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More to be posted soon…
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: berkeley, california, occupations, occupy everything, pre-game, video
Filed under: Uncategorized
From Seattle Local News:
“SEATTLE – A veteran Seattle police officer was fatally shot Saturday night as he and a rookie officer sat in their patrol car in the Central District.
The officer who was killed was identified as Tim Brenton, 39, a nine-year veteran of the Seattle Police Dept.
“Our community is in shock at this brutal and senseless crime,” Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels said at a news conference.
Nickels said this was the first intentional homicide of a Seattle police officer since 1994.
“The killing of someone who protects us, who protects our public safety, who protects our communities, is universally condemned, and our city is united in rejecting this violence and supporting the men and women in uniform,” said Nickels. “Let me be clear. We will not rest until the assailant is brought to justice.”
The shooting occurred shortly after 10 p.m. at 29th Avenue S. and E. Yesler Way.
Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel said the two officers were sitting in a patrol car parked at the intersection, discussing a routine traffic stop. The rookie officer, Britt Sweeney, 33, was sitting in the driver’s seat; her trainer, Brenton, was in the passenger seat.
Pugel said a car pulled up alongside the patrol car and someone inside opened fire.
Sweeney ducked, and a bullet grazed her back. She called for help and returned fire, Pugel said.
Sweeney, who was grazed by a bullet, managed to return fire as the car backed away and fled the scene.
“From everything that we understand, the car literally pulled up alongside the parked patrol car and began shooting,” said Pugel. “So it was without warning and it was a deliberate homicide.”
Police say they do not have a good description of the suspect or the make of the car, other than to say it may be small, light-colored, possibly gray or silver.
Pugel said at the press conference that local state and federal agencies are working on the investigation.
“This is an assassination and every resource is being used to bring it to a conclusion,” he said.”
http://www.king5.com/news/local/Breaking-News-Seattle-police-officer-shot-and-killed-68182712.html
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: communism, form-of-life, french, IEF, intervention, introduction to civil war, theory, tiqqun
According to a well established source, Introduction to Civil War which appeared in the journal Tiqqun is being translated as a whole and made into the fifth book of the Semiotext(e) intervention series, of which The Coming Insurrection was the first.
Here is a zine designed by the IEF of the translated fragments.
11. “War” because in each singular play between forms-of-life, the possibility of a fierce confrontation—the possibility of violence—can never be discounted.
“Civil,” because the confrontation between forms-of-life is not a confrontation between States—those coincidences between a population and a territory—but between parties, in the sense this word had before the advent of the modern State. Because we must be precise from now on, let us say that they confront one another as partisan war machines.
“Civil war” then, because forms-of-life are indifferent to the separations between men from women, political existence from bare life, civilians from military;
because to be neutral is to take sides in the free play of forms-of-life;
because this play between forms-of-life has no beginning or end that can be declared, its sole end being the physical end of the world that no one would be able to declare;
and above all because I know of no body that is not hopelessly carried off into the excessive, and perilous, course of the world.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: agamben, art, artists, capitalism kills, claire fontaine, french people, love, state of exception, war
First three Theses (out of 10):
“1.War happens. We know nothing of war, as they constantly remind us. War – always one and multiple – has been on our plates, since childhood, in what mustn’t go to waste. They resented us for our presumed ignorance of war, as if we were ignoring pain or an illness, or simply as if this forever absent war was now over for good, and it had to be remembered as one remembers a dead family member. Through grief.
2.Well-being. All those born far from war, or after it, know quite well that it isn’t over. They know it as possibility, as a nightmare that might come true. And this knowledge turns disquieting when war explodes in the distance, laying the childhoods, the kitchen smells, the bed sheets of others to waste. The past has dug a grave in the present and is again burying the living there – so they say — but it’s a lie. Because war is really one of the names for our present, and not a tale of days-gone-by. It lives in bodies; it flows through institutions, traverses relationships between strangers and acquaintances, even here, in this moment, for a long while now. And the more we pretend to be innocent and alien to events, the guiltier we know we are. Guilty of not being present where blood is shed, and yet somehow we are there…They used to tell us, “you kids have it all” as if to say “you sons of bitches,” yet who has raised and built this affluence, this inexhaustible source of war? Sometimes we have even suspected that if war is elsewhere, then life must be too.
3.Rest in peace… We know everything about war just like we know everything about prison, without having been there, since they are at the heart of “peace” and “free life,” already implied in them. Just as we know that nobody in our system is innocent, that only power relations exist, and that the losers and not the guilty are the ones being punished. That is why war has become someone else’s dirty job, which we are obliged to ignore. On every street corner they ask us to forget its possibility and its reality, to be surprised by it though never complicit in it. We are thanked in advance for our vigilance. Our choice is between collaborating in the social peace or with the partisans of terror. War is no longer concerned with us, we look at it and it doesn’t look back, it is too close. Its distance from us is not the same as that between a spectator and a football match, where we can still desire victory for one team and defeat for another. It resides in the limbo of things we would like to abolish. So we never have to take sides or believe that words have a weight that can be felt in the body, or that life has a meaning and that this meaning can also lead to its sudden end.”
-Claire Fontaine
http://www.clairefontaine.ws/pdf/footnotes.pdf
After recently reading Homo Sacer by Giogio Agamben, the state of exception has been floating around my mind. It seems to be floating around others’ as well. This is my main justification for posting it, since it has been circulating for a bit already (in the new Politics is Not a Banana and as a zine before that). Claire Fountaine, used to have some sort of relationship with the Tiqqun journal, and used to have some interesting things to say. Now they’re an artist collective who seemingly makes money putting alienation in the form of witty light up signs on gallery walls. Wasn’t there already alienation on the gallery wall?
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About:
“AAAARG is a conversation platform – at different times it performs as a school, or a reading group, or a journal.
AAAARG was created with the intention of developing critical discourse outside of an institutional framework. But rather than thinking of it like a new building, imagine scaffolding that attaches onto existing buildings and creates new architectures between them.”
One might use this as an example of how the academic institutional discourse infiltrates life “outside” of itself, by contaminating the “non-institutional” with its structures, as well as what was stated as the reverse. Why do we read these texts? Why are they important? Lately our friends have been flirting with and jumping into the accumulation of the discourse of critical theory, which doesn’t appear as a worthwhile endeavor in of itself. Some of us have become excited by the idea of applying the profaning highway robber and theoretical hooligan as a model to this; to steal, salvage and use these concepts in whatever ways (especially inappropriate) that are useful to us, not whatever simply reproduces the discourse.
As they say: “When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
It is at least a good source of critical theory that we don’t have to pay for… There are a lot of interesting and important texts compiled and accessible for use here.
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From the start of the essay:
“The everyday practical activity of tribesmen reproduces, or perpetuates, a tribe. This reproduction is not merely physical, but social as well. Through their daily activities the tribesmen do not merely reproduce a group of human beings; they reproduce a tribe, namely a particular social form within which this group of human beings performs specific activities in a specific manner. The specific activities of the tribesmen are not the outcome of “natural” characteristics of the men who perform them, the way the production of honey is an outcome of the “nature” of a bee. The daily life enacted and perpetuated by the tribesman is a specific social response to particular material and historical conditions.
The everyday activity of slaves reproduces slavery. Through their daily activities, slaves do not merely reproduce themselves and their masters physically; they also reproduce the instruments with which the master represses them, and their own habits of submission to the master’s authority. To men who live in a slave society, the master-slave relation seems like a natural and eternal relation. However, men are not born masters or slaves. Slavery is a specific social form, and men submit to it only in very particular material and historical conditions.
The practical everyday activity of wage-workers reproduces wage labor and capital. Through their daily activities, “modern” men, like tribesmen and slaves, reproduce the inhabitants, the social relations and the ideas of their society; they reproduce the social form of daily life. Like the tribe and the slave system, the capitalist system is neither the natural nor the final form of human society; like the earlier social forms, capitalism is a specific response to material and historical conditions.
Unlike earlier forms of social activity, everyday life in capitalist society systematically transforms the material conditions to which capitalism originally responded. Some of the material limits to human activity come gradually under human control. At a high level of industrialization, practical activity creates its own material conditions as well as its social form. Thus the subject of analysis is not only how practical activity in capitalist society reproduces capitalist society, but also how this activity itself eliminates the material conditions to which capitalism is a response.
Daily Life in Capitalist Society
The social form of people’s regular activities under capitalism is a response to a certain material and historical situation. The material and historical conditions explain the origin of the capitalist form, but do not explain why this form continues after the initial situation disappears. A concept of “cultural lag” is not an explanation of the continuity of a social form after the disappearance of the initial conditions to which it responded. This concept is merely a name for the continuity of the social form. When the concept of “cultural lag” parades as a name for a “social force” which determines human activity, it is an obfuscation which presents the outcome of people’s activities as an external force beyond their control. This is not only true of a concept like “cultural lag.” Many of the terms used by Marx to describe people’s activities have been raised to the status of external and even “natural” forces which determine people’s activity; thus concepts like “class struggle,” “production relations” and particularly “The Dialectic,” play the same role in the theories of some “Marxists” that “Original Sin,” “Fate” and “The Hand of Destiny” played in the theories of medieval mystifiers.
In the performance of their daily activities, the members of capitalist society simultaneously carry out two processes: they reproduce the form of their activities, and they eliminate the material conditions to which this form of activity initially responded. But they do not know they carry out these processes; their own activities are not transparent to them. They are under the illusion that their activities are responses to natural conditions beyond their control and do not see that they are themselves authors of those conditions. The task of capitalist ideology is to maintain the veil which keeps people from seeing that their own activities reproduce the form of their daily life; the task of critical theory is to unveil the activities of daily life, to render them transparent, to make the reproduction of the social form of capitalist activity visible within people’s daily activities.
Under capitalism, daily life consists of related activities which reproduce and expand the capitalist form of social activity. The sale of labor-time for a price (a wage), the embodiment of labortime in commodities (saleable goods, both tangible and intangible), the consumption of tangible and intangible commodities (such as consumer goods and spectacles)-these activities which characterize daily life under capitalism are not manifestations of “human nature,” nor are they imposed on men by forces beyond their control.
If it is held that man is “by nature” an uninventive tribesman and an inventive businessman, a submissive slave and a proud craftsman an independent hunter and a dependent wage-worker, then either man’s “nature” is an empty concept, or man’s “nature” depends on material and historical conditions, and is in fact a response to those conditions.”
-Fredy Perlman
Understandings of capital, anarchism, communism, and introductions to communicating these ideas outside of their familiar categories are extremely difficult to come by. This would be one of the few texts that introduces basic concepts regarding the social relation of capitalism in an easy to understand and concise manner.
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According to the Sydney Morning Herald:
“Hundreds of villagers broke into a smelting plant in north China blamed for the lead poisoning of more than 600 children, smashing trucks in protest, state media says.
About 100 policemen were deployed after the villagers in Shaanxi province’s Changqing township destroyed fencing around a special plant railway to gain access to the facility, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.
At least 10 trucks were damaged, the report said.
A policeman in Changqing township, who refused to be named, told Agence France-Presse the villagers had dispersed.
“Police are maintaining order at the scene,” he said, refusing to provide further details.
The local government refused to comment.
Tests have shown that at least 615 children out of 731 living in two villages near the Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting Co plant have excessive lead levels in their blood.
A total of 166 were hospitalised while the rest are to be treated at home.
On Sunday, Xinhua quoted Han Qinyou, head of an environmental protection monitoring station where the smelting plant is located, as saying the air near the plant was found to contain high lead levels.
“Lead content in the air along the main roads near the company is 6.3 times that of the monitoring sites 350 metres away from the roads,” Han was quoted as saying.
The lead levels in the blood of the children tested ranged from 100 milligrams to more than 500 milligrams per litre, compared with normal levels of between zero and 100 milligrams.
A reading of more than 200 milligrams is considered hazardous.
Children are more vulnerable to lead poisoning, which can harm the nervous system.”
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“Politics is Not a Banana is at the printer. After some practical gestures to expose a plane of consistency for theory and practice, a few old questions posed from a different angle, a bit too much smoking inside, and an excessive use of typography, Politics is Not a Banana: “What are you doing…” has reached its threshold. Some 168 pages of content, color covers, off-set printing and 2-color-pantone insides as a perfect bound 4.25x7in assemblage will make up the machine of PNB. Around a thousand copies will be printed for the first run. Seriously, we don’t even know a thousand people, much less a thousand people who will want to read this fucking thing.
