Another New Mister Fondle CD
"His
vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference."
I finished a new CD the other day, called "I Want the Things that Make You Happy (So That You Can't Have Them)." It comes under the category of "music no one but me will want to listen to," even though I think it's pretty damn good. Three very long sound sculptures using a combination of analog source and digital processing.
You can download a zip file with mp3s and cover here.
Here's the full track list:
I Want the Things... 24:00
That Make You Happy... 23:21
So That You Can't Have Them 34:48
New Mister Fondle CD
The
first new Mister Fondle album in a year is now
available. It's called Surprising Bowel
Movements of the
Wood Hornet, which I think is pretty
self-explanatory. The title came from a dream.
There's a handful of nice pop tunes–a bit of snark
directed towards Obama apologists, a return to
Central Food and one based around a sweet poem
written by a friend. The rest are instrumentals,
though some of the them are quite different than
what I'd been doing recently. There are still some
droning ambient things, but there's also some
quite melodic poppy things. Perhaps the best
noncompilation release since Bombard the
Headquarters. At least, that's what I think
now–we'll see if it holds up.
You can download a zip file with mp3s and cover here.
You can listen to "Central Food II" here.
You can listen to "Everything is Better Now" here.
Here's the full track list:
Everything is Better 3:00
Central Food II 2:48
Race to Power 3:38
Emvenyane 3:19
Brains! 2:06
Unbarmherzigen 5:34
Arma Ventris 4:27
Theme from “Black Flame” 1:45
Food Chain Disruptor 6:57
Central Food Suite 9:47
Christian Power Center 7:50
Suttee Trance Offering 13:43
Let’s Forget We’re in Heaven 7:10
United in Joy 1:33
Is there a bunch of blank space beneath this text? I don't know what that's about. Or the "echo" thing.
Editorial - The Alarm
_______________________________
The Alarm Editorial
Why a new student newspaper? The answer to this is simple enough. No population is well-served with just one major source of information, regardless of the quality of that source. The students of the University of Arizona deserve more than just one student paper; the University of Virginia, in comparison. has fifteen.
There is another, related answer. In the period leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, it was reported that more than 60% of the US population believed that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons capable of reaching the US. This fact is only one of a multitude of similar examples. The ignorance and misinformation which characterizes much of the US population’s understanding of the world is reinforced by the increasing monopolization of the forms of mass distribution of information. When Ben Bagdikian’s "The Media Monopoly" first appeared in 1983, he wrote that fifty corporations dominated most of every mass medium. With each subsequent edition, that number has dropped -- to 29 media firms in 1987, 23 in 1990, 14 in 1992, and 10 in 1997. The sixth edition of "The Media Monopoly" documents that just a half-dozen corporations are now supplying most of the nation's media.
More importantly, a variety of media sources is no improvement if they are all of the same type or in the control of people with similar views and values. In a speech to fellow journalists on April 12, 1883, John Swinton said, “There is no such thing in America as an independent press … We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” There is little to suggest that the situation is different now.
The Alarm is not the Anti-Wildcat. It is simply a question of recognizing that there are many issues and stories the Wildcat does not cover, or covers partially, and that there are diverse perspectives unrepresented. As a result, there are many topics around which there is very little public discussion. Why is there such a history of racist violence by the UAPD? What are the UA’s connections with Raytheon, a producer of weapons of mass destruction currently being used in a massive war crime? Why, after years of education and actions by Students Against Sweatshops, is the University still connected with such horrible institutions? What is the extent of the University’s involvement in animal testing? Why did the administration go to such efforts to stifle dissent and public discussion during the US attack on Iraq? Why has the university instituted SEVIS, thus participating in police state tactics? Why is the Arizona Board of Regents so opposed to any kind of unionizing among staff and faculty?
The Role of A University
How one feels about the current student newspaper situation has a lot to do with how one feels about universities. Many feel that universities should be modeled after corporations: undemocratic and lacking transparency, with decision-making based on cost/benefit analyses and concerns over efficiency. Others feel that the universities exist to provide technical training so that students are able to rent themselves out for more money upon graduation.
The Alarm’s position is that universities should be intensely democratic spaces. Universities should focus their resources on providing the resources and opportunity for the full wrangling over ideas, beliefs, and values - not just among its students but among the community more generally. Moreover, it should highlight and give preference to those issues which are ignored, covered up, distorted or avoided as ‘controversial’ by society as a whole.
This view, which seems so obviously correct to us, is seen by some as insufficiently patriotic, even treasonous. Those who hold this view feel that certain things must not be said, certain people and institutions must not be criticized, and certain assumptions and ‘truths’ must not be examined, much less challenged. Moreover, it should be the rich and powerful who get to decide this. Often, this view is defended in the name of ‘patriotism’ (understood as unquestioning allegiance) or the defense of supposedly universal values. While the corporate model often at least gives lip-service to democratic values, as President Likins well demonstrates, this other view is essentially fascistic in its demand for ideological subservience to the interests of ruling groups.
