indictments of “in-group” languages and “exclusionary” linguistic practices, in favour of what sounds very much like a call for even more anonymous, mass communication. Drawing on Alice Becker-Ho’s work on argot – “the language of the dangerous classes” – this talk asks what anarchists might learn from the study of such “anti-languages,” and argues that in the struggle over our language we arrive at “the heart of all the struggles between the forces striving to abolish the present alienation and those striving to maintain it.”

Duane will provide an overview at the end and stimulate discussion.

Biographies:

Roger is the author of a book of poetry, SURPLUS (Line Books, 2006), a contributor to the co-research project N 49 19. 47 - W 123 8.11 (Recomposition, 2008), and is the editor of the sporadically published journal PARSER: New Poetry and Poetics. His writing on social movements and the avant-garde has appeared or is forthcoming in Anarchist Studies, Fifth Estate, Islands of Resistance: Pirate Radio in Canada, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, The Poetic Front, and XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. His critical introduction to a new English translation of Alice Becker-Ho’s The Essence of Jargon is forthcoming from Autonomedia. He teaches in the Creative Writing and Culture and Technology Programs at Capilano University in Vancouver, BC.

Michael is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His work has focused on the postanarchist politics of digital culture (especially software), and has been featured in journals such as Postmodern Culture, Technical Communication Quarterly, and TEXT Technology.

Thomas is a visiting scholar at CERIS—The Ontario Metropolis Centre in Toronto, Canada. He has written on the post-structuralist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Alain Badiou. Awarded a U.S. Fulbright scholarship to complete his dissertation in Canada, he is currently writing his Ph.D in philosophy (University of Oregon) on the concept of revolution in the political philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. He was the assistant editor for the journal, Environmental Philosophy 5:2 (2008) and 6:1 (2009).

Duane is embarrassingly undecided. He is the editor of the forthcoming book “Post-Anarchism: A Reader” and a decidedly excommunicated anarchist.

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Post-Anarchism: A Reader [updated!]

Despite many obstacles, the Post-Anarchism Reader project continues (I will address these obstacles both in the book and on this blog in the future). Although I have had a contract on my desk for the last few months, I feel that it is more important to continue to negotiate with Pluto Press at this time [you may note that Pluto published Uri Gordon's Anarchy Alive! (2007), Richard Day's Gramsci is Dead (2005), John Moore and Spencer Sunshine's edited volume I am not a man, I am dynamite! (2004), Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone (2004), John Holloway's Change the world without taking power (2005), Daniel Singer's Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968 (2003), Joanne Richardson's Anarchitexts.] The latest update, from Pluto, is that all three peer reviews came back positive (very positive), I have responded to them and await a full decision in the very near future. For now, I hope that the table of contents is at least somewhat useful/interesting to you folks.

Preface - Duane Rousselle
Introduction - Sureyyya Evren

I - Anarchism After Post-structuralism/Post-Modernism
May, Todd -Is post-structuralist political theory anarchist?
Koch, Andrew - Post-structuralism and the epistemological basis of anarchism
Bey, Hakim - Post-anarchism anarchy
Newman, Saul - Anarchism, Marxism and the bonapartist state
de Rota, Antón Fernendez - Acracy_Reloaded@post1968/1989: Reflections on Postmodern Revolutions

II - Movements
Day, Richard J.F. - From hegemony to affinity
Mueller, Tadzio - Empowering anarchy: Power, hegemony, and anarchist strategy
Adams, Jason - The constellation of oppositions
Truscello, Michael - Imperfect necessity and the mechanical continuation of everyday life: A postanarchist politics of technology

III - Reactions
Cohn, Jesse., & Wilbur, Shawn - What’s wrong with postanarchism
Franks, Benjamin - Postanarchism: A partial account
Jeppesen, Sandra - Things to do with post-structuralism in a life of anarchy: Relocating the outpost of post-anarchism
Saint Schmidt - Postanarchism is not what you think: The role of postanarchist theory after the backlash

IV - Lines of Flight
Heckert, Jamie - Sexuality as state-form
Bertalan, Hilton - Emma Goldman: The postanarchist
Farr, Roger - Anarchist Poetics
Call, Lewis - Buffy the Post-Anarchist Vampire Slayer

V – The Future of Radical Politics
de Acosta, Alejandro - Anarchist Meditations, or: Three Wild Interstices of Anarchism and Philosophy
Nail, Thomas - Constructivism and the future anterior of radical politics
Evren, Sureyyya - Currently Untitled
Newman, Saul - Postanarchism and radical politics today

Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Selected Bibliography
Index Read more...

Special issue of Critical Horizons on Simon Critchley's Neo-Anarchism

Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory
Editor(s): Jay M. Bernstein, Emmanuel Renault, John Rundell
Print ISSN: 1440-9917
Online ISSN: 1568-5160
Institutional Price (Print and Online): £110.00
Individual Price: £30.00

VOLUME 10 (2009) ISSUE 2

**SPECIAL ISSUE**
Ethics of Commitment and Politics of Resistance:
Simon Critchley’s Neo-Anarchism
Edited by Robert Sinnerbrink and Philip A. Quadrio

Contents

Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance: Simon Critchley’s
Infinitely Demanding
Robert Sinnerbrink and Philip A. Quadrio

On Simon Critchley’s Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment,
Politics of Resistance
Alain Badiou

Neo-Anarchism or Neo-Liberalism? Yes, Please! A Response to Simon Critchley’s Infinitely Demanding
Robert Sinnerbrink

“Critchley is Zizek”: In Defence of Critical Political Philosophy
Matthew Sharpe

The Common Root of Commitment, Resistance and Power
Karin de Boer

Speaking to the People: Critchley, Rousseau and the Deficit in Practical Rationality
Philip A. Quadrio

Which Anarchism? On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Infinity for (Political) Life: A Response to Simon Critchley’s Infinitely Demanding
Nina Power

A Plea for Prometheus
Alberto Toscano

Humorous Commitments and Non-Violent Politics: A Response
to Simon Critchley’s Infinitely Demanding
Fiona Jenkins

Mystical Anarchism
Simon Critchley Read more...

Imperceptible Strategies, Unidentified Autonomous Organizations

:: A Drifting Seminar :: London, October 23rd,2009 ::

Anarchist and autonomous politics are often associated, in a kneejerk way, with a celebration of chaos and disorder: a rejection of all forms of organization. The reduction of radical politics to a cheap joke (‘anarchist organization, what’s that?’) comes to substitute for an actual understanding of autonomous organizational practices. Far from rejecting organization all together, the history of autonomous politics contains a wealth of different modes of organizing, from the formation of temporary autonomous zones to affinity group models, maroon communities to networks and collectives.

