An interesting looking Kickstarter project. "The anthology will emphasize women's speculative fiction from the mid-1970s onward, looking to explore women's rights as well as gender/race/class/etc. from as many perspectives as possible. The contributors are not yet established so we hesitate to name names, but rights  to reprint stories from Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia E. Butler, Joanna Russ, and James Tiptree Jr. would be sought in addition to a wealth of newer voices in the field. Ann and Jeff consider the anthology "to be an opportunity to contribute to the existing conversation about feminist speculative fiction, a conversation that has taken many forms over the years and has a long and established history." Funding covers the editors' fee, contributor fees/advances, book design, printing, as much advertising and promotion as possible. To help the project get off the ground the editors have agreed to take a small honorarium as their fee, with no share of royalties."

A book about protest posters.

"So what happened to the century that trusted in the future? If we look to the year 1977, we find it to be especially important in the history of mankind. It is the year Charlie Chaplin died, a moment that that, to my mind, marked the end of a possibility for a kind of a humane and gentle modernity. It is the end of a contradictory, controversial perception of time in modernity, the time of the horrible machine, invading and destroying my life. That same year, Uri Andropov, former head of the KGB, wrote a letter to Leonid Brezhnev, explaining that the USSR had five years left to close the gap with the United States in the field of information technology, or all would be lost. We all know how that story ended. But 1977 is also the year that, in a small Silicon Valley lab, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created user-friendly interfaces bearing the Apple trademark. This is not about the Indiani Metropolitani in Rome and in Bologna, but about Sid Vicious crying “no future” in 1977: the future is over—don’t think about your future, because you don’t have one. In a sense, this cry was the final premonition of the end of the modern age, of the end of industrial capitalism and the beginning of a new age of total violence. If capitalism is to go on in the history of mankind, then the history of mankind must become the place of total violence, because only the violence of competition can decide the value of time."

"Dutch artist and graphic designer Jacqueline de Jong joined the Situationist International in 1960. De Jong suggested the publication of an English language newsletter in November of 1960, to be co-edited with British Situationist Alexander Trocchi (who was in prison at the time). The publication was widely discussed at Situationist conferences in 1961, and the first issue of The Situationist Times was published in May of 1962. This year also saw the escalation of the long-standing friction between the aesthetic side of the Situationists and the political side, resulting in the expulsion of the German and Scandinavian Situationists. De Jong resigned/was expelled in February 1962 because of her solidarity with the German Situationist Group SPUR whom Guy Debord had expelled earlier. As the divide between Debord's Situationist circle and the Scandinavian and German Situationists widened, De Jong remained impartial. Key contributors to the Situationist Times included Debord, Asger Jorn, Gruppe SPUR and others from "both sides" throughout its years of publication."

"There are a lot of politics involved: some overt and readable, and some more subtle. Other openly political pieces include Josh On’s They Rule, which is a pillar in the history of interactive websites. Also, there are pieces that are about active citizens like Ushahidi. And, there are pieces that are about clear and empathetic information, like BBC Dimensions. The Homeless City Guide is also in that realm — there are different scales of politics represented in this show, from the very intimate to the cosmic. I would say that of course there are designers that still make furniture and products, and they might not express all their politics into an iPad or an iPod; but still, I consider political every action of making. And how much you can express yourself. As a designer you have to look professional, so sometimes you will have a great commission that enables you to really make your voice heard and other times, you will have to have side jobs that are your own art."

"Scanning through the blog I think of David Greene (of the sixties avant garde architecture group Archigram), and his quasi-imaginary ‘Institute for Electric Anthropology’ (ref), which he has used since the early-1970s to talk about the ways in which new technologies and communication networks alter modern life. The NA blog certainly constitutes some kind of electric anthropology, and could even become a department in Greene’s ‘Invisible University’ project? Several other commentators have made connections to the work of earlier twentieth century avant garde art movements. In the panel discussion Joanne McNeil of Rhizome talked about how technology changes perception, referencing the work of Cubists and Futurists. Several others have also asked whether this constitutes (or needs) a manifesto of some kind? Sterling suggests that the NA material is ‘like early photography for French Impressionists, or like silent film for Russian Constructivists, or like abstract-dynamics for Italian Futurists.’ This all makes some sense, as this is in many ways a classic modernist research project: the material is after all object trouvé, an assemblage of found ready-mades, stuff circulating in the world. Perhaps we should read the tumblr blog as a neo-Dadaist assemblage, a reworking of a Kurt Schwitters Merzbau? Or perhaps it is better to think of it in terms of the kind of contemporary artworks that have a strong curatorial aspect within the art itself? Something like say some of the work of the Otolith Group, or Mark Leckey? Thinking about it as an art project only gets us so far though… let’s look at the material a bit more closely…"

This is a curious collection of articles, photography and interviews about the Scandinavian Situationists (also known as the Nashites). The pieces are easily accessible and informative, if at times a bit dry and somewhat pedantic. What I found most appealing was the honesty of the interviews with Jacqueline de Jong, editor of The Situationist Times. De Jong talks with candour about the treachery of the famous 1962 split, the subsequent artistic explorations of the commune at Drakabygget, in southern Sweden, and the role of women in the movements in which she was involved. Debord, Jorn and Vaneigem are all to easily shrouded in a certain reverential mystique common to left-wing heroes. This book does away with that, particularly in its dealings with Jørgen Nash and his longtime collaborator Jens Jørgen Thorson. Nash and Jørgen are presented as artistic gangsters, provocateurs who were never accepted by the bourgeois art establishment. In what little is presented of their notes the reader starts to see a definitive move away from the exclusivity of the Situationist International and towards a more distinctively Scandinavian revolutionary practice - one of openness, participation and self-critique.

For Mckenzie Wark a détournement of the legacy of the Situationist International must include the taking of paths less travelled. Since May '68 a veritable micro-industry of critical theory has emerged - a commoditisation of revolution - producing, to paraphrase Wark, enough books to rebuild the barricades. The only way any one work can contribute to this today, while at the same time remain true to its spirit, is by being both within and against the sprawl of its historical weight. Wark attempts to achieve precisely this, taking the reader upon a meandering dérive through the minor characters and side stories of the Situationist International: Isou, Chtcheglov, Bernstein, Lefebvre, Jorn, de Jong, Spur, Trocchi and Constant. The Beach Beneath The Street is an ambitious book. It is consistent in both style and content - faithful, I think, to the character of the period and movement which it describes. Like the Situationist International however it lacks the coherence expected of academia. This is intentional, and makes for an entertaining read, but those seeking a rigorous study of the subject should perhaps consider looking elsewhere.

