The Century of Drought By Michael McCarthy

One third of the planet will be desert by the year 2100, say climate experts in the most dire warning yet of the effects of global warming.

    Drought threatening the lives of millions will spread across half the land surface of the Earth in the coming century because of global warming, according to new predictions from Britain's leading climate scientists.

    Extreme drought, in which agriculture is in effect impossible, will affect about a third of the planet, according to the study from the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.

    It is one of the most dire forecasts so far of the potential effects of rising temperatures around the world - yet it may be an underestimation, the scientists involved said yesterday.

    The findings, released at the Climate Clinic at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, drew astonished and dismayed reactions from aid agencies and development specialists, who fear that the poor of developing countries will be worst hit. more..

from Passiflora by Juliana Spahr

The politics of the island in the middle of the Pacific were something else altogether. They were a part of the island that bit into them and those around them with bladelike, piercing mouthparts that stabbed through the skin and then injected a saliva that teemed with digestive enzymes, viruses, and anticoagulants. This bite often left behind an annoying itch, a reminder that things were not both the one and the other, could not be both the one and the other because both made no sense because there could not be both colonialism and sovereignty. The uncomfortable itch did not last long, but the bite left in their bloodstream a troubling, a questioning, some new sort of information, some prickly new cells that attached themselves to their blood cells and reshaped them, something that their immune system had to deal with that it hadn’t dealt with before. more..

Raoul Vaneigem: Religion is the Enemy

By inaugurating close to two thousand years ago a system of exploitation of terrestrial and human nature, the agrarian revolution gave birth to a market economy of which the evolution and the forms are, despite their great diversity, marked by the persistance of several traits that are dominant everywhere: social inequality, exclusive appropriation, the cult of power and profit, work and separation that was introduced into the body between the impulses of life and the spirit, which tames them and represses them, just as it tames and represses the natural elements. The relation that, in the economy of gathering, anterior to the appearance of intensive agriculture, was established by osmosis between the human species and the mineral, vegetal and animal kingdoms has ceded place to its alienated form, to religion, which claims to subjugate the earth to a celestial empire, swarming with fantastic creatures called Gods, Goddesses, Spirits. The bonds interlaced by affection and comprehension, which emanate, have become the chains of a tutelary tyranny, cracking down from the foggy heights where the beyond of existence begins its vacuity. more...

The Story of My Accident Is Ours by Rachel Levitsky

The Story of My Accident Is Ours

If I no longer exist, if in fact I may never have existed in the first place, then do I have a name? What is in a name? Certainly we can ask these questions about such a name as Jane.

It was in my thinking about our names that I began to tell this story. Perhaps that is the origin, or rather, the originary root, of my accident. But  my accident, which may have begun when it occurred to me that I did not know my name nor the name of any of us, came after the events of this story, which began to be written at the time that I began to think this way about our names. (more at) Web Conjunctions (11.16.06)

Who the Hell Wants to be Reasonable? byKathryn Rosenfeld

I once joked to a friend and comrade that we should produce and distribute “WWED?” (What Would Emma Do?) bracelets. “She’s not the only famous anarchist, you know,” my friend replied. True enough. And yet, she is still the foremost foremother of modern-day anarchism, and the only person whose portrait I have ever considered having tattooed on my body. Undeniably, Emma Goldman more than any other single figure embodies the concept “anarchy” and the history that adheres to it. She is still “the anarchist” even to non-anarchists. Despite her insistence on the importance of individuality, she is by now less a person who lived than a symbol, and as such the repository of countless, multifarious, often contradictory dreams. Some of these are directly continuous with the dreams Goldman dreamed in her lifetime; others are based on creative interpretations or partial readings of her thought (into which category my own Emma Dreams fall is not for me to say). Yet all are equally precious to the dreamers themselves, as are the various Avatars of Emma with which they are bound up. Like all mythic personae, these avatars say less about Goldman herself than about the people who have created them. There is no question but that she is an icon, which is why I have found it nearly impossible to write about her. more....

Will Global Warming Unleash More Seismic Activity? by: Margaret Lillian

At first glance, there doesn’t seem like there could be any connection between global warming and seismic activity. After all, why would the earth become less stable just because it’s a little warmer?

Well, connected they are. The earth’s crust is a lot more sensitive than you might think. There are well documented cases of even the load of water in a new dam triggering earthquakes in the local area.

A number of geologists say glacial melting, in particular, will unleash pent-up pressures in the Earth's crust, causing extreme geological events such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. more....

Anarchism and the Question of Human Nature by Thomas Martin

In these first years of the new century anarchism, as a philosophy and as an ongoing praxis, is faced with a number of disconcerting adjustments. Chief among these is the growing evidence that we, along with most other ideologies on the Left, have based our theory on a mistaken concept of human nature. We have learned over the years to distrust words like sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and above all that dreaded buzzword, “hard-wired” — yet we can no longer ignore the fact that these sciences are probably right about human nature. It does exist; it has biological roots; and while it does enjoy a large measure of free will, its most basic drives and emotions are indeed hard-wired. The Left has long resisted and denied these facts, on the grounds that they might justify discrimination based on heredity, or that they militate against the possibility of radical social reform, or both. I hope to demonstrate that these fears are groundless.

The “hard-wired” concept is thoroughly anchored in evolutionary theory, and this is the first obstacle the Left runs up against when objecting to it. Evolution is a fact: we are animals, closely related to other primates and only a little more distantly to the rest of the mammals. We share many physical and emotional traits with them, and it is absurd to suppose that they are governed by instinct but that we are not. We don’t know exactly how evolution works (in fact there are some serious alternatives even to Darwinism’s most basic assumptions, like the central role of the gene); but it does work. Very few if any radicals or anarchists would disagree with that. But certain conclusions follow inevitably from that ‘given,’ and if we deny them, we put ourselves into very unsavory company. Biblical fundamentalists insist that we are a separate creation from the animals, our consciousness governed by a ‘soul’ which is in turn answerable to a ‘God’ — do any of us want that idea for a bedfellow? On the other hand, if we accept uncritically (as many on the Right do) the view of human nature suggested by today’s neo-Darwinism, we wander into even more unsavory neighborhoods. The notorious Bell Curve is founded on those arguments, and so is neo-Nazism and other overtly racist movements. more..

