There are thousands and thousands of videos in internet uploaded in sites like google, youtube, videotube, metacafe. e.t.c…..Many videos of them comes from commrades, spiritual friends, activists, thinkers, undergound movements and collectives of the global resistance, they created by all of us, they belong to all of us…Void Network hear accomodates the link of free programme MovieSaver 2.0, a fine way to download in your computer, share with everybody and use for public shows allmost all interesting videos that you can find in internet…We hope you will use this link for your personal pleasure as also for producing many info shows, documentaries film shows and extraordinary public events…

Description of the programme:

Millions of videos with no end in sight … First there was YouTube, then MySpace, then MyVideo (or was it the other way round?) and now it’s the turn of MovieSaver. What is so special about it?

No wrench is absurd enough, no spot is too funny, no visualized idea too bizarre. MovieSaver loads them down from the Net and stores them on your hard disc – for the hours and days without Internet connection

MovieSaver is a so-called video downloader, which – once fed with a URL that links to a video – loads and stores it on the home computer. Addictive factor? Very high, because once one has a small collection of the YouTube and Co. treasures one soon wants to have more.

Even better, the best small freeware on this side of Texas also provides a media filter that clicks into the system and henceforth allows the reproduction of flash files with all software players, which use the Microsoft DirectShow-interface, for instance the Windows Media Player.

Get the latest cult films onto your computer with MovieSaver 2.0!

The most important credit points:

– Freeware! developed by Engelmann Media GmbH

– Compatible to FLV-files (Flash videos).

– No flash player for reproduction required (even if your browser refuses to work you can copy the video address and load down and watch the video with MovieSaver).

– Extremely easy handling per Drag & Drop or Copy & Paste.

– Works with Youtube, Google Video, Veoh, Clipfish, MyVideo, VideoTube, myspace, metacafe, sevenload, ifilm, blip.tv and dailymotion.

System Requirements:

Windows 2000/XP/Vista with NET 2 Framework (will be automatically installed, if not available).

PC with Pentium compatible CPU and 256 MB RAM, Mouse.

Download the MovieSaver 2.0 here:

http://www.dreamscene.org/download_tips.php

The post MovieSaver 2.0 Free Download all possible Videos appeared first on Void Network.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often saved from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t? In his book Villains Of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence.

If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O’ Nine Tails. If you slacked often, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century”.

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy.” This is why they were romantic heroes, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age, a young British man called William Scott, should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirateing to live.” In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

This is the context in which the “pirates” have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence”.

No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas.” William Scott would understand.

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won’t act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.” The pirate smiled, and responded: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.” Once again, our great imperial fleets sail – but who is the robber?

This article is written by Johann Haris: j.hari@independent.co.uk and appeared originaly in 5 January 2009 in English newspaper The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html

you can find the same article with some interesting comments in:

http://www.anarchistnews.org/?q=node/5950

for further reading about the pirates of previous centuries, the myths and the lies about them read the books :

“Villains of all Nations” & “The Many Headed Hydra” by Marcus Redikers “Pirates and Buccaneers” by Gilles Lapouge “Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates” by David Cordingly

for a great report-photogallery from photographer Veronique de Viguerie about Somalia pirates: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2008/nov/18/piracy-somalia-gallery?picture=339805476

for a profile of Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, a 16 years old pirate that just arrested from American governement and brought to trial in New York, in the first pirate trial for the last century: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090421/ap_on_re_af/af_piracy_suspect_profile

Muse is the sole surviving Somali pirate suspect from the hostage-taking of commercial ship captain Richard Phillips from the Maersk Alabama. photo gallery from his arrest: http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Richard-Phillips/photo//090421/480/b79e980fec834dcdb55915676b932a58//s:/ap/20090421/ap_on_re_af/af_piracy_suspect_profile

The post You are being lied to about Pirates by Johann Hari appeared first on Void Network.

….for the last weeks Void Network participates with all its powers in one of the most visionary manifestations of self-organization of the social movement that appeared through the insurrection of December in Greece…Under the idea “Lets Take our Life Back in Our Hands” the Open Assembly of the Exarchia Inhabitants together with many anarchist, left, romantic and utopian groups and people squated an area of Exarchia just 50 metres from the spot that Alexis Grigoropoulos killed by police last December. The area was working for many years as parking and for 15 years the Athens Municipality failed to turn it into a park (as it was the original city-plan)…Actually through the self-organization and the power of more than 1000 people that gathered there in the first morning of the squat (and many more that they continue working there day by day) we turned this space into a park in 12 hours…It was like an utopian miracle…We removed the cement and put trees and flowers and dreams in its place…We couldn’t believe how fast and how beautiful everybody helped to happen this just in one daytime!….Many archtectures and mechanics planed together with all people the park, the areas of new trees and flowers, the new benches, the area for the children playground, the area for concerts, theatre, jugglers….and suddenly all the people of the city enjoy a new self-organized park, an area that offers to the center of the city an area of freedom that children can play, old people can have some hours of calm and friendly feelings, all people can speak, share their dreams, prepare plans, visions and start new struggles…
All of them these people they defend the park together through rotated citizens-self organized protection timeline, hard personal work, concerts, exhibitions, meetings, fights with the police and open public assemblies…We will never surrender…We will never allow to the governement to destroy this park….For this reason we invite all people to participate in this weekend events especially organized for children…Also with all the public space groups we organize big demo in Monday 30 March 2009 in the streets of Athens starting in 17.00 o clock from the park

“Κάτω τα χέρια απο τους Ελεύθερους Χώρους. Αυτο-οργάνωση σε όλες τις γειτονιές” Η ανοιχτή συνέλευση που πραγματοποιήθηκε την Τρίτη το απόγευμα στο πάρκο με τη συμμετοχή εκπροσώπων ή μέλη των συνελεύσεων ελεύθερων χώρων απο όλη την Αττική, όπως το πάρκο Κύπρου και Πατησίων, την πρωτοβουλία κατοίκων για το Αλσος Παγκρατίου, τις συνελεύσεις για τους λόφους Φιλοπάππου και Στρέφη, τον Ελαιώνα, πρωτοβουλίες της Δυτικής Αττικής, τον Αλιμο και πολίτες καλεί όλους σε διαδήλωση τη Δευτέρα 30 Μάρτη στις πέντε το απόγευμα απο το απελευθερωμένο αυτοδιαχειριζόμενο πάρκο της Ναυαρίνου προς το Δήμο Αθηναίων. Καλούμε τις γενικές συνελεύσεις όλων των πρωτοβουλιών, των απελευθερωμένων δημόσιων ή κοινωνικών χώρων, να συμμετάσχουν στη διαμαρτυρία, απαιτώντας την παραίτηση του Δήμου απο τα σχέδια εμπορευματοποίησης, εκμετάλευσης και δόμησης των τελευταίων εναπομείναντων ελεύθερων χώρων. Τον χαρακτηρισμό τους σε χώρους υψηλού πρασίνου και την απόδοση τους στους κατοίκους των περιοχών. Καλούμε ακόμα τους κατοίκους της Αθήνας να προχωρήσουν σε αυτο-οργανωμένες δράσεις υπεράσπισης των χώρων τους. Οι δημόσιοι χώροι κάθε ειδους ανήκουν στους κατοίκους και τους πολίτες της Αθήνας. Η παράδοση τους στην τσιμεντοποίηση και την εκμετάλευση είναι απολύτως απονομιμοποιημένη αφού καταπατά το δικαίωμα μας σε ανθρώπινες συνθήκες διαβίωσης στιον Αστικό χώρο, το δικαίωμα μας στην ύπαρξη, ελάχιστων πλέον, χώρων πρασίνου και το δικαίωμα στην συμμετοχή, την συλλογικότητα και την συνδιαμόρφωση της κοινής μας ζωής στον δημόσιο χώρο. Καλούμε άτομα και συλλογικότητες να διαδηλώσουν μαζί μας εκφράζοντας και μεταφέροντας τις ιδιαίτερες αντιλήψεις, τα ιδιαίτερα χαρακτηριστικά και τις ανάγκες τους. Κυρίως όμως καλούμε όλους να αναλάβουν δράση στους χώρους κατοικίας τους, μετατρέποντας τους απο χώρους εκμετάλευσης, σε χώρους ζωής, έκφρασης και δημιουργίας. Οι δημόσιοι χώροι ανήκουν σε όλους. Δεν τους εκχωρούμε. Δεν τους διαπραγματευόμαστε Εμείς, εδώ και τώρα για όλους εμάς

για ενημέρωση σχετικά με τις συνελεύσεις, την προστασία, τις εκδηλώσεις και τις πρωτοβουλίες του Αυτοοργανωμένου Πάρκου Εξαρχείων :
http://parkingparko.blogspot.com/

The post SELF-ORGANIZED-OCCUPIEDNew Created Park in Exarchia area -Athens appeared first on Void Network.

February 10, 2009 — Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert. Sameer Dossani interviewed him about the global economic crisis and its roots.

SAMEER DOSSANI: In any first year economics class, we are taught that markets have their ups and downs, so the current recession is perhaps nothing out of the ordinary. But this particular downturn is interesting for two reasons: First, market deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s made the boom periods artificially high, so the bust period will be deeper than it would otherwise. Secondly, despite an economy that’s boomed since 1980, the majority of working class U.S. residents have seen their incomes stagnate — while the rich have done well most of the country hasn’t moved forward at all. Given the situation, my guess is that economic planners are likely to go back to some form of Keynesianism, perhaps not unlike the Bretton Woods system that was in place from 1948-1971. What are your thoughts?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well I basically agree with your picture. In my view, the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s is probably the major international event since 1945, much more significant in its implications than the collapse of the Soviet Union.

From roughly 1950 until the early 1970s there was a period of unprecedented economic growth and egalitarian economic growth. So the lowest quintile did as well — in fact they even did a little bit better — than the highest quintile. It was also a period of some limited but real form of benefits for the population. And in fact social indicators, measurements of the health of society, they very closely tracked growth. As growth went up social indicators went up, as you’d expect. Many economists called it the golden age of modern capitalism — they should call it state capitalism because government spending was a major engine of growth and development.

In the mid 1970s that changed. Bretton Woods restrictions on finance were dismantled, finance was freed, speculation boomed, huge amounts of capital started going into speculation against currencies and other paper manipulations, and the entire economy became financialized. The power of the economy shifted to the financial institutions, away from manufacturing. And since then, the majority of the population has had a very tough time; in fact it may be a unique period in American history. There’s no other period where real wages — wages adjusted for inflation — have more or less stagnated for so long for a majority of the population and where living standards have stagnated or declined. If you look at social indicators, they track growth pretty closely until 1975, and at that point they started to decline, so much so that now we’re pretty much back to the level of 1960. There was growth, but it was highly inegalitarian — it went into a very small number of pockets. There have been brief periods in which this shifted, so during the tech bubble, which was a bubble in the late Clinton years, wages improved and unemployment went down, but these are slight deviations in a steady tendency of stagnation and decline for the majority of the population.

Financial crises have increased during this period, as predicted by a number of international economists. Once financial markets were freed up, there was expected to be an increase in financial crises, and that’s happened. This crisis happens to be exploding in the rich countries, so people are talking about it, but it’s been happening regularly around the world — some of them very serious — and not only are they increasing in frequency but they’re getting deeper. And it’s been predicted and discussed and there are good reasons for it.

About 10 years ago there was an important book called Global Finance at Risk, by two well-known economists John Eatwell and Lance Taylor. In it they refer to the well-known fact that there are basic inefficiencies intrinsic to markets. In the case of financial markets, they under-price risk. They don’t count in systemic risk — general social costs. So for example if you sell me a car, you and I may make a good bargain, but we don’t count in the costs to the society — pollution, congestion and so on. In financial markets, this means that risks are under-priced, so there are more risks taken than would happen in an efficient system. And that of course leads to crashes. If you had adequate regulation, you could control and prevent market inefficiencies. If you deregulate, you’re going to maximize market inefficiency.

This is pretty elementary economics. They happen to discuss it in this book; others have discussed it too. And that’s what’s happening. Risks were under-priced, therefore more risks were taken than should have been, and sooner or later it was going to crash. Nobody predicted exactly when, and the depth of the crash is a little surprising. That’s in part because of the creation of exotic financial instruments which were deregulated, meaning that nobody really knew who owed what to whom. It was all split up in crazy ways. So the depth of the crisis is pretty severe — we’re not to the bottom yet — and the architects of this are the people who are now designing Obama’s economic policies.

Dean Baker, one of the few economists who saw what was coming all along, pointed out that it’s almost like appointing Osama bin Laden to run the so-called war on terror. Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, Clinton‘s treasury secretaries, are among the main architects of the crisis. Summers intervened strongly to prevent any regulation of derivatives and other exotic instruments. Rubin, who preceded him, was right in the lead of undermining the Glass-Steagall act, all of which is pretty ironic. The Glass-Steagall Act protected commercial banks from risky investment firms, insurance firms, and so on, which kind of protected the core of the economy. That was broken up in 1999 largely under Rubin’s influence. He immediately left the treasury department and became a director of Citigroup, which benefited from the breakdown of Glass-Steagall by expanding and becoming a “financial supermarket” as they called it. Just to increase the irony (or the tragedy if you like) Citigroup is now getting huge taxpayer subsidies to try to keep it together and just in the last few weeks announced that it’s breaking up. It’s going back to trying to protect its commercial banking from risky side investments. Rubin resigned in disgrace — he’s largely responsible for this. But he’s one of Obama’s major economic advisors, Summers is another one; Summer’s protégé Tim Geithner is the Treasury Secretary.