This book offers a multitude of voices on the changing character of recent social movement. The authors tell us that the graduate without a future, the loss of faith in party politics, the lack of canonical texts/media-outlets, the possibility for fast and anonymous communications and actions online, and the changing characteristics of power and subjectivity (precarity and the entrepreneuriat) all mark a move towards a more anarchic politics. Some implore social movements to move beyond their current defensive rhetoric and instead insist on new, more deeply democratic modes of organisation. Others demand that they fight back and wound capital more deeply than they have themselves been wounded. This multitude of voices is the book's strength, but it is also it's weakness: that there is no coherent strategy or responsive methodology. We are left instead with numerous provocations and numerous questions still to be addressed.

In this article Merrifield lays out the thesis for his upcoming book on politics of the encounter. He argues first that the idea of a right to the city is too abstract and too vague to be useful as a cry and a demand for urban change. Then he goes on to suggest that the affinity politics of the encounter is a more suitable slogan - one that does not necessitate material or temporal bounds. 'Here Comes Everybody' is then a class that does not require organisers or professional activists. A process without a subject. The questions become: how do we sustain the affinity or common in the encounter? what does this do to space? what new subjectivities and encounters arise? My feeling is that the subject of 'everybody' is being pulled in two directions. In the first instance towards the identity produced by Facebook, Google and data mining. And as its negation, towards the identity of Anonymous. This reinscribing of identity is a form of power being mapped onto the urban. It changes space and the city but also affinity and the encounter.

"The spirit of lulz is not particular to Anonymous, the Internet, trolling, or our times. The Dadaists and Yippies shared a similarly rowdy disposition, as did the Situationists and Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers; more recently, the Yes Men have tightly fused pranksterism and activism, in one instance presenting a three-foot-long golden penis (“employee visualization appendage”) at a WTO textile-industry conference as a means of controlling workers, to the applause of the management-class crowd. These transgressions serve many purposes, upending the conventions—and highlighting the absurdities—of a political system within which substantive change no longer seems possible, and generating the kind of spectacles that elicit coverage from the mainstream media. But the aforementioned groups were conceived as radical political enterprises, with a limited purview and a vanguardist composition. What sets Anonymous apart is its fluid membership and organic political evolution."

"It is incumbent on us to drastically re-think how we design infrastructure. It is quite possible that mono-functional infrastructure is dead. Infrastructure cannot just do one thing anymore – it must do many things – ecologically, socially, and financially. It must produce as much as it exhausts. It must seek out new ways of generating value. It must couple, triple, and quadruple functions wherever possible. Like the scientists of the past, on a quest to discover a perpetual motion machine, our new mission should be to search out an elusive perpetual infrastructure machine – an infrastructure that once built, will no longer require any additional inputs to keep it going.  And while the scientists ultimately failed in their quest, their mission brought them a thousand-fold closer to their goal.  And so it should be with infrastructure."

I'm looking forward to receiving a review copy of The Insurgent Barricade by Mark Traugott next week, and, in the context of that book, this "enormous inflatable cylinder" could take on other, aboveground roles, such as intervening in and impossibly redirecting urban movement (both in the name of security and insurgency). To put this in somewhat absurd terms, what might the Paris Commune have looked like, for instance, had its participants used giant, knife-proof inflatable objects, like revolutionary sausages blocking access to whole streets? In any case, whether or not these or other such "plugs" will be permanently installed, like automotive airbags, inside underground infrastructure is yet to be decided; but it seems quite likely that affordably fabricated, inflatable barriers will become regular architectural safety features of a subterranean system near you.

"The last few months, however, have brought news from abroad suggesting that in many places, punk's combination of splenetic dissent, loud guitars and outre attire can cause as much disquiet and outrage as ever. The stories concerned take in Indonesia, Burma, Iraq and Russia – and most highlight one big difference between the hoo-hah kicked up by punk in the US and Britain of the late 70s, and the reactions it now stirs thousands of miles from its places of birth. Back then, being a punk rocker might invite occasional attacks in the street, a ban on your records, and the odd difficulty finding somewhere to play. Now, if you pursue a love of punk in the wrong political circumstances, you may well experience oppression at its most brutal: torture, imprisonment, what one regime calls "moral rehabilitation" and even death."

"This renaissance won't be of the cosmetic variety: it will be structural and bear witness to the subordination of those that control the speculation of value to those that control the production of technology, food, energy and knowledge as capital. Crucially, it will require "production" to assume a more devolved focus, with the transfer of power shifting to "the local" as domestic energy security, amongst others, becomes a reality. With this, it will be necessary for government – and particularly local government – to shift away from its traditional priority of servicing its community, towards strengthening it. To this end, local government is arguably at the forefront of efforts to create more resilient local communities, a task which requires their structures, resourcing and corporate accountancy to reflect strengthening rather than servicing."

"While I’m perfectly willing to accept that many of the Uni Lad users, and even the site administrators, are genuinely ‘joking’ (in the sense that they would not actually commit rape), their ‘jokes’ normalise misogyny, and ensure that those men who have raped and those who would rape believe that this is normal and acceptable. In the UK, statistics show that on average a woman gets raped every six minutes. These ‘jokes’ foster an attitude of acceptance of a crime that ruins lives on a daily basis; there is no subversion, no intellectual defence, and no shock – it is laughing at the reality of violence perpetrated against women, and actively encouraging it."

"Think about an alternative racial history of the 1990s. It goes without saying that the 90s were a strange time: neoliberal triumphalism gave birth to a culture of political correctness and a reigning sensibility of diversity based on the simple belief we can all just get along. Yet, at every step of the way, it was accompanied by intense forms of division and surreal spectacles of discrimination of virtually every stripe imaginable." This seems to be somewhere between radical politics and science fiction. If only I lived in NYC.

The aesthetics of the communist space program as an anticedent to crisis of meaning on the left.

"What post-capitalism needs is an imaginary that intersects the above justifications with a positive vision of the future that capitalism has failed to deliver. And part of this means rescuing the most lasting merits of the Soviet experiment. For while everyone can agree that the USSR had many failings, it remains the case that the artistic, architectural and technological development it stood for was in many cases a widely recognized concrete achievement. No one can deny the quality of their space programme. Even recently in London there has been two major exhibitions showcasing some of futurist ambitions of Soviet communism: Building the Revolution at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Red Skies season of Soviet science fiction at the British Film institute.  There is an element of aesthetics here as well as actual ambitions."

Detroit has given rise to the emergence of new artistic collectives, galleries and organizations that are all facilitating collaborative artistic and community projects throughout the city. [T]his new appearance of the ‘commons' and cultural community engagement [is tied] to the theoretical formulation of “real utopias”… A “real” utopian project, defined in opposition to the classic idealist strain by its insistence on the rigorous pursuit of attainable goals, places its aspirations on actualizing viable emancipatory social and political achievements through the principled and pragmatic transformation of dominant institutional structures… [W]ith the burgeoning artistic scene of Detroit and the deeply intertwined and mutually reinforcing nature of aesthetics and politics, the city is beginning to feel itself undergoing serious “revolutionary” and “evolutionary” changes and possible “utopian” alternatives to the former reigning institutions of privatized and corporate space and culture.

