Archive - www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

If I Die in Juárez (Camino Del Sol)

If I Die in Juárez (Camino Del Sol)

author: Stella Pope Duarte

name: Steev

average rating: 3.67

book published: 2008

rating: 3

read at: 2008/08/01

date added: 2008/08/17

shelves: novels

The Art of Free Cooperation

The Art of Free Cooperation

author: Geert Lovink

name: Steev

average rating: 3.00

book published: 2007

rating: 3

read at: 2008/08/10

date added: 2008/08/10

shelves: politics

review:
Some good ideas, but some of the ideas just get belabored for far too long. It's basically a new way to describe anarchism. (But don't tell anybody!)

On Whores

A cowardly troll from Phoenix took exception to my characterization of the Tucson Weekly on my blog post the other day, indicating that I was a whore because I've availed myself (or more accurately my causes) of publicity thanks to the Weekly and yet I complain about that same publication.

I'm pretty much done sparring with this jerk but he/she sparked an interesting train of thought that I want to follow for a moment. What exactly is a whore? Besides the literal, sex-work definition, I assume that what was meant is a signification like this one from Wiktionary: "A person who is unscrupulous, especially one who compromises their principles for gain."

Well, as I've often observed, pretty much nobody is pure. In this un-free society where everyone is locked in a web of greed and fear and necessity, constructed by capitalism and fascism, pretty much the only people not compromising their principles for gain are those that have none. For instance, by that definition,

  • If you are against the war in Iraq (I'm not sure what the current poll numbers are but probably at least half of all estadounidenses are) and yet pay for it with your income taxes, you're a whore.
  • If you believe in human-caused climate change and yet still drive cars or fly in airplanes, you're a whore.
  • If you care about human rights and yet buy products made in China, you're a whore.
  • If you care about the environment and sustainability and yet live in Phoenix or Tucson or anywhere in the Sonoran desert bioregion, you're probably a whore.

    These are just a few examples. I could go on and on. Everyone makes compromises. But, so, yes, I'm a whore. We pretty much all are. Suck it up. The person I know who comes closest to being free of all compromises lives alone in an abandoned town off the grid, drinks from a rainfed lake, grows and shoots his own food - but he still drives to town occasionally to buy more bullets and other supplies.

    Besides this compromise issue, there is the issue of tactics. If it's a crime to critique something but to also tactically exploit it as a resource or tool, then I'm guilty as charged. Lock me up. But many others who work for a better world (not to mention those who don't really work for one but rant about how one is possible) do this every day. How many freegans rail against consumer society waste yet benefit regularly from it by the dumpster-load? Primitivists who type their essays and fly to gatherings (and wear glasses and use clocks and language, etc etc) is one of the other more extreme examples. I myself think computers are evil, but I use one every day to do the work I do - that is the best way I have right now for my skills to help better the world.

    So, if, to promote a screening of a film about brutally raped and murdered women, I utilize a piece-of-shit newspaper like the Tucson Weekly which I hate, well, I see no problem with that. Corporate media is a tool to be used judiciously and tactically to accomplish valuable things. Sticking my head in the sand and refusing to exploit such tools in the name of some sort of ethical purity is counterproductive and stupid.

    And so is heckling and name-calling a blogger from behind the shield of anonymity.

  • Why the Border Wall Is Bad

    Though it's now about a month old, there's an excellent article in the New Republic about what's wrong with the border wall. For a right-of-center magazine, they do a good job of laying out all the important points, and conclude that "Most experts on all sides of the immigration debate agree that the border fence is a political band-aid for a larger policy problem." Another great quote at the end that they cite, from Cecilia Mu

    Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)

    Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)

    author: Frank Herbert

    name: Steev

    average rating: 3.97

    book published: 1965

    rating: 5

    read at:

    date added: 2008/08/05

    shelves:

    review:

    More on Hate Radio vs Isabel Garcia

    A couple weeks ago I posted about a local struggle between the forces of grassroots human rights and the forces of corporate-media-backed racist/sexist/xenophobic hatred. This is just a quick update to mention a couple things: first, recall that hate-jock "Jon Justice" made some horrid little videos in which he molests a giant pinata/sexdoll of Garcia. The schmuck took down the videos after he realized how damning they were, then his employer got YouTube to remove the re-posts that Derechos re-uploaded to YouTube, on copyright grounds. Well, now they've reposted them again to a different site that apparently isn't caving in as easily to such specious legal threats. The 2 vids are here and here. They are also embedded on a post from local progressive blog, "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." In fact they seem to be reposted so many places that Journal Broadcasting will probably have trouble censoring them all. There are also transcripts of the 2 videos and other information on the Derechos site.

    I also wanted to point out a few other references to this conflict, like a recent post on Feministing that mentions the situation, and cites some great feminist bloggers' analyses of the DJ's hate acts, saying it better than I could. And the Phoenix New Times' Feathered Bastard, known for regularly frying Sheriff Arpaio and other local facists, blogged expertly about it. I like how he refers to the hate-jock as "Jon Just-An-Ass."

    Also worth griping about is the regularly worthless (except for the comics and Savage Love column) Tucson Weekly's coverage of the story - they mentioned it twice the week it started (in the editor's first-page babblings, and longer blurb further in), and once again the next week, and in all 3 instances, 3 different writers all used the phrase "paraded around" to describe what Garcia did with the Arpaio pinata head. The Weekly's take on the story is somewhat neutral, not really taking sides too strongly, their point being that everyone involved was just being kinda silly (oh except that John Hoffman, another schmuck from the talk-radio world who apparently works with the Weekly's racist asshole-in-residence Tom Danehy, said in his "guest commentary" that Garcia was being "tyrannical." Huh?). Besides the use at all of the rather un-objective, connotative term "paraded" you have to wonder about the repeated use of that exact same wording. Was there a staff meeting at the Weekly where dumbshit editor Jimmy Boegle told everyone to always use "paraded"? Were other words like "walked," "marched" or "ambled" tried by the other 2 writers and discarded by the proofreaders as being not inflammatory enough (I've seen the video they keep mentioning and I think any of those other terms, amongst a host of others, would be accurate to describe Garcia's actions)?

    Or maybe all the authors associated with the rag are just lazy? Well, at any rate that's 4 more pieces of evidence (3 for each instance and 1 for the repetition) in my ongoing case that the Tucson Weekly is a hopeless piece of trash.

    Texas Wall Construction Starting

    txwallBorder.JPGWell, folks, in case anyone still doubted it, the new border wall planned for Texas is literally becoming a reality as of a couple weeks ago. The physical start of this sad and ludicrous atrocity (which, even more saddening, is already pretty much done here in Arizona) is in Mission, Texas. Tireless border activist Jay Castro has put up a bunch of photos from there, of a first protest against this first bit of Texas wall. He also has an impressive collection of shots from all over the rest of the border.
    Apparently there's also construction started in Granjeno, Texas on the combination levee-wall project, the corrupt deal that Hidalgo county made with DHS.

    Ask a Mexican

    Ask a Mexican

    author: Gustavo Arellano

    name: Steev

    average rating: 3.92

    book published: 2007

    rating: 5

    read at:

    date added: 2008/08/04

    shelves:

    review:

    The Nightly News

    The Nightly News

    author: Jonathan Hickman

    name: Steev

    average rating: 4.10

    book published: 2007

    rating: 5

    read at: 2008/08/03

    date added: 2008/08/03

    shelves: fun, politics

    review:

    All About Love: New Visions (Bell Hooks Love Trilogy)

    All About Love: New Visions (Bell Hooks Love Trilogy)

    author: bell hooks

    name: Steev

    average rating: 4.06

    book published: 2000

    rating: 5

    read at: 2008/08/03

    date added: 2008/08/03

    shelves: spirit-self

    review: