Since we have been mistaken for the youth organization of the party "Die Linke" due to our name and since we are neither organisatorially nor contentually linked to this party, we put an end to the risk of confusion. Our organisation is henceforth called "groups against capital and nation". For friends of political gossip we point out that this renaming is not due to a split or a readjustment of our politics. Our international URL is now "antinational.org/en" and points to our old website.
The first issue of Furball with the title On Wikileaks, Bitcoin, Copyleft - Three Critiques of Hacktivism is availble. Furball is the imprint under which we plan to publish pamphlets now and then in the future.
The open-source/free-software movement has quite a good reputation on the Left.1 This is not simply because of the fact that open-source developers provide things for free which usually cost money, but also because the free-software movement often is regarded as an opposition or even a practical counter project to capitalist private property. Hence, this text investigates the apparent contradiction that a licence – an assertion of ownership – guarantees universal access, while being simultaneously adopted and promoted by multinational IT corporations for their own profit.
On October 20th the TUC will march for “a future that works” and against austerity. In a booklet1 the TUC analyses “what went wrong” and spells out what the future should look like. In general terms, the programme is no different from the 2011 march under the slogan “Jobs, Growth, Justice”.2 That is, the TUC effectively invites its supporters to the streets to demand a future of poverty for the sake of the British economy and state.3
The government is undertaking a massive impoverishment programme, part of which is to cut housing benefits. In a recent speech1, Cameron argued: “If you are a single parent living outside London, if you have four children and you're renting a house on housing benefit, then you can claim almost £25,000 a year. That is more than the average take home pay of a farm worker and a nursery nurse put together.” He added: “For literally millions, the passage to independence is several years living in their childhood bedroom as they save up to move out; while for many others, it's a trip to the council where they can get housing benefit at 18 or 19 – even if they're not actively seeking work.”2
We released the fourth issue of kittens – the English speaking journal of Gruppen gegen Kapital und Nation. It is available here as a PDFand around London.
In 2009 Satoshi Nakamoto invented a new electronic or virtual currency called Bitcoin, the design goal of which is to provide an equivalent of cash on the Internet.1 Rather than using banks or credit cards to buy stuff online, a Bitcoin user will install a piece of software, the Bitcoin client, on her computer and send Bitcoin directly to other users under a pseudonym.2 One simply enters into the software the pseudonym of t
Already during his lifetime public opinion in the West had been in agreement about the deceased Libyan dictator: “insane” was the most frequent description of him. However, putting aside fashion faux-pas and focussing instead on his political career, the former ruler shows up in a rather different light. So who was Muammar Gaddafi?
