The notion of the 'failed state' is recurrently invoked to justify military and security interventions. Reviewing two books which take so-called failed states in Africa and South America as their object of enquiry, Angela Mitropoulos questions the founding premises of 'successful' national sovereignty

Porto Marghera – the last firebrands
Screening and presentation/discussion
Friday, 9th of November, 7.30pm, Pullens Estate community centre [see end of page for details]

This Anarchist Federation analysis of the National (UK) ID Database, parts of which are already up and running with no need for cards, needs to be read as widely as possible.  A terrifying account of how much more than abstract 'privacy' is at stake, and FOR WHOM.

Strong analysis of state repression from A Murder of Crows (http://www.geocities.com/amurderofcrows1/), via libcom.org.  Makes the crucial connection between spectacular 'emergency' measures (SWAT teams, anti-terror laws etc) and the racially differentiated class war waged every day as 'community policing'.  

Repression as state strategy - A Murder of Crows

Repression is a topic that is often discussed in the revolutionary milieu, but unfortunately it is a subject that is not well understood.

Editorial from the latest Prol-position newsletter (for live links to the full articles go to: http://www.prol-position.net/) which covers the European labour frontline in depth before turning to Brazil and India...

editorial

The Counterpunch video interview with Peter Linebaugh is at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/ruspoli03142007.html

Just what it says in the title: Peter Linebaugh and companions take a walk in Oaxaca in the aftermath of the state's bloody suppression of indigenous counter-power that may actually have posed a threat. 

January 10, 2007

A Twelfth Night Tale

A Walk in Oaxaca

By PETER LINEBAUGH

Schedule of impending disaster in Iraq according to the oil rights law (cf. Midnight Notes any time since 2003) about to be passed under cover of moral fever over the US cannon fodder 'surge'.  From by-no-means-sympathetic perspective the speculator, sorry, journalist almost acknowledges a common class interest between insurgent Sunni and Shia non-oil-owners, against their 'representatives' including the newly-ministerial Badr Brigades as well as th ex-Ba'ath thanatocrats courted by the occupiers as potential deal-brokers.