OPEN UTOPIA.

A message from Anarchist Studies Network: 

Open Utopia
Thomas More & Stephen Duncombe

       Open Utopia is the first complete English language edition of Thomas More’s Utopia that honors the primary precept of Utopia itself: that all property is common property. Open Utopia, licensed under Creative Commons, is free to copy, to share, to use. But Utopia is more than the story of a far-off land with no private property. It is a text that instructs us how to approach texts, be they literary or political, in an open manner: open to criticism, open to participation, and open to re-creation. Utopia is no-place, and therefore it is up to all of us to imagine it. 

      In this volume, and its accompanying website, Utopia is re-imagined and brought into the digital age as a participatory technology for undermining authority and facilitating new imagination.

Website: http://theopenutopia.org

      “A welcome new intervention into an old text. Re-read through the lens of Duncombe’s extensive – and persuasive – introduction, More’s Utopia is revealed as a subversive methodology for approaching utopias, one that engages and expands our capacity for political invention and imagination. Open Utopia is an infinite demand that splits the subject open to new possible worlds rather than giving a closed plan.” – Simon Critchley, author of The Faith of the Faithless

     “Everybody knows the difference between an open and a closed door. Fewer know the difference between an open mind and a closed mind, especially on the American left, where intellectual policing often replaces intellectual encouragement. Stephen Duncombe, in conversation with More and the horrifying history of utopia and utopians, opens minds and doors and reaffirms the importance of utopian thinking. Adelante, excelsior!” – Reverend Donna Schaper
PDF available freely online (http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=487).

Open Utopia
Thomas More & Stephen Duncombe

    Opinion polls, volatile voting patterns, and street protests demonstrate widespread dissatisfaction with the current system, yet the popular response so far has largely been limited to the angry outcry of No! But negation, by itself, affects nothing. The dominant system doesn’t dominate because people agree with it; it rules because we’re convinced there is no alternative.

        We need to be able to imagine a radical alternative – a Utopia – yet we are haunted by the disasters of “actually existing” Utopias of the past century, from fascism to authoritarian socialism. In this re-issue of Thomas More’s generative volume, scholar and activist Stephen Duncombe re-imagines Utopia as an open text, one designed by More as an imaginal machine freeing us from the tyranny of the present while undermining master plans for the future.

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WHY PAY EMPLOYEES??

       It is obvious that employers will milk any situation to cut costs and increase profits. The horrendous conditions prevailing in Greece today mean that people will try to hold on to their job no matter what, as being paid off means dire poverty and deprivation. Employers are well aware of this and are useing the situation to withhold employees wages, and blame it all on the economic conditions. Of course to continue working under these conditions also means dire poverty and deprivation, but that doesn't matter to the employer, they are doing just fine with the free labour. Our own brand of scum corporate bosses are no different and would love such a situation in this country. However, our millionaire cabal in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, are doing their bit to move things along that road. They dress it up with a nice sounding name, "workfare", instead of the employer withholding the wages, our government offers them employees free of charge. And as we all know, the corporate greed beasts are queuing up to garb some of the free slave labour. The system stinks, it is corrupt, exploitative, unjust and only favours the rich.

This from teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ:

        Greek police raided the Aristotelion University of Thessaloniki this morning, arresting 11 employees who had been part of an ongoing occupation of the Dean's office. The protest has been in response to the refusal of contractors used by the university to pay workers salaries for over three months.

       Those arrested were released temporarily after their court case was adjourned till Monday.
        With lay offs skyrocketing many unscrupulous employers have been using the fear of unemployment to delay or even stop payment of salaries, banking on the fact that people will continue working rather than face certain joblessness.

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INDYMEDIA ON CIRCLED "A" RADIO.

      The collective behind London Indymedia (http://london.indymedia.org) are closing shop. In the past twelve years, the collective have racked up over 100 years of involvement in radical political organising and media production and have provided invaluable resources, contributing to the proliferation of information, communication, opinion and discussion within the UK radical political movements in which they are situated. They recently published their decision (https://london.indymedia.org/articles/13128) to archive the site and close down the project, stating a desire to move on to other political work. This show features a conversation with several former members of the London Indymedia collective on reasons for wrapping up and moving on, with much time spent reflecting on the current state of independent media production in an information age with a vast majority of internet track going towards a handful of corporately owned and controlled social networking tools and publishing platforms. (You can listen to the full version of the interview on Dissident Island episode 111  HERE:

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WHAT'S THE SHAPE OF A REVOLUTION?

A comment taken from Italy Calling:

No one cares

No one cares
A few dissent
They're easily stifled
A few more get scared & distance themselves
Everyone else doesn't know/doesn't care
Repeat ad infinitum
The revolution will not be direct confrontation will cops. It will not be protests & square occupations.

What will the revolution look like, what will be the spark that ignites the fire?

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BARE-KNUCKLE CAPITALISM.

        With unrest growing across Europe as each country pushes its own variation of the financial Mafia's "austerity" plan, we are seeing each country bring more draconian measures to control and repress any display of that unrest. In the "good times" we had nasty but polite capitalism, but now as their grab for the public purse becomes more desperate, we are entering what I call the bare-knuckle phase of capitalism. More legislation against public protest, more restrictions on public spaces, more control of any gatherings, be it sport or protest.

This from Italy Calling:

      The demonstrations that took place all over Italy on 14th November as part of a European Day of Action against austerity are already setting the pace of the new management of public order. In Rome in particular it’s been forbidden for months to get anywhere close to the political headquarters during demonstrations, despite the revocation of the decrees introduced last year by the Mayor to turn the whole of the city centre into a red zone.

     The first repressive measures announced by the government straight after the riots and violence of 14th November are already being sketched out, drawing inspiration from the “social repression workshop” that started a few years ago around football matches and stadiums.

Continue READING:

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WE ASSIST IN BOMBING GAZA.

          On 14 November 2012, the Israeli army began attacking Gaza with drones, Apache helicopters, F-16 fighter jets and naval vessels. For 8 days, civilian areas of Gaza were bombarded by Israel from air and sea with over 150 men, women and children losing their lives. 

Tell the British government to stop funding Israel's brutal attacks on innocent people.
This attack was only made possible through the continued financial, military and diplomatic support Israel receives from Western states - including the British government. Take action to help end this suffering for good.
By selling arms to Israel, the British government is giving direct material support for Israel's aggression against the Palestinian people and sending a clear message of approval for its actions.
Call on Foreign Secretary William Hague to introduce an immediate arms embargo on Israel until it ends its violations of international law.

Thanks you for taking action.

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CREATING MYTHS.

    And so the myth is spread, the lazy Greeks are responsible for the state of their country, it has nothing to do with the financial mafia and the corporate greed machine.

This from Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ:

Supporters of Greek trade unionists 

charged with assaulting German official await verdict

      German CDU MP, Hans Joachim Fuchtel caused uproar during a visit to Greece when he claimed that 1000 Germans could do the work of 3000 Greeks. The remarks sparked off fierce protests by Greek trade unionists already angered by the latest round of public sector job cuts.
      During a joint German - Greek conference local government tempers flared and a German official was briefly attacked by angry public sector employees. The police arrested three in connection with the assault but all three were found not guilty yesterday.

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WORKING POVERTY, TODAY'S PATTERN.

      Iain Duncan Smith, our well heeled, Works and Pensions Secretary, recently stated that poverty was the result of “ worklessness and welfare dependency, addiction, educational failure, debt or family breakdown” Strange that he should put worklessness first, considering that recent figures show that in this country we have more than 6 million working families living in poverty. We also have approximately 5 million adults living in poverty from homes where nobody works. So bang goes that theory that if you are unemployed and you get a job, whizz-bang, you're out of poverty. Another little fact about working gets you out of poverty, almost one third of children living in poverty in this country, come from working homes.

     It is obvious to any ordinary person that in-work poverty is as much a problem as is out of work poverty, in this system of capitalism. Even the apoligists for capitalism can't help but see that when you have one fifth of women and one seventh of men working for less than £7 an hour, you are goping to have working families in poverty. The situation is getting worse by the month, as “austerity” bites, and incomes shrink, more and more people are having to claim “tax credits”, (tax payers subsides to employers who don't pay a living wage).

     There is also the wild claim that our country is riddled with families who have never worked, yet the true figures state that only 2% of all working age households contain no one who has never worked.

     Of course their ideological thinking to create a UK sweatshop economy, pushes them to say, get them off benefit and into work and the poverty problem is solved, it would not cross their tiny twisted minds to say that they are being paid too little. Nor do they open their eyes to the fact that shouting about getting people into work, when there are no jobs, doesn't fit rational thinking. Then again, this is capitalism and those making the legislation are mainly millionaires with bundles of shares in the corporate world and a vested interest to keep wages down and profits up to fatten there bank accounts and those of their shareholder friends.

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LET'S GET TOGETHER.

