the music of weapons

Claudia Salaris, Il movimento del Settantasette. Linguaggi e scritture dell'ala creativa

2010-06-29T05:33:00.001-07:00

“Grazie a noi il tempo verra in cui la vita non sara piu
semplicamente una vita di pane e di fatica, ne una vita d'ozio
ma in cui la vita sara vita-opere d'arte”

Marinetti in “Al di la del communismo.”

“Trascinato sulla strada
fra due barricate
si trova stupito
a sounar note
piu calde, piu dolci
Il mogano lucido
circondato dal fumo
sporco del lacrimogeni.”

“Chopin sulle Barricate”, Lotta Continua, 14th July,1977.

The first quote is from Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, affirming, along with the other movements of the early 20th century avante-garde, Futurisms desire to transform the existing social relationships of their day by superseding the division between everyday life and art. The second appeared in the new left newspaper “Lotta Continua” and is from a poem describing the surreal atmosphere of the university occupation in Bologna in 1977 where tear gas and smoke filled the air and students played piano near the barricades and drank champagne they “liberated” from a nearby restaurant.

Both are from a book called “Il movimento del Settantasette. Linguaggi e scritture dell'ala creativa” by art historian Claudia Salaris. Published in 1997 for the 20th anniversary of “settantasette”, it looks at the writings and zines of the creative wing of Autonomia (journalists from the time often used “Indianismo” to describe the creatives, of course named after the Indiani Metropolitani.)

Salaris is an historian of Italian Futurism of the early 20th century and sees much of the writing and politics through the prism of Futurisms utopian, ludic and anti-authoritarian elements, as opposed to its infamous militarist and nationalist positions. Likewise, she notes the antecedents of other utopian aesthetics such as Dadaism, Surrealism and Situationism: all seeking to overturn the social relationships of capital with those creativity and collective experimentation and all hostile to forms of mediation (political, ideological or otherwise.)

Its an interesting perspective as most writings on Autonomia (especially in English) are more interested in issues of class composition and the emergent political forms related to it; the forms of praxis and intellectual orientation of “il movimento” are traced and explained by its links to the Autonomist Marxism and to American influenced counter-cultural politics rather than to earlier artistic movements.

.........

2010-06-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

“The documents of the culture of '1977' are in a large part irretrievable as if one was dealing with a distant epoch, a past that official culture wants to remove every trace and memory of.”

a/Traverso, march 1987.

“Two opinion polls held in 1999 and 2006 among high-school students resident in the three Italian cities where the most aggressive terrorist attacks of the 1970s occurred, demonstrated that knowledge of these events had decreased considerably over time. Whereas in 1999, 96,6% of the students in Milan claimed to be familiar with a massacre that had struck this city in 1969, in 2006 this number had gone down to 81,6%. Furthermore, almost half of the students identified, in both occasions, a notorious left-wing terrorist group as the authors of the attacks, ignoring the simple fact that this group did not yet exist at the time.”

Andrea Hajek, Teaching Terrorism in Italy: Towards a Politics of Nonreconciliation, Department of Italian University of Warwick (Coventry, UK)

Grispigni 1977

2010-02-23T06:30:00.000-08:00

I arrived in Italy expecting a form of traumatised omerta surrounding the anni settanta, encouraged by a ruling class desperate to erase the memory of a time when other possibilities existed (akin to Reagan, Thatcher and Sarkozys desire to "undo" the 60's in their respective countries.) But on the contrary, the public memory of the time is strong and there is a stream of books on the various topics relating to the experience of the 70s.

My Italian is functional enough to be able to start wading through some of these.

An important text is Marco Grispigni's "1977", published in 1997 for the 20th anniversary of the famous student/youth revolt of 1977. Grispigni is an historian, archivist and writer as well as an ex-77er and is accepted as an authority on the era.

"1977" ironically starts at the end of the July 1976 elections where the Italian Communist Party nearly became the biggest political party in the Chamber of Deputies. Soon after, the PCI entered into the period of the "Compromesso Storico" where PCI abstained from voting, allowing the Christian Democrat government to pass austerity and law and order measures dealing with economic and political crisis.

Grispigni, and most other historians, see this as the point where the mass of students, young and precarious workers and other marginalised groups made a final split from the PCI, leading to the clashes with the State and the PCI that characterised 1977. The book gives a conventional narrative of the course of events over the year detailing the general slide of the movement towards violence but also deals with issues such as the cultural composition of the movement, its relationship to wider "politics" and the relationship of the various parts of the movement to each other (Operaists vs "creatives" etc.)

It's an account that sees the experience of "1977" as a cultural revolution or cultural refusal rather than as representing new forms of politics or political organisation, nor does it go too deeply into issues of class composition or the breakdown of the Keynesian social pact that the crisis represented. However, its one of the best, brief Italian language introductions to the era.

No war but the Gary War and Ducktails

2010-02-18T15:58:00.000-08:00

Of the current fetish for degraded and detourned sonics and images (arranged under the title "Hynagogic Pop") two acts sit on opposite ends of its spectrum: Gary War and Ducktails.

Ducktails self-titled effort runs like a carousel of nostalgic haze and downer sunset pop thats equal parts Bobb Trimble and Kemmialiset Ystavat. The feel is of a dream where 80s pop textures are removed and applied to looped fantasies reassembled by the hear and now. "Landscapes" is more a conventional pop record despite some abstract moments.

Gary War is the transcedent opposite to Ducktails; with sonics extracted from science fiction rather than summers hanging out at the beach. His first record "New Raytheonport" is more in line with the AM radio from 1985 of Ariel Pink or Lamborghini Crystal but veers in parts to the desolate hiss of Suicide.

"Horribles Parade" is cracked and wobbly in comparison. Parts vibrate and echo in all directions, vocals processed to the point that it streams up and down as well as out. Imagine this but cloaked over and in between a band that sort of sound like Modern Lovers or Pere Ubu. Rather than evoke anything real or remembered, HP brings up places and sounds that never happened or could never happen yet still work like a pop record.

On Hypnagogues

2010-02-11T09:47:00.000-08:00

I think I am a little late (8 months) on all this talk on "hypnagogic pop" talk but I've been out of the loop for the past couple of months. Apparently, David Keenan has been slapped about on the web for the article he wrote in the Wire, coining the term "hypnagogic pop", mainly directed at his temerity to try and classify music. Doesn't he know its just music, man!? It can't be classified. It dropped out of the sky, pure and perfect.

I can't comment too much on the article itself since I haven't read it but the reaction seems to strike me as the cultural version of the "post-political consensus" cited by Mr K-punk amongst comments on the Guardian CIF site in reaction to a piece (an excellent one at that) about Haiti's history after the recent earthquake. In the case of Haiti, the cry was that "politics" and "ideology" should be kept separate from the current emergency. In this case, the idea that music critics try to classify, make connections between artists or use any framework other than "the music" in writing is the crime.

But that's what critics are meant to do, right? The idea that culture exists in some sort of pure plane, free from "politics" or "classification", is pervasive and infuriating. Culture can't be understood purely through other meta-narratives or frameworks (like politics, ideology or class) but they overlap and intersect, these points should be what good critics examine and dissect.