None of this is really unanticipated. There were very good economists like say David Felix, an international economist who’s been writing about this for years. And the reasons are known: markets are inefficient; they under-price social costs. And financial institutions underprice systemic risk. So say you’re a CEO of Goldman Sachs. If you’re doing your job correctly, when you make a loan you ensure that the risk to you is low. So if it collapses, you’ll be able to handle it. You do care about the risk to yourself, you price that in. But you don’t price in systemic risk, the risk that the whole financial system will erode. That’s not part of your calculation.

Well that’s intrinsic to markets — they’re inefficient. Robin Hahnel had a couple of very good articles about this recently in economics journals. But this is first year economics course stuff — markets are inefficient; these are some of their inefficiencies; there are many others. They can be controlled by some degree of regulation, but that was dismantled under religious fanaticism about efficient markets, which lacked empirical support and theoretical basis; it was just based on religious fanaticism. So now it’s collapsing.

People talk about a return to Keynesianism, but that’s because of a systematic refusal to pay attention to the way the economy works. There’s a lot of wailing now about “socializing” the economy by bailing out financial institutions. Yeah, in a way we are, but that’s icing on the cake. The whole economy’s been socialized since — well actually forever, but certainly since the Second World War. This mythology that the economy is based on entrepreneurial initiative and consumer choice, well ok, to an extent it is. For example at the marketing end, you can choose one electronic device and not another. But the core of the economy relies very heavily on the state sector, and transparently so. So for example to take the last economic boom which was based on information technology — where did that come from? Computers and the Internet. Computers and the Internet were almost entirely within the state system for about 30 years — research, development, procurement, other devices — before they were finally handed over to private enterprise for profit-making. It wasn’t an instantaneous switch, but that’s roughly the picture. And that’s the picture pretty much for the core of the economy.

The state sector is innovative and dynamic. It’s true across the board from electronics to pharmaceuticals to the new biology-based industries. The idea is that the public is supposed to pay the costs and take the risks, and ultimately if there is any profit, you hand it over to private tyrannies, corporations. If you had to encapsulate the economy in one sentence, that would be the main theme. When you look at the details of course it’s a more complex picture, but that’s the major theme. So yes, socialization of risk and cost (but not profit) is partially new for the financial institutions, but it’s just added on to what’s been happening all along.

Double Standard

DOSSANI: As we consider the picture of the collapse of some of these major financial institutions we would do well to remember that some of these same market fundamentalist policies have already been exported around the globe. Specifically, the International Monetary Fund has forced an export-oriented growth model onto many countries, meaning that the current slowdown in U.S. consumption is going to have major impacts in other countries. At the same time, some regions of the world, particularly the Southern Cone region of South America, are working to repudiate the IMF’s market fundamentalist policies and build up alternatives. Can you talk a little about the international implications of the financial crisis? And how is it that some of the institutions responsible for this mess, like the IMF, are using this as an opportunity to regain credibility on the world stage?

CHOMSKY: It’s rather striking to notice that the consensus on how to deal with the crisis in the rich countries is almost the opposite of the consensus on how the poor countries should deal with similar economic crises. So when so-called developing countries have a financial crisis, the IMF rules are: raise interest rates, cut down economic growth, tighten the belt, pay off your debts (to us), privatize, and so on. That’s the opposite of what’s prescribed here. What’s prescribed here is lower interest rates, pour government money into stimulating the economy, nationalize (but don’t use the word), and so on. So yes, there’s one set of rules for the weak and a different set of rules for the powerful. There’s nothing novel about that.

As for the IMF, it is not an independent institution. It’s pretty much a branch of the U.S. Treasury Department — not officially, but that’s pretty much the way it functions. The IMF was accurately described by a U.S. Executive Director as “the credit community’s enforcer.” If a loan or an investment from a rich country to a poor country goes bad, the IMF makes sure that the lenders will not suffer. If you had a capitalist system, which of course the wealthy and their protectors don’t want, it wouldn’t work like that.

For example, suppose I lend you money, and I know that you may not be able to pay it back. Therefore I impose very high interest rates, so that at least I’ll get that in case you crash. Then suppose at some point you can’t pay the debt. Well in a capitalist system it would be my problem. I made a risky loan, I made a lot of money from it by high interest rates and now you can’t pay it back? Ok, tough for me. That’s a capitalist system. But that’s not the way our system works. If investors make risky loans to say Argentina and get high interest rates and then Argentina can’t pay it back, well that’s when the IMF steps in, the credit community’s enforcer, and says that the people of Argentina, they have to pay it back. Now if you can’t pay back a loan to me, I don’t say that your neighbors have to pay it back. But that’s what the IMF says. The IMF says the people of the country have to pay back the debt which they had nothing to do with, it was usually given to dictators, or rich elites, who sent it off to Switzerland or someplace, but you guys, the poor folks living in the country, you have to pay it back. And furthermore, if I lend money to you and you can’t pay it back, in a capitalist system I can’t ask my neighbors to pay me, but the IMF does, namely the US taxpayer. They help make sure that the lenders and investors are protected. So yes it’s the credit community’s enforcer. It’s a radical attack on basic capitalist principles, just as the whole functioning of the economy based on the state sector is, but that doesn’t change the rhetoric. It’s kind of hidden in the woodwork.

