A Shattering Moment in America's Fall from Power
John Gray, The Observer Sunday September 28 2008

The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. The era of American dominance is over.

Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over.

"Hank Paulson and the State of Exception"
Malatesta,

The "bad loans" i.e. the tender of high interest money to people who could not make the payments, have caused a banking crisis and Henry "Hank" Paulson seeks to take complete control to impose decades of austerity on main street America; nationalize the insolvent companies and give a handout to the banks of "treasury" money.

Hmmmm....first off, wouldn't nationalizing a profitable company like an oil company make the money available and hurt far fewer people? Well, besides the obvious there is an amazing Constitutional crisis and a time for boiling anger. I wonder where and when some protests will erupt?

"The Social Factory"
Otonom

“Meanwhile, and incidentally, there opened up for us the prospect, which cannot be sharply defined yet at this point, of a specific relation of capital to the communal, general conditions of social production, as distinct from the conditions of a particular capital and its particular production process.” (Marx, Grundrisse Notebook V, 1973)1

This emphasis by Marx which has mostly remained unrealized among the lines of Grundrisse has not been paid attention and reflected upon by Marxists in general except Negri. Even if it may have been reflected upon, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the implications of such a reflection have been very few in political theory and practice. This is not a problematic which is disregarded intentionally. As Marx has already said, this is related to the insufficient historical and social development of the specific relation of capital to communal, general conditions of social production, which is a prospect for us that cannot be defined yet at this point.

"The Climate Camp at Kingsnorth"
Shift Mgazine

The Climate Camp at Kingsnorth was great! These were our initial thoughts on arrival at the first German climate camp in Hamburg, which took place just one week after Kingsnorth. The Hamburg camp seemed less organised, there were far fewer people and the lack of a clear neighbourhood structure meant that we aimlessly walked around the site for a good half hour before finally pitching the tent in the ‘anti-barrio’ barrio.

"Corruption in Tanzania"
Albanie Marcossy, Dar es salaam, Tanzania

Under the Local Government Reform Programme (LGRP), the local government authorities, including the sub-council level authorities, are undergoing the following reforms: (i) Capacities enhancements to either provide the services directly or facilitate their delivery through other actors and players. (ii) Restructured and re-organized to become more efficient in carrying out their new functions. (iii) Acquiring more legal and administrative powers and freedom, in formulating their plans, budgets, activities and in managing their human and financial resources. (iv) Acquiring powers to mobilize their own resources.

borders 2.0 - future, tense
Angela Mitropoulos*
Mute Magazine

Arrayed beyond and around the obvious walls of migration control, the architectures and technologies of the border proliferate. These technologies seek to sort, expunge, confine and delay; to sift potential value from non-value; to fix the border inside and round both states and selves; to foreclose the future to versions of an infinitely stuttering present. Just as new instruments of financial debt and the offshore internment facility were exported from their post-colonial laboratories situated beyond Europe and the United States, so 'civil', metropolitan spaces have, in turn, been restructured by devices once reserved for those declared to be 'uncivil'. The partitioning of 'third' and 'first' worlds, colony and empire, the zoning of regular, waged work and that of precariousness and slavery – these are some of the divisions that have been shaken by the unprecedented movements of people around the world since the late 20th century. Flows shifted course, reversed, the (ex-)colonised moved toward the colonisers. And so, there is the militarisation of policing, the amplification of the prison lockdown as urban crowd control, preemptive surveillance and simulated warfare, a diffused fear and suspicion no longer confined to the 'margins'. To be sure, these expanding technologies oftentimes multiply death and suffering in an attempt to re-impose the ways in which misery was previously displaced to others, elsewhere – that is, marginalised. They aim to reinstall the borders, to fine tune the ramparts of wealth and its extraction, sometimes by new means, often as retrofits. Yet, as such, this expansion indicates the failure of the walls to hold firm against a future which is contingent upon movements that cannot be identified before they occur.

Gathering Storms: A Team Colors Statement on the Upcoming 2008 Convention Protests
Conor Cash, Craig Hughes, Stevie Peace & Kevin Van Meter | Team Colors Collective

On the eve of this year’s Democratic National Convention in Denver, and mere days before the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, we have borne witness to a number of narratives unfolding in the political landscape. We see an election year play out before us; we see an astonishing upsurge of activism and participation, much of it connected to the campaign of Senator Obama; we see organizations and individuals planning a wide array of protests, mobilizations, and direct actions. Many of these intertwining strands will converge into massive storms of activity and interaction at the upcoming conventions. We at Team Colors sought to examine narratives such as these, and over the past several months, have collected articles, interviews, discussions, essays - any and all evidence we could dredge up, recording the ways and means of today’s movements. We uncovered a lot - some problematic, some confusing, some even deplorable - but thankfully, enough whirlwinds of promise and potential emerged before our eyes to lend credence to a feeling of change, of gathering storms.

