Guerrilla Warfare by Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Guerrilla Warfare By Ernesto Che Guevara

'The Lacanian Real' converted into Persian

http://www.ibna.ir/vdcayin6y49nuy1.tgk4.html

Slavoj Zizek's "The Lacanian Real: Television" is converted into Persian by Mahdi Salimi. According to Zizek, television vacates us of meaning and even disarms us of the ability to weep or laugh.

IBNA: This book is a complete translation of a seminar by Slavoj Zizek on television made in 1987 in New York.

Referring to the Zizek's rereading of Jacques Lacan (French philosopher, physician and psychoanalyst), he said: "Despite its brevity, this text offers a very good idea of different stages of Lacan's thought. For instance, the text familiarizes the reader with the concept of 'The Real' in three phases of Lacan's thought. Besides, Zizek's keen view of everyday reality through popular phenomenon of television once again proves his loyalty to Slovenian School of psychoanalysis."

Salimi continued: "Followers of Slovenian School make political readings of psychoanalysis and meantime draw on everyday phenomena for illustrating their opinions. Following this strategy Zizek probes into political and philosophical aspects of Lacan's theory of psychoanalysis and comes up with a radical political reading of Lacan. For doing so he also cites Jacques-Alain Miller's reading of Lacan."

He went on to say that this Slovenian theoretician always finds an appropriate thought model for describing phenomena; in fact, the models are exploited out of the phenomena under survey.

Salimi continued: "Zizek has a good theoretical background and never takes the meanest aspects of everyday life for granted. I mean that although he sometimes is trapped into populism and simplicity, his clear thought system and strategies make him an outstanding and autonomous critic."

For instance, he added, he illustrates his ideas of The Real with an example from the television. It usually broadcasts short comedies that are immediately followed with a laugher sound.

Zizek states that even in Greek tragedies there was a chorus in charge of the comic or tragic effect. In Zizek's opinion, by doing so sometimes the television frees us of the charge of laughing or crying and actually empties us of all meanings – the meanings that we could have extracted from the scenes by ourselves.

This act means infusion of ideas upon the audiences and by doing so, the television is attempting to omit the great Other.

In fact Zizek's main goal in this speech is not to illustrate Lacan's ideas with the phenomenon of television, but rather to defamiliarize a well-known and popular phenomenon known as television.

The first issue of "The Lacanian Other" is published in 1150 copies and 94 pages by Roshd Amouzesh.

Id: 126444
Topic url: http://www.ibna.ir/vdcayin6y49nuy1.tgk4.html
Iran Book News Agency (IBNA)
http://www.ibna.ir

Rick Santorum Protects the Freedom of Con-Men

By Charles P. Pierce

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/rick-santorum-freedom-6633251

Rick Santorum, papist nutter and GOP It Boy of the moment, is well and truly energized by his recently demonstrated ability to get 25,000-odd Iowans to show up and write his name on a piece of paper. The way you know this is because his stump answers are no longer stumps. They are fully blossomed trees, ripe with pious arrogance, vicious social policies camouflaged with luxurious rhetorical foliage within which the bullshit birds sing their sweet songs of "dependency" and "freedom," and low-hanging hypocrisy just so ever-ripe for the picking. No kidding. The crazy is in full flower in this one.

Begin simply with the place last night's even took place. It was an assisted-care facility/nursing home run by Rockingham County here in the southern part of New Hampshire. It has disabled residents on Medicaid and it has 200 people in its nursing-home section, almost all of whom are on Medicare. It is a government-run facility, and a very well-regarded one, which is impossible because, as we all know, the government has no business interfering with the health-care "market." The facts about this facility will become important later on. Stay with us.

You can also tell he's energized because he's back to being the legendary dick he's always been reputed to be by those who knew him best in Washington. A kid from Haverhill, Mass., got up to ask a question, and Santorum hung him out to dry for the benefit of his assembled fans from New Hampshire. While discussing President Obama's recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, which the president made because the congressional Republicans refused to give his nominees a hearing, because the congressional Republicans don't want the NLRB — a fully legitimate agency of the federal government — to work, the grandson of a coal miner sneered, "I'm suurrrre they'll be soooo friendly and hospitable to American business." His entire pitch now is an extended nyah-nyah in the general direction of whatever White House exists at the moment in his imagination.

"You can't be trusted with freedom."
"He believes you are incapable of freedom."

"The president believes you need him. He'll solve all your problems. Remember all those people at the rallies in 2008? People would say, 'Oh, Mr. President, I know you'll help me with this.' He convinced Americans that they needed to believe in a president. You want a president who believes in you."
(I use italics because there is no "Seventh Grade Sarcasm" function on this computer. Sorry.)