What you said about the Southern Cone is exactly right. For the last several years they’ve been trying to extricate themselves from this whole neoliberal disaster. One of the ways was, for example Argentina simply didn’t pay back its debts, or rather restructured them and bought some of it back. And folks like the President of Argentina said that “we’re going to rid ourselves of the IMF” through these measures. Well, what was happening to the IMF? The IMF was in trouble. It was losing capital and losing borrowers, and therefore losing its ability to function as the credit community’s enforcer. But this crisis is being used to restructure it and revitalize it.

It’s also true that countries are driven to commodity export; that’s the mode of development that’s designed for them. Then they will be in trouble if commodity prices fall. It’s not 100% the case, but in the Southern Cone, the countries that have been doing reasonably well do rely very heavily on commodity export, actually raw material export. That’s even true of the most successful of them, Chile, which is considered the darling. The Chilean economy has been based very heavily on copper exports. The biggest copper company in the world is CODELCO, the nationalized copper company — nationalized by President Salvador Allende and nobody has tried to privatize it fully since because it’s such a cash cow. It has been undermined, so it controls less of the copper export than it has in the past, but it still provides a large part of the tax base of the Chilean economy and is also a large income producer. It’s an efficiently run nationalized copper company. But reliance on copper export means you’re vulnerable to a decline in the price of commodities. The other Chilean exports like say, fruit and vegetables which are adapted to the U.S. market because of the seasonal differences — that’s also vulnerable. And they haven’t really done much in developing the economy beyond reliance on raw materials exports — a little, but not much. The same can be said for the other currently successful countries. You look at growth rates in Peru and Brazil, they’re heavily dependent on soy and other agricultural exports or minerals; it’s not a solid base for an economy.

One major exception to this is South Korea and Taiwan. They were very poor countries. South Korea in the late 1950s was probably about the level of Ghana today. But they developed by following the Japanese model – violating all the rules of the IMF and Western economists and developing pretty much the way the Western countries had developed, by substantial direction and involvement of the state sector. So South Korea, for example built a major steel industry, one of the most efficient in the world, by flatly violating the advice of the IMF and the World Bank, who said it was impossible. But they did it through state intervention, directing of resources, and also by restricting capital flight. Capital flight is a major problem for a developing country, and also for democracy. Capital flight could be controlled under Bretton Woods rules, but it was opened up in the last 30 years. In South Korea, you could get the death penalty for capital flight. So yes, they developed a pretty solid economy, as did Taiwan. China is a separate story, but they also radically violated the rules, and it’s a complex story of how it’s ending up. But these are major phenomena in the international economy.

Government Investment

DOSSANI: Do you think the current crisis will offer other countries the opportunity to follow the example of South Korean and Taiwan?

CHOMSKY: Well, you could say the example of the United States. During its major period of growth – late 19th century and early 20th century – the United States was probably the most protectionist country in the world. We had very high protective barriers, and it drew in investment, but private investment played only a supporting role. Take the steel industry. Andrew Carnegie built the first billion-dollar corporation by feeding off the state sector — building naval vessels and so on — this is Carnegie the great pacifist. The sharpest period of economic growth in U.S. history was during the Second World War, which was basically a semi-command economy and industrial production more than tripled. That model pulled us out of the depression, after which we became far and away the major economy in the world. After the Second World War, the substantial period of economic growth which I mentioned (1948-1971) was very largely based on the dynamic state sector and that remains true.

Let’s take my own institution, MIT. I’ve been here since the 1950s, and you can see it first hand. In the 1950s and 1960s, MIT was largely financed by the Pentagon. There were labs that did classified war work, but the campus itself wasn’t doing war work. It was developing the basis of the modern electronic economy: computers, the Internet, microelectronics, and so on. It was all developed under a Pentagon cover. IBM was here learning how to shift from punch-cards to electronic computers. It did get to a point by the 1960s that IBM was able to produce its own computers, but they were so expensive that nobody could buy them so therefore the government bought them. In fact, procurement is a major form of government intervention in the economy to develop the fundamental structure that will ultimately lead to profit. There have been good technical studies on this. From the 1970s until today, the funding of MIT has been shifting away from the Pentagon and toward the National Institute of Health and related government institutions. Why? Because the cutting edge of the economy is shifting from an electronics base to a biology base. So now the public has to pay the costs of the next phase of the economy through other state institutions. Now again, this is not the whole story, but it’s a substantial part.

There will be a shift towards more regulation because of the current catastrophe, and how long they can maintain the paying off banks and financial institutions is not very clear. There will be more infrastructure spending, surely, because no matter where you are in the economic spectrum you realize that it’s absolutely necessary. There will have to be some adjustment in the trade deficit, which is dramatic, meaning less consumption here, more export, and less borrowing.

And there’s going to have to be some way to deal with the elephant in the closet, one of the major threats to the American economy, the increase in healthcare costs. That’s often masked as “entitlements” so that they can wrap in Social Security, as part of an effort to undermine Social Security. But in fact Social Security is pretty sound; probably as sound as its ever been, and what problems there are could probably be addressed with small fixes. But Medicare is huge, and its costs are going way up, and that’s primarily because of the privatized healthcare system which is highly inefficient. It’s very costly and it has very poor outcomes. The U.S. has twice the per capita costs of other industrialized countries and it has some of the worst outcomes. The major difference between the U.S. system and others is that this one is so heavily privatized, leading to huge administrative costs, bureaucratization, surveillance costs and so on. Now that’s going to have to be dealt with somehow because it’s a growing burden on the economy and its huge; it’ll dwarf the federal budget if current tendencies persist.

South America

DOSSANI: Will the current crisis open up space for other countries to follow more meaningful development goals?

CHOMSKY: Well, it’s been happening. One of the most exciting areas of the world is South America. For the last 10 years there have been quite interesting and significant moves towards independence, for the first time since the Spanish and Portuguese conquests. That includes steps towards unification, which is crucially important, and also beginning to address their huge internal problems. There’s a new Bank of the South, based in Caracas, which hasn’t really taken off yet, but it has prospects and is supported by other countries as well. MERCOSUR is a trading zone of the Southern cone. Just recently, six or eight months ago, a new integrated organization has developed, UNASUR, the Union of South American Republics, and it’s already been effective. So effective that it’s not reported in the United States, presumably because it’s too dangerous.

So when the U.S. and the traditional ruling elites in Bolivia started moving towards a kind of secessionist movement to try to undermine the democratic revolution that’s taken place there, and when it turned violent, as it did, there was a meeting of UNASUR last September in Santiago, where it issued a strong statement defending the elected president, Evo Morales, and condemning the violence and the efforts to undermine the democratic system. Morales responded thanking them for their support and also saying that this is the first time in 500 years that South America‘s beginning to take its fate into its own hands. That’s significant; so significant that I don’t even think it was reported here. Just how far these developments can go, both dealing with the internal problems and also the problems of unification and integration, we don’t know, but the developments are taking place. There are also South-South relations developing, for example between Brazil and South Africa. This again breaks the imperial monopoly, the monopoly of U.S. and Western domination. China‘s a new element on the scene. Trade and investment are increasing, and this gives more options and possibilities to South America. The current financial crisis might offer opportunities for increasing this, but also it might go the other way. The financial crisis is of course harming — it must harm — the poor in the weaker countries and it may reduce their options. These are really matters which will depend on whether popular movements can take control of their own fate, to borrow Morales’ phrase. If they can, yes there are opportunities.

this article found originaly:

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20595

The post Understanding the Crisis – Markets, the State and Hypocrisy by Noam Chomsky and Sameer Dossani appeared first on Void Network.

Welcome to ZineLibrary.info.
Here you will find hundreds of
radical zines
in pdf format ready for you
to print, read and share.
This is an amazing digital space
for radical thinking,
a wonderfull space of creativity
and a great open-source
process of reading,
sharing and
re-distribute zines, pamphlets,
books, magazines,
posters and alive visions
Please navigate in:
http://zinelibrary.info/

The post ZineLibrary.info / a magical world for sharing and re-distribution of radical visions appeared first on Void Network.

The post UTOPIAN TECHNOLOGIES | Space Music Free Festival | Sat. 14 & Sat. 21 March 2009 | 2 days of concerts, djsets, poetry and Void Art visual experience appeared first on Void Network.

Guadeloupe, a part of France colonization history in the Carribean sea,
and a part of European Union, is paralised after one month of general strike
that started in January 20 as the focus of the riots has shifted away
from the immediate demands for better wages.
The starting cause of the strike is inequality and raising of the prizes, and the
people asking, nothing more than 200 euro pay increase for low-wage earners.
In last days the fights spread also to Martinica and Antilles.

