It is necessary for every radical/revolutionary academic to ask specifically what they do, not merely what they think or say or write.

a lot of radical-posturing academic humanities writing is like. decent-to-insightful as far as describing the problems but falls completely to shit when the authors try to present themselves as engaging in any kind of subversion or opposition to those problems because both by form and by institutional affiliation the work is constrained to operating in the domain of language and rhetoric. and it's not that speech doesn't matter or doesn't tell us anything about power structures or historical forces but if your radical action at root boils down to like calling something a different name or making a declaration or whatever then probably it's more useful for your own career advancement than as a political act and it would behoove us all to read such texts with these considerations in mind

Letter: The Gaza Ghetto

posted on Cosmonaut from R. Ashlar

Final Entries of the Stroop Report

To: The Higher SS and Police Fuehrer East, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer and General of Police Krueger-or deputy. Cracow 

Warsaw, May 16th, 1943.

Progress of large-scale operation on 16 May 1943, start 1000 hours. 

180 Jews, bandits, and subhumans were destroyed. The former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer in existence. The large-scale action was terminated at 2015 hours by blowing up the Warsaw Synagogue. 

The measures to be taken with regard to the established banned areas were handed over to the commander of police battalion III/23, whom I instructed carefully. 

Total number of Jews dealt with 56,065, including both Jews caught and Jews whose extermination can be proved. 

No losses today. 

I will submit a final report to the Conference of SS Police Fuehrer on 18 May 1943. 

–Stroop, SS-Brigadefuehrer and Major general of Police.

I don't do a lot of reblogs, but

a) the comparison with Italy demonstrates once again the fundamental eugenic logic at play in Anglo culture

b) everyone involved in this should see criminal trials, from individual physicians to policy-makers. They won't, but they should.

Thousands of disabled people died after ‘covid treatment withheld’, inquiry to probe

Thousands of disabled people who died from Covid in the early weeks of the pandemic may have been denied intensive care treatment in NHS hospitals that could have saved them, campaigners and bereaved families believe. The Covid inquiry has been handed evidence from charities and bereaved family groups showing that Do Not Resuscitate notices (DNARs) were placed on the medical files of many people with Down’s Syndrome, autism and other learning disabilities who were otherwise healthy before contracting the virus. These notices, often placed without the patients’ understanding or consent, say charities, were due to those with learning disabilities being wrongly classed as “clinically frail” in the NHS in the initial weeks of the pandemic in March 2020. Lady Hallett’s inquiry is expected to investigate whether so-called “ward-based ceilings of care” – meaning a patient was kept on a general ward rather than admitted to ICU, even if their condition deteriorated – were applied arbitrarily to the disabled, as well as older patients, in a bid to ease pressure on the NHS. The evidence is likely to form a key part of Module 3 of the inquiry, which focuses on the healthcare response to the pandemic and is being held in public this autumn. The Department of Health and NHS England have long denied there were blanket protocols in place for DNARs for groups of people, and have said these policies should not be used by trusts.

[keep reading]

Industrial Agriculture: Lessons from North Korea

Zhun Xu in Monthly Review

The author of "From Commune to Capitalism", Zhun Xu is well placed to make an analysis of agricultural issues in DPRK. Xu points out the significant contradictions between the juche principle of self-reliance, and the historical development of industrial agriculture in DPRK based on massive import of mineral oils. The crisis of the 90s was not due to faults of socialism per se, but the inability to sustain industrial farming in light of the inability of DPRK to pay market prices for oil and fertilizers, after the marketization of China and the former Soviet Union. Per hectare fertilizer usage in DPRK prior to the 90s was more than double that used in the USA, higher than China, but a little under that of the ROK and Japan.

Prior to the 90s, socialist trading partners were willing to accept a small trade deficit with DPRK, whose exports typically lagged behind its imports (despite the emphasis on juche). As DPRK began trade with the West in the 1970s, it quickly accrued a significant foreign debt for imports that maintained the basic domestic economy (rather than one-time capital expenses).

