Archipelago

Sweet Haven

2011-08-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

One week left in Sweet Haven. Summer evening of crickets and cicadas with Saigon beer.

The Rhythm of Life

2011-06-19T20:27:00.000-07:00

He had at last begun to sense the rhythm of life in the ancient town, and how it was that his own pulse should eventually conform to it. And this in itself was a grave satisfaction to him. He had always been on the lookout for reverences, and here was a holiness more intrinsic than any he could ever have imagined--a slow, druidic procession of the seasons in the narrow streets.

--House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

Sorrow of War

2011-05-21T18:36:00.000-07:00

Bao Ninh was born three weeks after me in October 1952. He spent 1965 to 1975 in the North Vietnamese Army fighting the American Army, and then spent ten more years retrieving bodies from the jungle. His novel The Sorrow of War was published in 1994.

Poetics of Creation

2011-05-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

When we strip away the superficial banter blaring from media noise machines, three essential questions emerge. Who are your people? Where did they come from? What is their story? In answering these questions, Indian Country Today correspondent Hans Tammemagi takes a walk on Kangaroo Island with Walker, a descendant of the first Aborigine met by Europeans in South Australia.

G-Men

2011-04-13T13:21:00.000-07:00

It was a trait in the past I had most often seen in psychopaths. I wanted to give Lindell the benefit of the doubt so I chalked it up to the sort of federal arrogance I had also seen before as a genetic trait in bureau men.
--Lost Light by Michael Connelly

Expectations

2011-03-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

Success is irrelevant. You raised their expectations of life, you lifted their horizons.
--Joey Fagan in The Commitments

Adios Alberto

2011-03-06T14:55:00.001-08:00

The year I was born, Alberto Granado and his pal Ernesto Guevara set off on a motorcycle trip around South America. During the Summer of Love, Ernesto was executed in Bolivia. Alberto continued to live in Cuba, and passed away yesterday.

Rhetoric and Reality

2010-12-25T15:45:00.000-08:00

In December 2009, when President Obama cut a back room deal at the UN gathering in Copenhagen, using threats and bribes to undermine indigenous peoples' participation in climate change talks, that was reality. When he promoted his Copenhagen Accord on behalf of major polluters as progress, that was rhetoric. In July 2010, when President Obama lifted the ban on US funding for Indonesian death squads assassinating indigenous leaders in West Papua, that was reality. In December 2010, when he said he endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, that was rhetoric.

As Steven Newcomb observes in Indian Country Today, there is nothing new in Obama's "endorsement" of UNDRIP. His position is the same as Bush: federally recognized tribes in the US are not truly sovereign; they are free to develop as they wish as long as they don't oppose US policy. In other words, they are not self-determined, but rather, remain under the domination of the US government, which will continue to represent them in international fora, thus denying them their rightful voice in world affairs.

As President Obama and Secretary Clinton continue to back murderous regimes from Colombia to Palestine, the genocide of indigenous nations will be perpetually cloaked in official rhetoric. As with UNDRIP, that rhetoric will not match the reality of their deeds nor the official documents misrepresented by their public relations; what remains is to hold them accountable for both the crimes they commit and the frauds they perpetrate in covering up those crimes.

FotoFest

2010-12-23T10:09:00.000-08:00

At the Lens Culture FotoFest Paris 2010, Evgenia Arbugaeva from the Republic of Yakutia was awarded a prize for her photos of the five nationalities of reindeer herders in Eastern Siberia. Take a look.

Nowhere Else To Turn

2010-12-18T18:04:00.000-08:00

It would be difficult to find a more blatant example of hypocrisy than that of the United States' conduct in respect to the state of Colombia and its indigenous peoples. With the aboriginal nations on the verge of extinction due to the civil war funded by the US government, the colossal fraud known as the war on drugs is exposed for all to see. What in reality is a war for US military dominion of the hemisphere under the false pretenses of preventing narcotics addiction in the US, native Colombians are being slaughtered by both drug cartels as well as by Colombian police and military forces on the US payroll. While the government of Canada is slightly less hostile in unleashing its aggression, the indigenous peoples in Colombia are turning to Canada and the UN for help. As a sign of their desperation, Colombia's aboriginals feel they have nowhere else to turn.

Blowup

2010-10-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

Of the Smokejumpers' three elements, sky had already changed to earth. In about an hour, the earth and even the sky would all be fire.
--Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean

Luggage

2010-10-06T21:53:00.000-07:00

I don't need to find a revolution waiting for me. A revolution's something you have inside you, and you carry it around. It's like luggage.
--Sebastian San Vicente

From Just Passing Through by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

Philosopher Options

2010-10-06T20:23:00.000-07:00

Used to be if you were a philosopher, there were three options open to you: teach college, write a novel, or lead a revolution. Nowdays you can also blog.