It is reflective of the current situation in the US that the discussion of the proper role of universities largely keeps within the bounds of the corporate model, though the fascist model is increasingly a focus as well. Those that argue for something different, particularly those who argue from a principled position, are increasingly being kept out the discussion.
Here at the UA, it is clear that President Likins has a corporate model in mind. His record of broken promises, lack of accountability, fear of genuine democracy and focus on questions of money is clear, particularly to those who have dealt with him directly. As he once said, in a rare moment of honesty, ‘the university is not a democratic institution.’ Moreover, his views are evidently widely shared throughout his administration and, most importantly, the Arizona Board of Regents. Under his direction the University has become an increasingly opaque, repressive and autocratic institution.
The Overall Political Atmosphere
It is no accident that this is happening. The University is undergoing these changes in a country in which many of the freedoms which US citizens have taken for granted are under attack. Basic civil liberties such as the right to organize, to dissent, to publicly and peacefully protest are threatened. Even the right of American citizens to due process of law, to receive a court trial when accused of a crime, instead of a military tribunal or indefinite detention, is no longer secure. Attacks on immigrants, police brutality, restrictions on women’s rights are increasing, often with overt support from government officials.
The university does not exist outside the currents of social change. In fact, quite the opposite: the University is closely connected with some of these dangerous and repressive programs, and it is perpetuating some of the most grievous racist and sexist practices of society as a whole. To briefly mention three examples:
Women's Rights: The right to abortion is facing a grave legal threat right now, with extreme right-wingers in control of 2/3 of the federal government already. But just as important as keeping abortion legal is keeping it available. "Parental consent" and "waiting period" laws are a strategy used to make the option of abortion inaccessible to women. Since 1977, there have been more than 80,000 documented acts of violence against abortion providers in the US and Canada (which the FBI refused to classify as acts of terrorism). The Hyde Amendment and abortion gag rules are making abortion a practical impossibility for many women inside the United States as well as internationally. This is part of the context in which the University Medical Center is not allowed to teach abortion to U of A medical students.
Civil Liberties: We are facing the most significant civil liberties emergency in generations. The so-called War on Terror is being used as an excuse for the indefinite detentions of immigrants and of American citizens; it is being used to justify a return to the days of COINTELPRO, when the federal government went to great lengths to infiltrate and disrupt political opposition groups -- or simply to murder their leaders. Dissent is under such a sharp assault that the American Civil Liberties Union recently filed their first-ever lawsuit against the federal government in a case about the right of dissenters to gather and protest. This is part of the context in which the University harassed and tried to intimidate organizers of protests against the invasion of Iraq.
The Environment: Bush has said that it is a matter of national security that we need to allow drilling in protected parts of Alaska, that the US should not ratify the Kyoto treaty on global warming, and that we do not really need tighter controls on how much arsenic is in drinking water. His "Healthy Forests" plan calls for removing restrictions on logging and allowing more forests to be cut down. He even ordered the EPA to lie about air quality in Manhattan after September 11. Everything in the environment which is not protected is being increasingly exploited, and everything which is protected is under threat of losing that protection. This is part of the context in which the U of A can ignore the sanctity of Native American holy sites and spurn the protection of environmentally sensitive area to build and operate telescopes on Mt. Graham.
Many more parallels could be presented. The point is that the U of A is following in the footsteps of those who have a very repressive vision of society. It should be doing the opposite by taking the initiative in promoting debate, criticism and full public discussion, and steadfastly defending civil rights. Many individuals and some departments have been doing this, to their credit. But it is clear that Likins and his administration find it useful to tail after such people as Bush, Ashcroft and Ridge. And sadly, the Wildcat as an institution prefers to avoid tackling such topics in any real way. There is clearly the need for greater exposure, discussion and struggle over these issues. Our hope is that The Alarm can serve as a catalyst for this.
Bias and Objectivity
The casual reader will note that The Alarm has particular biases in the subjects it focuses on and how they are discussed. The more perceptive reader will know that this is true to varying degrees of any source of information, regardless of how ‘objective’ it might appear.
The Alarm is biased in many ways. First, we strive to cover stories that are either ignored or given negligible attention by mainstream sources. Second, we do not assume that individuals and institutions which dominate society have a monopoly on truth. Thus, we seek out alternative views and analyses, and proceed upon that basis. We assume that it is often much less illuminating to focus on the debates between those who have or seek power than it is to focus on the critical examination of the assumptions they share (but usually do not explicitly articulate).
As an example, consider the current US ‘War on Terror.’ It is assumed by virtually all mainstream media (regardless of political viewpoint), that such a struggle exists, that the United States is fighting a war against terrorists and all they represent. From this assumption, there are varying debates over questions of tactics, emphasis and specific aims. And yet, the idea that the United States government is fighting a war against terrorism is patently absurd. Many of the current targets of this war were supported by the US at one point - Saddam Hussein was a friend and ally of the US for far longer than he has been an official Bad Guy, despite the fact that he has always been a murderous thug. The list of US-supported (even US-created) terrorists is long, varying from groups like Alpha 66 and Omega 7 in Florida to the creation of terror governments in countries such as Zaire, Guatemala, Chile, Indonesia, etc. Some of the individuals chosen by the US to run these countries, such as Indonesia’s Suharto, make Hussein look like a choir boy. Then there is the direct use of terror as a fundamental tactic by the US in Vietnam or through the creation of the death squads in Latin America that killed hundreds of thousands. Finally, the US is the only government in the world that has been convicted in the World Court of state-sponsored terrorism, for its anti-Sandinista terrorist army in Nicaragua.
All of this (and much more that can not be summarized here) makes it clear that the US has a long and consistent policy of supporting terrorism when it serves its purposes. Indeed, one can make the argument that the US has long been the world’s major source of terrorism. Thus, there can not possibly be a US ‘War on Terror,’ certainly not one led by such individuals as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz or Colin Powell.
To report the ‘War on Terror’ not as a propaganda fiction but as fact, as virtually all US newspapers do, is not to be ‘objective,’ but is merely to reproduce a particular bias. It is a bias based on the uncritical repetition of assumptions which can not withstand the slightest scrutiny, but which serve well the interests of the powerful. In this case, the Alarm’s bias is to report on this war as an ideological cover for the actions of undemocratic and powerful individuals and institutions who seek to further US global domination and their own domestic power. That some of the targets of this war are indeed terrorists and are guilty of heinous crimes does not change this.
The Free Press: Liberal, Conservative, or Just Corporate?
The point is that we are not ‘biased,’ anymore so than any other media. What are typically considered ‘objective’ media sources are ones that reproduce dominate biases. And one major source of these biases are the rich powerful media conglomerates which provide the overwhelming source information for most people in the US. That some can differentiate between ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ rich powerful media conglomerates is less a testimony towards their powers of observation than their failure to see the forest for the trees. An honest examination of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ rich powerful media conglomerates reveals that their commonalities far outweigh their differences.
To reprint stories put out by rich, powerful, media conglomerates, as the Wildcat does, is not to participate in ‘objective’ journalism, but rather the perpetuation of the biases and assumptions of rich, powerful, media conglomerates (which, it should be obvious, are very similar to the biases and assumptions of other rich, powerful institutions and individuals).
Noam Chomsky has said: “Media are corporations ‘selling’ privileged audiences to other businesses.... Media concentration is high, and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media...belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations, and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well. Journalists entering the system are unlikely to make their way unless they conform to these ideological pressures, generally by internalizing the values.... Those who fail to conform will be weeded out... “
And whatever their differences, all the corporate media are dependent upon corporate advertising as the major source of their income. Bagdikian notes in “The Media Monopoly”: “Consequently, corporate decision making is the most powerful single force in socializing and politicizing the American public. Leading corporations own the leading news media and their advertisers subsidize most of the rest. They decide what news and entertainment will be made available to the country; they have direct influence on the country's laws by making the majority of the massive campaign contributions that go to favored politicians; their lobbyists are permanent fixtures in legislatures.”
Bagdikian goes on: “This inevitably raises suspicions of overt conspiracy. But there is none. Instead, there is something more insidious: a system of shared values within contemporary American corporate culture and corporations' power to extend that culture to the American people, inappropriate as it may be.”
As the old anarchist joke goes, the free press belongs not to everyone, but only to those that own it. One result is that, as Malcom X put it, “if you read the newspapers long enough, you end up hating the people being oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing.”
We are not saying that nothing of value comes from such sources. Many at The Alarm are daily consumers of sources such as the New York Times and CNN. However, we are also consumers of such things as truthout.org, Z Magazine, Al Jazeera or Revolutionary Worker. It seems to us a banality to say that nothing can be correctly understood if one only hears from the rich and powerful (or from those who seek to join their ranks).
Our Secret Agenda & Future Plans
The Alarm was chosen as the name for the paper because of two antecedents. The first was the working class paper put out in Chicago towards the end of the 19th century by people associated with the Haymarket Affair (see page 6 for a history of this). The second was the paper put out by the UA Peace Refuge during the initial period of the US war against Iraq. The point is not that we are specifically anarchist (we are not), but that we see ourselves as part of long-standing tradition of alternative publications.
Part of our larger agenda is to create a diversity of student newspapers at the UA. We want to be merely the first. We hope to inspire many more of every variety. We would welcome a new student paper which views The Alarm as rubbish put out by communist infiltrators, cultural relativists and other anti-American bottom feeders who seek the destruction of Western culture. We say this knowing full well that such people do not share our commitment to diversity and open discussion.
Though we are starting out as a monthly, we hope to move to publishing weekly at some point in the future. This may not happen. There are good grounds to assume that this paper may not last very long even as a monthly, as it is put out by a loose collective of people with many responsibilities and limited resources. We hope to initiate discussions with the administration to have funds set aside for the creation of several student newspapers. Whether this will happen, we do not know. The people with whom we would negotiate are ambivalent towards the principles of democracy at best.
We also hope to be able to focus predominantly on original journalism focusing on the University and southern Arizona. Whether this happens depends on the extent to which The Alarm finds support among students and the community. We encourage those who would like to participate in the production of The Alarm in any capacity to contact us. As our policy statement notes, The Alarm is a project of the Tucson chapter of Refuse & Resist, but it does not promote a specific political platform and is open to anyone who agrees with the principles of the mission statement. What The Alarm is and what it becomes is dependent upon who participates in its development.
Why Theory?
We’ve all got opinions.
Where do they come from?
Each day seems like a natural fact.
& what we think, changes how we act.
- "Why
Theory?" Gang of Four -
Theory provides for a site of resistance to a
world-view which is totalizing, concerned with
means/ends calculations and preoccupied with the
administration and maintenance of things as they are –
with increasing the efficiency of the status quo, which
necessarily means the preservation of misery, the
expansion of irrationality and the perfection of waste.
That is, theory provides the antidote to political
science.
Without theory, human society and daily life in its
immeasurable manifestations, has the appearance of a
natural fact. A fact because it (that is, whatever is
being conceived, whether an institution, relationship,
system, etc) is simple and straightforward; what
it is is readily and obviously discernible,
and natural because that’s the way it always is.
Without theory, there is no framework for
understanding, and therefore no guide to action for
fundamentally transforming, existing structures,
relationships, systems, ideologies, symbols, etc – a
lamentable situation given that these act together and
constitute one another to produce a world which is
terrifying in its destructiveness, brutality,
irrationality and waste.
Theory can expose ‘facts’ to be socially constructed
and embedded in ideology. What facts are perceived to
be (and which facts are perceived) is a reflection of
and is greatly conditioned, and sometimes determined,
by power, by asymmetrical power relationships and all
the violence through which these are constructed and
maintained. This means that facts are inherently
political, not natural, and are therefore contestable.
Identifying a fact, describing or analyzing the world
at any level of abstraction, is a political act, an act
in a site of power. Facts are also historical; they are
path dependent. Theory can show how a different path
leads to different facts. Or, to put it another way,
theory can show that beyond what facts are, there
exists what facts are not and could be. Finally, theory
provides the way to render critical judgement on all
this. Is this ‘fact,’ this institution, this system,
this relationship, this theory, good (and how is that
determined)?
The need for theory is made clearer (and rendered more
complex) with the recognition that theory is
omnipresent, an inherent and unavoidable part of human
existence. Not just evaluation, but all sensory input
itself is theory-laden, to a degree which can be
astonishing when recognized. Theory is what guides
action and understanding, one way or another. Human
beings are theoretical creatures. With disturbing
frequency, theorizing takes the form of an unconscious
ideology, reflecting and re-inforcing ontological and
epistemological assumptions which are unexamined and
uncritically accepted. These assumptions, since they
are constructed in and through a society which is
thoroughly embedded in asymmetrical relationships of
power, virtually by definition represent the interests
of those who are in dominant positions. Thus, so does
the theory built upon these assumptions. Thus, so do
the actions guided by the theory, whatever the
intentions may be of those constructing and wielding
the theory (which, again, may operate well below the
level of conscious understanding, which somewhat
paradoxically often results in it being all the more
tenaciously grasped and wielded).
Thus, a little reflection reveals that theory is
responsible for the administration and maintenance of
things as they are, which results in the perception
that human society and daily life in its immeasurable
manifestations are simple and natural facts. Theory is
what maintains the status quo and what guides its
perfection.
The question then becomes, how do we construct theory
and in doing so construct ourselves and our reality
(understanding that these are not sequential but
concurrent and mutually constitutive processes) in ways
which are more likely to create a world that doesn’t
suck?
"Once the inner connection is
grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent
necessity of existing conditions breaks down before
their collapse in practice."
- Karl
Marx -
[note: many of the phrases and ideas used above were cribbed from various sources. I wrote this quite awhile ago and have no way of remembering what came from where.]