A peril that dwelt among the Navajos

During the Cold War, uranium mines left contaminated waste scattered around the Indians. Homes built with the material silently pulsed with radiation. People developed cancer. And the U.S. did little to help.

Mary and Billy Boy Holiday bought their one-room house from a medicine man in 1967. They gave him $50, a sheep and a canvas tent. . . .

The single drawback was the bare dirt underfoot. . . .

. . . . sand and crushed rock that had washed down from an old uranium mine in the mesa, one of hundreds throughout the Navajo reservation that once supplied the nation's nuclear weapons program. The waste material wouldn't cost a cent. "He said it made good concrete," Mary Holiday recalled. more...

From Aesthetics to Politics: Rancière, Kant and Deleuze by Katharine Wolfe

Jacques Rancière's Dis-agreement, as Rancière writes in his subsequent work, The Politics of Aesthetics, explores "the distribution of the sensible at stake in any politics".[1] How is this phrase 'the distribution of the sensible' to be understood and why does the distribution of the sensible bear such a relation to politics? Dis-agreement tells us that politics first becomes a possibility with the institution of a community, where a community itself begins with something in common. This commonality is no shared stock of goods or shared claim to a territory. Rather, it is a shared partition of the sensible: community pivots around common modalities of sense. In other words, the commonality upon which a community is founded is sense, and politics first becomes a possibility with the institution of common sense. Hand in hand with the disclosure of shared modalities of sensing, moreover, comes the delimitation of each modality. The partition of the sensible thus renders some sounds intelligible (logos) and others unintelligible (pathos), some capacities visible and other invisible, and more. Moreover, social positions are portioned out according to these delimitations, and the partitioning of the sensible upon which the community is founded ultimately determines which people are recognizable as part of a shared world and which are sanctioned in partaking of it. Yet the moment politics becomes possible is distinct from the moment politics erupts -- politics is a much rarer thing than common sense or the institution of a community. For Rancière, politics is that rare event that occurs when the confluence between sanctioned dispositions to partake of the shared world and positions within the partition of the sensible is ruptured. Politics not only interrupts common sense but also erupts into the shared sensible world. more..

Baby, You Can Ride My Bike:10 Reasons Cars Suck By MICKEY Z

There's an interesting courtroom battle shaping up out in California. The state is attempting to institute new emissions standards for greenhouse gases. Such regulations could reduce exhaust emissions by 25% in cars and light trucks and 18% in SUVs. California already has the toughest standards in the nation-standards adopted by 10 states, including New York. This new proposal would surpass federal emissions standards and is likely to eventually raise the national bar even higher. Guess who's not happy about this?

Among others, DaimlerChrysler Corp., General Motors, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers have filed suit, claiming that California is in violation of the federal Clean Air Act because the state did not get a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency. In other words, the automobile giants are siding with the EPA and the Clean Air Act to crush regulations designed to address issues of global warming and human health. You can add this situation to the top ten list of why cars suck. Here are the other nine reasons: more..

Singer Ruth Brown Dies at 78

She'll always be Miss Rhythm, the powerhouse belter of those 1950s blues hits that made Atlantic Records.

Ruth Brown could swagger on "Teardrops From My Eyes" and turn imperious on "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean," its very first word rising like a squealed exclamation point. ....

Brown, who died yesterday at 78 after having been in a coma in a Las Vegas hospital for almost three weeks, was a pioneer of rhythm and blues. Even her initials bore testimony to that. Blessed with jubilance, sass and high spirits, and wonderfully expressive features that simply broadened over time, she influenced such greats as Etta James, Stevie Wonder, Bette Midler, Aretha Franklin and Bonnie Raitt. more..

Kamala Das - MY SON'S TEACHER

My son is four. His teacher swooned on a grey pavement

Five miles from here and died. From where she lay, her new skirt 

Flapped and fluttered, a green flag, half-mast, to proclaim death's 

Minor triumphs. The wind was strong, the poor men carried 

Pink elephant-gods to the sea that day. They moved in 

Long gaudy processions, they clapped cymbals, they beat drums 

And they sang aloud, she who lay in a faint was drowned 

in their song. The evening paper carried the news. He 

Bathed, drank milk, wrote two crooked lines of Ds and waited. 

But the dead rang no doorbell. He is only four. 

For many years he will not be told that tragedy 

Flew over him one afternoon, an old sad bird, and 

Gently touched his shoulder with its wing. more...

Global warming already killing species, analysis says

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Animal and plant species have begun dying off or changing sooner than predicted because of global warming, a review of hundreds of research studies contends.

These fast-moving adaptations come as a surprise even to biologists and ecologists because they are occurring so rapidly.

At least 70 species of frogs, mostly mountain-dwellers that had nowhere to go to escape the creeping heat, have gone extinct because of climate change, the analysis says. It also reports that between 100 and 200 other cold-dependent animal species, such as penguins and polar bears are in deep trouble.

"We are finally seeing species going extinct," said University of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan, author of the study. "Now we've got the evidence. It's here. It's real. This is not just biologists' intuition. It's what's happening." more...