These are forms of organizing that not always acknowledged as being organizations because they do not conform to what it is assumed organizations necessarily are: durable, static, and hierarchical. This understanding of organization obscures and makes difficult an actual engagement with the merits and weaknesses of different forms of organizing. But what would be found if rather than working from a fixed and unchanging concept of organization, one that excludes temporary forms of organization from consideration, it was attempted to tease out the organizational dynamics from all the temporary alliances and alliances that appear and disappear?

Might it be possible that we are already enmeshed in a world of unidentified autonomous organizations, a milieu of potential liberation that has remained imperceptible because of a narrow understanding of what organizations are? And might it not be that this imperceptibly, rather than being a condition to be addressed as a problem, could rather be part of building of what Robin D.G. Kelley calls an infrapolitical sphere: a space for politics coming out of people’s everyday experiences that do not express themselves as radical political organization at all.

The aim of this encounter is to explore the connections between anarchism, autonomism, and the revolutions of everyday life, drawing out conceptual tools useful to developing and deepening the politics of these infrapolitical spaces and organization. How can we strategize and build from the connections and movements of the undercommons, working from everyday encounters to compose new forms of social movement? How can we connect and work between spontaneous forms of resistance without forcing them into some larger form that ossifies them?

This event will not be based around formal presentations, but rather will rather take the form of a drifting seminar. Participants will be asked to read several pieces of text that will form the basis of discussion and exploration.

Registration for the event will be approximately 10 quid. There will be some limited travel funding available. If you wish to be considered for this funding indicate this when you register.

For registration and information contact: stevphen [NO SPAM] autonomedia [DOT] org / Sponsored by the Anarchist Studies Network & Minor Compositions

Sponsored by the Anarchist Studies Network (www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk) & Minor Compositions (www.minorcompositions.info).


SCHEDULE:
To be posted shortly. Begins at 12pm outside Pogo Café in Hackney.

READINGS:
Roger Farr (2007) “The Strategy of Concealment.”
Stefano Harney (2008) “Governance and the Undercommons.”
The Invisible Committee (2007) The Coming Insurrection.
Dimitris Papadopoulos (2006) “Who’s Afraid of Immaterial Workers? Embodied Capitalism, Precarity, Imperceptibility.”
Dimitris Papadopoulos, Niamh Stephenson, and Vassilis Tsianos (2008) Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the 21st Century. London: Pluto Press. Read more...

Anarca-Islam

"As an anarchist and a Muslim, I have witnessed troubled times as a result of extreme divisions that exist between these two identities and communities. To minimize these divisions, I argue for an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian Islam, an ‘anarca-Islam’, that disrupts two commonly held beliefs: one, that Islam is necessarily authoritarian and capitalist; two, that anarchism is necessarily anti-religious. From this position I offer ‘anarca-Islam’ which I believe can help open-minded (non-essentialist/non-dogmatic) Muslims and anarchists to better understand each other, and therefore to more effectively collaborate in the context of what Richard JF Day has called the ’newest’ social movements. [..] In light of anarchism’s identification as a pluralistic tradition, it follows that Anarca-Islam is an Islamic reinterpretation of anarchism, and more particularly post-anarchism." --Mohamed Jean-Veneuse


Read Mohamed's M.A Thesis At the Anarchist Library (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/anarca-islam) Read more...

CFP: First North American Anarchist Network Conference

The 1st North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference

Association Nord-Américain des Etudes Anarchistes

Asociación Norteamericana de Estudios Anarquistas

When: November 21st and 22nd, 2009

Where: Hartford, Connecticut USA: at Charter Oak Cultural Center (21 Charter Oak Ave.)

We are pleased to announce the beginning of the North American Anarchist Studies Network (NAASN). We see this as a space to develop theoretical and empirical work that pays critical attention to anarchism and items of interest to the anarchist milieu. Likewise, we see the creation of this network as a way for North American anarchists who do scholarly work to be able to support each other in our endeavors and create a space for critical dialogue and reflection.

This conference, then, is not only a place for us to discuss our research, dialogue with one another in panels, and educate ourselves through presentations. It is also a place for discussing the development and future course of the NAASN–so if you would like to be involved, please do so! As well, this provides us with a venue for discussing the role of the theoretician and the researcher in the larger project of dismantling capitalism, the state, and domination in all of its forms.

We are calling for papers, panels, and presentations to be given at the founding conference. Creativity in format and presentation is encouraged, as are submissions from people who may not currently have a university affiliation. As anarchists, we want to disrupt rather than perpetuate the lines drawn between the official academy and the production of knowledge. Papers, panels, and presentations should focus on work on anarchism or topics of interest to the anarchist milieu. Importantly, we see this as an occasion for dialoguing with one another to learn and grow, and would like to avoid sectarianism, personal attacks, and debating-to-win.

Please send proposals and/or abstracts with a brief bio to the conference organizers: Jesse Cohn, Luis Fernandez, Nathan Jun, Deric Shannon, and Abbey Willis at anarchiststudies@hotmail.com . Please keep descriptions and/or abstracts under 500 words. All proposals and abstracts are due by October 10, 2009. Likewise, vendors and organizations may email us at the above address to arrange for table space.

For a new world, free of institutionalized coercion and control! And for a present living and organizing in ways that embody that future as best we can!

The Organizers for the 1st North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference

For up-to-date information, please visit: http://naasn.wordpress.com Read more...

New Book: New Perspectives on Anarchism

NEW BOOK

New Perspectives on Anarchism
Edited by Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl

New Perspectives on Anarchism is not only timely, but an important testament to the growing importance of anarchist thought in our era. The book contains crisp ideas that analyze anarchism from multiple perspectives. Like all good books, this volume does not contain a set of prescribed concepts or stilted dogma. Rather, expect a sea of sharp critiques, all revolving around issues of equality, freedom, power, and justice.—Luis A. Fernandez, author of Policing Dissent and co-editor of Contemporary Anarchist Studies

The study of anarchism as a philosophical, political, and social movement has burgeoned both in the academy and in the global activist community in recent years. Taking advantage of this boom in anarchist scholarship, Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl have compiled twenty-six cutting-edge essays on this timely topic in New Perspectives on Anarchism. This collection of essays is unique in its global and multi-cultural scope, as its contributors hail from across the globe.

The scholars and activists featured in New Perspectives on Anarchism view anarchism from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, political science, religion, sociology, and ecology. Together, they attest to the vibrancy, intrepidity, and diversity of contemporary anarchist studies both within and without the academy. New Perspectives on Anarchism's broad approach to anarchism will make it appealing to scholars and political activists from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds.

