Due to the forum, "War on Democratic Rights," with Naomi Klein in Vancouver next Wednesday, February 2, the study group will go on a field trip. The forum is at St. Andrew's Wesley Church, Burrard and Nelson and starts at 7:30 p.m. It is organized by Stopwar.ca. Also appearing on the forum wll be Terry Engler of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Harsha Walia of No One Is Illegal. Admission is on a sliding scale: $5-$10, "no one will be turned away."
The following Wednesday, February 9, we'll be back at LUGZ at 8:00. We will be discussing "The European Dream" by Jeremy Rifkin: "In this selection from his provocative new book, social thinker Jeremy Rifkin argues that the American Dream has turned into a liability that has us clinging to an outmoded past. Meanwhile, a different vision of life that's now emerging from Europe could be the world's best hope for negotiating its shared global future."
Work Less Techies may be interested to hear about "The University of Openess" which is based in London. Much of the uo wiki is "wordulation" but there's there's also some substantive stuff there like weekly Unix workshops (FUNIX), the Lime House Town Hall and the Faculty of Cartography, which has a page on the Olympic Sacrifice Zone. There is also a "Faculty of Busiless Studies" (no typo) with a reading list that sheds light on some of the obscure corners of our reading last week of Paolo Virno. I recommend, for context, the review by Sergio Bolognia of Steve Wright's "Storming Heaven. Class composition and struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism", Raniero Panzieri's "The Capitalist Use of Machinery: Marx Versus the Objectivists" and Mario Tronti's "The Strategy of the Refusal."
Speaking of throwing light on Virno, I came across the following piece of historical background, which makes fascinating reading in light of the upcoming occupied Iraq "elections" Bush's inauguration pledge to "spread democracy". (See also above, Naomi Klein forum on the "War on Democratic Rights"!)
"Everything that happened in Italy in the past 50 years had to do with America's necessity to 'tame' the left-wing, the unions and the movements. The US kept in office a ludicrously corrupted Christian Democrat government, which was continually thrown into legitimacy crises because of scandals, strikes and mutual back-stabbing within the coalitions.
"In the summer of 1960 the situation had grown so unstable that the Christian Democrats endeavoured to prop up their government by involving the Italian Social Movement, i.e. the neo-Fascist Party. As a consequence, riots flared up in many cities, especially in Genoa, where young workers fought the police and prevented the Fascists from holding their party congress in a town that was awarded with the gold medal of Resistance. The prime minister Fernando Tambroni ordered the police to fire. Several demonstrators were injured and killed in Reggio Emilia and Licata. Tambroni was forced to resign and was replaced by a less reactionary premier. Since striped T-shirts were in fashion among the youth and all the Genoa rioters happened to wear them, that battle made history as "the revolt of striped T-shirts". As to the political situation, it continued to be very unstable: from 1948 to 1989 Italy changed prime ministers about 50 times."
Posted by sandwichman at January 28, 2005 10:17 AM