2.05.2007
The Withering of the American Environmental Movement
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
"The Dark Ages. They haven't ended yet." -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
A kind of political narcolepsy has settled over the American environmental movement. Call it eco-ennui. You may know the feeling: restlessness, lack of direction, evaporating budgets, diminished expectations, a simmering discontent. The affliction appears acute, possibly systemic.
Unfortunately, the antidote isn't as simple as merely filing a new lawsuit in the morning or skipping that PowerPoint presentation to join a road blockade for the day. No, something much deeper may be called for: a rebellion of the heart. Just like in the good old days, not that long ago.
What is it, precisely, that's going on? Was the environmental movement bewitched by eight years of Bruce Babbitt and Al Gore? Did it suffer an allergic reaction to the New Order of Things? Are we simply adrift in a brief lacuna in the evolution of the conservation movement, one of those Gouldian (Stephen Jay) pauses before a new creative eruption?
...(m0re)...
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
"The Dark Ages. They haven't ended yet." -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
A kind of political narcolepsy has settled over the American environmental movement. Call it eco-ennui. You may know the feeling: restlessness, lack of direction, evaporating budgets, diminished expectations, a simmering discontent. The affliction appears acute, possibly systemic.
Unfortunately, the antidote isn't as simple as merely filing a new lawsuit in the morning or skipping that PowerPoint presentation to join a road blockade for the day. No, something much deeper may be called for: a rebellion of the heart. Just like in the good old days, not that long ago.
What is it, precisely, that's going on? Was the environmental movement bewitched by eight years of Bruce Babbitt and Al Gore? Did it suffer an allergic reaction to the New Order of Things? Are we simply adrift in a brief lacuna in the evolution of the conservation movement, one of those Gouldian (Stephen Jay) pauses before a new creative eruption?
...(m0re)...
12.14.2006
Venezuela's Magnum Opus
For 31 Years, State Program Has Brought Music and Hope to Children of the Barrios
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; A23
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Amid tumbledown cinder-block homes, the Don Bosco community center rings with music. A chorus of pint-size students sings traditional Christmas songs; 20 budding teenage musicians take gratingly painful stabs at playing violins and cellos; and tiny harpists dwarfed by their instruments strum as the late-afternoon sun sets over the poor Chapellin barrio.
This country is known for its pulsating salsa and down-home folk ballads, songs with bawdy lyrics played on four-string guitars and maracas. But for 31 years, an ambitious state program aimed at instilling a love of classical music in children -- particularly poor children -- has drawn the admiration of conductors from as far away as Berlin and Boston, while producing musicians who have excelled in Europe's most hallowed concert halls.
"I don't know any country in the world that has such a great network of symphony orchestras," said Jan Van der Roost, a Belgian-born composer who has conducted orchestras in dozens of countries, including Venezuela. "It's really unique. I think if all the countries in the world would do the same as here, there would be a lot less problems and a lot more happiness."
As part of the state program, about 250,000 students are playing in orchestras and learning at centers like Don Bosco, facilities tucked into the poorest barrios of the biggest cities as well as villages in some of the most far-flung corners. Their music education, fully funded by a succession of Venezuelan governments, has become an international model that has spurred the creation of similar programs in about a dozen countries in Latin America.
But while the program has produced star musicians -- including Gustavo Dudamel, who at 25 has conducted orchestras in Berlin, Israel and Los Angeles, and Edicson Ruiz, who at 17 became the youngest bass player in the Berlin Philharmonic -- its central focus is to reach into barrios riven by drugs and guns and use music to teach broader lessons.
"The important thing is to work with children and rescue children and teach them values and the work ethic," said Susan Siman, director of the center in Montealban, a neighborhood in Caracas where as many as 600 young people learn at any one time.
"Some of these children are semi-abandoned," she said. "Some come from very poor classes. They've had it rough."
The idea behind the program, Siman and others say, is to provide another path for young people with few options, like 16-year-old Samuel Martinez.
Martinez is tall and athletic and sports a toothy smile. But his young life has been marked by hardship. His mother died soon after he was born. His father turned him over to an orphanage. He grew up in a gritty Caracas barrio where the incidence of death by gunfire has skyrocketed in recent years. But instead of finding trouble, like so many of his friends, Martinez has spent the past five years mastering the viola -- an instrument that he says obsesses him. He wants a career in music.
"You see how people from the street become a part of the orchestras," said Martinez, who plays at the Montealban center. "You change, switching one life for one that is good, one with instruments. You can be a good person. Music can really change people, even though you may not believe it."
The music program is called the National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela, but it is known informally as the System. It's the brainchild of Jos? Antonio Abreu, a slight, birdlike conductor and teacher who wanted to bring high culture to as many of his countrymen as possible. He started in 1975 with 11 students and volunteer teachers, working out of a garage. Now, there are 200 youth orchestras and 136 centers nationwide.
His quiet lobbying, and the acclaim his program regularly receives, have led one Venezuelan government after another to provide funding, whether this oil-rich country's economy was in boom or bust. Any child who wants to learn an instrument gets one, then participates in four hours of instruction after each school day for years on end.
"Now, art is not an ornamental accessory to education, but the child has the clear right to musical, art or literature instruction," said Abreu, 67, who sits hunched in his chair wearing large-frame glasses. "That permits the talent to be detected early on. That's important. It's detected in grade school, not the conservatory, so that the child can in time be developed and taken to the maximum artistic level."
In more than three decades of infusing a love of music in children, the teachers in the System have learned techniques that leave smiles on the faces of European conductors schooled in stodgy, traditional methods. Although young adults can join the program, there are literally thousands of students who enroll as young as 4 or 5. In Montealban, a few are as young as 2. "You have to change their diapers," Siman said.
To teach small children, instructors use games and nursery rhymes, helping them apply the sounds and cadences they know to the musical instruments they're learning to play.
Anabel Astudillo has about 40 children, most about 5 or 6 years old, in her violin class in Montealban. To many teachers that would be a nightmare, but Astudillo's young charges were in rapt attention on a recent afternoon. They raised their violins in unison when asked to, placed the instruments below their chins and took simple, if hesitant, swipes with their bows. Some giggled nervously.
"We have them play games with words that they know," Astudillo, 26, said. "We attach rhythms to these words. Those are the rhythms they associate with their instruments."
The coarse, lopsided sounds wafting from classrooms on a typical day were a far cry from Vivaldi or Mahler. But teachers in the System said the program moves fast: It takes a matter of weeks for students to get a handle on their instruments, months to play with a certain accomplishment. Getting children to appreciate classical music is the easy part.
In the "nuclei," as the music centers are known, children learn as a group. The little ones sing and clap together. They practice at the same time. The focus is not long hours of solitary, tedious practice, but rather teamwork.
"You compliment them, you motivate them," Astudillo said. "When you compliment one child, the one next to him wants to be complimented. We all work a lot with motivation, with motivation and with the games."
Maibel Troia, musical director at the Don Bosco center, said a bigger challenge is reaching children in the barrio who are inherently distrustful of outsiders who make promises. "They think it's another lie, or that it's not a real future for them," she said. "But as they start coming and they get uniforms and they see the possibilities to do the work or go out and see concerts, they become excited about it."
The big enticement -- what seems to win over even the most indifferent child -- is the instrument. Teachers in the System say that once children hold a tuba, oboe or viola in their hands, they are hooked.
Erick Cordero, 10, said he first heard classical music at the Teresa Carre?o, Caracas's most important concert hall, and knew then that he wanted to be in the System. His father, Jos? Cordero, 33, a cook, supported him from the beginning.
"I told him, 'I want to play the clarinet, I want to play the clarinet, I want to play the clarinet,' " Erick recalled. Now he's considered an up-and-coming musician, good enough to solo in youth concerts.
"When I hear him, I get really emotional," his father said. "The professors say he's very good. You want to hear him? I can have him play for you."
Coming from homes where classical music is never heard, some of the young children stumble from one instrument to another as they find their way. Christian Castillo, 9, said that he started with the viola but that administrators couldn't find one that fit quite right. He then switched to the cello. "I liked it right at first, because it's big," he said. "I was really curious."
Once in the program, students sing in a chorus, go to concerts, and learn scales and music history. Many of them learn to play instruments such as the cuatro, a four-string guitar, or the Latin harp, which are central to the raucous gaitas of the northwest or the llaneras of the great plains in the south.
But what drives them is classical music -- the challenge of playing with a hundred other musicians, the pomp of dressing in black tie for concerts, the thrill of tackling difficult composers like Bach.
"It's a way of freeing yourself, of expressing yourself," said Samuel Martinez, the teenager who grew up in an orphanage. "Music transports you to another world, a world of happiness and emotions."
For 31 Years, State Program Has Brought Music and Hope to Children of the Barrios
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; A23
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Amid tumbledown cinder-block homes, the Don Bosco community center rings with music. A chorus of pint-size students sings traditional Christmas songs; 20 budding teenage musicians take gratingly painful stabs at playing violins and cellos; and tiny harpists dwarfed by their instruments strum as the late-afternoon sun sets over the poor Chapellin barrio.
This country is known for its pulsating salsa and down-home folk ballads, songs with bawdy lyrics played on four-string guitars and maracas. But for 31 years, an ambitious state program aimed at instilling a love of classical music in children -- particularly poor children -- has drawn the admiration of conductors from as far away as Berlin and Boston, while producing musicians who have excelled in Europe's most hallowed concert halls.
"I don't know any country in the world that has such a great network of symphony orchestras," said Jan Van der Roost, a Belgian-born composer who has conducted orchestras in dozens of countries, including Venezuela. "It's really unique. I think if all the countries in the world would do the same as here, there would be a lot less problems and a lot more happiness."
As part of the state program, about 250,000 students are playing in orchestras and learning at centers like Don Bosco, facilities tucked into the poorest barrios of the biggest cities as well as villages in some of the most far-flung corners. Their music education, fully funded by a succession of Venezuelan governments, has become an international model that has spurred the creation of similar programs in about a dozen countries in Latin America.
But while the program has produced star musicians -- including Gustavo Dudamel, who at 25 has conducted orchestras in Berlin, Israel and Los Angeles, and Edicson Ruiz, who at 17 became the youngest bass player in the Berlin Philharmonic -- its central focus is to reach into barrios riven by drugs and guns and use music to teach broader lessons.
"The important thing is to work with children and rescue children and teach them values and the work ethic," said Susan Siman, director of the center in Montealban, a neighborhood in Caracas where as many as 600 young people learn at any one time.
"Some of these children are semi-abandoned," she said. "Some come from very poor classes. They've had it rough."
The idea behind the program, Siman and others say, is to provide another path for young people with few options, like 16-year-old Samuel Martinez.
Martinez is tall and athletic and sports a toothy smile. But his young life has been marked by hardship. His mother died soon after he was born. His father turned him over to an orphanage. He grew up in a gritty Caracas barrio where the incidence of death by gunfire has skyrocketed in recent years. But instead of finding trouble, like so many of his friends, Martinez has spent the past five years mastering the viola -- an instrument that he says obsesses him. He wants a career in music.
"You see how people from the street become a part of the orchestras," said Martinez, who plays at the Montealban center. "You change, switching one life for one that is good, one with instruments. You can be a good person. Music can really change people, even though you may not believe it."
The music program is called the National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela, but it is known informally as the System. It's the brainchild of Jos? Antonio Abreu, a slight, birdlike conductor and teacher who wanted to bring high culture to as many of his countrymen as possible. He started in 1975 with 11 students and volunteer teachers, working out of a garage. Now, there are 200 youth orchestras and 136 centers nationwide.
His quiet lobbying, and the acclaim his program regularly receives, have led one Venezuelan government after another to provide funding, whether this oil-rich country's economy was in boom or bust. Any child who wants to learn an instrument gets one, then participates in four hours of instruction after each school day for years on end.
"Now, art is not an ornamental accessory to education, but the child has the clear right to musical, art or literature instruction," said Abreu, 67, who sits hunched in his chair wearing large-frame glasses. "That permits the talent to be detected early on. That's important. It's detected in grade school, not the conservatory, so that the child can in time be developed and taken to the maximum artistic level."
In more than three decades of infusing a love of music in children, the teachers in the System have learned techniques that leave smiles on the faces of European conductors schooled in stodgy, traditional methods. Although young adults can join the program, there are literally thousands of students who enroll as young as 4 or 5. In Montealban, a few are as young as 2. "You have to change their diapers," Siman said.
To teach small children, instructors use games and nursery rhymes, helping them apply the sounds and cadences they know to the musical instruments they're learning to play.
Anabel Astudillo has about 40 children, most about 5 or 6 years old, in her violin class in Montealban. To many teachers that would be a nightmare, but Astudillo's young charges were in rapt attention on a recent afternoon. They raised their violins in unison when asked to, placed the instruments below their chins and took simple, if hesitant, swipes with their bows. Some giggled nervously.
"We have them play games with words that they know," Astudillo, 26, said. "We attach rhythms to these words. Those are the rhythms they associate with their instruments."
The coarse, lopsided sounds wafting from classrooms on a typical day were a far cry from Vivaldi or Mahler. But teachers in the System said the program moves fast: It takes a matter of weeks for students to get a handle on their instruments, months to play with a certain accomplishment. Getting children to appreciate classical music is the easy part.
In the "nuclei," as the music centers are known, children learn as a group. The little ones sing and clap together. They practice at the same time. The focus is not long hours of solitary, tedious practice, but rather teamwork.
"You compliment them, you motivate them," Astudillo said. "When you compliment one child, the one next to him wants to be complimented. We all work a lot with motivation, with motivation and with the games."
Maibel Troia, musical director at the Don Bosco center, said a bigger challenge is reaching children in the barrio who are inherently distrustful of outsiders who make promises. "They think it's another lie, or that it's not a real future for them," she said. "But as they start coming and they get uniforms and they see the possibilities to do the work or go out and see concerts, they become excited about it."
The big enticement -- what seems to win over even the most indifferent child -- is the instrument. Teachers in the System say that once children hold a tuba, oboe or viola in their hands, they are hooked.
Erick Cordero, 10, said he first heard classical music at the Teresa Carre?o, Caracas's most important concert hall, and knew then that he wanted to be in the System. His father, Jos? Cordero, 33, a cook, supported him from the beginning.
"I told him, 'I want to play the clarinet, I want to play the clarinet, I want to play the clarinet,' " Erick recalled. Now he's considered an up-and-coming musician, good enough to solo in youth concerts.
"When I hear him, I get really emotional," his father said. "The professors say he's very good. You want to hear him? I can have him play for you."
Coming from homes where classical music is never heard, some of the young children stumble from one instrument to another as they find their way. Christian Castillo, 9, said that he started with the viola but that administrators couldn't find one that fit quite right. He then switched to the cello. "I liked it right at first, because it's big," he said. "I was really curious."
Once in the program, students sing in a chorus, go to concerts, and learn scales and music history. Many of them learn to play instruments such as the cuatro, a four-string guitar, or the Latin harp, which are central to the raucous gaitas of the northwest or the llaneras of the great plains in the south.
But what drives them is classical music -- the challenge of playing with a hundred other musicians, the pomp of dressing in black tie for concerts, the thrill of tackling difficult composers like Bach.
"It's a way of freeing yourself, of expressing yourself," said Samuel Martinez, the teenager who grew up in an orphanage. "Music transports you to another world, a world of happiness and emotions."
12.01.2006
11.26.2006
October 30, 2006 06:52 PM
It is a testament to the power of money that Nicholas Stern's report should have swung the argument for drastic action, even before anyone has finished reading it. He appears to have demonstrated what many of us suspected: that it would cost much less to prevent runaway climate change than to seek to live with it. Useful as this finding is, I hope it doesn't mean that the debate will now concentrate on money. The principal costs of climate change will be measured in lives, not pounds. As Stern reminded us today, there would be a moral imperative to seek to prevent mass death even if the economic case did not stack up.
But at least almost everyone now agrees that we must act, if not at the necessary speed. If we're to have a high chance of preventing global temperatures from rising by 2C (3.6F) above preindustrial levels, we need, in the rich nations, a 90% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030. The greater part of the cut has to be made at the beginning of this period. To see why, picture two graphs. One falls like a ski jump: a steep drop followed by a shallow tail. The other falls like the trajectory of a bullet. The area under each line represents the total volume of greenhouse gases produced in that period. They fall to the same point by the same date, but far more gases have been produced in the second case, making runaway climate change more likely.
So how do we do it without bringing civilisation crashing down? Here is a plan for drastic but affordable action that the government could take. It goes much further than the proposals discussed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown today, for the reason that this is what the science demands.
1 Set a target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions based on the latest science. The government is using outdated figures, aiming for a 60% reduction by 2050. Even the annual 3% cut proposed in the early day motion calling for a new climate change bill does not go far enough. Timescale: immediately.
2 Use that target to set an annual carbon cap, which falls on the ski-jump trajectory. Then use the cap to set a personal carbon ration. Every citizen is given a free annual quota of carbon dioxide. He or she spends it by buying gas and electricity, petrol and train and plane tickets. If they run out, they must buy the rest from someone who has used less than his or her quota. This accounts for about 40% of the carbon dioxide we produce. The rest is auctioned off to companies. It's a simpler and fairer approach than either green taxation or the EU's emissions trading scheme, and it also provides people with a powerful incentive to demand low-carbon technologies. Timescale: a full scheme in place by January 2009.
3 Introduce a new set of building regulations, with three objectives: A. Imposing strict energy-efficiency requirements on all major refurbishments costing £3,000 or more. Timescale: in force by June 2007. B. Obliging landlords to bring their houses up to high energy-efficiency standards before they can rent them out. Timescale: to cover all new rentals from January 2008. C. Ensuring that all new homes in the UK are built to the German passivhaus standard (which requires no heating system). Timescale: in force by 2012.
4 Ban the sale of incandescent lightbulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights and other wasteful and unnecessary technologies. Introduce a stiff "feebate" system for all electronic goods sold in this country. The least efficient are taxed heavily while the most efficient receive tax discounts. Every year the standards in each category rise. Timescale: fully implemented by November 2007.
5 Redeploy the money currently earmarked for new nuclear missiles towards a massive investment in energy generation and distribution. Two schemes in particular require government support to make them commercially viable: very large wind farms, many miles offshore, connected to the grid with high-voltage, direct-current cables; and a hydrogen pipeline network to take over from the natural gas grid as the primary means of delivering fuel for home heating. Timescale: both programmes commence at the end of 2007 and are completed by 2018.
6 Promote the development of a new national coach network. City centre coach stations are shut down and moved to motorway junctions. Urban public transport networks are extended to meet them. The coaches travel on dedicated lanes and never leave the motorways. Journeys by public transport then become as fast as journeys by car, while saving 90% of emissions. It is self-financing, through the sale of the land now used for coach stations. Timescale: commences in 2008; completed by 2020.
7 Oblige all chains of filling stations to supply leasable electric car batteries. This provides electric cars with unlimited mileage: as the battery runs down, you pull into a forecourt. A crane lifts it out and drops in a fresh one. The batteries are charged overnight with surplus electricity from offshore wind farms. Timescale: fully operational by 2011.
8 Abandon the road-building and road-widening programme, and spend the money on tackling climate change. The government has earmarked £11.4bn for new roads. It claims to be allocating just £545m a year to "spending policies that tackle climate change". Timescale: immediately.
9 Freeze and then reduce UK airport capacity. While capacity remains high there will be constant upward pressure on any scheme the government introduces to limit flights. We need a freeze on all new airport construction and the introduction of a national quota for landing slots, to be reduced by 90% by 2030. Timescale: immediately.
10 Legislate for the closure of all out-of-town superstores, and their replacement with a warehouse and delivery system. Shops use a staggering amount of energy (six times as much electricity per square metre as factories, for example), and major reductions are hard to achieve: Tesco's "state of the art" energy-saving store at Diss in Norfolk, has managed to cut its energy use by only 20%. Warehouses containing the same quantity of goods use roughly 5% of the energy. Out-of-town shops are also hardwired to the car - delivery vehicles use 70% less fuel. Timescale: fully implemented by 2012.
These timescales might seem extraordinarily ambitious. They are, in contrast to the current plodding pace of change. But when America entered the second world war, it turned the economy around on a sixpence. Carmakers began producing aircraft and missiles within a year, and amphibious vehicles in 90 days, from a standing start. And that was 65 years ago. If we want this to happen, we can make it happen. It will require more economic intervention than we are used to, and some pretty brutal emergency planning policies (with little time or scope for objections). But if you believe that these are worse than mass death, then there is something wrong with your value system.
Climate change is not just a moral question: it is the moral question of the 21st century. There is one position even more morally culpable than denial. That is to accept that it's happening and that its results will be catastrophic, but to fail to take the measures needed to prevent it.
It is a testament to the power of money that Nicholas Stern's report should have swung the argument for drastic action, even before anyone has finished reading it. He appears to have demonstrated what many of us suspected: that it would cost much less to prevent runaway climate change than to seek to live with it. Useful as this finding is, I hope it doesn't mean that the debate will now concentrate on money. The principal costs of climate change will be measured in lives, not pounds. As Stern reminded us today, there would be a moral imperative to seek to prevent mass death even if the economic case did not stack up.
But at least almost everyone now agrees that we must act, if not at the necessary speed. If we're to have a high chance of preventing global temperatures from rising by 2C (3.6F) above preindustrial levels, we need, in the rich nations, a 90% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030. The greater part of the cut has to be made at the beginning of this period. To see why, picture two graphs. One falls like a ski jump: a steep drop followed by a shallow tail. The other falls like the trajectory of a bullet. The area under each line represents the total volume of greenhouse gases produced in that period. They fall to the same point by the same date, but far more gases have been produced in the second case, making runaway climate change more likely.
So how do we do it without bringing civilisation crashing down? Here is a plan for drastic but affordable action that the government could take. It goes much further than the proposals discussed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown today, for the reason that this is what the science demands.
1 Set a target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions based on the latest science. The government is using outdated figures, aiming for a 60% reduction by 2050. Even the annual 3% cut proposed in the early day motion calling for a new climate change bill does not go far enough. Timescale: immediately.
2 Use that target to set an annual carbon cap, which falls on the ski-jump trajectory. Then use the cap to set a personal carbon ration. Every citizen is given a free annual quota of carbon dioxide. He or she spends it by buying gas and electricity, petrol and train and plane tickets. If they run out, they must buy the rest from someone who has used less than his or her quota. This accounts for about 40% of the carbon dioxide we produce. The rest is auctioned off to companies. It's a simpler and fairer approach than either green taxation or the EU's emissions trading scheme, and it also provides people with a powerful incentive to demand low-carbon technologies. Timescale: a full scheme in place by January 2009.
3 Introduce a new set of building regulations, with three objectives: A. Imposing strict energy-efficiency requirements on all major refurbishments costing £3,000 or more. Timescale: in force by June 2007. B. Obliging landlords to bring their houses up to high energy-efficiency standards before they can rent them out. Timescale: to cover all new rentals from January 2008. C. Ensuring that all new homes in the UK are built to the German passivhaus standard (which requires no heating system). Timescale: in force by 2012.
4 Ban the sale of incandescent lightbulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights and other wasteful and unnecessary technologies. Introduce a stiff "feebate" system for all electronic goods sold in this country. The least efficient are taxed heavily while the most efficient receive tax discounts. Every year the standards in each category rise. Timescale: fully implemented by November 2007.
5 Redeploy the money currently earmarked for new nuclear missiles towards a massive investment in energy generation and distribution. Two schemes in particular require government support to make them commercially viable: very large wind farms, many miles offshore, connected to the grid with high-voltage, direct-current cables; and a hydrogen pipeline network to take over from the natural gas grid as the primary means of delivering fuel for home heating. Timescale: both programmes commence at the end of 2007 and are completed by 2018.
6 Promote the development of a new national coach network. City centre coach stations are shut down and moved to motorway junctions. Urban public transport networks are extended to meet them. The coaches travel on dedicated lanes and never leave the motorways. Journeys by public transport then become as fast as journeys by car, while saving 90% of emissions. It is self-financing, through the sale of the land now used for coach stations. Timescale: commences in 2008; completed by 2020.
7 Oblige all chains of filling stations to supply leasable electric car batteries. This provides electric cars with unlimited mileage: as the battery runs down, you pull into a forecourt. A crane lifts it out and drops in a fresh one. The batteries are charged overnight with surplus electricity from offshore wind farms. Timescale: fully operational by 2011.