"“There’s so much money on the Upper East Side right now,” she said. “If you look at the original movie Wall Street, it was a phenomenon where there were men in their 30s and 40s making $2 and $3 million a year, and that was disgusting. But then you had the Internet age, and then globalization… As an example, she described a conversation with a couple at a Manhattan dinner party: “They started saying, ‘If you’re going to buy all this stuff, life starts getting really expensive. If you’re going to do the NetJet thing’”—this is a service offering “fractional aircraft ownership” for those who do not wish to buy outright—“‘and if you’re going to have four houses, and you’re going to run the four houses, it’s like you start spending some money.’” The clincher, Peterson says, came from the wife: “She turns to me and she goes, ‘You know, the thing about 20’”—by this, she meant $20 million a year—“‘is 20 is only 10 after taxes.’ And everyone at the table is nodding.”"

"I don't think it is a coincidence that recent polls show that only about 17 percent of black youth support the Tea Party, compared to 34 percent of white youth and 15 percent of Latino youth. Black youth understand that the policies advanced by Tea Party candidates and members will mean a more limited role for the government in the lives of everyday Americans. And while many believe that the reach of the government has extended too far, black youth realize that many of the opportunities secured by the mobilization of Blacks and others from the Civil Rights Movement through the election of President Obama have only been implemented and protected by an activist and expanded federal government."

"As people elsewhere are killed for their belief in democracy and the rule of law, the supposed controversies of British politics inevitably rather fade. By comparison, we live in an Eden of stability, and argue over mere increments: to be getting in a lather about Cameron and Clegg can easily feel not just indulgent, but indecent. Still, there is a tale to be told that includes Westminster as well as Tripoli and Cairo, and underlines what watershed times these are. Much of the world's current tumult is traceable to the long and tangled fall-out from the crash of 2008 (note the role of rising food prices in recent unrest). And though most commentators seem either too polite or deluded to recognise it, the British side of this story is rapidly being revealed: not just cuts, but the most far-reaching attempt to remodel British society in 60 years, undertaken at speed, and with a breathtaking disregard for what was offered to the country only months ago."

"On 21st October 2010 a statement posted to Indymedia revealed that Nottingham based activist "Mark Stone" was in fact PC Mark Kennedy and he was an "undercover police officer from 2000 to at least the end of 2009". This news didn't get picked up in a big way by the corporate press until a story was spun that the trail of the Ratcliffe 6 had collapsed because he had "gone native" and had considered testifying for the defense. The "gone native" story was probably police disinformation… The media frenzy has also led to three further undercover police officers being exposed, Officer A, "Lyn Watson" who was undercover in Leeds from 2004 till 2008, Officer B, "Mark (Marco) Jacobs", who appeared in Brighton in 2004 and then moved to Cardiff in 2005 and was active there till 2009 and PC Jim Boyling, "Jim Sutton". A summary of the activities of the 3 agent provocateurs has been put together and activists are asked to publish any better photos or information about their political activity."

"The necessity of the present moment is driven by a failure of imagination, or more properly, a refusal to imagine and a blockage of the imaginative faculty. If politics is the contest of the delineation of the contours of the social, economic and cultural; that is to say, the establishment of the conditions for how we shall live, then we don’t have much of it at the moment. We have the ‘administration of things’, and the best that we can manage is elite-driven technocratic tinkering. We need to revive our faculties of imagination, in a future anterior mode… That is a political task, and let there be no mistake about what we’re engaged in. So, in fact, secular ecologists need to work against the ‘end of days’; and to do so with an eye to the long term, not the short term noise of rabid denialism. “Optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect” isn’t a bad slogan, still. We need to be realistic to confront the effects of the Real."

"None went as far as Huaxi in combining the strict political control of the ruling Communist party with the get-rich-quick economics of the market - and the results are being hailed as a model for the nation to follow. Each household's assets are listed in detail: size of the family, value of their property, average level of education, number of members of the Communist party, as well as how many cars, mobile phones, televisions, washing machines, computers, air-conditioning units, motorbikes, cameras, fridges and stereo systems they own… Xie'en says political stability is the base for rapid growth. "I think every era has a different formula for success. The most important thing is to be flexible and open to new ways to thinking. We must do whatever works," he says. "We are not communist. We are 100% shareholder owned." The burgeoning Chinese economy continues to evade the categories we in the west have for political philosophy. How do you define this odd suburb.

"Confucian-inspired intellectuals like Jiang Qing, have put forward an innovative proposal for a tricameral legislature. Legislators in one chamber would be selected based on merit and competency, and in the others based on elections of some kind. One elected chamber may be reserved only for Communist party members, the other for representatives elected by everyday Chinese. Such a tricameral legislature, its proponents believe, would better ensure that political decisions are made by more educated and enlightened representatives, instead of rank populism. It's intriguing to contemplate China evolving into some sort of innovative democratic experiment, combining tricameralism with all the high-tech features of deliberative democracy methods to mold a new type of political accountability, as well as separation of powers. Daniel Bell, professor at Tsinghua University, says China may be groping toward "a political model that works better than western-style democracy"."

"Foucault’s coverage of the Iranian revolution has much to say to us. This case shows that even an insightful, fruitful approach will not really address the real if it doesn’t confront the problem of universality. Which, to me, is like saying: the problem of communism. Today, universality is rejected even in the ultimate instance, even when the recourse to it is unavoidable. The (initially right) discourse of “differences” and “singularities” has turned into the uncontrolled proliferation of new (national, ethnic, political, subcultural, sexual) identities. Looking for an experiential core that's common to the entire human species – ideas of equality and justice – seems to be a forbidden task… Each one of us is required to stay in his/her own niche, with a minimal “discourse of human rights” to make sure that tension does not degenerate into open, identity-against-identity warfare. [Instead] we must reassert the problem of universality while always keeping in mind singularities."

"The young people of Britain do not need leaders, and the new wave of activists has no interest in the ideological bureaucracy of the old left. Their energy and creativity is disseminated via networks rather than organisations, and many young people have neither the time nor the inclination to wait for any political party to decide what direction they should take… What we are seeing here is no less than a fundamental reimagining of the British left: an organic reworking which rejects the old deferential structures of union-led action and interminable infighting among indistinguishable splinter parties for something far more inclusive and fast-moving. These new groups are principled and theoretically well-versed, but have no truck with the narcissism of small differences that used to corrupt even the most well-meaning of leftwing movements." Considering the fragmentation of the occupation at Leeds Uni I'm not convinced the student movement has broken with traditional left wing politics.

Bruce Sterling skips hysteria to drill down to the personal politics of Wikileaks: "In 1992 a brainy American hacker called Timothy May made up a sci-fi tinged idea that he called “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto.” This exciting screed was all about anonymity, and encryption, and the Internet, and all about how wacky data-obsessed subversives could get up to all kinds of globalized mischief without any fear of repercussion from the blinkered authorities… As Tim blithely remarked to his fellow encryption enthusiasts, “The State will of course try to slow or halt the spread of this technology, citing national security concerns, use of the technology by drug dealers and tax evaders, and fears of societal disintegration. Many of these concerns will be valid; crypto anarchy will allow national secrets to be traded freely,” and then Tim started getting really interesting… It was the kind of farfetched but provocative issue that ought to be properly raised within a sci-fi public discourse."