List of Contributors
Samantha E. Bankston, Harold Barclay, Lewis Call, Alexandre J.M.E. Christoyannopolous, Vernon Cisney, Jesse Cohn, Abraham DeLeon, Francis Dupuis-Déri, Benjamin Franks, Clive Gabay, Karen Goaman, Rodrigo Gomes Guimarães, Uri Gordan, James Horrox, Anthony Ince, Sandra Jeppesen, Stavros Karageorgakis, Elizabeth Kolovou, Thomas Martin, Todd May, Nicolae Morar, Irene Pereira, Stevphen Shukaitis, Mick Smith, Scott Turner, Salvo Vaccaro, Mitchell Verter, Dana Ward, and Dana M. Williams.

About the Authors & Editors:
Nathan J. Jun is assistant professor of philosophy and coordinator of the philosophy program at Midwestern State University.

Shane Wahl is an instructor in philosophy at Ivy Tech Community College and teaches philosophy and debate to gifted children through Purdue University's Gifted Education Resource Institute.

$95.00 | Cloth | 0-7391-3240-

7 | 978-0-7391-3240-1 | Jul 2009 | 456 pp.
$42.95 | Paper | 0-7391-3241-5 | 978-0-7391-3241-8 | Jul 2009 | 456 pp.

For more information and to order, click here.

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Accursed Anarchism: Five Post-Anarchist Meditations on Bataille

"I am myself a war" --Georges Bataille

Any inquiry into the nature of Georges Bataille's troublesome relationship with Marxism appears to me to be a matter of banality expressed through the hysterical (or worse, university) discourses inhabited by those who would not dare probe the traumatic nature of Bataille's commitment to sovereignty[1]; in any case, this vexing relationship is by now a matter of common knowledge and it proves useless if one is truly interested in the exploratory and transformative practices associated with philosophical meditation.[2] Likewise, recent attempts to situate Bataille as the to-finally-be-discovered father-figure of a distinctly post-structuralist/post-modernist lineage have not been met by deaf ears nor by idle pens (c.f. Dorfman, 2002);[3] for instance, not long after Bataille's death Tel Quel—an avant-garde literary journal operating out of Paris at the time—had incisively granted Bataille this very appropriate distinction – the irony of which becomes exposed as the occurrence preceded the popularization of structuralist thought itself (Botting & Wilson, 1991: 5-7, esp. pg 6). What remains to be excavated from Bataille's texts, however, is the nature of his commitment to that proud adversary of Marxist thought: anarchism. This venture resolves itself into two interrelated questions: (1) how might a contemporary anarchist read into Bataille's work? and (2) how might Bataille read into traditional anarchism and how might this reading inform contemporary anarchist philosophy?

Read more: http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/8602

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Primitivism, post-Modernism, Chomsky and anarchism

Source: http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/7658

There are those who want to popularize anarchist ideas, and then there are those that want to radicalize them. The post-modern anarchists, not unlike the primitivists, are, of course, going to be dismissed by the former group of thinkers who are nothing more than bent on tradition. What is truly interesting, however, is why, afterall, Purchase believes it worth discussing the so-called popularity among radical intellectuals of dismissing the working class while, in the same breath, admitting that these post-modern anarchists are just a very small group. He has mixed up the description of post-modern anarchism with the advocacy of it. What is more ironic is that the book does not tackle, in any way, post-modern anarchism. Why does Purchase feel the need to include them?

"The dismissal of the working classes is currently popular among "radical" intellectuals. Some of the stupidest political ideas and outlooks maybe found among primitivists (back-to-the caves) and post-modernists. A few individuals mistakenly believe themselves to be avant garde anarchist thinkers or philosophers. Post-modern `anarchists' (a tiny clique embedded in the academy) believe class analysis is passé and the working classes largely irrelevant and/or virtually non-existent. Primitivists believe workers exist but are just human robots within our evil industrial-technological civilization, which will end with our return to the caves. Quizzed about his views on such nonsense, Chomsky sensibly replies that "post Modernism is gibberish" (216), and primitivism would entail "the mass genocide of millions" (226). For Chomsky, "technology is a pretty neutral instrument," utilizable for both good and evil ends. (225) He dismisses the post-modernist denial of "fundamental class differences." He hasn't "much problem in discerning class differences and their significance. In fact we see class issues rising all the time." (228)"

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Postanarchism is not what you think: The role of postanarchist theory after the backlash

Postanarchism, according to Rousselle, “has never received the amount of attention or sympathy that it deserved from the radical community at large” (infoshop, 2007). He continues, “Part of the reluctance, I suspect, results from the empty spaces occupying the bookshelves of universities, alternative bookstores and radical lending libraries across the world today” (ibid.). However, the reception of postanarchist theory, I would suggest, is hindered less by the problems associated with its propaganda than with a fundamental misunderstanding, on the part of its critics (in particular: Antliff, 2007; Cohn & Wilbur, 2003; Cohn, 2002; Day, 2005; Franks, 2007; Sasha K, 2004; Zabalaza, 2003) of what the postanarchists’ claims have been. This tension has hindered further dialogue and clarification on the key issues raised in the postanarchist writings and has erected a barrier which can only be dislodged through a careful and attentive investigation into the way in which the debate has played out on both sides of the fence. Judgement must be reserved on the basis of whether the resulting demarcations are worth retaining or abandoning.

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Anarchist Germinations - DesertEgo

(For Full Text: http://affinityproject.org/documents/germinations.pdf)

"This is an attempt to offer anarchists a tactical analysis of two barriers to germinations. It takes a poststructuralist approach to the academic analysis of social movements, like that considered by Todd May in his book, The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism (1994)."

This article was posted anonymously on a facebook account.  Although I would argue that the overall approach falls somewhere outside of postanarchist concerns, others might disagree with me and find value in it.

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Internal bleeding: the possible causes of Ian Tomlinson's death

From The Guardian:

Massive internal bleeding, which is now being blamed for Ian Tomlinson's death, can be triggered by someone being assaulted or simply falling over, according to a senior emergency medicine doctor.

Dr Charles O'Donnell, a consultant in emergency and intensive care medicine at Whipps Cross hospital in east London, said a person could have an abdominal haemorrhage as the result of suffering some kind of trauma.

"An abdominal haemorrhage is a fairly common occurrence as a result of a blunt injury, such as a road traffic accident, fall or assault," he said. "Most people who have trauma don't have [such] problems. But among people who have trauma, a small percentage will have life-threatening bleeding. It would not be common for someone to die from an abdominal haemorrhage in response to a simple fall, but it's not unknown. It can happen, but it's rare."

Consultant forensic pathologist Dr Nat Cary's new postmortem report states that, while Tomlinson's cause of death was abdominal bleeding, it was still unclear what led to that haemorrhage. O'Donnell said that the many potential reasons for it included someone having a liver that was already diseased, through heavy drinking, an infection or problem with the body's immune system. Liver disease causes problems by interfering with the person's ability to clot and stop their bleeding. "Something that wouldn't be a problem in the rest of us can be a problem in such patients," he said.

Trauma can also produce an abdominal haemorrhage - serious bleeding around organs such as the liver, spleen, intestine and bladder - by causing a large, solid organ to bleed, O'Donnell added. "That can lead to the person possibly dying or having a major haemorrhage which requires an urgent blood transfusion," he said.

The doctor who conducted the first, disputed postmortem on Tomlinson, Dr Freddy Patel, said he found that his heart and liver were diseased.

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The Resurrection of Guy Debord

Source: http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/7173 (Retrieved April 12th, 2009)

The situationist arch-rebel has finally been recognised as a 'national treasure' in France – but would he have appreciated it?

Guy-Ernest Debord would be spinning in his grave – had he not been cremated following his suicide in 1994. The arch-rebel who prided himself on fully deserving society's "universal hatred" has now officially been recognised as a "national treasure" in his homeland.

The French government has duly stepped in to prevent Yale University from acquiring his personal archives, which contain almost everything he ever produced from the 1950s onwards: films, notes, drafts, unpublished works and corrected proofs, as well as his entire library, typewriter and spectacles. The crowning jewel is, of course, the manuscript of The Society of the Spectacle, Debord's devastating pre-emptive strike on virtual reality. The small wooden table on which his magnum opus was composed is also thrown in.

It's difficult to convey how bizarre it is to hear Christine Albanel – Sarkozy's minister of culture – describing the revolutionary Debord as "one of the last great French intellectuals" of the second half of the 20th century. A love-in between a resurrected Andreas Baader and Angela Merkel would be only marginally more surprising. Then again, intellectuals have been something of a Gallic speciality ever since the Dreyfus Affair. They're accorded the privileged status usually reserved for the likes of Bono on these shores. Jean-Paul Sartre's funeral, in 1980, attracted some 50,000 punters. I doubt whether Noam Chomsky or Tom Paulin will top that.

But however incongruous her position, Madame Albanel is spot-on: no one – not even his sworn ideological enemies – can deny Debord's importance. Even though the young prankster soon turned into a curmudgeonly old soak, his influence is all-pervasive. In fact, it was precisely because he hated the modern world with a passion that he was able to analyse it so presciently. "All that was once directly lived has become mere representation," he observes in the opening pages of The Society of the Spectacle – a statement that's only grown in truth since he made it, back in 1967.

Howls for Sade, his first movie, certainly was not "mere representation". It was the cinematographic equivalent of a meeting between Yves Klein's monochromes and John Cage's 4' 33": the screen remains blank throughout – all-white when there is some dialogue and all-black the rest of the time. During the last 20 minutes, the film plays itself out in total silence and obscurity.

Guy Debord co-founded not one, but two, radical movements: the Lettrist International (1952) and the more famous Situationist International (1957), which popularised concepts such as "dérive" and "détournement". The situationists' hour of glory was undoubtedly the student uprising of May 1968, which they partly shaped, but their influence has kept on growing ever since, from Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid's work with the Sex Pistols to the current crop of British psychogeographers (Iain Sinclair, Will Self, Stewart Home et al) via Factory Records and The Idler's anti-work ethic.

In 1959, Debord and the artist Asger Jorn published Mémoires, which was bound in sandpaper so that it would attack any book placed next to it. For years, this lethal dust jacket served as a perfect symbol of Debord's abrasiveness: he was the ultimate outsider whose ideas could never be assimilated by the mainstream. So what went wrong?

The official recognition of Debord's work tends to dissociate the revolutionary from the writer whose classical prose style has been compared with that of great memorialists such as Saint-Simon. This negates the situationist belief that politics, literature and art must go hand in hand: "The point is not to put poetry at the service of revolution, but to put revolution at the service of poetry". Revolution was supposed to lead to the "supercession of art" by enabling human beings to live poetry and become works of art. From this point of view, Debord belongs to the tradition of dadaists and surrealists such as Jacques Vaché, Arthur Cravan or Boris Poplavsky.

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book," Oscar Wilde famously wrote. "Books are well written, or badly written. That is all." The French have long made this aphorism their own, as exemplified by the reception given to the likes of Rimbaud, Céline, Jean Genet or Dennis Cooper. It seems that the only crime an author can commit on the other side of the Channel is poor writing – although you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

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Olympic Torch Promo Tour Protested in Waterloo, Ont

Olympic Torch Promo Tour Protested in Waterloo, Ont

WATERLOO—Friday April 3, AW@L activists and members of the Climate Change Containment Unit (CCCU) descended on Coca-Cola’s promotional event for the 2010 Olympic Torch Relay.

The torch relay is currently scheduled to come through Ontario in December 2009. The 2010 Olympics are occurring on stolen native land and causing dramatic environmental destruction and unconscionable gentrification and criminalization of the poor in the city of Vancouver.

The Coke van, which is travelling across the province, was in Kitchener yesterday and Waterloo today, attempting to spread hype for the Games.

However, today AW@L crashed their party—not once, but twice—sending action teams to both of the van’s scheduled stops.

For the first stop, at a local Sobey’s, AW@L dispatched the CCCU who,
dressed in ‘haz-mat’ suits and armed with large fire-extinguishers, warned the Coca-cola Olympic Torch Relay team that if they were to attempt to light the flame while inside Waterloo or Kitchener, it would be promptly extinguished. “The Olympic torch must be seen as a symbol for the massive scale of the ecological destruction being caused in the building and preparation for the 2010 Games. It is all of our responsibility to refuse to participate in the brazen display of celebration for the environmentally and socially destructive behaviour that the Olympics represent,” said a member of the CCCU.

AW@L activists were also on hand with a large banner that displayed the
no2010 Thunderbird and the message: “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land.”

One of the activists emphasized that the Olympics are an “embodiment
of neoliberal colonialism, and that the absurd overspending on the Olympic security operation is a sign of creeping fascism and militarism in our police forces and the government’s response to land protection and the struggles of marginalized and oppressed populations.”

At the second stop, at a local Galaxy cinema, members of AW@L handed out
flyers and argued with management and police before vacating the premises. AW@L activists have said that the Torch Relay, if it is to pass through Kitchener-Waterloo, will be met with resistance, as it will across the province and the country.

AW@L is a direct action group based out of Kitchener-Waterloo that works
on anti-war, ecological defence, and indigenous solidarity campaigns.

AW@L’s Climate Change Containment Unit has taken up the task of shutting
down some of those corporations that are most guilty of propagating climate change and environmental destruction. AW@L has endorsed the Olympic Resistance Network’s Statement on Solidarity and Unity. AW@L can be found online at peaceculture.org and reached by email at antiwar@peaceculture.org.

--
dan kellar
-------------------------------
Philosophical Environmentalist
Eternally Concerned Citizen
beingthechange.ca
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Protesters crash Larry Summers talk

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With capitalism dying, what’s left to protest?

Source: http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1115277.html (Retrieved April 9th, 2009)

IT’S TOUGH being an anarchist these days. After all, what’s the point of owning a black balaclava, combat boots and a personal eyewash dispenser if the object of your hatred causes its own downfall?

Why bother travelling from Seattle to Quebec, to Halifax and around the world if the omnipotent forces of capitalism have done themselves in without any help at all from the brotherhood of the black hood? How frustrating to take on the man, if the man just hauls off and knocks himself cold?

What a cruel denial of validation, that so many protests had so little effect. Turns out the revolutionaries could have stayed home, saved the bail money and capitalism would have wrecked itself anyway.

How bad is the global recession? It’s so bad that even anarchists are out of work. That is if they actually worked, which they don’t.

For anarchists, the problem isn’t supply and demand or the vagaries of the market, because there’s not much of a market for their services anyway. It’s just that capitalism is collapsing, so what’s left to protest?

It’s pretty evident that some righteous steam has leaked out of the professional opposition movement. You could see it in the relatively mild melees at the G20 summit in London. The confrontationists did as much damage as they could, but judging from the television coverage, they lacked their usual gusto.

Sure, hooded men attacked the Royal Bank of Scotland and vandalized the lobby. But that seemed futile since the failed bank is pretty much owned by the British people now anyway.

In fact, the protest was so tame that the only fatality was due to natural causes. The bobbies never even got out their tear gas.

Things have changed out there, that’s certain. Some experts are predicting, if not the end of capitalism, certainly the end of the George Bush no-fetters, grab-what-you-can variety of it.

So who’s an anarchist to hate? The Americans will be out of Iraq pretty soon and have soured on foreign military adventures. Here in North America, we’ve never really had class hatred to exploit.

Sure, the black hood gang can still hate the bankers who got away with fortunes as the economy tanked. But lots of people are mad about that. You don’t have to be a radical to despise the greed heads at AIG who collected bonuses after almost bankrupting the U.S. economy.

But maybe the anarchists should thank the uber-materialists for fulfilling a prediction that goes back to Karl Marx. Marx believed that capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

Certainly those seeds, if they exist, have been well watered over the past few years. Markets and industry are in crisis, companies are folding, some billionaires have been reduced to mere millionaire status and last week the G-20 ponied up another trillion dollars to bail out the global economy.

And surely the protest crowd takes heart in the fact that the crisis has recharged calls for curbs on international trade. They’ve demanded protected markets for years.

Now it seems that even industry itself is determined to calcify global trade. For evidence, look no further than the car business.

The North American auto industry is so weak from the economic slowdown and its own strategic mistakes that it’s no longer a threat to foreign markets, if it ever was. At the same time, American workers are losing their jobs and their incomes, so they can’t afford to buy foreign imports.

Emerging powers like India and China have used the liberalized global trade system to revolutionize their economies in ways not seen for 60 years. Life has improved for millions. But does the sudden economic introspection of countries like the U.S. and Britain mean that ends, too?

Even in America, where deregulation has reigned as the prevailing financial dogma since the days of Ronald Reagan, there are calls for economic controls. Leading European powers are demanding much stricter supervision of financial markets.

Where are we headed? All we know for sure is that it’s a time of massive change. Maybe things will get better sooner than we think, but they’ll never be the same. In retrospect, that might be a good thing, too.

Dan Leger is director of news content for The Chronicle Herald. The opinions expressed here are his own. ( dleger@herald.ca)

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Angry Luddites attack Google Street Car View

Source: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/angry-luddites-attack-google-street-view-car-589902 (Retrieved on April 8th, 2009)

A gang of angry Luddites in Ye Olde Middle England have set upon an innocent Google Street View car driver in an attempt to save their lives from ruin.

"Angry villagers formed a human chain to thwart the progress of a Google Street View car that was in the process of taking photographs of their homes," reads a report in The Times.

Police were soon on the scene in the leafy village of Broughton in deepest Buckinghamshire with the "furious villagers" blocking the progress of the Google Street View car.

A burglar's charter

Local man Paul Jacobs, was quickly able to identify this moving threat to civilisation with its 360-degree snooping camera eye and was quick to warn his fellow villagers of the presence of the Google alien in their midst.

He warned the driver, telling The Times: "My immediate reaction was anger; how dare anyone take a photograph of my home without my consent? I ran outside to flag the car down and told the driver he was not only invading our privacy but also facilitating crime.

"This is an affluent area. We've already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks. If our houses are plastered all over Google it's an invitation for more criminals to strike. I was determined to make a stand, so I called the police."

Thames Valley Police confirmed that one of its squad cars "was sent to Broughton at 10.20am on Wednesday to reports of a dispute between a crowd of people and a Google Street View contractor."

World. Gone. Mad.

Via The Times

By Adam Hartley

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Video of police assault on Ian Tomlinson, who died at the London G20 protest

More footage of G20 protests (embed option has been disabled):
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France 'condones police violence'

From BBC News:

The human-rights group, Amnesty International, has accused the French authorities of failing to investigate alleged violence by security forces.

Allegations of beatings, and even unlawful killings, were rarely looked into and those responsible seldom brought to justice, Amnesty said.

In a report, it cited cases of abuse, many involving ethnic minorities and foreign nationals living in France.

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D O C U M E N T (a)

* Call to the First Libertarian Print and Audiovisual Documentary Fair of Caracas. D O C U M E N T (a) November 2009. The editorial collective of El Libertario announce that the Venezuelan capital will be, during the second half of November 2009, the venue for D O C U M E N T (a) , the First Libertarian Print and Audiovisual Documentary Fair. With this event, we want to show the public a sample as large and representative as possible of printed and audiovisual materials produced and avaliable today about the anarchist ideal and related subjects, because as in many others places, in Venezuela it is usually difficult to access books, periodical publications or other documents about anarchy, thus making it more difficult to overcome ignorance and misunderstanding regarding this idea and practice.

What we want will only be possible with the participation of as many editorial and production initiatives that generate audiovisual documentation associated with libertarian and related topics (particularly productions in Spanish). This call is primarily directed at such initiatives because we would like to have the greatest number and diversity of materials that have been developed, so it is important to contact you in advance to determine under what conditions it would be possible to show your work. We emphasize that this call to contact us is not only for those who make libertarian material in a relatively big or “commercial” scale, we will also welcome DIY or craft production.

In the coming months, as the required preparations move forward, we will notify you with more precise details about the Fair and its characteristics. For now, we look forward to receiving the first communication from editors and producers of libertarian materials who wish to have a presence at the event. You can contact us in writing (preferably in Spanish) to feriaa.caracas2009@gmail.com

For info in English about us, see the English section in www.nodo50.org/ellibertario.

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Swelling chorus of revolutionary voices calling for radical change in Greece

From the Irish Times:

Civil unrest in Greece is due to a number of factors. Globalisation and the financial crisis are universal. Specific and local to Greece are the need to reform the education system at both secondary and university levels, the power and status of the police force, the paralysis of public administration, and the condition of some of the Athens suburbs, especially Exarchia where the 15-year-old was killed.

The University of Athens has long been a no-go area for police – imagine TCD not only physically ring-fenced in the centre of Dublin, but also a forbidden city for the authorities. Students today resent the fact that, despite their degrees, the job market in Greece offers little opportunity.

The proliferation of terrorist groups seems to mirror the fragmentation of those making up the political spectrum, and this is reflected in commentaries on what is happening in parliament and on the streets.

“Anarchism” doesn’t exactly define what the violent protests are about. Yes, they query the validity of the modern Greek state, but they are also concerned with a system that denies them their own meaning as citizens.

Where the anarchists call for “the death of the system”, social scientists describe what is happening as “the end of political hope”. It isn’t difficult to see the connection, or, indeed, the common ground.

It's not surprising that a mainstream paper such as the Irish Times would attribute social unrest in Greece to "the end of political hope" and call the actions of revolutionaries "terrorism". I thought I would post this story, however, as another chance to consider what opportunities the economic "crisis" might offer revolutionary causes. Read more...

Collective Singularity: A Musing On Paralysis

Source: Retrieved March 18th, 2009 from http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/6874 Collective Singularity: A Musing On Paralysis HAPHAZARD DEFINITION: What hampers communication is communicability itself; humans are separated by what unites them. -Giorgio Agamben If you are reading this on a screen, you are staring at our point of contact, our collective singularity. Here, we become one. You are an anarchist. I am an anarchist. Or at least I am telling you I am one. Here, ANARCHIST is simply a word. Here, all past meaning is erased, all understanding is imaginary. Anyone can be an anarchist here, just as anyone with a computer can be here.

Is this communication? Was this ever a form of communication? I vaguely remember thinking of it solely as a mode of communication. Now, in 2009, I am seeing something entirely different. Everyone is interfaced through a totalitarian voyeur culture. All can be observed by the eye which is a distraction just as much as it is camera. We observe the lives of others. We see other places. We mesh in this singularity and become one identity, one group, one movement, one cause, one fight, one war, one electronic world. All of our musings and ideas are observed through a screen. Seen on Myspace. Assessed byNorthCom. The countless anarcho-interneters and the unimaginative servants of the Department of Homeland Security all have one thing in common when they become part of the collective singularity: they are staring into a mirror.

Jorge Luis Borges once wrote of mirror people who attempted to take over the land of the real. The mirror people lost the war against the real and were banished to the mirrors they had come from. But one day, perhaps, the mirror people would launch a new war. And this time, after having studied their enemy for so long, they would win.

What you are reading now is composed of nothing. Borges, before going blind, wrote his nothings on paper. His nothings were treasured not only because of their brilliancy but because books such as his were scarce and treasured. Only small groups found their collective singularity in the books of Borges and Kafka and Joyce. They could carry these books in their pockets. When the collective singularity was entered into, it was face to face, body to body. Conversation and musing took the form of real interactions. Information was spread slowly but steadily. Mass production had not ensured them instant success or mass audiences yet.

Who is Borges? Who is Kafka? Who is Joyce? Perhaps we know who they are, or perhaps their names simply trigger more associations than we can count? Their names are right along side those of Justice, Facebook, Julien Coupat, Tiger Woods, Ipod, Watchmen, Afghanistan, Call, Nike, Sprite, Nokia, MP3, Rachel Ray, Obama, Economic Crisis, 2012.

One of the theories is that a singularity will eat the world in 2012. What proponents of this theory do not understand is that the singularity is already starting to form. You are staring at it right now. You are watching a bright star collapsing under its own weight. You are living in and seeing the burst of energy flooding away from the collapsed star.

You are the singularity. And so am I. We are the black hole. The computer in front of you is the star.

And the collapse is irreversible.

VIRTUAL ILLUSTRATION:

Hey, for you to note--Ugly girls and boys--I put you on my list--And make you clap to this

-Justice

There is a pop duo known as Justice. They are two French men. But they are really no different than you or I. They are part of the same culture that can be seen in Seattle just as it can be in New York City. When they perform, their crowds jump and cheer under a glowing white cross. These revelers could easily be confused with ecstatic fundamentalist Christians. The cross is worshiped, the duo is praised for doing something common and banal. The two men always appear to be smiling.

The duo released a single entitled D.A.N.C.E.. The song is a simple fusing of old, simple pop songs. Countless people have heard this song alongside countless other pop songs. The duo also recorded a track called Stress. Knowing the song would never be played on the radio, a music video was made which was so disturbing it would not be aired on television.

In the video , a group of youths in the Parisian suburbs is shown walking out of a lifeless environment into the heart of Paris. They all wear the same black jackets. On the back of their jackets is a glowing golden cross. They are united in their urge to destroy the smooth-functioning world outside their prisons. The youths proceed to assault women, break kid's guitars, smash tourist's cameras, knock off car mirrors, smash up a white bar and knock out the owner, fight the police, escape, steal a car and then molotov it. All the time the youths are being filmed by a white camera crew, making the video appear to be real.

While driving away in their stolen car, the youths turn on the radio. D.A.N.C.E. is playing over the speakers. One of the youths smashes the radio in disgust and throws it out the window. After molotoving their stolen car, having nothing left to destroy, the youths turn on the camera men. The video ends with the camera on the ground, filming the flames of the burning vehicle.

(None of this has anything to do with anarchism, by the way).

The collective singularity of a gang is itself. It cares little for anything outside of itself. The gang in the video destroys the very thing rendering them into images. Their rage will not allow itself to be diluted by the common singularity the wealthy and privileged and thoughtful (YOU AND I) are mired in.

They will steal your Ipods and cameras and laptops. They will laugh at your hip clothing. When they come for you, they won't give a shit about anarchism. The more you try to be like them, the more pitiful you will look when they find you. Just as the video attempts to illustrate, what is coming will destroy what it wishes to and as it likes. What is coming casts no light. It is the black space after the collapse of the star. It no longer acts as a reflection. The mirror people have escaped their framed confines. The more you try to ask them to reflect your image, the more fervently they will break your cameras, smash your computers and burn your cars. The mirror people have no race, no nationality, no politics. They are not you. And you are not them. You have nothing in common with them aside from their reflection on your screen. No light escapes from a black hole. It replies to no questions.

AN EVENT OF SOME IMPORTANCE

The whole series of nocturnal strikes, anonymous attacks, wordless destruction, had the merit of busting wide open the split between politics and the political. No one can honestly deny the obvious weight of this assault which made no demands, and had no message other than a threat which had nothing to do with politics.

-The Coming Insurrection

During the fires of France in 2005, the urban guerrillas who fought the police planned out their attacks. They were familiar with the battlefield and understood the terrain in a manner that the police did not. The fighting could not have been sustained without pre-existing networks that were as personal as they were virtual. The internet and the mobile were utilized, but without the living networks of neighborhoods and friendship and a shared environment, those electronic tools would have been useless. All military forces need to communicate in order to be effective. Communication during the insurrection of 2005 (when it was not breaking down or being disrupted) was the purpose of using a phone or posting locations on the internet.

The same use of networks was recently seen in Greece. Utilizing the real-time communication these networks provided, over a billion dollars of damage was realized in Athens. The insurrection spread like a virus. Sarkozy was correct in fearing contagion. He had already witnessed what happened in France. Just like the other European leaders, he was afraid of what he saw approaching. He and the others know that what is coming demands nothing aside from their heads.

Unlike the Red Brigades of Italy or the Red Army Faction of Germany in the 1970's, there is no future proletarian state that is being fought for. There is no political counterpart to be dealt with, bought off or neutralized. The coming destructive force is a byproduct of the system, an inevitable error in their programming efforts. No party can lead it. When it rears its head, it does not replicate the State structure. Instead, it decentralizes in order to be most effective. Neighborhoods and gangs and crews form and strengthen out of necessity. To do otherwise leads back into the same prison of daily life which you and I are currently inhabiting. Relationships are not mediated by the collective singularity of the internet, they are face to face because there is no other way for them to be. The singularity becomes common and small and centered around Exarchia or the apartment block or the neighborhood. Like the seized Polytechnic, it is a center of gravity for those who are a part of it.

This virus of multiple singularities has been spreading across the planet. Guadeloupe was a tear in the fraying map of the French Empire. The entire northern coast of Europe erupting, with fishermen fighting the police, was just part of the prelude. The small population of Iceland took its first steps, realizing that they could walk, that they could topple governments. All that was missing were steps taken towards self-governance. In Greece, we are seeing that the process of creation is far slower than its destructive counterpart. But it is happening. Soon enough, we will see someone actually succeed in making a government irrelevant. We will see something new, something that will not be a replication of the State. It will not come about without fire. It will not come about without love. It will require everything at our disposal, especially our patience.

The fires of Athens were the bursting forth of the dignified future. Its herald was the darkness and the flames.

AND NOW FOR THE EMPIRE...

We need to see each other, look at each other, talk to each other, listen to each other. We are others, the other. If this world doesn’t have a place for us, then another world must be made. With no other tool than our rage, no other material than our dignity. We still must find each other, know each other.

-Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

There was a boy named Narcissus. He stared at his reflection so long that he fell in love with himself and became a beautiful flower. If are you reading this, you are staring into the water, Narcissus. This singularity we are sharing here, now, is no different than the singularity of McDonald's. Unity from a multitude. One from many. What do you and I have in common? We are both staring a screen in a moment without time. What does Ashland, Oregon have in common with Richmond, Virginia? They both have McDonald's.

At this point, actual anarchists who are 30 and older have been scattered all across the US. Others keep traveling, keep moving and keep teaching. The ones who learned from reality and not from books and the internet cannot transmit their knowledge as fast as the internet. And so now, in 2009, more and more anarchists have nothing in common besides an image, a representation and a scene. People without a community fight for a community that is created as a reflection of what once was real, potent and glowing: the legends of the past.

Most of us lack the base of support needed to achieve our goals. Armed insurgency would be crushed by the government, all known agitators would be imprisoned, the machine would win. This is what we see. There is nothing left to do but wait to die or begin to live. Some people seem to want to rush into their death, to throw their lives away rather than live in this death-culture. Others, however, have seen that the only thing which will ever win is true autonomy, true independence, true singularity. Our country provides us with something we do not want. Rather than stew in their filth, others have decided to provide themselves with what they do want.

Meanwhile, anarchists walk in circles, sticking with the familiar rather than creating something their immediate communities want. Many anarchists can never figure out what to do because, more often than not, they are not part of any community other than the national anarchist subculture. In the absence of any resistance, any healthy community, many anarchists have flocked to the virtual resistance of the internet and the spectacular representation of the international anarchist movement.

Our collective singularity must end. We are becoming lost in it. This collective singularity is massive and vast, but it is weak and spineless. It can allow us to communicate, but it can also reduce us to spectators. Many have not tasted the power of small singularity. Local singularity is potent and unstoppable. There is no need for representation when there is a town or a neighborhood in front of everyone's eyes, a shared place where the news is delivered by a loved ones mouth.

The collective singularity of the internet, of mass production and the mono-culture allow one to take things for granted. Someone else is burning something down, someone else is starting a community center, someone else will give their money over to the project. From this moment on, dear Narcissus, take nothing for granted. You must do everything yourself. You must do everything with those closest to you, especially the ones you do not know.

The world is outside. The world is not here, on this screen. This is basic. As are all of the conclusions being reached by so many all over the planet. There is no God and there is no Devil. There is no War and there is no Peace. There is no Violence and there is no Pacifism. There is no Magic and there is no Science. The only differences left are real ones. They are visible, they are clear and they cannot be ignored. They are evident. What we all see outside is different. Our difference from once another is our strength. Despite living in vastly different environments, our desires lead us all to the same conclusion: in order for us to survive, we must be in charge of our own lives.

Greece shows us that it is possible and that it is a slow process. There are fires, but there is new life. One could not exist without the other. These fires and this new life is what Marcos keeps talking about when he speaks of rage and dignity. The Zapatista's recently presented the Greek insurrectionists with a mural. Chiapas is not Athens. But yet there is unity between the two. Unity that is not imposed by a machine, but a unity that is born and lives forever in ones own heart.

In Exarchia, Athens, Alexandros Grigoropoulos was executed. In Oakland, California, Oscar Grant was executed. In Oakland, people who were just like Oscar Grant disobeyed the preachers telling them to hide away their rage. They lit fires and trashed McDonald's. They were together, united by their dignity and their rage. Underneath the surface, people are understanding their power.

The mirror is cracking, and the reflections are going to destroy that which made them into the Other.

Soon, very soon, the fable of Borges will come true.

The mirror people will have their revenge.

Good luck, everybody.

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The Autonomous Astronaut Association of Oakland

Column From "Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed"

We began by naming our insurmountable enemy and brainstorming methods by which we can defeat it. For the Oakland chapter of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts our enemy is simple: Gravity. Gravity is the force that is, literally, keeping us down. It is the basis of every assumption about what we can and can’t do. Gravity sticks us to the ground, stops us from fl ying, and sticks the entire government apparatus square on top of our heads and backs. As empiricists we recognize that our battle against our pre-conceptions must begin with a brush war against gravity. Under what terms should we accept this conflict?

It is well established by the Law of Universal Gravity (a selfenforcing name if ever there was one) that every two material objects attract each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. This is usually understood at F=GM1M2/R2. Stated in terms of G, G=FR2/M1M2. G was fi rst measured through what is called the Cavendish Balance, which is comprised of two balanced spheres with a vacuum container between. Within the vacuum was a smaller balanced weight that would be disturbed once the equilibrium of the spheres was shifted. The measurement of this disturbance accounts for our measurable evidence for gravity. As our measuring technologies improved our knowledge (that is, what can be described in terms of number of significant digits), the constant force of gravity has grown. As our technology has improved, our internalization of the specific nature of our enemy has improved.

Till now the fight against gravity has been waged by those looking to decrease the coefficient of friction for short-to-medium range travel. Looking not just for another commodity but to make distance itself a product. Flight has commodified space and created the illusion of a victory against gravity. Instead it is the equivalent of a rugby match. One force pushing against another in some sort of scrum. Part of our challenge in our own battle against gravity is not to follow the path of merely joining in this scrum.

As one can imagine, primary literature along this line is difficult to find, and the secondary literature is ideological to the point of absurdity. UFOs, , the Rockefellers, and hour-long orgasms may be connected to the battle against gravity but only, at best, in tenuous ways. Researchers willing to break with the dogma of science-ism are as rare as anarchists willing to break with the dogma of anarchism.

The most fruitful direction for our research appears to follow the clues left by Yevgeny Podkletnov in his never-published “Gravitational shielding properties of composite bulk YBa2Cu3O7-x superconductor below 70K under an electromagnetic fi eld,” and in the hints he has left since then. The point is obvious. Gravity isn’t fixed and there are ways that we can contest it.

We also love the levity of John Searl, who not only claims to have built 50 versions of his fully functioning antigravity device, but also to have fl own around the world—undetected—in at least one of them. In many ways he is a kindred spirit, but mostly in his practice of eschewing authority in his pursuit of trans-conceptual intersections. His arrest for the theft of electricity is similar to our recent arrests for “Unpermitted launching of sky rockets using external guidance and stability.” Experimentation transcends earthly law.

AAA’s strong preference is to get directly involved in the experimental fi eld; we refuse to trust our confl ict with gravity to the struggles of peer-reviewed scientific journals and the pockets of government agencies and multinational corporations. Their priorities continue to be terrestrial. At this time our research isn’t possible due to our own lack of resources, but is a project we plan for the future.

For now we struggle with our participation in what is derogatorily referred to as “amateur rocketry,” which has recently seen a major resurgence. Not since the Space Race of the 1960s has there been more excitement and participation by people-who-are-not-paid-to-care about the human capacity to travel to the stars. This means that obtaining a certain level of material beyond model rockets is easier than it has ever been.

We are still working at the level of small liquid bi-propellant rocket motors using pre-manufactured solid fuel motors, but desire to work in the direction of experimenting with liquid fuels and pushing more mass into the sky. This update on our work is largely a call for more participation in our project along the lines of resources, knowledge, and other empiricists who are interested in autonomous space travel. We have several methods where we hope to continue our shared project: the Oakland AAA blog, personal correspondence, and in the field where the battle ensues.

Liberated from their systems of control, so-called common sense ideas about how to live and think, the spirit of autonomous astronauts will require the grit and determination of a new golden age of speculative empiricists. From that we will gain the ability to live freely and the will to engage in impossible struggles that can achieve successes beyond what has been imagined up till now. A determination to be competent at the skills necessary for the next stage of our struggle; calculus, a steady hand with explosive materials, fleet feet, procurement skills, craftiness, and a sense of humor. Join us!

There will be no ideology in space.
http://anarchymag.org/aaa

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CFP: Post-Anarchism: Beyond Ideology

For those of you who don't know, Immedium Press (the brainchild of Harvard Haarstad and Mark Graham) released a call out some years ago for their collaborative project "Post-anarchism: Beyond Ideology".  The project is a little different than the one that I am currently involved in (i.e., The Postanarchism Reader) in that it adopts a Fair Use license policy which eradicates the burdens associated with copyrights.  Unfortunately, the project has been on a bit of a hiatus pending the gradual decay of other academic pressures, but I have agreed to take this on as a side-project for the future.  If any others are interested in something like this which would, unlike the Reader project, showcase new and original work in the area, let me know.

In the meantime check out their website for the project here: http://www.immediumpress.com/Sub/postanarchism.html

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New Book: Contemporary Anarchist Studies

There's a new anthology from Routledge that looks interesting: Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Introductory Anthology of Anarchy in the Academy. Apparently, it has not been released yet.

From the description:

This interdisciplinary work highlights connections between anarchism and other perspectives such as feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, disability studies, post-modernism and post-structuralism, animal liberation, and environmental justice. Featuring original articles, this volume brings together a wide variety of anarchist voices whilst stressing anarchism's tradition of dissent. This book is a must buy for the critical teacher, student, and activist interested in the state of the art of anarchism studies.

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Welcome

Post-anarchism anarchy is often defined in relation to poststructuralist and postmodernist political philosophies (specifically, the varieties found in the writings of Todd May, Saul Newman, and Lewis Call).  But perhaps it would be more fruitful to extend the post-anarchist analysis to include all those variants of anarchist thought which have interrogated the tradition from the inside (such as, for example, Bob Black and Hakim Bey's 'Type-3 anarchism', Jason McQuinn's 'Post-Left anarchy', Aragorn! and HPWombat's 'nihilist anarchism', etc.

Some of the questions I would like to think about is: How can we begin to think postanarchism anarchy in new, dangerous, ways?, How can we begin to bring post-anarchism (particularly its current fixation with poststructuralist/postmodernist theories) out of the academy and into the broader discussion?

I encourage you to join the discussion, contribute by posting questions, thoughts, blogs, essays, etc, to try to work through some of these ideas.  

Email r5jmp@unb.ca if you would like to contribute.

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