8 Abandon the road-building and road-widening programme, and spend the money on tackling climate change. The government has earmarked £11.4bn for new roads. It claims to be allocating just £545m a year to "spending policies that tackle climate change". Timescale: immediately.
9 Freeze and then reduce UK airport capacity. While capacity remains high there will be constant upward pressure on any scheme the government introduces to limit flights. We need a freeze on all new airport construction and the introduction of a national quota for landing slots, to be reduced by 90% by 2030. Timescale: immediately.
10 Legislate for the closure of all out-of-town superstores, and their replacement with a warehouse and delivery system. Shops use a staggering amount of energy (six times as much electricity per square metre as factories, for example), and major reductions are hard to achieve: Tesco's "state of the art" energy-saving store at Diss in Norfolk, has managed to cut its energy use by only 20%. Warehouses containing the same quantity of goods use roughly 5% of the energy. Out-of-town shops are also hardwired to the car - delivery vehicles use 70% less fuel. Timescale: fully implemented by 2012.
These timescales might seem extraordinarily ambitious. They are, in contrast to the current plodding pace of change. But when America entered the second world war, it turned the economy around on a sixpence. Carmakers began producing aircraft and missiles within a year, and amphibious vehicles in 90 days, from a standing start. And that was 65 years ago. If we want this to happen, we can make it happen. It will require more economic intervention than we are used to, and some pretty brutal emergency planning policies (with little time or scope for objections). But if you believe that these are worse than mass death, then there is something wrong with your value system.
Climate change is not just a moral question: it is the moral question of the 21st century. There is one position even more morally culpable than denial. That is to accept that it's happening and that its results will be catastrophic, but to fail to take the measures needed to prevent it.
11.22.2006
The movement has ceased to be a traditional struggle or protest and
begun to transform itself into an embryo of an alternative government.
11.19.2006
.
.
.
The judge challenged Greg Boertje-Obed's decision to take actions that risked a year in prison instead of staying home with his family. "Why would one leave a wife and daughter at home to engage in juvenile acts of vandalism to protest nuclear weapons? I would think your commitment to your family should far outweigh your calling to such actions." Greg's wife, Michelle Naar Obed, was in the courtroom during this exchange. After the sentencing was over, Michelle shook her head and said, "If Greg had left us his for a year and risked his life to go to war to kill people, no one would question him - they would call him a hero! But, because he risked time in jail to act out his convictions for peace, people question his commitment to his family. That is tragic."
.
.
.
.
.
The judge challenged Greg Boertje-Obed's decision to take actions that risked a year in prison instead of staying home with his family. "Why would one leave a wife and daughter at home to engage in juvenile acts of vandalism to protest nuclear weapons? I would think your commitment to your family should far outweigh your calling to such actions." Greg's wife, Michelle Naar Obed, was in the courtroom during this exchange. After the sentencing was over, Michelle shook her head and said, "If Greg had left us his for a year and risked his life to go to war to kill people, no one would question him - they would call him a hero! But, because he risked time in jail to act out his convictions for peace, people question his commitment to his family. That is tragic."
.
.
.
11.14.2006
[not sure what to write. sit with this for an afternoon, and then get up and do something that matters.]
On Saturday the Sun-Times ran a small item about a man who had set himself on fire during rush hour Friday morning near the Ohio Street exit on the Kennedy. His identity has still not been officially determined, but members of the local jazz and improvised music community say they are certain it was Malachi Ritscher, a longtime supporter of the scene. Bruno Johnson, who owns the free-jazz label Okka Disk, received a package yesterday from Ritscher that included a will, keys to his home, and instructions about what should be done with his belongings. Johnson, a former Chicagoan who now lives in Milwaukee, began making calls. Police are still awaiting the results of dental tests, but Johnson says an officer told one of Ritscher's sisters that all evidence pointed to the body being his; his car was found nearby and he hadn't shown up for work since Thursday.
Buried on Ritscher's web site Chicago Rash Audio Potential, a compendium of invaluable show postings, artwork, and photography, are a suicide note and an obituary. Both indicate that he was deeply troubled by the war in Iraq and pinpoint it as a motive for suicide (no method is specified), though there are indications that he may have had other issues as well. "He had a son, from whom he was estranged (at the son's request), and two grandchildren," reads the obit. "He had many acquaintances, but few friends; and wrote his own obituary, because no one else really knew him." Ritscher was a familiar face at antiwar protests, and he was arrested more than once for his involvement, including this time this past May. A note found at the scene of the immolation reportedly read "Thou Shalt Not Kill."
Although Ritscher, who was in his early 50s, had played music off and on over the years, he was best known for his devotion to documenting other people's shows. Several nights a week for at least the last decade he could be found at places like the Empty Bottle, the Velvet Lounge, and the Hungry Brain; by his own count he recorded more than 2,000 concerts. Over the years he invested more money in equipment and as his skills improved, many of his recordings went to be used on commerical releases--by Paul Rutherford, Gold Sparkle Band, Isotope 217, Irene Schweizer, and Ken Vandermark among others. Ritscher was fiercely modest about these pursuits--I once tried to do a piece on him for the Reader but he declined, saying he didn’t want publicity.
[please go and read the comments.]
10.23.2006
[pat robertson coloring book:]
10.05.2006
[from johnny barber, arrested for civil disobediance at the u.s. capitol on sept26. also look at his photos]
i stood in silence in front of a young woman as well as a young man, both members of the Capital police, holding the line, barring our progress to the steps of the Capital. I held the white rose i had been given in the park close to my heart. John Carlo (a poet and gardener from San Francisco) stood next to me, holding the cardboard coffin over his head. The entire time the young male officer in front of me, eyes hidden behind dark shades, stood tensed, ready for confrontation. The young woman officer stood tensed as well, but over the course of the "negotiations" she visibly relaxed. She was short and the white rose i held was very near her face (we were toe to toe, like dance partners). Her face was freckled, she wasn't wearing sun glasses and her eyes were beautiful, green and clear...So in this tableaux, we stood, silent- and the earth roared! For a moment, i wondered where they were at, what they were thinking, but i did not ask. Together, we shared the scent of a rose (what does a rose mean but love, beauty, delicacy, and care) and in that moment, i loved them.... After a short amount of time, and several arrests, John Carlo was left holding the front of the coffin by himself, and actually put it over the heads of the 2 big cops in front of him. He said, "Can you feel it? We are all in this coffin together. Can you? Can you feel it?", he quietly implored, "This coffin is the Iraq war and we are in it together." He words blew me wide open. Me, a white rose, the police barring our way, their arms linked, freckles and clear green eyes, a coffin with the photos of dead children and soldiers, the names of the dead scrawled across it. The ediface of Congress, like an unattainable Oz, or the great city on the hill (equally unattainable), maybe one hundred yards distant. Yet the truth right at hand (God bless the poets) "Can you feel it?", he said.
Can you?
Meanwhile, the arrests continued, there were 4 or 5 of us left. The officer in front of me, tensed like an offensive lineman, hands up, ready to defend the line, seemed unmoved. i looked at him closely and i leaned forward, nearly whispering, "No one is going to try to push past you." "We have to be ready", he replied. i said, "Yes, but we are here non-violently. i am holding a rose. He laughed and said, "yes, i know." "i will not break through the line", i said. After several moments i noticed he relaxed, and unlinked his arm from the officer next to him. John Carlo was led away, but before he moved, he asked the policewoman next to him if she would hold the coffin for him- and she agreed. She took the front of the coffin and held it over her head, and became part of our action! When the person holding the rear of the coffin was going to be arrested, together they placed the coffin gently on the ground, as if they were laying someone to rest. As they looked at each other, he said, "These pictures represent the hundreds of thousands who have died in this senseless war".
As i was handcuffed and led away, i noticed the tourists who had gathered, particularly a father and his two young boys, who watched me carefully and i thought of my son, his kindness and understanding (as much as a 7 year old can grasp these things), as well as his fear of what i do, and i wondered how this young father would explain these events to his sons. Walking to the police van, a supporter said, "God bless you" and i felt blessed. Waiting to enter the police van, i asked the cop holding my elbow how he was doing on this morning, staring straight ahead, he said, "I'm ok." "That's good", i replied, as i broke into a big smile, "Here we are together, both doing what we need to do, what could be better?" He said, "Yeah... I guess so." I continued smiling as I climbed into the van and the doors slammed behind me.
This morning, the white rose is fading to brown, though its fragrance is even stronger than yesterday. i sit with it and embrace my soul mates on the other side of the line- freckles and the lineman, as well as the cops in the coffin, and the beautiful police officer who agreed to hold the coffin as John Carlo was led away in handcuffs. i think of all those who work for peace and justice, and what you are willing to give, and i recognize a beauty that is indescribable, but sustains me like food and water, like breath. And i contemplate a Rumi poem: "In the driest, whitest stretch of pain's infinite desert, I lost my sanity and found this rose."
May this dreadful war end. May all beings be at peace.
May all beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and the root of suffering.
May they not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.
May they dwell in equanimity free of passion, aggression, and prejudice.
Blessings, Peace and love, Johnny
i stood in silence in front of a young woman as well as a young man, both members of the Capital police, holding the line, barring our progress to the steps of the Capital. I held the white rose i had been given in the park close to my heart. John Carlo (a poet and gardener from San Francisco) stood next to me, holding the cardboard coffin over his head. The entire time the young male officer in front of me, eyes hidden behind dark shades, stood tensed, ready for confrontation. The young woman officer stood tensed as well, but over the course of the "negotiations" she visibly relaxed. She was short and the white rose i held was very near her face (we were toe to toe, like dance partners). Her face was freckled, she wasn't wearing sun glasses and her eyes were beautiful, green and clear...So in this tableaux, we stood, silent- and the earth roared! For a moment, i wondered where they were at, what they were thinking, but i did not ask. Together, we shared the scent of a rose (what does a rose mean but love, beauty, delicacy, and care) and in that moment, i loved them.... After a short amount of time, and several arrests, John Carlo was left holding the front of the coffin by himself, and actually put it over the heads of the 2 big cops in front of him. He said, "Can you feel it? We are all in this coffin together. Can you? Can you feel it?", he quietly implored, "This coffin is the Iraq war and we are in it together." He words blew me wide open. Me, a white rose, the police barring our way, their arms linked, freckles and clear green eyes, a coffin with the photos of dead children and soldiers, the names of the dead scrawled across it. The ediface of Congress, like an unattainable Oz, or the great city on the hill (equally unattainable), maybe one hundred yards distant. Yet the truth right at hand (God bless the poets) "Can you feel it?", he said.
Can you?
Meanwhile, the arrests continued, there were 4 or 5 of us left. The officer in front of me, tensed like an offensive lineman, hands up, ready to defend the line, seemed unmoved. i looked at him closely and i leaned forward, nearly whispering, "No one is going to try to push past you." "We have to be ready", he replied. i said, "Yes, but we are here non-violently. i am holding a rose. He laughed and said, "yes, i know." "i will not break through the line", i said. After several moments i noticed he relaxed, and unlinked his arm from the officer next to him. John Carlo was led away, but before he moved, he asked the policewoman next to him if she would hold the coffin for him- and she agreed. She took the front of the coffin and held it over her head, and became part of our action! When the person holding the rear of the coffin was going to be arrested, together they placed the coffin gently on the ground, as if they were laying someone to rest. As they looked at each other, he said, "These pictures represent the hundreds of thousands who have died in this senseless war".
As i was handcuffed and led away, i noticed the tourists who had gathered, particularly a father and his two young boys, who watched me carefully and i thought of my son, his kindness and understanding (as much as a 7 year old can grasp these things), as well as his fear of what i do, and i wondered how this young father would explain these events to his sons. Walking to the police van, a supporter said, "God bless you" and i felt blessed. Waiting to enter the police van, i asked the cop holding my elbow how he was doing on this morning, staring straight ahead, he said, "I'm ok." "That's good", i replied, as i broke into a big smile, "Here we are together, both doing what we need to do, what could be better?" He said, "Yeah... I guess so." I continued smiling as I climbed into the van and the doors slammed behind me.