"Nov 23 – Italian students begin actions, occupations and blockings using mock books as banners and shields… Dec 7 – Inspired by, and in solidarity with the Italians and their demo against Berlusconi’s education reforms an assemblage of life-size books are being constructed for the national demonstration against the cuts. Students, artists and cultural workers preparing actions against the cuts… Dec 9 – Within the book block a new generation recognized and found itself in the protest. Today in lots of cities the Italian student movement is showing something more than just solidarity: this is because your struggle is our struggle and all around Europe students are against the increasing of fees, the privatisation of the university and the education cuts. You are not alone in UK: an European event, a new generation do not want to stop. We have the force whom want to change the world and we have the intelligence to do it. It is just the beginning!"

"The Internet is a network of networks that depends on cooperative peering agreements - I carry your traffic and you carry mine. The high speed Internet is increasingly dependent on the networks of big providers, the telcos or cable companies like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Time Warner, and Comcast. They all see the substantial value supported by their networks and want to extract more of it for themselves. They talk about the high cost of bandwidth as a rationale for charging more for services - or metering services - but I think the real issue is value. When you see Google and Facebook and Netflix making bundles of money using your pipes, you want a cut… However higher costs could become a barrier. The value of the Internet is a network effect - it's more valuable as more people use it to do more things; cost as a barrier to entry could reduce participation and diminish the Internet's value. Killing the golden goose, so to speak." One of many interesting comments on this year's SATW.

"These are exactly the kinds of tactics that take place in the World Trade Organisation, where rich countries attempt to buy off poorer countries in return for singing up to a deal that hurts the poorest and benefits the rich… In Cancún, already, there is angst over who will be allowed access to the Moon Palace, where the negotiations are taking place. It is already a mission to get there and it will be easy to block the roads so that civil society aren’t allowed within miles of the Moon. With hundreds of police with very big and scary guns already in place, it will be a daunting task for anyone who wants to face down the police this year. That’s what we have to look forward to just to get to the media centre on Friday. Like Copenhagen, this is an event designed to ensure the minimum of dissent from poor countries’ negotiators on the inside, or their supporters out here in the sun."

"The field of education, the process of impoverishment in terms of perspective and future for the young generation, are the research fields for the debut of Common. In the epoch of cognitive capitalism, in an apparent paradox, it seems that the governance of the productive forces passes through a sort of war on knowledge. Starting from inquiring the biggest student movement in Italy and Europe since 1968, this issue is an attempt to analyze the new political anthropology within the temporality of the movement, its discontinuity and challenges. 'In the background', 'in figura' and 'lines of flight' are the three main sections that compose Common. The methodology of inquiry, the themes treated in this issue, such as institutions, self-education and common, are dispositive to strengthen our resistance, to organize our independence, to defend our exodus." Looks like these Italian students like their Deleuze with a good dose of Negri. Not suprising I guess.

"Clicktivists will respond to Gladwell’s critique by redoubling their efforts to build exactly these kinds of tools. One way this will happen is through the emergent field of “alternate reality gaming” (ARG) where activism is turned into a game. Although Jane McGonigal has already developed several prototype experiences, the best work is being done by advertisers… The important distinction is not between weak and strong ties or networks and hierarchies. It is instead between political and social revolution. By political revolution, I mean a change to the leadership of a society that does not impact the social structures, mores or power relations. A social revolution, on the other hand, is one where the political regime is not the focus of struggle because what is at stake is the very way of being, living and experiencing the world. Digital activism excels at political revolution… But can techno-activism accomplish an emancipatory, egalitarian social revolution?"

"Scientists are liars out to line their pockets with government grants. Environmentalism is nothing but a money-spinning “scam.” These people aren’t reading the science and thinking, I have some questions about this. They’re convinced of a massive conspiracy… Conservatism has always stressed stability and continuity; since Burke, the watchwords have been tradition, authority, heritage. The globally averaged temperature of the planet has been 57 degrees, give or take, for most of human history; we know that works, that it allows the world we have enjoyed. Now, the finest minds, using the finest equipment, tell us that it’s headed toward 61 or 62 or 63 degrees unless we rapidly leave fossil fuel behind, and that, in the words of NASA scientists, this new world won’t be “similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” Conservatives should be leading the desperate fight to preserve the earth we were born on."

"Organization and decentralization thus need not be mutually exclusive, though of course in some cases they may be… I would suggest that some elements of social media *can be utilized* to generate and cement ties and coordination between those committed to the revolutionary cause. Moreover, by spreading awareness via weak ties, other social roles can be defined and filled, perhaps by some individuals less strongly committed the cause but important in terms of their positions within the network… Social media thus lies at the heart of both sides of the network. It can generate the weak-tied awareness that then enable social roles and associated organization to emerge out of a complex, seemingly disorganized network. Or it can empower a smaller group of coordinated activists to hone their message, cultivate their strategy, and then reach out to larger groups of potential followers." This is starting to get at the heart of the issue: what role does new media play in decentralised activism?

"Hierarchies also exist within the social web and are particularly useful in promoting an understanding of causes." Not hierarchy, structure. There is a difference. "Most human rights violations, from discrimination to genocide, can be attributed to one or both of two root causes: pluralistic ignorance and diffusion of responsibility. It takes a critical mass of awareness and assignment of responsibility for injustice to end. While the social web, with its inherent anonymity and predilection for slacktivism, may do little in the way of assigning responsibility, it has a monumental effect on awareness… As the internet scholar Evgeny Morozov has famously said, “Technology doesn’t necessarily pry more information from closed regimes; rather, it allows more people access to information that is available.” But access is the first tile in a domino effect of awareness, empathy and action." This article also takes pains to blur Gladwell's online/offline duality.

"The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met… The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism… Facebook and the like are tools for building networks, which are the opposite, in structure and character, of hierarchies. Unlike hierarchies, with their rules and procedures, networks aren’t controlled by a single central authority. Decisions are made through consensus, and the ties that bind people to the group are loose… But if you’re taking on a powerful and organized establishment you have to be a hierarchy." I disagree with Gladwell's insistence on hierarchy. Should our activism not be challenging hierarchy itself?

"The massive centralization of a managerial bureaucracy, especially in the name of a secular millennialist vision has led all too quickly to ideological purges and to all the other horrors of totalitarianism. Seen in this light, the hesitation of at least some on the US Left to embrace grand utopian schemes is not something to be scorned but rather may be a sign of welcome skepticism about the busybody notion that one can impose utopia upon others by force… Investigating a theme like the death of the Left rapidly leads to fundamental questions about the very nature of political categories themselves. Such questioning is essential, from time to time, and if it disturbs some, perhaps they should take the opportunity to stop and consider exactly what they stand for and why. For inevitably, consideration of what has happened to the Left forces one to confront what it means to belong to the Right in the first place." Despite its smug tone I often find myself in agreement. Fragmentation ftw!

"From the early 1990s on, community-based art – more evidently so than in earlier incarnations of collective approaches – have focused on marginalized groups encouraged to act and communicate via a co-operative process, with the aim of empowering the socially disadvantaged... While these projects frequently place less emphasis on representation in an exhibition context, where they often comprise little more than some matter-of-fact documentation or interviews with participants, another currently prevalent form of participatory art aims directly at the production of a video... In another current tendency communities are brought together in a joint action that is concentrated on the physical, and in which the individual experiences the vulnerability and manipulability of his/her body... These can be linked most appropriately to Jean-Luc Nancy’s idea of an ‘inoperative community’, a relational social organization that is founded equally on singularity, otherness and shared experience."

"Mussolini’s embrace of Italian Futurism (albeit briefly) suggested a more progressive outlook than the aesthetically reactionary German Führer, Herr Hitler; Duce’s architectural preferences were certainly less gothic and less medieval. While Mussolini extolled the style and trappings of ancient Rome (i.e. the Roman salute and the fascist emblem), he allowed for crosscurrents of Classicism and Modernism to run through Fascism, which contributed a bit of Mediterranean flair. To this day, the remnant of Fascist style continues to be subtly evident in Rome. (Having just spent a week there with students, as part of a design workshop, I watched how seduced some where by the Fascist facades and block letter inscriptions. Indeed, some drew inspiration for making original typefaces through their own interpretation of classic and fascistic lettering.)"

"We’ve all seen it: the photo of a teary-eyed African child, dressed in rags, smothered in flies, with a look of desperation that the caption all too readily points out. Some organization has made a poster that tells you about the realities of poverty, what they are doing about it, and how your donation will change things. The truth is that the development sector, just like any other business, needs revenue to survive. Too frequently, this quest for funding uses these kind of dehumanizing images to draw pity, charity, and eventually donations from a largely unsuspecting public. I found it outrageous that such an incomplete and often inaccurate story was being so widely perpetuated by the organizations on the ground. This is not to say that people do not struggle, far from it, but the photos I was seeing only told part of the story. I thought that these images were robbing people of their dignity, and I felt that the rest of the story should be told as well."

"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it... The decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely... it becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration."

"The deluge of information available on the Web has made the country ungovernable, according to EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow. "The political system is broken partly because of Internet," Barlow said. "It's made it impossible to govern anything the size of the nation-state. We're going back to the city-state. The nation-state is ungovernably information-rich."... Barlow also said that President Barack Obama's election, driven largely by small donations, has fundamentally changed American politics. He said a similar bottom-up structure is needed for governing as well. "It's not the second coming, everything won't get better overnight, but that made it possible to see a future where it wasn’t simply a matter of money to define who won these things," Barlow said. "The government could finally start belonging to people eventually."... Despite his concerns, Barlow remains optimistic about the Internet's ablitity as a force for good in politics, describing himself as a techno-utopian."

"'Structurelessness' becomes a way of masking power, and within the women's movement it is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). The rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is curtailed by those who know the rules, as long as the structure of the group is informal. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware. For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can only happen if they are formalised." — Jo Freeman

I'm starting to think of Iceland as a microcosm of the future. "The Best Party, founded by comedian Jon Gnarr, secured 34.7% of the vote, ahead of the Independence Party's 33.6%. Its campaign video featured candidates singing to the tune of Tina Turner's "Simply The Best". Key pledges included "sustainable transparency", free towels at all swimming pools and a new polar bear for the city zoo. The party also called for a Disneyland at the airport and a "drug-free parliament" by 2020. As well as specific pledges, its video promised change, a "bright future" and suggested that it was time for a "clean out". The Best Party was only established six months ago. Its victory means it will hold 6 seats on the 15-member city council. Commentators suggest it has benefited from voters' loss of trust in government and the establishment in the wake of the country's banking collapse in 2008. According to Iceland Review Online, several local races saw parties that were in power ousted in the polls."

"Together with the quaint aesthetics of the Scandinavian countryside, this socialist backdrop is precisely what makes the genre work. It’s shocking enough when a bloated corpse turns up floating in Stockholm’s pristine, well-managed waterways or when a serial killer disrupts the huddles of little red cottages that dot the Swedish countryside. The lingonberry jam on the detective’s afternoon waffles looks a darker shade of red; the friendly smile of the average Jens on the street twists into a sinister grin. But the complicity of the welfare state heightens the tension. The system has a hand in all aspects of Swedish life. If you can’t trust the system, what can you trust? In the best Swedish crime novels, including Larsson’s, the cradle-to-grave welfare system takes care of its wards. But you start to wonder just which meaning of “to take care of” that phrase refers to and whether the all-too-visible hand of the state isn’t rocking the cradle over an open grave."

"No one, with the exception of a few allegedly archaic Marxists, refers to "capitalism" any longer. The term was simply struck from the vocabulary of politicians, trade unionists, writers and journalists - even of social scientists... But what about the upsurge of the anti-globalization movement in the last years? Does it not clearly contradict this diagnostic? No: a close look quickly shows how this movement also succumbs to "the temptation to transform a critique of capitalism itself (centered on economic mechanisms, forms of work organization, and profit extraction) into a critique of 'imperialism'... What we have here is thus another version of the ill-famed notion of "alternate modernity": instead of the critique of capitalism as such, of confronting its basic mechanism, we get the critique of the imperialist "excess," with the (silent) notion of mobilizing capitalist mechanisms within another, more "progressive," frame." — Slavoj Zizek

"Electoral politics has been moving along the path towards Baudrillard's simulacrum for a number of years, with a growing sense of unreality and the increasing resemblance of party leaders to characters from Thunderbirds. We have now reached the final stage where the simulacrum masks the absence of the reality. The more we hear about choice and change the more we know that things will stay the same and that the distance between the parties we see performing is smaller than ever... Perhaps the greatest evidence that our democracy is now little more than a sham is the way that the forms of democracy we impose on Iraq or Afghanistan are designed to more accurately link the wishes of the people of those countries with the political power exercised on their behalf than is the system we labour under... An oppressive and obsessive empire decides to map its territories at an exact scale, so that the map becomes as large as the territory itself. When the empire crumbles only the map is left."

"The United States is rapidly losing influence over Latin America. At a historic summit during the end of February, more than two dozen leaders of Latin American and Caribbean countries decided to form a new organization to strengthen their political and economic cooperation and to leverage their power in dealings with the US. The leaders agreed on strategies to address immigration among the countries. They expressed solidarity with the people of Haiti still reeling from the earthquake there. They backed Argentina’s rights to the Malvinas (also known as the Falklands) in its dispute with Great Britain. And they condemned the United States for its continued blockade of Cuba. The news of Latin American and Caribbean nations developing a united agenda was not welcomed in Washington. Much of the focus was on the inclusion of Cuba — and the exclusion of Canada and the US." A Latin American block is great, but one has to wonder when the pink tide is going to recede. What then?