Yet despite these discoveries – or rather, primarily because of them - we feel compelled to state that the storms that intrigue us the most will not show themselves at the convention protests. We don’t disallow the potential for new wrinkles and exciting surprises as the actions unfold - indeed, we’d welcome them - but we also can’t ignore the honest circumstances of where we are at: these protests, overwhelmingly, do not come out of substantial movements, and will not generate substantial movements.

This deficiency necessarily clouds over any ‘successes’ and ‘gains’ from the protests, a gloomy yet heartening prospect; after all, we may see ourselves better without the dazzling sun that inadvertently blinds us.

And we know those sunlit moments all too well: skill-sharing, long-term institutions, creating spaces, increasing morale among radicals, tapping into larger networks, diversity of tactics frameworks, solidarity between causes, better planning, better communication - the list of ‘betters’ is seemingly endless when it comes to these protests. As a collective, we have heard even more pronounced claims than these - that this will be “one of the largest actions at a convention in history,” that this won’t be “the same old ritualized protest,” that “we’ll be a stronger movement afterwards” by “bringing the struggles home.” Behind these rejuvenating words lies a vacuum, an inability to understand or discuss movements; specifically, where (if anywhere) are the convention protests situated in the flow of movements, and how do all the ‘betters’ contribute to movements, if at all. The notion of “bringing the struggles home” as a key to movement, while comforting, is especially dangerous when unquestioned; for we may define ‘home’ as a very small ‘radical community’ marked by regression and fear, rather than a larger field of growth, openness and genuine encounter - the basic ingredients of movements.

The Legalization of Squatting
Punkerslut

Until all governments are abolished in favor of a just, mutual, and cooperative relationship between all civilizations, until that day, all states, governments, and councils should legalize squatting; that is, they should allow people to sleep in unused buildings, even if privately owned. The rights to freedom of speech, press, religion, and association are powerful safeguards for the Democratic spirit of any people. These concessions made by the government in giving their people more liberty are never done peaceably The people must always demand, they must always fight, they must always struggle, and inevitably, to create a true social change, they must bring themselves to a violent standoff with their enemies. Martin Luther King changed America by marching in the streets and letting himself be subject to the torture of the police. When those images of vicious police brutality appeared on the television sets of every American, it instantly became a social issue that people had to face. King's campaign was to change the way the this country looked at race. He followed along the guidelines of Gandhi, who also subjected himself to the brutalities of a tyrannical and undemocratic government. Again, the revolution in social progress was made possible by making people look at the brutality of the status quo.

"The Worst and Best of Times"
Grace Lee Boggs, The Michigan Citizen

My first column with this title appeared in the December 31-January 6, 2007 issue of the Citizen. We were living in the worst of times, I wrote, because of the Iraq war, the planetary emergency, the growing gulf between rich and poor, corporate takeover of the media, and a president who was acting like a king and losing all connection with reality.

But it was also the best of times, I said, because Americans were beginning to create new forms of community-based economic institutions that are less vulnerable to globalization, like coops and ESOPs (employee stock ownership enterprises). Local and state governments were assuming the responsibility, abdicated by the federal government, to reduce global warming. The urban gardening movement was growing by leaps and bounds.

ephemera 8.2. ‘Alternatively’ released

ephemera 8.2., ‘Alternatively.’ is now online: http://www.ephemeraweb.org. In its focus on alternatives, the latest ephemera issue addresses one of the main tasks that critique has (to) set for itself: to counter political paralysis of any kind, construed by the right and left, by pointing at the false logic behind it, indeed, by means of the formulation and practice of alternative logics.

There are many ways of organizing social life other than on the basis of and dictated by the kind of free market- or neoliberalism that reigns in large parts of the world. In other words, this issue, its editorial specifically and its contributions in their own way attempt to delegitimize the notorious post-communist ‘There Is No Alternative’-logic of thinking (TINA). At the same time, this issue also warns against the defeatist way of thinking represented by the casting of commodification as a totalizing force that leaves nothing beyond its grasp. While this threat is real, to portray consumer capitalism thus is a process of abstraction that is not only politically paralyzing, but can even be construed as conformist, like any belief in ‘this is how things are’, like TINA.

To suggest that things can be otherwise, the shift of perspective might be an important part of alteration (the act of producing alternatives), including shifting our perspective on how to appreciate alternatives. That is, rather than attributing appreciation based on the potential for realizability, the editorial suggests that alternatives might prove politically enabling precisely because they seem unrealizable. Alternatives understood in this way do not function as different solutions but as different problems; not as alternative answers to the same questions but as alternative questions opening up for new answers. Whereas any alternative solution keeps the problem which it solves intact, an alternative problem breaks with and delegitimizes the existing solution. It divides, twists and thoroughly subverts established Truths as well as breaking the ground for new ways of thinking. As such, the moment of alteration transforms the horizon of the given by way of giving us new questions to ask.