And this is actually how politics has been evolving, over the last 30 years in particular. More and more money buys influence and buys political power. It also structures the media. Increasingly we find it dominates what’s going on inside of universities. It dominates our educational system, so that universities increasingly become places where all you learn is neoliberal ideology. Where all you learn is corporatist manegerial techniques. And those corporatist manegerial techniques are about actually how to squeeze more and more money out of those who can least afford it.

David Harvey at Occupy London / November 12, 2011 / International Day of Solidarity from Elaine Castillo on Vimeo.

Get the full transcript here.

Confronting the crisis and seeing clearly the way it is being managed by the current political system, young people populating the various encampments are, with an unexpected maturity, beginning to pose a challenging question: If democracy — that is, the democracy we have been given — is staggering under the blows of the economic crisis and is powerless to assert the will and interests of the multitude, then is now perhaps the moment to consider that form of democracy obsolete?

The government is set to ram through a new set of electronic surveillance laws that will allow authorities to access private information of any Canadian, at any time, without a warrant. You’ll be forced to pay for this online spying scheme.

The government has failed to inform Canadians about the privacy and data security implications of this scheme, but Canadians are stepping up to the plate. Share these important citizen-made videos with everyone you know before it’s too late—let’s stand together and make our voices heard.

A 21-year-old page lost her job Friday after walking onto the Senate floor during the speech from the throne to protest against Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

This act by such a young person has caught the attention of the media across the country, and rightly so. It was an act of bravery by a member of a generation that have been variously labelled as apathetic, lazy, politically disengaged, etc. Not that miss DePape is necessarily a voice of her generation, but certainly we can no longer make such sweeping generalisations about the under 30 set.

In typical fashion, much of the uproar has focused on the style and form of the protest, and not on the content of her (and many others’) objections to the Harper regime and it’s anti-democratic policies. Green leader Elizabeth May has called the protest “inappropriate,” Conservative blowhard senator Mike Duffy dismissed it as a “stunt,” and Bob Rae – in language that echoes the types of conservative resistance to African American integration and women’s rights – has noted that such ceremonies (the throne speech) are sacred and ought not to be disrupted. (watch the accompanying videos on the article).

Such a non-partisan  reaction to DePape’s act is evidence of the supine attitude of today’s entrenched political class; and this is precisely why actions such as DePape’s are needed. How else is dissent to be voiced if it first must conform to the “proper” expectations of the ruling class? There is no such thing as “legitimate protest;” such an oxymoron fails to account for the greater necessity to challenge the sedimentation of procedure and “legitimate” process – what is allowed and what is not. A protest that is sanctioned by ruling elites does little to undermine and drill down to the root cause for the existence of and adherence to such procedures/processes/traditions: the establishment and maintenance of hierarchical power relations; the institutionalisation and perpetuation of power for the few over the many.

DePape’s tremendous act, combined with the focus on its disruption of procedure and the ruling class’s uniform dismissal provides further evidence that dissenting views (or, in DePape’s electoral/mathematical language, the 3/4 of us who do not hold “conservative values”) are spoken in a language that simply cannot be understood by the ruling elite. This is a dissent characterised by, among other things, voter absenteeism (not always a case of apathy) and disregard for proper procedure. And  ruling elites have no investment in or means for communicating with such dissent: why would a government able to form a “majority” by winning 60% of 40% of all the eligible votes be interested in enticing all of those who didn’t vote to come join in? Why would a parliamentary system that hinges on the idea that one can represent the many be interested in hearing the voices of those who speak themselves and not through their appointed representatives? In this sense, dissent is speaking truth to power in a way that power simply cannot and will not understand. But does this mean that dissent needs to change its language to match that of the dominant? I’d argue no.

Could it not be the case that the political establishement’s reaction to DePape’s protest is informed by some sort of (subconscious?) acknowledgement that, in fact, her message was not directed at them at all? And by not directing it at them, could she be effectively undermining their authority as arbiters of right and wrong? Indeed, since parliamentary chambers are places of tradition and “proper procedure” a simple placard would have little effect in such a space. Her means of protest will find and has found greater resonance in the media and across the discursive terrain of the Internet than it will/has in any parliamentary registry or minutes sheet. Thus, like tired old kings whose decrees fall on deaf ears or are blatantly ignored, the ruling elites scream “foul”: she’s not playing by our rules…and we don’t like it! They fetishise “rules” and process as a means of distracting us from the illegitimacy of their power.

Forms of civil disobedience, like the rejection of staid parliamentary procedure, not to mention damaging corporate property and the subversive use of technologies (pirate radio, media piracy), serve to highlight the inability and unwillingness of ruling classes to live up to their empty promises of “democracy” and “freedom.” They further highlight the necessity of such forms of protest in an era where dissent has been commodified in the form of increasingly divisive and hyper-individualised PR campaigns such as Product RED or “green” profiteering. Moroever, such acts reinforce the need to carve out and expand spaces for voicing  dissent; spaces that are not determined in advance by law enforcement and safely placed far from the eyes and ears of power, subject to strategic anti-democratic modes of surveillance, scare tactics, and punitive discipline.