In the next few days, Ill have something up on may two favourite players in "hypnagogy", Gary War and Ducktails.

YES WE CASH!-Welfare struggles in Italys Red remnants

2010-02-02T15:11:00.000-08:00

Italy has little welfare to speak of, especially welfare that's directed at young people, students and precarious workers and the current crisis makes its absence all the more apparent. Welfare struggles in countries with more developed welfare systems are currently in a defensive mode against neo-liberal re-imposition of work and privatisation. Italy is potentially moving in another direction, as the crisis fuels calls from left and liberal commentators for new welfare initiatives.

Yes We Cash! is a movement that is pushing for the creation of a social wage in Emilia-Romagna (in North-West of the country.) Their name forms part of a tradition in Italy that takes moderate demands (in this case, the hopelessly moderate pleas for change associated with the presidential campaign of Barack Obama) and radicalises them (here, openly demanding a social wage that has never existed in Italy.) In the same way that strikers in Italy would answer the ritualistic call of "Cosa vogliamo?" (What do we want?) with "Tutto!" (Everything!)

I spoke with Ilia from the campaign in Bologna.

When did YWC start?
YWC started about 2 or 3 months ago as a campaign but the project started about a year ago. The idea for a regional campaign for a guaranteed social wage came out of the Onda Onomala campaign against university reforms last year. The main slogan of Onda Anomala was "We won't pay for your crisis", that experience focused on the need for a basic, social wage for young people, precarious workers and so on to fight the effects of the current economic crisis and to extend welfare rights to these groups who have no access to welfare in Italy. So the campaign has been planned for a while and we are now only starting to take it forward. This campaign involves activist from all the main cities in Emilia-Romagna: Bologna, Parma, Ferrara, Reggio Emilia, Rimini.

So it's made up of people from Onda Anomala?
Yes, it's made up of students and researchers involved in Onda Anomala but also precarious workers and activists but we see YWC as an open campaign that's open to all including non-citizens who are interested in seeing the creation of a guaranteed minimum income in E-R.

What are the specific goals of the campaign?
We want to force the regional government here in Emilia-Romagna to adopt a basic income like one that was passed in Lazio (the region where Rome is located) after a movement of students and precarious workers won the right to a social wage, last year. We recognise that this law was not enough, it is very restricted and doesn't guarantee a basic income for all those who need it but it is a precedent and we want to try and make the government in E-R adopt similar measures but hopefully extend them further.

The goal simply a basic income for anyone who needs it. We don't want it to be linked to wage labour, it won't depend on the claimant looking for work or relate to their ability to look for work; it will only depend on whether you earn less than subsistence wages/income. We want eligibility to be assessed on an individual basis and not take into account parental wealth or whether someone is living at home. The amount we are asking for is at least 800 to 1,000 Euros per month which is enough money to live decently and not just to survive. We consider this to be the only serious measure possible against the crisis since there is barely a welfare system in this country.

What is the welfare situation in Italy?
Each region in Italy has its own welfare system. Apart from Lazio, Campania has a social wage that was created a few years ago but that is only for unemployed workers while the welfare measures that we want will not be related to anyones work status or their intention to work. An important aspect of the campaign is our desire to focus on the needs of precarious workers since precarious work has become a structural feature of the economy in Italy and around the world. By getting a guaranteed, minimum income adopted in E-R, we can radically transform the welfare system in Italy and placing the focus on the welfare rights and needs of individual people rather than welfare being dependent on work status. We also hope that any new measures we can force will set a precedent for other welfare struggles throughout Italy.

A prominent part of the campaign seems to be the idea of autonomy from wage labour, how important is this?
This is one of the central principles of YWC. We want a basic, guaranteed minimum income, to attend to material needs ,of course, but also to free people from the need to take any job that they are offered. So they are not compelled to take work that is poorly paid, has bad working conditions or is only for a short time. We think that wage labour should not be the central organising principle of peoples lives, that it constricts people and forces them into capitalist modes of organisation and production. This was central to Operaismo, to Autonomia and its important to YWC. It's a problem for university graduates who have to accept low wage and skill jobs despite spending years studying in other fields and not just a feature of the current crisis but also of the global division of labour. So YWC is definitely an effort to free people from the “cage” of wage labour and to enable people to make autonomous decisions about life and work from a secure position and not one of desperation. We also come from the viewpoint that the production of value in modern capitalism isn't only in the "official" site and time of labour but is spread everywhere throughout the society, and it deeply involves the reproductive sphere. So we consider a basic income such as this as a wage for work that previously was unwaged.

Another interesting aspect of the campaign is that the wage will be unconditional.
We want to make it so the right to this wage will be unconditional and not connected to citizenship, non-Italian citizens and migrants will have the right to this basic income. We understand the difficulties that this would present in the current climate surrounding immigration here in Italy but we hope it can open up new space for dialog about the idea of citizenship and to fight to extend it. We know it will be difficult to achieve this especially from an institutional perspective but there is a great need to connect these struggles.

What, if any, involvement have the political parties and trade unions had in YWC?
This is an autonomous campaign that relies on the horizontal relationships and solidarity between students, researchers, precarious workers, migrants etc and we try and avoid the influence of institutional bodies such as unions and political parties. However, should these groups want to support this campaign, they have not been involved in the campaign from the start.

What sorts of actions have taken place so far and what have you got planned?
We are at the very start of the campaign but we did enter a city council meeting (in a peaceful manner) to announce the campaign and asked for the right to talk about the campaign. Of course, they didn't allow us to speak so we left campaign flyers and information for the media. Now, we are planning to increase our efforts to promote the campaign amongst precarious workers at temp agencies, around picket lines, at the universities and so on. We are starting to sense a change in the political climate regarding a social wage in Italy. The idea has never been discusses in Italy before but we are starting to hear a calls for one not just from the left but also from some liberal commentators, who are starting to argue for the expansion of the welfare system. We want to continue to push this idea into the public debate especially during the regional election campaign in February and March by hosting debates , conferences and seminars to discuss this idea and to force the candidates to talk about it. One debate we have planned is to host a talk by Luciano Gallino, an important sociologist who is an advocate of a social wage, along with other researchers and academics involved with BIN (Basic Income Network) that campaigns for a social wage throughout Italy. We also have events planned in other cities in E-R like Ferrara, Parma, Reggio Emilia, Rimini etc during the election campaign.

Most of the literature makes no reference to the wider economy or any effects this would have, is this deliberate?
This campaign is a partial one, focusing on the needs of the groups we have already mentioned. We are interested in issues of the wider economy but we aren't interested in helping to solve the problems of the economy but to change the social relationships of production and give more power to people and more control over their lives.

http://yeswecash.blogspot.com/
email: yeswecash@gmail.com

Blog Refusal

2010-01-30T11:20:00.000-08:00

Hmmm....Sorry for the brief, year-long absence from posting here.

Basically, I've spent the last year receiving a sub-standard education in "professional writing and editing" that has robbed me of the energy and, at times, the morale that's needed to sit in a dark cellar and tap away at a typewriter for your empty pleasure.

I have, however, managed to extricate myself from Melbourne and have made it to sunny, Bologna where I have started my work researching the counter-cultural politics of Autonomia and the Metropolitan Indians. I have also come into contact with some interesting contemporary movements/people and in the next week I'll have something up here for you to read.

"bullets for your youth, money for your banks" part 2

2008-12-12T18:40:00.000-08:00

More on the Greek Uprising. This is a letter about events in Patras, a city on the west coast from Moses Boudourides, a worker at the University.

Allow me to tell you a few words about what happened last night here
in the city of Patras (aka Patrasso) where I'm living and working
(teaching at the University). Police forces accompanied with members
of extreme rightist groups and supported by a crowd of presumably
irritated local shop-owners were dispersed in the streets and alleys
of the city center, chasing protesters, mostly young people, busting
and injuring them and arresting a good number of them. The involvement
of extreme rightist groups has been confirmed by a public statement
made earlier today by Andreas Fouras, Mayor of Patras.

This happened yesterday evening after a number of protests have taken
place during the day and while most of the young people who have been
participating in the protests were standing quiet in front of a
University building in the center of the city. At the same time there
were still some burning barricades in a few streets, where previously
a number of demonstrators have been clashing with police, while the
wildest part of them was breaking the windows of some banks and a few
shops of cell phones and telecommunication accessories.

During the subsequent police chases, because many among the protesters
were University students, the cops were escorted by few members of the
student organization DAP of the governing party of Nea Dimokratia who
were trying to identify suspects among young people walking in the
streets and gesturing toward those they were considering to be
dangerous troublemakers.

Everything started last Saturday night, when a 16 years old kid,
Alexandros-Andreas (aka Alexis) Grigoropoulos, was cruelly shot dead
by an angry cop, against whom the kid and his two friends had just
thrown a bottle over the police car and they were shouting a few words
against the police patrolling of the Athens area of Exarchia. Since
then, for four days up to now, the city of Patras together with all of
Greece has been shaken by turbulent and wild protests and riots. In
these events people have been protesting against police violence,
state authoritarian oppression and demoralizing terror, the
aggravating standard of living, the coming recession under the current
financial crisis, the precarious and uncertain conditions of work, the
disparagement and retrenchment in the public education system because
of neoliberal policies adopted by the government, the discriminations
against foreign immigrants and weak subaltern people and so on.

In a nutshell, these protests were completely spontaneous - with the
exception of today's demonstrations in all Greece previously decided
on by two major trade unions in order to protest against the measures
of austerity implemented in the governmental budget for the new year -
there were no calls to participate from any organization at all.
People, mostly youngsters, were gathered on their own in squares and
streets almost everywhere in Greece in order to express their
indignity and rage for the loss of Alexis and to call for social
justice, freedom and respect for human bare life endangered by planned
precarious models of work and the threat of an authoritarian
imposition of de-democratizing political processes.

In memory of Alexis and against social injustice everywhere in the world.

"bullets for your youth, money for your banks"

2008-12-09T01:36:00.000-08:00

The phrase "10, 50, 100 Vietnams", coined by Che Guevara and applied to the factories, universities and streets of the world post-68, seems to be pretty apt for whats going on right now. Moves to resist capitals attempts to push the price of their crisis onto the wider social factory are afoot in Europe, North America and even Australia (more known for burning books than banks)

But the most dramatic seems to be in Greece. All sparked by the police killing of a 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, the reaction contains all the rage of something deeper. The last twelve months has seen a myriad of struggles and self-valorising strategies employed in Greece to counter Karamanlis government's market reforms and against the general rotten nature of the Greek political class. Clearly, the spectacles paid bozos and soothsayers are noting the significance.

People I met seemed to be sickened by the state of affairs in the country. Inflation was seriously eating into wages, unemployment high and pensions/unemployment benefits woefully inadequate for anyone to live on unless they stayed at home or squatted. And its extra-legal acts such as squatting and autoriduzione that many young people are turning to get by. The existence of so many struggles and this general dissatisfaction meant it was only a matter of time before this coalesced into something resembling a revolt.

More than one reported has suggested that Karamanlis could declare a state of emergency and even call in the army. Should this happen, something very massive could be on the cards. The shadow of the junta still casts a shadow over Greek life today and this would throw most of the country behind the protesters. This is still unlikely since Karamanlis knows the problem this would create, the most likely scenario is new elections and gains for the anti-capitalist parties.

noi la crisi non la paghiamo!

2008-11-25T17:18:00.000-08:00

More stuff on contemporary struggles. Italian universities are centre stage of resistance to capital and the states attempts to palm off their crisis on to the working class.

To the faculties in mobilization, to the undergraduate and Ph.D.
students, and to all the precarious researchers

"We won't pay for your crisis", this is the slogan with which a few
weeks ago we started our protest at the university of La Sapienza,
Rome. A simple, yet at the same time immediate, slogan: the global
crisis is the crisis of capitalism itself, of the financial and real
estate speculation, of a system without rules or rights, of
unscrupulous companies and managers. The burden of this crisis can't
fall on the educational system - from the school to the university -
on the health system or generally on taxpayers. Our slogan has become
famous, spreading by word of mouth, from town to town. From the
students to the precarious workers, from the working to the research
worlds, nobody wants to pay for the crisis, nobody wants to
nationalize the losses, whereas for years the wealth has been
distributed among few, very few people.

And it is exactly the contagion that has been produced in these weeks,
the multiplication of the mobilizations in the schools, in the
universities, and in the cities that should have stirred up a lot of
fear. It is well known that a fearful dog bites; similarly, the
reaction of President Berlusconi was immediate: police against who
occupy universities and schools, we will get rid of violence in our
Country. Only yesterday Berlusconi declared that he was willing to
increase the financial support to the banks and that the State and the
public expense would stand surety for the companies' loans: in a few
words, cutbacks to education, less founds for the students, cutbacks
to the health system, but public money for the companies, for the
banks and the private sector. We are wondering where is violence: is
it a violence to occupy universities and schools or instead that of a
government who imposes the Law 133 to cutback the founds for the
education system refusing the parliamentary debate? Is it the dissent
violent or is it violent who intends to put it down by the police? Who
is violent: who mobilizes for the public status of university and
schools or who wants to sell them for a few private profits? Violence
is on Berlusconi government's side, while in the occupied schools and
universities there is the great joy and indignation of who fights for
his own future, or who doesn't accept to be put in the corner or
forced to be silent. We won't want stay in silence in the corner.

They tell us that we are only able to say no, that we don't have any
proposal. There is nothing more false: the occupations and the
meetings of these days are really building up a new university, a
university made of knowledge, as well as of sociality, of learning,
but also of information, and consciousness. Studying is very important
for us: and it is exactly for this reason that we think that the
protests are necessary: we are occupying so that the public university
can endure, to continue to study and do research. There are a lot of
things that have to be changed both in the universities and in the
schools, but one thing is certain: the change can't pass through these
cutbacks. Changing the university means increasing founds, to sustain
the research, to qualify the educational processes and to guarantee
mobility (from study to research, and from research to teaching). The
cutbacks mean just one thing: transforming the public universities in
private foundations, decreeing the end of the public university.

The design and its tools are clear: Law 133 was approved in august,
and against the protests of dozens of thousands of students they claim
the police. This government wants to wreck democracy, through the
fear, through the terror. But today, from La Sapienza in mobilization
and from the occupied faculties, we want to say that we have no fear
and we won?t step back. On the contrary, our intention is to make the
government retreat: we won?t stop struggling before Law 133 and the
Gelmini decree will be withdrawn! This time we will proceed till the
very end, we don't want lose, we don't want submit to this arrogance.
For this reason we ask all faculties of the Country to do the same:
they want to repress the occupations, so that a thousand of faculties
occupy!

Moreover, after the extraordinary success of the general strike on
October 17th, we think that is the right time to give an unitary and
coordinated answer in our cities. We suggest two national dates: a day
of mobilization on Friday November 7th, with demonstrations spread all
over the cities; a huge national demonstration of the educational
world, from university to School, on November 14th in Rome, the day
the unions proclaimed the general strike of the university; a day to
be built from the bottom and in which the central figures have to be
the students, researchers and teachers in mobilization. At the same
time we think that it is useful to cross, with our forms and claims,
the general strike of the school proclaimed by the unions on Thursday
October 30th.

What is happening in these days tells us of a powerful, extraordinary
and rich mobilization. A new wave, an anomalous wave that doesn't want
stop and that rather wants to win. We have to increase this wave and
the will to struggle. They want us idiots and resigned, but we are
cleavers and in movement and our wave will go far!

From the occupied faculties of the La Sapienza, from the University
in mobilization, Rome.

“MUST THE MOLECULES FEAR AS THE ENGINE DIES?”

2008-10-10T20:19:00.000-07:00

I really have been slack lately. I'm writing about a section of a dynamic and innovative anti-capitalist movement but I have written nothing on the current crisis and the attempts to transfer it into the hands of the US working class in the form of a 700 billion dollar bail out and purchasing of bad debt.

Below are the musings of the righteous individuals at the Midnight Notes Collective on the current situation, its possible implications and on the need for resistance.

Dear Midnight Notes Friends,

The breakdown of the Wall Street financial machine makes the task that we
outlined in our June meeting more urgent. In June we planned to rethink
Midnight Notes in view of the restructuring of the accumulation process and
class relations carried out through the neo-liberal turn and Structural
Adjustment. We can now define this project more precisely: what do the current
crisis and restructuring of the financial system imply for us as we join the
rest of the world in the dog house of structural adjustment in the twilight of
the American empire?

In response to these questions, it
is important, first, that we realize that the so-called Wall Street “meltdown”
is certainly the end, but also the completion of the neo-liberal program. Let us
be clear about it. To think otherwise is to ignore the lesson taught to us by
the event that opened the present capitalist era: the 1973 coup again the
Chilean working class experiment with socialism, that led to the victory of
strong state backed market economy. Karl Polanyi’s theory that the single most
important cause of the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe was the inability
to control the financial market after the 1929 crash also resonates here. In
other words, we should not read the restructuring taking place as a turn to
socialism/Keynesianism, to the extent at least that Keynesianism was an
intervention by the state into the economy aimed at increasing the state’s
investment in social reproduction, starting with the reproduction of the
working class, in exchange for an increase in the social productivity of labor.
Despite the adoption of regulatory mechanisms, the operation presently
conducted by the US government bears little resemblance to the Keynesian
program launched with the New Deal.

Behind the $700 billion bail-out
and the many others that will follow--some already in the pipeline-- is a
massive transfer of funds from the US working class to capital, inevitably
leading to an assault on the last remaining entitlements (like Medicare, Social
Security) and a general program of austerity the like of which we have not seen
yet in a long time. The fact that there is no organized response to this
assault makes us fear the worst. For things would never have reached this point
if over the last decade the US workers had responded to the repeated thefts of
their money and benefits, through the Enron scandal and the many other “crises”
that have followed it. That despite the “instability” of the market, despite
its usage as a means to expropriate thousands of small/working class investors,
US workers continued to trust their livelihoods and future to it is certainly a
key factor in what we are presently witnessing and Washington/Wall Street
confidence in launching=2 0the new austerity program. It is our argument that
in the same way as September 11 served the US government to shed the last
remains of? ?democracy? and move to a model of government where
militarization is always around the corner (apparently Representatives were
threatened with the proclamation of martial law if they did not pass the
bailout bill), so the Wall Street crash will serve to shed the last remaining
elements of working class ?socialism? in the US political economy, starting
with Social Security, Medicare, a thorn in capital’s flesh, but so far
demonstrating a great resilience, the last shore for working class struggle in
the nation.

2. Lessons from the Debt Crisis.

There is a important parallel here, not sufficiently noted, between the present
crash and bail-out and the “debt crisis” of the 1980s, which engulfed most
Third World nations (except for China) and was the start of the globalization
process. Both have been engineered in the same fashion.

The? ?debt crisis? was the outcome a financial campaign conducted by
Washington and Wall Street, to practically force Third World nations to take
cheap development loans --liberally dished out at the lowest interest rates--
at a time when capital was refusing to invest in Europe and North America in
the face of the most successful working class attack to its profit-rate since
the 1920s, and a new generation of Africans, Asians etc. were organizing to d
emand a global redistribution of wealth and a program of reparations, that is,
in the language of the Bucharest Conference of 1974 : A NEW WORLD ORDER. ?

Through the lending mechanism, the massive flow of petrodollars that had been
amassed in the aftermath of the 1974 embargo (the first attack on US wages,
organized through a stiff inflationary wave) was redirected to the coffers of
Third World nations, which, attracted by the bait of cheap loans, were soon
hooked to the global economy, all dreams of an independent path to development
foregone.

In other words, loans at the
lowest interest rates were key to the creation of a global debt and the process
of primitive accumulation (through structural adjustment) that was imposed on
most of the workers of the world.

As we know, within less than a
decade, the rise of the interest rates in the US, turned manageable debts into
a long-term process of economic and political subordination. Debt became the
hook for a massive restructuring of Africa’s, Asia’s Latin America’s political
economies, re-establishing a colonial dependency that for three decades has
served to promote a massive transfer of funds from the Third to the First World
and defeat the organizational efforts of TW nation for an independent road to
development.

Under the guise of the “debt crisis”, portrayed as a case of “mismanagement” by backward countries, requiring First World-style financial responsibility, countries across the world were forced to open their books to Washington--via the IMF and World
Bank--accept any terms of repayment imposed on them. They were forced to freeze
wages, terminate all social spending, open their markets to foreign investors
and products, devaluate their currencies and so forth. The consequences of
these policies are well known. While Washington and NY built forests of
skyscrapers, sucking on the blood of Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, Caribbean
people, such levels of impoverishment and expropriation were imposed on the
people of the world that millions took the road out of their countries, unable
to survive in them, while those remaining witnessed epidemics, elimination of
schools, famines, wars, the loss of ancestral lands, waters and forests, brutal
wars of privatization, all directly related to the debt.

