through europe

Recent events in the East End of London around anti-gay stickers put up supposedly by some Asian youth have triggered clear manifestations of Islamophobic sentiments amongst LBGTQ groups in London. Thus far there has been no evidence as to who is responsible for the act. The stickers had quotes from the Qur’an that refer to Allah’s vengeance. There was supposed to be a pride march organised after the stickers were put up; the East End Gay Pride (EEGP), which was eventually cancelled [1].

At the moment in Japan, the government is trying to make the situation look as normal as possible, by veiling crucial information on the degree of radiation and the calamitous condition of the reactors. This menacing situation notwithstanding, it does not show any intension to terminate its pro-nuclear power policy. In accordance with the benefit of TEPCO (The Tokyo Electric Power Co), it is instigating temporal blackout in large areas outside central Tokyo, as if sending the message to the people: no nuclear power, no electricity.

Geeks are a nice species of creature. Cutely dressed, delicate, fragile, softly spoken to the point of mutism. Yet, they have managed to colonize the collective imagination of an entire generation. This generation. But who are the geeks? And how could this species of shy elves take over the innermost sanctums of the western cultural environment?

I would like to talk about something that everybody knows, but that, so it seems, no one has the boldness to say. That is, that the time for indignation is over. Those who get indignant are already starting to bore us. Increasingly, they seem to us like the last guardians of a rotten system, a system without dignity, sustainability or credibility. We don't have to get indignant anymore, we have to revolt.

At the beginning of an essay on Debord’s cinema, Agamben recalls a conversation that he had with Debord himself. He says: “when I was tempted (as I still am) to consider Guy Debord a philosopher, he told me: ‘I’m not a philosopher, I’m a strategist.’ Debord saw his time as an incessant war that engaged his entire life in a strategy.” [1]
‘I’m not a philosopher, I’m a strategist.’ Of this statement made by Debord on Debord, and directed to Agamben the philosopher, we could try to read the drive, in relation with its context: I’m not interested in establishing an ontology, or defining a contemporary state of things, but rather in moving some “pieces” of a Game of War, some elements available to me, in a certain way. [2]