      The book that should be on everybody's bookshelf, and the end of year social that every anarchist/libertarian socialist, freethinking individual should be attending. Forget the works night out, (if you still have a job) this is the one.

End of Year Anarchist Social & AFAQ Vol.2 Book Launch

Kinning Park Complex

14/12/2012
7PM-1030PM

     You are invited an end of year anarchist social. We will be providing soup, bread and beverages, as well as opening up the main hall for stalls from the Radical Independent Bookfair, Glasgow Anarchist Federation and the Solidarity Federation amongst others.

This event will also mark the launch of the Anarchist FAQ Vol.2 by AK Press. It’s author, Iain McKay, will be on hand to undertake an informal Q&A session between 7:30 and 9:30. The RiB mini-stall will also be on hand to browse and pick up any radical literature that takes your fancy (including the AFAQ vol. 1 & 2).

 It's a great big social, so i' is.

      Feel free to spread the word and we look forward to seeing you there!

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A LAND OF OPPORTUNITY - FOR WHO??

       Quite often, from that babbling brook of bullshit, the media, we hear about the economic hardship being faced by people in Greece, Spain and even now and again hints of what is happening here. Seldom are we told of the misery and deprivation in America. After all, it is the world's biggest economy, the pinnacle of corporate capitalism, so things must be better there, right? Well not quite, a recent Reuters report states that due to the “sub-prime mortgage crisis” (corporate greed) and the stratospheric rise in foreclosures of owner occupier houses, there is now a record number of vacant homes in that land of freedom and opportunity. It seems that the number of vacant homes in America now numbers more than 18.6 million, and according to the national Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, there are 3.5 million homeless people in America. So, that should mean that the homeless problem is solved, each homeless person now has more than 5 homes from which to make a choice of that basic right, a roof over your head!!! Of course it won't happen, so it is obvious that in that land of plenty, the the capital of corporate capitalism, the system is just as screwed up as any other capitalist country. Another little fact from the land of opportunity, there is no other city in the developed world with a greater divide between rich and poor than New York. The bottom 20% of its citizens get by with less than $10,000 a year, you can guess what the top 20% have to struggle by with in glitzy New York, New York??

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FREE ACCESS TO ALL KNOWLEDGE.

      Open access? Should that not apply to all knowledge? Well it would in a free really democratic system, which at the moment is still just a dream, but we will get there.

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THE STATE'S PACK OF ANIMALS.

       What the babbling brook of bullshit, the media, put out about Germany is about its "wonderful" economic success, how it is the bank manger of the Euro, the powerhouse of Europe, etc.. What they never mention is the fascist attacks and the complicity of the state in trying to cover these up. Nor do they report the strength of the anti-fascist resistance. One such attack by fascists took place on 21 November 1992 and resulted in the death of one Silvio Meier, the police cover up and false evidence eventually collapsed and there was an "investigation". Since then November 21 has become an annual event and a rallying of anti-fascists. This year in Berlin 6,000 took part in the march and demonstration marking the 20th. anniversary of Silvio's murder.

This from ContraInfo:

    Anti-authoritarian Silvio Meier was stabbed to death by neo-Nazi scum on November 21st, 1992 at the Samariterstraße metro station in Berlin.
     The State tried to water down the murder, presenting it as if it were a common bar brawl among youths. Furthermore, the German police and the mainstream media spread lies based on false statements by the neo-Nazis, who claimed that Silvio attacked them first with a knife, and they allegedly stabbed him in self-defense. Initially Silvio’s three companions, who survived the attack, faced charges and were questioned by cops even while in hospital (two of them suffered serious injuries). The police attempted to hold them responsible for the death of their own friend.*

Continue READING:

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IT'S FRACKING OUT OF ORDER!!

       It is fracking out of order!! Tar sands oil, and fracking gas, probably two of the most environmentally devastating process the corporate greed machine has come up with. What is more they are both backed up by a massive PR campaign to paint them people friendly, just as they told us tobacco wasn't harmful.

This from Artists against Fracking:

Why is fracking dangerous?
     Aquifer. To drill down to the shale, one must drill through the aquifer. These drills are known to leak and sometimes even explode, releasing chemicals into this precious source of water.
   Chemicals. The 2011 U.S. House of Representatives investigative report states that out of 2,500 hydraulic fracturing products, more than 650 contain chemicals that are known carcinogens. One would think that the Safe Drinking Water Act – a Federal law – would make such willful contamination illegal, but it is not being applied to Fracking.
    Also, most of these chemicals are not biodegradable. Once they are introduced to the aquifer, they will remain there forever.
Wastewater. Each gas well requires 1-8 million gallons of fresh water. The used water is one of the most hazardous wastes in the U.S., containing carcinogenic Fracking chemicals,remnant oil and hydrocarbons, biocides, as well as naturally occurring radioactive materials, like radon, which is heavier than air and sinks into the communities where people work and live.
      Air Pollution. There are air emissions associated with Fracking, which include methane leaks originating from wells, as well as emissions from the diesel or natural gas-powered equipment such as compressors, drilling rigs, pumps etc..

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WORKFARE TO WORKHOUSE.

     Not a new article, but still very interesting and relevant. It also makes the connection between workfare and the governments plans for expanding the the prison population by "tough" on crime, "tougher" sentencing. After all a prison population is a captive, union free work population, and more and more companies are using prisons as cheap labour pots.

This from Libcom:

      Workfare isn’t just an austerity measure, it’s part of a longer term restructuring of the labour market. That makes it all the more important to kill it while we still can.

      Workfare has been kicking up a twitter-storm again lately. First with such joys as a permanent job stacking shelves on the Tesco night shift for your £67/week JSA, and unpaid ‘pre-employment training’ which is “mandatory; (...) Claimant informed consent is not required.” Then later it was announced that “disabled people face unlimited unpaid work or cuts in benefit.” This got me thinking. Workfare significantly pre-dates austerity. Labour introduced the New Deal in 1998 during the supposed ‘boom’ years, which was rebranded the Flexible New Deal in 2009. The idea was to ‘help’ people who’d been unemployed for more than 6 months back into work with ‘voluntary’ training and work placements. This went hand in hand with demonising the unemployed as work-shy scroungers – workfare was purportedly to get them back into work.
     In the world of workfare, ‘voluntary’ of course means ‘we’ll sanction you if you refuse’. And if your JSA is sanctioned, it can interrupt other claims such as for housing benefit and cause serious cash-flow problems for claimants. The LSE professor who devised the New Deal was made a Labour peer – Baron Layard – and loads of private sector firms (many with links to Labour) got on the gravy train as ‘providers’. Notionally, this was about ‘helping’ people back to work in a context of relatively full employment and economic growth. The whole thing merrily rolled along until the recession hit, when the scheme was revamped and continued to do exactly the same thing – mandatory unpaid work on pain of losing benefits. Bizarrely, the rhetoric demonising ‘scroungers’ has escalated in keeping with the ratio of jobseekers to jobs. As someone pithily put it on twitter, “JOBSEEKERS: Empirically, there are no jobs, but ideologically, we have potential full employment IF YOU WEREN'T SO LAZY.”

Read the full article HERE:

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JEWS AGAINST THE OCCUPATION.

       Another voice that our babbling brook of bullshit, the media, don't give much publicity to, if any, but it is there, and thankfully, it is getting louder.

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YOU KNOW IT IS CLASS WAR.

      Their class know it is all out war and act on it, when does our class accept that it is all out war and act on it?

This from Libcom:

Quote:

When this country was at war in the 40s, Whitehall underwent a revolution. Normal rules were circumvented. Convention was thrown out. As one historian put it, everything was thrown at the overriding purpose of beating Hitler.
Well, this country is in the economic equivalent of war today - and we need the same spirit.
We need to forget about crossing every ‘t’ and dotting every ‘i’ and we need to throw everything we’ve got at winning in this global race.

     On the face of it, this is pretty odd. The economic war footing Britain actually had during the second world war involved a command economy, with a union general secretary becoming minister of labour. Neither of these things are likely to be what Cameron meant.
But the rhetoric of a war footing, and therefore the analogy that opponents of austerity are fifth columnists is likely to become more common. It is part of the ideological cover that is overlaying the most significant attack on working class living standards since WW2.

Read the full article HERE:

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HE SAID, "RISE UP" -- SHE SAID, "OCCUPY EVERYTHING"!!

Anybody want to add their comments?

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FANTASY OR FUTURE?

       In a world controlled by "the markets" what happens when "the markets" go crazy? What is likely to happen when a bunch of massively armed Zionist fanatics attack a bunch of heavily armed Islamic fanatics? The innocents stand to suffer immeasurably, that's the nature of the beast we have allowed to grow and allowed to control our world. Fantasy or future?

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THE ILLUSION THAT CAPITALISM IS FAIR.