You can also tell he's energized because he's not at all shy about taking his more outre views out for a walk. Take Iran, for a moment. Did you know that the Iranians are building their nuclear weapons in Qom? (Santorum couches a lot of his answers this way, in the manner of a middle-school civics teacher who's read Time twice this month.) Do you know why? Well, he's going to tell you. Qom is a holy city to the Shi'a population of Iran. (The return of the 12th Imam is mixed up in this somewhere, too. Listening to Santorum on Iran is like accidentally tuning in one of those ancient astronaut documentaries on the History Channel.) "It is a very important town dealing with the end times for Shi'a Islam," he says.

In other words, Rick Santorum believes that the current Iranian regime is building a nuclear weapon not merely as leverage for power in that region and the world, and not merely to defend itself, and not merely, as he himself says, "to protect itself from retaliation while it engages in acts of terrorism." He believes it is building a bomb, and is more than likely to use it, in order to bring on the end times and the return of the 12th Imam.

(And you are not incorrect in wondering at this point how he feels about those millions of evangelical Christians over here who encourage belligerence on the part of Israel because of their desire to see the big show open on the plains of Megiddo, starring the famous Disemboweling Christ, action hero of the Left Behind novels. Rather not have those folks influencing nuclear policy myself.)

But he doesn't really reach full bloom until he's talking about ethics, and decency, and "living a moral life." It is here where his sanctimony, his hypocrisy, and his carefully refined dickitude truly burst forth in interesting ways. He was asked last night about the recent revelations of "insider trading" among members of Congress. He began his answer carefully, parsing the legitimate difference between actual insider trading of the kind that takes place on Wall Street, and the kind of thing in Congress most recently exposed by 60 Minutes in which members of the Congress trade on information concerning pending laws that might effect certain industries.

Forgive me for a moment if I now bring out the tin drum again and point out that, as one of Jack Abramoff's primary rentboys in the Senate, Santorum is well qualified to make this Jesuitical distinction. But then he goes on to make a learned simpleton's disquisition on why we have of laws in our society, and we move deeply into the upper branches, the lush green canopy, that overarches his entire purpose in public life, at least as he sees it.

"The point is, this is something we shouldn't even have to have a law for," he says. "People should behave ethically. When people don't behave as they should, we gotta pass laws. Now we have a law, and it has to be enforced, and that means someone has to hire staff to enforce it, and these are people that you pay for, and all because people don't live decent moral lives like they should. If people don't live good decent moral lives, government is going to get bigger."

(As with so many things, Mr. Madison said it better: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary.")

Let us unpack this, shall we? First we have the mournful condemnation of the various members of Congress who did these dastardly but altogether legal deeds, which is very rich coming from a guy — tin-drum alert — whose brief on behalf of one of the greatest scams in the history of the Republic included:

Every week, the lobbyists present pass around a list of the jobs available and discuss whom to support. Santorum's responsibility is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican--a senator's chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors. "The underlying theme was [to] place Republicans in key positions on K Street. Everybody taking part was a Republican and understood that that was the purpose of what we were doing," says Rod Chandler, a retired congressman and lobbyist who has participated in the Santorum meetings. "It's been a very successful effort."

His efforts on behalf of the K Street Project, which eventually redounded to the great benefit of Abramoff, landed Santorum on a watchdog group's list of the Most Corrupt Members of Congress in 2006. And thus did Rick Santorum enable people to avoid living decent moral lives and, by his own logic, thus is Rick Santorum a primary architect of big government in this regard. Ron Paul Is Right!!!!

Even Santorum's unremarkable contention that, if it weren't for criminals, we wouldn't need laws, is wholly reminiscent of the preacher caught out behind the barn with a sheep. Like every other Republican candidate, Santorum favors repeal of the Dodd-Frank law, which was passed as a rather pale attempt to rein in the excesses of the financial industries. He calls it "job-killing." Just last night, he announced his support for a lawsuit contemplated by the Senate Republican leadership to fight President Obama's recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, another appointment held up by those same Republicans because they do not approve of a law duly passed by Congress and signed by the president. Santorum doesn't like that law, either. Last night, he made quite a show of not remembering the name of the CFPB.