This morning, the white rose is fading to brown, though its fragrance is even stronger than yesterday. i sit with it and embrace my soul mates on the other side of the line- freckles and the lineman, as well as the cops in the coffin, and the beautiful police officer who agreed to hold the coffin as John Carlo was led away in handcuffs. i think of all those who work for peace and justice, and what you are willing to give, and i recognize a beauty that is indescribable, but sustains me like food and water, like breath. And i contemplate a Rumi poem: "In the driest, whitest stretch of pain's infinite desert, I lost my sanity and found this rose."
May this dreadful war end. May all beings be at peace.
May all beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and the root of suffering.
May they not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.
May they dwell in equanimity free of passion, aggression, and prejudice.
Blessings, Peace and love, Johnny
9.18.2006
9.17.2006
On the way out of the conservatory is Musick’s Story Bush. The artist wrote a 255-line narrative poem onto the leaves of a star-magnolia bush using a water-based paint pen. Musick says he’s concerned with “the poetics of unseen acts,” that is, doing small, beautiful things that are hardly noticed.
The poem started as a piece of prose. “I’m not terribly well versed in poetry but I am a much bigger fan of music and the way lyrics float,” he says. Musick called the Poetry Center for advice and it put him in touch with poet Dan Beachy-Quick. “He read through very generously and started striking lines out.” Musick rewrote the resulting poem in segments on the leaves. But that’s just the first phase. As the leaves begin to fall, Musick will gather them daily and create a new poem determined by the change of season. “I’ll probably check on it beginning the 20th of September,” he says.
9.13.2006
A CALL FOR COLORS FROM:
the blind birds
the roasted flesh
the stars' sound
beirut's sky
and from my tired eyes
...
PLEASE DO NOT POST ANY POLITICAL COMMENTS ON THIS BLOG.
THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED TO ART. AND AS SUCH, IT VOMITS ON ANYTHING CALLED POLITICS.
(please go visit mazen kerbaj's blog. he is an amazing musician from beirut, we played the same show one night last fall, his drawings and writings on this war need to be seen.)
For Immediate Release
Tuesday June 20, 2006
*WMD Found in North Dakota: Disarmament Begins*
A Roman Catholic Priest and two Veterans went to a Minuteman III silo this morning and began to disarm the nuclear weapon using hammers. Reverend Carl Kabat, OMI, Gregory Boertje-Obed, and Michael Walli entered the E-9 missile silo on the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation in North Dakota about 75 miles southwest of Minot. Using a sledgehammer and household hammers, they disabled the lock on the personnel entry hatch that provides access to the warhead and they hammered on the silo lid that covers the 300 kiloton nuclear warhead that is targeted and ready to launch. The activists painted DISARM on the face of the 110-ton hardened silo cover and the peace activists poured their blood on the missile lid.
They were detained and arrested by McLean County Sheriffs and are being held in the McLean County jail in Washburn, North Dakota. They have since been transferred to a county jail in Bismark. They are being chargesdwith destruction of government property in excess of $1000 (a felony).
Speaking from jail, Carl Kabat, OMI from St. Louis, Missouri stated, “We now prepare for the nuclear bombing of Iran with the reasoning that only weapons of mass destruction can stop weapons of mass destruction. We bombed and strafed in Iraq based on lies that the Iraqi’s possessed nuclear weapons. We have the weapons here.”
The Minuteman III missile is targeted and on alert for launch. The missile is armed with a warhead that carries 27 times the heat, blast and radiation of the bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.
The activists say that they are following the nonviolent Jesus, that they are taught by their faith to love their enemies, and that the money used for these weapons of mass destruction is a theft from the poor and should be used for food, housing, medical care and rebuilding the infrastructure of our country.
STATEMENT
Nuclear Weapon Here Plowshares
Please pardon the fracture of the good order. When we were children we thought as children and spoke as children. But now we are adults and there comes a time when we must speak out and say that the good order is not so good, and never really was. We know that throughout history there have been innumerable war crimes. Two of the most terrible war crimes occurred on August 6th and 9th, 1945. On August 6th, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing more than 100,000 people (including U.S. prisoners of war). Three days later the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan, killing more than 50,000 people. Use of these weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations were abominable crimes against humanity. The U.S. has never repented of these atrocities. On the contrary, the U.S. has deepened and expanded its commitment to nuclear weapons. The U.S. built a large nuclear-industrial complex which has caused the deaths of many workers and has resulted in killing many more people by nuclear
testing. Our country built thousands of nuclear weapons and has dispersed weapons-grade uranium to 43 nations. Each Minuteman III missile carries a bomb that is 27 times more powerful than those dropped on the Japanese people. The building of these weapons signifies that our hearts have assented to mass murder. Currently the U.S. is seeking to research a new class of smaller nuclear weapons – demonstrating its desire to find new uses for weapons of mass destruction.
The U.S. is rushing down the path that leads to more death and destruction, ultimately bringing this nation and other nations to ruin. Therefore we issue a call for national repentance. We make an urgent appeal to the people of the U.S. to change course – to place our security in God and not in weapons of mass destruction.
We have chosen to start the process of transformation and disarmament by hammering on and pouring our blood on components of the Minuteman III nuclear missile system. We believe that the concrete that goes into making missile silos would be better used for building homes. We know that total disarmament of our first-strike system of nuclear weapons will require national repentance with a change in the hearts and minds of the people of the U.S. The pouring of our blood is meant to make visible the bloodshed resulting from the production, testing, and use of nuclear weapons. We believe the message in the Bible that after Cain killed his brother Abel that Abel’s blood “cried out from the ground.” We hear our sisters’ and brothers’ blood crying out from the ground. We believe that God hears these cries and grieves deeply over every person whose blood is shed. We call ourselves the “Weapon of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares” to highlight that our nation has thousands of horrific weapons of mass destruction. U.S. leaders speak about the dangers of other nations acquiring nuclear weapons, but they fail to act in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which commits the U.S. to take steps to disarm its weapons of mass destruction. We act in order to bring attention to people’s responsibility for disarming weapons of state terrorism. We can begin the process of exposing U.S. weapons of mass destruction, naming them as abominations that cause desolation, and transforming them to objects that promote life.
We dress as clowns to show that humor and laughter are key elements in the struggle to transform the structures of destruction and death. Saint Paul said that we are “fools for God’s sake,” and we say that we are “fools for God and humanity.” Clowns as court jesters were sometimes the only ones able to survive after speaking truth to authorities in power.
Is there hope for the world? Yes – if people begin to live the truth now. We believe that Jesus reveals who God is, and that God is a God of love and nonviolence, teaching us to love all people, even our enemies. Furthermore, the prophets Isaiah and Micah prophesy that there will come a time when people will learn the ways of God and
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.”
By our plowshares/pruning hooks action we have tried to make visible God’s will for disarmament and peacemaking. By living this truth we hope to shorten this murderous age – closing the gap between the future hope for universal peace and our present reality of endless violence and war-making. We begin to bring hope into the present moment.
MINUTEMAN III – Fact Sheet
A Minuteman III is a first strike Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) nuclear weapon. The current U.S. ICBM force consists of 500 Minuteman III's located in three missile fields: F.E. Warren Air Force Base with 150 missiles covering the corner of Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming; Malmstrom AFB in Montana with 200 ICBMs; and Minot AFB in North Dakota with 150 missiles. These warheads can be launched from a Minuteman III missile silo within minutes and reach any destination within 35 minutes. A nuclear bomb launched from a Minuteman silo produces uncontrollable radiation, massive heat and a blast capable of vaporizing and leveling everything within a 50-mile radius. Outside the 50 square miles -- extending into hundreds of miles -- the blast, wide-spread heat, firestorms and neutron and gamma rays are intended to kill, severely wound and poison every living thing and causing long-term damage to the environment. A Minuteman warhead has the potential to destroy the genetic code of the human race. Current warheads carry 27 times more power than the U.S. nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima August 6, 1945.
The Minuteman III is currently undergoing upgrades to extend its 2020 service limit. Minuteman III is the sole ICBM deployed by the United States. Each Mark 12 or Mark 12-A warhead in a Minuteman III silo can travel more than 6,000 miles at 15,000 miles per hour.
At one point the U.S. had 1,000 land-based ICBMs at a cost to taxpayers of $7 million each. Minuteman IIIs are in transition from having 3 independently targeted warheads to carrying one.
The Minuteman missiles are dispersed in hardened silos and connected to an underground launch control center through a system of hardened cables. Launch crews, consisting of two officers, perform around-the-clock alert in the launch control center. A variety of communication systems provide the National Command Authorities with virtually instantaneous direct contact with each launch crew. Should command capability be lost between the launch control center and remote missile launch facilities, an airborne launch control center dubbed “looking glass” automatically assumes command and control of the missiles.
The Minuteman III system is undergoing upgrades to: replace an aging guidance system; increase payloads; remanufacture the solid-fuel rocket motors; replace standby power system; repair launch facilities; improve communication; enhance accuracy; and improve survivability in a nuclear war.
In January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, issued by the Bush administration, threatens the use of nuclear weapons to “deter” any attack by chemical or biological as well as nuclear weapons by any non-nuclear state or entity within or sponsored by “the axis of evil.” We now prepare for nuclear bombing of Iran with the reasoning that only weapons of mass destruction can stop weapons of mass destruction.
By any standard of proof, the threat or use of the Minuteman III constitutes crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity or genocide.
Tuesday June 20, 2006
*WMD Found in North Dakota: Disarmament Begins*
A Roman Catholic Priest and two Veterans went to a Minuteman III silo this morning and began to disarm the nuclear weapon using hammers. Reverend Carl Kabat, OMI, Gregory Boertje-Obed, and Michael Walli entered the E-9 missile silo on the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation in North Dakota about 75 miles southwest of Minot. Using a sledgehammer and household hammers, they disabled the lock on the personnel entry hatch that provides access to the warhead and they hammered on the silo lid that covers the 300 kiloton nuclear warhead that is targeted and ready to launch. The activists painted DISARM on the face of the 110-ton hardened silo cover and the peace activists poured their blood on the missile lid.
They were detained and arrested by McLean County Sheriffs and are being held in the McLean County jail in Washburn, North Dakota. They have since been transferred to a county jail in Bismark. They are being chargesdwith destruction of government property in excess of $1000 (a felony).
Speaking from jail, Carl Kabat, OMI from St. Louis, Missouri stated, “We now prepare for the nuclear bombing of Iran with the reasoning that only weapons of mass destruction can stop weapons of mass destruction. We bombed and strafed in Iraq based on lies that the Iraqi’s possessed nuclear weapons. We have the weapons here.”
The Minuteman III missile is targeted and on alert for launch. The missile is armed with a warhead that carries 27 times the heat, blast and radiation of the bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.
The activists say that they are following the nonviolent Jesus, that they are taught by their faith to love their enemies, and that the money used for these weapons of mass destruction is a theft from the poor and should be used for food, housing, medical care and rebuilding the infrastructure of our country.
STATEMENT
Nuclear Weapon Here Plowshares
Please pardon the fracture of the good order. When we were children we thought as children and spoke as children. But now we are adults and there comes a time when we must speak out and say that the good order is not so good, and never really was. We know that throughout history there have been innumerable war crimes. Two of the most terrible war crimes occurred on August 6th and 9th, 1945. On August 6th, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing more than 100,000 people (including U.S. prisoners of war). Three days later the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan, killing more than 50,000 people. Use of these weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations were abominable crimes against humanity. The U.S. has never repented of these atrocities. On the contrary, the U.S. has deepened and expanded its commitment to nuclear weapons. The U.S. built a large nuclear-industrial complex which has caused the deaths of many workers and has resulted in killing many more people by nuclear
testing. Our country built thousands of nuclear weapons and has dispersed weapons-grade uranium to 43 nations. Each Minuteman III missile carries a bomb that is 27 times more powerful than those dropped on the Japanese people. The building of these weapons signifies that our hearts have assented to mass murder. Currently the U.S. is seeking to research a new class of smaller nuclear weapons – demonstrating its desire to find new uses for weapons of mass destruction.
The U.S. is rushing down the path that leads to more death and destruction, ultimately bringing this nation and other nations to ruin. Therefore we issue a call for national repentance. We make an urgent appeal to the people of the U.S. to change course – to place our security in God and not in weapons of mass destruction.
