Documentary on Pierre Bourdieu - Sociology is a Martial Art

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Pierre's Bourdieu's forty books and countless articles represent probably some of the the most influential renovations and applications of social science in the twentieth century. The highly influential and controversial intellectual - a longtime Professor of Sociology at the College de France - passed away in January 2002.
A "committed" thinker in the vein of Foucault, his work is concerned with elucidating the processes of symbolic violence and cultural domination in various areas of social life. His most well known book, Distinction (1979), addressed these themes in an effort to overcome the opposition of objectivist (Marxist) and subjectivist (Weberian) theories of class. Click here for more books by Bourdieu.
In the late nineties he became something of a celebrity scholar, one of the world's most important academics actively associated with the anti-globalization movement. Bourdieu himself argued that scholars and writers could and should bring their specialized knowledge to bear on social and political issues. His powerful critiques of the neoliberal revolution were the natural outgrowth of a lifetime of research into economic, social and cultural class domination among peoples as disparate as Algerian peasants and French professors, and as expressed in everything from amateur photography to posture.
SOCIOLOGY IS A MARTIAL ART, a new documentary about Bourdieu's life, became an unexpected hit in France just prior to his death. Filmed over three years, director Pierre Carles' camera follows Bourdieu as he lectures, attends political rallies, travels, meets with his students, staff, and research team in Paris, and includes Bourdieu having a conversation with Günter Grass.
The film's very title stresses the degree of Bourdieu's political engagement. He took on the mantle of Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre in French public life, slugging it out with politicians because he considered those lucky enough to have spent their lives studying the social world could not be indifferent to the struggle for justice.

Leo Panitch: Still a Marxist after All

In this lecture, Leo Panitch explains his positive but critical relation to Marx and how to understand current events, like the crisis, in Marxist terms. He does this not by just labelling current events with Marxist language, but is interested in how different capitalisms came to pass and how to transcend them in today's world. This is what makes Panitch very stimulating to read and listen to.

He has been a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He is also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a supporter of the Socialist Project.

He is a prominent exponent of Marxism who sees his own work as theoretically innovative within that tradition, because he maintains that the dominance of the United States in the early years of the twenty-first century can't be understood using theories of imperialism that are themselves a century old.

He has argued, for example, that the concept of imperialism developed for the Victorian era over-emphasized the matter of the export of capital. Yet if one uses that as a yardstick today (he reasons) Great Britain is more a victim of U.S. imperialism than Kenya -- since American investors have much more at stake in the former than in the latter. The advanced industrial nations, in other words, are interpenetrating -- exporting capital to one another, not to the 'South,' and this requires a great deal of revision in Marxist-Leninist models.

A vast amount of his publications can be found here.

Panitch has also argued that Marx was wrong to contend that the rise of trade unions would develop a socialistic class-consciousness in the working class. The association of workers for the purpose of collective bargaining has proven quite compatible with capitalism -- since such bargaining concerns the terms of wage labor, not the legitimacy of wage labor. He argues that Marxist political parties must abandon the assumption that there is anything inherently revolutionary about any class, so that they can get to work creating a self-conscious revolutionary class of wage earners, "articulating the articulation."

Marxism 2009: some highlights

Unfortunately, finishing my bachelors this summer turned out to mean I could not attend Marxism festival 2009 in London. However, some of the most prominent speakers have had their speeches filmed and posted on Youtube.

Slavoj Žižek on reinventing socialism and what it means to be a revolutionary today.



Tariq Ali on recent international politics: Obama, Pakistan and the US empire.



More can be found here, including speeches by David Harvey, Chris Harman, and Alex Callinicos (the diehard leninist).

Documentary: A Place Called Chiapas

'A Place Called Chiapas' is a breathtaking Canadian documentary of first-hand accounts of the EZLN, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and the lives of its soldiers and the people for whom they fight. Director Nettie Wild takes the viewer to rebel territory in the south west Mexican state of Chiapas, where the EZLN live and evade the Mexican Army.

