181141 Acres USA article (2000) by David Yarrow ---------------- 180791 Gold mining in Rumania planned ----------------- -------------- 181519 THE VALUE OF PARANOIA the guardian on 9/11 ------------ working for change on countering a right wing gathering (hope they ain't settin up for a pc cycle (culminatin in pol assasination) like we just had in Holland ---------- -- LBO bits ------------------xxx------------------ 181141 paste from my favorite magazine http://www.acresusa.com/ toolbox/reprints/rockdust_apr00.pdf Mineral Restoration & Utah Rock Dust by David Yarrow April 2000 Reprinted from April 2000 - Vol. 30, No. 4 - Page 14 by David Yarrow ike so many young people, Jared Milarch was in a hurry. At age 13, Jared began transplanting native sugar maple seedlings out of his family´s woodlands in northwest lower Michigan. Thinking ahead, Jared planned to sell them as street trees to pay for his col-lege education. Watching this investment in his future creep skyward, Jared wondered how to speed these trees up grow taller fast-er. "I got impatient because the trees weren´t growing fast enough," Jared ad-mitted. About this time, Jared read Secrets of the Soil by Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins. One chapter described a fer-tilizer that stimulated plants to remark-able vigor. This "miracle" plant food is a powdered pink clay from central Utah named Azomite, an acronym: A-to-Z Of Minerals, Including Trace Elements. It also goes by the name montmorillonite ore. I asked Jared what Azomite is. "Ground up sea floor bed from Utah mines," he replied. "They grind it up tal-cum- powder fine. I guess it´s easier for plants to digest then." "And for the microbes, too," added his father. "Because plants don´t really take up nutrients in their root hairs, but from dead and living bodies of microorgan-isms that ingest the minerals." Azomite is, in fact, a unique mineral deposit with special biological charac-ter. In ancient geologic times, central Utah was an inland sea. Water washing off then-young Rocky Mountains was rich in minerals, and, over eons, this body of water evaporated and shrunk, until today only the Great Salt Lake and Great Salt Desert remain. Bacteria living in this inland sea ate the minerals, then excreted them in oxi-dized, hydrated and blended forms. The microbial manure accumulated on the sea L floor. This sediment has an abundance of over 60 elements, not just three or four, or a dozen. "I didn´t have a lot of money, so I kept bugging my dad to order a few bags," re-membered Jared. "He reluctantly gave in. When the bags arrived, I sprinkled two tomato soup cans around each baby tree." After 100 trees, his bags were empty, so his other 400 saplings got none. The next spring, Jared watched his unfertilized trees grow 12 inches. But the Azomite-treated trees grew fully 3 feet in one spring spurt! In Jared´s years working in his fam-ily´s shade tree business, this was un-precedented beyond imagination. "The results were just amazing!" en-thused Jared. But even more, treated trees grew not only taller, but better healthier. Treat- ed trees had darker color. "Leaf tatter was minimal," explained Jared. "Caliper [diameter] of their trunks was up, too." Impressed by these results, Jared bought more to sprinkle around all his trees. In the family garden, too, where the effect was similar bigger, stron-ger plants, with one further benefit. "The taste of the vegetables is dramatically different," reported Jared. "It´s a great taste!" His father David a third-generation nurser-yman in this remote cor-ner of northwest Michi-gan took notice of Jared´s fertilizer results. In 1996, David decided he had seen enough financial gains on his tree farm, and read enough evidence, to become an Azomite distributor. "After the Gazette article about Jared´s discovery, we got more and more Budding Michigan Farmer Shares Discovery of Rock Powder Potency Mineral Restoration & Utah Rock Dust Kirk Waterstripe, left, and Jared Milarch monitor tomato plants at the Northwestern Michigan College greenhouse. I asked Jared what Azomite is. "Ground up sea floor bed from Utah mines," he replied. "They grind it up tal-cum- powder fine. I guess it´s easier for plants to digest then." "And for the microbes, too," added his father. "Because plants don´t really take up nutrients in their root hairs, but from dead and living bodies of microorgan-isms that ingest the minerals." Azomite is, in fact, a unique mineral deposit with special biological charac-ter. In ancient geologic times, central Utah was an inland sea. Water washing L floor. This sediment has an abundance of over 60 elements, not just three or four, or a dozen. "I didn´t have a lot of money, so I kept bugging my dad to order a few bags," re-membered Jared. "He reluctantly gave in. When the bags arrived, I sprinkled two tomato soup cans around each baby tree." After 100 trees, his bags were empty, so his other 400 saplings got none. The next spring, Jared watched his unfertilized trees grow 12 inches. But the Azomite-ed trees had darker color. "Leaf tatter was minimal," explained Jared. "Caliper [diameter] of their trunks was up, too." Impressed by these results, Jared bought more to sprinkle around all his trees. In the family garden, too, where the effect was similar bigger, stron-ger plants, with one further benefit. "The taste of the vegetables is dramatically different," reported Jared. "It´s a great taste!" His father David a third-generation nurser-yman Budding Michigan Farmer Shares Discovery of Rock Powder Potency Mineral Restoration & Utah Rock Dust Kirk Waterstripe, left, and Jared Milarch monitor tomato plants at the Northwestern Michigan College greenhouse. ------------------ ------------------------ http://www.indymedia.org/ front.php3?article_id=180791 The biggest ecological disaster in the history of Europe has been given green light by Rosia Montana 2002-05-17 11:59:15.910823-07 The Romanian government and the Canadian company ´Gold Corporation´ are willing to extract 300 tons of gold by turning into dust five mountains and leaving in place a lake of 700 ha. full with cyanide water. 150 tons of dynamite will be detonated daily, 250 000 millions tons of mineral will be displaced. Collateral human damages already happening. 180789 One item (//emperors-clothes.com in this case) in the rash n flood of them lateley (almost all of the may 17th ones), trying to prove the ´US´ secretives staged the goddamn spire spoliation --- a commenter (on the Reichstag fire) goes: The only people who believe the Nazis started it themselves are diehard Stalinists. But if you try and take that position among historians, you´ll be laughed out of the room. I know it´s good for conspiracy theorists but it is not the truth. Once again, this does not discount the fact the Nazis used it to their advantage. They may have even "looked the other way." But they did not start the fire. http://www.championtrees.org/oldgrowth/index.htm http://www.indymedia.org/ front.php3?article_id=180669 China´s ban on websites lifted http://www.motherandkids.com I wonder if this is a safe place for mothers to fess up they used the argument of ´aving kids to ´get closer to the fathers´ as a cover up for the fact they couldn´t be near or close to them very well in the first place .. and thus, shouldn´t have allowed themselves to unless they were on their way back to an extended family situation they couldn´t manage to bring the father along to .. .and even then I´d have serious objections to mother instincts overriding the need for amputated parenting. =========== oops 20.05.2002 09:56 amputated (in the last sentence) should be: non-amputated and that goes for special cases only (cause an extended family makes up for an absent bioparent easily); not for instance for the little girl that manages to bully daddy and goes on to keep on bullying her way to head whore and such. overigens valt de levensvatbaarheid van die goud delf plannen ook wel tegen natuurlijk --------------------------- 181519 THE VALUE OF PARANOIA (english) John Sutherland 10:51pm Mon May 20 '02 address: Guardian UK article#181519 President Bush might have ridden the September 11 conspiracy theories - but he's not out of the woods yet The value of paranoia http://www.guardian.co.uk/ bush/story/0,7369,718622,00.html President Bush might have ridden the September 11 conspiracy theories - but he's not out of the woods yet John Sutherland Monday May 20, 2002 The Guardian Last week was almost as bad for the president of the United States as for the American Catholic church. Leak after leak from "informed" sources of the "what did the big cheese know and when did he know it?" kind finally forced Bush, last Friday, to interrupt his cosy schmooze with air-cadets in the Rose Garden. A minor photo-op occasion became a desperate damage-limitation exercise. "Had I known - fateful day - hunt them down one by one." He looked bad. The Los Angeles Times frankly compared him to Nixon. "I am not a coverer-up." Were those pants on fire one could smell, or the smoking gun memos? Not roses for sure. It was a good day for investigative journalism, which had patiently exhumed the killer evidence. The White House was, demonstrably, warned ahead of time and did nothing. Above all, Bush's discomfiture was a tribute to the value of paranoia. Sometimes, craziness pays off - although rarely in the way the crazies expect. What had kept the heat on and finally brought this issue to the boil was a long series of conspiracy theories. Preposterous as they were they had one thing in common: they all insisted - in their lunatic way - that there was more to the September outrage than met the eye. Someone, somewhere, was hiding something. The key moment in the long unravelling occurred three weeks ago. On a radio show congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (Democrat, Georgia) dragged into the open air an allegation that had been festering in the depths of the internet for the previous six months. -----------------------  supremacist rally set for Memorial Day weekend When most people think of Branson, Missouri (if they consider it at all), they think entertainment — good old-fashioned, down-home entertainment. Attending a performance at one of the theaters in town is like being transported back in time. And while most of the acts lighting up the stages in Branson aren't that popular anymore, the town draws lots of tourists and the entertainers have a loyal following. Last Memorial Day, Branson drew an unwanted group of guests: Pete Peters and his Scriptures for America. No, that's not the name of a contemporary Christian band — Pete Peters is a white supremacist and a major figure within the "Christian Identity" movement. This year, Peters hopes to draw hundreds of men, women and children to Branson for another white supremacist confab. The Chicago, IL-based Center for New Community, along with dozens of Missouri religious leaders, hopes to keep him out of town. Branson is a city built on feel-good Americana — country-western and other lively diversions dominate the town's commerce. Located in the Ozark Mountains, Branson was founded in 1903 by men who were "planning an industrial center in the Ozarks that would generate trainload after trainload of logs, lumber, and manufactured products... [providing] steady income for area residents," according to the book In The Heart of Ozark Mountain Country. The entertainment industry took years to develop and today the outpost is defined by tourism and its nearly "wall-to-wall" music halls. The dozens of theaters in Branson bear colorful names like the Moon River Theatre (where you can catch Glen Campbell and Andy Williams on the same bill in early summer), the