According to AFP, “France dispatched hundreds of police reinforcements
to its Caribbean island of Guadeloupe on Wednesday as a month-long
strike over the rising cost of living descended into deadly riots.
Union representative Jacques Bino, aged in his 50s,
was shot dead overnight when he drove up to a roadblock manned
by armed youths in Pointe-a-Pitre, the island’s main city.
It was not immediately clear who shot him, but he was the
first victim of the escalating violence on Guadeloupe,
normally a tourist-friendly island
but crippled since January 20 by a general strike.
Six members of the security forces were slightly injured during
clashes with armed youths, police said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy told a nationwide address
he would meet with elected officials from Guadeloupe on Thursday to
“address the anxiety, worries and also a certain form of despair from our compatriots.”
After holding an emergency meeting on the deteriorating security on the island,
Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie announced that 280 police reinforcements
would fly to the island immediately.
Gangs of youths looted shops, smashed storefront windows and threw up burning
roadblocks overnight along the main streets of Pointe-a-Pitre and
in at least two other towns. Fourteen people were detained.
Ary Chalus, mayor of the town of Baie-Mahault, where three police were hurt,
described the scene as “chaos.”
“We have 15-year-old children who are clashing with police.
We may well have families in mourning,” he warned.

Most shops, cafés, banks, schools and government offices have been shut in Guadeloupe
and the neighbouring tourist island of Martinique as a result of region-wide disturbances.

While both islands, which are formally integral to the French state,
are disadvantaged compared to the mainland, the standard of living
is much higher than in the former English and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean.

Guadeloupe’s socialist opposition leader Malikh Boutih said: ‘It is shocking to
watch a police force which is almost 100 per cent white confront a population which
is 100 per cent black.

‘All the same elements of the riots on mainland France in 2005 are present here.

‘We don’t have the same concrete buildings, there are palm trees instead,
but it’s the same dead-end, the same “no future” for young people,
with joblessness and a feeling of isolation.’
The violence has provoked divisions in Mr Sarkozy’s cabinet with black minister Rachida
Data acknowledging that Guadeloupe suffered from “a problem with the distribution of wealth.”

Guadeloupe is a French overseas department ruled directly from Paris, and
authorities in France have sent 300 extra riot police to the island in a bid
to quell the violence.Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters are roaming the streets
of the capital Point-a-Pitre, looting shops and restaurants, burning cars
and vandalising public buildings.

Holiday resorts along the coast have hired extra security to protect tourists,
while the airport is jammed with visitors now trying to get out of the country.

Union leader Jacques Bino was the first man to die in the violence when he was
caught in crossfire on Tuesday while driving a car near a roadblock manned by armed
youths who had opened fire at police.

Six members of the security forces were injured during shoot-outs with the armed
youths as they tried to help emergency teams who were trying to save Mr Bino’s life.

Dozens more police and demonstrators have also been hurt in frequent clashes on
the capital’s streets—which one newspaper describing it as looking like a battlefield’.

first info for this article came from:
http://riotstorebellions.blogspot.com/
as also the Greek site:
http://globalnewswire.wordpress.com

for more info read:
http://www.welt.de/english-news/article3239532/Sarkozy-offers-package-to-end-Guadeloupe-unrest.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/guadeloupe-8216on-verge-of-revolt8217-as-workers-riot-over-cost-of-living-1624890.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/guadeloupe/4690797/Guadeloupe-protesters-turn-on-white-families-as-man-is-shot-dead.html

photos comes from AFP and Reuters

The post Guadelupe is on one month strike! Wild Riots in one of most distant areas of European Union appeared first on Void Network.

translations, PDF and docs at :
http://dissent.fr/node/61/

The revolts which are presently rising in Europe and the other parts of the world are a reaction to the global economic and social situation which deteriorates at an exponential rhythm. The impoverishment of resources also causes numerous conflicts. IMF have already asked the countries to get ready to face numerous uprisings due to the generalized recession, insisting on the importance to be able to control those resistances to insure the safety of capitalism. Actually NATO seems to have the will to appear as an army in the service of a global security, merging interior and external security, what implies a military vision of the management of every type of crises. Naturally we know that it is only their own interests which they try to protect and to widen… The 3rd and 4th April, representatives of the countries members of NATO will meet again to celebrate their 60 years of domination, but also in order to develop their new plan to “defend freedom” and quoting the terms of their own generals: “A great strategy for an uncertain world.” From the 1st to the 5th April 2009 we will be present in Strasbourg and we’ll oppose their “globalization by force” with the creativity of our actions of resistance: direct actions, blockades, civil disobedience, demonstrations, meetings, alternative village, convergence centers, autonomous arts, concerts, … The success of these action days depends on an efficient international network which enables to succeed in taking decisions and preparing actions for the next NATO summit in April and for the longer term. Until now those networks have always been set up temporarily before international summits and it is important to meet to reactivate them, enrich them and to think about eventually finding ways to make them durable to gain in resistance ability… This international meeting of the radical resistance movements will be held on the 17th & 18th January 2009 in Strasbourg. It aims to strengthen international networks and achieve concrete actions during the counter-summit. This would be the only international Dissent! assembly before the NATO summit, a strong mobilization and the presence of all on this occasion is essential. Actually we had to reserve a place including meeting rooms, kitchen and sleeping places (bring sleeping bags) which costs us quite a lot of money. We are still waiting for the answer of two other places which would be much cheaper. We have to ask all participants to demand to their groups if they can help financially as actually all the money is coming from personal funds of individuals who take parts in the organization of this meeting. Of course this is absolutely not an obligation and nothing will be asked to those who cannot afford to help ! If we have enough money we will try to help those who have diificulties to pay their travel expensies. Discussions will be in English and will be translated by groups in French and German. We do need more volunteers ! Moderation will be done by a group. Those willing to participate to this group are invited to take part in the preparation meeting of this group who will happen on the Friday 16th afternoon. /