“Politics is Not a Banana: What are you doing…” is not “Politics is Not a Banana 2.” While it is certain that the Politics is Not a Banana that has been floating around since spring of ’08 was the first of many issues we have, it was not “Politics is Not a Banana 1.” This project is not intended for progress or development. If by chance we get worse over time, it is because we will have given in to the seduction of becoming a better commodity or a more terrible practice of print—which are temptations that are felt at every corner. If the former is the case, it would behoove you to not merely denounce us. If the latter is the case, may god have mercy on the anarchist milieu.
“Blablabla form blablabla content”
We believe that we can get what we want. Its difficult perhaps; we have to become sensitive to each other in order to really be expositional, rather than merely performative[1]. However, with a meaningful practice of doing relationships how we want to, we may accidentally stumble upon something a bit better than just a different form of terrible. It is this logic that motivates the experiment with the commodity known as Politics is Not a Banana.
The Institute for Experimental Freedom would like to congratulate itself. We engage in projects with a certain lightness and prefer the form of the experiment, which serves to prove—to give experience—to a what we believe to be sensible. If the 7×7 issue of Politics is Not a Banana proved anything, it was that the practice of DIY print (zines) could be reappropriated. Solidarities between service workers felt as inclinations were made material, and whatever force of seduction was afforded to Politics is Not Banana translated into crews across the US figuring out their own shit and printing a few copies. The theft and use of the hookup network between various metropolitan service workers made the initial 300 copies of Politics is Not a Banana possible. The use of the information super highway and the PDF form accounts for the other immaterial conditions which gave Politics is Not a Banana its strangely vast distribution. The practice of so called DIY print is not dead, it is merely refined.
Cool.
Despite the fact that Politics is Not a Banana “What are you doing…” was professionally printed, it should not to be understood as form in favor of content. Rather, it is an elaboration of the methods employed to produce the glossy pages and the design decisions of the first issue that tormented Anarchy Magazine. Should we pay from our own pockets to produce beautiful things that will be captured as commodities? Never. Although, sometimes we do. This time, however, like the last, is a testament to what is possible through a profaned use of class antagonisms, friends, sadomasochism, a few hoops to jump through, and, of course, material solidarities. Although currently we shamefully practice doing the commodity ethically or whatever, perhaps soon we’ll give the purists a real reason to hate us.
Don’t mistake cohesion and rhythm for a coherent political program. Although some readers will applaud a more easy to follow amalgamation of texts, Politics is Not a Banana “What are you doing…” is not the result of ideological unity between contributors. After carefully reading the proofs, the editors of Politics is Not a Banana turned to each other and shared the tiniest single tear for the undoubtedly stupid readings of our so-called work of art. Yes, we could have more effectively splayed aphorisms and nonsensical maxims across the page; we could have interrupted the reader with more confusing pornography, with more experimental fictions, but then again we, so charitably, decided to cut a lot of our own writing. Perhaps we can all learn a valuable lesson: there is more to the practice of radical discourse than propaganda and discipline. Make no mistake, we could give a fuck, and we certainly do give fucks, but our perversity cannot be contained in any one literary singularity. We take whatever seriously.
So how will we distribute this? How will we share our shame and power? How will we write our ignoble desire on new generations?
We have no illusions about the class composition of our friends and comrades—we work stupid jobs and survive on coffee and theft, but we’re pretty good at it. Likewise, we have no fucking idea what to do with a thousand copies of anything. When anarchists give us their newspaper advertisements for this or that protest, we are usually able to get rid of like twenty and then the rest usually sit around. Sometimes print is lucky enough to be used for kindling. Most times, it’s near a toilet. “Politics is Not a Banana: What are you doing…” is useless as toilet paper. It is best as a sexual technology or fashion accessory.
It is from this knowledge that we pose the question to our comrades, to our vile territories of revolt-in-practice. We will be selling Politics is Not a Banana at a retail price (around $10-12) and a wholesale price (around $5-6). We ask that comrades buy fifty or so at wholesale and then sell it to make a reasonable amount of profit to benefit their projects; we ask that distributors get in touch too, but we’re not super worried if Glenn Beck doesn’t cry about us on Fox news. We ask also that comrades in university and comrades who work with social spaces would be so kind to get in touch with us, to prepare this year’s IEF tour (SRSLY IEF T0URz 0MG!!!!1).”
Nothing is too beautiful for the unwanted children of capital,
-IEF friends
from the dirty, and across the puddle ’09
