[spectre] Applebaum, The Gulag: Lest We Forget

[Null]

Aliette Guibert wrote:
> Any leftists are interested of the question or they would not be anymore
> leftists : don't you think? Or leftists but of what, please, which party
> could be represented as their center, todays ? Tell us of current
> revisionism.

No such party. At the present state of things, where it is the economic 
powers who buy the laws and not only (as well as ideas, DNA, rights to 
produce medicine, etc), where it is increasingly impossible to obtain 
citizenship in the country you chose/happen to live in, which brings us 
to a situation that only so many percent of people who actually 
live/work/are_exploited in Europe have citizenship (crisis of 
citizenship and subjectivity). And with other trends such as 
privatisation, precarisation, etc. there are well other questions to ask 
oneself other then "which party".

Leftists, when you write it I can hear a cynical tone, maybe it`s just 
me, it is disturbing nowdays with the rise of the right. The right is 
gaining ground both materialy and in the immaginary/mediatic sphere, and 
the left I see it fail to be propositive, brave, daring, and instead 
"plays" in defense, defending ever less "rights". Yes, we need to 
confront ourselves with the post-Berlin-wall situation, but it is not 
enough to talk about Gulags etc.. That, in my opinion, is not the point. 
We well know already that the situation in USSR went from bad to worse, 
etc. But what do we do about the rebuilding of the political horizons?

When I was a kid my parents would tell me that the difference between 
the left and the right were that the right looks backwards, and the left 
forward, and that the progress will eventually lead us to ever more 
freedom, being it that already from slavery we fought our way to 
feudalism, and from there to capitalism and from there to socialism.

Now with the fall of socialism in the east, need we discredit an entire 
school of thought? Throw away the baby with the bathwater? Or can we 
learn from different ways of thinking and come to new solutions. Else we 
are part of the problem.

> In these past times anyone could imagine that US were allowed to defend
> freedom against the extensive universal dictatorship represented by URSS
> danger. But at the same time they helped or act distatorships in Center and
> South America. And soon after the Perestroïka no one could imagine and more
> in our days that US would no be the total dominance to the world today. Even
> of Poutine emergency - but edificated in greatest danger by the time of an
> opportunist ciroumstancial siutation of US front of the question of South
> and South East Asia (China but not only), more South Pacific Asia... We are
> no more in dialectical situations, we are in antagonist - or dualist, it
> depends of the cirucumstances of a general plasticity of post-economical
> causes or of the post-politics conditions and forces - situations, but a way
> of domination not to defend but to own territories and act the most of the
> human genre in exclusive business - or they are submitted or they will die
> by default ofresource of by the repression.

Yeah, the great superhero US will eventually save us for sure... With 
the witch hunts, the CIA, the shopping malls, patents that allow 
property over thought, etc. The US does not seminate totalitarism only 
in the world.


> What Baudrillard explained recently it was of the "well" as the worst, as
> the actual "evil" equal to the former moral - even ethics - "evil". All
> along there is a way depriving of freedom or of information as political and
> pragmatical ressource of any power to make the human different of their
> inheritated structure (as part of them which are unoffensive to others)
> against their own choice, would it be to a liberal system, acting in real a
> united utopia instead of thinking of it : there is a totalitarianism.
> Dictatorships are more circunstancial - their easy object could be
> opportunatly in the only depriving of liberties by a power not affecting a
> project in progress to the people -  than totalitarianisms (always in
> progress of the extensive project to the human genre: Nazis, communists
> linked to the disctotorship, integrist religions (all confessional one),

It is interesting how well your post reflects the current media induced 
paranoias. Fear of comunists, fear of Islam (and capitalism is not an 
integralism which blindly trusts in the dollar/money?). You`ll say all 
religion, but I hardly read any allarmist posts about the danger of the 
power of Vatican (would be nice).

What`s freedom?

Freedom to buy and be bought, freedom to sell and be sold, today when 
media and parliaments are controlled by the multinationals?

Capitalism leads to dictatorship?

Comunism was an interesting school of thought, which had many currents 
other than the madness in the head of Stalin. A spectre is haunting 
Europe -- the spectre of Precarisation. The proletariat is now brought 
to extremes by the precarisation of the middle class, the poor are ever 
more so, the rich always more rich, and even migration is controlled by 
the corporations - if you get someone to "order" you on a job, you may 
live there. A (flex)worker of today, has nothing to do with what s/he 
does at his job, alienated to the extreme and moving from one part time 
"occasion" to another, deciding nothing, knowing little, atomized, 
isolated, poor, no pension plan. Laws are bought and sold, all is 
privatised.

Ah, but it is comunism that leads to dictatorship. Then we should be 
safe, after all, capitalism is winning. Phew. Let`s go to the mall.

> economical visions of liberalism by the peace or by the war - hardest would
> it appear as war resource -, and so on). They are soft totalitarianism and
> hardest one in appearence but all make get up the resistance and lead to
> repression of the rights or to the war to extend in a radical proof at a
> moment or at antother moment. Part of one is surfing by the net parties or
> organizations, specially global organizations affecting a universal project
> to the earth (I do not tell of Internet as the web), even a cool project,
> would they good would they bad.

Soft? What is soft about CPT`s, for instance, centres of temporary 
permanence that exist in Italy where people found "without papers" are 
held for extended (even illegal) ammounts of time, tortured, imprisoned, 
etc? What is soft about the migrant ships being sunk all over the world? 
Pollution, patents, preventive warfare, situation in Nigeria, and so on?

Maybe I didn`t understand you well, I hope it is so.

It is not the parties that are doing interesting work today, but the 
grassroots movements, that are experimenting new, free, open ways of 
collaboration, networking, creating, agitating, coding...

Free the source of the world, they say to us.

> Dictatorships were more linked to nations but I am afraid of a new extensive
> vision of the dictatorship of the well under the obvious action by
> Condolezza Rice post-war representative statement (by war going on as the
> new mode of peace), or for another part under the European oligarchy.
> Totalitarianism is getting up in every place today. As a global and
> multifield war and post-war project to human genre as the misssing resources
> will grow down.

With the way it is going down noone cares about how much resources we 
have, as long as enough of them go to the global elites. Even when we 
destroy what is left of our rivers (and we just did most of that in one 
generation), I`m afraid that the world`s richest will still have their 
oasis to buy and live in. As little resources as there may be, there 
will always be enough exclution to go around and help us get around that.

Fortress Europe, Fortress World.
.

Llun
A spectre is haunting Europe -- the spectre of Precarisation. All the 
Powers of the new [behind the scenes] Europe have entered into a 
precarious conspiracy to exorcise this spectre: the flexworkers and the 
brainworkers, contorsionists, guerriglia gardeners, theorists, adbusters 
and designers, proletariat and the precariat.
http://www.euromayday.org/
http://www.euromayday.org/adesioni.php
-- 
Nothing short of total gender.