(From Perspectives on Anarchist Theory , the biannual newsletter of the Institute for Anarchist Studies, Spring 2004 - Volume 8, Number 1)

The Life--or Death--of the Anti-Globalization Movement

The anti-globalization movement that erupted onto the scene in Seattle 1999 frightened elites and inspired activists around the world to fight the system in a utopian, anti-authoritarian way. However, this movement has occupied a much less significant place on the public stage since the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001. Is it over?

We asked Marina Sitrin (IAS grant recipient) and Chuck Morse (IAS board member) for their thoughts on this question.

Marina Sitrin's Response / Chuck Morse's Response

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Kurtz is an internationally recognized lecturer in the areas of genetic manipulation and information technology. Critical Arts Ensemble has published several books encouraging popular response to the specialized field of scientific investigation. (See autonomedia.net).

Financial and other support can be made at CAEdefense@rtmark.com.

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The State of Emergency as the Empire's Mode of Governance.
by Jean-Claude Paye
translated by Patrice Riemens

Originally published in Multitudes 16, March 2004.

The atrocities of September 11, 2001 caused an unprecedented acceleration in the transformation of the corpus of criminal and criminal procedure laws in Western countries. In the months following the outrage, and sometimes within days, governments have enacted measures curtailing public and private liberties. In our opinion, a real break is taking place, because it is the very existence of the rule of law as we know it which is at stake.

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The State of Emergency - A Reader

She is married to a man she loathes but who has her almost completely in his power ... [So] Sue Ellen’s ... alcoholism functions as a metaphor for her enduring state of crisis ... Such a state of crisis is not at all exceptional or uncommon in the context of the soap opera genre. On the contrary, crisis can be said to be endemic to it.- Ien Ang on Sue Ellen from Dallas.

In 1940, Walter Benjamin - a Marxist Jew in exile in France - wrote that “[t]he tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception, but the rule.” Just as crisis is the normal state for a soap opera about oil fortunes (i.e., Dallas), crisis is the normal state for the soap opera about oil fortunes in which we live (i.e., the world).

( Read More... | 383 words in story | Analysis & Polemic )

Everyone knows by now (or should) that the Patriot Act allows the FBI to conduct surveillance on Internet and email usage. Using so-called National Security Letters (NSLs), the FBI directs Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide passwords and identifying information that will allow the government to target people who are plotting terrorism or who are otherwise potentially dangerous to national security. I am sure that many of you reading this (and I, likely) have the government in our computers.

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Early last February, a 19-year-old sophomore dragged himself into the psychiatric emergency ward at a large American university hospital, complaining that his friends and family were plotting against him. Though the fellow knew his thoughts were irrational, he could not shake his bout of paranoia. He also told the receiving staff that six weeks earlier he had swallowed an unknown amount of 2C-I, a recreational drug that, in his case, produced bright colors and swirling patterns and a suffocating onslaught of cosmic dread. The bad vibes had recurred with increasing ferocity in the intervening weeks, until he finally decided to check himself in.

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The "New" Europe

The European Union as from May 1 has ten new member-countries. It extended its membership after years of debate and indecisiveness and became the world's single biggest market with a population of 450 million. Not only that the extended EU increased its economic potential, and eventually its worldwide influence and economic power, but it created a part of the world which will presumably be a respective, almost equal, competitor to the US on the global political landscape in quest for global dominance.

As it is, there are some significant downsides to this spectacular "Europeanization of Europe". Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, as some of the new members are societies with a dreadful recent past of unsuccessful communism. Their economies were systematically ruined by the overwhelming influence of Stalinist Soviet Union and the population of those countries as a whole lack, if we can call it like that, a basic training course in democracy. Of course, some countries, like for example Slovenia, had more ideological and geographical contacts with Western Europe, and therefore have developed a stronger sense of what "capitalism" and "democracy" as abstract concepts mean. Thus, this Slovenian experience reflected itself to certain extent in the current socio-political situation in the country which is, along with Cyprus, the richest newcomer in EU with a GDP per head of 69% of EU average.

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The photos from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison are snapshots, not of simple brutality or a breakdown in discipline, but of CIA torture techniques that have metastasized, over the past 50 years, like an undetected cancer inside the US intelligence community.

From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led massive, secret research into coercion and consciousness that reached a billion dollars at peak. After experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, electric shocks, and sensory deprivation, this CIA research produced a new method of torture that was psychological, not physical — best described as "no touch torture."

The CIA's discovery of psychological torture was a counter-intuitive break-through — indeed, the first real revolution in this cruel science since the 17th century. In its modern application, the physical approach required interrogators to inflict pain, usually by crude beatings that often produced heightened resistance or unreliable information. Under the CIA's new psychological paradigm, however, interrogators used two essential methods, disorientation and self-inflicted pain, to make victims feel responsible for their own suffering.

( Read More... | 932 words in story | Analysis & Polemic )

"It's been a bad week on the repression front for the p2p community. Last weekend Isamu Kaneko was arrested (10 million yen — more than $100,000 — has already been raised by his supporters to assist in his defense). Shortly afterwards, the RIAA began proceedings against another 493 defendants in the United States. Lastly a private law firm has announced suits against 20 p2p users in Korea, mostly for downloading movies."

Isamu Kaneko, Winny, P2P Repression

Isamu Kaneko, author of Winny, the Japanese P2P software with encrypted networking capability, similar to Freenet, has been officially arrested on copyright-related charges. The charge of violating copyright laws carries up to three years in prison or a fine of up to 3 million yen ($27,000).

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One of the most astonishing remarks that George W. Bush made in his Army War College speech laying out a five-step plan to re-engineer the occupation is his declaration that "America will fund the construction of a modern maximum security prison. When that prison is completed detainees at Abu Ghraib will be relocated. Then with the approval of the Iraqi government we will demolish the Abu Ghraib prison as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning" ("Transcript of Bush Speech on US Strategy in Iraq," Financial Times, May 25 2004). Then again, it is quite fitting that an empire built by a prison state -- "a nation that incarcerates 2.2 million people -- one-quarter of all the world's prisoners" (Alan Elsner, "If US Plays Global Prison Ratings Game, It Ought to Play by Its Own Rules," Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2004) -- will be a prison empire.

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