       Most of the debate on the present capitalist system and its current problems, that we get on that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is about how to modify the anomalies and glitches in the system. What is never on there radar is the fact that the system is inherently corrupt and beyond correction. All their debate and arguments seem to flow from the illusionary point of view that there was a time when capitalism was a fair and just system, and all we have to do is get back to those good old days and everything will be just fine. It never was a fair and just system, it never can be, it is based on someone useing others to get richer than them. It has nothing to do with providing a service, that may be, but not necessarily so, a bye product, but it is not the aim.

This from A World to Win:

The biggest loophole is capitalism itself

      As austerity deepens, with spending cuts stretching into the far horizon, there is a renewed focus on the tax that corporations pay, or rather don’t pay. Some argue that if they paid their “fair share”, cuts in services like health and care would not be so severe.
    Others like Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK, go further, claiming that "if only more had been done to tackle rampant tax evasion, Europe would not be facing a crisis today." It’s an attractive – but ultimately misleading – theory that would seem to solve the problem of public finances and the economic crisis at a stroke.
     Tax avoidance by the major corporations is an obvious target, so much so that MPs last week called names like Starbucks and Amazon to explain themselves before the Commons public accounts committee.
Chancellor George Osborne has even dedicated some funding to allow Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to chase the worst abusers and close loopholes. He even described tax evasion as “morally repugnant”. But it’s making no impact.
       While individuals and small firms are hounded by HMRC with some success, the major transnational corporations continue to run rings around the government, as the PAC found out.

Read the full article HERE:

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JUSTICICATION FOR AUTHORITY.

      Noam Chomsky stated that onus of justification is on authority, if it can't be justified, then it has to be abolished. Of course there are others who have tried to justify the authority of the state and admitted that they can't.

This extract is from In Defence of Anarchism by Robert Paul Wolff:

Preface

     This essay on the foundations of the authority of the state marks a stage in the development of my concern with problems of political authority and moral autonomy. When I first became deeply interested in the subject, I was quite confident that I could find a satisfactory justification for the traditional democratic doctrine to which I rather unthinkingly gave my allegiance. Indeed, during my first year as a member of the Columbia University Philosophy Department, I taught a course on political philosophy in which I boldly announced that I would formulate and then solve the fundamental problem of political philosophy. I had no trouble formulating the problem- -- roughly speaking, how the moral autonomy of the individual can be made compatible with the legitimate authority of the state. I also had no trouble refuting a number of supposed solutions which had been put forward by various theorists of the democratic state. But midway through the semester, I was forced to go before my class, crestfallen and very embarrassed, to announce that I had failed to discover the grand solution.
     At first, as I struggled with this dilemma, I clung to the conviction that a solution lay just around the next con- ceptual corner. When I read papers on the subject to meetings at various universities, I was forced again and again to represent myself as searching for a theory which I simply could not find. Little by little, I began to shift the emphasis of my exposition. Finally -- whether from philosophical reflection, or simply from chagrin -- I came to the realization that I was really defending the negative rather than looking for the positive. My failure to find any theoretical justification for the authority of the state had convinced me that there was no justification. In short, I had become a philosophical anarchist.

Read the full essay HERE:

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WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN GAZA.

       It is always good to hear somebody speak of Israel in terms that we don't usually hear on TV. I got some pleasure watching the expressions on the faces of the rest of the panel, that alone makes it worth watching. 

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A LAND OF TOTAL SURVEILLANCE.

This from Liberty:

How private is your private life?

I am writing to let you know what is happening with the Government’s Draft Communications Data Bill, also known as the Snoopers’ Charter.

The Government plans to instruct private companies to collect and store our ‘communications data’. That means records of emails, web activity, texts and phone calls – for the entire population. This amounts to mass, blanket surveillance - outsourced to the private sector.
Find out more about the Draft Communications Data Bill here

Your privacy is under threat

Your communications data can build up a very detailed picture of your life: who you have texted, emailed, skyped or phoned on any given day; where you were when the contact was made and for how long; which websites you have visited in the privacy of your own home; details of social media activity…and more.

We can stop the Snoopers’ Charter

Since we learned of the draft bill last year, we have submitted expert evidence to Parliament, secured public statements against the measures at all three main party conferences and encouraged thousands of Liberty members to write to their MPs or sign petitions.

This new law is being reviewed right now so we need your help urgently. We stopped this proposal under the last Government, and together we can stop it again.

Please visit www.nosnooperscharter.org.uk to help us stop the Snoopers’ Charter.

Thank you for your support



Shami Chakrabarti

Director of Liberty

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