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It never fails to get my adrenaline flowing when my hotel rumbles from a car bomb detonating in central Baghdad.

Last night around 7 pm the explosion occurred at a hotel compound which houses foreign contractors over near Firdos Square.

Shortly there after the “Green Zone” took a sustained mortar attack which went on long enough for them to hit the blaring sirens which warn the inhabitants to take cover, long after the mortar rounds had stopped falling.

Iraq’s borders with Syria and Jordan remain closed, according to US-appointed prime minister Allawi since declaring Iraq in a state of “national emergency.”

( Read More... | 990 words in story | 1 comment | News )

Part 1
The Nicest Guys You Can Imagine

In their film, The Corporation, Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan describe how in the mid-1800s the corporation was declared a "fictitious person" in law and granted the same legal rights as real individuals. So what kind of 'person' is a corporation?

The filmmakers assessed the corporate 'personality' using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organisation and standard diagnostic tools of psychiatrists and psychologists:
"The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social 'personality': It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism... Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a 'psychopath.'"

( Read More... | 2626 words in story | Analysis & Polemic )

"Marines Self-Destruct"
Robert S. Finnegan, Southeast Asia News

There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its ’finger men’ to point out enemies, its ‘muscle men’ to destroy enemies, its ‘brain guys’ to plan war preparations, and a ‘Big Boss, Supra-nationalistic Capitalism. It may seem odd for me a military man, to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to do so. I spent thirty-five years and four months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps.

( Read More... | 893 words in story | News )

He hadn't appeared in public in 12 years, this former professor and university provost, Marxist philosopher specializing in the thought of Kant, and Chairman of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP, popularly known as Sendero Luminoso or "the Shining Path"). From 1980 he had led what became the most powerful communist insurgency in the Western Hemisphere. By the time of his capture in 1992, U.S. intelligence analysts estimated that up to one-half of Peru was more in the hands of the Senderistas, fighting their Maoist People's War, than those of the Peruvian state. He was regarded by his followers as the "Fourth Sword" of Marxism, and by his foes and the mainstream press almost everywhere as a "terrorist" responsible for all 70,000 deaths in a long civil conflict. Abimael Guzman (aka Presidente Gonzalo) met the press and the people in a Lima courtroom November 5.

( Read More... | 1226 words in story | Analysis & Polemic )

"God Bless America"
John Chuckman

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." — Alexis de Tocqueville

( Read More... | 1575 words in story | 1 comment | Analysis & Polemic )

As American forces penetrate ever deeper and more destructively into the city of Falluja, each of the major players in this violent drama is engaged in a complex, constantly shifting calculus involving ways of turning events to their advantage. Of the many possible outcomes to the battle of Falluja, the four which seem most plausible follow, starting with the one that might be viewed most positively by the Bush administration. In sum, they offer us a grim picture of how the window of success has closed on American strategists in Iraq. Even the "best" outcomes below (from the administration's point of view) have lost the trappings of freedom and democracy that helped justify the invasion nineteen months ago.

( Read More... | 2135 words in story | Analysis & Polemic )

"Ten Theses on the Multitude
and Post-Fordist Capitalism"
Paolo Virno

I have attempted to describe the nature of contemporary production, socalled post-Fordism, on the basis of categories drawn from political philosophy, ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. I have done so not as a professional exercise, but because I am truly convinced that, in order for it to be described clearly, the mode of contemporary production demands this variety of analyses, this breadth of views. One cannot understand post-Fordism without having recourse to a cluster of ethical-linguistic concepts. As is obvious, moreover, this is where the matter of fact lies in the progressive identification between poiesis and language, production and communication.

( Read More... | 3837 words in story | 1 comment | Analysis & Polemic )

"Operaismo, Autonomia, Settantasette in Translation: Then, Now, The Future" (1)
Steve Wright

Originally published in Strategies, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2003

Engagement with Negri’s work has also been on the rise in the English language press, as reactions to the success of the book Empire (co-authored with Michael Hardt) attest. Within the various circles active against global capital, interest in Negri has also been marked, with his ideas concerning the changing nature of the world capitalist system widely debated.

( Read More... | 7286 words in story | Analysis & Polemic )

Wherever he may be buried when he passes away, the day will come when his remains will be reinterred by a free Palestinian government in the holy shrines in Jerusalem. Yasser Arafat is one of the generation of great leaders who arose after World War II. The stature of a leader is not simply determined by the size of his achievements, but also by the size of the obstacles he had to overcome. In this respect, Arafat has no competitor in the world: no leader of our generation has been called upon to face such cruel tests and to cope with such adversities as he.

( Read More... | 1734 words in story | 1 comment | Events )