suffering | word pond

Behemoth: reflections on Joshua Freeman’s history of the factory – WILLETT’S MAGAZINE

Freeman is sensitive to the way organized labor, in revolt in the early seventies, was met by a number of entrepreneurial ‘innovations” seeking, ultimately, to do to the working class what the Pentagon did to many a Vietnamese village: pacify it, liquidate it, and disburse its population. In the process, investors began to invest not in manufacturing, but in de-manufacturing – in cutting lose from actually making anything. Freeman registers the divorce between manufacture and brand and ties it into the logic of the factory. To take the most well known example, Apple computers are, strictly, not manufactured by Apple. This is well known, but it is easy to forget. Apple designs them, and Apple markets them. Design and marketing – and not concern with the grime and grievance of the proletariat – define their corporate culture. This has become true for hundreds of big American corporations.

Source: Behemoth: reflections on Joshua Freeman’s history of the factory – WILLETT’S MAGAZINE

The secret history of radiation | Eurozine

The Pripyat amusement park in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Photo by Jason Rogers from Flickr

In the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, international agencies dismissed local doctors’ warnings about a ‘public health catastrophe’ in order to suppress scandal over nuclear tests carried out by the West since the 1950s. This is the conclusion reached by Kate Brown, in her new book ‘Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future’. Here, she talks to Aro Velmet about the secret history of radiation and what Chernobyl means in the era of climate change.

Source: The secret history of radiation | Eurozine

‘Climate apartheid’ between rich and poor looms, UN expert warns – BBC News

A house burns in the upmarket Paradise Pines neighbourhood of California in November

A UN expert has warned of a possible “climate apartheid”, where the rich pay to escape from hunger, “while the rest of the world is left to suffer”.

Source: ‘Climate apartheid’ between rich and poor looms, UN expert warns – BBC News

Rochelle Owens: Devour Not the Elephant :: Poems and Poetics

Rochelle Owens: Devour Not the Elephant

Poaching scene

crime scene carcasses of

dead rhinos and Savannah elephants

Precious the ivory tusks and horns

cut off severed

Two from a bull

raw and bleeding holes gouged

into Jumbo’s face

Swollen infected the wounds

every day bears the data

Data of body

feces hair and nails yellowish-white

bones push to the surface

In the green of leaves Earth

Air Fire Water

What is property?

property is the body Ears Trunk

Feet

The face half-severed precious

the ivory tusks and horns

Property is the body

mutilated burned Ears Trunk

Feet

Ears like human fingerprints

none are the same

Flapping their ears

blood circulates in the head

ears the shape of Africa

Two long pointed teeth stick out

of the mouth

The trunk is like a human arm

or the fingers of a hand

picking berries

Elephant corpses found drifting

In a creek yellowish-white bones

Push to the surface

In the green of leaves Earth

Air Fire Water

What is property? property

is the body a human arm or hand

My mother was sold

from me \when I could

but crawl

Among the stalls

piles of ivory trinkets bangles

and beads

Rows of Ivory carvings

of maidens monks and birds

Carcasses of dead rhinos

and Savannah Elephants carcasses

stripped of their skin

Burned mutilated saleable parts

hacked off

Ears Trunk Feet

the horns and tusks ground up

my body the bread my blood the wine

Disturbingly informative

an elephant savaged by poachers

Poison in the rivers

poison in the arrow heads following

the dying animal around

Following the dying animal around

every day bears the data

Data of body body of data

property is the body mutilated burned

carnal/spiritual

In the green of leaves Earth

Air Fire Water

Source: Poems and Poetics: Rochelle Owens: Devour Not the Elephant

A Review of Irradiated Cities by Mariko Nagai – decomP magazinE

Human suffering is central here, but more unsettling is how inflicting such catastrophe can be rationalized, ignored, fictionalized, denied. Nuclear power is only one form of deadly power under examination in this book, which looks, too, at power and power imbalance on global and local levels, from the capitalist interests in locating a power plant in a certain, cash-thirsty town to the nationalist interests that see in irradiated rocks a potential leveling force. We are made to see “power” as something invisible, taken-for-granted and recklessly consumed, with even those citizens who organize for anti-nuclear protests doing so via text messages sent using electricity, dependent upon and addicted to a vast grid of infrastructure. – Spencer Dew

decomP, founded in 2004, is a monthly, online magazine that publishes prose, poetry, art, and book reviews.

Source: decomP magazinE

a curatorial content blog of modern and contemporary poetry, poetics, photography, philosophy, permaculture, and the arts

The Bard of Capitalist Realism by Ed Simon | Poetry Foundation

Behemoth: reflections on Joshua Freeman’s history of the factory – WILLETT’S MAGAZINE

The secret history of radiation | Eurozine

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo in conversation with Mark Krotov | Online Only | n+1

The Gospel According to Marianne Williamson – The New York Times

‘Climate apartheid’ between rich and poor looms, UN expert warns – BBC News

‘Exhausted’ polar bear found 700km from home in Russian village | World news | The Guardian

Rochelle Owens: Devour Not the Elephant :: Poems and Poetics

Rochelle Owens: Devour Not the Elephant

Mandy Patinkin – Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? – YouTube

A Review of Irradiated Cities by Mariko Nagai – decomP magazinE

About

Blogroll

Email Subscription

in fairness ~

Archives

tag cloud