Saturday, October 31, 2009

Declaration for our imprisoned Serbian friends

We hereby declare our unconditional solidarity with the five Serbian anarcho-syndicalists who have been imprisoned since September the 4th, facing the charge of "international terrorism." Tadej Kurep, Ivan Vulović, Sanja Dojkić, Ratibor Trivunac and Nikola Mitrović, all members of Sindikalna konfederacija Anarho-sindikalistička inicijativa (ASI), were arrested some days after an action of solidarity with the Greek activist, and then-hunger striker, Thodoris Iliopoulos. The target of this action was the Greek embassy in Belgrade.

The Serbian authorities used the slight damages caused to the building of the Greek embassy as a pretext in order to exercise their repressive powers, labeling the members of ASI as "terrorist" and detaining them with no substantial evidence of their actual involvement in this so-called crime of damaging the façade of a building. It is not the building, of course, that concerns the Serbian police; neither is it the symbolism, per se, of an attack against the embassy of another state: the real impact of international solidarity and radical politics, with a view towards social emancipation, is what makes them transgress the limits of their supposed democracy, so as to imprison militants through farcical procedures.

Ratibor Trivunac, one of the accused, is a friend of the international surrealist movement. But surrealism is not an exclusive club of personal relations, any more than it is one of mere aesthetic affinities. We consider as our brothers all these five persecuted Serbian militants, because their cause, their choice to live and to struggle for another, liberated life, is one that we share. When a state lays its oppressive hand upon one of us, we must all feel the threat to our freedom, we must all take a stand with those who risk being deprived of their elementary freedoms because they are determined to fight, here and now, for real universal freedom.

We demand the immediate release of our five comrades and friends!

The passion for freedom is stronger than any of your prisons!


on behalf of
Athens Surrealist Group
Barcelona, 09
"commodity fetishism", the idea that the way we behave in society is determined by objective market forces rather than subjective beliefs. "The importance is in what you do, not in what you think. I love this dialectical reversal."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/886a1b6e-0ab7-11de-95ed-0000779fd2ac.html

"Läsaren må ursäkta om en del av följande material kan tyckas falla något utanför de ramar som han eller hon anser vara surrealismens. Och visst, vi har bedömt enstaka kompromisser vara på sin plats, utan att för den skull ge vika åt det godtyckliga. Sådan är den verklighet vi råkar röra oss i just nu. Å ena sidan det subjektiva, uttrycket, handlingen. Vi kan likaväl röra oss i motsatt riktning och registrera vad vi uppmärksammats av i detta givna, i det oansenliga, i det torftiga och i det folkliga.


Vi hittar blott vad som erbjuds, vad som konfronterar oss på detta särskilda eller gåtfulla sätt, när det inte försvinner plötsligt, när vi inte slarvar, tvivlar, missar eller glömmer.


Här följer några enstaka prov, en viss tingens poesi eller vissa tings poesi. Det mesta materialet i detta nummer samlades in i en tidsrymd som utsträcker sig några månader tillbaka i tiden.
Själva kliver vi något åt sidan.

Stockholm, maj 1997"

(Stora Saltet Nr 7, maj 1997)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Astronomers have confirmed that an exploding star spotted by Nasa's Swift satellite is the most distant cosmic object to be detected by telescopes.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Thursday, October 15, 2009


Lorenzo Valla
"Valla's originality, critical acumen, and knowledge of classical Latin style were put to good use in an essay he wrote between 1439 and 1440, De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione declamatio. In this he demonstrated that the document known as the Constitutum Constantini (or "donatio Constantini" as he refers to it in his writings), or the Donation of Constantine, could not possibly have been written in the historical era of Constantine I (4th Century), as its vernacular style dated conclusively to a later era (8th Century). One of Valla's reasons was that the document contained the word satrap which he believed Romans such as Constantine I would not have used.[1] The document, though met with great criticism at its introduction, was accepted as legitimate, in part owing to the beneficial nature of the document for the western church. The Donation of Constantine suggests that Constantine I "donated" the whole of the Western Roman Empire to the Roman Catholic Church as an act of gratitude for having been miraculously cured of leprosy by Pope Sylvester I. This would have obviously discounted Pepin the Short's own Donation of Pepin, which gave the Lombards land to the north of Rome.
Valla was motivated to reveal the Donation of Constantine as a fraud by his employer of the time, Alfonso of Aragon, who was involved in a territorial conflict with the
Papal States, then under Pope Eugene IV.[citation needed] The Donation of Constantine had often been cited to support the temporal power of the Papacy, since at least the 11th century.
The essay began circulating in 1440, but was heavily rejected by the Church. It was not formally published until 1517. It became popular among
Protestants. An English translation was published for Thomas Cromwell in 1534. Valla's case was so convincingly argued that it still stands today, and the illegitimacy of the Donation of Constantine is generally conceded."

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Saturday, October 3, 2009