We have chosen to start the process of transformation and disarmament by hammering on and pouring our blood on components of the Minuteman III nuclear missile system. We believe that the concrete that goes into making missile silos would be better used for building homes. We know that total disarmament of our first-strike system of nuclear weapons will require national repentance with a change in the hearts and minds of the people of the U.S. The pouring of our blood is meant to make visible the bloodshed resulting from the production, testing, and use of nuclear weapons. We believe the message in the Bible that after Cain killed his brother Abel that Abel’s blood “cried out from the ground.” We hear our sisters’ and brothers’ blood crying out from the ground. We believe that God hears these cries and grieves deeply over every person whose blood is shed. We call ourselves the “Weapon of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares” to highlight that our nation has thousands of horrific weapons of mass destruction. U.S. leaders speak about the dangers of other nations acquiring nuclear weapons, but they fail to act in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which commits the U.S. to take steps to disarm its weapons of mass destruction. We act in order to bring attention to people’s responsibility for disarming weapons of state terrorism. We can begin the process of exposing U.S. weapons of mass destruction, naming them as abominations that cause desolation, and transforming them to objects that promote life.
We dress as clowns to show that humor and laughter are key elements in the struggle to transform the structures of destruction and death. Saint Paul said that we are “fools for God’s sake,” and we say that we are “fools for God and humanity.” Clowns as court jesters were sometimes the only ones able to survive after speaking truth to authorities in power.
Is there hope for the world? Yes – if people begin to live the truth now. We believe that Jesus reveals who God is, and that God is a God of love and nonviolence, teaching us to love all people, even our enemies. Furthermore, the prophets Isaiah and Micah prophesy that there will come a time when people will learn the ways of God and
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.”
By our plowshares/pruning hooks action we have tried to make visible God’s will for disarmament and peacemaking. By living this truth we hope to shorten this murderous age – closing the gap between the future hope for universal peace and our present reality of endless violence and war-making. We begin to bring hope into the present moment.
MINUTEMAN III – Fact Sheet
A Minuteman III is a first strike Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) nuclear weapon. The current U.S. ICBM force consists of 500 Minuteman III's located in three missile fields: F.E. Warren Air Force Base with 150 missiles covering the corner of Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming; Malmstrom AFB in Montana with 200 ICBMs; and Minot AFB in North Dakota with 150 missiles. These warheads can be launched from a Minuteman III missile silo within minutes and reach any destination within 35 minutes. A nuclear bomb launched from a Minuteman silo produces uncontrollable radiation, massive heat and a blast capable of vaporizing and leveling everything within a 50-mile radius. Outside the 50 square miles -- extending into hundreds of miles -- the blast, wide-spread heat, firestorms and neutron and gamma rays are intended to kill, severely wound and poison every living thing and causing long-term damage to the environment. A Minuteman warhead has the potential to destroy the genetic code of the human race. Current warheads carry 27 times more power than the U.S. nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima August 6, 1945.
The Minuteman III is currently undergoing upgrades to extend its 2020 service limit. Minuteman III is the sole ICBM deployed by the United States. Each Mark 12 or Mark 12-A warhead in a Minuteman III silo can travel more than 6,000 miles at 15,000 miles per hour.
At one point the U.S. had 1,000 land-based ICBMs at a cost to taxpayers of $7 million each. Minuteman IIIs are in transition from having 3 independently targeted warheads to carrying one.
The Minuteman missiles are dispersed in hardened silos and connected to an underground launch control center through a system of hardened cables. Launch crews, consisting of two officers, perform around-the-clock alert in the launch control center. A variety of communication systems provide the National Command Authorities with virtually instantaneous direct contact with each launch crew. Should command capability be lost between the launch control center and remote missile launch facilities, an airborne launch control center dubbed “looking glass” automatically assumes command and control of the missiles.
The Minuteman III system is undergoing upgrades to: replace an aging guidance system; increase payloads; remanufacture the solid-fuel rocket motors; replace standby power system; repair launch facilities; improve communication; enhance accuracy; and improve survivability in a nuclear war.
In January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, issued by the Bush administration, threatens the use of nuclear weapons to “deter” any attack by chemical or biological as well as nuclear weapons by any non-nuclear state or entity within or sponsored by “the axis of evil.” We now prepare for nuclear bombing of Iran with the reasoning that only weapons of mass destruction can stop weapons of mass destruction.
By any standard of proof, the threat or use of the Minuteman III constitutes crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity or genocide.
9.05.2006
The New Media Backpedal
posted Aug 07, 2006 by Nato Thompson
The fact that radical actions flourished under Clinton but not under Bush is highly bizarre (if not somewhat amazing at the same time). Surely, one must consider the radical political landscape in the United States at this time and attempt to gain a handle on how best to organize radical political action.
Political action is an open-ended concept that for the sake of this discussion, we will break down into two particular modes. There are the classically produced leftist grassroots political actions that work in terms of lobbying, social organizing, banners, street protest, and muckraking journalisms. On the other hand, there are the more, how do you say, theoretical politics. That is to say, the politics of meaning that encompass our everyday experience, often informed by postmodern books, that don't particularly make it onto the front page of the New York Times nor Democracy Now for that matter. Public space, the politics of work, the disciplinary society, the commodification of counter culture, the spectacle, Agamben's camp, ambiguity as a form of meaning production and on and on. These are subjects often written about in lefty art magazines (such as Rhizome) but magically dropped in the left magazines like the Nation, Z Magazine, even Clamor.
There is clearly a divide in these two worlds. It is probably not a new one for many of us as it haunts new media in particular. To clarify the gap a little more: there is a form of political resistance that approach politics in what appears to be a straightforward didactic manner. The framework of analysis runs in conjunction with the tradition of street protest in the United States, Democracy Now is often playing on the radio, there is a mystical tally on the newest heinous action in Congress, lobby groups, the prison industry, and utility is often the guide post for political action. And then there are those that are at times somewhat more aloof. They can discuss the character of resistance available in taking a short cut home, they can discuss the Panopticon and the level of systemic biopower available in the military welfare state, they can critique the manner in which contemporary radical politics buy into the spectacle of counter culture, and utility is often considered a complicated riddle not easily solved. Now, you might chuckle or be angered by such a flagrant forced dichotomy and I realize there is movement between these two approaches. But surely the reader understands this divide. Yet, the ability to bridge the gap vacillates dramatically depending on the political temperature of the times.
I would go out on a limb and say that during the second Clinton administration, art and politics were allowed to be a bit more theoretic. Questions of the commodification of counter culture, movements toward extending public space and the like were embraced and merged into a growing political movement that used the anti-globalization movement as its spine. Theoretical analysis and pragmatic political gestures merged haphazardly into an evolving platform of political process.
Life under Bush is quite different. The disappearance of a coordinated political movement has produced a painful lacuna in the political art scene. The theoretically minded politics of public space, ambiguity and visual culture have in large part retreated toward the academic sub sphere in lieu of a political movement to connect with. Would it be erroneous to place art and technology directly along this path? The radical action leftist magazines have moved back toward embracing a pragmatic politics that utilize typical forms of political resistance (eg. Move.On.org).
Without a pragmatic grassroots political movement to connect the dots of political action, aesthetic micro-resistances (such as most art and technology gambits) ultimately add up to gestures of aesthetic and identity posturing interpretable primarily through the lens of new media social capital. This is not to say the need for this form of politics has dried up, but that it lacks a necessary cohesive political community that brings the utilitarian, the ambiguous and the desirous into a unified sphere.
In the face of this, what is to be done? New movements emerge (such as the growth of the immigration movement) and an infrastructure of meaning (magazines, spaces, organizations, collectives, radio shows) needs to be produced to close the gap. An infrastructure must be produced that manages the tensions between the theoretical needs of ambiguity and skepticism with the pragmatics of didacticism and action. Without considering the manner in which our efforts work toward this end, new media efficacy runs parallel with the naivetÇ and convenient posturing that is the current landscape of identity under spectacle. These are perilous times and the most risky and beneficial thing we can do, is to build bridges. We must reconnect the dots and apply questions of spectacle, ambiguous new media interventions, and theory driven actions on the same platform as the pragmatic politics of grassroots politics. We must work toward getting back on the streets and challenging power head on. Without an accompanying pragmatic approach, new media drifts backward toward gadgetry, conventions, listservs, and geeky obscurity.
posted Aug 07, 2006 by Nato Thompson
The fact that radical actions flourished under Clinton but not under Bush is highly bizarre (if not somewhat amazing at the same time). Surely, one must consider the radical political landscape in the United States at this time and attempt to gain a handle on how best to organize radical political action.
Political action is an open-ended concept that for the sake of this discussion, we will break down into two particular modes. There are the classically produced leftist grassroots political actions that work in terms of lobbying, social organizing, banners, street protest, and muckraking journalisms. On the other hand, there are the more, how do you say, theoretical politics. That is to say, the politics of meaning that encompass our everyday experience, often informed by postmodern books, that don't particularly make it onto the front page of the New York Times nor Democracy Now for that matter. Public space, the politics of work, the disciplinary society, the commodification of counter culture, the spectacle, Agamben's camp, ambiguity as a form of meaning production and on and on. These are subjects often written about in lefty art magazines (such as Rhizome) but magically dropped in the left magazines like the Nation, Z Magazine, even Clamor.
There is clearly a divide in these two worlds. It is probably not a new one for many of us as it haunts new media in particular. To clarify the gap a little more: there is a form of political resistance that approach politics in what appears to be a straightforward didactic manner. The framework of analysis runs in conjunction with the tradition of street protest in the United States, Democracy Now is often playing on the radio, there is a mystical tally on the newest heinous action in Congress, lobby groups, the prison industry, and utility is often the guide post for political action. And then there are those that are at times somewhat more aloof. They can discuss the character of resistance available in taking a short cut home, they can discuss the Panopticon and the level of systemic biopower available in the military welfare state, they can critique the manner in which contemporary radical politics buy into the spectacle of counter culture, and utility is often considered a complicated riddle not easily solved. Now, you might chuckle or be angered by such a flagrant forced dichotomy and I realize there is movement between these two approaches. But surely the reader understands this divide. Yet, the ability to bridge the gap vacillates dramatically depending on the political temperature of the times.
I would go out on a limb and say that during the second Clinton administration, art and politics were allowed to be a bit more theoretic. Questions of the commodification of counter culture, movements toward extending public space and the like were embraced and merged into a growing political movement that used the anti-globalization movement as its spine. Theoretical analysis and pragmatic political gestures merged haphazardly into an evolving platform of political process.
Life under Bush is quite different. The disappearance of a coordinated political movement has produced a painful lacuna in the political art scene. The theoretically minded politics of public space, ambiguity and visual culture have in large part retreated toward the academic sub sphere in lieu of a political movement to connect with. Would it be erroneous to place art and technology directly along this path? The radical action leftist magazines have moved back toward embracing a pragmatic politics that utilize typical forms of political resistance (eg. Move.On.org).
Without a pragmatic grassroots political movement to connect the dots of political action, aesthetic micro-resistances (such as most art and technology gambits) ultimately add up to gestures of aesthetic and identity posturing interpretable primarily through the lens of new media social capital. This is not to say the need for this form of politics has dried up, but that it lacks a necessary cohesive political community that brings the utilitarian, the ambiguous and the desirous into a unified sphere.
In the face of this, what is to be done? New movements emerge (such as the growth of the immigration movement) and an infrastructure of meaning (magazines, spaces, organizations, collectives, radio shows) needs to be produced to close the gap. An infrastructure must be produced that manages the tensions between the theoretical needs of ambiguity and skepticism with the pragmatics of didacticism and action. Without considering the manner in which our efforts work toward this end, new media efficacy runs parallel with the naivetÇ and convenient posturing that is the current landscape of identity under spectacle. These are perilous times and the most risky and beneficial thing we can do, is to build bridges. We must reconnect the dots and apply questions of spectacle, ambiguous new media interventions, and theory driven actions on the same platform as the pragmatic politics of grassroots politics. We must work toward getting back on the streets and challenging power head on. Without an accompanying pragmatic approach, new media drifts backward toward gadgetry, conventions, listservs, and geeky obscurity.
6.20.2006
(chomsky)
...
Many indigenous people apparently do not see any reason why their lives, societies, and cultures should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in SUVs in traffic gridlock.
...
Though it is natural for doctrinal systems to seek to induce pessimism, hopelessness, and despair, reality is different. There has been substantial progress in the unending quest for justice and freedom in recent years, leaving a legacy that can be carried forward from a higher plane than before. Opportunities for education and organizing abound. As in the past, rights are not likely to be granted by benevolent authorities, or won by intermittent actions - attending a few demonstrations or pushing a lever in the personalized quadrennial extravaganzas that are depicted as "democratic politics." As always in the past, the tasks require dedicated day-by-day engagement to create - in part recreate - the basis for a functioning democratic culture in which the public plays some role in determining policies, not only in the political arena, from which it is largely excluded, but also in the crucial economic arena, from which it is excluded in principle. There are many ways to promote democracy at home, carrying it to new dimensions. Opportunities are ample, and failure to grasp them is likely to have ominous repercussions: for the country, for the world, and for future generations.
...
Many indigenous people apparently do not see any reason why their lives, societies, and cultures should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in SUVs in traffic gridlock.
...
Though it is natural for doctrinal systems to seek to induce pessimism, hopelessness, and despair, reality is different. There has been substantial progress in the unending quest for justice and freedom in recent years, leaving a legacy that can be carried forward from a higher plane than before. Opportunities for education and organizing abound. As in the past, rights are not likely to be granted by benevolent authorities, or won by intermittent actions - attending a few demonstrations or pushing a lever in the personalized quadrennial extravaganzas that are depicted as "democratic politics." As always in the past, the tasks require dedicated day-by-day engagement to create - in part recreate - the basis for a functioning democratic culture in which the public plays some role in determining policies, not only in the political arena, from which it is largely excluded, but also in the crucial economic arena, from which it is excluded in principle. There are many ways to promote democracy at home, carrying it to new dimensions. Opportunities are ample, and failure to grasp them is likely to have ominous repercussions: for the country, for the world, and for future generations.
5.22.2006
...
We can delete certain texts, erase entire scenes, tone down our “outrageous behavior,” and eventually, when we least expect it, we will have lost our voices and our souls. If we choose to comply over and over again, eventually a tiny crystal (our dignity?) will shatter inside our chests. We will carry the pain silently wherever we go, and it will worsen each time we face yet another warning or humiliating interrogation. One day we will wake to find we have become broken humans, without even realizing it.
We can delete certain texts, erase entire scenes, tone down our “outrageous behavior,” and eventually, when we least expect it, we will have lost our voices and our souls. If we choose to comply over and over again, eventually a tiny crystal (our dignity?) will shatter inside our chests. We will carry the pain silently wherever we go, and it will worsen each time we face yet another warning or humiliating interrogation. One day we will wake to find we have become broken humans, without even realizing it.
5.14.2006
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." The state of the world is always a jumble of opposing ideas, of uprisings and crackdowns, of wonder and horror. Fitzgerald's forgotten next sentence is, "One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."
5.02.2006
...
This society faces a far harder test than any external threat: that of its own absence, its loss of reality. Soon it will be defined solely by the foreign bodies that haunt its periphery: those it has expelled, but who are now ejecting it from itself. It is their violent interpellation that reveals what has been coming apart, and so offers the possibility for awareness. If French—if European—society were to succeed in ‘integrating’ them, it would in its own eyes cease to exist.
Yet French or European discrimination is only the micro-model of a worldwide divide which, under the ironical sign of globalization, is bringing two irreconcilable universes face to face. The same analysis can be reprised at global level. International terrorism is but a symptom of the split personality of a world power at odds with itself. As to finding a solution, the same delusion applies at every level, from the banlieues to the House of Islam: the fantasy that raising the rest of the world to Western living standards will settle matters. The fracture is far deeper than that. Even if the assembled Western powers really wanted to close it—which there is every reason to doubt—they could not. The very mechanisms of their own survival and superiority would prevent them; mechanisms which, through all the pious talk of universal values, serve only to reinforce Western power and so to foment the threat of a coalition of forces that dream of destroying it.
But France, or Europe, no longer has the initiative. It no longer controls events, as it did for centuries, but is at the mercy of a succession of unforeseeable blow-backs. Those who deplore the ideological bankruptcy of the West should recall that ‘God smiles at those he sees denouncing evils of which they are the cause’.
...
This society faces a far harder test than any external threat: that of its own absence, its loss of reality. Soon it will be defined solely by the foreign bodies that haunt its periphery: those it has expelled, but who are now ejecting it from itself. It is their violent interpellation that reveals what has been coming apart, and so offers the possibility for awareness. If French—if European—society were to succeed in ‘integrating’ them, it would in its own eyes cease to exist.
Yet French or European discrimination is only the micro-model of a worldwide divide which, under the ironical sign of globalization, is bringing two irreconcilable universes face to face. The same analysis can be reprised at global level. International terrorism is but a symptom of the split personality of a world power at odds with itself. As to finding a solution, the same delusion applies at every level, from the banlieues to the House of Islam: the fantasy that raising the rest of the world to Western living standards will settle matters. The fracture is far deeper than that. Even if the assembled Western powers really wanted to close it—which there is every reason to doubt—they could not. The very mechanisms of their own survival and superiority would prevent them; mechanisms which, through all the pious talk of universal values, serve only to reinforce Western power and so to foment the threat of a coalition of forces that dream of destroying it.
But France, or Europe, no longer has the initiative. It no longer controls events, as it did for centuries, but is at the mercy of a succession of unforeseeable blow-backs. Those who deplore the ideological bankruptcy of the West should recall that ‘God smiles at those he sees denouncing evils of which they are the cause’.
...
4.18.2006
[the best thing i've read in a long time. in addition to thoreau, the other best thing i've read in a long time.]
Network, Swarm, Microstructure
* To: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net
* Subject: Network, Swarm, Microstructure
* From: Brian Holmes
* Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 06:36:38 -0400
* Reply-to: Brian Holmes
...
a certain kind of complexity theory as a possible way to understand emergent behavior in the real world.
...
I am beginning to think that there are two fundamental factors that help to explain the consistency of self-organized human activity. The first is the existence of
a shared horizon - aesthetic, ethical, philosophical, and/or metaphysical - which is patiently and deliberately built up over time, and which gives the members of a group the capacity to recognize each other as existing within the same referential universe, even when they are dispersed and mobile. You can think of this as "making worlds." The second is the capacity for temporal coordination at a distance: the
exchange among a dispersed group of information, but also of affect, about unique events that are continuously unfolding in specific locations. This exchange of information and affect then becomes a set of constantly changing, constantly reinterpreted clues about how to act in the shared world. The flow aspect of the exchange means that the group is constantly evolving, and it is in this sense that it is an "ecology," a set of complex and changing inter-relations; but this dynamic ecology has consistency and durability, it becomes recognizable and distinctive within the larger evironment of the earth and its populations, because of the shared horizon that links the participants together in what appears as a world (or indeed as a cosmos, when metaphysical or religious beliefs are at work).
...
the art of composing mutable worlds, where the goal of the participants is to carry out continuous transformation of the very parameters and coordinates on which their interactions are based (this is also understood as 3rd-order cybernetics, where the system produces not just new information, but new categories of information).
...
Of course, different individuals are involved each time, different groups, differences of philosophy and mode of action; but a shared horizon makes all those differences also recognizable as somehow belonging together. This is the complexity of self-organization.
...
serious attempts were underway to "overcode" and stabilize the dangerously mobile relational forms that had been unleashed by the generalization of the market and its
weak ties.
On the one hand there is an attempt to enforce the rules of the neoliberal world market by military force, and thus to complete an Imperial project which has now shown itself to be clearly Anglo-American in origin and in aims. This attempt is most clear in the book "The Pentagon's New Map" by Thomas Barnett, where he explains that the goal of American military policy must be to identify the "gaps" in the world network of finance and trade, and to "close the gap," by force if necessary. The thesis (on which the Iraq invasion was partially based) is that only a continuous
extension of the world market and of its deterritorializing technologies can bring peace and prosperity, rooting out the atavistic religious beliefs on which terrorism feeds, and in the process, rationalizing the access to the resources that the capitalist world system needs to go on producing "growth for everyone."
On the other hand, however, what we see in response to this extension of the world are market are regressions to sovereignist or neofascist forms of nationalism, and perhaps more significantly, attempts to configure great continental economic blocs where the instability and relative chaos of market relations could be submitted to some institutional control. These attempts can also be conceived as "counter-movements" in Karl Polanyi's sense: responses to the atomization of societies and the destruction of institutions brought about by the unfettered operations of a supposedly self-regulating market. They can be listed: NAFTA itself; the European Union, which has created its own currency; ASEAN+3, which represents East Asia's so-far abortive attempt to put together a stabilized monetary bloc offering protection from the financial crises continuously unleashed by neoliberalism; the Venezuelan project of "ALBA," which is raising the issue of possible industrial cooperation programs for a left-leaning Latin America; and
of course, the "New Caliphate" in the Middle East, which is being proposed by Al-Qaeda and the other Salafi jihad movements....
I think that in years to come, everyone will increasingly have to take a position with respect both to the Imperial project of a world market, and to the regressive
nationalisms and the more complex processes of bloc formation. All these things are contradictory with each other and their contradictions are at the source of the
conflicts in the world today. In this respect, Guattari's perception, at the close of the 1980s in "Cartographies schizoanalytiques," has proved prophetic:
"From time immemorial, and in all its historical guises, the capitalist drive has always combined two fundamental components: the first, which I call deterritorialization, has to do with the destruction of social territories, collective identities, and systems of traditional values; the second, which I call the movement of reterritorialization, has to do with the recomposition, even by the most artificial means, of individuated frameworks of personhood, structures of power, and models of submission which are, if not formally similar to those the drive has
destroyed, at least homothetical from a functional perspective. As the deterritorializing revolutions, tied to the development of science, technology, and the arts, sweep everything aside before them, a compulsion toward subjective
reterritorialization also emerges. And this antagonism is heightened even more with the phenomenal growth of the communications and computer fields, to the point where the latter concentrate their deterritorializing effects on such human faculties as memory, perception, understanding, imagination, etc. In this way, a certain formula of anthropological functioning, a certain ancestral model of humanity, is expropriated at its very heart. And I think that it is as a result of an incapacity to adequately confront this phenomenal mutation that collective subjectivity has abandoned itself to the absurd wave of conservatism that we are presently witnessing."
The question that complexity theory allows us to ask is this: How do we organize ourselves for a viable response to the double violence of capitalist deterritorialization and the nationalist or identitarian reterritorialization to
which it inevitably gives rise? It must be understood that this dilemna does not take the form of Christianity versus Islam, America versus the Middle East, Bush versus Bin Laden. Rather it arises at the "very heart" of the modern project, where human potential is "expropriated." Since September 11. the USA - and tendentially, the entire so-called "Western world" - has at once exacerbated the abstract, hyperindividualizing dynamics of capitalist globalization, and at the same time, has reinvented the most archaic figures of identitarian power (Guantanamo, fortress
Europe, the dichotomy of sovereign majesty and bare life). Guattari speaks of a capitalist "drive" to deterritorialization, and of a "compulsion" to reterritorialization. What this means is that neither polarity is inherently positive or negative; rather, both are twisted into the violent and oppressive forms that we
now see developing at such a terrifying and depressing pace. The ultimate effect is to render the promise of a world without borders strange, cold and even murderous, while at the same time precipitating a crisis, decay and regression of national institutions, which appear increasingly incapable of contributing to equality or the respect for difference.
So the question that arises is whether one can consciously participate in the improvisational, assymetrical and partially chaotic force of global microstructures, making use of their relative autonomy from institutional norms as a way to influence a more positive reterritorialization, a more healthy and dynamic equilibrium, a better coexistence with the movement of technological development and global
unification? The question is not farfetched, it is not a mere intellectual abstraction. Knorr Cetina's strong point is that global unification cannot occur through institutional process, because it is too complex to be managed in that way; instead, the leading edge is taken by lighter, faster, less predictable microstructures. Clearly, nothing guarantees that these are going to be beneficent.
The forms that they will take remain open, they depend on the people who invent them. In his recent book, Lazzarato writes:
"The activist is not someone who becomes the brains of the movement, who sums up its force, anticipates its choices, draws his or her legitimacy from a capacity to read and interepret the evolution of power, but instead, the activist is simply someone who introduces a discontinuity in what exists. She creates a bifurcation in the flow of words, of desires, of images, to put them at the service of the multiplicity's power of articulation; she links the singular situations together, without placing herself at a superior and totalizing point of view. She is an experimenter."
The close of the book makes clear, however, that what should be sought is not just a joyous escape into the unpredictable. The point of this experimentation is to find
articulations [agencements, which might also be translated as microstructures] that can oppose the literally death-dealing powers of the present society, and offer
alternatives in their place. My guess is that in most cases, this can happen not at the local level of withdrawal (though that may be fertile), nor at the level of national institutions and debates (though these will be essential for holding off the worst), but most likely at the regional or continental level, particularly where the core economies overflow into their peripheries and vice-versa. This is the level where the most important policy is now being made, the level at which the major economic circuits are functioning and at which massive social injustice and ecological damage is happening all the time. What's really lacking are all kinds of border-crossing experiments, ways to subvert the macrostructures of inclusion/exclusion and to redraw the maps of coexistence. Ultimately, new kinds of institutions and new ways of relating to institutions will be needed, if there is to be any hope of stabilizing things and surviving the vast transition now underway. But we're not there yet, and it doesn't seem likely that any upcoming election will start the process.
* To: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net
* Subject:
* From: Brian Holmes
* Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 06:36:38 -0400
* Reply-to: Brian Holmes
...
a certain kind of complexity theory as a possible way to understand emergent behavior in the real world.
...
I am beginning to think that there are two fundamental factors that help to explain the consistency of self-organized human activity. The first is the existence of
a shared horizon - aesthetic, ethical, philosophical, and/or metaphysical - which is patiently and deliberately built up over time, and which gives the members of a group the capacity to recognize each other as existing within the same referential universe, even when they are dispersed and mobile. You can think of this as "making worlds." The second is the capacity for temporal coordination at a distance: the
exchange among a dispersed group of information, but also of affect, about unique events that are continuously unfolding in specific locations. This exchange of information and affect then becomes a set of constantly changing, constantly reinterpreted clues about how to act in the shared world. The flow aspect of the exchange means that the group is constantly evolving, and it is in this sense that it is an "ecology," a set of complex and changing inter-relations; but this dynamic ecology has consistency and durability, it becomes recognizable and distinctive within the larger evironment of the earth and its populations, because of the shared horizon that links the participants together in what appears as a world (or indeed as a cosmos, when metaphysical or religious beliefs are at work).
...
the art of composing mutable worlds, where the goal of the participants is to carry out continuous transformation of the very parameters and coordinates on which their interactions are based (this is also understood as 3rd-order cybernetics, where the system produces not just new information, but new categories of information).
...
Of course, different individuals are involved each time, different groups, differences of philosophy and mode of action; but a shared horizon makes all those differences also recognizable as somehow belonging together. This is the complexity of self-organization.
...
serious attempts were underway to "overcode" and stabilize the dangerously mobile relational forms that had been unleashed by the generalization of the market and its
weak ties.
On the one hand there is an attempt to enforce the rules of the neoliberal world market by military force, and thus to complete an Imperial project which has now shown itself to be clearly Anglo-American in origin and in aims. This attempt is most clear in the book "The Pentagon's New Map" by Thomas Barnett, where he explains that the goal of American military policy must be to identify the "gaps" in the world network of finance and trade, and to "close the gap," by force if necessary. The thesis (on which the Iraq invasion was partially based) is that only a continuous
extension of the world market and of its deterritorializing technologies can bring peace and prosperity, rooting out the atavistic religious beliefs on which terrorism feeds, and in the process, rationalizing the access to the resources that the capitalist world system needs to go on producing "growth for everyone."
On the other hand, however, what we see in response to this extension of the world are market are regressions to sovereignist or neofascist forms of nationalism, and perhaps more significantly, attempts to configure great continental economic blocs where the instability and relative chaos of market relations could be submitted to some institutional control. These attempts can also be conceived as "counter-movements" in Karl Polanyi's sense: responses to the atomization of societies and the destruction of institutions brought about by the unfettered operations of a supposedly self-regulating market. They can be listed: NAFTA itself; the European Union, which has created its own currency; ASEAN+3, which represents East Asia's so-far abortive attempt to put together a stabilized monetary bloc offering protection from the financial crises continuously unleashed by neoliberalism; the Venezuelan project of "ALBA," which is raising the issue of possible industrial cooperation programs for a left-leaning Latin America; and
of course, the "New Caliphate" in the Middle East, which is being proposed by Al-Qaeda and the other Salafi jihad movements....
I think that in years to come, everyone will increasingly have to take a position with respect both to the Imperial project of a world market, and to the regressive
nationalisms and the more complex processes of bloc formation. All these things are contradictory with each other and their contradictions are at the source of the
conflicts in the world today. In this respect, Guattari's perception, at the close of the 1980s in "Cartographies schizoanalytiques," has proved prophetic:
"From time immemorial, and in all its historical guises, the capitalist drive has always combined two fundamental components: the first, which I call deterritorialization, has to do with the destruction of social territories, collective identities, and systems of traditional values; the second, which I call the movement of reterritorialization, has to do with the recomposition, even by the most artificial means, of individuated frameworks of personhood, structures of power, and models of submission which are, if not formally similar to those the drive has
destroyed, at least homothetical from a functional perspective. As the deterritorializing revolutions, tied to the development of science, technology, and the arts, sweep everything aside before them, a compulsion toward subjective
reterritorialization also emerges. And this antagonism is heightened even more with the phenomenal growth of the communications and computer fields, to the point where the latter concentrate their deterritorializing effects on such human faculties as memory, perception, understanding, imagination, etc. In this way, a certain formula of anthropological functioning, a certain ancestral model of humanity, is expropriated at its very heart. And I think that it is as a result of an incapacity to adequately confront this phenomenal mutation that collective subjectivity has abandoned itself to the absurd wave of conservatism that we are presently witnessing."
The question that complexity theory allows us to ask is this: How do we organize ourselves for a viable response to the double violence of capitalist deterritorialization and the nationalist or identitarian reterritorialization to
which it inevitably gives rise? It must be understood that this dilemna does not take the form of Christianity versus Islam, America versus the Middle East, Bush versus Bin Laden. Rather it arises at the "very heart" of the modern project, where human potential is "expropriated." Since September 11. the USA - and tendentially, the entire so-called "Western world" - has at once exacerbated the abstract, hyperindividualizing dynamics of capitalist globalization, and at the same time, has reinvented the most archaic figures of identitarian power (Guantanamo, fortress
Europe, the dichotomy of sovereign majesty and bare life). Guattari speaks of a capitalist "drive" to deterritorialization, and of a "compulsion" to reterritorialization. What this means is that neither polarity is inherently positive or negative; rather, both are twisted into the violent and oppressive forms that we
now see developing at such a terrifying and depressing pace. The ultimate effect is to render the promise of a world without borders strange, cold and even murderous, while at the same time precipitating a crisis, decay and regression of national institutions, which appear increasingly incapable of contributing to equality or the respect for difference.
So the question that arises is whether one can consciously participate in the improvisational, assymetrical and partially chaotic force of global microstructures, making use of their relative autonomy from institutional norms as a way to influence a more positive reterritorialization, a more healthy and dynamic equilibrium, a better coexistence with the movement of technological development and global
unification? The question is not farfetched, it is not a mere intellectual abstraction. Knorr Cetina's strong point is that global unification cannot occur through institutional process, because it is too complex to be managed in that way; instead, the leading edge is taken by lighter, faster, less predictable microstructures. Clearly, nothing guarantees that these are going to be beneficent.
The forms that they will take remain open, they depend on the people who invent them. In his recent book, Lazzarato writes:
"The activist is not someone who becomes the brains of the movement, who sums up its force, anticipates its choices, draws his or her legitimacy from a capacity to read and interepret the evolution of power, but instead, the activist is simply someone who introduces a discontinuity in what exists. She creates a bifurcation in the flow of words, of desires, of images, to put them at the service of the multiplicity's power of articulation; she links the singular situations together, without placing herself at a superior and totalizing point of view. She is an experimenter."
The close of the book makes clear, however, that what should be sought is not just a joyous escape into the unpredictable. The point of this experimentation is to find
articulations [agencements, which might also be translated as microstructures] that can oppose the literally death-dealing powers of the present society, and offer
alternatives in their place. My guess is that in most cases, this can happen not at the local level of withdrawal (though that may be fertile), nor at the level of national institutions and debates (though these will be essential for holding off the worst), but most likely at the regional or continental level, particularly where the core economies overflow into their peripheries and vice-versa. This is the level where the most important policy is now being made, the level at which the major economic circuits are functioning and at which massive social injustice and ecological damage is happening all the time. What's really lacking are all kinds of border-crossing experiments, ways to subvert the macrostructures of inclusion/exclusion and to redraw the maps of coexistence. Ultimately, new kinds of institutions and new ways of relating to institutions will be needed, if there is to be any hope of stabilizing things and surviving the vast transition now underway. But we're not there yet, and it doesn't seem likely that any upcoming election will start the process.
3.29.2006
Judge Barker ruled that “teachers ... do not have a right under the First Amendment to express their opinions with their students during the instructional period.”
3.20.2006
...
It’s Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an “oligopoly”—a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there’s less oil, not more of it. So, every time the “insurgents” blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just LOVE it.
Dick and George didn’t want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.
No so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick’s ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 – compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it’s been a good war for Big Oil.
...
It’s Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an “oligopoly”—a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there’s less oil, not more of it. So, every time the “insurgents” blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just LOVE it.
Dick and George didn’t want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.
No so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick’s ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 – compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it’s been a good war for Big Oil.
...
3.02.2006
(in case you were wondering, massachusetts state law stipulates that:)
For the purposes of this section, a Flesch scale readability score shall be measured as hereinafter provided:
(1) For policy forms containing ten thousand words or less of text, the entire form shall be analyzed. For policy forms containing more than ten thousand words, the readability of two two hundred word samples per page may be analyzed in lieu of the entire form. The samples shall be separated by at least twenty printed lines.
(2) (a) (i) The number of words and sentences in the text shall be counted and the total number of words divided by the total number of sentences. The figure obtained shall be multiplied by a factor of 1.015.
(ii) The total number of syllables shall be counted and divided by the total number of words. The figure obtained shall be multiplied by a factor of 84.6.
(iii) The sum of the figures computed under subclause (i) and subclause (ii) subtracted from 206.835 equals the Flesch scale readability score for the policy form.
(b) For the purposes of clause (a) the following procedures shall be used:
(i) A contraction, hyphenated word, or numbers and letters, when separated by spaces, shall be counted as one word;
(ii) A unit of words ending with a period, semicolon, or colon, but excluding headings and captions shall be counted as a sentence; and
(iii) A syllable means a unit of spoken language consisting of one or more letters of a word as divided by an accepted dictionary. Where the dictionary shows two or more equally acceptable pronunciations of a word, the pronunciation containing fewer syllables may be used.
Every policy form filed with the commissioner under this section shall be accompanied by a certificate stating the Flesch scale readability score achieved by such form.
For the purposes of this section, a Flesch scale readability score shall be measured as hereinafter provided:
(1) For policy forms containing ten thousand words or less of text, the entire form shall be analyzed. For policy forms containing more than ten thousand words, the readability of two two hundred word samples per page may be analyzed in lieu of the entire form. The samples shall be separated by at least twenty printed lines.
(2) (a) (i) The number of words and sentences in the text shall be counted and the total number of words divided by the total number of sentences. The figure obtained shall be multiplied by a factor of 1.015.
(ii) The total number of syllables shall be counted and divided by the total number of words. The figure obtained shall be multiplied by a factor of 84.6.
(iii) The sum of the figures computed under subclause (i) and subclause (ii) subtracted from 206.835 equals the Flesch scale readability score for the policy form.
(b) For the purposes of clause (a) the following procedures shall be used:
(i) A contraction, hyphenated word, or numbers and letters, when separated by spaces, shall be counted as one word;
(ii) A unit of words ending with a period, semicolon, or colon, but excluding headings and captions shall be counted as a sentence; and
(iii) A syllable means a unit of spoken language consisting of one or more letters of a word as divided by an accepted dictionary. Where the dictionary shows two or more equally acceptable pronunciations of a word, the pronunciation containing fewer syllables may be used.
Every policy form filed with the commissioner under this section shall be accompanied by a certificate stating the Flesch scale readability score achieved by such form.
2.11.2006
A renowned Hungarian theatre director with terminal cancer is to lie in state for a week while still alive so he can experience his own funeral.
...
"I'm curious how a funeral looks from the other side," Halasz told BBC World Service's Outlook programme. "I want to take a look at my friends and listen to the eulogies, and the final farewell. "The event itself is very simple, but the outcome will I guess be interesting, because people are rarely confronted with the situation - that there is another angle to look at this gathering, at themselves, and at me."
...
...
"I'm curious how a funeral looks from the other side," Halasz told BBC World Service's Outlook programme. "I want to take a look at my friends and listen to the eulogies, and the final farewell. "The event itself is very simple, but the outcome will I guess be interesting, because people are rarely confronted with the situation - that there is another angle to look at this gathering, at themselves, and at me."
...
11.21.2005
11.01.2005
I say forget about New Orleans and build a new city, in a new American place, maybe in Iraq, where at least the imbecility is out in the open and not hidden in the barrio waiting for a hurricane to uncover it. Now that would be honest. Infinite casinos in the desert - we specialize in that, no?
10.26.2005
Let us not be disconsolate over the increasing control of the court system by the right wing.
The courts have never been on the side of justice, only moving a few degrees one way or the other, unless pushed by the people. Those words engraved in the marble of the Supreme Court, "Equal Justice Before the Law," have always been a sham.
No Supreme Court, liberal or conservative, will stop the war in Iraq, or redistribute the wealth of this country, or establish free medical care for every human being. Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of the past suggests, on the actions of an aroused citizenry, demanding that the promise of the Declaration of Independence-an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness-be fulfilled.
10.20.2005
...the case that I saw for 4 plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations, [inaudible], changes to the national security [inaudible] process. What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense and [inaudible] on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
And then when the bureaucracy was presented with those decisions and carried them out, it was presented in such a disjointed incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn’t know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.
...Under Secretary of Defense Douglas [inaudible], whom most of you probably know Tommy Frank said was stupidest blankety blank man in the world. He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.
And yet, and yet, after the Secretary of State agrees to a $400 billion department, rather than a $30 billion department, having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere. That’s not making excuses for the State Department.
That’s telling you how decisions were made and telling you how things got accomplished....
And then when the bureaucracy was presented with those decisions and carried them out, it was presented in such a disjointed incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn’t know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.
...Under Secretary of Defense Douglas [inaudible], whom most of you probably know Tommy Frank said was stupidest blankety blank man in the world. He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.
And yet, and yet, after the Secretary of State agrees to a $400 billion department, rather than a $30 billion department, having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere. That’s not making excuses for the State Department.
That’s telling you how decisions were made and telling you how things got accomplished....
10.15.2005
(via nettime)
http://suicidegirls.com/members/RealSuicideGirl/
A bit about me written by Mika Minio-Paluello:
Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old lawyer from Jenin, blew herself up in the Haifa
Maxim restaurant in early October, killing 21, including four children. Her
younger brother Fedi was executed by an Israeli undercover unit in front of her,
despite her trying to protect him. On June 12th, three days before Fadi's wedding,
the family was in the courtyard of the house. Salah Jaradat, Fadi's cousin and a
member of Islamic Jihad, came to visit his pregnant wife, Ismath, and their
two-year-old son, who were living with the family.
(more...)
MEMBER SINCE: October 2005
AGE: 30 (Sep 22, 1975)
LOCATION: Palestine
HOMETOWN: Jenin
SIGN: I've seen it.
OCCUPATION: Law, until that proved insufficient.
STATS: Don't commodify people.
BODY MODS: A few.
FAVORITE BANDS: Chrissy Hynde.
FAVORITE FILMS: Battle of Algiers.
FAVORITE BOOKS: The Qur'an, The Bible, Give Me Liberty: The
Uncompromising Statesmanship of Patrick Henry
FAVORITE TV SHOWS: Xena the Warrior Princess.
VICES: Deadly revenge.
CURRENT CRUSH: Mordechai Vanunu.
INTO: Fighting oppression.
MOST HUMBLING MOMENT: You have to ask?
5 ITEMS I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT: I only wanted two: My brother and justice.
MAKES ME HAPPY: Family. The Act of Sacrifice.
MAKES ME SAD: Israeli colonial aggression. Your imperialist government.
Your lying media. Your passivity. The need for sacrifice.
GETS ME HOT: You have a very crude culture, the way you talk of such things.
I LOST MY VIRGINITY: Not.
FAVORITE SEXUAL POSITION: My mother – who I actually talk about these
things with – tells me she really enjoys something I can hardly wait to
try – oh, no, I guess I'll have to…
FANTASY: For you to understand.
CURRENT THOUGHTS ON SG: I hate it
WEBSITE: http://www.aztlan.net/women_martyrs.htm
http://suicidegirls.com/members/RealSuicideGirl/
A bit about me written by Mika Minio-Paluello:
Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old lawyer from Jenin, blew herself up in the Haifa
Maxim restaurant in early October, killing 21, including four children. Her
younger brother Fedi was executed by an Israeli undercover unit in front of her,
despite her trying to protect him. On June 12th, three days before Fadi's wedding,
the family was in the courtyard of the house. Salah Jaradat, Fadi's cousin and a
member of Islamic Jihad, came to visit his pregnant wife, Ismath, and their
two-year-old son, who were living with the family.
(more...)
MEMBER SINCE: October 2005
AGE: 30 (Sep 22, 1975)
LOCATION: Palestine
HOMETOWN: Jenin
SIGN: I've seen it.
OCCUPATION: Law, until that proved insufficient.
STATS: Don't commodify people.
BODY MODS: A few.
FAVORITE BANDS: Chrissy Hynde.
FAVORITE FILMS: Battle of Algiers.
FAVORITE BOOKS: The Qur'an, The Bible, Give Me Liberty: The
Uncompromising Statesmanship of Patrick Henry
FAVORITE TV SHOWS: Xena the Warrior Princess.
VICES: Deadly revenge.
CURRENT CRUSH: Mordechai Vanunu.
INTO: Fighting oppression.
MOST HUMBLING MOMENT: You have to ask?
5 ITEMS I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT: I only wanted two: My brother and justice.
MAKES ME HAPPY: Family. The Act of Sacrifice.
MAKES ME SAD: Israeli colonial aggression. Your imperialist government.
Your lying media. Your passivity. The need for sacrifice.
GETS ME HOT: You have a very crude culture, the way you talk of such things.
I LOST MY VIRGINITY: Not.
FAVORITE SEXUAL POSITION: My mother – who I actually talk about these
things with – tells me she really enjoys something I can hardly wait to
try – oh, no, I guess I'll have to…
FANTASY: For you to understand.
CURRENT THOUGHTS ON SG: I hate it
WEBSITE: http://www.aztlan.net/women_martyrs.htm
10.14.2005
(rather beautiful, i think. anyone else getting this kind of spam? a collection from the past few weeks)
automat see ammonia try petrifaction in capistrano be mosaic ! algorithmic or gregory try attack the stool on checkerberry it cedric not bullhead or duke and bankruptcy not mint some reinstate may vice some conflagrate on cell , alsop on cycad be haphazard a locomotive may moss it moose , corrugate be discussion it's chunky be equatorial on layup be lawbreaking it intelligible on hemorrhoid a despond some conley , coronado try. Not, go here
martini it metabolite it andrei a angeles but roustabout in betony in resignation in anxiety , dreamboat and progress may conspire on offsetting a khan the reptile see petrify in forsake it grizzly not monkeyflower ! choral it algonquin some selves it elmsford see lew not anastasia be coequal some bankrupt in ethnic a purgative not bridal on chimera and ammonia be cliffhang ! began or kickback be amalgam or tycoon !. Not, go here
(and then the monkeys made a breakthrough in concision, they have never gone back...)
! maine be consonant it folly a hostelry try bluefish try hulk see isochronal and redemption may delouse may romantic ! curran or putt it eat may futile Or maybe not
in athlete it's rococo but bourbon or exigent a suction ! crutch see psychophysiology be cocky the equipoise it ditto try committing ! standpoint not coma in betsy Or maybe not
, diffract but chelate a decant it's demagnify some cdc it gallstone not diaper not name see mcnulty some systematic and candlestick and deluge the transmitting a samba Or maybe not
in provocation a gain may flourish the thrift but riboflavin it's conduct a cradle in facilitate be needn't it's zen may orphan , celandine be clink be sober Or maybe not
on polaroid it's embedder on cit the colander not io some shaven may pitman ! kenyon it's gunky in dingy try madhouse be assimilate be argentina not nanette Or maybe not
automat see ammonia try petrifaction in capistrano be mosaic ! algorithmic or gregory try attack the stool on checkerberry it cedric not bullhead or duke and bankruptcy not mint some reinstate may vice some conflagrate on cell , alsop on cycad be haphazard a locomotive may moss it moose , corrugate be discussion it's chunky be equatorial on layup be lawbreaking it intelligible on hemorrhoid a despond some conley , coronado try. Not, go here
martini it metabolite it andrei a angeles but roustabout in betony in resignation in anxiety , dreamboat and progress may conspire on offsetting a khan the reptile see petrify in forsake it grizzly not monkeyflower ! choral it algonquin some selves it elmsford see lew not anastasia be coequal some bankrupt in ethnic a purgative not bridal on chimera and ammonia be cliffhang ! began or kickback be amalgam or tycoon !. Not, go here
(and then the monkeys made a breakthrough in concision, they have never gone back...)
! maine be consonant it folly a hostelry try bluefish try hulk see isochronal and redemption may delouse may romantic ! curran or putt it eat may futile Or maybe not
in athlete it's rococo but bourbon or exigent a suction ! crutch see psychophysiology be cocky the equipoise it ditto try committing ! standpoint not coma in betsy Or maybe not
, diffract but chelate a decant it's demagnify some cdc it gallstone not diaper not name see mcnulty some systematic and candlestick and deluge the transmitting a samba Or maybe not
in provocation a gain may flourish the thrift but riboflavin it's conduct a cradle in facilitate be needn't it's zen may orphan , celandine be clink be sober Or maybe not
on polaroid it's embedder on cit the colander not io some shaven may pitman ! kenyon it's gunky in dingy try madhouse be assimilate be argentina not nanette Or maybe not
(from greg, old - but timeless - news from cnnnn.) 'we'll make a big glass crater out of the fucking middle east, for all i care.' brilliant.
10.12.2005
A clock with no hands - that's my kind of thing.
-agnes varda
(next entry in directory of all things wonderful. varda's les glaneurs et la glaneuse.)
-agnes varda
(next entry in directory of all things wonderful. varda's les glaneurs et la glaneuse.)
10.10.2005
DC Festival Opens with 10,000 despite Rains
Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005 Posted: 11:30:05AM EST
WASHINGTON – Some 10,000 people pulled out their raincoats and umbrellas Saturday to attend the opening day of the much-anticipated DC Festival on the wet grounds of Washington, D.C.’s National Mall....
Saying he did not know why God brought down rain on the festival day, Palau told the crowd that God "makes no mistakes" and that "Jesus is alive today and ... here at the mall." (oh no, wait, that's just some hippie - the war protests were last weekend, dude)...
In between the musical acts, Palau preached the good news and invited the thousands to make their life more than a mist that only exists for a moment....
"You and I will have a party that will never end," said Palau.
Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005 Posted: 11:30:05AM EST
WASHINGTON – Some 10,000 people pulled out their raincoats and umbrellas Saturday to attend the opening day of the much-anticipated DC Festival on the wet grounds of Washington, D.C.’s National Mall....
Saying he did not know why God brought down rain on the festival day, Palau told the crowd that God "makes no mistakes" and that "Jesus is alive today and ... here at the mall." (oh no, wait, that's just some hippie - the war protests were last weekend, dude)...
In between the musical acts, Palau preached the good news and invited the thousands to make their life more than a mist that only exists for a moment....
"You and I will have a party that will never end," said Palau.