Antonio Gramsci - Problems of today and tomorrow

There will be no possibility of working-class political action, so long as the concrete problems which present themselves to each worker have to be resolved individually and privately, as is the case today. He has to preserve his job, his pay, his house and his family. The union and the party cannot help in any way, indeed the reverse is true. A little peace can only be won if one makes oneself as small as possible, if one scatters. One can only increase one's pay a bit by working a lot or looking for supplementary jobs, competing with the other workers, etc. The very negation of the party and the union. The economic crisis has now diminished, so that if there was even a minimum of trade-union freedom and public order, union organization, industrial action, etc., could start up again (as in England, for example). The urgent question, which conditions all others, is that of "freedom" and "order": the others will come later, but for now they cannot even interest the workers. more..

Shameless self promotion

Review of "obedience" by kari edwards by Erica Kaufman, at CutBank Poetry

Midway Journal .01.FA.06

Midway Journal .01.FA.06

Fiction
Frank Miller
Greggory Moore
Richard Holinger
Barbara De La Cuesta

Poetry
kari edwards
James Sanders
Richard Kostelanetz

Drama
Mac Wellman

Mixed Genre
jUStin!katKo

Interviews
An interview with Henry Hills by Charles Bernstein

Chronic Diseases of Rich Countries Begin to Plague Developing Nations

The international community has set its sights on easing the burdens of infectious disease and malnutrition around the world. Yet some projections find that a bigger fraction of deaths in developing countries may soon come from chronic ailments such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and respiratory illness. In one example of the underlying trend, researchers report that high blood glucose exacts a global death toll comparable to any pathogen and has fueled an epidemic of diabetes in Asia. Another new study surveys the known economic impacts of such chronic diseases. more..

Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed

Week by week food became scarcer. The daily allowance of bread fell from a pound and a half to a pound, then three quarters, half, and a quarter-pound. Toward the end there was a week without any bread at all. Sugar one was entitled to at the rate of two pounds a month-if one could get it at all, which was seldom. A bar of chocolate or a pound of tasteless candy cost anywhere from seven to ten rubles-at least a dollar. There was milk for about half the babies in the city; most hotels and private houses never saw it for months. In the fruit season apples and pears sold for a little less than a ruble apiece on the street-corner....

For milk and bread and sugar and tobacco one had to stand in "queue" long hours in the chill rain. Coming home from an all-night meeting I have seen the "kvost" (tail) beginning to form before dawn, mostly women, some with babies in their arms.... Carlyle, in his "French Revolution," has described the French people as distinguished above all others by their faculty of standing in "queue." Russia had accustomed herself to the practice, begun in the reign of Nicholas the Blessed as long ago as 1915, and from then continued intermittently until the summer of 1917, when it settled down as the regular order of things. Think of the poorly-clad people standing on the iron-white streets of Petrograd whole days in the Russian winter! I have listened in the bread-lines, hearing the bitter, acrid note of discontent which from time to time burst up through the miraculous goodnature of the Russian crowd....more...

Marx’s Theory of Revolution Remains a Beacon By Sukomal Sen

THE great November Revolution, ushering in socialism and a workers’ state, occurred in Russia in November 1917. Next year will be observed the 90th year of this world-historic revolution.
 
Analysing the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871, its very short tenure, many mistakes, signs of immaturity and also the heroic acts of the Paris workers who laid down their lives in thousands, Marx hailed this great event as the “storming of heavens.” Had Marx been alive in the early-20th century and seen the Soviet Union’s birth, he would perhaps have given a more thrilling acclamation for this world-shaking event. more...

Commentary In our dark times we need poetry more than ever, argues Adrienne Rich

In "The Defence of Poetry" 1821, Shelley claimed that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world". This has been taken to suggest that simply by virtue of composing verse, poets exert some exemplary moral power - in a vague unthreatening way. In fact, in his earlier political essay, "A Philosophic View of Reform," Shelley had written that "Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged" etc. The philosophers he was talking about were revolutionary-minded: Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Voltaire, Mary Wollstonecraft. more..

Carbon emissions rising faster than ever

Far from slowing down, global carbon dioxide emissions are rising faster than before, said a gathering of scientists in Beijing on Friday.

Between 2000 and 2005, emissions grew four times faster than in the preceding 10 years, according to researchers at the Global Carbon Project, a consortium of international researchers. Global growth rates were 0.8% from 1990 to 1999. From 2000 to 2005, they reached 3.2%.

Though alarming, the figures confirm expectations. "They make intuitive sense to me," says Jim Watson, deputy leader of the energy programme at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UK. more..

U.S.: Nationwide action against Starbucks: Nov 24th -25th

This November 24th-25th, stand in solidarity with Starbucks workers as we call for an end to the anti-union campaign waged by Starbucks and for the reinstatement of all unlawfully fired workers. In addition we are calling on Starbucks to give Ethiopia control over its coffee.

Starbucks Workers demand the right to Organize

This November 24th-25th, stand in solidarity with Starbucks workers as we call for an end to the anti-union campaign waged by Starbucks and for the reinstatement of all unlawfully fired workers. In addition we are calling on Starbucks to give Ethiopia control over its coffee.

Starbucks workers around the country and the world are organizing to make our jobs better and finally have a real, independent voice at work. A powerful voice that our managers, even the whole company, have no choice but to listen too. By organizing a union baristas in NYC have seen our wages increased, schedules stabilized and respect from our bosses. Over the last two years, however, Starbucks has consistently responded to workers organizing with harassment, intimidation and illegal firings. A National Labor Relations Board settlement was reached in March of 2006 that reinstated two workers and forced Starbucks to pay back wages and change discriminatory policies. The Settlement did little to stop the anti-union campaign and since December of 2005 five workers in NYC were unlawfully fired for engaging in protected union activity. more..

IVAN CHTCHEGLOV - Formulary for a New Urbanism

SIRE, I AM FROM THE OTHER COUNTRY
 
We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun. Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup. That’s lost. We know how to read every promise in faces — the latest stage of morphology. The poetry of the billboards lasted twenty years. We are bored in the city, we really have to strain to still discover mysteries on the sidewalk billboards, the latest state of humor and poetry:

Showerbath of the Patriarchs

Meat Cutting Machines 

Notre Dame Zoo 

Sports Pharmacy 

Martyrs Provisions 

Translucent Concrete 

Golden Touch Sawmill 

Center for Functional Recuperation 

Saint Anne Ambulance 

Café Fifth Avenue 

Prolonged Volunteers Street 

Family Boarding House in the Garden 

Hotel of Strangers 

Wild Street

And the swimming pool on the Street of Little Girls. And the police station on Rendezvous Street. The medical-surgical clinic and the free placement center on the Quai des Orfèvres. The artificial flowers on Sun Street. The Castle Cellars Hotel, the Ocean Bar and the Coming and Going Café. The Hotel of the Epoch.more....

Ten Reasons Congress Must Investigate Bush Administration Crimes By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith

    Few elections in history have provided so clear a mandate. As the New York Times put it, Democrats were "largely elected on the promise to act as a strong check on [Bush's] administration." (1) But the first response of the new Congressional leadership has been to proclaim a new era of civility and seek accommodation with the very people who need to be held accountable for war crimes and subversion of the Constitution.

    Democratic strategists who argue for this kind of bipartisanship maintain that the American people want their political leaders to address the problems of the future, not pursue recriminations about the past. They therefore oppose the kind of penetrating investigation that a White House strategist told Time would lead to a "cataclysmic fight to the death" (2) if Democrats start issuing subpoenas. If such "peace at any price" Democrats prevail, the result will be a catastrophe, not only for the Democratic party but for American democracy. more..

Modern Fiction & The Decay of History: bpNICHOL'S the true eventual story of billy the kid by carl peters

Naming comes from seeing, or vision; it comes from sight & observation: "billy the kid was born with a short dick but they did not call him richard (1)."

In that same part we read: "they called him the kid because he was younger & meaner & had a shorter dick." This is an observation [of] sorts: "could they have called him instead billy the man or bloody bonney? would he have bothered having a faster gun? who can tell." more....

“V” Meets The Secret Service

On Monday, November 6, 2006, “V” visited security check points at the White House, the main Treasury, IRS and Justice Department Buildings and the Capitol. “V’s” purpose was to deliver the People’s Petitions for Redress of Grievances relating to the Government’s violations of the war powers, tax, privacy and money clauses of the Constitution, and to inform key Government officials that at least 100 more “Vs” would be at their doorstep on November 14th expecting a response to the Petitions. 

At the White House about a dozen Secret Service agents appeared on foot, bicycles and car to meet “V.” While virtuously assuring the security of the state, they were curious about the image of “V” and asked many questions. Most, when asked if they had seen the movie “V for Vendetta”, smiled their approval. more...

Global Warming is Undeniable By Jonathan Spicer

TORONTO (Reuters) - Aboriginal communities in Ontario's far north are becoming increasingly isolated as rising temperatures melt their winter route to the outside world and impede their access to supplies.

"The ice doesn't have its solid blue color any more," said Stan Beardy, the grand chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which represents Ontario's remote First Nations. "It's more like Styrofoam now, really brittle."

"With the toxic waste moving north, and global warming, we don't have that solid ice anymore, and that's why we have problems with winter roads when it's mild."

The 34 First Nations reservations, scattered in boreal forest across northern Ontario, are accessible only by plane for much of the year. more..

The Prowl by Charlina Daitouah-Smith

She looked up and saw him, and then quickly lowered her eyes. Well-dressed man, nice haircut, expensive car, obviously a family man. He represented the essence of goodness. He represented what she could never hope to be. There existed a wide chasm between her, not just her, but what her “profession” had made of her, and what accepted morality said she was. One of her kind did not, could not, mingle with one of his kind.

Yet, she swayed her ample hips, encased in a red sheath and sauntered away, her body moving to a special rhythm, a rhythm all her own, the rhythm of the night.

And yes, oh yes! his eyes followed, followed and followed, while his heart beat fast, faster and faster still, like it would burst out of his body. His heartbeat became cultural drums beating wildly in his ears, beating a wild tune which vibrated from the masterpiece his eyes feasted on, intoxicating his senses and pushing him beyond the brink of reasoning, pushing him until he could take it no more. more...

Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse By ADAM ZAGORIN

Just days after his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. more...

The Beat Root: Chronicling the adventures of Beat seeker Allen Ginsberg by C.Carr

In November 1956, the first copies of Howl and Other Poems went on sale at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, and Allen Ginsberg marveled that his publisher, fellow poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, had decided to print a thousand copies. How would they ever sell that many? Howl, of course, proved to be an explosion in consciousness heard round the world, and nearly a million copies are now in print. It's hard to imagine a poem—or poet—having such impact ever again.

The Beats were the first bohemian movement born under the eye of mass media, thus also the first to gain huge fame that flattened them into images, or caricatures. In Ginsberg, detractors saw merely the most infamous of the bearded bathless Beats, while admirers saw a visionary, Dharma seeker, fearless activist, and master of the long buoyant line. Who was the human underneath it all? Two new books about Ginsberg's life address the question. I Celebrate Myself (a biography) and The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice (selections from his earliest journals) have just been published to coincide with Howl's 50th anniversary. more...

human. all-too-damn-human - by charles hageman frey

I love technology. I love computers, email, fax machines, automatic car washes, ATMs. I love that when I call the electric company I never hear a live human voice. However, it is screwing me. As one advisor said, "He does not have a stellar academic record." Lump into that a lack of an impressive resume also. My interpersonal communication skills are good, or in other words, I give a kick-ass interview. With technology, though, I have a small chance of ever demonstrating my abilities through such interaction. This places me in the precarious position of having no chance to get into grad school or—at the moment—acquiring employment. So I fax 30 resumes a week to jobs that routinely say, "Please, no walk-ins." more..

IBM, the attack on workers power and white supremacy By Phoenix Insurgent

IBM announced this week that it has developed and is deploying a video surveillance system capable of analyzing human and machine behavior, including tracking individuals and vehicles (i.e, specific license plates and cars) and singling out suspicious behavior.

According to CNET.com, IBM's system connects surveillance video with smart software that can detect and index what you tell it to in real time. The system performs attribute-based searches on stored video clips for specific objects or actions, or can be set to sound alarms when those things come across the screen. more...

THE POSITIVE ASPECTS OF AMBIGUITY by Simone de Beauvoir

Thus, every man has to do with other men. The world in which he engages himself is a human world in which each object is penetrated with human meanings. It is a speaking world from which solicitations and appeals rise up. This means that, through this world, each individual can give his freedom a concrete content. He must disclose the world with the purpose of further disclosure and by the same movement try to free men, by means of whom the world takes on meaning. But we shall find here the same objection that we met when we examined the abstract moment of individual ethics. If every man is free, he can not will himself free. Likewise the objection will be raised that lie can will nothing for another since that other is free in all circumstances; men are always disclosing being, in Buchenwald as well as in the blue isles of the Pacific, in hovels as well as in palaces; something is always happening in the world, and in the movement of keeping being at a distance, can one not consider its different transformations with a detached joy, or find reasons for acting? No solution is better or worse than any other. more..

Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in America by Stan Goff

Denial supports this “non-racist” racism.  A poll by the Washington Post in 2001 showed that half of all white people believe blacks in the U.S. are just as economically well-off and secure as whites.

But economic and social distance between blacks and whites is far from closed, except in the minds of many white Americans.
Six in 10 whites—61 percent—say the average black has equal or better access to health care than the average white, according to the poll.

In fact, blacks are far more likely to be without health insurance than whites. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey found that blacks were nearly twice as likely as whites to be without health insurance.

The survey in fact notes that half of whites have convinced themselves that African-Americans and Euro-Americans are educated equally well in the U.S.  The empirical evidence, of course, points to a contrary conclusion.  This misperception by whites is based on two things:  (1) the need to believe that race as an issue is “all in the past now” and (2) the association of middle-class whites with middle-class African-Americans, which lends anecdotal support to the idea of equality-achieved, by exclusive exposure to a non-representative sample of the black population.  Half of all whites believe that African-Americans enjoy economic parity with whites, another staggeringly wrong impression (the poverty rate for blacks is double that for whites, as just one example). more..

Academic Whores and Publishing Pimps by Mark John Isola

It is difficult to express the anxiety that accompanied the writing of this article. I found myself rewriting it several times, and I wondered if I would even submit it. The reasons behind my concerns are numerous, but they are sufficiently represented by a recent headline from Adult Video News, which reported the fate of a text based erotic web site: “Red Rose Stories Shutdown by FBI.” What does the closure of this text based web site have to do with me? Everything, for not only do I believe in free speech, I also believe in free erections. I represent the silent majority of Americans, whose presence can be detected behind every dollar that constitutes America’s porn industry, who appreciate erotic and pornographic material. Not only do I enjoy erotica, I also produce it. I write erotic fiction and manage an erotic website, and over the past several years, while pursuing a graduate degree, I have managed some publishing success. My fiction enjoys an online reading community of over eight thousand readers a month, and I can only imagine my readership is nearly as large via my print publications. Before you review my byline and think about your favorite bookmarks and anthologies, let me assure you, you do not know me, or you might, but you will not recognize me under my this—my academic identity. Given the recent events surrounding the closure of Red Rose and the growing determination of the Bush administration to create the Meese Report sequel, the decision to write this article from my academic perspective was simply made. It is safer to be an academic than it is to be an erotica writer. Think about it—would you rather face a tenure committee or the FBI? Sure, they will both probably be comprised of men in black, but one is decidedly more likely to be carrying a gun. Herein lies the difference Louis Althusser posited between an ideological and a repressive state apparatus. more..

RADAR reading series * tuesday, november 14th * triple-chocolate cookies

the RADAR reading series
a showcase of underground and emerging writers and artists
a disperser of free home made cookies

tuesday, november 14th 2006

kari edwards + kathe izzo + keith knight + annalee newitz + triple-chocolate cookies

KARI EDWARDS is a poet, artist and gender activist; recipient of a
Small Press Traffic book of the year awards + New Langton Art's Bay Area Award in literature; author of obedience, iduna, a day in the life of p., a diary of lies - Belladonna #27, and post/(pink). Edwards' work can also be found in Scribner's The Best American Poetry, Bay Poetics, Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action, Biting the Error: writers explore narrative, Bisexuality and Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others, Experimental Theology, Public Text 0.2., Blood and Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepard, Aufgabe, Tinfish, Mirage/Period(ical), Van Gogh's Ear, Amerikan Hotel, Boog City, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, Narrativity, Fulcrum: an annual of poetry and aesthetics, Pom2, Shearsman, and Submodern Fiction.

poet, filmmaker and conceptual performance artist KATHE IZZO works with love: childhood, motherhood, sex, and community. Her elegant installations, both confrontational and emotionally intimate, incorporate her physical presence into a performance space at once natural, theatrical & sacred; slipping through the subtle crack between limitation & liberation, between art & life. Her work has been shown most recently in solo shows at Artemis (Miami), Cinders (Williamsburg), Experimentica (Cardiff), Highways (LA) and Movement Research (NYC) and Wild Gift (London). In her most ambitious work so far, The True Love Project, Izzo has loved the world, one person at a time (for one day, one hour, one afternoon, evening or morning) for the last four years. The True Love Project and all it’s subsidiaries are based on the principle of direct energetic transmission from artist to audience through the medium of love as art. By spending time together, all parties, artist and audience, are immediately and irrevocably transformed. To this date, she has loved over 400 private audiences, with only a few disgruntled patrons. Izzo’s poetry, memoirs and short fiction have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. An early formative performance has been preserved for posterity in the seminal Jack Smith collection of writings: MEET ME AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL/Serpent's Tail. She is currently at work on her memoir, LOVE ARTIST.

KEITH KNIGHT is an award-winning San Francisco based cartoonist and rapper. His two weekly comic strips, the K Chronicles and (th)ink (seen locally in the S.F. Chronicle’s 96 Hours), can be found in over thirty-five alternative, ethnic, political and college newspapers across the country. His latest book, The Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts, is a primer for anyone looking to use art for social change. Knight is also the narrator for the KQED artist documentary. show Spark. Not bad for a former Michael Jackson impersonator. For more info, see www.kchronicles.com

ANNALEE NEWITZ is the founder of the webzine Bad Subjects; author of the books White Trash: Race and Class in America, The Bad Subjects Anthology, the recently published Pretend We’re Dead (based on doctoral research on capitalism and monster movies), and the forthcoming anthology She’s Such a Geek, about female nerds. Her weekly syndicated column, Techspolitation, explores the way media mutates and reiterates everyday life. She is a contributing editor at Wired magazine, and a recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship. Newitz’s writings have appeared in magazines and papers such as Wired, New York Magazine, Popular Science, New Scientist, Salon, SecurityFocus, The Industry Standard, GettingIt, Feed, Gear, Nerve, The Utne Reader Online, Alternative Press Review, New York Press, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Silicon Valley Metro, and several academic journals and anthologies.

hosted by michelle tea

readings will be followed by questions and answers.
ask a question, recieve a cookie.
the triple-chocolate cookie recipe was awarded first proze in baking at the
2006 yolo county fair. RADAR thanks MJ Strong for sharing her recipe.

RADAR also thanks the Hormel Center and The Friends of the San Francisco Public Library for their ongoing sponsership and support.

tuesday, november 14th 2006
san francisco public library / main branch
100 larkin street
latino reading room / basement level
6pm / free

many wonderful events, including information about a free writing workshop being presented by Elizabeth Stark, would have been listed here if not for the present Mercury Retrograde and its affect on RADAR’s computer.

Big Brother 101: Could your social networks brand you an enemy of the state?

By some counts, government snoops are sifting through data from a billion or more phone calls and online messages daily. What might they be looking for?

• WHO: The National Security Agency and other intelligence groups

• WHAT: Processing and connecting data from phone calls, e-mails, online postings and financial transactions

• HOW: Using social-network analysis (the study of how people interact) and data-mining techniques (such as pattern-recognition algorithms) first used for artificial intelligence and consumer marketing

• WHY: To help uncover the structure of potential terrorist groups—far too secretive and dispersed to locate with traditional detection techniques—and decode their intentions. more..

Jacques Derrida- Intellectual Courage: An Interview by Thomas Assheuer

JD: Had the intellectuals lost their courage? There is nothing to confirm this. In the course of the last decades and at an unprecedented tempo, they were forced to take profound transformations in the public space into account. The conditions of taking a stand in the media, of intervening in the tele-technological field, have been exposed to many transformations and re-appropriations, politically and economically. On the other hand, all responsible citizens needed courage to analyse these evolutions, acting instead so as to avoid these traps. All the more since some intellectuals have sought to exploit these new media powers to the end of personal promotion; when they did so in the fight for a good cause, solidarity was at times as difficult to give as to withhold. Intellectuals have been more present and active than your question suggests, in all fields of public life, in Europe and elsewhere, where the political or governmental agencies have often been paralysed by the habits of the past. Moreover, if courage is a virtue, and also an intellectual virtue, it is not the most specific quality which one rightfully demands from an intellectual as such. An incompetent and irresponsible intellectual can have courage for the worse. I do not believe that all 'intellectuals' have been, as you suggest, 'paralysed by an attitude of posthistoire or cynicism'. It is difficult for me to answer this question in a few words. One needs to understand what you mean by 'posthistoire' or 'cynicism', but also put into question, as I would do if I had the time and the place, the hateful assimilations that often circulate on this topic. For reasons of economy I prefer to confess my discomfort at the beginning of this interview, once and for all, without returning to it. It has to do with the conditions created by the media and by the public space for intellectuals to take a stand. If I said, for instance, that I refuse to engage in a debate about this point ('cynicism', 'posthistoire', the 'status of the intellectual', etc.) in four or five phrases, as they are suggested to me, will one accuse me of escaping into silence or into elitism? Would it be indulgent, condescending or a bit journalistic to refer to the published texts where I treat all these questions? I believe on the contrary that this would be the most 'responsible' response. It could illustrate the historical difficulty to which I allude. It is these conditions for speaking out publicly that change and that one has to change. And with them the figure of the public intellectual. more..

THE NEED FOR DISSENT by George Monbiot

IF OSAMA BIN LADEN did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. For the past four years, his name has been invoked whenever a US president has sought to increase the defence budget or wriggle out of arms control treaties. He has even been used to justify President Bush's missile defence programme, though neither he nor his associates are known to possess anything approaching ballistic missile technology. Now he has become the personification of evil required to launch a crusade for good: the face behind the faceless terror.

The closer you look, the weaker the case against bin Laden becomes. While the terrorists who inflicted the dreadful wound in the world may have been inspired by him, there is, at the time of writing, little evidence that they were instructed by him. But bin Laden's culpability is irrelevant: his usefulness to Western governments lies in his power to terrify. more...

Social Conservatives Questioning Past Support for GOP as Evidence of Large Numbers of Gay Republican Leaders Grows

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 – Mike Rogers, the nation’s leading gay activist blogger, last night took his campaign against hypocrisy by anti-gay Republicans and evangelicals who are gay themselves to the U.S. Capitol steps.

Under a full moon in front of the Capitol dome, at a prayer vigil organized by the Christian Defense Coalition “to put men and women in office that will honor God and the principles of this nation,” Rogers handed out flyers with a list of 27 “known homosexuals in the Bush administration and Republican party.”more....

British believe Bush is more dangerous than Kim Jong-il by Julian Glover

America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published today that reveals just how far the country's reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq.

Carried out as US voters prepare to go to the polls next week in an election dominated by the war, the research also shows that British voters see George Bush as a greater danger to world peace than either the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, or the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both countries were once cited by the US president as part of an "axis of evil", but it is Mr Bush who now alarms voters in countries with traditionally strong links to the US. more..

THE FIRST BOOKE OF THE COURTYER OF COUNT BALDESSAR CASTILIO UNTO MAISTER ALPHONSUS ARIOSTO

I HAVE a longe time doubted with my self (most loving M. Alphonsus) which of the two were harder for me, either to denye you the thinge that you have with suche instance manye tymes required of me, or to take it in hande: bicause on the one side me thoughte it a verye harde matter to denye anye thynge, especially the request beinge honest, to the personne whom I love deerlye, and of whom I perceyve my selfe deerlye beloved. Againe on the other syde, to undertake an enterpryse whiche I do not knowe my selfe able to brynge to an end, I judged it uncomely for him that wayeth due reproofes so much as they oughte to be wayed. At length after muche debatynge, I have determined to prove in this behalfe what ayde that affection and great desyre to please, can bring unto my dilygence, whyche in other thynges is wont to encreace the laboure of menne. You then require me to wryte, what is (to my thynkynge) the trade and maner of Courtyers, whyche is most fyttynge for a Gentilman that lyveth in the Court of Princes, by the whiche he maye have the knoweleage howe to serve them perfectlye in everye reasonable matter, and obtaine thereby favour of them and prayse of other men. Fynallye, of what sort he ought to be that deserveth to be called so perfect a Courtyer, that there be no wante in him: wherefore I, considering this kinde of request, say, that in case it should not appeare to my selfe a greater blame to have you esteame me to be of smal frendeshippe, then all other men of litle wysdome, I woulde have ryd my handes of this laboure, for feare leaste I shoulde bee counted rashe of all such as knowe, what a harde matter it is, emonge suche diversitye of maners, that are used in the Courtes of Christendome, to picke out the perfectest trade and way, and (as it were) the floure of this Courtiership. Because use maketh us manye times to delite in, and to set litle by the self same thinges: wherby somtime it proceadeth that maners, garmentes, customes, and facions whiche at sometyme have beene in price, becumme not regarded, and contrarywyse the not regarded, becumme of price. Therfore it is manifestlye to be descerned, that use hath greater force then reason, to brynge up newe inventions emonge us, and to abolishe the olde, of the whiche who so goeth about to judge the perfection, is often tymes deceyved. more...

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT STOP BY Fidel Castro

Comrades:

There are times in the life of peoples. there are moments and minutes that are extraordinary: and a minute, a moment of this kind has come now, a tragic moment, a bitter moment which we are not experiencing here today.

Before anything else, I want to make it clear that we are not overcome here by passion today: I want to make it clear that we are once again looking at a people capable of looking the facts in the face with valor, a people who knows how to analyze the situation calmly, a people who does not listen to lies, a people that does not give itself over to pretext, a people that does not base its opinions on absurd suppositions but on evident truths; and so the very first thing we must do is to analyze
the facts. MORE..

DIARAM 6.5

The new issue of DIARAM, street-wise and sassy, is up at:

It includes the following parts (assembly may be required):

:: 6.5 Table of Contents

TEXT by the following excellencies: Gina Abelkop, Corinn Adams, Marco A. Domínguez, Michael Greenberg, Daniel Gutstein, Andrew Kozma, Michael Martone, Erick Nordenson, Brendan O'Connor, Frances Justine Post, Bonnie Roy, D. Antwan Stewart, Tony Trigilio, Caroline Wilkinson, and Brandon A Wyant

REVIEWS of Deborah Bernhardt's Echolalia; S. A. Stepanek's Three, Breathing; Charles Yu's Third Class Superhero

SCHEMATICS of the following helpful items: Farmstead and Main Road Relationships; Psychic Digestion; Sample Congregations, Concentrated and Dispersed, Plus Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Coefficients; Summary of Human Resource Management Legislation; The Universal System


DIARAM 6.5

The Bush Administration Is Weak on Terror By Stephen Van Evera

The U.S. public widely credits President Bush with toughness on terror. An August 2006 poll found 55 percent of Americans approving his handling of the campaign on terror and only 38 percent disapproving. Republican candidates are running successfully on the terror issue in this fall's election campaign. In fact, the Bush administration is weak on terror.
The administration wages a one-front war against al-Qaeda, the main terror threat, when effort on every relevant front is needed. Specifically, it has focused on an offensive military and intelligence campaign abroad while neglecting five other critical fronts: bolstering homeland security, securing weapons and materials of mass destruction from possible theft or purchase by terrorists, winning the war of ideas across the world, ending conflicts that fuel support for al-Qaeda, and saving the failed states where al-Qaeda and like groups can find haven. The administration has also bungled parts of the military offensive by diverting itself into a counterproductive sideshow in Iraq and by alienating potential allies. As a result, al-Qaeda and related jihadi groups remain a potent threat more than five years after the 9/11 attacks. Assessments by U.S. intelligence and other analysts actually indicate that the terror threat has increased since 9/11. more...

RESISTING THE NATION STATE - ANARCHISM AS A TRADITION OF POLITICAL THOUGHT - Geoffrey Ostergaard

Considered as a tradition of political thought, however, anarchism is more complex than its manifestation in the classical anarchist movement might suggest. From this perspective, anarchism appears to be as closely related to liberalism as it is to socialism. Indeed, one form of anarchism, individualist, may be seen as liberalism taken to its extreme - some would say - logical conclusion. Individualist, as distinct from socialist, anarchism has been particularly strong in the USA from the time of Josiah Warren (1798-1874) onwards and is expressed today by Murray Rothbard and the school of 'anarcho-capitalists'. Individualist anarchism emphasises individual liberty, conscience, individuality, and the uniqueness of each person - the latter brilliantly expressed by Max Stirner (1805-56) in The Ego and His Own. Often, as with William Godwin (1756-1836), it leads to a distrust of any kind of enduring cooperation with others, such relations constraining the exercise of what Godwin called the individual's 'private judgement'. In their economic ideas, individualists have usually insisted on the importance of individual production, private property or possession, praised the free market and condemned the iniquity of all monopolies. Their central political principle is 'the sovereignty of the individual'. Taken seriously, this principle is sufficient to explain their rejection of the state and of any government other than 'voluntary government' based on the consent of each and every individual. more...

Tristan Tzara - Deep Snow

It was a pathetic treasure you held tight to your chest.

Hadn't you abandoned the light to the rifts of insurrection?

The wolves attacked and haunting old rags hung there

sweeping the earth. As deep and heavy as the night, you sank

into the cave of a lifelike presence. Bells and children

might well lie within the trajectory of fate; not a blade

of grass grazed your inner sleep. Darkened windows, like

hunted animals, opened onto a forbidden future. more..

Michael Farrell: Candylands: California/Midwest Poetry

Michael Farrell: Candylands: California/Midwest Poetry

atCORDITE POETRY REVIEW

Only 50 years left' for sea fish

There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study.

Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating.

Writing in the journal Science, the international team of researchers says fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity. more...

Excerpt from One Man's Bible by Gao Xingjian

You no longer live in other people's shadows nor treat other people's shadows as imaginary enemies. You just walked out of their shadows, stopped making up absurdities and fantasies, and are now in a vast emptiness and tranquillity. You originally came into the world naked and without cares and there is no need to take anything away with you, and if you wanted to you wouldn't be able to. Your only fear is unknowable death.

Military Charts Movement of Conflict in Iraq Toward Chaos By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.

A one-page slide shown at the Oct. 18 briefing provides a rare glimpse into how the military command that oversees the war is trying to track its trajectory, particularly in terms of sectarian fighting.

The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate an “Index of Civil Conflict.” It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad......

The conclusions the Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a copy of the slide that was obtained by The New York Times. The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from “peace,” an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked “chaos.” more...

How First-World Garbage Makes Africans Sick By Jeremy Kahn

Over the last few weeks, a major environmental, medical, and political crisis has unfolded in the West African nation of Ivory Coast. On Aug. 19, a Panamanian-flagged ship owned by a Greek firm and chartered by a leading Dutch commodities broker docked in Abidjan, the country's commercial capital. The ship unloaded between 400 tons and 600 tons of toxic petrochemical waste, which was summarily dumped in open-air sites around the city and poured into the sewer system. Within days, people began to show up in hospitals complaining of symptoms ranging from nosebleeds, diarrhea, and nausea to eye irritation and breathing difficulties. So far, 50,000 people have sought medical attention, seven people have died, and dozens more have been hospitalized after being poisoned by the fumes.

The toxic waste has spread to the large lagoon that divides this city of 5 million—once known as "the Paris of West Africa"—and may have contaminated drinking water and surrounding farm land as well. The war-racked country's Cabinet ministers resigned en masse over what was seen as the government's slow response to the crisis and its alleged complicity in the dumping. This has set back already fragile efforts to restore peace and democracy to Ivory Coast four years after a civil war left the nation divided and economically crippled. Meanwhile, people clamoring for medical attention have overwhelmed Abidjan's hospitals, many of which have run out of critical supplies. International aid organizations have rushed teams to the country to help provide humanitarian assistance and to clean up the waste, a process that is expected to take at least six weeks. The World Health Organization has said the acute medical crisis is over but has warned of possible long-term health effects from the waste dumping. more...

Multiple Symptoms and the Visible Real: Culture, Media, and the Displacements of Vision by Sudeep Dasgupta

The mass-mediated fascination with traumatic events, the proliferation of images of disaster and horror, and the shifting relationship between the subject and the object of the eye in contemporary visual culture form the locus of this essay’s investigation of the symptom. Symptom-formation, as Freud points out, can have a crucial visual function in that the zone in which the initial cause excites the body is displaced onto another zone of the body – “the formation of the symptoms takes place in regions of the mental apparatus which are more remote from the particular centres concerned with somatic control.” He goes on, a few lines later, to note, “in scopophilia and exhibitionism, the eye corresponds to the erotogenic zone”. Ocularcentrism becomes the obsessional repetition and the substitute satisfaction of this displaced zone of the eye from its original site of disturbance; opticality is reconfigured in its excessive function through visual plenitude. This displacement will be analysed in the media coverage of natural disasters. Both the media’s active solicitation of “raw witness footage” and the modalities of the scopophilic drive to view death and destruction function as the “mechanisms of symptom formation” through which the Real emerges as the excessively visual cause. These two dimensions – the active solicitation of scopophilia by visual culture’s fascination with disaster and the displaced functioning of the eye in the viewing subject – will be analysed in their contemporary historical formation. more...

Saving Inuktitut by COLIN CAMPBELL

On the dusty streets of Iqaluit, Nunavut, stop signs read in two languages: English and the squiggly syllabic characters of Inuktitut. So do signs at the post office, bank and grocery store. Inuktitut is the first language for 70 per cent of the territory's 30,000 residents, and by some measures appears one of the healthiest indigenous languages in the country. But here in the capital, a town of about 3,600, English is the language of choice among young Inuit. Children wear SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirts, and buy the latest CDs by 50 Cent and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Internet use is widespread, as is satellite TV. The result: Inuktitut is a language under siege, and assuring it survives, even flourishes, has become a priority. more..