Annie Machon: How to Counter the Spies

Annie Machon is a former MI5 (British Security Service) Intelligence Officer and whistleblower. She left the Service at the same time as her (now ex-)partner, David Shayler, due to Shayler's disclosures about crimes committed by the intelligence agencies. Annie is a prominent member of 9/11 Truth Movement, and in 2005 she wrote a book called "Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5 and the David Shayler Affair". This is a presentation she gave about the role of intelligence agencies in the current era of the unending “war on terror”, how they monitor citizens and left-wing activists in particular, the implications for our democracies, and what we can do to fight back.

Shell on Trial and Antonia Juhasz on “The True Cost of Chevron"

These two in depth Democracy Now reports on Shell's and Chevron's practices of 'externalising costs' proved to provide a great deal of the history of these companies' shady dealings in the third world.



A landmark trial against oil giant Royal Dutch Shell’s alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Niger Delta begins this Wednesday in a federal court in New York. Fourteen years after the widely condemned execution of the acclaimed Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, the court will hear allegations that Shell was complicit in his torture and execution.



Now Chevron’s annual report reports that 2008 was the company’s most profitable year in history. Just ahead of Chevron’s shareholder meeting, a new report released today tells shareholders more about the hidden and underreported costs of these profits. The alternative annual report is called “The True Cost of Chevron.” It brings together stories from communities across the world—Angola, Burma, Canada, Chad, Cameroon, Ecuador, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the Philippines and the United States—all directly affected by and in struggle against Chevron’s operations. We speak to the report’s author and James Craig, media adviser for Latin America for Chevron.

Meet Mumia Abu Jamal

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Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Before his arrest he was a Black Panther Party activist, cab driver, and journalist. Since his conviction, his case has received international attention and he has become a controversial cultural icon. During his imprisonment he has published several books and other commentaries, most notably 'Live from Death Row'. On April 6, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled that his original conviction of 28 years ago would stand.
Despite all the setbacks and defeats in the struggle for his own life, Mumia is still regularly broadcasting broadcasting his insightful and eloquent columns trough Prison Radio.

In light of the article I've just written and posted below, I think it'd be informative to link to a speech made by first Iraq war veteran and UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 2007 on the anti-war movement and strategy. In it, he promotes his book Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Anti-War Movement. Enjoy the drill.

Funnily enough, there's also a British based organisation with the identical name: Waging Peace

People Power Politics

Compared to the last American government of course, the Obama administration is quite responsive to public opinion. But, to be frank, it should be clear by now that Obama’s policies are miles away from taking measures to dismantle the empire, take care of the poor in your country, set up single payer health care, or implement a crucial emergency rescue plan for energy and climate, for instance. The crucial question therefore, I think, is not what the current administration is proposing and doing, but rather what American activists will be able to achieve in the present historic window of opportunity. As Christopher Hayes expressed a similar optimism: "history is pointing in our direction". So in this article I would like to address the strategy of the American left, the vital actors who put pressure on the only state that can on its own seriously change the course of world politics.

I am of course not alone in calling for the active citizens of the US to think about the most effective way to act in the longer term. For example, former UN weapons inspector and anti-war drill sergeant Scott Ritter stated that the anti-war movement needs to reinvent itself:

“It is high time for the anti-war movement to take a collective look in the mirror, and be honest about what they see. A poorly organized, chaotic, and indeed often anarchic conglomeration of egos, pet projects and idealism that barely constitutes a "movement," let alone a winning cause.” ('The Art of War for the Anti-War Movement')

Ritter is often a little harsh and rigid to my taste, and understandably suffered from some culture shock after siding with anti-authoritarian activists, he does have an important point. I think it can help all of us to be shouted at by people like him from time to time. Not because activist groups need to organize in a military manner per se, but to become better at strategic forward thinking; setting objectives, and consequently figuring out concrete ways to achieve them. There is, however, one crucial issue he does not address: the need to formulate an independent radical vision of and for society. Strategic action is always a means to an end, it by definition only makes sense if it is instrumental to a larger goal. The task for the left is to formulate this alternative vision for society.

