Democracy may have lost the battle but it can avoid losing the war. Let capital be afraid. The relation between democracy and capital has always been a tense one, of even total contradiction. Capitalism only feels safe it is ruled by whoever owns capital or identifies with its needs, whereas democracy, on the contrary, is the…
Freemen-on-the-land is a reactionary western movement which argues that law is based on consent. They distribute legal advice, suggesting that people can and should refuse to accept the jurisdiction of the courts. This has become particularly important in Ireland recently, following the increasing foreclosure on debts. The Irish Times reports over 100 ‘Freeman’-style arguments used in the…
Accelerationism pushes towards a future that is more modern, an alternative modernity that neoliberalism is inherently unable to generate. 01. INTRODUCTION: On the Conjuncture 1. At the beginning of the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, global civilization faces a new breed of cataclysm. These coming apocalypses ridicule the norms and organisational structures of the politics which…
Over the past thirty years, Human Rights Watch has become one of the most recognized non-governmental organizations in the world due to its global promotion of human rights. But despite its claims to be an advocate of international human rights law, the reports issued by Human Rights Watch over the past decade have increasingly exhibited…
Depositors decimated by bail-in. Come again? Cypriots discover the debt jubilee? Well yes actually, that is basically how depositors at Cypriot banks have been treated by the Troika, even if the decision to grab up to 9.9% of cash deposits to finance a bail out of the finance sector is being presented as a tax or levy.…
Nancy coins the term eco-technics to describe the current global politico-economic conjuncture. Hillis Miller explains: ‘“Eco” comes from the Greek word oikos, the house or home. The prefix “eco-” is used more broadly now to refer to the total environment within which one or another “living” creature “dwells”’ (Hillis Miller 2012, 66). Thus, at stake…
Blockupy 2013: preparations for 200 actions underway “Resistance in the heart of Europe’s crisis régime” — under this slogan the Blockupy Alliance is planning renewed international protests in Frankfurt this spring. In a nationwide meeting on Sunday in Frankfurt’s DGB-200 Active House it was agreed to push on with preparations for the days of action and issue a written…
Capitalism, war and environmental decline in the era of European dominance are irrevocably linked. Peace and the environment are two equally wide-reaching topics, and consequently they could be studied separately and from a variety of perspectives. In this article, we will endeavour to demonstrate the relationship between peace and the environment starting with the idea that…
On Wednesday night prime German television channel ARD broadcast undercover reportage concerning the treatment of foreign workers at Amazon’s huge distribution warehouse near Bad Hersfeld in central Germany. State parliamentarians called the report “unspeakable”, “shocking”, “beyond the pale”, and the Left Party spokesperson stated:
“We call on the state government to carry out promptly and with all at its disposal checks of the complainant’s social security fraud, the use of an apparent neo-Nazi security company through Amazon and the inhumane placement in a so-called ‘resort’”.
Bad Hersfeld backs up against the old border with East Germany at the point, the Fulda Gap, which the US determined was the prime strategic entry point for Soviet forces in any invasion of Europe. As a consequence this wooded up-country became a backwater of barbed wire and checkpoints after the war. It is here that Amazon has had built one of its massive distribution centres for Germany, and it is here that undercover reporters infiltrated.
A group of German trades unions, academics, and militants have attempted to seize back the clock as a powerful mode of political expression with their “Wealth Clock”. It seems to be a direct response to the relative success of the US’s National Debt Clock, instituted in the late 80s by property developer Seymour Durst, in impressing into the public consciousness the claimed urgency of dealing with the US national debt, as a route to neoliberal austerity measures. Leaving aside the many arguments that can be levelled against Durst’s fears, the image of a constant up-ticking of a national debt has had its echoes in European states, not least Britain and Germany as flag-bearers for austerity.
Anthropology has amply shown us that sociality does not have to be the product of sharing subjection to a common law. It was lunchtime at Sydney’s David Jones, Australia’s up-market department store chain. So I headed down to the ‘food floor’. Whenever I have to shop at DJs I try to make sure I go there around midday, precisely so I can…
The road to Doima (Colombia), at best unpaved and bumpy, is today crossed by rivers in flood. The rivers have submerged the low concrete bridges and at the second bridge the river is so high the bus has to stop and wait for the waters to subside. The rainstorm that caused the flood gradually dies…
It has been apparent to many people in Ireland, across Europe and much further afield that the professional political class are living in a sort of virtual reality. [In Ireland] we have a political system that has been described as corrupt in all areas of public life in the Mahon report [a report on corruption of senior…
From 15 November 2012, a part of the Occupy Movement in the U.S. led by Strike Debt will be operating a “Rolling Jubilee” which their website describes as:
“A bailout of the people by the people.
We buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish it. We cannot buy specific individuals’ debt — instead, we help liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal.”
David Graeber, for example, has been tweeting about this enthusiastically and the Rolling Jubilee Facebook page has a picture of Slavoj Zizek holding the linked “Strike Debt” logo and a statement claiming that he too supports the campaign. My initial reaction to the plan was open-minded bemusement and a question which I see keeps recurring on the Rolling Jubilee FB page: “How does this work?.”
The Amendment of the German Bankruptcy Act,1 which came into effect six months ago, has opened the door to widespread abuse alleges the industry association VID, which claims to represent more than half of liquidators. “A few influential and wealthy creditors now threaten to dominate proceedings”, the VID chairman Christoph Niering said in Berlin. “In addition,…
The expansion of the extractive industries has, as counterparts, first, the reaction of indigenous communities in the defense of their communal goods (land, water, grazing, etc.), and second, the violent counter-attack of the state through police and military repression, legitimated many times by the of exception (in Peru the “state of emergency”, a kind of state of exception, has been applied by governments in previous years to control socio-environmental protests). Political economy and legal policy are both relevant to this situation and both are functionally connected.
In respect of political economy, let us bring to mind what David Harvey calls “accumulation by dispossession”, which is just the theoretical update of the “primitive accumulation” described by Karl Marx, that is to say: capitalist expansion requires the violent transformation of common goods into commodities in order to be appropriated and then used by exchange mechanisms.
Martin Wheatley, British financial regulator charged with solving the LIBOR crisis, has returned from his Crusade carrying, we are told, a splinter of the True Cross which he assures us is capable of procuring miracles. Not common or garden miracles involving the lame, Galilean fish stocks, or talking asses, no. Something really impressive: announcing the actual…
The UK has rated consistently as the fifth largest arms exporter in the world, trailing behind the USA, Russia, Germany and France (in that order) since at the very least the year 2000[1]. Those exports notoriously and understandably caused cacophony when it was revealed that the UK was transferring arms to repressive Middle Eastern and…
Yesterday’s publication of further dismal GDP data for the UK is an opportunity to reconsider its basis as the justification for many aspects of the current neoliberal order. Bracketing out the question of whether economic growth is a valid lodestar for any just society, there comes the old but under-frequented question1 about what constitutes growth and…
In my previous post I asked somewhat rhetorically what else banks had felt able to do during the credit crunch if the belief had arisen that “market stability” (sc. bank survival”) trumped criminal law. The U.S. Securities and Exchnage Commission (“SEC”) has obligingly provided an example. Yesterday (19 July 2012) the Securities and Exchange Commission charged…