Democracy and freedom are not embodied in 19th Century regalia and tradition any more than they are in Greek statuary, Romanesque columns, Stars and Stripes, battlefield memorials, or checkboxes on ballots. They are acts, continuous disruptive events that make and remake the world. What better place to do this than in the seat of Canadian democracy?

Bravo!

Musicians usually show up at rallies to protest labour rights but it is very rare for that protest to be at a guitar show! If you own a Cort, Fender, or Ibanez guitar you will want to read about labour relations at their Korean factory.

Embarrassingly, I have never thought about labour conditions in Asian guitar factories. I reflected a little on this after hearing about this action. I think I can boil it down to a blind-spot: because it is music, there couldn’t be anything truly negative surrounding it” I mean guitar making, what could be more pure a pursuit than that? But of course there are always material conditions associated with the creation of things, and thus why should large scale industrialised guitar making be any different than shoes? I own one custom made instrument, I know the maker personally, and I saw the guitar emerge from pieces of raw lumber to become the instrument I now play. I also own an excellent Korean made guitar, a G&L “Tribute” Series. I have now learned that this guitar was very likely manufactured in a Cort facility, I now find this embarrassing. I also now have to question all of the other guitar accessories I own. One thing is for sure, I can use the guitar as an entry point into discussions of labour conditions in guitar factories, commodity fetishism, ideology, and labour more generally — as I pull it out of the case, or if someone remarks on it, for example. In this way, perhaps the workers can speak through the instrument? I dunno.

There has always been a highly racialised discourse about the supposed superior quality of American made instruments over their Asian made counterparts. This is part of a far reaching discourse that characterises the American labourer as a craftsperson, working with his/her hands to extract a beautiful instrument from a block of carefully chosen wood. This is contrasted with the common perception (and realistic) of the Asian factory, with all its attendant “Toyotaisation” (just in time shipping, hyper-Taylorist factory organisation, etc.), and the suggestion that it is impossible for anything truly beautiful to come from such a technologically sophisticated organisational paradigm. Perhaps this perception of the Asian factory has aided in dehumanising the labour process. But it turns out that there are still actual people at the end of that line, working to bring instruments to aspiring and accomplished musicians alike. We need to think beyond the commodity fetish and acknowledge the chain of events and human actions that bring us our products, perhaps we need to do this even more so for things like instruments, to which we attach such mythologies of purity and beauty that further mystify the material conditions of their makers.

What you can do: http://axisofjustice.net/how-to-support-the-cort-workers-namm/

The ultimate show of power on the part of the ruling ideology is to allow what appears to be powerful criticism. There is no lack of anti-capitalism today. We are overloaded with critiques of the horrors of capitalism: books, in-depth investigative journalism and TV documentaries expose the companies that are ruthlessly polluting our environment, the corrupt bankers who continue to receive fat bonuses while their banks are rescued by public money, the sweatshops in which children work as slaves etc. However, there is a catch: what isn’t questioned in these critiques is the democratic-liberal framing of the fight against these excesses. The (explicit or implied) goal is to democratise capitalism, to extend democratic control to the economy by means of media pressure, parliamentary inquiries, harsher laws, honest police investigations and so on. But the institutional set-up of the (bourgeois) democratic state is never questioned. This remains sacrosanct even to the most radical forms of ‘ethical anti-capitalism’ (the Porto Allegre forum, the Seattle movement etc).

via the LRB

HIP-HOP NEWS spreads like any other mainstream NEWS in America. The garbage that’s unfit to print has now floated on websites and blogs like sh*t. For example a rapper working in the community gets obscured while if that same rapper robbed a gas station he’d get top coverage and be label a “rapper” while getting his upcoming or current music somewhat put on blast, regardless of its quality which of course is subjective like any other art. RAP sites and blogs are mimicking the New York POST.

It does the people of the planet little good to hear that an an artist is famous and rich, will wear expensive jewelry straight from the mines, show it off, stay it the hotel, ride in limos, do the VIP with chilled champagne in the clubs, ape and monkey the chicks (meaning not even talking) and keep the dudes away with slave paid bodyguards when real people come close.

The tendency is to think of oil as an externality, an element of capitalism (energy) that can be easily substituted by some other element (solar, wind, nuclear, etc.) without much impact on the nature or character of the system. This is why, when there is talk about energy futures, it seems to be assumed that the economic system of that future will continue to be capitalism. “Oil capitalism” is intended to make us think differently and more deeply about the socio-ontology of capitalism. Could we have capitalism without oil? Plainly. Would it have the same character and form, especially on a global scale? I think not. This is more than a game of alternative histories, of asking, “What if there was no such thing as oil?” Rather, it is meant to confront some challenges coming in the future, and to get the Left to think about topics essential to social emancipation and justice. We tend not to think about the work that energy does socially, and will have to do even if political circumstances change.

No one should be surprised that after six months in limbo the students should be at the forefront of resistance to this government. The Labour party does not yet resemble an opposition, rather Ed et al seem to be on a collective gap year.