This, combined with increasing sanctions in the 90s, played a major role in the collapse of food production in the mid-90s (like a 50% decrease in cereal production).

An interesting point raised by Xu is this crisis was due to having achieved a high level of industrialization prior to the 90s, and thus it was unable to rely on a reserve army of labour in the countryside to gradually alter the economy. Another point of interest is that today DPRK produces nearly as much cereal as ROK, with about 6% of the fertilizer intensity.

The overall message is that of historical identification of socialism with industrial agriculture. A lesson from DPRK, and to a lesser extend Cuba, is that such agriculture is not sustainable in the long term, and can serve to undermine socialism in the long term.

"...ecological agriculture would be impossible without socialism. If a society plans to phase out fossil fuels and intense chemical applications, it implies we have to keep a considerable level of human physical labor in farming and other activities and a robust and populous countryside. This is against the overall trend in the history of capitalism. The people must develop the effective economic means of bringing an end to both the division of material and mental labor and the separation of town and country. This, of course, is just another way of describing socialism.

From the Maoist perspective, Zhun Xu's emphasis on all-round development and opposition to import-substitution make a lot of sense. Given that a major goal for global south communists includes national industrialization, the risks of overdependence on industrial methods and capitalist models of development should be kept in mind.

"On Cadre Policy." Chen Yun, 1938.

"Cadre policy means, in common speech, the way to use people. Why should we talk about this subject? It is because when our fellow students go to work in the rear areas occupied by the enemy, they are not merely members of the guerrillas, they are also cadres and leaders. The way to use people is very important in leadership work. There is a saying: "Cadres decide everything." It is in common use in the whole world. It can be used in both foreign countries and China. It can be used by communist parties and by other political parties..." "...I would like to use 12 characters and to explain it under 4 topics: 1) understanding people; 2) being big-minded; 3) using people well; 4) taking good care of people." "We should understand people. It is not easy to thoroughly understand people. Strictly speaking, it is very difficult to do so... We have recently discovered two defects: 1) We use one eye to judge people. We pay attention only to a single incident in their life, rather than to their life and work as a whole. We cannot judge people in an all-round way. 2) We only know what this person has done today, but know nothing about what he did in the past. We only know whether such a person is capable or not, but neglect his moral character.

...Weak points might also contain certain good points. When using a person, we must make use of his good points so that he can give play to his strong points and overcome his weak points. Under heaven there is nobody who has no strong points or merits whatsoever. There is nobody who has no weak points or defects at all. Therefore, we say that there is nobody in the revolutionary ranks that cannot be used." "Our second defect is that when we try to understand a person, we only know what he has done today, but do not know what he did yesterday, or we only assess what he did in the past, but not the things he is doing now. We only pay attention to his contributions, but neglect his mistakes, or vice versa. We only pay attention to the fact that he is good today, but was bad yesterday, or vice versa. In so doing, we very often cannot make a fundamental assessment of cadres..." "...We should be big-minded in using people. Why should we talk about this topic? Times have now changed. Is there any difference between the year 1938 and the year 1928?... I still remember that we ran a school in Shanghai in 1932 in order to train worker cadres. The class was conducted for 6 days and there were only six students. Today... there are more than 10,000 students in Yanan alone... If we compare 10,000 with 6, how great is the difference? ...In the past when we ran a school, there were only six students. It was simple, indeed. Today, there are various kinds of people and the situation is complicated indeed. When we intend to achieve something magnificent, we will encounter a complicated situation. When we lead the whole nation in the future, the situation will be even more complicated. It is very simple when there are only a few people and when we do not intend to promote our cause. However, the revolution will not succeed this way." "...What methods should be adopted in order to use people well? I cannot give you any unusual suggestion. However, as long as people under your leader- ship are working happily and actively, they can certainly do their work well. This principle is suitable for all kinds of work. When you are assigned to do civilian work, military work, or party work in future, you should ensure that everyone working under you has a strong sense of responsibility and works hard and happily. In such a way, all the work can be carried out satisfactorily..."

"1. Leaders should adopt a friendly attitude... 2. We should refrain from pinning on too many political labels. For instance, if a person who utters erroneous remarks is severely criticized, or labeled as suspected of "leftist" phrasemongering or right opportunism; if we pin such unsuitable political labels on him at random, such a person will probably be "ruined" and will no longer be able to work after under- going such an experience on three or four occasions...

3. When we are criticizing other people's mistakes, we should point out the roots of the mistakes and the way to correct them. The purpose of carrying out criticism is not to give vent to our anger..."

"In a word, it is very important to take good care of people. When promoting a certain cadre, we should make an all-round assessment of his political integrity and ability. Since we have promoted him, we should do everything possible to help him so that he will not collapse. We should patiently solve the problems of those cadres who cannot keep their minds on their work. We should carefully and seriously solve problems that concern a cadre's political life."

"‘Got Fuck All’: Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes’ Dissident Republicanism." Tom Blackburn. Ebb Magazine.

"Returned to Long Kesh, Hughes was facing a total of 20 years inside. But by this period, the cages at Long Kesh were a hotbed of political education and intellectual ferment. ‘The British labelled it, or nicknamed it, “the university of terrorism”’, he reminisced in a 1991 documentary. ‘Long Kesh, to me, was the university of freedom; the university of revolution.’ Prisoners taught themselves the Irish language, studied the history of their country's long and lonely struggle to free itself from the British yoke, and acquainted themselves with revolutionary thinkers from around the world. Bobby Sands’s reading list, for example, included Che Guevara – also Hughes’ greatest hero – Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, George Jackson and liberation theologist Camilo Torres, as well as homegrown revolutionaries James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, and Liam Mellows.23 The H-block men also educated themselves about and made common cause with other national liberation struggles, including that of the Palestinians, whose cause Hughes would hold dear for the rest of his life.

All this stood in stark contrast to the situation just a few years earlier. In the early 1970s, by Hughes’ own admission, IRA recruits had scarcely been political at all, motivated as they were by the immediate need to defend their communities and fight the British occupiers. Though Sinn Féin was nominally the political arm of the Republican movement, it offered little in the way of ideological leadership. By the middle of the decade, however, a new brand of political militant was on the rise as younger IRA volunteers recognised that it was insufficient to struggle for a 32-county republic without having some idea of the kind of society they wanted to build once that battle was won. They began to chafe at the restrictions imposed on them by the IRA’s more conservative, Dublin-based leadership, and a select few commenced plotting to overthrow it."

The final point here is well-taken, but points to a broader problem. There are more than 280 million motor vehicles in the USA. Depending on your source, percent ownership of a personal vehicle in the USA ranges from the high 80s to low 90s.

What this means is an American city like Boise, Idaho or Madison, Wisconsin also emits at least as much CO2 from vehicles as the superyacht fleet, and thus also more than the nation of Burundi.

This is what bothers me about focusing on private jets and superyachts. It allows many typical people in developed countries to look at their own ways of living and say "well I don't do that", and develop a belief that the problem is a tiny minority of the super-rich and not the broader ways of living in "post-industrial" countries.

This goes alongside that "90% of emissions are the responsibility of just 100 companies" which provide fossil fuels, shipping, power, etc.

It's ultimately a social-democratic approach to the problem (we just need to deal with the bad actions of a small minority) vs. the communist approach (we need a complete transformation of the social and economic systems under which we live.)

Operating an SY [Superyacht] is expensive and ecologically damaging. On average, an SY over 71 meters/233 feet uses 500 liters/132 gallons of gasoline an hour, and annual fuel costs for an average SY are around $400,000. From available data, we estimated that an average (71 meter) SY uses about 107,000 gallons gasoline/year and produces 2.1 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually. Thus, the fleet of 300 SY produces approximately 627 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year. That very large figure needs to be placed in context. To do so, we compare the carbon and gasoline footprint of Sys owned by the wealthy to the average vehicle—a more affordable mode of transportation for the average person operated in the United States. An average new car gets 25.5 miles per gallon (mpg) in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, an average person drives about 13,476 miles, using 528.5 gallons of gas, and generates 10,358.6 pounds of CO2 pollution annually. Thus, one average SY produces as much CO2 pollution as 202 average cars, and, annually, the SY fleet (N = 300) uses as much gasoline as 60,600 cars that get 25.5 mpg. Another way to illustrate the annual ecological harm caused by SY is to compare the CO2 emissions from the 300 largest SY to the CO2 emissions of entire nations. The SY fleet carbon emissions (nearly 630 million pounds), for example, is similar to the emissions of the 10.6 million inhabitants of Burundi (654.02 million pounds), and 5.7 times larger than the carbon footprint (111,556,039 pounds) of the small (36,157 inhabitants) developed nation of Liechtenstein. Thus, the carbon footprint of the global SY fleet of the wealthy produces as much ecological disorganization as entire nations of people.

Measuring the Ecological Impact of the Wealthy: Excessive Consumption, Ecological Disorganization, Green Crime, and Justice

The first moment in love is that I do not wish to be an independent person in my own right and that, if I were, I would feel deficient and incomplete. The second moment is that I find myself in another person, that I gain recognition in this person, who in turn gains recognition in me. Love is therefore the most immense contradiction.

Hegel

"The Palestinian National Charter: Resolutions of the Palestine National Council July 1-17, 1968."

Article 1:

Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.

... Article 5:

The Palestinians are those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father – whether inside Palestine or outside it – is also a Palestinian. Article 6:

The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.

...

Article 8:

The phase in their history, through which the Palestinian people are now living, is that of national (watani) struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Thus the conflicts among the Palestinian national forces are secondary, and should be ended for the sake of the basic conflict that exists between the forces of Zionism and of imperialism on the one hand, and the Palestinian Arab people on the other. On this basis the Palestinian masses, regardless of whether they are residing in the national homeland or in diaspora (mahajir) constitute – both their organizations and the individuals – one national front working for the retrieval of Palestine and its liberation through armed struggle.

Article 9:

Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it . They also assert their right to normal life in Palestine and to exercise their right to self-determination and sovereignty over it.

...

Article 16:

The liberation of Palestine, from a spiritual point of view, will provide the Holy Land with an atmosphere of safety and tranquility, which in turn will safeguard the country’s religious sanctuaries and guarantee freedom of worship and of visit to all, without discrimination of race, color, language, or religion. Accordingly, the people of Palestine look to all spiritual forces in the world for support.

Article 17:

The liberation of Palestine, from a human point of view, will restore to the Palestinian individual his dignity, pride, and freedom. Accordingly the Palestinian Arab people look forward to the support of all those who believe in the dignity of man and his freedom in the world.

Article 18:

The liberation of Palestine, from an international point of view, is a defensive action necessitated by the demands of self-defense. Accordingly the Palestinian people, desirous as they are of the friendship of all people, look to freedom-loving, and peace-loving states for support in order to restore their legitimate rights in Palestine, to re-establish peace and security in the country, and to enable its people to exercise national sovereignty and freedom.

…

Article 20:

The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

…

EMERGENCY PROTESTS FOR RAFAH

CANADA Feb 12 Montreal - 5 PM Ottawa - 4:30 PM Toronto - 5:30 PM Feb 13 Montreal - 5:30 PM UNITED STATES Feb 12 Austin - 5 PM Cleveland - 5:30 PM Los Angeles - 3 PM New York - 4 PM Seattle - 6 PM Washington DC - 6:30 PM

Feb 13 Atlanta - 7 PM Houston - 4 PM Philadelphia - 5:30 PM San Francisco - 5:30 PM

I'm sure more will be announced in the next few hours, please add any you see!!

