Very Insightful, Zizek
So Zizek is warning the Left [thus, an empty room] that we must not be "co-opted" by the challenge of climate change, and that we must attack it as a specific symptom of the capitalist system within which we live. Treat the symptom, and treat the disease, too. He goes on and makes a number of points, some of which I suppose are insightful, whatever: Žižek argues that, whilst it is true that the climate crisis is a

Someone finally says it: a Fifth International
I went to the World Social Forum in Caracas in 2006 and it was great: rife with tremendous energy, panels on anarchism and Zionism and post-capitalist social organization, on food supply and ecological agriculture and militarism and financial architecture, on Latin American integration and South-South links. It was really nice talk. The World Social Fora were really nice places for leftist networking, in sunny climes, and for forging solidarity with Latin Americans, the advance guard of the alter-globalization movement. And then the WSF process seemed to be petering out. It could have become a New International. Or it could be a really effervescent discussion forum. It seemed to be turni

Killing Trees and Lambs
Gideon Levy reports from the occupied West Bank: Less than a month ago, in this space, we told the story of the beautiful vineyard belonging to the agriculture teacher Mohammed Abu Awad from the village of Mureir, whose 300 trees were felled by intruders - probably from the illegal outpost of Adei Ad - using buzz saws. Here, clues left by the criminals suggest that they used handsaws and ripped out the crowns of the trees with their hands, one crown after another, one branch after another, rending and wounding the trees. In Mureir, the agriculture teacher wrapped the stumps in sacks, giving

Re-Reading Hollow Land
I have just been re-reading the chapter on the Gaza Strip in Eyal Weizman’s Hollow Land. After Israel’s 2005 withdrawal, armored military bulldozers turned the 3,000 buildings in which the settlers had lived and worked into fetid rubble, run through with festering food and great swarms of flies. All that was left were 19 synagogues, the last physical remnant of occupation in Gaza proper. Palestinian kids would soon burn them down. After the withdrawal, not content to simply let the rubble sit and rot, Israeli fighter jets and distant artillery regularly re-arranged the debris, dropping leaflets, warning the Palestinians not to re-occupy the land. Now, Gaza is

In Solidarity with the UC-Berkeley Protesters
As I write, students are occupying Wheeler Hall at the University of California-Berkeley, after an unsuccessful try at occupying the Capital Projects building. The occupiers are on the 2nd floor, and the police are threatening to tear-gas them. Scores of police in riot gear are beating on the doors. This was building for a long time: There is a grotesque irony to this. Student fees are being securitized and repackaged exactly like the toxic assets that triggered the latest economic collapse. Four years ago it was subprime mortgages; now it is “subprime educat