So the left does not only need to reinvent itself organizationally, but also ideologically. Theory is a necessary first step to opening up political possibility. These times of proliferation of crises should be used first and foremost to return to the fundamental questions and critiques of capitalist social relations, the state and its relation to capital, democracy in the economic sphere, the relation between the economy and the natural environment, alienation and consumer society and so on. The ongoing search for forms of collective action that transcend the now all too apparent shortcomings of liberal democratic capitalism is what needs to give the left a lasting sense of direction.

But in the mean time, reforms are urgently necessary to open space for radical ideas. Electoral reform and environmental reform are two illustrations of this necessity. Electoral reform is needed to break open the two party system, to show that the Democrats or the Republicans are not the only political options. And whatever society one would like to see take form, it will have to live with natural constraints like climate change, depletion of natural resources; in short the limits to growth. Our current transgression of the limits to growth is one fundamental difference between the situation in the 1930s and today. As a consequence of these new concerns, I would argue, the American left will have to seriously press for reform while engaging in a fundamental debate of self-reinvention. The issue is therefore not whether you should take a step back and think or act immediately out of a sense of urgency, but rather how to combine the two activities.

To determine a way to start realizing those long-term visions, it is helpful to think in terms of social processes. Quite understandably, the last eight years of the Bush administration evoked a serious amount of popular disenfranchisement; resulting in passive apathy but also active resistance. The depression and the bailouts have also motivated people to protest in the streets of New York, London and Strasbourg. People power has been on the rise lately. If the process of disenfranchisement continues during the Obama administration, it could very well become the foundation for a commonplace independent activist citizenry on the longer term, in which citizens organize, self-educate and determine their own course rather than limiting themselves to passively endorsing the Democrats, the Republicans, or being apathetic. The two essential missing ingredients are active organization and critical theory.

For some time, the campaign and election of Barack Obama took away a lot of energy from the movements. Especially in the weeks following the election the Obamania was absolutely intolerable. But lately, popular discussion and pressure increased by mainstream media is forcing him into a dilemma. If I understand the significance of the torture memoranda debate correctly, there are two possible outcomes. In the most likely case, Obama will keep to his line of only 'looking forward' and stop short of prosecuting those responsible for the torture under Bush (and during his own presidency! Democracy Now reported that since the closing of Guantanamo was announced, the treatment of prisoners there worsened significantly), which means he will bend and twist to keep the torture conspirators above the law. Such preferential treatment would be another sign that real change can only be the result of pressure from below, as was shown by the conservative staff appointments, the intensification of the war in Afghanistan, the silence during the Gaza siege, the Geithner plan, etcetera. Pressure would have to increase for the Obama government to make the changes that are necessary, pressure that will only come from your actions and patience.

The other possibility is that Obama shows himself willing to give in to pressure from below on issues that can draw on widespread coverage and popular support, and really allow prosecution. Just imagine Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld as defendants in court! That would be an amazing victory, again not for the Obama government, but for the American people; earned especially by those who have made the case for justice and fought for years to get to the truth of the matter.

If anything, this debate shows there is a chance to realize successes. The Obama administration is predictably wriggling around and torturing logic in avoidance of making powerful enemies, so do not be fooled into passivity if he will not go through with prosecution of those who allowed and committed torture. But there will be new chances. Anyone who has read books by Chomsky will know that there is no short supply of issues on which the policy elite, Republican or Democrat, opposes the views of a wide majority of the American population. Herein lies possibility of reform not only for the sake of reform itself, but also to show that another world is possible.

So what I would like to convey to you is this: for your own countries’ sake and for people around the world, self-educate and become effective. While engaging in the necessary ideological debates on the bigger picture, join an activist group if you haven’t already. Get into touch with other groups on a national level, coordinate and pick a topic to campaign on, have patience and try to use the mainstream media as your own platform. I am not saying that this will be easy, but when the chance is there, you have to be able to take it and use it well. Because, as we see in the recent debate on torture, it actually is possible to get even Fox News hosts to unequivocally denounce torture and call for prosecution of those responsible. You may not agree with how Shephard Smith puts his argument -“If we are to be Reagan’s shining city on the hill..”- but he was able to suddenly disrupt the indoctrination of millions of your countrymen. His broadcast outrage was as politically valuable a service as countless hours’ worth of organizing, licking envelopes, sending emails, having meetings and staging rallies. The trouble so often is, you need to latter to have the former; the very fact that Obama released the memoranda or that Shephard Smith felt the need to denounce torture to such a degree, are the sweet fruits of effective activism. Never forget that you, the active citizens of the US, are the real superpower.

Freek Blauwhof is a philosophy student and member of the Dutch Green Party, as well as the International Socialists.

The Evilness of Power - A Documentary on Authority

Few, if any documentaries I have come across go as deep into what motivates people to commit acts that our conscience normally would never allow. Montageing commentary from a host of intellectuals and shards of history, recent politics and popular culture to back them up, this film makes a powerful case that the evil people do to each other is not inherent in human nature: it requires authority and hierarchy to come about.

On www.anarchy.net, the creator of the film had this to say about his montage documentary:
"My motivations for creating The Evilness of Power are varied. I wanted to clarify the ideas and channel the strong emotions I'd been internalizing since I became an activist in 2004 and which I had been sketchily trying to articulate in my youtube channel since late 2006. I also realized that there weren't that many documentaries dealing exclusively with the concept of hierarchy--perhaps none at all--. I noticed how relatively easy and effective it would be to weave together some of my youtube videos with parts of programs, films, documentaries etc to offer a more comprehensive examination of hierarchy and hopefully contribute to revolutionary change."

Interview with Eva Golinger

I've found an excellent twenty-minute interview with Eva Golinger, the American-Venezuelan lawyer and journalist who obtained documents proving USAID and CIA's involvement in the 2002 coup attempt in Caracas. She tells about the coup, the direction and deepening of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, and US policy towards the country.

Books by Eva Golinger

Announcing Dutch and British Marxism Festivals

As spring comes into full swing in Europe, the traditional 1st of May is followed by a series of Marxism festivals. In Holland, the International Socialists organised a two day event, hosting a myriad of discussions, film screenings, meetings and musical performances. The language will occasionally be Dutch, but the list of speakers is international so there will also be plenty of opportunities for those who don't speak Dutch.
During the course of weekend of the 9th and 10th of May, the following speakers will shed their light and engage in discussion on the depression, its causes and opportunities, climate change, NATO and Afghanistan, Obama and what he means for imperialism, 10 years of Chavez, the food crisis, the state of the unions, and much, much more:

Arnold Heertje (economist)
Ronald van Raak (Socialist Party MP)
Linda IJmker (Milieudefensie; Environmental Defence)
Mohamed Rabbae (Een Land Een Samenleving; One Country, One Society)
Lindsey German (Stop the War, UK)
Cees Ladestein (OR Nemef / FNV)
Maina van der Zwan (International Socialists)
Hajo Meyer (Een Ander Joods Geluid; A Different Jewish Voice)
Sotiris Kontogiannis (SEK, Greek Socialist Worker Party)
Nora el-Jebli (Moslima Polder Brigade)
Henk Overbeek (University of Amsterdam)
Mike Gonzalez (socialist from Venezuela)
Rebecca Gomperts (Women on Waves Foundation)
Peyman Jafari (author of 'The Other Iran')
Marjolein ’t Hart (University of Amsterdam)
Erhan Can (organizer with Dutch labour Union, the FNV)
Sara Farris (Sinistra Critica, Italy)
Marienella Yanes (filmmaker Red Oil)
Erkan Dogan (socialist from Turkey)
Miriyam Aouragh (Oxford University)
Antonio Carmona Baez (IIRE)
Volkhard Mosler (Die Linke, Germany)
Sjaak van der Velden (IISG)
Bart Griffioen (head editor 'De Socialist')
Mani Tanoh (socialist from Ghana)
Kees Kalkman (VD Amok)

So for those of you who live in Holland, I very warmly invite you to join the festival.

For those of you who live in Britain, this kind of festival is organised in an even more grandiose style in London, spanning five days with several events simultaneously. The list of internationally renowned speakers is just extraordinary. I plan on going there as well to see in real life some of the people who have been real sources of inspiration to me: Tariq Ali, Tony Benn and Slavoj Žižek in particular. So if you are in Britain, mark the 2nd to the 6th of July in your diary and make sure you do not miss this opportunity!

Jeremy Scahill on the Obama Age

One of America's newly risen stars in investigative journalism, Jeremy Scahill discusses American military power and economic imperialism in the coming years, related to Obama policies. Scahill has reported from post-invasion Iraq; the former Yugoslavia, where he covered the 1999 NATO bombing; and from post-Katrina Louisiana. He is is a correspondent for Democracy Now, and is a frequent contributor to The Nation. Scahill documented the use of private military contractors in his award-winning book "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army."

'Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army' and other books by Jeremy Scahill

No Volveran -The 21st Century Socialism of Venezuela

Documentary No Volveran: Behind the bold policies of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is a revolutionary mass movement that is saying NO to capitalism, and attempting to change the course of Latin American history. Journey deep into the barrios, out to the factories and into the heart of the revolution to find out why there is a movement to transform society. Meet the people who are fighting for power in their communities, and taking control of their work places. Follow the factory workers of Sanitarios Maracay in their struggle against sabotage and corruption, as they pave the way forward with their unprecedented campaign for full nationalisation under workers' control. In this feature length documentary, meet many of the key revolutionary figures to find out how they are trying build socialism of the 21st century, and how it is changing peoples lives. www.handsoffvenezuela.org www.alteredstatefilms.com www.marxist.com

In this lecture given by Michel Chossudovsky in 2003, in the early years of the neoconservative Bush administration and the war on terror, he blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on the US by "Islamic terrorists". As this speech is a few years old, we should of course add to it what we know happened afterwards. Through meticulous research, he has uncovered both a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and a cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration. According to Chossudovsky, the "war on terrorism" is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. But Chossudovsky does not fit the stereotype of 'truthers' who do nothing else then meticulously going over the details of the events of 9/11. In stead, he puts 9/11 in a wider context of geopolitics, one that allows insight in the shadow side of actual states. In this lecture, he argues that the "war on terrorism" is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to a "New World Order", dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex. September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington's agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

Michel Chossudovsky is currently professor of economics at the Universtiy of Ottawa. He has taught as visiting professor at academic institutions in Western Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia, has acted as economic adviser to governments of developing countries and has worked as a consultant for international organizations including the United Nations Development Programme, the African Development Bank, the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning, the United Nations Population Fund, the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1999, Chossudovsky joined the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research as an adviser. Chossudovsky is the past president of the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He is a member of research organisations that include the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform, the Geopolitical Drug Watch and the International People's Health Council. He is an active member of the anti-war movement in Canada, and has written extensively on the war in Yugoslavia. After the September 11 terrorist attacks he has also been involved in highlighting the historical relationship between the US government, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He is a frequent contributor to Le Monde diplomatique, Third World Resurgence and Covert Action Quarterly. His publications have been translated into more than twenty languages. His latest book is titled America's "War on Terrorism".

War and Globalisation and other books by Michel Chossudovsky

Report from Strasbourg

RTL 4 News Report on the Dutch International Socialist Demonstration

Below this report is a transcript in English.

Last weekend I joined the Dutch International Socialists to try and peacefully protest NATO and the occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine in the French border city of Strasbourg. While no demonstrations were allowed inside the city, we agreed to try to get into the city as early as 4 am on Saturday, where we were met with extraordinary police repression. The gendarmerie immediately fired tear gas grenades at our manifestation the moment we were first spotted in the Strasburg suburbs. This encounter would set the tone for the entire day. Nonetheless we tried to reach the city centre, but had to back off when the riot police threatened to hopelessly split open our already decimated group of, at that moment, around 300 protesters. This is where Sanne, interviewed in the news clip, got hit directly in the face by an exploding tear gas grenade. She, some other comrades and I locked arms and got away as quickly as possible while we were trying to reach the retreating group, resisting the gas and grenade impacts. Many fellow protesters, me included, got hit by explosive grenades directly aimed at our bodies. In several cases this resulted in injuries. Inside the protected 'orange zone', we got trapped by lines of armed and armoured riot police, who refused to let us out to join the major demonstration. We were locked in at an intersection for several hours, Over time other split off groups of demonstrators joined our blockade, and so we slowly regained morale.