"US shot in San Juan 125 years ago, start of global imperialist conquest," Marco Valbuena (chief information officer)

"The echoes of the shots fired by US colonial aggressors 125 years ago in San Juan continue to be heard around the world today, with every bomb dropped by US-supported Israel in Gaza strip, as well as in the US missile attacks in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, as well as in every US-made bomb and missile fired by the US-trained and US-controlled Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

It is propitious and just for the Filipino people, that while they remember today how their revolutionary fighters valiantly resisted US colonial aggression, they also affirm revolutionary solidarity with the Palestinian people and all the peoples around the world fighting to free their nations from the clutches of imperialism... "No amount of terrorism unleashed by the US throughout the past century and more, succeeded in completely suppressing the Filipino people’s aspiration to be free. The struggle against US colonial and neocolonial oppression will persevere all through the century, initially breaking out in spontaneous uprisings, and ultimately waged through protracted anti-imperialist armed resistance by the New People’s Army and led by the Communist Party of the Philippines over the past five and a half decades."

"Love, but not for the colonized: Responding to the repression of Palestine solidarity at CUNY." Mondoweiss by Britt Munro, Conor Tomás Reed and Lucien Baskin. Via Monthly Review Online.

"...what we find particularly affronting and are driven to address here is the insidious way in which WAC coordinators weaponized the language of love, antiracism, and care to silence support for Palestinian liberation. This hypocrisy is part of a broader trend in left academia and is thus important to address..." "While as educators we will always do our best to create environments in which all of our students can feel safe, we cannot and will not prioritize that over a commitment to critical thinking and to the rigorous analysis of structural injustice. Toni Cade Bambara, another great CUNY educator-activist, teaches us that coming to see the violent reality of structures of injustice we may have been taught to take for granted can result in feelings of unsafety, and that transformative learning may thus require that students negotiate feelings (feelings, not realities) of unsafety in the classroom. As teachers, our job is to support and encourage our students through whatever feelings come up as they learn to challenge preconceived ideas and engage critically with the world around them."

https://mronline.org/2024/02/10/love-but-not-for-the-colonized/

"The Collapse of the New Polish Left." Damian Winczewski, Monthly Review. "This outline of the political situation in Poland, which, after its neoliberal transformation has been ruled alternately by liberals and nationalists, constitutes a context for the reflections of contemporary politically active left-wing intellectuals. Having largely abandoned the Marxist apparatus as obsolete, they attempt to resort to or create new, fashionable concepts that intend to re-empower the left. In fact, however, these turn out to be ideological justifications for increasing opportunism... "...In recent years, following the full-scale Russian military intervention in Ukraine and the outbreak of a massive international-scale crisis in which the Polish authorities have played a major role, the reconstruction of the intellectual and political identity of the Polish left has become even more difficult. At present, the majority of its representatives speak with one voice with the government camp, supporting the militarization of the country and even competing with the government for bizarre, militaristic ideas. At the ideological level, the dissociation of the Polish left from its Western anti-imperialistic counterpart has been justified by the concept of “Westplaining,” which was introduced into the public debate by Jan Smoleński and Jan Dutkiewicz, both columnists for Political Critique. According to them, “Westplaining” is basically any criticism of the United States and NATO. It allegedly treats the peoples of Eastern Europe as objects and ignores their belief that the United States and NATO are agents of rescue from and an alternative to centuries-old Russian colonialism.

"In other words, according to columnists associated with the Polish left, criticism of Western imperialism in a period of war is forbidden because support for it is the democratic will of the East European peoples. This is how Polish leftist activists compensate for decades of failures and missed opportunities: by lecturing their Western colleagues from a position of moral superiority and making themselves spokespeople for an abstract populace, while the real Polish working class, after years of being left alone in class struggle, is already completely indifferent to such leftist messages. The Polish left is now deluding itself into believing that it will win the favor of the people by affirming a conservative ideology allied with Western imperialism... "...Overall, the New Left received the smallest working-class support of all parties (only 5 percent of the vote) [in the October 2023 elections], with their biggest supporters appearing to be the metropolitan middle class. Despite this, they have announced great success, as they could become an important part of the new government under the leadership of the neoliberals of the Citizen Platform (which won 30.7 percent of the vote). These politicians, in turn, are already announcing cuts in social spending and the need to “balance the budget.” To paraphrase the ancient king of Epirus, Pyrrhus: A few more such successes of the left, and there will be no left at all."

https://monthlyreview.org/2023/12/01/the-collapse-of-the-new-polish-left/

"What the GDP hides." Prabhat Patnaik, People's Democracy, via Monthly Review Online. "To be sure, the gap between the workers in the growing “modern” segment of the third world and their counterparts in the stagnant or declining segment such as peasant agriculture and petty production, does not increase. Both sets of workers are victims as much of the massive and growing labour reserves that keep down the real wage rate, as of the demand compression imposed in order to squeeze out the requirements of the metropolis from the tropical land-mass without generating significant inflation. But the gap between the local big bourgeoisie and upper middle income professionals engaged in the “modern” segment on the one hand, and the working people engaged in both the modern and the traditional segments, distinctly increases; and this has also a spatial dimension, which expresses itself most clearly in a rural-urban dichotomy... "...In the face of such a stark and accentuating dichotomy between two segments of the economy, the use of a single hold-all measure like the GDP serves as a camouflaging device. It is not just that growing income inequality makes the GDP an inappropriate measure for economic well-being, a proposition that is readily accepted; but this growing inequality has a spatial dimension, recreating a dualistic economic structure, under the ascendancy of neoliberalism which represents a re-assertion of imperialism. The use of the GDP therefore serves to hide this growing structural dichotomy that imperialism introduces. It serves in short to camouflage the operation of imperialism."

https://mronline.org/2024/02/07/what-the-gdp-hides/

"Mapuche Hunger Strike Reaches Crisis Point: Political Prisoners Fight for Madre Tierra." Andy Higginbottom, via Monthly Review Online.

"The renewed hunger strike of fifteen political prisoners of the Mapuche resistance movement in Chile has reached a highly critical stage. The prisoners are members of the Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco (CAM), a movement that is involved in direct action to recover ancestral lands in order to protect Madre Tierra from spoliation by logging companies and big business latifundios.

The weichafe ecowarriors also identify by their Spanish acronym PPM (Presos Políticos Mapuche). They have been in a protracted struggle for political autonomy and protection of their wallmapu homeland from destructive commercial exploitation. But the Chilean state, under the supposedly leftist government of Gabriel Boric, insists on criminalizing the CAM and stigmatizing any action for national liberation as terrorist."

"The weichafe are one the foremost contingents of the invisible daily resistance of Indigenous peoples to capitalist extractivism. Their lives are on the line to resist criminalization and make visible the Mapuche nation’s struggle. Please support them by writing urgently, calling on the government to respect the prisoners’ rights as Mapuche people, to:

Jaime Gajardo, Subsecretario de Justicia. E-mail: [email protected] Mobile number: +569 4275 9326 https://mronline.org/2024/02/06/mapuche-hunger-strike-reaches-crisis-point-political-prisoners-fight-for-madre-tierra/

The Continuous Reinvention

What connects Ljubljana, New York and Berlin? A modular, adaptive design system placed there. It is a Kiosk K67, designed by Saša Mächtig. 

Kiosk K67 next to the seaside as a tobacco and newspaper stand. | Image © Museum of Architecture and Design MAO, Ljubljana

From 1968 to 1999 have been manufactured around 7,500 units of the K67 all around Yugoslavia. Some of them were also exported to Poland, Japan, New Zealand, Kenya, Iraq, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The system permitted unlimited configurations and variations, therefore is perfect for different types of adaptation and programs. You might find the Kiosk K67 in the collection of the Museum of Architecture and Design MAO in Ljubljana.