sounds-of-the-70s Ain't Misbehavin' Theatre, and Bobby Vinton's Blue Velvet Theatre featuring the crooner himself. You won't find marquees advertising hipster favorites like Smashmouth or Me'Shell Ndegeocello here. But Peters' second "Big Branson Memorial Day Weekend Rally," featuring three days of hate-filled 'Christian Identity' theology and worship, won't be quite so entertaining. According to the Center for New Community (CNC), which tracks the activities of hate groups in the Midwest, Peters' appearance "is significant because he feels that he can mobilize a... number of believers and establish a permanent base of bigotry for the region." Followers of "Christian Identity" have been linked to violent incidents including attacks on an L.A-area Jewish community center and Sacramento synagogue, and the separate killings of a Filipino postal worker and a gay couple. One of the rally's scheduled speakers is Charles Weisman, regular speaker on the Identity and Christian Patriot circuit. The Minnesota-based Identity preacher specializes in "fiery sermons" on race and "the Jewish question." The Memorial Day event is scheduled to be held at the Clarion Hotel and Conference Center which, it reports to the CNC, "apparently knew nothing of Peters and Identity." This is possible because TeamPeters often uses other aliases to book venues. Last year Branson's Chateau on the Lake hotel cancelled his gathering when they learned "who he is and what he stands for." In fact, over the past few years, no fewer than five Midwest hotels and retreat centers have canceled Peters or told him not to return. What is "Christian Identity?" And what do Pete Peters and his Scriptures for America stand for? According to the CNC reports, Peters talks of a "Scriptural Understanding of the Race Issue" and "claims the Bible calls for the execution of gays and lesbians." Christian Identity (also known as "Israel Identity," "Christian Israel" or "Racial Identity) teaches that "European whites and their American descendants are the Biblical 'chosen people,' while Jews are the literal descendants of Satan and that people of color are subhuman. It is the theological glue that binds together neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan devotees, militia members into the contemporary white supremacist movement." Charles Weisman openly expresses his hatred of Jews, preaching that genocide against Jews is biblically warranted and that their extermination is impending. In his 1991 book, Who is Esau-Edom?, he writes: "The Jews cry 'never again' in reference to the Holocaust story, but the fact is that it has not yet happened. This destruction will happen to the Jews and at the hand of Israel, the white race... [T]he white race, will someday kill off the entire house (family line) of Esau, which includes the Edomite Jews." Religious and civic leaders in Missouri are asking people to call the Clarion Hotel in Branson at its toll free number, 1-800-725-2236, and share with them their thoughts about them hosting the Peters bash. The ad-hoc coalition requests you "Urge them to do everything they can to move the event out of their facility or, at minimum, to take a public stand denouncing it." Resources: Center for New Community, PO Box 346066, Chicago, IL 60634 (708) 848-0319, (708) 848-0327, www.newcomm.org Pete Peters and Scriptures for America Worldwide, PO Box 766, LaPorte, Colorado 80535 (307)745-5913 www.identity.org Charles Weisman, Weisman Publications, 11751 W. River Hills Dr. #107, Burnsville, Minn. 55337 www.seek-info.org Branson-USA Online www.branson.com/branson/ -------------------- 181611 Who are the Global Terrorists? (english) Noam Chomsky 1:42pm Tue May 21 '02 article#181611 In a new essay, Chomsky continues to lay out the hypocrises in our current and past "wars against terrorism." After the atrocities of 11 September, the victim declared a "war on terrorism," targeting not just the suspected perpetrators, but the country in which they were located, and others charged with terrorism worldwide. President Bush pledged to "rid the world of evildoers" and "not let evil stand," echoing Ronald Reagan's denunciation of the "evil scourge of terrorism" in 1985 -- specifically, state-supported international terrorism, which had been declared to be the core issue of US foreign policy as his administration came into office.[1] The focal points of the first war on terror were the Middle East and Central America, where Honduras was the major base for US operations. The military component of the re-declared war is led by Donald Rumsfeld, who served as Reagan's special representative to the Middle East; the diplomatic efforts at the UN by John Negroponte, Reagan's Ambassador to Honduras. Planning is largely in the hands of other leading figures of the Reagan-Bush (I) administrations. The condemnations of terrorism are sound, but leave some questions unanswered. The first is: What do we mean by "terrorism"? Second: What is the proper response to the crime? Whatever the answer, it must at least satisfy a moral truism: If we propose some principle that is to be applied to antagonists, then we must agree -- in fact, strenuously insist -- that the principle apply to us as well. Those who do not rise even to this minimal level of integrity plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of right and wrong, good and evil. The problem of definition is held to be vexing and complex. There are, however, proposals that seem straightforward, for example, in US Army manuals, which define terrorism as "the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear."[2] That definition carries additional authority because of the timing: it was offered as the Reagan administration was intensifying its war on terrorism. The world has changed little enough so that these recent precedents should be instructive, even apart from the continuity of leadership from the first war on terrorism to its recent reincarnation. The first war received strong endorsement. The UN General Assembly condemned international terrorism two months after Reagan's denunciation, again in much stronger and more explicit terms in 1987.[3] Support was not unanimous, however. The 1987 resolution passed 153-2, Honduras abstaining. Explaining their negative vote, the US and Israel identified the fatal flaw: the statement that "nothing in the present resolution could in any way prejudice the right to self-determination, freedom, and independence, as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, of people forcibly deprived of that right..., particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and foreign occupation..." That was understood to apply to the struggle of the African National Congress against the Apartheid regime of South Africa (a US ally, while the ANC was officially labelled a "terrorist organization"); and to the Israeli military occupation, then in its 20th year, sustained by US military and diplomatic support in virtual international isolation. Presumably because of US opposition, the UN resolution against terrorism was ignored.[4] Reagan's 1985 condemnation referred specifically to terrorism in the Middle East, selected as the lead story of 1985 in an AP poll. But for Secretary of State George Shultz, the administration moderate, the most "alarming" manifestation of "state-sponsored terrorism," a plague spread by "depraved opponents of civilization itself" in "a return to barbarism in the modern age," was frighteningly close to home. There is "a cancer, right here in our land mass," Shultz informed Congress, threatening to conquer the hemisphere in a "revolution without borders," a interesting fabrication exposed at once but regularly reiterated with appropriate shudders.[5] So severe was the threat that on Law Day (1 May) 1985, the President announced an embargo "in response to the emergency situation created by the Nicaraguan Government's aggressive activities in Central America." He also declared a national emergency, renewed annually, because "the policies and actions of the Government of Nicaragua constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States." "The terrorists -- and the other states that aid and abet them -- serve as grim reminders that democracy is fragile and needs to be guarded with vigilance," Shultz warned. We must "cut [the Nicaraguan cancer] out," and not by gentle means: "Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table," Shultz declared, condemning those who advocate "utopian, legalistic means like outside mediation, the United Nations, and the World Court, while ignoring the power element of the equation." The US was exercising "the power element of the equation" with mercenary forces based in Honduras, under Negroponte's supervision, and successfully blocking the "utopian, legalistic means" pursued by the World Court and the Latin American Contadora nations -- as Washington continued to do until its terrorist wars were won.[6] Reagan's condemnation of the "evil scourge" was issued at a meeting in Washington with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who arrived to join in the call to extirpate the evil shortly after he had sent his bombers to attack Tunis, killing 75 people with smart bombs that tore them to shreds among other atrocities recorded by the prominent Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk on the scene. Washington cooperated by failing to warn its ally Tunisia that the bombers were on the way. Shultz informed Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir that Washington "had considerable sympathy for the Israeli action," but drew back when the Security Council unanimously denounced the bombing as an "act of armed aggression" (US abstaining).[7] A second candidate for most extreme act of Mideast international terrorism in the peak year of 1985 is a car-bombing in Beirut on March 8 that killed 80 people and wounded 256. The bomb was placed outside a Mosque, timed to explode when worshippers left. "About 250 girls and women in flowing black chadors, pouring out of Friday prayers at the Imam Rida Mosque, took the brunt of the blast," Nora Boustany reported. The bomb also "burned babies in their beds," killed children "as they walked home from the mosque," and "devastated the main street of the densely populated" West Beirut suburb. The target was a Shi'ite leader accused of complicity in terrorism, but he escaped. The crime was organized by the CIA and its Saudi clients with the assistance of British intelligence.[8] The only other competitor for the prize is the "Iron Fist" operations that Peres directed in March in occupied Lebanon, reaching new depths of "calculated brutality and arbitrary murder," a Western diplomat familiar with the area observed, as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shelled villages, carted off the male population, killed dozens of villagers in addition to many massacred by the IDF's paramilitary associates, shelled hospitals and took patients away for "interrogation," along with numerous other atrocities.