The Price of Admission

2010-09-29T22:03:00.000-07:00

The Art of the Steal is not only a superbly crafted documentary about high crimes by the rich and powerful, it is also an inside look at the ruthlessness of the philanthropy industry exemplified by the notoriously duplicitous Pew Charitable Trust. For art devotees as well as champions of the underdog, the film is an inspirational story as an expose well done. For anyone who has been trampled on by benefactor bullies like the Pew oil magnates and their money grubbing offspring, seeing this misanthropic bunch of scoundrels get their comeuppance is well worth the price of admission.

Felony and Mayhem Press

2010-09-25T22:48:00.000-07:00

My fear is not that I shall one day look back on the last half-dozen years as dreary and utterly wasted. My fear is that one day I shall look back on them as the best days of my life.

--The Herring Seller's Apprentice by L.C. Tyler

Black Mamba Boy

2010-09-15T21:25:00.000-07:00

Black Mamba Boy, a novel by Nadifa Mohamed, is a stunning debut.

The Siege of Shangri-La

2010-09-06T20:44:00.000-07:00

In the six centuries preceding the British invasion of Lhasa in 1904, fewer than two hundred Europeans had managed to penetrate Tibet's diplomatic isolation and return home to write about their travels.

--The Siege of Shangri-La by Michael McRae

Being Human

2010-08-09T09:57:00.000-07:00

We have a totally different understanding of life and being human and how we act to one another. How people speak. How they treat each other. How they move. How they treat the Earth.

Look at what being American is doing to its own people. There’s no kind of humanity or togetherness or connectiveness.

--Audrey Shenandoah, Onondaga clan mother

Twist of Rawhide

2010-08-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

He was a broken-down old man, a twist of rawhide. His face, especially, was an archaeology in itself. He had broken horses all his life, and not a few of them had broken him. The leading edge of a dream was moving like a distant, migrant bird across his eyes.

---The Ancient Child by N. Scott Momaday

Holding Back

2010-07-23T15:12:00.000-07:00

I remember, historically speaking, a time when there was no state because I grew up in a society where literally there wasn’t a state, at least in its centralized, coercive form.

The state embodies a static concept. When controlled by a class, it is an instrument for holding back society—holding back creativity, art, movement, change, renewal.

—Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Kikuyu author

Total Chaos

2010-07-19T22:15:00.000-07:00

They were good looking. And they knew how to fight.
Life had slipped through their fingers, faster than money.

--Total Chaos by Jean-Claude Izzo

Zulu

2010-07-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

"Have you read the newspapers?"
"Some."
"They're all saying the same thing."
"They all belong to the same people."

--Zulu by Caryl Ferey

Eagle Dreams

2010-06-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

I am enjoying reading Eagle Dreams: Searching for Legends in Wild Mongolia by Stephen J. Bodio.

Johnny Moses

2010-05-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

Johnny Moses is a unique Native American storyteller. Raised by his grandparents in a remote village on Vancouver Island, Moses is fluent in eight indigenous languages, and has been recognized as a spiritual ambassador bringing aboriginal knowledge and perspective to non-indigenous audiences.

Reluctant Relations

2010-05-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

The Killing of Major Denis Mahon by Peter Duffy is a tale of tenancy grounded in peat and potatoes, reluctant relations, church and state. An uncommon history of County Roscommon. A careful critique of colonialism in Ireland. A marvelous mystery.

Annihilation

2010-05-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

Apocalypse is a relative term, but must surely apply to the annihilation of the majestic forests of the Pacific Northwest. Darius Kinsey documented in photos the wasting of the Salish Sea watershed a century ago, the effects of which continue to trouble us today.

Cut Stones

2010-04-30T09:16:00.000-07:00

Perceived through senses awry with altitude, this colorless world becomes sinister and prone to sudden reversals of light and perspective, as though we are wandering in a three-dimensional photographic negative.

--Cut Stones and Crossroads: A Journey in the Two Worlds of Peru by Ronald Wright

Gospel

2010-03-25T20:31:00.000-07:00

Newspapers do have a legitimate, important role, Desmond. We cannot take them lightly.

If you say so, sir. I know that's the standard wisdom for senior officers.

