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.

"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.

"On the Pogroms in South Africa"
Richard Pithouse

The industrial and mining towns on the Eastern outskirts of Johannesburg are unlovely places. They’re set on flat windswept plains amidst the dumps of sterile sand left over from old mines. In winter the wind bites, the sky is a very pale blue and it seems to be all coal braziers, starved dogs, faded strip malls, gun shops and rusting factories and mine headgear. All that seems new are the police cars and, round the corner from the Harry Gwala shack settlement, a double story facebrick strip club.

The 2008 G8 on Hokkaido, a Strategic Assessment
Emergency Exit Collective

Bristol, Mayday, 2008

zero

The authors of this document are a collection of activists, scholars, and writers currently based in the United States and Western Europe who have gotten to know and work with each other in the movement against capitalist globalization. We’re writing this at the request of some members of No! G8 Action Japan, who asked us for a broad strategic analysis of the state of struggle as we see it, and particularly, of the role of the G8, what it represents, the dangers and opportunities that may lie hidden in the moment. It is in no sense programmatic. Mainly, it is an attempt to develop tools that we hope will be helpful for organizers, or for anyone engaged in the struggle against global capital.

"The New Security Culture"
Boris Beauregard

It’s a New Security Culture!
A message from Boris Beauregard celebrating the World Security Days:
"Never before in the history of the world, there has been such a need to
respond effectively to critical events. In today’s complex world where the
solutions to your security concerns are no longer straightforward, it is
more difficult than ever to successfully protect interests against diverse
and intricate dangers."

http://www.global-security-alliance.com/gsa/world-security-days/en

Below his keynote speech...

Pogroms in South Africa
Sunday, 25 May 2008

Empire or Humanity?
What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me About the American Empire
By Howard Zinn

With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with
military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there
is hardly a question any more of the existence of an American Empire.
Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed
embrace of the idea.

However, the very idea that the United States was an empire did not
occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the
Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began
to have second thoughts about the purity of the "Good War," even after
being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own
bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the
context of an American "Empire."

Mugabe Said to Be Negotiating Possible Exit
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Advisers to President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe
are in talks with the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, amid signs
that Mr. Mugabe may be preparing to resign, a Western diplomatic source
and a prominent Zimbabwe political analyst said Tuesday. The
negotiations about a possible transfer of power away from Mr. Mugabe
come after he apparently concluded that a runoff election would be
demeaning, a diplomat said.

23 Polish Antimilitarist Activists Violently Arrested
From Krzysztof Krol

23 Polish antimilitarist activists were violently arrested on Sunday (30/03/2008) at a private flat of one of them morning after coming back from a demonstration after-party in Slupsk in nothern Poland.

On Saturday (29/03/2008) noon a demonstration against the plans of locating up to ten silo-based long-range missile defence interceptors in Poland took place in Slupsk, a city in northern Poland. The military base where the shield would be placed is located near this city. Around 500 people took part in a peaceful march in the city centre, after that around 50 people came to the military base and tried to come inside but were stopped by the police. Nobody was arrested, one person got a fine for using swearwords and drinking beer.

At night a techno party organized by anti-war activists was organized at one of the local pubs in Slupsk. The activists came back to their flat and around 6 a.m. cops raided their house and arrested the people inside, aged 18 to 35. The police used heavy violence, beating up the activists with batons and using pepper spray. One of the activists had his arm broken and later managed to run away from the hospital.

After an immediate reaction of other activists, lawyers and media cops gave their official version of the event which says that the activists were arrested for „violating the night silence”, some of them are charged with an physical assault and verbal insult of a police officer. First activists were released after 12 hours of interrogation, cops claimed that the activists were drunk and had to sober up before they were questioned. So far (Sunday, 10 p.m.), around 10 people are out, 9 who are charged are still detained and they are said to leave the arrest tomorrow (Monday, 31/03/2008) by 3 p.m. The cops had no legal warrant to come inside the flat. It is not common to send a dozen or so cops to silence people at night, so the argument about them being too loud is clearly a lie.

The Police & Abahlali baseMjondolo

A List of Key Incidents of Police Harassment Suffered by Abahlali baseMjondolo (2005-2007)
- compiled by Stephanie Lynch and Zodwa Nsibande