The modularity of the K67 design offers different types of adaptations | Image © Museum of Architecture and Design MAO, Ljubljana

Axonometric drawing of the second generation of the K67 from 1972. | Image © Museum of Architecture and Design MAO, Ljubljana

System Kiosk K67, expansion options and combinations. | Image © Museum of Architecture and Design MAO, Ljubljana

Kiosk K67 as beehive.  | Image © Museum of Architecture and Design MAO, Ljubljana

Kiosk K67 as fruit and vegetable stand. | Image © Museum of Architecture and Design MAO, Ljubljana

K67 as an installation by Marjetica Potrč in Modern Gallery Ljubljana. | Photo via Next Stop Kiosk 

Kiosk K67 was also adapted for different uses, from border patrol stations, ski lift ticket booths, flower shops, to retail and fast-food stands. And after more than 50 years it is still present and becoming popular in many cities.

The first K67, which became a part of the design collection of MoMA in 1970, was at the beginning set on the 53rd Street sidewalk. It got finally its place in the museum during the MoMA exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980 as an object of mass design. 

The installation with K67 at the exhibition in MoMA. | © 2018 The Museum of Modern Art. Photo by Martin Seck

The catalogue from the exhibition Systems, Structures, Strategies in the Museum of Architecture and Design MAO, Ljubljana.

Maja Vardjan, our of the curators of the exhibition Systems, Structures, Strategies in the Museum of Architecture and Design MAO, describes why the K67 is so persistent in many cities. She evaluates it as a piece that with “its position between architecture and industrial design, embeddedness in the framework of a modern city and society, the rituals of daily life, and, last but not least, its persistent capacity to reinvent itself.”

The reinvention of K67 in Berlin in 2018. | Photo by Marc Brinkmeier 

The ability to reinvent itself makes the kiosk fresh in many settings and configurations. Martin Ruge created a kioski in Berlin. He brought one of the K67 although the transportation was difficult and the connection with freshwater, sewage and electricity to the Mykita building took more effort than expected. But he thinks it was worth it. And freshwater, sewage and electricity shall become matter of the new design issues for K67 to solve in the future. 

The metamorphosis as a constant change of shape, idea, social and political reality shaped K67 to the point that is again in use. As Maja Vardjan said, a kiosk is phenomena, always alive and never the same.  

Kiosk K67 used as kioski bar in Berlin. | Photo by Marc Brinkmeier

"Letter: On Lazare's Mischaracterization of the Gaza Crisis," Fred M., Cosmonaut Magazine.

"Everyone is aware that Hamas is not a socialist party. We are not expecting them to support their socialist allies in the war coalition indefinitely, just as we would not wish for Palestinian socialists to abandon socialism and assimilate with Hamas. But in calling to attention the differences between the original and revised Hamas charters, Lazare actually provides evidence against his conclusion that Hamas is the same old Islamist party it has always been. Once Hamas won the 2007 elections in Gaza and had to represent the views of the population of Gaza, it was almost immediately forced to abandon its policies that Palestinian society at large considered unacceptable. Hamas’ inability to either repeal its old charter or prevent the creation of its new charter reflects the evolution of Hamas since 1988, and especially since 2007, into a party with factions that hold extremely different ideas on the meaning of the organization.

Unlike in politically free societies where parties can represent the interests of their respective classes in the typical Marxist model, and where large differences in interests result in the formation of distinct parties, the prevention by Israel of an open, legal political structure in Gaza means that Hamas is forced to accept extreme internal contradictions if it wishes to avoid annihilation by Israel. Under these circumstances, Hamas might be better described as a permanent wartime coalition of various classes in Gaza, all of whose primary material interest is the end of the Israeli apartheid regime. If we accept this premise, it is no surprise that groups such as PFLP have been correctly willing to ally themselves with Hamas against Israel."

https://cosmonautmag.com/2024/02/letter-on-lazares-mischaracterization-of-the-gaza-crisis/