--Gospel by Bill James

Outrage

2010-03-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

The Baader Meinhof Complex

This Human Season

2010-02-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

This Human Season by Louise Dean is an historical novel of the caliber usually associated with authors like Nadine Gordimer and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Soul Murder

2010-02-05T14:09:00.000-08:00

The discrepancy between wishful thinking and sombre reality is a series of tragic statistics.
--Soul Murder by Andrew Nugent

American Political Theatre

2010-01-29T10:27:00.000-08:00

Last fall, in Maintaining the Deception, I wrote about how the supporting actors of American political theatre -- by limiting the scope of debate and imagination in the American public mind -- help to keep democracy down. In Dependency Limits Strategies, I observed that Campaign for America's Future and other progressive fronts for the Democratic Party were essential to undermining the democratization of capital. In Breathless Buffoonery, I noted how this progressive avant garde marginalizes authentic activists who offer genuine solutions to global crises.

In Fatuous Futurists, I chronicled their plans for positioning themselves to profit from the widescale resentment mobilized by justifiable anger at the Obama regime they themselves helped to elect, and, until recently, painstakingly apologized for. For their rising stars, capitalizing on crisis requires persistent hyperbole.

Of course, none of this is new.

Progressive Reports Now

2009-12-31T22:01:00.000-08:00

The Progressive Reports Now series by Charles Oxtrot, featuring Amber Milgram, is the best thing since MAD magazine.

Eddie Stack

2009-12-18T19:27:00.000-08:00

Eddie Stack tells stories from County Clare. His blog is a riot.

Gallows Lane

2009-12-16T19:03:00.000-08:00

Ten pages into Brian McGilloway's second novel, Gallows Lane, and you know you're reading the next Simenon.

Totem Forests

2009-12-14T10:59:00.000-08:00

To the Totem Forests, a collection of paintings and photos of coastal villages in early twentieth century British Columbia, is available online. The exhibit includes recent commentary by First Nations regarding some misinterpretations by the artists, as well as maps of the four nations represented.

Paleolithic Paintings

2009-12-05T11:14:00.000-08:00

The French Ministry of Culture and Communications has revamped its Lascaux website to include a 3-D digital exploration of the cave, as well as specialized information about the history of the latter Upper Paleolithic cave paintings of the Dordogne region. The period (34,000-9,500 BP) is noted for the appearance of bone and antler work, jewellery making, art, and religious concepts.

Kentucky Cello

2009-11-07T17:50:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to remember if the Beatles used a cello in their tune Eleanor Rigby. I forgot to mention that to a doc filmmaker who interviewed me on the plaza this afternoon. She left me her card, thankfully, and her film about a cello player looks interesting--especially since the unusual musician comes from Kentucky, where my dad's side of the family came from.

Breakdown

2009-10-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

The older I get, the more it seems I've lived my life not in a linear fashion--day to day, year to year--but in blocks and scraps of time. These exist in my memory like an archipelago, some large islands, some small, each made up of a momentous event, a deep impression, a profound insight, a living nightmare.
--Breakdown by Bill Pronzini

Constructing Coherence

2009-10-17T18:31:00.000-07:00

Constructing coherence concerns the flow of attention and continuity of apprehension of the situation.
--Therese Ornberg Berglund

Prevention of Terrorism

2009-10-04T19:51:00.000-07:00

In Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life, John Conroy examined daily life in West Belfast, Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. One of the facts of life there at the time was the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act, a law used by the UK to compile dossiers on individuals, to force people to become informers, and, "to harass activists whose politics the government did not appreciate". In a report by Amnesty International examining the unwarranted detentions, interrogations, and torture of individuals arrested under the act, 88% of those arrested were found to be innocent of any crime whatsoever.

Red April

2009-09-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

In order to increase the cooperation of the detainee, he put into effect an investigative technique that consists of tying the suspect's hands behind his back and letting him hang suspended from the ceiling by the wrists until the pain permits him to proceed to confess his criminal acts.
--Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo

Role Models

2009-09-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the Robin Hood television series?

Club Dumas

2009-09-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

That's how it starts. Murder doesn't seem like a big deal, but then you end up lying, voting in elections, things like that.
--The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Oryx and Crake

2009-08-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

Reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood confirms my belief that when we arrive in the future, she will already have the kettle on.

China Chastised

2009-08-03T13:52:00.000-07:00

Chinese attack Australian film festival for showing film about Uyghur leader imprisoned by Chinese government.

Walker in Gaza

2009-07-25T13:01:00.000-07:00

Alice Walker describes her visit to Gaza, and compares Apartheid Israel with the segregated American South where she grew up.

Camel Counting

2009-07-10T15:52:00.000-07:00

Accountants look for consistencies; they don't look at realities. Provided the story is consistent, they're not bothered whether it's true.

--The Camel of Destruction by Michael Pearce

Memory and Lies

2009-07-02T09:20:00.000-07:00

This month we consider writing on, and from, memory. Every autobiography has an unreliable narrator, and all writing is autobiographical, reflecting as it does a singular consciousness formed by unique experience. While some writers draw their narratives directly from life and produce memoirs clearly defined as such, others put their life stories to the service of fiction, rewriting the past in the transformation of life into art. Here characters revise their pasts in order to survive, then pass down those altered histories to their descendents, who in turn produce their own revisions. Political and personal borders shift and blur, rapture and grief are both detailed and elided, and one man’s moment is another’s (and another) story. Anna Enquist, Eduardo Halfon, André Kaminski, Eduardo Lago, Rouja Lazarova, Luan Starova, Jáchym Topol, Carles Torner, and Tomáš Weiss interrogate notions of truth, authenticity, and art in creating these compelling narratives.

--Words Without Borders, July 2009

Preserving Integrity

2009-07-01T16:03:00.000-07:00

We were born into an unjust system; we were not prepared to grow old in it. The Price of My Soul refers not to the price for which I would be prepared to sell out, but rather to the price we all must pay in life to preserve our own integrity. To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.

--The Price of My Soul by Bernadette Devlin

Fresh Airheads

2009-06-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

If devotees of the Grateful Dead are called deadheads, might it be proper to call fans of NPR's program Fresh Air airheads?

Public Service Announcement

2009-06-16T20:44:00.000-07:00

Beware syntactical discrepancies.

Wonders of the Imagination

2009-05-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

In reference to creating consciousness, storytellers, like other artists, play host to wonders of the imagination.

Perpetual Childhood

2009-05-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

The American Dream is perpetual childhood: teacher, boss, preacher, president; cradle to grave daddy figures to make their decisions for them.

Have To Do

2009-05-14T09:09:00.000-07:00

It's funny how bits of information from the past can reform themselves in relation to each other to present a new image of events. Something akin to turning a kaleidoscope.

I was thinking about that this morning when I recalled my graduate school program chair asking me for a copy of my master's thesis, which, seven years ago, I was in the process of writing. At the time, it puzzled me why he would want to read a draft thesis by a student he was not even instructing or advising, but I shrugged it off and printed him a copy.

Five years later, the college was subjected to a special investigation by the accrediting agency for violations of academic integrity, and in the agency report, I recall reading that the school had come under heightened scrutiny five years earlier, and that things had gone downhill from there. Reading further in the report, the oversight agency acknowledged that some of the academic work produced by students at the college was noteworthy, and that the interdisciplinary curriculum had merit, but that the administration of the school could not be relied on to ensure academic vigor or reliable records.

Looking back, I recall one of the senior faculty remarking to me in passing one day, that I was the star of the school, even though I'd not received any formal recognition or participated in any public events on the school's behalf. I figured he was just being nice, and forgot about the encounter until I began pondering the importance of the events described in this article. It was then that it dawned on me that the college might have submitted my thesis as evidence of institutional merit, perhaps as one of several exhibits used in fending off heightened oversight, but I'll never know for sure.

Of course, now that the college is closed, due to the frauds committed by the trustees, it doesn't really matter what benefit my work as a student there had, except to my self-esteem. As consolation for loss of my alma mater and a lifetime of alumni involvement, I suppose that will have to do.

Living on Earth

2009-05-08T10:35:00.000-07:00

The only way you could identify the Earth's destroyers as "humankind" would be to exempt tribal people from the category of "human." Otherwise you would have to admit that it is not humans-as-a-species, but the way certain humans live, that is destroying the Earth.

Technocratic man, with his linear view of the world, tends to see tribal societies as earlier, less evolved forms of his own society, rather than as alternative, simultaneously existing methods of living on the Earth. So it is not humans, but industrial-technocratic societies, that are destroying the Earth.

--Timber Wars by Judi Bari

Factories of Fantasy

2009-04-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

In his history of the national security state, Gore Vidal says there are two formidable factories of fantasy in the world: one is located in Hollywood, the other in Washington, D.C.

Cultivating Insight

2009-04-20T08:02:00.000-07:00

Where they sought a molecular mechanism, she sought a conceptual structure supported and made real by the coherence of its inferences and its correlation with function.

She had developed a unique virtuosity at integrating disparate clues into a coherent and meaningful whole. Her ability to identify those clues that were worth following, her instinct for what was important, grew steadily.

Her belief is that the mind functions like a computer--processing and integrating data far more complex than we can possibly be conscious of. Those who learn to cultivate insight learn also to respect its mysterious workings. They come to know trust and value it.

--A Feeling for the Organism by Evelyn Fox Keller

Recovery and Return

2009-04-17T15:34:00.001-07:00

At the end of the forested canyon where I live is a footpath that follows a cascading stream up a flank of the mountain to a ridge that looks down on a valley of old-growth redwoods known as Muir Woods National Monument. Beyond that is the Pacific Ocean.

When the largest of the trees in Muir Woods were young, one third of the population of Europe and the Middle East were dying from the Black Plague, and suffering greatly from social and religious hysteria. Their economies and governments were in turmoil; corruption and depravity were rampant. Recovery from these traumas was doubtful.

Across the Pacific at the time they were seedlings, gunpowder had been in use for as long as they have now lived. The loudest noise that reverberated through the valley, though, would have been the rare thunder or perhaps drums of the Miwok Indians.

Just before dark on New Year’s Day 2003, I walked through the monument with visiting friends who were startled by the copper silver flashes of salmon and trout splashing their way through the rippled spawning redds in muted spotlights of dusk. They were surprised Coho and Steelhead still returned from feeding in the Pacific to this creek where they were born.

Watching the ocean fog sail overhead this morning, I ponder thoughts of recovery and return and what they hold in store for the seedlings I see walking through time.

Strait Stuff

2009-04-08T07:43:00.000-07:00

On the silent rise in the pines overlooking the tidal beach, we could pee in the lee of the fir tree without losing sight of the kiting Osprey at hand or the sound of wave-washed pebbles below. Thick duff and wild rose held the bluff at bay while scent of pitch oozed down.

First Earth

2009-03-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

Our sole obligation, my grandmother instructed, in having been created in the first place by the Holy Grandfather, is to maintain the Principal Religion of the Earthlodge clans. It was agreed eons and eons ago that if these ceremonies were not performed, the world would no longer be held together, the elements of wind and ice would whirl together and splinter us apart. Our forgetfulness, in other words, would become part of a chain of natural and man-made catastrophes--flag wars and ecological suffocation--leading to the end of the earth. And the people who so connivingly and viciously sought to make us forget ourselves by subjugating us, the Euro-Americans, would be the root cause.

It is therefore prophesied that by making us forget who we are, they inevitably kill themselves....

---Remnants of the First Earth by Ray A. Young Bear

Cellist of Sarajevo

2009-03-11T12:01:00.000-07:00

There's a strange sense of relief in knowing where the danger is. It's much easier to deal with than an unfocused sense of doom.

--The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

The Task of Propaganda

2009-02-19T22:37:00.000-08:00

How is it possible for hatred, humiliation, brutality, and even murder to become legitimate behavior? What political, social, and psychological processes in a society make such thinking possible?

The reasons do not have to be rational or even necessarily true. The most important thing is that they are convincing, because this makes them acceptable to people.

The task of propaganda is to shape this difference so that it creates a feeling that there is a threat from the other side and strengthens the urge for homogenization. Most important is the method of introducing hatred: it is most effective if people get used to it slowly, step by step, until they have absorbed it into their daily life.

--They Would Never Hurt a Fly by Slavenka Drakulic

Silence of the Rain

2009-01-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

What was tough was keeping myself on a level of reality compatible with my profession.

--The Silence of the Rain by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

Life of Poetry

2008-12-16T17:24:00.000-08:00

Muriel Rukeyser keeps popping up, so I'm going to suggest anyone unfamiliar with her work to check it out.

Shun and Censure

2008-12-11T17:18:00.000-08:00

While it comes as no surprise that Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States continue to obstruct democratic participation by indigenous peoples in climate change talks at the United Nations, it is still disheartening to watch the UN perpetuate the bankrupt global carbon market schemes through the World Bank and other UN agencies. Even more distressing, is the hypocrisy of the international institution, especially given its much-touted declaration in support of indigenous human rights one year ago.

For those grown accustomed to fraud and other criminal enterprises by UN member states like the US, it is saddening to see the UN take the same route to perdition. With ecosystems and economies in collapse worldwide, the perfidy shown toward the Indigenous Caucus in Poznan was both foolish and unkind.

The generosity of the indigenous delegates and the First Nations that sent them to help the UN in this crisis should be rewarded, not rebuffed. People of conscience worldwide should both shun and censure their governments for behaving so rudely.

Bona Fide Blogging

2008-12-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

Blogs are now an accepted genre of human communication. Indeed, when it comes to the written form, it is the most popular participatory mode.

I mean, every literary society in and out of academia and publishing has blogs, and often the best are those not written by professional authors or journalists. So why are bloggers not considered bona fide writers?

Maybe it's because blogging is relatively new and difficult to establish standards for. But then, what is the standard for a short story, a memoir or a novel? That it be interesting? Popular? Profitable?

Blogging can be all that. So why no recognition of the venue? Is it because bloggers came by their skills without formal education? That would hardly seem fair.

No, I think blogging is less favored because it is perceived to be less engaged--a sometimes accurate and thus forgivable prejudice. But then, do not the famous and fortunate also sometimes produce pulp for profit in between magnificent works of art?

Casablanca

2008-12-05T09:02:00.000-08:00

Asserting that Portugal would never intentionally violate international law, Portugal's foreign minister today announced that no documents exist proving Portugal's complicity in smuggling kidnapped prisoners to the Guantanamo, Cuba torture camp. The assertion follows on the heels of a damning report in the Spanish media, that 95% of the prisoners bound for abuse by the CIA arrived on flights from the Portuguese Azores. Ever the wit, the Portuguese attorney general promised to get to the bottom of the allegations.

Dipnote

2008-11-21T10:31:00.000-08:00

Even the US State Department has its own blog now. User friendly, upbeat, and cheerily extolling the virtuous rhetorical values of our seriously failed state. A lesson for mass communication aficionados and political analysts alike.

Straight Hammett

2008-11-19T21:31:00.000-08:00

Plans are all right sometimes. And sometimes just stirring things up is all right.

--Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

American Business

2008-11-12T09:43:00.000-08:00

In Illegal People, David Bacon examines the history of the economic relationship between Mexico and the United States, as well as the politics of immigration and indentured labor. This expose of the cynical manipulation of power by American banks, institutions and politicians over the lives of innocent people napalmed by NAFTA, reminds me of a remark made about American business:

They will stoop to anything and stop at nothing.

Building a Future

2008-10-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

Raising Consciousness

Indigenous Chiapans are building schools and a future:

Because of the poor quality of government education, we have begun to create our own. The model of education from the government served only to destroy the mother earth and all of humanity, to develop studies favoring the interests of those in power.

Joy of Learning

2008-10-29T08:04:00.000-07:00

Galileo Glory

The writing center where I volunteered posted this tutoring note about my experience. I later expanded my note into a short story.

Blind Leading Blind

2008-10-10T10:16:00.000-07:00

That is the ultimate irony of our era. Those who have been most utterly defeated have become most influential. Another irony is that the most linear and material minds are not aware that history has relentlessly moved past them, putting their values in a new perspective which they cannot yet see.

--Jamake Highwater

Integrity and Empire

2008-09-11T13:01:00.001-07:00

Integrity is the enemy of empire.

--Someone almost famous

A Jar of Purple Heaven

2008-08-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

We planted a plum tree by the end of our drive at the road where our neighbors walked their kids to school. They were the sweetest and most abundant plums I've ever seen; everyone would stop to pick and eat one or two, and leave smiling.

Our neighbor who let us use his pasture for our horses gave us a recipe book with plum pie written by his cousin in Montana.

One fall a woman and young daughter knocked on the door to tell me she read a story at school about making plum jam, and wondered if she could pick a box. The next week she brought us a jar of purple heaven.

Torturing Diego Garcia

2008-08-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Special Agent Diego Garcia left the Congressional oversight committee meeting wondering which of the members would rat him out. He could always call Pepe Escobar, but he was pretty sure his phone was already tapped. No matter what he did from here on out, Agent Garcia would either end up dead, disgraced, or disappeared. Would his grandchildren ever know?

As an orphan in Utah, Diego became a Mormon at age twelve to take advantage of the church welfare system. At eighteen he went to Brigham Young on a scholarship from the FBI. He was perhaps the only Mexican-American in Salt Lake who didn't swear, smoke or drink. Now, at age forty-five, he was on the verge of taking up two of these three vices.

Agent Garcia had no illusions about either the church or the bureau – they were both racist institutions. But Diego had bigger things on his mind since the morning he found the memo from the Vice President in the pants pocket of the corpse in the White House basement. The fact it was still in his own jacket pocket, and not in the evidence file, put Garcia in a no-win situation. Thinking about it put him over the threshold of vice number one.

The suicide of a member of the President's cabinet was not a news story that would go away. The Secret Service phoned Diego's desk daily, ostensibly to see how the investigation was going, but Agent Garcia knew which way the wind was blowing; the script called for character assassination, and Garcia had been dragging his feet. Earlier this week, he spotted the tail they'd put on him. One visit to the pharmacy and they'd have the photo they needed for an article about his own suicide.

Riding in the taxi back to his office, Diego decided to take early retirement – without notice. After drawing the max out of an ATM across from the federal building, Garcia caught the train to New York.
---from Torturing Diego Garcia by Jay Taber

Living on Earth

2008-07-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

Sierra Henries, graduate of the school of life.

Planet Gulagia

2008-07-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

Franchising the dark side.

Summer of Love

2008-07-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

Watch the Summer of Love PBS documentary. It's more important than you think.

Fab Fiction

2008-06-18T15:35:00.001-07:00

The three greatest works of fiction are the Bible, the US Constitution, and the New York Times.

---Jay Taber

Faith and Behavior

2008-06-09T15:49:00.000-07:00

The novel was forbidden in the Spanish colonies by the Inquisition. The Inquisitors considered this literary genre, the novel, to be as dangerous for the spiritual faith of the Indians as for the moral and political behavior of society, and, of course, they were absolutely right.

--A Writer's Reality by Mario Vargas Llosa

Kick the Door Down

2008-06-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

I take a very traditional view of democracy. When people want to be included they don't wait for an invitation; they kick the door down...

--Frank Furedi

The Waitress Was New

2008-06-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

Apart from the fact that on the whole I didn't give a damn, the day was off to a good start.

---The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre

Lives Forgotten

2008-06-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

Unlike the Jews, they share neither a Messianic visionary cult nor the consciousness of a great historical past. Oral traditions survive only through strong genealogical awareness; their memories do not extend beyond four, or at best five, generations, limited to those ancestors a living person still remembers---and at his death these ancient ones are forgotten, since no one else has known them alive. There are no mythical or legendary heroes, no stories about their origin, no need for any justification of their worldwide nomadism...

Close to half a million were exterminated by the Germans between 1939 and 1945.

---Jan Yoors' The Gypsies

Diversity Dispatches

2008-05-30T19:37:00.001-07:00

Alex Shoumatoff, a correspondent to the New Yorker and Vanity Fair for two decades, gets around. He has a penchant for documenting the diversity of life, and has organized his far-flung dispatches here.

A Reckless Luxury

2008-05-29T21:21:00.000-07:00

In the early years of post-communist totalitarianism in Central and Eastern Europe, brutal violence against ethnic minorities like the Roma (Gypsies) was almost commonplace. In Romania, for instance, police assisted murderous mobs -- numbering in the hundreds -- while they committed calculated attacks and arsons all over the country. The desire for ethnic cleansing was proudly proclaimed by many throughout the region, not just in the former Yugoslavia. As Isabel Fonseca wrote in her book Bury Me Standing, this epidemic constituted, "the violence of violated men".

Writers like Malcolm Gladwell (Damaged) and Lloyd de Mause (The Emotional Life of Nations) have cited scholarly studies demonstrating the corrosive effects of brutality on the human mind, but the long-term consequences of the psychological cruelty of totalitarian regimes is not as widely appreciated as it is in terms of phenomena like domestic violence and child abuse. Symptoms of community trauma crop up in ethnographic reports about such atrocities as aboriginal boarding schools in Canada, Australia and the US, or in medical papers on collective punishment in Palestine, but the sadism and seething hatred undergirding the resurgence of fascism in Europe is fueled by more than religious racism; it is sociopathic.

Unfortunately, this new pandemic is not limited to the geography of former dictatorships. As Hans Magnus Enzensburger, author of Civil Wars, wrote, "Those who look at globalization in purely economic terms have not understood it. Today, nothing is left that can remain separate from it, neither religion nor science, neither culture nor technology". As the new capitalist totalitarianism, it is proving itself no less capable of producing mindless violence.

With the loss of hopes and dreams, millions more in the so-called developed world are susceptible to mobilized resentment and scapegoating. With the loss of security and identity, they are easy prey for manipulated hatred and revenge.

Ignoring the dehumanizing effects of such colossal disempowerment of humanity is a reckless luxury; in no time at all it can become catastrophic.

Essence of Life

2008-05-26T12:24:00.000-07:00

These [totem poles] were objects of bright pride, to be admired...They told the people of the completeness of their culture...

The people of the Northwest Coast were rich. Their sea even richer; they were enormously energetic, and they centered their society around what was to them the essence of life: what we now call "art".

--Out of the Silence by Adelaide de Menil and William Reid

The Big Halt

2008-05-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

Law 74, the End of Nomadism, the Big Halt. The crux of the matter was assimilation, belonging, ethnic identity. We wanted them, but they wanted us to leave them alone.

They nodded and showed us the door, assured us they were on our side, but anyone could see that they were separated from honesty by fear.

--Zoli, a novel by Colum McCann

Sacred Games

2008-05-02T20:44:00.000-07:00

The people in the Bombay underworld are terrifically international. I started the book because, like all other citizens of Bombay and India in general, I found myself living through an escalating level of violence in the 80s and 90s. The increasing influence of the underworld, of organized crime, in every aspect of public and private life was right in our faces. At one point in the late 90s, it was estimated that 50,000 people in the city worked in one way or another for these organizations. There were gang shootouts near my house, with AK-47s.

But once I started talking to people through the policemen and journalists I knew, it became clear that you couldn't talk about organized crime without talking, for instance, about politics. If the political entities in any state decide that organized crime is not going to exist, it will not--there's mutual profit and exchange going on.

--Vikram Chandra, author of Sacred Games

End of the Hunt

2008-04-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

"Without poets," Blake said, "there would never have been a Rising. Pearse and MacDonagh and Plunkett."

"True enough," Collins said. "It takes poets to stage an armed rebellion in the middle of a city with no lines of communication or retreat."

--The End of the Hunt by Thomas Flanagan

Seeking the Center

2008-04-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

We enjoyed reading The Fourth World of the Hopis, Harold Courlander's compilation of the Hopi epic story as preserved in their legends and traditions.

About Archipelago

2008-04-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

Archipelago is a project of it's editor, Jay Taber, to locate essential points of view among diverse literary perspectives on the humanities. If you have recommended additions, we'd love to hear from you. e-mail: tbarj@yahoo.com

(Jay writes a regular column for Fourth World Eye, a publication of the Center for World Indigenous Studies. You can listen to him speak about the Fourth World and the Fourth Estate here.)

What Needs to be Done

2008-03-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Nadine Gordimer's new book, and my initial response was that she's lost her clarity, but on reflection I think she has merely reached a point where she can see her life in proper perspective. It can't be easy losing friends like Susan Sontag, Anthony Sampson and Edward Said. Soon enough she will have to add to that list of comrades Nelson Mandela.

Thoughtful readers are fortunate to have guides like Gordimer to point the way. Other writers are blessed by her example. Humanitarians are encouraged to do what needs to be done.

Seanchai

2008-03-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

I'm a storyteller. That's all.

That's all? How can you say, 'That's all'? Who else is going to create our memory?

--Ireland by Frank Delaney

Small Things

2008-02-20T20:24:00.000-08:00

The past is always carried into the present by small things.
--Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje

Valid Judgments

2008-02-12T09:08:00.000-08:00

He had the certainty of a man who took time for his thoughts so they were later expressed in valid judgments.

--Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier

Traditional Leaders

2008-01-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

Among ancient peoples, the leader is not to be found among the most corrupt and devious members of the community, or the most tricky and opportunist, or even the richest. He is not among the most grasping, or the most sectarian. Our leader is traditionally the person whom the rest of the community most respects, the person who has distinguished himself by his service to the community. His authority derives from his ethical behavior, and from his experience of life.

--Crossing Borders by Rigoberta Menchu

Research Seminar

2008-01-18T10:24:00.000-08:00

California Institute for Integral Studies
Spring 2008 BA Completion

Readings:

Behar, Ruth. (1996) Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart: The Vulnerable Observer. Boston: Beacon Press. Chapters 1 & 6.
Boal, Augusto. (1985) Theatre of the Oppressed. New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group. Pp107-115 & 142-155. Handout.
Taber, Jay. (2001-2005) “Research as Organizing Tool”. Pp 1-17. Handout
Mindell, Arnold. (1995) Sitting in the Fire: Large Group Transformation Using Conflict and Diversity. Portland, Or: Lao Tse Press. Pp49-60. Handout.
Gillmor, Dan. (2004) We the media: Grassroots Journalism By The People, For The People. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc. pp. IX-41 & 158-190 plus glossary & notes.
Lundgren-Williams, Kai and Methodologies for Resistant Negotiation Working Group. “Negotiating Communication Across Complex Difference: The Classroom and Democratic Social Movements as Coalitional Spaces”. Handout.
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. (2002) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London & New York: Zed Books Ltd. pp. 1-41.

The Right to Live

2008-01-15T20:46:00.000-08:00

As I stood along the Sacapulas bridge rail, I glanced up and was startled to see a fully armed military patrol in camouflage gear marching toward me,. The line grew until I could see fifty or sixty soldiers, armed with everything from machine guns to mortars. The 1960's and '70's, leading up to the worst of the recent violence, had been the first period of church idealism in Guatemala since the [16th century] Verapaz experiment. Foreign priests, many of them Spanish and North American, had evangelized among the [Mayan] Indians, founded cooperatives, and taught literacy. The civil and military authorities in Guatemala had apparently found the resulting Indian political consciousness threatening, because in the late seventies, as a preface to the more generalized violence to come, thousands of religiously inspired catechists, cooperative members, and community leaders were selectively assassinated.

I followed the soldiers up the hill and into the center of town. Just off the main plaza, they filed through a gate bearing the words DECAMPAMENTO MILITAR SACAPULAS. To one side of the gate was painted the base motto: "Only he who struggles has the right to conquer. Only he who conquers has the right to live."

--The Heart of the Sky by Peter Canby