[9] The IDF high command described the targets as "terrorist villagers." The operations against them must continue, the military correspondent of the Jerusalem Post (Hirsh Goodman) added, because the IDF must "maintain order and security" in occupied Lebanon despite "the price the inhabitants will have to pay." Like Israel's invasion of Lebanon 3 years earlier, leaving some 18,000 killed, these actions and others in Lebanon were not undertaken in self-defense but rather for political ends, as recognized at once in Israel. The same was true, almost entirely, of those that followed, up to Peres's murderous invasion of 1996. But all relied crucially on US military and diplomatic support. Accordingly, they too do not enter the annals of international terrorism. In brief, there was nothing odd about the proclamations of the leading co-conspirators in Mideast international terrorism, which therefore passed without comment at the peak moment of horror at the "return to barbarism." The well-remembered prize-winner for 1985 is the hijacking of the Achille Lauro and brutal murder of a passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, doubtless a vile terrrorist act, and surely not justified by the claim that it was in retaliation for the far worse Tunis atrocities and a pre-emptive effort to deter others. Adopting moral truisms, the same holds of our own acts of retaliation or pre-emption. Evidently, we have to qualify the definition of "terrorism" given in official sources: the term applies only to terrorism against us, not the terrorism we carry out against them. The practice is conventional, even among the most extreme mass murderers: the Nazis were protecting the population from terrorist partisans directed from abroad, while the Japanese were laboring selflessly to create an "earthly paradise" as they fought off the "Chinese bandits" terrorizing the peaceful people of Manchuria and their legitimate government. Exceptions would be hard to find. The same convention applies to the war to exterminate the Nicaraguan cancer. On Law Day 1984, President Reagan proclaimed that without law there can be only "chaos and disorder." The day before, he had announced that the US would disregard the proceedings of the International Court of Justice, which went on to condemn his administration for its "unlawful use of force," ordering it to terminate these international terrorist crimes and pay substantial reparations to Nicaragua (June 1986). The Court decision was dismissed with contempt, as was a subsequent Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law (vetoed by the US) and repeated General Assembly resolutions (US and Israel opposed, in one case joined by El Salvador). As the Court decision was announced, Congress substantially increased funding for the mercenary forces engaged in "the unlawful use of force." Shortly after, the US command directed them to attack "soft targets" -- undefended civilian targets -- and to avoid combat with the Nicaraguan army, as they could do, thanks to US control of the skies and the sophisticated communication equipment provided to the terrorist forces. The tactic was considered reasonable by prominent commentators as long as it satisfied "the test of cost-benefit analysis," an analysis of "the amount of blood and misery that will be poured in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge at the other end" -- "democracy" as Western elites understand the term, an interpretation illustrated graphically in the region.[10] State Department Legal Advisor Abraham Sofaer explained why the US was entitled to reject ICJ jurisdiction. In earlier years, most members of the UN "were aligned with the United States and shared its views regarding world order." But since decolonization a "majority often opposes the United States on important international questions." Accordingly, we must "reserve to ourselves the power to determine" how we will act and which matters fall "essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States, as determined by the United States" -- in this case, the terrorist acts against Nicaragua condemned by the Court and the Security Council. For similar reasons, since the 1960s the US has been far in the lead in vetoing Security Council resolutions on a wide range of issues, Britain second, France a distant third.[11] Washington waged its "war on terrorism" by creating an international terror network of unprecedented scale, and employing it worldwide, with lethal and long-lasting effects. In Central America, terror guided and supported by the US reached its most extreme levels in countries where the state security forces themselves were the immediate agents of international terrorism. The effects were reviewed in a 1994 conference organized by Salvadoran Jesuits, whose experiences had been particularly gruesome.[12] The conference report takes particular note of the effects of the residual "culture of terror...in domesticating the expectations of the majority vis-a-vis alternatives different to those of the powerful," an important observation on the efficacy of state terror that generalizes broadly. In Latin America, the 11 September atrocities were harshly condemned, but commonly with the observation that they are nothing new. They may be described as "Armageddon," the research journal of the Jesuit university in Managua observed, but Nicaragua has "lived its own Armageddon in excruciating slow motion" under US assault "and is now submerged in its dismal aftermath," and others fared far worse under the vast plague of state terror that swept through the continent from the early 1960s, much of it traceable to Washington.[13] It is hardly surprising that Washington's call for support in its war of revenge for 11 Sept. had little resonance in Latin America. An international Gallup poll found that support for military force rather than extradition ranged from 2% (Mexico) to 11% (Venezuela and Colombia). Condemnations of the 11 Sept. terror were regularly accompanied by recollections of their own suffering, for example, the death of perhaps thousands of poor people (Western crimes, therefore unexamined) when George Bush I bombed the barrio Chorillo in Panama in December 1989 in Operation Just Cause, undertaken to kidnap a disobedient thug who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Florida for crimes mostly committed while he was on the CIA payroll.[14] The record continues to the present without essential change, apart from modification of pretexts and tactics. The list of leading recipients of US arms yields ample evidence, familiar to those acquainted with international human rights reports. It therefore comes as no surprise that President Bush informed Afghans that bombing will continue until they hand over people the US suspects of terrorism (rebuffing requests for evidence and tentative offers of negotiation). Or, when new war aims were added after three weeks of bombing, that Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the British Defense Staff, warned Afghans that US-UK attacks will continue "until the people of the country themselves recognize that this is going to go on until they get the leadership changed."[15] In other words, the US and UK will persist in "the calculated use of violence to attain goals that are political... in nature...": international terrorism in the technical sense, but excluded from the canon by the standard convention. The rationale is essentially that of the US-Israel international terrorist operations in Lebanon. Admiral Boyce is virtually repeating the words of the eminent Israeli statesman Abba Eban, as Reagan declared the first war on terrorism. Replying to Prime Minister Menachem Begin's account of atrocities in Lebanon committed under the Labor government in the style "of regimes which neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare to mention by name," Eban acknowledged the accuracy of the account, but added the standard justification: "there was a rational prospect, ultimately fulfilled, that affected populations would exert pressure for the cessation of hostilities."[16] These concepts are conventional, as is the resort to terrorism when deemed appropriate. Furthermore, its success is openly celebrated. The devastation caused by US terror operations in Nicaragua was described quite frankly, leaving Americans "United in Joy" at their successful outcome, the press proclaimed. The massacre of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians in 1965, mostly landless peasants, was greeted with unconstrained euphoria, along with praise for Washington for concealing its own critical role, which might have embarrassed the "Indonesian moderates" who had cleansed their society in a "staggering mass slaughter" (New York Times) that the CIA compared to the crimes of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao.[17] There are many other examples. One might wonder why Osama bin Laden's disgraceful exultation over the atrocities of 11 Sept. occasioned indignant surprise. But that would be an error, based on failure to distinguish their terror, which is evil, from ours, which is noble, the operative principle throughout history. If we keep to official definitions, it is a serious error to describe terrorism as the weapon of the weak. Like most weapons, it is wielded to far greater effect by the strong. But then it is not terror; rather, "counterterror," or "low intensity warfare," or "self-defense"; and if successful, "rational" and "pragmatic," and an occasion to be "united in joy." Let us turn to the question of proper response to the crime, bearing in mind the governing moral truism. If, for example, Admiral Boyce's dictum is legitimate, then victims of Western state terrorism are entitled to act accordingly. That conclusion is, properly, regarded as outrageous. Therefore the principle is outrageous when applied to official enemies, even more so when we recognize that the actions were undertaken with the expectation that they would place huge numbers of people at grave risk. No knowledgeable authority seriously questioned the UN estimate that "7.5 million Afghans will need food over the winter -- 2.5 million more than on Sept. 11,"[18] a 50% increase as a result of the threat of bombing, then the actuality, with a toll that will never be investigated if history is any guide. A different proposal, put forth by the Vatican among others, was spelled out by military historian Michael Howard: "a police operation conducted under the auspices of the United Nations...against a criminal conspiracy whose members should be hunted down and brought before an international court, where they would receive a fair trial and, if found guilty, be awarded an appropriate sentence."[19] Though never contemplated, the proposal seems reasonable. If so, then it would be reasonable if applied to Western state terrorism, something that could also never be contemplated, though for opposite reasons. The war in Afghanistan has commonly been described as a "just war," indeed evidently so. There have been some attempts to frame a concept of "just war" that might support the judgment. We may therefore ask how these proposals fare when evaluated in terms of the same moral truism. I have yet to see one that does not instantly collapse: application of the proposed concept to Western state terrorism would be considered unthinkable, if not despicable. For example, we might ask how the proposals would apply to the one case that is uncontroversial in the light of the judgments of the highest international authorities, Washington's war against Nicaragua; uncontroversial, that is, among those who have some commitment to international law and treaty obligations. It is an instructive experiment. Similar questions arise in connection with other aspects of the wars on terrorism. There has been debate over whether the US-UK war in Afghanistan was authorized by ambiguous Security Council resolutions, but it is beside the point. The US surely could have obtained clear and unambiguous authorization, not for attractive reasons (consider why Russia and China eagerly joined the coalition, hardly obscure). But that course was rejected, presumably because it would suggest that there is some higher authority to which the US should defer, a condition that a state with overwhelming power is not likely to accept. There is even a name for that stance in the literature of diplomacy and international relations: establishing "credibility," a standard official justification for the resort to violence, the bombing of Serbia, to mention a recent example. The refusal to consider negotiated transfer of the suspected perpetrators presumably had the same grounds. The moral truism applies to such matters as well. The US refuses to extradite terrorists even when their guilt has been well established. One current case involves Emmanuel Constant, the leader of the Haitian paramilitary forces that were responsible for thousands of brutal killings in the early 1990s under the military junta, which Washington officially opposed but tacitly supported, publicly undermining the OAS embargo and secretly authorizing oil shipments. Constant was sentenced in absentia by a Haitian court. The elected government has repeatedly called on the US to extradite him, again on September 30, 2001, while Taliban initiatives to negotiate transfer of bin Laden were being dismissed with contempt. Haiti's request was again ignored, probably because of concerns about what Constant might reveal about ties to the US government during the period of the terror. Do we therefore conclude that Haiti has the right to use force to compel his extradition, following as best it can Washington's model in Afghanistan? The very idea is outrageous, yielding another prima facie violation of the moral truism. It is all too easy to add illustrations.[20] Consider Cuba, probably the main target of international terrorism since 1959, remarkable in scale and character, some of it exposed in declassified documents on Kennedy's Operation Mongoose and continuing to the late 1990s. Cold War pretexts were ritually offered as long as that was possible, but internally the story was the one commonly unearthed on inquiry. It was recounted in secret by Arthur Schlesinger, reporting the conclusions of JFK's Latin American mission to the incoming President: the Cuban threat is "the spread of the Castro idea of taking matters into one's own hands," which might stimulate the "poor and underprivileged" in other countries, who "are now demanding opportunities for a decent living" -- the "virus" or "rotten apple" effect, as it is called in high places The Cold War connection was that "the Soviet Union hovers in the wings, flourishing large development loans and presenting itself as the model for achieving modernization in a single generation.â€�[21] True, these exploits of international terrorism -- which were quite serious -- are excluded by the standard convention. But suppose we keep to the official definition. In accord with the theories of "just war" and proper response, how has Cuba been entitled to react? It is fair enough to denounce international terrorism as a plague spread by "depraved opponents of civilization itself." The commitment to "drive the evil from the world" can even be taken seriously, if it satisfies moral truisms -- not, it would seem, an entirely unreasonable thought. Reprinted from Ken Booth and Tim Dunne eds., Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order (Palgrave/Macmillan) (UK, May 2002; US, September 2002). - - - Notes: 1 New York Times, Oct. 18, 1985 2 US Army Operational Concept for Terrorism Counteraction (TRADOC Pamphlet No. 525-37), 1984. 3 GA Res. 40/61, 9 Dec. 1985; Res. 42/159, 7 Dec. 1987. 4 See my Necessary Illusions (Boston: South End, 1989), chap. 4; my essay in Alex George, ed., Western State Terrorism (Cambridge: Polity/Blackwell, 1991). 5 Shultz, "Terrorism: The Challenge to the Democracies," June 24, 1984 (State Dept. Current Policy No. 589; "Terrorism and the Modern World," Oct. 25, 1984 (State Department Current Policy No. 629; Shultz's congressional testimony, 1986, 1983, the former part of a major campaign to gain more funding for the contras; see Jack Spence and Eldon Kenworthy in Thomas Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas (Boulder, London: Westview, 1987). 6 Shultz, "Moral Principles and Strategic Interests," April 14, 1986 (State Department, Current Policy No. 820). 7 NYT, Oct. 17, 18; Kapeliouk, Yediot Ahronot, Nov. 15, 1985. Foreknowledge, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 3; Geoffrey Jansen, Middle East International, Oct 11, 1985. Bernard Gwertzman, NYT, Oct. 2, 7, 1985. 8 Boustany, Washington Post Weekly, March 14, 1988; Bob Woodward, Veil (Simon & Schuster, 1987, 396f. 9 Guardian, March 6, 1985. For details and sources, see my "Middle East Terrorism and the American Ideological System," in Pirates and Emperors (New York: Claremont 1986; Montreal: Black Rose, 1988), reprinted in Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, eds., Blaming the Victims (London: Verso, 1988). 10 For details, see my Culture of Terrorism (Boston: South End, 1988), 77f. 11 Sofaer, The United States and the World Court (State Dept. Current Policy 769), Dec. 1985. 12 Juan Hernandez Pico, Env¡o (Universidad Centroamericana, Managua), March 1994. 13 Env¡o, Oct. 2001. For a judicious review of the aftermath, see Thomas Walker and Ariel Armony, eds., Repression, Resistance, and Democratic Transition in Central America (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000). 14Env¡o, Oct. 2001; Panamanian journalist Ricardo Stevens, NACLA Report on the Americas, Nov/Dec 2001. 15 Patrick Tyler and Elisabeth Bumiller, NYT, Oct. 12; Michael Gordon, NYT, Oct. 28, 2001; both p. 1. 16 Jerusalem Post, Aug. 16, 1981. 17 For extensive review, see my Necessary Illusions and Deterring Democracy (London: Verso, 1991) (Nicaragua); Year 501 (Boston: South End, 1993) (Indonesia). 18 Elisabeth Bumiller and Elizabeth Becker, NYT, Oct. 17, 2001.} 19 Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2002; talk of Oct. 30. See Tania Branigan, Guardian, Oct. 31, 2001. 20 For a sample, see George, op. cit.. Exceptions are rare, and the reactions they elicit are not without interest. 21 FRUS, 1961-63, vol. XII, American Republics, 13f., 33. www.zmag.org/content/ForeignPolicy/choms... -------- -------------------Michael Pugliese (lbo): Hmm, Um, is,"Fellow, " a sexist term? Time to call a wimmin or womyn, like my premature feminist Mom... Born in '61, growing up in the 'burbs of Washington, D.C.during the Vietnam War(watching nightly on the NBC Hnter-Brinkley network news, I asked my folks sometime around 7 yrs. or so, "Why Are We Killing Children in Vietnam?" I wasn't allowed to watch the news for a while after that.I was a kid that paid close attn. to politics, When Humphrey lost to Nixon in '68, I remember walkiong to 2nd grade being bummed out.I watched the coverage of Attica and Wounded Knee on the Today show, before I went to school.My Mom and I went to one of the huge Mobe's against the War in '71. I still have photos I took of hippie waving a National Liberation Front flag from the steps of the U.S. Capitol. We moved to California in '74. Moved into the house in Oxnard, the day after Nixon resigned. Growing tension in my Parents marriage, and already bookish bent, with my accelerating radicalization fueled by listening to Pacifica Radio and meeting Iranian and South African student radicals at CSUN, going to NAM meetings led by Dorothy Healey, ex-cade of the CPUSA, and monthly jaunsts to a great newsstand in Hollywood where I baught, Monthly Review, Marxist Perspectives, Dissent, Telos, Socialist Revolution and the Review of Radical Political Economics (and like Woody Allen, porn, except mine was stuff like Blueboy, heh.)Two best memories of my CSUN days, were a rally against the draft I helped to organize that had a large crowd. Some speakers were, my mentor there, the radical Jesuit kicked out of Guatemala in '66, Blase Bonpane and Phyllis Bennis. And, when the U.S. Army recruiters came on campus with a goddamn tank and within minutes there was a crowd of hundreds of us chanting and doing street theater to get them off campus. Which happened after a few hours. Transfered to USCs, in early 80, after my Mom seemed over the worst of the beginning stages of the divorse from my Dad, long in coming.Joined NAM and DSOC and went to CISPES meetings, walked precincts to elect a majority leftist city council in Santa Cruz. First representive anecdote I can tell of a bitter intra-leftist squabble that illustrates my underlying theme in this post is this. After reading a brilliant piece in Dissent, by Gabriel Zaid, translated from the Mexican journal edited by Octavio Paz, on the murder of communist poet, Roque Dalton, (accusing, spurreously of being a CIA agent) by futute FMLN guerilla leader, Joaquin Villalobos, and arguing over this with other CISPES members, gave me some personal experiernce of leftist intellectuals rationalizations for what Comrade Khruschev in '56 called, "violationas of socialist legality, " The UCSC library was lucky to have the fill set of the 100 volume approximately, Greenwood Press reprint series, "Radical Periodicals in the U.S." Everything from the Debsian ere, Socialist Party and Emma Goldman's, , "Mother Earth," Dwight Macdonald's, "Politics, " (C.Wright Mills idea was to call it, "No!."), "New Foundations, " the Stalinst YCL monthly edited by Robert Fogel (who gained notoriety later for his cliometric study of slavery.), Monthly Review back to 1949, dissident libertarian communist journals like, "The New International Eeview, ' from the 30's and, "Living Marxism, " edited by Paul Mattick, Sr. Delving deep into the Stalinist journals of the 30's like the New Masses, microfilm of the Daily #orker at the Hoover Institute, buying yellowed copies of discussion bulletins of the SWP, Workers Party and the Sparts (callng, John's brother, Shane! "Shane, we need you!" His polemic against Herbert Aptheker's Stalinist hack job on the Hungarian revolution of '56 in The American Socialist, edited by ex-Trotskyist Bert Cochran, is great I think the Young Sparticus portion of the MIA has the discussion bulletin version of the same polemic.) Reading (and meeting over the yrs.) way too many autobiographies of ex- Communists (most of whom retained left committments) like the following authors, Al Richmond, Dorothy Healey, Junius Scales, Joseph Starobin, John Gates and histories of the communist movement like the two volumes by Spanish communist, Fernando Claudin, and more narrowly focused works like, "Radical Paraxes:Dilemmas of the American Left, " by Peter Clecak (focuses on Paul Sweezy, Paul Baran, Marcuse and Mills, before moving on to New Left praxis.Heh, haven't typed that word in yrs.)Studies of the Old Left intelligentsia like, "Radical Visions and American Dreams, " by Richard Pells and Alan wald on the NY intellectuals, as well as bios and critiques of Lukacs by Michael Lowy (Lukacs: from Revolutionary Romanticism to Bolshevism." and Paul Breines and Andrew Arato, "The Young Lukacs and the Origins of Western Marxism, " as well as aquaintances with Illinois CPUSA leader and Lincoln Brigader, William, "Bill, " Sennett, deppened my anti-Stalinist leftism, as well as friendships with Trotskyists of the non-Sparticist persuasion. (Though I love reading, Workers Vanguard.) Time to cut this off, I need some caffeine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, for those in the 20's who might wonder why a lefty that seems to harp too much on the gaps in political knowledge (esp. left history) that too many current radicals exhibit and who think folks like me and Nathan

are soft on the crimes of U.S. Imperialism, well, I say (defensively ;-( , been there, done that, know way too much about CIA counter-revolutionary bloodbaths from Indonesia to Chile. Time for those that have a one sided focus on the USG to get up to speed on things like this. The Iran-Iraq war of the 80's and slughter of the Kurds. History of Bosnia and Kosovo. The former Soviet Union and the GPCR in the PRC. Nope, I'm not saying anyone here (except for Charles, Casrrol and sadly Yoshie, harbors desires to throw any of us into a GULAG[ which will never hapeen again anywhere, thank gawd. Leninism is dead, never to retrn, buried in '89-91.] But, there needs to be more hard strategic AND ethical/moral reflection on the AmeriKKKan (I can never resist ironic digs at leftist cant.) Left, if we are ever again to appeal to the majority in the belly of the beast, that so badly needs leadership to move beyond a decaying, decadent, overripe for radical change polity and kultur. Michael Pugliese -------------------------- Intellectual Property Regimes and Indigenous Sovereignty I realize that pursuing social justice for indigenous peoples and protecting their culture are urgent tasks that require funding. But what are we to make of efforts in that direction that begin by questioning not only the universality of the open source movement, but also the effectiveness of legal regimes based on deliberative democracy and human rights? Which seek to redefine the common cultural heritage of humanity -- language, art, music, mythology -- as racial property which may circulate only as the subject of monetized revenue streams? And which cite as intellectual authority the "political philosopher Carl Schmitt", an ardent Nazi who until 1936 was the undisputed legal architect of the Third Reich? [2,3] Kermit Snelson ========== oh gosh Kermit, you've outed me as a neoliberal, a racist, a nazi who adovocates an elite culture that seeks to restrict access to what you see as humanity's so-called "common cultural heritage" . Gotta say, that last part sounds like a typical line from some wacko proto-nationalist tract if ever. Or something old humanists blurt out, mantra like, never quite getting the hypocritical ring it has with nationalism, or any other movement that seeks to reduce difference to the same. Common-cultural heritage??!! Bullshit!! Whose got it?! We're talking about radically different cultural systems here that, try as any good assimilationist might, simply will not fit into the white container. This said, the signifiers of this difference can be acknowledged within the realm of IP law to the benefit of indigeneous peoples rather than add more lining to the fluffy crevices of corporations and individuals who seek to rip off indigenous cultural knowledge and heritage. I'm pleased you looked into indigenous IP issues a bit more. Certainly IP covers more than the manufacture of boomerangs and didgeridoos - a nicely ignorant, if not racist, reduction of yours to be sure. As my paper points out, it also includes 'cultural heritage and its mediatisation, ecological and biological knowledge'. This was part of the sentence that appeared just before the first quote you lift from my paper - you seemto have missed it, even after 2 reads. The diversity of indigenous IP could - and should - be elaborated further with case studies. That would be a longer paper though, and to be honest, would involve more research that I have currently done. I perhaps could have stated more forcefully that I am not advocating that indigenous people give up on the pursuit of human rights issues within an international frame. That would be foolish. Rather, I'm suggesting that a 2-pronged approach be taken: maintain pressure within the realm of international human rights law, and also pursue IP rights. Personally, I think the Aboriginal polity will hold more success in pursuit of the later. It's naive to assume that just because international courts of law exist to deal with human rights abuse that they are then effective. As my paper states repeatedly (which of course does not make it fact, though I think the evidence is there), the supranational legitimation of human rights violations has, for the most part, failed to articulate with the national form, in the case of Australia. I am reading this as representative of a failure of rational consensus models of democracy. My reading of rational consensus democracy is informed by Mouffe here. The open source movement is, I think , in need of the sort of critique I begin to table. In particular, it should not, in my opinion, be assumed to hold universal application. As nice as it sounds, not all culture should be open. Nor is it. In times of crisis, some culture needs to be protected. And culture is not open, irrespective of open source principles, precisely because individuals and communities hold varying, and often inalienable degrees of cultural capital. I have argued, perhaps not as clearly as I might have, that IP rights hold the potential for indigenous people to bring claims for self-determination to the table within the national form. Open source movements, as far as I can tell, are predominantly against IP. (More subtle obervers like Lessig recognise that IP is here to stay, has been around for a long time, is intrinsic to capitalism, and the battle against overly restrictive IP law is best fought by seeking to have a balance between public access and economic interests.) As my paper states - to my knowledge, I have never heard open source advocates address the problematic of cultural capital. To be really crude and reductive (ie, kinda stupid): open source movements assume all white boys have fast computers, modem/network access, and the cultural knowledge and desire to participate in network, informational societies. If you can giv e me a lesson on why open source movements have universal application, I'd be more than keen to hear it. Now, regarding Schmitt. Sure, it was always going to be a dodgy move to haul out a quote from Schmitt without contextualisation. (A blunder that typifies much academic work these days, for a host of cultural, institutional and political economic reasons.) I'm using Schmitt in the spirit of Mouffe and others who see him as an adversary to think with, to rub ideas against and see what happens. Maybe this is dangerous, but I think there is a form of fascism that goes by the name closing one's eyes/mouth to all things horrible. Heidegger is another obvious case in point: we should never ever invoke his name or ideas because of his flirtation with national socialism. So the thought police say. Well, I'd suggest there can be useful and productive things that emerge from encounters with those who've had a date with the limits of thought and practice. regards Ned ======= Your first post, Ned, led me to pose only a few worried questions. Not until your second was I led, with sadness, to draw certain conclusions. Consider, for instance, this gem of "clash of civilizations" rhetoric that, except for the vulgarity and overt racialism, could have come straight from Sam Huntington himself: > "Common-cultural heritage"??!! Bullshit!! Whose got it?! > We're talking about radically different cultural systems > here that, try as any good assimilationist might, simply > will not fit into the white container. Yikes. And this: > To be really crude and reductive (ie, kinda stupid): open > source movements assume all white boys have fast computers, > modem/network access, and the cultural knowledge and desire > to participate in network, informational societies. =========  I ask again: how are we to characterize thinking that recognizes this "digital divide" not as a tragic legacy of poverty and racism which must be reversed, but as an inevitable and even desirable result of cultural and racial differences? Open source and democracy are no more "white" (to use your own twice-repeated word) than are sanitation and immunization. To state otherwise is either rank racism or pseudo-mystical glorification of poverty as in Negri's _Empire_ (see pages 156-9). The effects of both fantasies, however, are equally toxic. And getting back to the Indigenous IPR issue, didgeridoos are no more "Indigenous" than violins are "Aryan". To advocate turning such racist fictions into law is bad enough, but to do so for the express purpose of extorting money is simply obscene. > I'm using Schmitt in the spirit of Mouffe and others who see > him as an adversary to think with, to rub ideas against and > see what happens. Maybe this is dangerous, but I think there > is a form of fascism that goes by the name closing one's eyes/ > mouth to all things horrible. ==========  Indeed. And many thinkers, like Habermas, have been strong enough to ingest Schmitt as a tonic without poisoning themselves. There are others, however, who have been obviously less fortunate. And if one happens to witness such an accident, it is only humane to intervene. Kermit Snelson ------------------- Communication, privacy and spam (old but since a correspondent asked to have his name removed from my site it has some interest): nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0203/1501.html (ongeveer de 28ste post in deze draad) Subject: Re: Dicks n' Dough sui.generis@myrealbox.com Date: Sat Mar 16 2002 - 07:01:23 EST sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] Next message: Nathan Newman: "Re: Walzer on the Left" Previous message: Charles Jannuzi: "RE: Falling profits, deflation, defaults, unemployment: Time for another Great Depression?" Next in thread: Chuck Grimes: "Dicks n' Dough" Maybe reply: sui.generis@myrealbox.com: "Re: Dicks n' Dough" At 02:08 AM 3/16/02 -0500, Matt Cramer wrote: I replied when the topic shifted from spam to privacy. Like it or not, online privacy is not a given, never has been. If you want it, you have to build it yourself. ------xx------- as budge said, it's about respect for other people. you mention x-no-archive. don't you think we've been hoping to get him to see that we'd like this as a fucking option? we've been trying to get him to see that there are options to protect people from the kind of thing we all know happens to people with our politics. he wants everyone to spill their guts about income and sex, but he doesn't even have the decency to acknowledge that people have very real concerns about current and potential employers. not EVEN to mention that someone on this list didn't get a job because someone else took his archived posts and used them as evidence as to why he shouldn't get the job! as i recall, doug thought that was pretty shitty thing to do. go figger! ------xx------- but he just doesn't give a shit because he participates in some sort of warped bourgeois consciousness about his ownership of the list. ------xx------- What is the warped consciousness that makes it Doug's responsiblity as list manager to obfuscate certain people's identities because they are uncomfortable with their posts being viewable by others? ------xx------- context: doug ignored joe and insulted him by accusing joe of harboring notions of bourgeois privacy. i'm turning the table because the accusation was really pathetic.doug disingeuously asked (to paraphrase) "what are people afraid of, sharing their dick sizes, their sex lives, their income...?" absofuckinglutely absurd. why did he not tell justin to chill out then? huh? no, instead he told me to chill out about suggestions that were much like yours: protect your own damn privacy because doug doesn't give a shit about doing even the simplest things. given that, there has to be another explanation for his refusal to countenance munging addresses before posts are archived. there also has to be a related explanation for the fact that doug wants to pay $200 a month for a list that people have offered for three years now to host for free. so, since doug thinks he can give joe a little left analysis of joe's bourgy consciousness, then he's fair game. bourgeois ownership: he wants complete control over the list. he refuses to countenance discussions about privacy because it makes