It took determination and a lot of pressure before the riot police let us cross the bridge to join the planned major demonstrations. The battle for the bridge started when a bigger group of several hundred people joined our group cheering. The police felt threatened and moved in to ram us away from the bridge. We stayed our ground, lifting our hands in the air, chanting: "We are peaceful, what are you?". The pressure mounted and we were forced to retreat, but the police apparently feared retaliation and returned to the bridge. It was at this time that the 'Black Block' started rioting. The Black Block are a radical group of anarchists who want to beat the system with violence. They got increasingly worked up, reacting with stones, clubs and eventually a few Molotov-cocktails to the police blockade and their continuous volleys of direct tear gas and CS grenade fire from launchers aimed with laser guidance. They also lobbed deafening and dangerous sonic grenades. An especially grim detail we witnessed was that a medic in uniform got hit frontally in the crotch by another directly aimed exploding gas grenade. As he was dragged to the side of the road by his colleagues, they got hit as well while treating their colleague's wounds. The police definitely seemed to single out the medics.

It started to look like we might be surrounded for real, when, at precisely the right moment, a thousand strong group of fresh Englishmen, Greeks, Italians, Turks, Frenchmen and others gloriously tipped the scales in our favour. When we finally broke through the bridge blockade the riot police moved to the side of the road and let us through to the main stage; the starting point for the official demonstration outside the city centre. But a few hundred Black Blockers turned right one street later than we did, where hundreds of riot police let them set fire to a hotel and a bank office before they felt the need to quell the riot. We suspect the fires were allowed to happen because, from our stage site, we saw smoke coming from the other side of a wall at least half an hour before we heard any serious grenade and rifle fire. When it hit, though, nobody knew what would happen to the planned demonstration - tension was definitely in the air.

The manifestation was quiet, while the widely spread frustration with the Black Block got confirmed one more time. Another bridge was occupied by at least two hundred fully equipped riot police now blocking a route to the city centre, but this time we could just have passed them by. In stead of ignoring the gendarmerie and following the normal route for the demonstration, the black mob chose to pick a fight anyway. This incident resulted in intense fire with rubber bullets, water cannons, and a suffocating amount of CS and tear gas. Disappointed with these irrational rioters, we decided it was time to go home to the Anti-NATO village and called it a day.

As Strasbourg was my first demonstration at an international summit, I never expected this amount of violence. But neither did the more experienced members of the Dutch IS. We agreed to have a peaceful blockade before the main demonstration, something that is to my mind an act of perfectly legitimate civil disobedience to a refusal of right to free speech. However, it seemed that the police would not let a peaceful blockade happen. The police response combined with a Black Block that is immune to arguments of non-violence leaves little room for an honest and widely supported demonstration against NATO and the occupations in the Middle East. Still, we managed to win the sympathy of the local population in the city centre at least. We crossed a good part of the 'orange zone', and even got our message of peace and solidarity across two Dutch national television broadcasters. Reporting teams from the public news programme Netwerk (transmission Monday the 6th, 20:25) and RTL Nieuws (Saturday the 4th, 19:30) followed us in our attempt to cross the city.

I think our movement has two major problems that prevent it from spreading in the hundreds of thousands. The Black Block were in my view just as much a threat to our message as the riot police was to our right to convey it. Despite serious difficulties for peaceful protesters at this summit, we have reached more than a million of our countrymen who might see through the general picture of violent rioters as a result. I want to thank all the comrades who made our efforts a success in spite of everything with their courage, caring, solidarity, and clarity! THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!

Transcript:

(0m;0s) Suzanne Rosman: Compliments back and forth, Bastiaan, eh, outside people are apparently less happy."

