Totalitarisme inversé Chris Hedges, journaliste lauréat du prix Pulitzer pour le New York Times et auteur de plusieurs livres, a écrit un article percutant publié en anglais le 8 février 2010. Ce billet en est largement inspiré et en quelque sorte un compte rendu en français. L’article original de 12 pages est disponible sous le titre « Chris Hedges: Zero Point of Systemic Collapse ». Cet article est d’une importance capitale pour temps à venir. Il résume bien aussi mon analyse personnelle du déroulement des évènements passés, présents et surtout, futurs. Il mérite toute notre attention et puisqu’il est si bien écrit, ceci constituera principalement une traduction libre de l’auteur qui doit recevoir tous les mérites. Nous sommes à la veille d’un des moments les plus dangereux pour l’humanité. Chris Hedges écrit que son analyse se rapproche de l’analyse de nombreux anarchistes. La démocratie, un système idéalement conçu pour défier le statu quo, a été endommagé et dompté pour servir servilement le statu quo.
The Left-Right Political Spectrum Is Bogus It might be a division between social identities based on class or region or race or gender, but it is certainly not a clash between different ideas. The French Estates-General in 1789 (Isidore-Stanislaus Helman via Wikimedia Commons) Americans are more divided than ever by political ideology, as a recent Pew Research Center study makes clear. My prescription isn't civility or dialogue, which though admirable are boring and in this case evidently impossible. The arrangement of positions along the left-right axis—progressive to reactionary, or conservative to liberal, communist to fascist, socialist to capitalist, or Democrat to Republican—is conceptually confused, ideologically tendentious, and historically contingent. Transcending partisanship is going to require what seems beyond the capacities of either side: thinking about the left-right spectrum rather than from it. I'd say it's obvious that PHC is true, and that everyone knows it to be true. I'd say no one is so sure anymore.
Twitter pundit Haque's Starting Point? The NYPD, now sponsored by Wall Street - Occupy Wall Street This article made possible by Salon Core members. “NYPD! NYPD! JP Morgan doesn’t give a f*ck about you!” That was the chant of a crowd of protesters during one of the tenser moments Wednesday evening as police tried to corral the occupiers of Wall Street and force them to stay in the confines of Liberty Square. As it turns out, that version of the rumor isn’t quite correct. Here’s what we know: JPMorgan gave a massive gift of $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation in the form of money, patrol car laptops, “security monitoring software,” and other tech resources. The police foundation is the private fundraising arm of the NYPD. “This gift is especially disturbing to us because it creates the appearance that there is an entrenched dynamic of the police protecting corporate interests rather than protecting the First Amendment rights of the people,” says Heidi Boghosian of the National Lawyers Guild, which has had legal observers posted at the major Occupy Wall Street marches.
ozio produttivo: La pulsione di morte della concorrenza Attira l’attenzione anche il carattere globale e universale di tale fenomeno. E' cominciato negli Usa. Nel 1997, nella città di West Paducah (Kentucky) un adolescente di 14 anni ha ucciso a spari, dopo l’orazione del mattino, tre compagni di scuola, e altri cinque sono rimasti feriti. In Europa, questi massacri nelle scuole sono stati interpretati dall’inizio, ancora nel contesto del tradizionale antiamericanismo, come una conseguenza del culto delle armi, del darwinismo sociale e della scarsa educazione sociale negli Usa. Naturalmente, il fenomeno delle mattanze nelle scuole non si può considerare in modo isolato. Se l’atto degli assassini furiosi armati è più comune delle speciali mattanze nelle scuole, entrambi i fenomeni sono a loro volta integrati al contesto più vasto di una cultura della violenza della società, che sta inondando il mondo intero nel corso della globalizzazione. Terrorismo suicida Auto-smarrimento Traduzione by lpz
The Political Thought of Etienne de la Boetie The Political Thought of Étienne de la Boétie By Murray N. Rothbard [Introduction to The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de la Boétie, written 1552-53. Translated by Harry Kurz for the edition that carried Rothbard’s introduction, New York: Free Life Editions, 1975. The pagination in the footnotes refers to this 1975 edition. Étienne de La Boétie[1] has been best remembered as the great and close friend of the eminent essayist Michel de Montaigne, in one of history’s most notable friendships. Étienne de la Boétie was born in Sarlat, in the Perigord region of southwest France, in 1530, to an aristocratic family. La Boétie’s great contribution to political thought was written while he was a law student at the University of Orleans, where he imbibed the spirit of free inquiry that prevailed there. The first striking thing about the Discourse is the form: La Boétie’s method was speculative, abstract, deductive.