"Okay, you've treated your future as an "unpredictable lurching thing" and now you're all morose about that. You and your generation CREATED that situation! Ever heard of "disruptive innovation," "disintermediation," "offshoring," "small pieces loosely joined," "de-monetization," "plug and play," "the network as a platform"? Of course you've heard of all that crap, because you've been tub-thumping it your entire adult life, but what the hell did you think that was all about? Did you think you were gonna bend every effort to virtualize reality, and then get a gold railway-retirement watch and a safe place to park the cradle? Guys with stacks of gold bars and working oil wells don't have any stability now! Much less guys like you, who move their fingers up and down on keyboards for a living." You want some security? Demand government housing subsidies and a guaranteed minimum income! They might as well bail out the civil population." — Bruce Sterling to Cory Doctorow

Pretty tough academic piece, but it rewards persistance. "But there has also been a growing recognition - and this is where Hardt and Negri have something important to say - that the commons is perpetually being produced. In Hardt and Negri's version, the turn to immaterial labor has radically increased the inadvertent but inevitable creation of an excess that is the commons. This commons is a field that the multitude is in a position to exploit, if only because it is impossible to exclude people from dwelling there. Capital has, in effect, lost control over the production of the common and has to rely on the multitude to produce it in order for capital itself to survive. The multitude is empowered in a way it has never been before. Hardt and Negri agree, therefore, with Rancière that "politics is the sphere of activity of a common that can only ever be contentious.""

How to brave the coming collapse: sensationalist, but entertaining. "The increasingly overt uses of force by the elites to maintain control should not end acts of resistance. Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience understand the moral imperative to challenge systems of abuse and despotism. They should be carried out not because they are effective but because they are right. Those who begin these acts are always few in number and dismissed by those who hide their cowardice behind their cynicism. But resistance, however marginal, continues to affirm life in a world awash in death... Those who carried out great acts of resistance often sacrificed their security and comfort, often spent time in jail and in some cases were killed. They understood that to live in the fullest sense of the word, to exist as free and independent human beings, even under the darkest night of state repression, meant to defy injustice."

"In the past 10 years I have written very little about developments like these. I realised why while reading William Gibson's 2003 novel Pattern Recognition. The book's protagonist, Cayce Pollard, is allergic to brands, particularly Tommy Hilfiger and the Michelin man. So strong is this "morbid and sometimes violent reactivity to the semiotics of the marketplace" that she has the buttons on her Levi's jeans ground smooth so that there are no corporate markings. When I read those words, I immediately realised that I had a similar affliction. As a child and teenager I was almost obsessively drawn to brands. But writing No Logo required four years of total immersion in ad culture – four years of watching and rewatching Super Bowl ads, scouring Advertising Age for the latest innovations in corporate synergy, reading soul-destroying business books on how to get in touch with your personal brand values, making excursions to Niketowns, to monster malls, to branded towns." – Naomi Klein

"Lord Mandelson has no personal experience of research in science or technology, but, like many people whose minds are unclouded by knowledge, has strong views on these matters. In his first speech after taking control of Britain's research spending, Mandelson left his listeners in no doubt that he will continue government policy of allocating more of the £6bn science budget to areas with commercial applications – in other words, areas that the government (and its industrial advisers) think will yield short-term benefits for Britain. Meanwhile, the Higher Education Funding Council for England... are working on a "Research Excellence Framework" which will require applicants for funding to cite "demonstrable benefits to the economy, society, public policy, culture and quality of life". This bodes ill for any scientist or engineer interested in curiosity-driven research."

"According to Gramsci, hegemony occludes the domination of the state and the classes whose interests it serves. One does not have to be an Italian communist of the 1920s to see the usefulness of Gramsci's groundbreaking insight. Broadly speaking, all political actors pursue their agendas by trying to narrow other people's imaginations in order to make desired outcomes seem common-sensical and undesired outcomes outside the ambit of reasonable thought. It seems to me that over the past decade, in the United States, the state and a narrow circle of powerful interests—banks, energy companies, and private health insurers in particular—have simply given up trying to persuade the rest of us that their interests were our interests. Could we be moving in the twenty-first century to a state that practices domination without hegemony?"

"The constellation of the instantly-famous eleventh-hour meeting between the heads of state for China, Sth Africa, Brazil and India, into which Obama barged uninvited to make the final deal, also communicates something all by itself. The absence of any European country from the conversation that ultimately mattered most – not to mention the absence of Russia, Japan, and all the other countries — was, to say the least, widely noticed... We saw this on perfect display at CoP-15 in the negotiations between China and the US on the issue of reporting and transparency... The categories of “developed” and “developing” remain essential when talking about the flow of climate funds, issues of equity, vulnerability, adaptation, etc. But I am talking here about the democratic process of the world... when it comes to a global negotiation and deliberation process, even the smallest or economically most marginal nation can find a powerful and influential voice." But are these voices truly democratic?

"Even if US money ever materialized it wouldn’t do much good for countries that weren’t actually going to exist once sea levels rose. They were backed to the wall. And so, they squawked. They didn’t knuckle under quite as easily as usual, despite the usual round of threats and bribes... When President Obama finally appeared on Friday his speech was an exasperated and tight-lipped little dressing-down about the need for countries to take “responsibility”... The biggest stumbling block to the kind of semi-dignified face-saving agreement most people envisioned was China. According to accounts I’ve heard from a number of sources, Obama met with 25 other world leaders after his press conference for a negotiating session. It was a disaster — China turned down one reasonable idea after another, unwilling to constrain its ability to burn coal in any meaningful way (and not needing to, since power, especially in any non-military negotiation, has swung definitively in its direction)." – McKibbon

"I reflect on Hawthorne’s story not to celebrate the timid: those who justify inaction by invoking the power of the mind alone to change political reality do need to hit the streets. I bring up this story as a critique of those ultra-militants who maintain that pure and violent destruction is the only path to political transformation. It is in the tension of these two extremes – transcendentalist mentalism and materialist insurrectionism – that the triumph of future activism resides. At a time when activists are sorely needed, activism is at a crossroads. Each of us knows that a tremendous crisis is looming, but it is so large that we are paralyzed... The dimensions of the catastrophe exceed the capacity of our imaginations and we are consequently incapacitated. We sense that a terrible future awaits and that unless we act, urgently and passionately in the present, the bountiful Earth will die in our lifetimes. Bringing an end to this descent toward hell is the burden of the activist."