This is history now, though the politics of SAP have set back for decades the
project initiated by the anti-colonial struggle, reformulated and reasserted,
as I mentioned, at the Bucharest Conference of 1974, where TW nations
emboldened by the defeat of the US in Vietnam, demanded a NEW WORLD ORDER, i.e.
the redistribution, return of the wealth that Europe and the US have robbed
from the colonial world.

?? ?

With the debt crisis,
international capital obtained three major objectives.

?i) It disciplined the working class in Europe and the US, by dismantling
its manufacturing structure and refusing for years to engage in any serious
investment in these regions [remember zero growth??]

?

ii) It destroyed the attempt of
the former colonial world to escape a dependent/subordinate position, as
demanded by the new generation of Africans, Asians, etc., who, infused of the
spirit of Fanon, were keen on import substitution schemes, were pressing for
REPARATIONS, and pushing for some form of socialism (in Angola and Mozambique).

(iii). In addition to defeating revolution in First and Third World, the “debt
crisis” built the infrastructure for the new global economy. It forged the
mechanisms by which industries and offices could be relocated, companies could
run around the globe, the work process could be computerized and streamlined
and the working class thereby could be flexibilized and re-divided.

Against this background, we must note some basic similarities between the
engineering of the debt crisis and the engineering of the Wall Street crash and
must assume these similarities will extend to the social consequences of the
crash. The housing bubble was the result of loans made at very low though
adjustable credit rates, redirecting the influx of capital coming from abroad
(China and other countries) toward the US market.

Is it possible that investment
banks, credit rating agencies, the head of the Federal Reserve all FAILED to
realize what would be the inevitable result of an “easy credit”, lending policy
that reversed decades of regulatory principles and rules? Unless we want to
revel in the nonsensical tale of a blinding surge in human greed, the answer
must be a negative one. Thus, we must stop using the concept of “failure” to
describe the absence of regulations and the reasons for the crash. We must rule
out that the architects of the housing/mortgage crisis did not know it would end
in a financial disaster and cascade of foreclosures for the home owners, in the
same way as banks are partly responsible for the debt of the US working class
($45.000 on average per capita).

?

Continuing with the parallel, we have to conclude that with this 700 billion
dollar “bail-out”, coming straight out of our pockets and hides, the
“structural adjustment” that since the 1980s has been imposed on countries
across the world, is going to be extended to the US territory and the US
working class. This time (after many beginnings and many deferrals) we too are
being “adjusted.” I will discuss later what adjustment will mean at this time
for us. For the moment we only want to stress that we are witnessing not only a
financial meltdown, but also a great robbery, a macro-process of expropriation,
an immense transfer of labor, this time siphoning funds to the US banking
system not only from the Third World, as in the Debt Crisis of the 1980s, but
from our households, through the classic maneuver of increasing the national
debt. What we are witnessing is a capitalist coup, an example of capital’s
historic readiness to destroy itself in order to regain the initiative and
defeat resistance to its discipline.

3. Where does this resistance come from? How is the collapse of the financial systems
a response to it?

We cannot understand the Wall Street crisis unless we read it in class term as
a means to negotiate a different class deal and response to class struggle and
resistance. However, in dealing with these questions, I also want to
distinguish this approach and the growing tendency to view every development in
capitalist planning as a realization of working class struggle and demands, the
Negrian perspective on capital’s response to class movements.

This perspective is dangerous,
because besides turning even defeat into a victory, (such as: we wanted
globalization, we wanted flexibilization, etc), it ignores the fact that a
capitalist response must use working class demands against themselves, use them
to drive part of the working class out of the struggle, turn it against or away
from the other half, use them in such a way as to spark off forms of
development that decompose the class.

Let us look now at the crisis as a disciplinary tools and strategy. There are
at least three areas of resistance to the neo-liberal accumulation project that
the Wall Street collapse has to respond to. I will list them without an attempt
to establish an order.

First, the c rash and the bail-out must defeat the attempt of the US working
class to circumvent class discipline by using financial markets, rather than
struggle, sweat and labor, to increase their wages. While strikes and struggles
have died out over the last two decades, workers have tried to increase their income
in three ways: investing in the stock market, buying on credit, now even for
everyday expenses, getting equity money through housing, and defaulting student
loans. These tactics have clearly failed and now millions of workers are now to
pay twice for them, in terms of their individual losses and in terms of the
losses that will be inflicted on the US proletariat as a class through the
bailouts. If successful, these bail-outs will in fact be conducive to a new
regime of low wages and zero entitlements the like of which we have not seen
since the last part of the 19th century.

The new regime will not be the end
of market fundamentalism. It will be a revitalization of market investment
through the injection of our social security money, and it will be a
revitalization of some parts of American industry now presumably taking
advantage of the fact that workers are desperate enough to accept any
conditions just to have a job and a roof over their heads. A large part of
capital has for a long time been lusting to bring back America to the situation
before the New Deal, when employers had the upper hand. The “crisis” is giving
them a chance to return to that era.

That this time Social Security is
at stake is due to various factors. First, Social Security is the last pot of
money available to re-launch the US market, in a context in which workers have
no savings and monetary flows from the outside are drying out. It is also the
last “scandal” on the list of US capitalists who have relentlessly for years now
told us it must go. Most important of all, Social Security affects primarily
the old, the retired, and it is therefore an easier target than entitlements
affecting the whole working class.

So far workers in the US have
resisted the privatization of Social Security despite many governmental
attempts. But cuts in pensions have already gone a long way in the private
sector, where employers have given stocks of their companies to workers, or
stopped putting any money in their pension funds. The present crisis will
extend that to government backed pensions. And the road to it has been cleared
by years of false statements to the effect that Social Security is
unsustainable. Though it is a colossal lie, younger generations have, however,
accepted it. By cutting Social Security, capital undoubtedly hopes to pit the
young against the old, who (as in Africa today) are being pictured as a crew of
selfish gerontocrats sucking up the funds the young need to build their future.

The second target of the attack is the global resistance to capital’s
appropriation of natural20resources beginning with oil and gas extraction. The
defeat in Iraq is the peak of it. To this day, despite an immense expenditure
in war funding, the US has not been able to put its hands on Iraqi oil.
Resistance to international capital control over global energy resources has
also come from Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Many more countries are also
refusing the neo-liberal packet, especially in Latin America. These refusals,
not peak oil, are the true limits to capital’s energy plans.

There have also been bottlenecks
in the exploitation of forests, waters, minerals, and lands which structural
adjustment was to remove. A new “urban” peasant movement has been growing that
is fighting independently of unions, parties, “civil society” and NGOs, using
direct action tactics, to re-appropriate the lands and resources of which it
has been robbed ---poaching, harvesting timber or produce in commercial
plantations, mining diamonds and gold “illegally”, or farming in the very lands
from which they have been “legally” excluded. When they move to the cities they
squat on urban land and take over land not used, private or public to farm it
for their needs. It is a vast re-appropriation movement that is redefining the
fundamentals of social reproduction globally. It has put globalisers and
adjusters out of government; it has forced the nationalization of local
resources, and has redistributed wealth and political power, putting the World
Bank and IMF almost out of business in Latin America. It has defeated the
attempt to completely liberalize the economies of the TW through the rule of
the World Trade organization. Though not sitting at the table, the specter of
the rural/urban peasants of the world has guided the refusal of TW
representative to comply.