But, wait. Don't we need this law? Don't we need a law because a bunch of Wall Street pirates declined to live "good, decent moral lives" as they were stealing most of the national economy and wrecking what was left? Don't we need a law because those people, declining to live good, decent, moral lives, looted pensions, cheated people on mortgages, and left one poor county in Alabama in hopeless debt from now until the 12th Imam really does come back? Aren't the people behind credit-default swaps and collateralized debt obligations and all the rest of the vehicles of exotic economic pillage the real reason why government had to expand its power in this area? Here, alas, possibly with the sound of Jack Abramoff's voice echoing softly in his ear, Rick Santorum wants people to live "good, decent moral lives" and, yet, if they don't, well, that's just the way it goes.

Let us all be free again to be swindled the same way.

Rick Santorum is yet another example of a conservative to whom "freedom" means protecting the free speech rights of con-men. That's how he managed, during his demi-victory speech in Iowa, to compare much of the social safety net to the actual fascism his grandfather fled Italy to avoid. He treats caveat emptor as a basic principle of human freedom. Toward the end of the evening, he got into a long wrangle about health-care and announced his support for "the Ryan plan," the Medicare phase-out designed by zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan. Remember now where he said it — in a well-regarded government-run nursing home containing 200 patients, all of whom depend on Medicare for one reason or another. Rick Santorum believes that these people are not free. If they were, they'd get up tomorrow morning and shop for the best deal they could find on an open market, which naturally would be run by people in the insurance industry who are living good, decent moral lives, especially in their business practices. It was about here where I fell out of the tree.

Have the Super-Rich Seceded from the United States?

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/05/have-the-super-rich-seceded-from-the-united-states/

The Joke is on the Rest of Us

Have the Super-Rich Seceded from the United States?
by MIKE LOFGREN

It was in 1993, during congressional deliberation over the North American Free Trade Agreement. I was having lunch with a staffer for one of the rare Republican members of Congress who opposed the policy of so-called free trade. I distinctly remember something my colleague said: “The rich elites of this country have far more in common with their counterparts in London, Paris, and Tokyo than with their own fellow American citizens.”

That was just the beginning of the period when the realities of outsourced manufacturing, financialization of the economy, and growing income disparity started to seep into the public consciousness, so at the time it seemed like a striking and novel statement.

At the end of the cold war many writers predicted the decline of the traditional nation state. Some looked at the demise of the Soviet Union and foresaw the territorial state breaking up into statelets of different ethnic, religious, or economic compositions. This happened in the Balkans, former Czechoslovakia, and Sudan. Others, like Chuck Spinney, predicted a weakening of the state due to the rise of Fourth Generation Warfare, and the inability of national armies to adapt to it.

The quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan lend credence to that theory. There have been hundreds of books about globalization and how it would break down borders. But I am unaware of a well-developed theory from that time about how the super-rich and the corporations they run would secede from the nation state.

I do not mean secession in terms of physical withdrawal from the territory of the state, although that happens occasionally. It means a withdrawal into enclaves, a sort of internal immigration, whereby the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well-being except as a place to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension – and viable public transportation doesn’t even show up on the radar screen. With private doctors on call, who cares about Medicare?

To some degree the rich have always secluded themselves from the gaze of the common herd; for example, their habit for centuries has been to send their offspring to private schools. But now this habit is exacerbated by the plutocracy’s palpable animosity towards public education and public educators, as Michael Bloomberg has demonstrated. To the extent public education “reform” is popular among billionaires and their tax-exempt foundations, one suspects it is as a lever to divert the more than one-half trillion dollars in federal, state, and local education dollars into private hands, meaning themselves and their friends. A century ago, at least we got some attractive public libraries out of Andrew Carnegie. Noblesse oblige like Carnegie’s is presently lacking among our seceding plutocracy.
In both world wars, even a Harvard man or a New York socialite might know the weight of an army pack. Now the military is for suckers from the laboring classes whose subprime mortgages you just sliced into CDOs and sold to gullible investors in order to buy your second Bentley or rustle up the cash to employ Rod Stewart to perform at your birthday party. Courtesy of Matt Taibbi, we learn that the sentiment among the super-rich towards the rest of America is often one of contempt rather than noblesse; Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, says about the views of the 99 percent: “Who gives a crap about some imbecile?”

Steven Schwarzman, the hedge fund billionaire CEO of the Blackstone Group who hired Rod Stewart for his $5-million birthday party, believes it is the rabble who are socially irresponsible. Speaking about low-income citizens who pay no income tax, he says: “You have to have skin in the game. I’m not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system.” But millions of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes pay federal payroll taxes. These taxes are regressive, and the dirty little secret is that over the last several decades they have made up a greater and greater share of federal revenues. In 1950, payroll and other federal retirement contributions constituted 10.9 percent of all federal revenues; by 2007, the last “normal” economic year before federal revenues began falling, they made up 33.9 percent. By contrast, corporate income taxes were 26.4 percent of federal revenues in 1950; by 2007 they had fallen to 14.4 percent. Who has skin in the game now?

As is well known by now, Schwarzman benefits from the “Buffett Rule:” financial sharks typically take their compensation in the form of capital gains rather than salaries, thus knocking down their income tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. But that’s not the only way Mr. Skin-in-the-Game benefits: the 6.2-percent Social Security tax and the 1.45-percent Medicare tax apply only to wages and salaries, not capital gains distributions. Accordingly, Schwarzman is stiffing the system in two ways: not only is his income tax rate less than half the top marginal rate, he is shorting the Social Security system that others of his billionaire colleagues like Pete Peterson say is unsustainable and needs to be cut.

This lack of skin in the game may explain why Willard Mitt Romney is so coy about releasing his income tax returns. It would also make sense for someone with $264 million in net worth to joke that he is “unemployed,” as if he were some jobless sheet metal worker in Youngstown, when he is really saying in code that his income stream is not a salary subject to payroll deduction. The chances are good that his effective rate for both federal income and payroll taxes is lower than that of many a wage slave.

The real joke is on the rest of us. After the biggest financial meltdown in 80 years – a meltdown caused by the type of rogue financial manipulation that Romney embodies – and a consequent long, steep drop in the American standard of living, who is the putative front-runner for one of the only two parties allowed to be competitive in American politics? None other than Mitt Romney, the man who says corporations are people. Opposing him, or someone like him, will be the incumbent president, Barack Obama, who will raise up to a billion dollars to compete in the campaign. Much of that loot will come from the same corporations, hedge fund managers, merger and acquisition specialists, and leveraged buyout artists the president will denounce in pro forma fashion during the campaign.

The super-rich have seceded from America even as their grip on its control mechanisms has tightened.

MIKE LOFGREN retired in June 2011 after 28 years as a Congressional staffer. He served 16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican staff of the House and Senate Budget Committees.

Obama versus civil liberties

Far from being the exception, the undermining of constitutional rights is standard operating procedure under capitalism, regardless of which politicians are in charge.

http://socialistworker.org/2012/01/04/obama-versus-civil-liberties

THE U.S. military can indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without trial--that's the latest of our supposedly "inalienable rights" sacrificed by the Democratic former constitutional law professor who currently inhabits in the White House.
After promising during his campaign to roll back the abuses of the Bush administration, Barack Obama has spent the last three years pushing through attacks on civil liberties that Republicans could only dream about. He is eliminating all doubts that the Democrats are as firmly committed as the GOP to strengthening the national security state at the expense of our rights.

As part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed into law by Obama on December 31, the military--under the authority of the president--is empowered to hold anyone "who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners...without trial until the end of hostilities."
According to legal scholar Jonathan Turley [2], the NDAA represents "one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country."

Even the liberal New York Times, which regularly praises the Democratic Obama administration, described Obama's announcement that he would sign the bill [3] as "a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency."

The ACLU's Laura Murphy pointed out that the last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was the Internal Security Act of 1950, passed during the McCarthy era. Then-President Harry Truman vetoed the Internal Security Act of 1950, but Congress overrode the veto.

As Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald wrote [4], the Internal Security Act:
authorized the imprisonment of Communists and other "subversives" without the necessity of full trials or due process (many of the most egregious provisions of that bill were repealed by the 1971 Non-Detention Act, and are now being rejuvenated by these "war on terror" policies of indefinite detention). President Obama, needless to say, is not Harry Truman. He's not even the Candidate Obama of 2008, who repeatedly insisted that due process and security were not mutually exclusive, and who condemned indefinite detention as "black hole" injustice.
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IN THE New York Times, Andrew Rosenthal wrote [5], "It's stunning that the president is willing to sign a bill that might effectively turn the right of habeas corpus into a mere privilege--even for citizens."
But it's not so "stunning" once you compare this measure with the Democrats' record on civil liberties over the past several years--from capitulation to the Bush administration on the USA PATRIOT Act and similar abuses to their own measures during the Obama years.