"Over 130 years ago during the Industrial Revolution, London went through exactly the same tribulations that Shanghai and Mumbai are currently experiencing. Drury Lane was one of the worst slums the world has ever seen. It had high density—with seven or eight people to a bedroom and ill health – due to poor air and lack of good food, which is exactly what happens in many third-world cities today. It also lacked infrastructure, with open sewers running in the streets and spreading disease. In that sense, we as Londoners have been here before, but it’s also true in the case of Barcelona, Rome, Milan, Paris—and many other major Western capitals. Most of these cities dealt with similar problems by implementing a series of enlightened policies, which in the case of London included the Victorian improvements engineered by Joseph Bazalgette—although you’d never have thought that someone who did nothing more than build sewers would still be talked about a century later, would you?"

This is disheartening. "This is in part because, as George Monbiot points out [tr.im/HBR2], 'carbon offsetting' is factored into the overall target - so, the UK may continue to expand its polluting industries, particularly air travel, and will purchase carbon credits from other countries. Based on the current arrangements, that means that the poorest countries, would have to buy sell so many carbon credits that they would end up reducing their total carbon emissions by 60% while the richer countries reduce theirs by only 40%. This limits the development capacities of those nations in need of development, while placing the burden of climate reform on those least responsible for the greenhouse gas effect. Quite aside from the issue of justice, the current targets agreed by the G8 countries currently dominating discussions in Copenhagen would not actually reduce carbon emissions enough to prevent global temperatures rising by 2 degrees - which itself may not be the best target anyway."

A polemic, yes, but a crucial one. "There is no environmental crisis, the crisis is the environment. As long as we see something called ‘the environment’ separate from us, we have something to use, abuse, sell, commodify, and when it’s broken, ‘we’ can fix ‘it’. While it’s separate from us, the problem is not caused by us. This has been the long-standing tendency every since the Enlightenment to objectify nature as something separate from humans in order to dominate and exploit it, rather than to see it as something we intrinsically depend upon... Protest is not about saving the planet. It’s about saving democracy. To resonate with people it has to use cherished values like equality, freedom, and be about a better deal for the poorest here in the UK and abroad. It’s about getting the growth obsessed market, the drudgery of the wage, bloated governments and careerist politicians off our backs. It’s about challenging nasty right-wing populism."

Canadians see wealth in their tar sands, but is this the worst of climate crimes? "Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush. Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works. In 2006 the new Canadian government announced it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%."

"Ahmadinejad is a corrupt Islamofascist populist, an Iranian Berlusconi whose mixture of clownish posturing and ruthless power politics is causing unease even among the ayatollahs. His demagogic distribution of crumbs to the poor shouldn’t deceive us: he has the backing not only of the organs of police repression and a very Westernised PR apparatus. He is also supported by a powerful new class of Iranians who have become rich thanks to the regime’s corruption... We have to draw a clear distinction between the two main candidates opposed to Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi and Mousavi. Karroubi is effectively a reformist, a proponent of an Iranian version of identity politics, promising favours to particular groups of every kind. Mousavi is something entirely different: he stands for the resuscitation of the popular dream that sustained the Khomeini revolution. It was a utopian dream, but one can't deny the genuinely utopian aspect of what was so much more than a hardline Islamist takeover."

On climate war. "Much of the doubt about the relationship between climate change and conflict results from the inherent complexities of war and peace. With so many political, social, economic and environmental factors playing a role in either preventing or stimulating conflict, applying quantitative analysis and then trying to predict the chance of future conflict is problematic... "There is no doubt that impoverishment and human insecurity may arise as a result of climate change, if preventive measures are not undertaken. However, there is missing evidence that global warming directly increases conflict," says Dr Popovski. "The causes of conflict are primarily political and economic, not climatic. Warlords — who foster conflict — may exploit draught, flooding, starvation, agricultural or natural disasters in their strategies, like they did in Somalia and Darfur... When people face climate dangers or scarcity, they may decide to fight, but similarly they may decide to co-operate.""

Urban eschatology. "One thing this massive failure has made possible is ability to come up with radical ideas for the city, and potentially to even implement some of them. Places like Flint and Youngstown might be attracting new ideas and moving forward, but it is big cities that inspire the big, audacious dreams. And that is Detroit. Its size, scale, and powerful brand image are attracting not just the region’s but the world’s attention. It may just be that some of the most important urban innovations in 21st century America end up coming not from Portland or New York, but places like Youngstown and, yes, Detroit... It's “Rust Belt chic”, and Detroit has it in spades... In Detroit, the incapacity of the government is actually an advantage in many cases... The people know that they are on their own and if they want something done they have to do it themselves. Nobody from the city is coming to help them. And they’ve found some very creative ways to deal with the challenges that result"

This is crucial! "Bruce Wright has nothing against alternative energy. He grows camelina, a type of oilseed, to make biodiesel. He cares about energy-efficiency, too: his watering system is powered by gravity, as the water is piped down from the nearby mountains. But he cannot see how he could run his farm without cheap fossil fuels. The work that four generations ago was done by men and horses is now mostly done by machines. He has no full-time employees, but owns about 20 vehicles... Obama wants to save the world by curbing CO2 emissions. Earlier this year the House of Representatives voted to erect a “cap-and-trade” system, which would set a ceiling on such emissions and lower it each year. The government would issue tradable permits to emit carbon, at first by giving 85% of them away, but eventually by auctioning them... The main point is to discourage the use of high-carbon fossil fuels. If it does not make them more expensive, it will not work. That alarms people like Mr Wright."

My how opinions change. Or: this no longer upsets me... "Barack Obama acknowledged today that time has run out to secure a binding climate deal at Copenhagen and began moving towards a two-stage process that would delay a legal pact until next year at the earliest. During a hastily convened breakfast meeting in Singapore, the US president supported a Danish plan to salvage something from the moribund negotiations by aiming for a broad political agreement and postponing contentious decisions on emissions targets, financing and technology transfer. While this falls short of hopes that Copenhagen would lock in place a new action plan for the world, it recognises the lack of progress in recent preparatory talks and the hold-ups of climate legislation in the US Senate. "There was a realistic assessment … by the leaders that it was unrealistic to expect a full internationally legally binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days.""

You couldn't make this shit up. "Franny Armstrong, the director of The Age of Stupid, described the mayor of London as her "knight in a shining bicycle" after he came to her defence as she was walking home in Camden, north London, last night. She called out for help to a passing cyclist after being surrounded by a group of hoodie-wearing young girls who pushed her against a car, one holding an iron bar. The cyclist turned out to be none other than Johnson, who has made tackling youth crime a key mayoral priority. He stopped and chased the girls down the street, calling them "oiks", according to Armstrong, who praised the mayor's intervention. Johnson returned and insisted on walking her home."

British National Party membership vs non-white populations. An interesting map of British racism.

"Until 1975, the US' criminal justice system was roughly in line with much of Europe's. For 50 years preceding 1975, the US incarceration rate consistently hovered around 100 inmates per 100,000; criminologists made careers out of theorizing that the incarceration rate would never change. Around 1975, however, they were proved wrong, as the United States became radically more punitive. In 35 years, the incarceration rate ballooned to over 700 per 100,000... This growth is not attributable to increased offending rates, but to increased punitiveness. Being "tough on crime" became a political mandate. State and federal legislatures imposed mandatory minimum sentences; abolished or radically restricted parole; and adopted "three strikes" laws that exact life imprisonment for a third offense... Comparing the ratio of convictions to "index crimes" such as murder, rape, and burglary between 1975 and 1999 reveals that, holding crime constant, the United States became 5 times more punitive."

"The events of '89 are most often depicted as the failure of socialism. It's a powerful interpretation that has served to discredit alternatives to the capitalist system, which is said to have triumphed, and to bestow upon capitalism an aura of legitimacy based not only on a reading of recent history but also on assumptions about the natural order, not least human nature. Capitalism, it is proposed, is the normal state of human traffic in what people make and value and need... History, however, is always more complicated and messy than the moral and ideological tales it may be called to serve. The history of Eastern Europe in the 2nd half of the 20thC can be told as the story of two series of revolutions: the communist-led revolutions of the post-WWII years that ousted the former ruling elites and transformed largely rural societies into urban industrial ones; and the anticommunist revolutions of 1989... that overturned entrenched party regimes already weakened by political sclerosis."

"The failed state is not Aboriginal north Australia, where the social fabric is in shreds and tatters. No: it is the jurisdiction largely responsible for entrenching this degree of indigenous disadvantage: the modern-seeming, self-governing Northern Territory. On the face of things, all the standard attributes of a democratic society are present here in Darwin: a parliament, political parties, government departments, a range of key social institutions that look much like their southern equivalents. But in fact the Territory is best understood as an interlocking set of interest groups. It is heavily dependent on outside funding, the bureaucracy is shot through with politics, almost all medium-sized business relies on public sector contracts and the entire system is founded on the administration of an Aboriginal underclass... an underclass that has become absolutely necessary to the system... The Territory is probably the most unequal Western society in the world."

Some good news? "Norway has just announced that it's taking the lead on the world stage when it comes to cutting carbon. If a global treaty can be brokered in Copenhagen this December, the nation pledges to reduce carbon emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. That's the most ambitious target set by any developed nation - and oh yeah, Norway also pledged to become fully carbon neutral just 10 years after that. The announcement has helped rekindle hopes that a bold global climate treaty is possible.... Even though Norway hasn't specifically outlined its plans to achieve the cuts--the environmental minister only noted that the nation will become "a pioneer country when it comes to environmental policy," and will invest more heavily in renewables - the nation's willingness to make binding cuts is rightfully an inspiration to the international community. The US should take note." Norway got rich from oil money. When their oil runs out, they will have little left to exploit.

Global politics are an unusual beast indeed. Only days ago, there was a renewed vigour borne on Japan's new Prime Minister. Not so now. "Developed countries have so far refused to show their hand on what their emission cuts should be. The UN's Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that to keep below a 2C rise in temperatures they need to cut their emissions by 25-40% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels. But developing countries are calling for an aggregate cut of at least 40%. But with fewer than 10 days of formal negotiations left before the Copenhagen talks begin, poor countries are complaining that they are being expected to cut emissions but the US and others are being allowed to get away with minimal cuts. The UN estimates that the combined cut from national pledges made by rich countries, without the US, comes to 16-23%. However, a new analysis by the Alliance of Small Island States, estimates that this drops to just 11-18% with the US's present offer."

Problems >>> Causes. "Like any large political undertaking in our democracy, our entitlement system depends on the loyalty and support of the broad middle class. It is, after all, fundamentally an arrangement with middle-class voters. Its benefits accrue largely to them. And the consequences of the system's fiscal decline will affect the middle class above all, and through them the larger economic engine they make possible. To sustain American prosperity and pass along a healthy economy to the next generation, the middle-class contract of the post-war years must be revised. Our entitlement programs need not be abolished — but they do need to be reformed so that they are economically viable, and bolster a thriving free-market economy instead of undermining it. For such an overhaul to happen, middle-class voters will need to be persuaded that change is necessary, and that it can be undertaken rationally, responsibly, and fairly. This may be the foremost political challenge of our time."

Third biggest carbon emitter makes a commitment worthy of note. "Indonesia is the world's third largest greenhouse emitter and steps by big developing nations to curb their emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases are a key focus of U.N.-led climate talks under way in the Thai capital until Oct 9... Environmentalists on Tuesday welcomed Indonesia's pledge to substantially cut the growth of its greenhouse gas emissions, saying the promise could help talks on crafting a broader global pact to fight climate change... "This target is entirely achievable because most of our emissions come from forest-related issues, such as forest fires and deforestation," said Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during a working lunch in Pittsburgh. "We are also looking into the distinct possibility to commit a billion ton of CO2 reduction by 2050 from BAU. We will change the status of our forest from that of a net emitter sector to a net sink sector by 2030.""

This is a strange thought. ""What would happen if a state was to physically disappear but people want to keep their nationalities? It could continue as a virtual state even though it is a rock under the ocean and its people no longer live on that piece of land." Gemenne said there was more at stake than cultural and sentimental attachments to swamped countries. Tuvalu makes millions of pounds each year from the sale of its assigned internet suffix .tv to television companies. As a nation state, the Polynesian island also has a vote on the international stage through the UN. "As independent nations they receive certain rights and privileges that they will not want to lose. Instead they could become like ghost states," he said. "This is a pressing issue for small island states, but in the case of physical disappearance there is a void in international law.""

Reflections on Keynes modern relevance. "The General Theory is a work of elegant prose, the book sparkles with aphorisms ("It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens") and rhetorical flights (most famously that "madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back"). But it also bristles with unfamiliar terms, such as "unit-good" (an hour's employment of ordinary labor), and references to unfamiliar economic institutions, such as a "sinking fund" (a fund in which money is accumulated to pay off a debt). And it brims with digressions, afterthoughts, and stray observations, such as: "the two most delightful occupations open to those who do not have to earn their living [are] authorship and experimental farming." Two important chapters, dealing with the "trade cycle" and with mercantilism, usury, and thrift, are deferred to the last part of the book."

On Ayn Rand's legacy and the American right: "Ayn Rand's novels tend to strike their readers with the power of revelation, and they are read less like fiction and more like self-help literature, like spiritual guidance. Again and again, readers would write Rand to tell her that their encounter with her work felt like having their eyes open for the first time in their lives... The likes of Gale Norton, George Gilder, Charles Murray, and many others have cited Rand as an influence. Rand acolytes such as Alan Greenspan and Martin Anderson have held important positions in Republican politics. "What she did--through long discussions and lots of arguments into the night--was to make me think why capitalism is not only efficient and practical, but also moral," attested Greenspan. In 1987, The New York Times called Rand the "novelist laureate" of the Reagan administration. Reagan's nominee for commerce secretary, C. William Verity Jr., kept a passage from Atlas Shrugged on his desk."