Bastiaan Hetebrij: "You can say that again. There have been demonstrations in both Germany and France today, as was the case yesterday and the day before. Some fifty protesters got wounded in the process today, and colleague Jeroen Akkermans got up very early this morning to report from the demonstrations."

Jeroen Akkermans: "Columns of smoke over the NATO summit. Strasbourg is the scene of riots and fires despite the enormous security operation. A group of around 100 Dutch socialists is on it's way early in the morning, but time and time again they find the police in their way."

Maina: "Emm, look, this is also not what we are looking for, but we want to make our voices heard against the war and escalation here today. It's hard, but we do it nonetheless."

Jeroen Akkermans: "De police fears spontaneous action and ar present on every corner of the street."

Pepijn: "If it were up to us, then all those security measures, that whole 110 million would not be necessary, because we are not out to kill those world leaders at all, our intention is to forcefully make our voices heard."

Bart and the IS: "A! Anti! Anticapitalista! A! Anti! Anticapitalista!"

Jeroen Akkermans: "Next to Bart, disguised protesters are singing along."

Jeroen Akkermans: "That protesters disguise themselves. Is that okay?"

Bart: "Yeah, I think it's okay, but erm, I don't understand the reason for it. Because protesting I think is something you do in complete openness, to plead for ewaul rights, human rights, democracy, I don't do that in disguise, and I would like to ask everyone to do it without disguise."

Jeroen Akkermans: "Because?"

Bart: "Because we don't have anything to hide, literally."

Jeroen Akkermans: "But this is not the place nor the time where protest is allowed. Also the police without uniform sees more and more protesters join in."

Maina: "So, firstly, this is a good feeling that we are with so many, by the way I have to take some measures now, but this is an excellent... development..."

Jeroen Akkermans: "Because?"

Maina: "Because, eh, there's a line of, er, riot police coming towards us, and we are a little surrounded."

Jeroen Akkermans: "The police fires with tear gas regularly. The protesters are not impressed. They retreat, only to advance later. Afterwards rocks are being thrown. The police beat with t heir batons, and people get injured."

Sanne: "All of a sudden there was this kind of BAM, and then this thing had exploded in my face."

Jeroen Akkermans: "But do you think this is worth it?"

Sanne: "I don't understand, why in a city like, you know, Strasbourg, we don't have the right to peacefully protest, in that sense I think it's really true: 'This is what democracy looks like.'"

Jeroen Akkermans: "Finally the demonstration is allowed to start, far away from the NATO leaders.(2m:46s)

More Reports: G20 Demonstrators Get Interviewed by OneWorldTV in London

Watch OneWorldTV - Interviews from the G20 protests in London in News  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

One of my favorite comedians, Mark Steel combines a sense of british humour, an amazing ability to make history come to life, and a healthy activist spirit in this lecture (or performance) on the French Revolution. First of two parts.

Why bother?

In many ways, what this page is all about is a combination of a positive perspective of advancing the plight of common people with a negative acknowledgment of the limits to growth. This combination is a contradiction in terms to many people, and so, most of the time, political debates keep to one topic or the other. That's why, on the one side, 'Malthusianism' is a derogatory term for misanthropes who really want a 'cleansing' of our overpopulated planet. (Texas radio host and New World Order conspiracy theorist Alex Jones actually puts Henry Kissinger and the Club of Rome in one and the same category.) On the other side it explains why 'peakniks' often find Chavez' use of oil revenues to create a welfare state naive in the extreme.

Issues like peak oil, the current world wide economic collapse and climate change tell us about how life has become harder and will become much harder still in the future. Looking through all the literature and information it seems like the era following the second world war was a friendly time of rising prosperity and the consolidation of the middle class, accomplished by pushing problems into the future, with the future beginning just about now. From this perspective, many people discard the aspiration for a good life for all people on this planet as a tragic wild goose chase, reminiscent of Tantalus' eternal torment in Hades.

It is very understandable that the limits to growth have turned precisely those committed people with a social conscience into utter fatalists. How can humanity possibly improve its fate when at a peak of prosperity inequality has spiraled out of control, leaving half of the world population in dire poverty and lacking the most basic of necessities? In a desperate attempt for some kind of hope and meaning, these environmental (and/or Marxist) determinists retreat into a more soothing geological timescale. They hope that even if we are not able to stop the ongoing collapses of the economy and ecology and the societies that depend on them, wiser future generations will scavenge a sustainable economy out of the corpse of industry and the natural resources it left unscathed.

I have been, and in darker moods still am one of those fatalists who retreat in their impotent determinism. The scarce forces that point in the good direction are so often so lacking in coherence and determination. But even if our darkest fears will play out as predicted, it would be good to know that someone tried to do something. You probably heard that one before, so let me put the argument another way; I also know that there are more than one or two possible futures, even if there are increasing natural boundaries to what is possible. As anyone who traced back the contingencies of his birth knows, the present world is the result of an infinite number of causes, both natural and human. Like ripples in a pond, actions that seem insignificant might change the world incrementally in unexpected ways, and you never know what is possible unless you take the initiative to find out.

What I have become increasingly convinced of is that as scarcity, climate chaos and economic collapse become ever more frightfully real, we should least of all abandon our social ideals. To many of us in the West solidarity has a quite abstract meaning; it means softening the sharp edges of the market, or giving a coins to charity. We have quite forgotten to practice the moral convictions that now seem like intellectual allegiances. As life gets tougher, we might actually have to make some more concrete life choices; we might have to share our food even if that means that we have no desert ourselves. We might have to start really opposing the international trade regime that has so systematically kept the third world underdeveloped to stimulate overconsumption in the West, in stead of just bandaging the results of this scandal with our charity money. To take seriously the imperatives of ethics, to do something for the other will only gain in its already critical importance, in small scale daily life or in grand scale international politics.

Theodor Adorno, the Frankfurter theorist and co-writer of the profound 'Dialektik der Aufklärung' is famous for saying that ethics should not be about individuals solving dilemmas in concrete life situations, but about avoiding that individuals find themselves in those situations. In other words, it should be a philosophy of social systems, not of the actions of the morally autonomous individual. I believe we need both. If we just do systems ethics, the now disappears as a moment of action and ethics becomes an interesting but ultimately pointless battle of ideology, while actual politics is left to the usual players. On the other hand, if we just do dilemma ethics, we get things like the hypocritical and shallow practical ethics that Peter Singer has been trying to escape from.

In stead, we need an ethics that is visionary enough to imagine all kinds of ways to advance the plight of common people that are now still unthinkable or politically impossible. We need that kind of broad understanding and orientation now, and in the dire years to come, to shape better societies than the ones existing now. But a better society has always been a long way away. For the shorter term and more limited scope we also need to think seriously about the moral choices that we face while we are still living in the self-destructive and often cruel systems that are in place at the moment. And, to use a rhetorical trick again, even if everything goes wrong, I would still prefer to live in a broken society in which people share their scarcities than in one where people fight each other over them. The point is that only by taking seriously both of these dimensions of ethics, both Singer and Adorno, can we profoundly make sense of what we should do to curb and to mitigate the tide of the collapse of economies, ecosystems, and societies that we are very concretely facing.

So to retreat into a deterministic analysis of capitalism, population growth, and environmental destruction I think is a mistake. Not because the analyses are wrong, but because it denies the present of its importance, being the only sliver of history over which we have any kind of influence. Capitalism may be inherently expansionist and self-reinforcing, poverty and population growth may be locked in the most cruel of positive feedback loops, and we may be too late to stop both serious climate change and the peak oil worst case scenario, but never will I give up on the only thing that can prove the predictions wrong; action by conscientious and strategically savvy people in the here and now. And I hope that anyone kind enough to read this article to the end won't, either.

Media critic and historian Robert McChesney, talks about the essential role of journalism for meaningful democracy, and puts forward a radical proposal to address the challenges faced by news media in the current economic crisis, and into the future.

Documentary on Frankfurt School Critical Theorist Herbert Marcuse as a figure in the American student activist movements.