A forgotten war older than the children forced to fight it. Once again rabid religion and predatory politics leading to the maculate conception of death and destruction.
The Lord's Resistance Army 18 years on.
(thanks to michael for pointing to the first link)
Microwave gun to be used by US troops in Iraq.
"Using technology similar to that found in a conventional microwave oven, the beam rapidly heats water molecules in the skin to cause intolerable pain and a burning sensation. The invisible beam penetrates the skin to a depth of less than a millimetre. As soon as the target moves out of the beam's path, the pain disappears."
(via)
Tatiana Bazzichelli plays at plagiarising the jodi.org map with her excellent map of the Italian hacktivist and net-culture scene. Check out the source code for an alternative reading pattern.
(grazie a neural!)
Sejla Kameric's others and dreams.
"The Project, Bosnian Girl, that she developed in 2003 and will be found during the exhibition in Frankfurt as a poster campaign throughout the city, has already been seen in other cities in the form of posters, postcards, billboards or as advertisements in magazines and newspapers. Here, the juxtaposition of these opposing perspectives becomes very clear. The image shows a portrait of the artist with some graffiti written by an unknown Dutch soldier 1994/95 on the wall of the barracks in Potocari, Srebrenica. The Royal Netherlands Army troops were stationed in Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of the UN Peace Operation UNPROFOR 1992-95 and were responsible for the protection of the Srebrenica region. Although the work here is clearly directly linked with the tragedies of Srebrenica, she also refers simultaneously to worldwide-spread micro-racism as well as the great discrepancy between the conceptions of that 'self' and that from 'the other'".
(via)
(image from the stereographs exhibit at vintage works)
Sex slavery and queer resistance in eastern Europe.
"The new republics are far from welcoming strangers: they fear their purity may be soiled by inclusion of others and excel in entrenching themselves against foreign infections. As it invents new social defenses against contagion, eastern Europe is engaged simultaneously in a master-slave dialectic with the US and the EU: civic sadomasochism, one that inflicts and welcomes social pain, characterizes its bodies politic. Eastern Europe today is filled with growing legions of unemployed and poor, the disposable people, the neo-slaves — Turgenev's lishnye ludi of the nineteenth century. The economics and poetics of sadomasochism persist now as then; the serfdom of eastern Europe continues and its international slavery deepens."
(via)
Female persuasion is currently featuring Celia Calle in its girlcrush section.
Plastic cell phones with the effigy of Bin Laden, toy twin towers and plane, 9011 product codes, foreign-sounding packaging company, a mysterious Miami importer: is this the Osama toy conspiracy?
(via)
Forget the B-52. Shake up a killer drink with Kalashnikov vodka.
There's a perverse parable perched in the folds of a veil, behind which shine the demure eyes of a brutal business case.
(via dph - who brings news of the gig getting cancelled)
Back sometime last century, this was a visual forecast of what the home computer would look like in 2004. Love the UI, but is that steering wheel the mouse?
(via)
Ultra-cool name, breezy cover art, cinema arcana a go-go.
Found some mp3 gifts in my inbox this morning: RX brings news of his/her latest installment of the songs of George Bush - after sunday bloody sunday here's imagine & a walk on the wild side in the karaoke stylee of the president of the USA. While out of the cosmic blue, 1st Lt. Lisa Hayes beams me the URL to two mp3s of the Psychedelic Avengers. Make of them what you will.
Were I in NYC I'd probably check out Barminski's exhibition is this important east
at the ricco/maresca gallery.
But as I'm not, I visited the online gallery of last year's is it important? show, instead.
There is something quixotically quaint about this druggie tale from two heads of the psychedelic intelligentsia. Quaint like a mustachioed man enjoying a golden shower in a Victorian daguerreotype is quaint. Quaint like an octogenarian hell's angel brandishing a baseball bat is quaint. Quaint like all that which is swept off the contemporary plane into that space known as the past, where the power of danger no longer lasts, nor lingers anymore, is quaint. Or perhaps not. Perhaps this post was spiked.
(Found in the fascinating third issue of New World Disorder)
This is not the first article to point out the mutual, tragically ironic, dependency that exist between Bush and Bid Laden. Each being the pulp nemesis against which the other benchmarks his destructive drive towards entropic success. Nor the first to draw marketing parallels. But it is interesting to read something that breaks away from the clash of civilization dogma to discuss age-old political power struggles in the era of global brands.
"'Global' al-Qaeda may also even profit from the fact that national liberation movements, in desperation, decide to go on an all-out offensive, improving their alliances of circumstance with al-Qaeda. The al-Qaeda brand is also becoming attractive to scattered sectors of the extreme left, because more than appealing to radical Islam, al-Qaeda has succeeded in branding its image as the revolutionary vanguard in the fight against American imperialism. The cross-fertilization between radical Islam and disfranchised Muslim youth born and raised in the West is also performing wonders: when young people convert to Islam in a dreary suburb of Brussels, Paris, Hamburg or Madrid, it all has to do with political anger rather than discovering a direct line to Allah....As nihilistic as it may be, al-Qaeda, from a business point of view, is a major success: three years after September 11, it is a global brand and a global movement. The Middle East, in this scenario, is just a regional base station. This global brand does not have much to do with Islam. But it has everything to do with the globalization of anti-imperialism. And the empire, whatever its definition, has its center in Washington. Bin Laden is laughing: Bush's crusade has legitimized an obscure sect as a worldwide symbol of political revolt. How could bin Laden not vote for Bush?"
I've been re-listening to Joe Strummer's solo album Earthquake Weather (1989) recently. Don't think it ever received much attention, which is a shame 'cos it's a beautiful, very personal album, all dirty in musical styles and some inspired lyrics that aggregate snapshots of Strummer's travels, memories of media consumption, flavours of favourite films, nerve endings of news snippets, cultural cuttings and mash-up myths. Guttersnipe words of garageland wisdom from the west London son of Sandino:
"Go to college and acknowledge some respect for knowledge. Above all keep an alibi, a rented room and a car full of gas. Inside keep a purple dressing gown and a fridge full of guns and cash"
(image source)
goodbye romania. migrants swamp italian island. yellowarrow. betterPropaganda. second beslan reporter drugged. mars tokyo presents theaters of the 13th dimension. a philosopher of change: an interview with yasuhiko kimura. today, 27 million people are enslaved, more than at the height of the transatlantic slave trade. mistress of the stitch. ecstacity. the erotica bibliophile. artandleisure. natural magick: the works and life of giambattista della porta (1535-1615).
One of the key events in the history of the Italian counter-culture and antagonistic communications is being told in a film just out in Italy. Lavorare con lentezza tells the story of Radio Alice back in Bologna in 1977. The poster child of the Italian free radio movement, its legacy (and some of its protagonists) live on in current grassroot media projects, such as TeleStreet, while the film was co-scripted by the Wu Ming collective. For my part, you'll find mention of Radio Alice and the political theory/practice experience in Seventies Italy, in a paper I wrote a few years ago entitled: Deleuze&Guattari and techno-nomads.
The eyes are the seat of the soul. They can also mirror hell, unspeakable horror. Eyes pried wide open by pain and infinite fear. The eyes of the children running from madness and cross-fire on September 3, 2004, at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, many in their underwear, nothing covering them, nobody left to protect them.
Dead children, injured kids, crazed parents. The photos, together with the news updates, began to flood the media. Online galleries of horrors appearing on all newspaper sites. I looked at the first few and then stopped. Stopped watching the news on TV. Tried not to look at the newspaper stands with frontpages like mourges displaying body bags.
I stopped looking, watching, not because I wanted to forget, but because I had seen enough. I had seen too much.
A few months ago, I remember seeing, half-hidden online, photographs of the disfigured corpses of Iraqi children. What remained of fragile bodies after they had been blown to bits. I remember the anger and wondering why they weren't being shown on TV, in the press. Why weren't we showing the effect of what happens when you bomb a country in the name of democracy and liberation. The charred, sliced-up faces of collateral damage.
Not sure at all now. Today, I read that a video shot by the terrorists inside the school has been shown on Russian TV. The stills are available on the BBC website. Why? What does this add? What is the point of the gruesome details, the images, if we are powerless to stop the carnage? Has information become a snuff film?
The eyes are the seat of the soul. They can also mirror memories, establish connections. I recall images of Grozny in rubble. Like East London, Dresden, Hiroshima, after the second world war. But do not misunderstand me. There can be no justification ever for what happened in Beslan. No justification ever, no understanding is possible. But I cannot help but think how violence breeds violence, and how the violence becomes more vicious, and we freefall, spiralling out of control, into the depths of unspeakable, systematic cruelty. How can you sink any lower than targeting children, on their first day of school?
On September 3, 2004, chechen terrorists and russian soldiers shot down the future, the hope of learning, our humanity. Today, the news is filled with the kidnapping of two Italians in Iraq. Two women striving for peace through their work for an NGO. And then, as I write, there are all the child soldiers from Colombia to Africa, all the child slaves working across Asia, all the dispossessed world-wide, all those that will not receive mention of their suffering today.
We are all children of Beslan, caught in the cross-fire of bloodthirsty bastards. A minority of monsters playing out power struggles with our lives. It's time to turn the table around. Break the cycle of violence. Just don't ask me how.
There's a cool collection of DIY French comics to be found here.
I picked up the Italian translation of Raoul Vaneigem's nothing is scared, everything can be said (rien n'est sacré, tout peut se dire) a few days ago.
Vaneigem is a unique species in Twentieth Century French Theory circles inasmuch as his writing has tended to flow with the freshness, the clarity and the urgency of a mountain stream, instead of the mistiness of a structurally baroque rainforest of meaning found in most of his peers. This latest booklet, published in France last year, is no exception. In the form of a pamphlet, the subtitle runs reflections on the freedom of expression.
The title is a clear indication of Vaneigm's position, and he does not shy away from mapping his reflections onto real life scenarios, highlighting where exceptions exists.
Its essence can be distilled from these three quotes:
"I can't insist on this point enough: nothing is more against human progress than the ongoing tollerance of the ancestral instincts of depredation, cruelty, dominion...The freedom of expression belongs to all, not just to some, who offed it. This is an obvious truth which hasn't as yet been realized by those that strive for a better destiny and are not lacking in ideas regarding the means of getting there. The truth is these people haven't nearly dared, until today, make their voices heard. They do not fear the wrath of a master, they are afraid of themselves...
Authorize all opinions. We will be able to recognize ours and neutralize the strength of attraction of noxious ones, to stop the corruption of profit and power from spreading mental cancer. We will fight these opinions with the only critique capable of eradicating them: by thinking for ourselves, by no longer putting ourselves in a condition of dependency, discovering through our desires what kind of life we want to lead, creating situations that make impossible the empire of inhumanity".
French counter-culturalist Ivan Brun plays in a hardcore band, draws porn comics, writes and paints powerful scenes of everyday day life, despair and media.
Anne Galloway has sampled and remixed and made the gift of an online version of a book of surrealist games.
