The Postmodern Anarchist

The Bureau of Public Secrets has added an interesting page on Georges Brassens and the French “Renaissance of Song” focused on anarchist singer/songwriter Brassens. His recording career spanned the mid 50s to the mid 70s and the page includes links to Brassens related sites and some information on his French contemporaries.

Open Access News has started reporting on a boycott of Elsevier Journals in response to the increasing costs of journals with brief pieces on a resolution from the UC Santa Cruz Academic Senate and statements from BioMed Central. The Open Access movement is really heating up in a nice way.

I just found the coolest blog about academia ever. Actually it's the only blog I've seen about academia. Maybe the links have more such blogs but I'm not even waiting to find out. I just want to pass on the fact that academicgame looks incredibly useful and keyed in to the issues you'll face if you decide to go for a career in academia. It should be particularly useful to those who have the opportunity to do something else and to those who are recovering from the totally fucked up nature of careers in higher ed.

In many sections of netweed, occasionally even here at The Postmodern Anarchist, you'll find links to products sold at Amazon.com. Sales made through these links benefit netweed as an Amazon Associate. However these links have not always been obvious until clicked. In the future, all Amazon links on netweed will be clearly identified.

Since we make miniscule amounts of money from Amazon sales, we'd like to encourage you to click through and spend money, but we don't want you to feel like we're tricking you into anything. One more note, previous weblog entries will not be revised due to time constraints.

Not only is Amazon's new text search feature potentially bad for authors, but Amazon is also continuing to apply for and receive further frivolous patents. A brief glance at this patent application reveals that the U.S. Patent office is still way behind on understanding what the fuck is happening on the Internet. Amazon's one-click patent was ridiculous enough and should have alerted them to their ineptitude. The ongoing granting of patents for mundane concepts that are already widely practiced is going to be a long term disservice to everyone using the Web.

Disclaimer: netweed participates in the Amazon Associates program in a sad attempt to help pay a few bills. The Postmodern Anarchist will periodically participate in an attempt to be supportive of that effort.

A major wave of the open access movement has involved Peter Suber who originally termed it "free online scholarship." His SPARC Open Access Newsletter site includes an Open Access News blog and a Timeline of the Open-Access Movement.

Another useful resource is the growing Directory of Open Access Journals, a great guide to academic journals freely available online.

Interesting piece about a report on psyops and the war on Iraq in Democracy Now. It includes a link to the report in PDF form.

Democracy Now has also done a piece about one of Edward Said's last public addresses and include a transcript as well as streaming video.

I'm generally not a big fan of liberals and I rarely support use of the term Negro, but I make exceptions.

In this case, a liberal blog worth noting:
Radical Review

And a black history, culture, politics blog:
Negrophile

If you've got a blog of relevance, let me know at postmodernanarchist(at)netweed.com

Recent Village Voice Articles on Howard Dean/John Kerry:
Kerry's War by James Ridgeway
The Army of Dean by Kareem Fahim

Recent Tech Articles from the New York Times:
Venture to Offer ID Card for Use at Security Checks by John Schwartz
The Stealth Computer by Ford Fessenden

And from San Francisco Indymedia:
Oakland Mayor Sued By Alice Arts Center Residents by Lynda Carson

Clyde, that netweed guy, is getting into digital libraries in a big way. So not only is Roy Tennant's Digital Libraries column this week's netweed Favorite, but he's encouraged me to plug it here. And, you know what? It's a damn good column about interesting issues like open source, open access journals and the Patriot Act that should clue you in to the fact that librarians are down with the age of information. Or whatever it is we're living through.

While the CIA is a vicious beast that must be reigned in at every opportunity, it's not the omnipresent godlike Agency many imagine. This recent article from the BBC does a nice job of reporting the findings of a declassified report about the CIA's inability to cope with contemporary information technologies. I'm not sure whether or not to feel good about this or to be concerned about the danger of the Agency getting up to speed.

In addition to the useful links posted by the article, you might want to check out the CIA's venture capital operation, In-Q-Tel, designed to get them up to speed.

As I've continued to read Kostelanetz's SoHo (see Oct. 15), I've felt that in some ways I was too hard on him. The ongoing discussion of the work done there makes me realize that many artists that I associate with New York more generally did much of their trailbreaking work in SoHo. So I can see why Kostelanetz sees it as the center of things. And it must have been an amazing place to be for awhile.

Nevertheless I find remarks like the following truly annoying:
"Nobody else's theater, anywhere in the world, looked or sounded like [Richard] Foreman's." p. 117
Foreman is obviously unique but nobody anywhere in the world? How the fuck would anybody be able to ascertain such a claim? And there's something like that in almost every chapter. Ah well, perhaps that should be filed under the postmodern anarchist's pet peeves.

Check out the review of Pumping Iron at netweed's newest weblog, Screen Watcher. Pumping Iron is the mid 70s documentary on body building. It could make you like, love, hate and fear Arnold Schwarzenegger, all in the span of one feature film. Hey, like the Terminator series!

Grist Magazine columnist Amanda Griscom gives a useful breakdown about the lies of George W. Bush and his apologists regarding his environmental policies in Gadfly in the Ointment.

I've been reading Richard Kostelanetz's book
SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artists' Colony. It focuses on the emergence of a major live/work movement in the SoHo area of New York that kicked in during the 1970s and then played out by the 1990s. The peak years were really the late 70s and early 80s, though, and I remember reading in the Village Voice and in art books about a lot of the stuff Kostelanetz discusses. However he describes the artist scene as a form of apolitical anarchism whereas many of those who would struggle from squats and the streets on the Lower East Side in the 80s and 90s would call it gentrification.

In any case, the book is worth reading for a personal view of a historical event. Kostelanetz, like many New Yorkers, falls prey to the belief that one neighborhood can be the center of the world. And his occasional references to people who disappeared from the scene and were forgotten by the avant garde or who are no longer there but are still remembered, is a periodic reminder of the fact that he is the one who's believes himself to be at the center of crucial world events. But mostly it's an interesting read and it did connect various individuals and processes in a useful way. I might have to get access to those old Voices and recall my fantasies from another place about another time.

This Arnold Scharzenegger thing, believe me, it's bad.

I mean, Enron here, Enron there,
sexual misconduct and those darn nazi connections.

The News Wire of the Pacific News Service looks like a good place to keep up with the unfolding drama. And search Google News for Arnold Schwarzenegger any old time.

Autonomedia will be at the following book fairs in the near future:

Mid-Atlantic Anarchist Book Fair

Cheap Small Press Bookfair

New Orleans Book Fair

Ken Knabb at the Bureau of Public Secrets has published online a previously unpublished work by anarchist poet Kenneth Rexroth. Written in the late 1930s for the WPA, Camping in the Western Mountains sounds like a unique project and Ken's introduction is worthwhile reading. Hell, I might even read the damn thing.

The Institute for Anarchist Studies has completed a website redesign and is also putting out an occasional e-newsletter focusing on articles published on their site, event announcements and related news. IAS introduced me to Saul Newman's work on postanarchism and they publish some nice things. However, the primary mission of IAS is to fund anarchist scholarship.