Interlude - American Troglodyte

Kropotkin on The Primate Diaries!

Eric Michael Johnson of The Primate Diaries in Exile is writing a three-part series on Kropotkin and Huxley. Here are the first two segments:

"The Scientist and the Anarchist - Part I"

"The Scientist and the Anarchist - Part II"

As many know, this is a subject dear to my heart. I'll update with a link to the third part (and a few comments) when it appears.

Interlude - From The Book of Embraces

The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano



is wonderful. I'm going to share a few of my favorites. Here are the first two:

THE FUNCTION OF ART/2

The Preacher Miguel Brun told me that a few years ago he had visited the Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco. He was part of an evangelizing mission. The missionaries visited a chief who was considered very wise. The chief, a quiet, fat man, listened without blinking to the religious propaganda that they read to him in his own language. When they finished, the missionaries awaited a reaction.

The chief took his time, then said:
"That scratches. It scratches hard and it scratches very well."

And then he added:
"But it scratches where there isn't any itch."

***

CELEBRATION OF FANTASY

It happened at the entrance to the town of Ollantaytambo, near Cuzco. I had detached myself from a group of tourists and was standing alone looking at the stone ruins in the distance when a small boy from the neighborhood, skinny and ragged, came over to ask if I would give him a pen. I couldn't give him my pen because I was using it to write down all sorts of boring notes, but I offered to draw a little pig for him on his hand.

Suddenly the word got around. I was surrounded by a throng of little boys demanding at the top of their lungs that I draw animals on their little hands cracked by the dirt and cold, their skin of burnt leather: one wanted a condor and one a snake, others preferred little parrots and owls, and some asked for a ghost or a dragon.

Then, in the middle of this racket, a little waif who barely cleared a yard off the ground showed me a watch drawn in black ink on his wrist.

"An uncle of mine who lives in Lima sent it to me," he said.

"And does it keep good time?" I asked him.

"It's a bit slow," he admitted.

***

Grizzly Man

I was transfixed by Werner Herzog's film Lessons of Darkness


Watch Lessons of Darkness, 1992, by Werner Herzog in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

at the tremendous 2008 "After Nature" exhibit at the New Museum (I hate the description there).

So I was thrilled to see his Grizzly Man, another film I missed when it was playing originally. It's an intelligent meditation on our relationship with nature and what our ideas about it say about us, told through the story of an unlikable man.*



*(Why didn't he just get some dogs, I had to wonder.)

UPDATE, moments later: I don't know about Herzog's politics, and some things I've read, if true, I disagree with. But I recommend the film as a film. One moment in which I did not share his vision was in the description of what he saw in the bear in the final footage. It was simply not what I saw in the eyes of that bear. Interesting....

Pairings

I've been recommending Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich



in various contexts of late. It happens that while I was reading it I caught this movie, which I had missed when it was out:



They're delicious together.

Interlude - Blue Horizon

Strange to have an "interlude" with such limited posting, I know, but I need this now and want to share.

STRIKE!

Scienceblogs continues to implode. By my count, 19 bloggers have left. (Carl Zimmer has regularly updated information here, and you can follow the events on Twitter - #SbFail.) Pharyngula is on strike and may be packing up and moving on, and Orac and others are contemplating leaving as well.

One aspect of these situations that often gets lost is the emotional hardship. It's difficult to lose income and to leave a stable situation (even when it's become intolerable). But beyond that, it seems a bit like they're having to pull up stakes and relocate their town. Even if it can be rebuilt in a new, hopefully better, location, leaving behind a familiar home and history is stressful.

Best wishes to all, and I hope the community can remain intact and even grow to include some new voices (a few radicals would be great) from around the world.

I write like...

So this is going around. Mel Gibson rants in the style of Margaret Atwood, and most bloggers apparently sound like David Foster Wallace.

I entered one of my comments from a recent thread at Butterflies & Wheels, and was informed that I write like Daniel Defoe.

I'd like to think it's my potent pamphleteering pointedness, but it may have quite a bit to do with the content - my comment concerned religion and accomodationism, for instance, and Atwood's splendid work and Gibson's frothing attack both deal with gender.

Poem: City of Ships

The other day, people working at the WTC site uncovered a boat. This was the first or second article I read about it. I made a poem entirely from words and phrases I found in the comment thread. (I'm reading Walt Whitman, so the title was also a found object.)

***

CITY OF SHIPS

Nine years, a billion dollars later,
a murder scene.
History is unearthed -
an old ship.
Shabby, derelict vessel,
what one calls junk.
Just a little distraction.

The site, the site of the ship,
was part of the Hudson River.
It is sad, going to deteriorate,
to dry and rot (and warp).
Aerobic microbes
need oxygen to live,
just like people
need a history lesson.

Did they find dinosaur bones, burial grounds,
towers, treasures, slave ships,
the ships that bring in supplies, salaries, corpses?
A bone fragment of those hijackers?
Feed it to the dog.

I just hope
we buried it again.
Archaeologists, 200 years from now,
saddest days,
will search the internet, our landfills
to discover it all
about us.
How we once lived -
self centered and wasteful,
millions wasted,
afraid of our government.
Things that are not that important,
remnants, excavated and documented.
Think of the Roman Empire,
maybe just give up.

Great news!
The internet is only
stored on various computers.
The content disappears
forever.
It's not like internet sites fossilize!

Time to rebuild.
Freedom Tower is rising as I type.
We will stand tall again.
So Manhattan is built
on a big junk pile.
An old boat -
wasn't worth writing about then,
not worth writing about it now.
Junk to us too.
Move it and keep building.
On to the next story.

***

Interlude - Society

Integrity

http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/2010/07/unconformity.php

http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/2010/07/my_official_farewell.php

http://scienceblogs.com/classm/2010/07/beyond_the_pale.php

http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2010/07/blog_suspended.php

http://scienceblogs.com/culturedish/2010/07/culture_dish_doesnt_live_here.php

http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2010/07/a_pepsi-induced_hiatus.php

http://scienceblogs.com/neuronculture/2010/07/a_food_blog_i_cant_digest.php

http://scienceblogs.com/sunclipse/2010/07/i_dont_make_nearly_enough_mone.php

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2010/07/seed_conflicts_of_interest_and.php

http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2010/07/sucking_corporate_dick.php

Anatomy of an Epidemic?

Embedding is disallowed, but here's a link - hot off YouTube! - to Robert Whitaker on Book TV* talking about his book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness.



I haven't yet had a chance to read the book or even review the studies he cites (he lists the major ones on his site), but found the talk provocative. (Also mentioned on the site: an interview with Mercola? Really? I understand that people want to spread the word about their books, but really you have to draw the line somewhere.)

*I just looked at the schedule for this weekend and next. Overall, Book TV seems to be remaining something of a right-wing testosterone fest. It’s a bit creepy. Who selects the books and authors featured, anyway?

HONDURAS: The Normalization of Terror and Resistance Events

Distressing about reports concerning Honduras the past few months is the extent to which they can work to normalize the situation there. There are, of course, explicit attempts at normalization – both by the current illegitimate regime and the Obama administration.



They seek not only the cultural but the institutional normalization of the coup and its results in the form of international and specifically OAS recognition of the Lobo government and the acceptance of the farcical “Truth Commission.” But much coverage, intentionally or more likely unconsciously, risks playing into these normalization efforts by treating events in Honduras as a stage for human rights violations divorced from historical context (or reframed from within a historical vision that is already biased and circumscribed) and marginalizing the people who continue to work for justice in Honduras.

It is of course valid and necessary to draw attention to human rights abuses, including murders, in Honduras (among many other violations, nine journalists have been killed already this year). What we should be careful of, though, is falling into a script that depoliticizes the people and organizations on the ground there, ignores the local and global economic forces at play, or presents events as falling within some generic image of “organic” Central American violence.

Given this, I’m going to try to continue focusing on the efforts being made by social justice movements in Honduras and their supporters elsewhere. As the anniversary of the coup on June 28th approaches, Adrienne Pine at Quotha has listed some of the events organized to help people learn more and get involved:

• En Las Sombras (documentary about Honduras) airing on TeleSUR
  Monday, June 28, 2010
  (on TV in Latin America; online at the TeleSUR link on the left side of the page)

• Los Angeles: Protest-Vigil at Honduran Consulate
  Monday, June 28, 2010
  5 PM
  General Consulate of Honduras in Los Angeles
  3550 Wilshire Boulevard
  (more here)

• Berlin: Walter Trochez Queer Alliance Protest and Film
  Monday, June 28, 2010
  (more here)

• New York City: Karla Lara and Rodolfo Pastor at the Brecht Forum
  Friday, July 2, 2010
  7/8 PM
  Brecht Forum
  51 West Street
  (more here)

• New York City: Premiere of We Are Not Afraid: Inside the Coup in Honduras
  Wednesday, July 7, 20107 PMTribeca Cinemas54 Varick Street
  (more here)

• Washington, DC: Premiere of We Are Not Afraid: Inside the Coup in Honduras
  Tuesday, July 8, 2010
  E Street Cinema? [This is listed but I can’t find it on the theater’s web site. Probably calling them would be best.]

(If you know of other events, please leave me a note in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.)

More developments: The democratic resistance movement has organized an alternative truth commission. The US government is giving more money to Honduran “security” forces. People should be watching sales of Honduran resources or deals made with corporations, in mining, power, etc. - contracts made with this government should be seen as invalid, in my view. There is also a dengue outbreak in Honduras.

This article by Dawn Paley emphasizes the economic powers behind the coup and the continuing efforts to shape Honduras in the interests of the rich. For a longer view, of course, the classic work is Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America – a magnificent book.



Also opening this week: Oliver Stone’s South of the Border. Here are Stone and Tariq Ali being interviewed about the film on Democracy Now! (There’s a Wall Street 2 coming out? Really?):



(I'm not sure if the video will show up; if not, please click on the link.) I haven’t seen it, and will wait until I do before I comment. Preliminarily, though – it appears to focus excessively on a handful of political figures rather than on the social movements that drive the transformations of these countries. It also seems perhaps not to look critically enough at Chavez and others. I do look forward to seeing it, though. You can find where it’s playing here.

Gil Scott-Heron

Freedom in the Cloud

It was a decade ago, searching for the latest articles on anarchism, that I first came across Eben Moglen. It was this piece - "Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright" - and, while he didn't have anything particularly intelligent to say about anarchism as a political-economic movement, I found the article interesting and shared it with people at the time.

Over the years, others have linked to various talks Moglen has given. Recently someone in a comment thread at Narco News linked to this one from earlier this year. Here he is on "Freedom in the Cloud":



As usual, xkcd gets it.

The trouble for some of us is that while we share the concern of the character in this strip we lack the technical knowledge to contribute significantly to change in this way (or at least I believe I do). But I can do my small part connecting people to those working on it.

UPDATE:

Here's Part 2 - the Q&A: