[editorial note: this is off the nettime list from Geert. There is a link to the original article, which may be worth looking at, because this is not the first time that this line of attack has been waged on Negri and hopefully his rebuttal will serve as clarification of what appears to be an obfuscation of what really happened]

(fwd. on request of the conference organizers to nettime-l. more on
this case can be found on the www.fibreculture.org list. /geert)

The following is a statement written by Toni Negri in refutation of the
allegations made against him by Keith Windschuttle in _The Australian_
(16 March 2005):

http://theaustralian.com.au/common/story_page/
0,5744,12556881%255E7583,00.html

Negri isolates nine points in Windschuttle's article that he claims are
totally false. He is angered by the need to rebut a series of scandalous
accusations that contradict the truths established by Italian judges who
convicted him of some crimes but found him totally innocent--and
therefore definitively absolved--of another series of charges.

The nine points are as follows:

1. I never had anything to do with the Red Brigades, neither as leader,
member, nor sympathiser. These charges were dropped after some months
(in late 1979/early 1980). Even Cossiga, who put me in jail at the
time, has now repeatedly rejected these allegations. I have been
totally absolved of these charges. As a matter of fact, when I was in
prison the Red Brigades even condemned me to death for disassociating
myself from 'armed struggle,' along with many other friends in Rebibbia
prison.

2. I never had anything to do with the kidnapping and murder of the Hon.
Moro by the Red Brigades. The court records hold me completely innocent
of this accusation.

Autopsy Interview with Michael Hardt (January 2005)*
http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpnegri15.htm

* In Labor of Dionysus, you and Negri write that the definition of labor is a political matter. Part of what is attractive in your most recent work is the expansion of the definition of labor. How does this expansion work? Is it that some non-labor has become labor? Or is that we have realized that certain activities which weren't called labor actually were labor after all?

I found very useful in this regard something that Diane Elson wrote several years ago about "the value theory of labor," and I think socialist feminism in general is the field in which these questions have been most clearly thought out. Determining what activities are accorded economic value is often a political struggle. This was at stake in many of the past feminist struggles to recognize domestic labor or caring labor or kin work as productive. And, to take a very different perspective, one might consider the entire notion of productive externalities that economists talk about as activities productive of capital but not recognized as such. We should note too, and this has historically been a strong part of the feminist debates, that there can be negative consequences to claiming certain activities as labor. Some would say that calling labor what I do for those I love (reproductive labor for children, partners, etc) degrades the activity. Or, others might say, if everything I do is labor then I can never escape from capital.

General intellect, exodus, multitude

Interview with Paolo Virno, published in Spanish in Archipélago number 54

We thank Veronica Gago and Diego Sztulwark (Colectivo Situaciones) together with Marcelo Matallanes, who have facilitated this material for us.

We have known Paolo Virno for a few years, through fragmented readings of his classic articles: Virtuosismo y revolución:notas sobre el concepto de acción política* (1993) [*1] and Do you remember
counterrevolucion (1995). With time his name began to circulate more frequently. First, as a consequence of the meteoric diffusion of the more celebrated work of his colleague, Toni Negri and, later, due to an interview - polemical in its effects - conducted by Flavia Costa and published the same year in the newspaper Clarín. [*2]

The preparations of our interview with Virno had begun more or less by that date. The link was a common friend: Sandro Mezzadra, intellectual and Italian militant, and co-editor - together with Virno - of the journal DeriveApprodi. Virno is a political militant with a long trajectory in the Italian workerist autonomy, founder of various political journals and author, of the following titles, among others: Convenzione e materialismo. L´unicitá senza aura (1986); Mondanitá. L´idea di "mondo" tra esperienza sensibile e sfera pubblica (1994); Parole con parole. Poteri e limiti del lenguaggio(1995); Radical thought in Italy, compiled with Michael Hardt (1996); and Il ricordo del presente, Saggio sul tempo storico (1999).

At the time of this interview he had just published his last book, Gramática de la multitud, Para un análisis de las formas de vida contemporáneas (2002), the conversation we had with him revolves around this work.

Paolo Virno, Neapolitan, fifty years old, lives a block from the Piazza di Fiori, one of the most beautiful in Rome. The first time we visited his home we had the pleasure of trying his specialty: homemade pasta. While he cut the tomatoes and ground the basil, he began to relate part of his life and to do philosophy in the style of Sor Juana: “while stirring the pot.”

5 German Law Journal No. 5 (1 May 2004) - Special Edition

Interview with Giorgio Agamben – Life, A Work of Art Without an Author: The State of Exception, the Administration of Disorder and Private Life 

http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=437

By Ulrich Raulff

[Editors’ note: this interview, conducted by Ulrich Raulff in Rome on 4March 2004, was originally published, in German, by the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 6 April 2004. We are grateful to Ulrich Raulff and Giorgio Agamben for the permission to translate and publish this interview in German Law Journal. This translation was made by German Law Journal Co-Editor, Morag Goodwin, EUI, Florence.  All notes have been provided for this publication by the editors.]

[1] Raulff:  Your latest book The State of Exception has recently been published in German. It is an historical and legal-historical analysis of a concept that we, at first blush, associate with Carl Schmitt. What does this concept mean for your Homo Sacer[1]project?

[2] Agamben:  The State of Exception belongs to a series of genealogical essays that follow on from Homo Sacer and which should form a tetralogy.  Regarding the content, it deals with two points. The first is a historical matter: the state of exception or state of emergency has become a paradigm of government today.  Originally understood as something extraordinary,an exception, which should have validity only for a limited period of time, but a historical transformation has made it the normal form of governance.  I wanted to show the consequence of this change for the state of the democracies in which we live.  The second is of a philosophical nature and deals with the strange relationship of law and lawlessness, law and anomy.  The state of exception establishes a hidden but fundamental relationship between law and the absence of law.  It is a void, a blank and this empty space is constitutive of the legal system.

'One huge US jail'

Afghanistan is the hub of a global network of detention centres, the
frontline in America's 'war on terror', where arrest can be random and
allegations of torture commonplace. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark
investigate on the ground and talk to former prisoners

Bush Defends Packaged News Stories from Government
Wed Mar 16, 2005 06:03 PM ET
By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Wednesday the U.S.
government's practice of sending packaged news stories to local television
stations was legal and he had no plans to stop it.

His defense of the packages, which are designed to look like television
news segments, came after they were deemed a form of covert propaganda by
the Government Accountability Office watchdog agency.

Some television stations have been airing such pieces without a disclaimer
saying they were produced by the government. The GAO, an arm of Congress,
said that ran counter to appropriation laws and was a misuse of federal
funds.

Bush cited a Justice Department opinion the segments were legal.

"There is a Justice Department opinion that says these -- these pieces --
are within the law, so long as they're based upon facts, not advocacy,"
the president told a news conference.

Dear Friends,

Please take a moment to read this urgent email. It is a long one.

This email concerns Paul From - a prisoner at Pleasant Valley State Prison in California. Before being transferred to this facility, Paul was a long-time cellmate and close friend of Angelo - the author of the book „Prisoners‚ Inventions‰, a publication and project that we initiated in 2001. Paul helped a lot with Prisoners' Inventions. He read Angelo's writings, studied the drawings, offered editorial suggestions, and provided in-house support. Paul sought no credit for this so he is hardly mentioned in the book. After Paul was transferred he and Angelo could not remain in contact because of prison rules about inmate correspondence.