Third, global migration has developed in ways that make it difficult for
governments to use it as a regulatory mechanism for the labor market. Far from
being an easy device for driving wages down, migration is now an autonomous
uncontrollable phenomenon, with a logic of its own that is not reducible to the
needs of the labor market. It is important however to stress (against the
idealization of the migrant and of Exit, Exodus, Flight as the highest form
of struggle) that the struggle of the migrants is not superior to the struggle
of those who remain. In fact, migration can lead to the dissolution of local
organizations, it can create new divisions among the locals, separating those
benefiting from remittances and those deprived of them, it can boost the cost
of living in the area of origin by the influx of new money and hook local
economies more strongly to the international monetary system, fostering the
expansion of monetary relations. These, of course, are not inevitable results.
Actually, migrants have been able to use the wage against the wage, to refuse
impoverishment, to create transnational networks, to move from country to
country seeking a better deal and nullifying nation al boundaries and borders.

The attacks on immigrants of recent months, which have seen the most massive factory raids and deportations
ever in the US, are response to this autonomy. They are part of the attempt to
create a population of rightless workers, to function as a safety valve for the
labor market. Only if they have no rights can immigrants function as regulatory
mechanism for the labor market (in the same way as mass incarceration and
expansion of unpaid labor do). The redefinition of immigrant workers as outlaws
and the criminalization of working class--historically a key strategy to
devalue labor power--will continue to be a tool of the world order we will see
emerging from the crisis. But the crash will intensify the divisions between
?natives? and migrants, attack the organizational strength of migrant
organizations, unless there is strong opposition to this strategy.

The Politics of the Financial Crisis and Our Response.

Crises are always a threat and an opportunity as they break down business as
usual, and reveal something of the inner workings and nastiness of capitalism.
This one is not an exception and we can be sure that what will come out of it
will be greatly a result of what people do in response to it. If the Great
Depression is an indication, it took more than ten years for capital to
organize a different social order. Much can happen in such a period.

The problem for us today is that
workers are only organized around electoral politics at best. And many still
place more hope in a racist and imperialist stance than in working class
solidarity. We certainly don’t have a communist or an anarchist movement
organizing rallies of the unemployed, fight against evictions, or organize
“penny auctions” of farms as they did during the Great Depression. Nor do we
have an anti-capitalist alternative as the Soviet Union was in the eyes of
many. We also do not have the kind of solidarity that in the Great Depression
led to invention of new commons, like the hobo movement and the creation of
“jungle cities.”

Where to start then? This is what we need to work on in the coming months and years. There is no clear path to this kind of mobilization. But we need to start somewhere. On two
things we can get people to agree with us: First, we better find alternatives,
because, as things stand presently, we are so incestually connected with
capitalism that its demise threats our own existence. Second, unless we
organize to resist government planning, what lies ahead for us, after a cut of
more than a trillion dollars of our “entitlements” looks much more like some
variant of fascism than socialism.

With warm greetings,

Silvia and George

(H)istory: 1943-45.

2008-09-27T22:03:00.000-07:00

“History is not like a bus line on which the vehicle changes all its passengers and crew whenever it reaches the point marking its terminus.” Eric Hobsbawm in The Age of Empire

It’s hard to know where to begin with the historical background of Indiani Metropolitani/Movement of 77 and the general social and economic crisis of the 1970’s.

The general problems and cultural inheritances that Autonomia and the wider extra-parliamentary left dealt with can be traced far back in Italian history.
The “long view” of the development of Italian state and society would begin in the Risorgimento, the unification of the Italian peninsula that was completed by the late 1870’s. Another starting point could be the period after the First World War, the Red years of 1919 and 1920 and the “March on Rome” and the fascist seizure of power in 1922. In the end, I decided to start from the collapse of fascism in 1943 and the growth of the Resistance movement from 1943-45. This period provides a good platform for introducing the themes and the actors who would play a central role in the crisis of the 1970’s and the institutional, economic and social aspects of that crisis.

The Fall of Fascism

Central to fascisms programme was the idea of creating a new Italian Empire, to turn the Mediterranean into an Italian lake. Mussolinis attempts to bring this empire to reality were disastrous. He ordered the invasion of Greece in a fury after learning of German involvement in Romania, the Balkans was seen by Mussolini as being in the Italian sphere of influence and he intended to exert his influence there. The invasion was a failure from its inception. The Italians invaded Greece through Albania but were soon pushed back and their positions in Albania were under serious threat. Only a German invasion of Greece in April 1941 prevented a complete disaster.

Military failures helped compound the serious situation within Italy itself. There were serious shortages in food and other essentials which provoked major strikes during 1943. Once the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943, many “moderate” fascists were convinced that the time for a break with Germany had arrived but that Mussolini was a serious obstacle to this. The Fascist Grand Council, meeting for the first time since the outbreak of war, passed a no confidence motion in Mussolini. This in itself was not enough to unseat him but the one person who could had decided to act. King Emanuel II dismissed him days later and had him arrested, appointing monarchist General Badoglio to the premiership. Soon after Italy surrendered to the Allies and immediately declared war on Germany. The German reaction was to invade and occupy North and Central Italy while the Allies occupied the southern half of the peninsula. This period of dual occupation set the stage for the growth of Resistance, an experience that would significantly influence the post-war period.

Resistance and the PCI

Thousands flocked to the various resistance bands that formed behind the German lines known as the Gothic line. The PCI formed the “Garibaldi” brigades; Socialists formed the “Matteoti” brigades and members of the republican Action Party “Giustizia e Libertà” brigades. Committees of National Liberation (CLN) were set up all over the country, their headquarters under occupation being in Milan. Nazi terror and the formation of the puppet Salo Republic encouraged the growth and proliferation of the CLNs. These regional and provincial CLN’s were being joined by new local committees, co-operatives, factory committees and new district, neighborhood and even street CLNs.

In terms of partisans under arms, Saloist intelligence reported that there were 25,000 in Piedmont, 17,000 in Emilia, 14,000 in Liguria and 5,000 in Lombardy. These partisans managed to liberate small areas of North Italy such as Carnia in the north east and Montefiorino in the Central Appenines. Numerically, the biggest single group in the Resistance was the Italian Communist Party (PCI.) This period was to see the PCI grow from a persecuted underground movement to a mass party with a membership of millions. Their strategy at the time was based on the unity of all anti-fascist forces against the Germans and against the Salo Republic. The strategy was based on the political line developed at the 7th Congress of the Comintern in 1935. Formulated by the PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti and Dimitrov, it advocated that communists work with bourgeois political forces and institutions in the struggle against fascism. This effectively meant the temporary abandonment of all other political considerations (the destruction of capitalism and the seizing of state power) in favour of working for the immediate goal which was the destruction of fascism. In the Italian context, this meant the communists abandoning their opposition to the monarchy known as La svolta di Salerno (The Salerno turning point) after the Italian town where Togliatti announced this political u-turn. Beyond this the PCI dropped all socialist and republican slogans so as to preserve the anti-fascist front.

The PCI was especially strong amongst factory workers in the North. The deprivations, violence and networks of resistance that were set up created a new era collective action that would have resonance for years to come. March 1944 saw a wave of major strike action making explicit political demands for immediate peace and for an end to German war production. 300,000 workers walked out in the province of Milan and tram drivers walked out for days before returning after a campaign of violence was waged against them. Even sections of white collar workers would walk out with blue collar workers, a rarity amongst the usually highly stratified workplaces. More generally, the German occupiers needed to make concessions to workers involved in war production. Violence and threats to dismantle factories and take them to Germany would often provoke strikes and even sabotage of the machinery.

CLN and the Allies

In August, 1944, the Tuscan CLN played a major role in liberating Florence from the Nazis. They liberated the northern part of the city and immediately appointed their own choice for prefect, the socialist Gaetano Pieraccini. The Allies were forced to accept this appointment despite the fact they had their candidate in mind from amongst the Florentine aristocracy. The situation of an assertive and confident resistance movement represented a major problem for the Allies. While they understood the military value of the Resistance, they also understood that the Resistance had political objectives of their own both for the immediate period and for after the war. Many members of the CLN’s wanted to see the institutions and spirit of the CLNs be the basis of a post-war order, one that was based on goals of direct democracy and egalitarianism.

For the Allies it was clear that the central task was to wrestle power from these independent CLNs and to invest it in a central authority in Rome. This was to be done in two ways: the separation of political and military goals and the strengthening of the CLNAI so as to keep the local CLNs under control. As part of this strategy the Badoglio government and the Allies came to an agreement with the CLNAI known as the “Protocols of Rome.” The Allies would offer financial subsidy and assistance in exchange for CLNAI promises to obey the Allies Military Command, transfer all authority and powers of local government to the Allied Military Government and immediately disband the Partisan groups after liberation. This agreement was a massive blow to the CLNs and the ambitions of many movement members. From this point onwards, post-war politics would be conducted in Rome and through the representative organs of political parties, the centralized State and Cabinet rather than through the direct democratic organs of the CLNs.

Liberation

The last winter before liberation was especially difficult for Italians. Massive food shortages and unemployment caused by sabotage and German requisitioning was compounded by bitterly cold weather. However, with the Red Army approaching from the east and the Anglo-American Allies from the west, liberation was close at hand and the details of liberation were prominent in the Allies thinking. They wanted the Germans to surrender to them alone and for the Resistance to devote their energies to protecting factories an infrastructure from German “scorched earth” policy. The partisans themselves had a different vision of how liberation would be carried out. They wanted to launch insurrections in the major cities to demonstrate the strength of the movement to ensure a place at the table of any post-liberation political arrangement (specifically the communists) and to help repair a broken nations morale through an act of self-liberation.

On April 1st, Allied troops began their last offensive against German lines. However, German resistance was fierce and the Allies arrival into the Centre and North was delayed. The CLNs and the PCI however had already begun preparations for insurrection, with or without Allied help. On the morning of the 24th of April, insurrection was launched in Genoa. The urban guerillas of the SAP and ordinary citizens stormed public buildings and cut power to the German barracks and engaging in fierce battle for days until partisans came from the countryside and forced the German garrison to surrender.

In Turin, a massive strike preceded insurrection and the local CLN fixed the 26th of April as the date for the insurrection. The Allies delay had confused matters and a planned attack from partisans in the surrounding hills failed to materialize. This left many CLN members, mainly factory workers to face the full brunt of the fighting. The Germans and fascist volunteers were pushed back to the centre of the city and during the night of the 26th pushed though the partisan lines and headed east toward the Austrian border. The remaining troops in the city surrendered to the Allies troops on the 3rd of May.

On the 27th of April, Mussolini was fleeing Milan towards the Swiss border under SS guard. Disguised as a German soldier, he was part of a motorized column heading north but was stopped by members of the Garibaldi brigade. Mussolini was recognized and taken prisoner. The Allied commanders gave orders for Mussolini not to be shot but this was ignored by CLN leaders. Mussolini along with his mistress was shot and strung up in Piazza Loreto (see photo.)

High and Low

2008-09-14T06:05:00.000-07:00

As a listener, I seem to be heading in trajectories that are completely contradictory. The older I get the more immature my interests seem to be but also I’m being led into worlds of high seriousness and pretension.

My current rotation would be a good place to demonstrate this. I have gotten myself involved with hardcore band Deep Wound, most famous for being Lou Barlow and J Mascis’ first band. There is something wonderfully juvenile about them. They sound like wild teenage ID running riot in a supermarket, grabbing products off the shelves and trying to eat them before removing the packaging. They perfectly embody punks most immediate urges and desires for unmediated experience and fulfillment. Few songs lasts more than a minute and nor could it: Deep Wound expunge every thought/feeling/spasm right there in front of you and that’s rarely ever coherent or sustainable.

My fascination with this may not last long but this certainly pushes certain buttons right now.

At the opposite end of my brain right now lies Pierre Schaeffer. He was one of the pioneers of Music Concrete, the construction of sound art from recorded sound sources rather than musical instruments/notes. Despite his quite academic intent, his music does have an attractive element to the listener thats unaware of Schaeffers project. His use of disembodied voice and old classical music lend his work an almost spectral intangibility constructing it from traces of recordings long forgotten but living on in new contexts.

His intent and approach would seem to be the opposite of anything resembling Deep Wound but they both seem to be satisfying completely uncomplimentary musical needs.

On this spot nothing will ever happen-and nothing ever has Part 2

2008-08-25T05:22:00.000-07:00

A post-script to the last post. I read these in Paul Ginsburgs outstanding "A History of Contemporary Italy."

The first is in relation to an absent post office in the Milanese neighbourhood of Quarto Oggiaro. The area had grown massively during the period of mass migration from the South from 7,200 in 1959 to 80,000 in 1972. The area was in need of a post office amongst other public services.
In 1964, the local section of the Christian Democrats (DC) promise to investigate the problem.
In 1967, The Ministry of Post and Telecommunications claimed that the plans for a post office were at "an advanced stage" and that building would take place shortly. In 1968, the provincial director of posts claimed that the neccessary paperwork had been completed. In 1970, the regional director of posts announced that various buildings were under consideration to house the new post office; at the same time DC deputies talked of the new post office as "a concrete reality". By late 1973, there still was no post office in Quarto Oggiaro.

The second is in relation to the massive amounts of money spent on regional development in the South. The Cassa di Mezzogiorno was established in 1950 to distribute the vast funds earmarked for investment in Southern industry and infrastructure. Throughout the South, massive "Cathedrals in the Desert" were constructed. Massive heavy industrial projects built far from major cities like metalworks or petrochemical plants that would often close after a short period, especially during the 1970's when the bottom fell out of the steel market. Infrastructure projects would be built on a similar basis: One example was after an earthquake in Sicily in 1968. The government promised immediate aid and vast sums of money was assigned for reconstruction. Nine years later, not one house had been assigned to a local family. However, massive and unused infrastructure was built: roads that led nowhere, massive bridges only used by shepherds and livestock, footpaths that had no pedestrians etc.

These examples evoke the same images of empty structures and stagnation as the buildings I saw in Greece. The main difference would be that I'm not sure whether the "Cathedrals in the Desert" are still standing (and been re-appropriated by people in the same way.) Maybe thats a task for when I get to Italy!

A Minor Band

2008-08-18T04:47:00.000-07:00

Music, like so many aspects of life under capitals thumb, is the site of injustice and contestation.
Bands, genres and approaches that seek to subvert or at least renovate musics lucrative role in the spectacle are maligned and ignore while music that is boring/lazy/alienating/shit is showered with gifts and favour from well wishers. One of the victims of this situation is the brilliant US Maple.

US Maple are the band that are nothing-but should be everything. They were formed in early 1995 by veterans of several Chicago area punk bands. US Maple were, for most of their life, were: Pat Samson, Todd Rittman, Mark Shippy and Al Johnson.

The most widely quoted statement of intent is that they collectively sought to banish rock and roll from their minds. The best evidence of this project are their two masterpieces: Talker and Acre Thrills.

They both proceed in polydirectional courses: everywhere but nowhere all at once. Loose and haggard, pulling every which way to the point of apparent incoherence. But these records still deal in songs and structures, however loose and unconventional.

Its tones are muted and compressed. Todd Rittmans "low" guitar defines large stretches of their minor rock and roll, working circles of strangled flourish in and around the fits and starts of Pat Samsons drumming.

Unlike the usual indie rock tension and release template, Talker builds and subsides/collapses without climax. This void could be said to be the defining feature of Talker and Acre Thrills: songs without release, loose structures without dissonance, punk rock without rocking out.

Their arcs of stop and start and lax structures, however, cant hide the viruosity at play here, more of a punk Captain Beefheart than a debt to any idiot-(s)avant tradition. Al Johnsons vocals are a lurching wheeze sung through clenched teeth that take the form of riddles and poems of unknowable intent.

The paradox of this band, the thing that makes them so enticing and interesting is all these contradictions at play. The fact that they can sound like a glorious mess but have at their heart a sense of control and absence that cant be grasped instantly. They can sound sprawled yet compressed, free yet constrained, contorted yet natural.

P.S-There is a documentary film in the works about US Maple as well.

On this spot nothing will ever happen-and nothing ever has

2008-08-17T03:36:00.000-07:00

Greece is littered with Ruins, both Ancient and Modern. The Ancient Ruins were the homes and temples of people from an imagined glorious past. They were born, they lived and they died in these spaces, assigning them an ongoing significance. The Modern Ruins are the exact opposite. They are buildings that have been half-built but never completed either because the money for construction has run out or bureaucratic delay has led to their abandonment. No one has ever lived or worked there and its unlikely that anyone ever will. They are anti-monuments, signifiers of what has not happened rather than what has.

What he said!

2008-06-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all,

Meatier and less lazy posts will follow I swear.

But first some grade A plagiarism here, an interesting post on the Refusal of Work as a revolutionary strategy . An important concept when looking at Autonomia and the general class struggle since the 1960's.

Enjoy!

On our pitiful silences

2008-05-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

Anger is an energy

Every man a critic......

2008-05-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

I have recently had the joy of being introduced to the films of Peter Watkins, a British renegade of the highest order. His films are stark and confronting affairs about power, its exercise and its victims. The most notable of his works are "La Commune" (a mammoth recreation of the Paris Commune of 1871 as if covered by 24 hour news cycle) and "Edvard Munch" (touted by many as the greatest film ever made about an artist.)

I recently saw Punishment Park (in the rather safe surrounds of my cousins flat in Thessaloniki) which I can liken to firm punch in the stomach. Set in a time of perpetual and indefinite crisis, the Internal Subversion Act of 1950 is being used to bring dissidents and counter-culturalists before special tribunals. Upon sentencing, defendants are offered the choice of a jail sentence or time in Punishment Park (a stretch of desert where prisoners are asked to walk a huge distance to reach an American flag and avoid police and National Guardsmen.) We follow two groups of defendants: one facing the tribunal and the other being sent into Punishment Park.

The tribunal and police engage in a violence that is at first steeped in procedure. But it is clear that this is a procedure heavily rigged against the dissidents. During the first moments of the trial, we are shown the defence lawyer trying to pass motions on points of law only to be instantly denied by the head of the tribunal. Despite this bias, tribunal members seem unwilling to address issues of guilt or innocence... that has seemingly been decided. Instead they use the proceedings to vent the resentments of their class/proffession/statuses against the handcuffed and shackled dissidents brought before them. There is the Senator who cant understand black militant rage when many black people own colour tvs. The union shop steward whose patriotism and faith in "upward mobility" precludes him from finding common cause with people who probably have more in common with him than the other panel members (and who probably would have marched side by side a generation or two earlier.) The housewife/moral activist denouncing the immorality of love ins and revolutionaries.

This depiction of power and its procedures as farce mirrors the way the impartiality of the film crew is treated. The premise of the film is that a European camera crew is filming the events to show on television. In the beginning, the narrator (Watkins himself) maintains a objective distance from the events being filmed, reading out the desert temperature and distance travelled by the dissidents in Punishment Park. As police chase and capture the dissidents, the film crew maintain this distance from events. Over time, this objectivity is eroded.
A group of dissidents take one of the crew hostage before the dissidents are both killed, the crews status as pure observers is ended. The other dissidents, thirsty and desperate, attack police lines with rocks and whatever they can find and police open fire. The narrators passive voice is replaced by a desperate and passionate tone, accusing the police of cold blooded murder and threatening to use the images against the police. In the face of seemingly intractable social conflict, distance is impossible. There are no spectators.

Introductions

2008-05-07T02:19:00.000-07:00

Its best I use this first post to explain what it is I'm trying to do here.

First of all, I'd like a place to indulge my worthless opinions on everything: music, books, film and the hundreds of humiliations and micro-fascisms of everyday life.

Besides venting my spleen in this minor way, I want to use this little blog to chart the progress of a pet project of mine. I am researching the history of the various protest/resistance movements of late 1970's Italy collectively known as Autonomia and especially a section within the movement known as the Metropolitan Indians.

The Metropolitan Indians (MI) were essentially a loose/informal grouping of young proletarians, students, drop outs, workers in the informal economy etc who became infamous for their actions/stunts mocking enemies and movement leaders as well as their acts of resistance against the politics of austerity and repression practiced by the Christian Democrat/Communist Party government (known as the "Historic Compromise".)

Essentially, I am starting from zero: I know the history of the period but have yet to do much writing yet, I havent learnt Italian yet (!) nor have I been to any of the cities they were active in.

So this should be fun! Join Me!