To participate to the translation or the moderation group, please contact us at this mail address : dissent_fr@riseup.net

*For security reasons we do not want to announce publicly the place of the meeting. To receive all informations
please send a mail to dissent_fr@riseup.net *

/*If you have any problem you can contact us from Thursday 15th at this phone number : 0033.660.372.501 or 06.60.37.25.01

Friday, 16th January 2009 * 19.00 : Participants arrival * 20.00 : Crisis, repression and resistance. Discussion about the actual situation and perspectives. An international mobilisation has to stay abreast of changes and actual situation. We propose participants to give an overview of what is going on in their country and to analyse altogether the global situation and the resistance possibilities.

*Saturday, 17th January 2009* * 10.00 – 11.00 : Participants presentation by themselves and overview of the international mobilizations * 11.00 – 12.30 : Lunch – Discussions * 12.30 – 14.30 : Discussion about the political content of the action days : Relation with ICC (International Coordinating Committee) : Do we want to be part of it by signing their call ? Do we want or not to coordinate ourselves with them for a choreography of actions ? Quick presentation of the proposal for the action days (we have propositions on fighting repression, crisis and G20, blockades). Please try to come with some other proposals. * 14.30 – 15.00 : Break – Discussions * 15.00 – 17.00 : Workshops : 1. 1st Action day 2. 2nd Action day 3. 3rd Action day 4. 4th Action day ? 5. 5th Action day ? * 17.00 – 17.30 : Break – Discussions * 17.30 – 18.30 : Workshops progress reports * 18.30 – 20.00 : Dinner – Discussions * 20.00 : Discussion on the relevance of creating a perdurable international Dissent! Network *

Sunday, 18th January 2009* * 10.00 – 12.00 : Discussion on the relations with the authorities and the non-radical organizations and media * 12.00 – 13.00 : Lunch – Discussions * 13.00 – 15.00 : Workshops : 1. Villages – Convergence Centers – Kitchens – Infopoints 2. Anti-repression, Legal Teams 3. Infotour * 15.30 – 17.00 : Workshops progress reports, discussions on the means to communicate together and proposal for a next international meeting * 17.00 : Goodbye – Never Ending Discussions… _

*Some more informations*_* :* When people meet up to speak about their common perspectives and to organise resistance, the government agencies are always interested in. From the official files of the inquiry, it has been proven that the German intelligence service observed the meetings of preparation for the G8 Summit 2007 in Heiligendamm. It is certain that at two meetings (Dissent! Meeting, October 2005 in Hamburg and January 2006 in Berlin) have been used IMSI-catchers. A device called an “IMSI-catcher” pretends to the mobile phones in its vicinity to be a legitimate base station of the mobile phone network, mobile phones in the coverage will log in there automatically. The users don’t realize that, they can still use the telephone in a normal way as the device passes on communications to the mobile network. Phone calls can be directly tapped as well as SMS. Furthermore are also recorded your International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI, the serial number of your mobile phone) and your International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI, your identification number on the network). Moreover, the intelligence service installed in Berlin a video camera to identify afterwards the visitors of the meeting. We think it is important to make this public, not to cause paranoia, but to your and our security. Looking closely the conditions under which we move and act has become more important than ever. If you have mobile phones but can stay without for 3 days, you may as well leave them at home or shut them before you arrive. Keep your eyes and ears open so you can come to the meeting without any fear !

http://www.dissent.fr
http://www.gipfelsoli.org/
http://sommet-otan-2009.blogspot.com/

The post international dissent! meeting in strasbourg the 16-18th january 2009 appeared first on Void Network.

We are here 

The post WE ARE AN IMAGE FROM THE FUTURE! [athens riots| announcement of people from the Squatted Economic Athens Univresity] appeared first on Void Network.