him feel guilty about his desire for and enjoyment of owning the list in order to have _complete_ control. bourgeois ownership. it's fine with me. i could give a rat's ass about doug's hang ups and i don't really judge him for wanting to control the list. it's a perfectly typical and possibly even reasonable desire living in this world. but i do care that he 1. complains aobut how much it costs and 2. i do care that he refuses to even countenance the discussion, denies even a simple solution, and demeans my best friend because he doesn't like dealing with his own contradictory feelings about that ownership. kelley ---------- ????? r most people in most job situations to think carefully whether to reveal or to conceal that they suffer from depression. Letting a prospective employer know is not advisable. Letting fellow workers know is iffy. After securing employment and establishing any kind of a good record at all it is often best to reveal it (to get under the protection of ADA). But for most it is a "private" matter which is best kept under their own control to reveal or conceal. Probably there are many gays and lesbians also who have fairly objective reasons for remaining "in the closet." Ex-convicts are in a real bind. If they reveal it, they won't get hired. If they don't reveal it, it's grounds for dismissal. A friend's brother ended up with a 199 year prison sentence after first having been fired from two or three jobs when they discovered his prior convictions. He got out after almost 20 years, and is presently working for a priest deep in South Chicago and hoping never to see another white person as long as he lives. Carrol   ---------- Doug Henwood <dhenwood@panix.com wrote: A lot of employers (including mine) hire people to check these kinds of lists before hiring people. what are you, some kind of faggot? what have you got to hide? ------xx------- The fact that I have unorthodox political views for one thing. ------xx------- I just did a Google search on "Carl Remick," and the very first hit to pop up was an LBO archive entry of Jan. 4, 2002 (why that particular date, I don't know) where, by an odd coincidence, I was responding to a post of yours, Cian. In that post I wrote: "I have nothing good to say about American society whatsoever. I just think that the US will be an even nastier nation to live in, and a nation more dangerous to the rest of the world, if it follows in the footsteps of the UK, seeking global salvation through military adventurism." That's not the type of statement that would have burnished my candidacy as a job applicant during my recent search for a new position as a PR writer. But is what I believe, and it's a position I would defend vigorously if anyone ferreted it out and challenged me on it. I guess I'm a sap to put any faith at all in the right to free speech, but as much as I dislike actually existing US democracy, I take democratic ideals seriously and am willing to exercise my nominal rights even if it's foolish to do so. A life that consists of nothing but temporization isn't worth living, IMO. Carl ------ "I have nothing good to say about American society whatsoever. I just think that the US will be an even nastier nation to live in, and a nation more dangerous to the rest of the world, if it follows in the footsteps of the UK, seeking global salvation through military adventurism." That's not the type of statement that would have burnished my candidacy as a job applicant during my recent search for a new position as a PR writer. But is what I believe, and it's a position I would defend vigorously if anyone ferreted it out and challenged me on it. I guess I'm a sap to put any faith at all in the right to free speech, but as much as I dislike actually existing US democracy, I take democratic ideals seriously and am willing to exercise my nominal rights even if it's foolish to do so. A life that consists of nothing but temporization isn't worth living, IMO. Carl That's not the best example of what people might be worried about. I think it's arguable that not posting under your name is temporizing. I'd bet a hardass like Carrol would argue that "in the last instance" it is, but I think we should encourage people to engage and play on these lists, especially young folks who want to test out ideas. Part of the reason I post as Peter K. and don't use my last name is that I want to demonstrate to lurkers and others that they shouldn't feel pressured to use their full names if they don't want to. It might seem obvious, but it's an important point. At least that's what I tell myself. (Perhaps, I have a bit of the pessimist in me and in the back of my mind figure that 10 years down the road, after a couple more terrorist attacks and after the government has issued national ID cards, these lists will come back to haunt us; except that the optimist in me would point to what a mess the INS is and speculate that it will be a long, long time until Capital gets its act together. Also, my father is the chief judge of one of the most republican counties in the country and was once the right-hand man to the candidate most likely to be the next governor of Illinois. So there's that, but I think there's also a point to be made that sometimes paranoia about privacy is just a way to make ourselves feel more important or more dangerous to the government than we really are.) Anyway, if a list ever instituted a "real names only" policy I would immediately drop off and try to enliven some other, more free-wheeling list. But also, the archive is nice. Peter K. ------------ the list technician earlier in the thread: On Fri, 15 Mar 2002 sui.generis@myrealbox.com wrote: here's a workaround that we're using at pulp culture: write a script to obscure our email addresses. the name you use--your from name--will still be visible, just not your addy. That's a great idea. If there's enough demand, I'll think about doing it. If you feel like modifying hypermail to suit that option, please do, and I'll use the modified version. As it is, hypermail is written in C, and while I do know enough C to get by during code review it'll certainly take some time to make a fix on a program I've never before looked at. As for the spam bots, your email address is already out there, on a mailing list, and it'll continue to be used as mailing lists are bought, merged, scanned, sold and resold. Obscuring your address is damage control, not a miraculous anodyne. I'm not sure about the utility of obscuring email addresses. Everyone here, I guarantee, has already been placed on a hundred spam lists. If you think that your employer would have trouble with your using a work email address to post to LBO, then don't do it. If you're afraid of being blackballed for your revolutionary views, I can remove discrete inflamatory posts. (OTOH, if you want me to scrub your name from the archive ... well, don't count on it happening any time soon.) As an aside to those who might be worried, a google search on me reveals that I am, or at least was, as cuckoo as cocoa puffs. Nobody whom I've told seems to care; I'm sure that managers in my company know (it is, or was, a dot-com, and they've demonstrated the ability to use google in other contexts) and I've received nothing but the pain and agony of being overpaid and entrusted with important work and regularly promoted. I am willing to admit that your mileage may vary. Finally: anyone who is willing to help with the archive can help. If you want to write a feature-rich list archive program, or can suggest an alternative to hypermail, go to it. I'm sure you all know that I'm not exactly replete with spare time, and while constructive criticism is valued, constructive help is even better. m. ,---------- Marco Anglesio | Chance favours < mpa@the-wire.com | the prepared mind < http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa | --Louis Pasteur --------------- It's probably best for most people in most job situations to think carefully whether to reveal or to conceal that they suffer from depression. Letting a prospective employer know is not advisable. Letting fellow workers know is iffy. After securing employment and establishing any kind of a good record at all it is often best to reveal it (to get under the protection of ADA). But for most it is a "private" matter which is best kept under their own control to reveal or conceal. Probably there are many gays and lesbians also who have fairly objective reasons for remaining "in the closet." Ex-convicts are in a real bind. If they reveal it, they won't get hired. If they don't reveal it, it's grounds for dismissal. A friend's brother ended up with a 199 year prison sentence after first having been fired from two or three jobs when they discovered his prior convictions. He got out after almost 20 years, and is presently working for a priest deep in South Chicago and hoping never to see another white person as long as he lives. Carrol --------------------------- 181994 The invisibility of struggle; from the same source: bluegreenearth.com/reviews/mainfeature.html  Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization by John Zerzan "I've thought a lot about how I can best serve - and I realize that at least part of this answer is based on class privilege, on a wider set of options being open to me than to many others - but for right now I'm OK with my form of resistance, which is through cultural critique. For me, words are a better weapon to bring down the system than a gun would be. This is to say nothing of anybody else's choice of weapon, only my own ... my words are nothing but a weapon." John Zerzan. JOHN ZERZAN, the anarcho-primitivist [see our archived piece] philosopher made famous more from his media attention following the WTO Seattle protests than his books, has released a new book, Running on Emptiness that, in 214 pages, describes the dense and intricate traps of culture that doom the human race. Some of it is not easy reading, for as Chellis Glendinning says the book is, "brilliant, stark, challenging, timely - a deliberate and delicious foreplay to nothing less than the erasure of civilization itself". Softcover jacket, Feral House, US Zerzan commands a vast array of insight and references as he plows through chapters on The Failure of Symbolic Logic and Thought (the hopelessly inadequate way that we perceive and think), Time and Its Discontents (mesmerizing and easy to read - worth the price of the book alone), Against Technology, as well as chapters on Why I Hate Star Trek and Who is Chomsky? Archeologist Teresa Kintz, a former long-term editor at the Earth First! Journal and Green Anarchy, gives an introduction that takes the reader into the context of Eugene, Oregon during the late 1980s to the mid-1990s when Zerzan's ideas came together and attracted enthusiasts. During this period the Eugene, Oregon activist and anarchist uprisings began to take root in the nearby forests and urban communities. Warner Creek, China Left, Whiteaker were some of the early Free State squats and communities that went on to help organize protests from Black Bloc at the Seattle WTO, the anarchist forest defense of the Red Cloud Thunder-Winberry Tree Villages, the now-victorious Eagle Creek Treesit (three years), and riots and mayhem up and down the west coast of the US. "Working as an archeologist for the last decade," writes Kintz, "I've observed first hand how 14,000 years of continuous Native American occupation left the scant legacy of ephemeral hearth features, delicate spear points and broken pieces of pottery prehistoric archeologists study. But what lies on the land now, after only a few hundred years since colonization and industrialization? ... superfund sites, nuclear warheads, factory farms, denuded forests, poisoned rivers and dying industrial towns with crumbling inner cities. Archeologists recognize how all this alteration of matter our society engages in now is unprecedented ... my academic colleagues are reluctant to engage in the kind of political debate Zerzan is trying to start, yet I know that none in the field could deny that all of the so-called achievements of man are only monuments to overwhelming pride and hubris. Everybody knows people managed to live perfectly fine for thousands of years without electricity or automobiles-what better evidence than that can you have that it is possible?" The introduction by Kintz is a valuable summary of the key points and the argumentation of the book. "For 99 percent of human history people walked gently on the Earth," she writes, "lived daily lives using a stone, bone, wood technology. Running on Emptiness demands we consider why all artifacts have politics and how when we use tools they use us back. It requires we consider how human nature was originally one and part of a whole and now we lament that we are lost and alienated from one another." Who decided we needed mechanization, electricity, nuclear power, automobiles or computer technology? Has one single man-made item been a necessary improvement on Earth? Why do we put the survival of all species in peril for our exclusive comfort and gratification? How did we come to dedicating our lives to maintaining this mad tangle of supply and demand that we call civilization? And finally what will it take for us to give up on the artificiality of our grim modern lives and cleave instead to what is natural? Kintz outlines how the book addresses these issues and she lauds anarcho-primitivism as arguing for going forward towards a future primitive - not for going backward. "Prehistory is all around us, it is there for everyone to observe and contemplate," writes Kintz, "Don't believe me? Please get up now and go gaze out of the nearest window for a moment. Imagine the same landscape there before you 10,000 years ago and just think about what the lives of the people living there would have been like. Turn off the radio and television, unplug the computer and the telephone, look past the concrete, tune out the noise of the traffic and visualize what it must have been like living in an ecologically sustainable, socially harmonious world. Zerzan argues that in understanding the primitive past we take the first step toward rejecting the pathological present and actualizing a future primitive. It is a radical idea that certainly deserves our consideration." Anarcho-primitivism (AP) is, she writes, "inspired equally by anti-authoritarian and radical green viewpoints. Society as we know it now in the industrialized world is pathological and the civilizing impulses of certain dominant groups and individuals are effectively to blame. Trends in communications toward acts of symbolic representation have obstructed human being's ability to directly experience one another socially, and alienated us from the rest of the natural world." AP thought and action is intentionally provocative. While it aspires to inform and enlighten with regard to anthropological and archeological knowledge the primary purpose is to exhort and incite revolutionary social change. Kintz gives a rare and first hand account of how anarchists especially at the tree village camps near Eugene began to "excommunicate themselves from civilization and take up residence in communal social groups ... In the woodlands they came to identify completely with the landscape ... deliberately rewilding themselves thorough acts of confrontation and defiance, and fundamentally changing their lives." Several are doing long prison sentences for Earth Liberation Front related arson attacks. Living, evolving classrooms of anarchist and anarcho-primitivism are teaching us much about living a future primitive and John Zerzan helped guide and document this phenomenon. The first chapter on The Failure of Symbolic Thought is difficult reading that is best taken in modest bites. "Many of us feel driven to get to the bottom of a steadily worsening mode of existence," writes Zerzan. "Out of a sense of being trapped and limited by symbols comes the thesis that the extent to which thought and emotion are tied to symbolism is the measure by which absence fills the inner world and destroys the outer world." As Kintz summarizes, "rethinking the characteristics of the categories of primitive vs. modern is one of the main themes of the opening essays of Running on Emptiness which address the failures of symbolic thought. As Zerzan argues, when we removed ourselves from direct experience of the sensual world [existence without a need for symbolic representation of anything] through reification [ascribing thing-ness to everything - acts, thoughts, feelings ...], time and language we became less stimulated by our senses. As we immerse ourselves in the world of objectification and abstraction [post-modern vapid delusions] we see the triumph of the symbols for reality over the reality of experience itself." And he argues that the gap between a symbolic existence and what we have lost is so great that we are left unaware of the full extent of the thievery of modern life - and unaware of the robbers who have taken everything from us. "Just as Freud predicted that the fullness of civilization would mean universal neurotic unhappiness, anti-civilization currents are growing in response to the psychic immiseration that envelops us. Thus symbolic life, essence of civilization, comes under fire," writes Zerzan. Chapter one goes on to blame language, art and religion (even Shamans) - indeed the whole concept of culture - for the pathology of human relations during the last 10,000 years. Anarchist disregard for democracy is held back until the final page of the book. Zerzan takes his first jab at Noam Chomsky saying, "this chief language theorist commits a grave and reactionary error by portraying language as a 'natural' aspect of 'essential human nature,' innate and independent of culture. His Cartesian perspective sees the mind as an abstract machine which is simply destined to turn to symbols and manipulate them." Ritual was the first fetishizing of culture and points decisively toward domestication and reification. "Out of ritual action arose the shaman, who was not only the first specialist because of his or her role in this area, but the first cultural practitioner in general," writes Zerzan. "The earliest art was accompanied by shamans, as they assumed ideological leadership and designed the content of rituals. [The shaman] became the regulator of group emotions, and as the shaman's potency increased, there was a corresponding decrease in the psychic vitality of the rest of the group. Centralized authority and most likely religion too, grew out of the elevated position of the shaman." This statement begs investigation, for along with Zerzan's rejection of any division of labor a number of people would disagree with the primacy of these statements. Physical and mental attributes would have always resulted in some specialization - the fastest runners, the best firemakers and the most lucid dreamers, etc. In Native American tribes it does not seem that shamans disrupted the egalitarian nature of the tribe and few of the tribes seemed to have moved much toward centralization or religion as we would define it. Trying to link this to the future couldn't we all be shamans? Zerzan is masterful at finding interesting and appropriate sources that keep the reader engaged and convinced: "The American philosopher George Santayana summed it up well with, 'Another world to live in is what we mean by religion'. "We are caught up in the cultural logic of objectification and the objectifying logic of culture, such that those who counsel new ritual and other representational forms as the route to re-enchanted existence miss the point completely. More of what has failed for so long can hardly be the answer ... Which is not to say that there are no more everyday pleasures, without which we would lose our humanness. But as our plight deepens, we glimpse how much must be erased for our redemption." From page 65, That Thing We Do (our reified lives), "Until fairly recently - until civilization - nature was a subject, not an object. In hunter-gather societies no strict division or hierarchy existed between the human and the non-human. The participatory nature of this vanished connectedness has to be restored, that condition in which meaning was lived, not objectified into a grid (matrix?) of symbolic culture. "There is nothing even remotely similar to time. It is unnatural and yet as universal as alienation. All ritual is an attempt, through symbolism, to return to the timeless state. Ritual is a gesture of abstraction from that state, however, a false step that only leads farther away." The division of life by time and by clocks fits in with the industrial system - time is money. This discourse on time is fascinating and disturbing - turning another of our cherished notions of reality inside out, where we can better see its insidious nature in the totality (the many glues that cement our deepening domination, domestication and ignorance). In the last paragraph he asks, "Can we put an end to time? Its movements can be seen as the master and measure [even the mover?] of a social existence that has become increasingly empty and technicized. Averse to all that is spontaneous and immediate, time more and more clearly reveals its bond with alienation ... Divided life will be replaced by the possibility of living completely and wholly - timelessly - only when we erase the primary causes of that division." Humans are unique in their ability to plan ahead - into a complex future. A million years ago humans were planning hunting trips and water stops days or weeks ahead - so, time as Zerzan discusses it is mostly accurate, but humans didn't live only in the now. Several chapters deal with issues of technology, which weave along with the totality of symbolic existence throughout the book. He begins with the social implications of technology: "I live in Oregon, where the rate of suicide among 15- to 19-year-olds has increased 600 percent since 1961," he writes. "I find it hard to see this as other than youth getting to the threshold of adulthood and society and looking out, and what do they see? They see this bereft place ... We're seeing the crisis of inner nature, the prospects of complete dehumanization, linking up with the crisis of outer nature which is obviously ecological catastrophe ... accelerating extinction of species ... in Oregon, the natural original forest is virtually 100 percent gone; the salmon are on the verge of extinction ... and it's so greatly urged along by the movement of technology." According to Kintz, "humanity basically took a wrong turn with the advent of animal domestication and sedentary agriculture, which laid the foundation for the exploitation of the Earth, facilitated the growth of hierarchical social structures and subsequently the ideological control of the many by the few. All technology [but perhaps knowledge is OK?] besides the stone-age techniques of hunter-gathers is inherently detrimental to social relations and set the stage for ecological catastrophe." For Zerzan, post-modernism is the abdication of reason, antipathy to meta-narratives, the refusal to consider the totality, against origins, nature versus culture is a false notion, history is fiction, truth and meaning are nonsense, irony verging on cynicism, popular culture, an accomplice to technology and postmodernism is pervasive and yet few people know anything about it. Derrida, Virilio, Public Broadcasting, Bookchin, Fifth Estate, Slingshot, The Progressive, The Nation, Hakim Bey, Alexander Cockburn, Earth First!'s Judi Bari and Noam Chomsky get Zerzan's contempt for aiding post modernism or blocking the anarchist dialogue and the debate over Ted Kazinsky and his Unabomber Manifesto. Chomsky is accused of being a liberal-leftist with a haphazard critique, a supporter of the state and reformism, a reactionary linguist, pro-advanced-technology and pro-automobiles. Whose Unabomber? Whose Enemy of the State? "We didn't make this culture. We didn't turn the world into the battleground and cemetery it has become. We didn't turn human relations into the parody they have become. But now it is our responsibility to overcome what our culture has created ... we must be what we must be to overcome it ... COULD YOU KILL SOMEBODY, IF YOU KNEW THAT TO DO SO WOULD SAVE OTHER LIVES?" Ted Kazinsky (aka The Unabomber and FC) is mentioned frequently in the book, but most of his exposure is in regard to his trial and the non-support of many activists and anarchist publications for Kazinsky. Zerzan has been a long and loyal friend to Kazinsky, so it was a surprised to see: "There are two obvious objections to Kazinsky's theory and practice ... A return to undomesticated autonomous ways of living would not be achieved by the removal of industrialism alone. Such removal would still leave domination of nature, subjugation of women, war, religion, the state, and division of labor, to cite some basic social pathologies. It is civilization itself that must be undone ..." A few people have tried to explain to Zerzan over the years that waiting for the perfect revolution is as much a part of the "society of the spectacle" as the Rainbow Family, New Agers or the Green Party. One would imagine anarchists encouraging people to follow their authentic feelings and to express their rage - it is unnatural to put up with the everyday terrorism of apathy in the face of the industrial system's growing power and destructiveness. "The irony, of course, is that lethal bombings were necessary for an alternative to planetary and individual destruction to be heard," writes Zerzan. Kazinsky killed three people and wounded 23 in his Unabomber campaign against corporate executives primarily in the computer and forest industries. He agreed to stop bombing when national media published his manifesto. This is Zerzan's second point of departure with Kazinsky, that, "collateral harm is not justifiable," but this is as naïve as insisting that a revolutionary campaign simultaneously solve all of the problems that beset humanity. Would he join the chorus condemning young Palestinians for their desperation and self-defense? "When justice is against the law, only outlaws can effect justice," writes Zerzan. Or as he quotes the Boulder Weekly of July 1995, "Amid the overwhelming madness of unbridled economic growth and postmodern disintegration, is the Unabomber's (FC) nostalgia or even such rage, really crazy? For many, especially those who scrape by in unfulfilling jobs and peer longingly toward stars obscured by beaming city street lights, the answer is probably no. For them, the Unabomber may not be a psychopathic demon. They may wish FC the best of luck." Even in the US, poor people usually enjoy the misfortunes of the rich and powerful ... waiting for their downfall. In several sections of the book we get to know John Zerzan the person through his brief autobiography and an interview with Derrick Jensen that appeared in The Sun, September 1998. There are short essays on Grief and Memory and a brilliantly laid out chapter on Art and the Abstract Expressionists, who tried so nobly to rescue and redeem art - and failed. In 214 pages he covers a wide swath of history and subject matter. As you get familiar with the terminology the reading gets easier, more compelling and draws one into reflection and discovery. These are the issues of our life and times. And they are the issues that are so hard to find information on, so hard to talk to anyone about. Reading this book twice should earn one at least six college credits and it's even enjoyable - once you get beyond the utter gloom and your definitions of reality. The chapter on art is easy to read and gives a powerful look into the art activist transition from the 1940s to the end of modernism with pop art's postmodern triumph in the 1960s. "Also known as Heroic Abstraction, the New York School, Gesture Painting and Action Painting, Abstract Expressionism was modernism's last, great assault on the dominant culture, the finale for painting as opposition or breakthrough." He details the emergence and works of Pollock, Kline, Motherwell, Still Smith, Newman and Rothko. He calls their attempt to transcend, "a romantic anti-capitalist hope, complete with weaknesses and contradictions, a hope that the values embodied in their art could supersede the artistic and transform society ... a radical art whose purpose was to venture rapidly into the unknown, to attempt painting as the yet indefinable. Key components were risk, passion and adventure. For such intensity of purpose against such great odds, only extremist need apply." Like a rude storm the Abstract Expressions barged into the public art scene, the huge drip or poured canvases of Pollock, Rothko's fields of color or his aligned rectangles floating in layers of vibrant light and color ... the magnitude and intensity of Newman's colors and the turbulent, craggy fields of color in Still's works - these artist loathed the art world and painted from scratch, as if art and "painting were not only dead but had never existed," though Newman was influenced by Pisarro and Seurat. Depression, alcoholism and tragedy eventually caught up with many of these determined radicals. "Their desperate initiative was widely misunderstood and steadily assimilated into the prevailing cultural, political and social ethos. Nonetheless, Action painting was not only the evident end of formal development in art, it was the highest point of the whole modernist project. And because of what David Craven recognized as its 'unequivocal opposition to scientism, technologism, and wage labor alienation,' Abstract Expressionism superseded the non-radical Enlightenment belief in progress that is usually found near the heart of modernism." Octavio Paz, described the successor to the Abstract Expressionists, Pop Art, in 1973, "Pop Art is not a figure in a vision, but a mannequin in a department store." The curtain closed on art and we had the triumph and unification of all things postmodern. In Summary This is an important book - a landmark in the Rebellion Against the Tyranny of Total Brainwashing (the culmination of 10,000 years of symbolically defined existence) - a book that opens a debate long in the waiting. Many of the essays are four to eight years old and yet they remain pertinent and unanswered. I agree with almost every detail that is said and every innuendo. Despite being the 'Prince of Pessimism' I was stunned by the "problems with everything" (including quotation 'marks') that Zerzan lays out so compellingly. He seamlessly blends Adorno, Marcuse and Freud with a touch of Lasch, Heidegger, Mumford, and a suggestion of Illich and Adbusters magazine (Situationists always!). My biggest question is: What good is it? Living on Emptiness makes the possibility of real change seemingly impossible by definition, since to get all the way to a non-symbolic world is infinitely more difficult than to get to an ecologically sustainable world (be it socialist, agrarian or post-apocalyptic). While the goal of a non-symbolic primitive existence is ultimately worthy, the goal is no more the tactic in this scenario than it is with recycling or food coops - which are goals but lousy tactics for change (and apparently poor educational devices). Everywhere people hide in lifestyle delusions thinking that by living the world they want that somehow the "big change" will happen everywhere peacefully, with little suffering and not much effort. There is little in this book (or any other), which is of use for the revolution that must happen. Nor is there enough on the transition to primitivism after the revolution (given our odds, these are the only two issues worth discussing until we win, debate anyone?). A short essay written in 1993 discusses "The Transition" (an issue that for ten years I have claimed no one has ever written a useful treatise on). Zerzan did not update it and much if it deals with the revolution and not the transition which is the period following a collapse, catastrophe or revolution when policies, guidelines or programs will be needed to keep the armed masses from destroying the environment faster than the industrialists did. Fortunately, Zerzan's teacher/pupil Kazinsky is writing from prison with concrete discussions of strategy and the application of tactics against the vulnerable aspects of industrialism. In Hit Where It Hurts (Green Anarchy #8, 2002) Kazinsky theorizes (you can't advocate much from prison), "Technology, above all else, is responsible for the current condition of the world and will control its future development ... Many radicals are aware of this, but have paid little attention to the need to hit the system where it hurts. Smashing up McDonalds or Starbuck's is pointless ... As a means of weakening the techno-industrial system [animal liberation] is utterly useless. No one is foolish enough to mistake these for revolutionary activities or that they do anything to weaken the system. He goes on to state that forest and wilderness defense are only marginally useful; ditto the struggles against racism, sexism, and sweatshops. Even globalization is seen as a poor target for determined revolutionaries because it is like a rubber ball - pliable and hard to smash. Vital targets are given as the electric-power industry, the communications industry, computers, the propaganda industry and biotechnology. He acknowledges the obvious primacy of electricity, but then develops a well-thought argument for retiring biotech engineers and executives as the best tactic for a strategy designed to take out the biotechnology industry and thus the industrial system. With Zerzan's insightful motivation and Kazinsky's strategic lessons the future is a question mark - and the wilding wolves howl at the rusting gates of the citadel ... – Mark Idels John Zerzan is the author of Elements of Refusal; Questioning Technology; Future Primitive and Other Essays, and the editor of Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections. He lives in the Whiteaker neighborhood, Eugene, Oregon. He is 59 years old. Marcel Idels is a 39 year old writer, some say the most published anonymous or pseudonymous writer, on the topics that delineate cutting-edge radical warnings and prescriptions. From the Phony Drug war in Colombia to the Third Bush Coup - the military takeover of the world that we are now witnessing, Idels is usually ahead of the pack - with neck stretched. He has been published in the Earth First! Journal, Covert Action, Green Anarchy and numerous other publications. He is currently a senior adviser to the Eco-Solidaridad Working Group which investigate US interventions in Latin America. He lives in northern California when not on a rescue mission against the lies of the Empire. Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization (US$12, stg£10.99, €15) is distributed in north America by the publishers and in Europe by Turnaround (+ 44 20 8829 3000). It can also be purchased directly from the publisher's website: FeralHouse . If anyone has any difficulty getting hold of a copy contact us at atgblue@yahoo.com