Beyond Obama's failure to honor his promise to close the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay--thus embracing the idea of indefinite detention of foreign nationals suspected of terrorism--his administration has overseen a vast expansion of executive power and attacks on rights that includes: failing to prosecute war crimes, whether committed by U.S. soldiers or former Bush administration officials; continuing the use of warantless surveillance; actively prosecuting Bradley Manning and other whistleblowers who have exposed war crimes; carrying out unlawful detentions on U.S. soil [6] and repressive, illegal treatment of those accused of "materially aiding" terrorists; massively expanding the use of unmanned drones to attack and kill so-called "terrorists" (and, often, innocent civilians who happen to get in the way); carrying out extra-judicial assassinations of foreign nationals and at least one U.S. citizen (Anwar al-Awlaki); defending the right of the president to do so free from oversight by invoking "state secrets"; continuing the prosecution of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. on the flimsiest of evidence for crimes like "material support" of terrorism.
In other words, the Obama administration has shown its willingness at every step to trample civil liberties in the service of expanding executive power--and justify it by invoking the "war on terror."

Obama did attach a "signing statement" to the NDAA, proclaiming that he doesn't wantto use the massive power which he was granting to not only his own, but to successor, administrations. "I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists," he wrote.

But then why enshrine such heinous power into law? The answer is that Obama is only too happy to have such a weapon at his disposal.

Even more laughable was Obama's assertion that his administration's so-called accomplishments in the "war on terror" have "respected the values that make our country an example for the world."

Maybe an example of the ruthless pursuit of power. But not respect for civil liberties or human rights.
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THE QUESTION some might be asking is how Obama--the former law professor who promised to uphold the rule of law and protect civil liberties--could have so fully embraced the policies he has?
The answer isn't a personal failing on Obama's part, but that he and the Democratic Party are as committed as the Republicans to expanding and upholding U.S. power around the globe as the Republicans. Part of ensuring that is strengthening of the national security state to silence and repress any perceived threats to that power--whether at home or abroad.

In the 1950s, such attacks were aimed at socialists and communists. Today, the Obama administration claims its repressive laws are aimed at "terrorists." But combined with developments like an expansion of FBI spying [7], they can and will be used to silence dissent at home.
Consider Obama's former chief of staff and the current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. In preparation for planned protests against the NATO/G8 summit in Chicago in May, Emanuel is seeking permanent changes to city ordinances that would: raise fees for violations of parade regulations from the current $50 to a minimum of $1,000 per violation; double fines for protesters accused of resisting or obstructing police; restrict to two hours the time period for permitted demonstrations; restrict gatherings at public parks and beaches; and allow Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to "deputize law enforcement personnel" and forge agreements with state, federal and local law enforcement agencies.
Or remember the many instances over the past months in which peaceful Occupy protesters were harassed, beaten, pepper-sprayed and summarily arrested from coast to coast--for even attempting to exercise their right to speak out against the system.

Far from being the exception, this is how the state operates in a bourgeois democracy. Violence and coercion are used when necessary, and stated principles of democracy are continuously undermined, regardless of which party is in charge.

We're encouraged to believe that the state stands above society as an impartial arbiter. But at heart, the state in a capitalist society protects those at the top--the 1 percent whose wealth dominates and directs the way the state is run.
The war on our rights at home is connected to U.S. wars abroad--and the pursuit of U.S. imperial interests around the globe.

Politicians from both sides of the aisle will claim to support and uphold the Constitution, but as soon as ordinary people begin to exercise our constitutional rights and agitate for change in a way that might actually impact the system, our "rights" become expendable.

That's why Obama's decision to sign the NDAA into law was not surprising in the end. But it's important in the coming months for activists to hold Obama accountable for his actions.

As Jonathan Turley rightly points out [8], beyond Obama's specific shredding of civil liberties, there is a broader danger--that those who might otherwise speak out against such measures will keep quiet because the Republicans, on the surface, seem so much more awful:

[P]erhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what [Obama] has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama's personality and his symbolic importance as the first Black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush...In time, the election of Barack Obama may stand as one of the single most devastating events in our history for civil liberties.
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Published by the International Socialist Organization.
Material on this Web site is licensed by SocialistWorker.org, under a Creative Commons (by-nc-nd 3.0) [9] license, except for articles that are republished with permission. Readers are welcome to share and use material belonging to this site for non-commercial purposes, as long as they are attributed to the author and SocialistWorker.org.

[1] http://socialistworker.org/department/Opinion/Editorials
[2] http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/02/final-curtain-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-of-citizens-into-law-as-final-act-of-2011/
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/opinion/politics-over-principle.html
[4] http://www.salon.com/2011/12/15/obama_to_sign_indefinite_detention_bill_into_law/singleton/
[5] http://loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/more-rubble-from-the-military-detention-cave-in/
[6] http://www.thenation.com/article/165334/unlawful-detention-us-soil
[7] http://socialistworker.org/2011/06/22/picking-up-where-bush-left
[8] http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/29/opinion/la-oe-turley-civil-liberties-20110929
[9] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0

Negativity in Hegel and Freud