The World According to Trump by Bernard-Henri Lévy PARIS – The word “trump,” according to the dictionary, is an alteration of the word triumph. And because Donald Trump, the US presidential candidate, appears likely to become the nominee of the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, we owe it to ourselves to ask in what sense and for whom he represents a triumph. One thinks of a segment of the American population angered by the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, a group that is now feeling vengeful. The Contradictions of Chinese Capitalism Introducing PS On Point. One easily gets the sense, when trying to take seriously what little is known about the Trump platform, of a country turning in on itself, walling itself off, and ultimately impoverishing itself by chasing away the Chinese, Muslims, Mexicans, and others who have contributed to the vast melting pot that the most globalized country on the planet has alchemized, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, into prodigious wealth. Support Project Syndicate’s mission
When the rich are born to rule, the results can be fatal | George Monbiot Those whom the gods love die young: are they trying to tell me something? Due to an inexplicable discontinuity in space-time, on Sunday I turned 50. I have petitioned the relevant authorities, but there's nothing they can do. So I will use the occasion to try to explain the alien world from which I came. To understand how and why we are now governed as we are, you need to know something of that strange place. I was born into the third tier of the dominant class: those without land or capital, but with salaries high enough to send their children to private schools. A few decades earlier, the role of such schools was clear: they broke boys' attachment to their families and re-attached them to the institutions – the colonial service, the government, the armed forces – through which the British ruling class projected its power. But the old forms and the old thinking persisted. My second boarding school was a kinder, more liberal place.
Nietzsche e i precursori del nazismo: una riflessione metodologica | Critica Impura Friedrich Nietzsche Di EZIO SAIA Nietzsche e i precursori del nazismo Mesi fa sul Web è stata a lungo dibattuta la questione sui rapporti fra la filosofia di Nietzsche è l’ideologia nazista a cui hanno partecipato, fra molti altri la signora Palazzotti, il signor Antonio Martone, la professoressa Tiziana Ferragina. Di solito si parla di questi rapporti in termini di influenza utilizzando così la concettualità verticale secondo il paradigma del “chi agisce su chi e di chi subisce da chi”. Come precursori del Nazismo sono stati indicati, saggisti, filosofi, romanzieri, poeti e musicisti come Wagner (e non solo per il suo feroce antisemitismo). La filosofia post illuminista Kant viene presentato come apoteosi di un illuminismo e di un pensiero critico volto a circoscrivere i confini delle possibilità del sapere certo: da una parte la conoscenza fondata, dall’altra le pericolose illusioni del dogmatico e contradditorio pensiero metafisico. La ragione demolitrice La doppia legge Nietzsche [1] H.
With New Constitution, Post-Collapse Iceland Inches Toward Direct Democracy Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic parliament, at the Open Government Camp 2011. In a conversation with Truthout she insisted she doesn't want "the new constitution to be plagued with (bureaucrats') language, but the language of the people." (Photo: Florian Apel-Soetebeer / Government 2.0 Netzwerk Deutschland)When the global financial system crumbled over four years ago, Iceland played host to one of the most dramatic economic collapses in modern history. Now, Iceland is making headlines for more positive reasons: activists there are in the process of advancing some of the strongest freedom of information laws and journalist protections in the world, and the Icelandic economy, while still beset by problems, is significantly outperforming other crisis-stricken countries. Uncertainty is swirling around the status of the constitution, however. It's unsurprising that inertia is casting a pall over the constitution's future. A Shining Beacon of Post-Collapse Economics?
Raggi, Appendino e la società dei mediocri di PAOLO ERCOLANI La nostra è l’epoca in cui, per citare Paul Ricoeur, all’ipertrofia dei mezzi corrisponde un’atrofia dei fini. In cui la sfavillante opulenza informativa produce, all’atto pratico, una desolante indigenza conoscitiva. Sappiamo che dobbiamo andare, desideriamo ardentemente farlo, siamo programmati dalla grande industria culturale per muoverci in base ai dettami prestabiliti, ma non sappiamo per dove. Costretti al viaggio ma privati della capacità di concepire autonomamente una mèta. Sempre più è così nel nostro esistere quotidiano, ma da molto (troppo) tempo è così nell’agire politico. Naviganti senza una mèta Il teatrino mediatico appiattisce tutto sul “chi vince e chi perde”, senza denunciare il dato più clamoroso e significativo: nessuno, né chi vince né chi perde, ha vinto o perso sapendo dove andare. Per troppo tempo ci hanno raccontato la stupidaggine secondo cui conta il viaggio e non la meta. Mediocrazia Mediocrità Raggi e Appendino alla prova dei mediocri
Democracy's Arc The troubling news about methane releases from the Arctic ocean that was the focus of last week’s post on The Archdruid Report belongs, as I mentioned then, to the wider trajectory of industrial society’s decline and fall, not to the more specific theme I’ve been developing here in recent months. The end of America’s global empire takes place against the background of that wider trajectory, to be sure, and core elements of the predicament of industrial civilization bid fair to play a crucial role as the United States backs itself into a corner defined by its own history. Still, important as the limits to growth are just now, there’s much more at work in the endgame of American empire. Thus this week’s post will plunge without further ado from the austere heights of atmospheric chemistry to the steaming, swampy, snake-infested realities of American politics. The worst example, and the one I propose to explore this week, is democracy. Here’s an example. End of the World of the Week #20
La generazione fottuta. Sinistra, Movimento 5 stelle, populismo di PAOLO ERCOLANI Se fai parte di quelle persone che hanno visto entrare nelle Università, nelle case editrici, nei giornali e in generale nei posti dirigenziali le menti più inadeguate e improbabili. O se, non per forza in alternativa (ma magari in aggiunta), ti sei visto scavalcare nella scala sociale da persone non in ragione del merito, dalla deontologia professionale e neppure dalla passione per un lavoro che gli è piovuto sulla testa come un atto dovuto. Ebbene, se sei tutto questo, è molto facile che tu appartenga alla generazione fottuta. Che non è quella di cui parlava Gaber, la generazione «sconfitta», perché siamo su un piano ulteriore. La generazione fottuta La generazione che oggi ha più o meno fra i 35 e i 50 anni, infatti, è quella che molto spesso non ha potuto neppure giocarla, la sua partita. Inutile girarci intorno: se questo disastro è figlio di un intero sistema socio-culturale, è la Sinistra a portarne sulle spalle la responsabilità più grande. 1968 e 1989
The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin - The Garrett Hardin Society - Articles Updated 13 March, 2005 The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin, 1968 Published in Science, December 13, 1968 For copyright permission, click here. The author is professor of biology, University of California, Santa Barbara. At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York (1) concluded that: "Both sides in the arms race are ... confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. I would like to focus your attention not on the subject of the article (national security in a nuclear world) but on the kind of conclusion they reached, namely that there is no technical solution to the problem. In our day (though not in earlier times) technical solutions are always welcome. Recall the game of tick-tack-toe. The class of "No technical solution problems" has members. What Shall We Maximize? Population, as Malthus said, naturally tends to grow "geometrically," or, as we would now say, exponentially. Pollution