Struggles Against Commodification of the Mind
November 20th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
The free play of the mind has been managerialised. Holding our way of life to account has yielded to accountancy. The logic of the commodity has now penetrated into the sphere of human needs and nurture, breeding pathological symptoms there. In universities, as in transnational corporations, a largely disaffected labour force confronts a finance-obsessed managerial elite (Terry Eagleton, 2009).
Student occupation at the University of Vienna
November 17th marked the twentieth anniversary of the popular uprising in former Czechoslovakia, when thousands of students marched through the streets of Prague on International Students’ Day. Though officially sanctioned by the government, the occasion was used by the student movement to protest against the stale orthodoxy of the Czechoslovak regime, one of the last remaining Communist outposts in Central Europe. Hours later, when news spread of the violent suppression of the demonstration by security forces, the fate of the increasingly hollow regime was effectively sealed, as the event ushered in a remarkable period of popular mobilisation and mass civil disobedience which ultimately led to the regime’s downfall. Twenty years later, with the Czech student body thoroughly depoliticised, one had to look elsewhere however to find traces of the legacy of the International Students’ Day.
Imagining Radical Change with David Harvey & Alexander Cockburn
November 20th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Event description:
David Harvey, author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism, and Alexander Cockburn, author of End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate, don’t think small when it comes to change. They aren’t afraid to think about significant, even radical changes to the social order we’ve grown so used to, whether it’s requiring full employment, reimagining urban living, or repudiating credit card debt and abolishing Wall Street speculation.
Cry Out by Fares Khouri
November 19th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Reposted from Occupation Magazine 15/11/09.
Cry Out
– Fares Khouri
Cry out in Arabic, Ahmed, and contaminate their ears
Stand at Habima square, and cry out to your friend, who’s on Hertzel street, to bring you the shovel
Disturb all those sitting in Rothschild boulevard with their coddled dogs
Disturb them as they speak about yesterday’s party
About this evening’s Macabi Tel-Aviv match
About the (stinky) orthodox Jew that just got on the bus
About the right-wing government that they aren’t a part of
And about the intelligent Arab they met lately
Cry out, ya Ahmed
Defile their ears with your language
They don’t like it
They fear it
They don’t like to hear your friend’s name
It scares them, disturbs them as they read the leftist paper
Cry out Ahmed, with all the voice that god gave you
Cry out, don’t fear, cry out!
« Read the rest of this entry »
The Buycott Campaign
November 17th, 2009 § 2 Comments
Do you support Israel? Are you fed up with calls to boycott Israeli goods and services? Want to do something about it? NOW YOU CAN. Sign up for BUYCOTT ALERTS today.We’ll alert you when a boycott initiative needs to be countered, and we’ll let you know the results of every BUYCOTT action.
In a twilight zone, where an established state needs protection from grassroot communities, we have the Buycott campaign. Who are these people and how have they sprung up over night?
Encouraging Consumerism and Faking Tolerance
I got to the official Buycott page through Wikipedia, where two lines and two links were thrown together in haste, in order to give the campaign more Google juice. The site has a clean Getty Image-esque design, and considering how quickly this whole campaign was erected, I say touché to my opponents- you may not be worthy, but you know your shit.
Bagram gets a makeover for the Press
November 17th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
A few days ago a group of journalists were allowed to go on a restricted access tour of Bagram Theater Internment Facility, which is located north of Kabul in Afghanistan. Commonly referred to as just “Bagram,” the recently renovated prison (60 million US tax dollars were used to build an additional wing which has been given a new name) is one of the United States’s lesser known “war on terror” inspired “detention facilities.” Ironically, it was widely believed that Bagram actually had more detainees than the now infamous Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, and although US officials had previously ignored all requests made by a number of human rights focused organizations to release information about the prisoners, this was confirmed when an official admitted to currently holding 700 prisoners, 5 of which are juveniles. This was the first time in its history that unofficial outside observers were allowed into the prison, although attending Al Jazeera correspondent James Bays noted that all of this was part of a concentrated effort to fend off slowly but surely increasing negative press that the institution has been getting and generating for the Obama Administration, due at least in part to the previous refusals to release any information about it:
It soon became clear this was part of a concerted drive to show Bagram’s new face. In fact, the new prison block, built at a cost of $60 million has been renamed Parwan Detention Facility. (Parwan is the province, north of Kabul, where Bagram is located.)
Avi Shlaim and Shlomo Sand in conversation with Jacqueline Rose
November 17th, 2009 § 3 Comments
Avi Shlaim and Shlomo Sand in conversation with Jacqueline Rose at the Frontline Club (via PIWP).
Event description:
Few modern conflicts are as attached to history as that of Israel and Palestine. Avi Shlaim, professor of international relations at Oxford will be in conversation with Shlomo Sand, professor of contemporary history at Tel Aviv University, at the Frontline Club for a seminal evening of discussion. « Read the rest of this entry »
Britain’s Israel Lobby
November 16th, 2009 § 6 Comments
UPDATE: You can watch the episode in full here at PULSE, here or here.
Back in 2005 when I set out to write a profile of the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group the Labour Friends of Israel for Spinwatch, I could not find a single in depth study. Nearly five years later, little seems to have changed. All of this cannot be blamed on corporate media collusion; the left is equally complicit. Partly because of dogma, partly cowardice. So it is unsurprising that when finally someone decides to subject the activities of Britain’s powerful Israel lobby to overdue scrutiny (see this in-depth report), it should be a conservative journalist. Peter Oborne has already made an excellent documentary about the persecution of Muslims in Britain for Channel 4′s Dispatches. Tonight at 8 pm, Channel 4 will broadcasting his latest: a brave, hard-hitting look at the Israel lobby in the UK. In the following article Oborne and James Jones explain what motivated them to make this film. (Also check out this Guardian report on the lobby’s bankrolling of the Tory party).
Every year a very grand lunch is given by the Conservative Friends of Israel at a central London hotel. Anyone who is anyone in the Conservative party makes it their business to be there. It is normally addressed by the party leader.
This year’s event took place in June, with the main speech by David Cameron, and the shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, in attendance. The dominant event of the previous 12 months had been the Israeli invasion of Gaza. We were shocked Cameron made no reference in his speech to the massive destruction it caused, or the 1,370 deaths that resulted, or for that matter the invasion itself. Indeed, our likely future prime minister went out of his way to praise Israel because it “strives to protect innocent life”. This remark was not intended satirically.
Canada, CSIS and the Future
November 16th, 2009 § 1 Comment
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes a more than obvious attempt at projecting a "softer" side to Canadians.
When I was in high school my female guidance counsellor (also my Physical Education teacher) asked my class to write out a paragraph describing what we wanted to do in the future career wise. My answer, which was rushed and obviously forced, prompted her to ask me to stay for a moment after the class was over.
“Where are you from, Jasmin?”
I wanted to tell her that I was Canadian, just like her, but knew that she was fishing for something else.
“I was born in Iran.”
“And you don’t know what you want to be when you grow up?”
I half smiled and said I was still working on it.
That’s when she asked me if I spoke Farsi and after realizing that I did, suggested that I consider pursuing a career with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (the Canadian version of the MI6 or CIA), because “they need more people like you.”
George Galloway at the War Crimes Conference
November 16th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
The inimitable George Galloway addresses the War Crimes Conference in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia on 28th October 2009. In three parts.
Strikes Back at Empire
November 15th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Afghan insurgents deploy Fourth Generation Warfare tactics, of which propaganda is a key component. (via ABC News) Also see Thomas Ricks’s post on the army investigation into the rout.
