joelle leandre, performed by MC Dacqui, with humor:

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best of luck…

once upon  a time. one of the once upon times… in terms of the amerikan unconscious landscape: with great wit and fortitude: including patton and who he was…

anti-academia: that which academia thrives on in order to pretend it’s ‘liberal’: how radical can a blog be?

once upon a time, academia valued ‘interdisciplinary’ research and publication for phd students. in theory. in practice, advisors never understood or really supported it. that spate of academic illusionism destroyed lives. academia has always succumbed to what foucault diagnosed as disciplinary regimes – academia is an intellectual prison – it’s panopticon has several components: the elite ivy academics, the boards of universities, their funding mechanisms, their admission policies and faculty selectors; including their lackeys in sub-ivy institutions; the hierarchy of publishing regimes from journals like critical inquiry to… too many to name – the police state of ‘intelligence’ in any case overseen by editorial board equivalences of the NSA. the illusion of ‘academic freedom’ is exactly that – an illusion. publishing is determined by an elite force governed by a system of academic branding and certification according to pedigree. which means, ‘intelligence’ is pre-branded in a way no different than the quality of organic meat – harvard meat, princeton meat, oxford or cambridge meat, etc.

i had a professor once, who acknowledged this: he said to me: ‘once a yale professor said to me that no reputation or advancement through academic ranks would not be determined by the QUALITY of publications, but only on QUANTITY; so i then decided to get a big box [for his quantity but unqualified publications]. i had another prof, a phd advisor, a woman, who said proudly to me, about the phd program i was enrolled in at the time at UCSC-HISTCON: we have one working class prof [who happened to be hayden white] as though he were a gem from the identity ghetto, added to their elite crown. class was no different than race or gender, for her. he may as well have been a black basketball player.

it’s not new news that the only way to advance, or survive, in any field or domain, is through succumbing to branding, stardom. enrollments are based on star-power, not on intelligence. therefore, students are willing to powder the noses OR fuck, their professors in order to follow them on stage. they are even willing to allow their profs to steal their research from them and let them publish it as if it was their own. that happened to me. but the system didn’t allow me to complain or seek recourse. i’m even now loathe to name names. isn’t that frightening?  is it any different than  victims of rape being unwilling to name their assailants?  so, okay, my research/writing was stolen from me by… and i know i’m not the first of her students from whom she stole research and capitalized on it for her own benefit. and even here, i don’t dare to name her… even though i have absolute proof.

i’m scared to post her name and the proof. why?

because: there is no ‘academic freedom’. Despite the:

1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure

In 1915 the Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure of the American Association of University Professors formulated a statement of principles on academic freedom and academic tenure known as the 1915 Declaration of Principles, which was officially endorsed by the Association at its Second Annual Meeting held in Washington, D.C., December 31, 1915, and January 1, 1916.

Academic Freedom

1. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.
2. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.⁴ Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.⁵
3. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.⁶

Such ‘freedom’ has been trashed. I know several who have been sacrificed to this illusion. The best way to test this false academic freedom is to cite all attempts by academics to criticize israel.

for example:

The best account of israel’s colonialist/genocidal regime was that written by the palestinian poet, mahmoud darwish, and delivered by yasar arafat to the UN General Assembly in 1974. every detail of the darwish/arafat address has been corroborated by both palestinaian and israeli historians. beginning with the 1948 war, with which even the jewish historian, benny morris, agrees, from his study of archival materials, was started by ‘israel’, before 1948, before ‘israel’ was ‘israel’.

Let’s test the following theses, in terms of academic freedom:

1. The name today of: ‘Israel’, is the name for – a form of apartheid that has degenerated into pure genocide.
2. the name, ‘israel’, is worse than the name,  ‘south africa’  under apartheid
3. the ’cause’ of ‘israel’ is the ’cause’ of all the trouble in the middle east
4. why else would the US give 38 billion in military aid over 10 years to ‘israel’?
5. only in order to keep the war going, in order to keep the military-industrial-info war going, because it’s profitable.
6. ‘israel’ is the tail the wags the US dog.
7. to say so, is interpreted as ‘anti-semetic’. which is a false claim. it is only a historical fact.

i will update this entry soon:

the police state is not only real, it’s far worse than the ‘stassi state’ that orwell had imagined.

universities have failed. you won’t discover that fact/debate on google.

may we see such great humor in the future…

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the above two images/works, are by fleming. the second, above, is not only one of my dadadata favs, but a very important image for our time. this last is not as powerful imagestically, but poetically, is highly suggestive of some possible future, or, wish for one.

I

Lon Yaul manned the transmitter interface in the pitch black, subsurface cavern, its LED’s blinking on and off only to vanish instantly in the immensity of the space. Yaul worked the keys like brail, comparing the sounds as he tapped out his message to the pattern of flashing lights in order to ensure it’s accuracy. After years of experience he knew the audiovisual patterns that signaled every form of violent death. He imagined the encryption sheathing his message as a kind of info-drag that would no doubt titillate the geek voyeurs whose role it was to undress it again before passing it on to those who would no doubt ecstatically carry out every letter of its commands like the submissives they were. They’d then push back in their well-padded leather chairs and masturbate as they watched the missiles fire from the safe distance of their monitor-walled war rooms. Yaul was nauseated at the thought, knowing that in exactly 37 minutes, as he sat blindly in his silent void, the soundless vibrations he’d feel gently pass through the concrete walls that surrounded him were indices of the carnage of body parts exploding on the surface hundreds of meters above him.

And by the time they did come, he’d have made his way to his bunk like a sightless mole, where he kept a torch ready for his nightly inscriptions. Had he had a mother, he’d written to her first. Had he had any political representation, he’d written to it next. Having neither, having never had either, he’d struggle every post-war, torch inflected darkness to give name to an imaginary recipient to whom he’d beg to be enlightened as to why he was incarcerated as he was. Dear Plato, my cave has no shadows because it has no candles. Dear Aquinas, you offer no solutions here because even Aristotle would have nothing to observe. Lon, after reveries like these, would continue to trace the lineaments of an education he once not only had, but believed in. One motive animated him at such moments, to try to answer one question – why don’t the majority good revolt against the minority bad?

‘I’, fortunately unfortunately have replaced Lon Yaul in his subterranean tomb. As he didn’t, I have all the light I need. So it shocks my assistants when I ask them to turn out the lights and leave me in total darkness. Eventually, I’m able to force them to leave, but I weary with this daily ritual. Stupidity still reigns supreme. When they finally leave, and darkness reigns, then Lon and I begin. Begin, that is, to measure things, to measure thoughts, those data that moved him most, retrieved from Ormood, K’a, and many other memphage pirates…

Here is what we’ve faintly recorded, in raw form, free of interpretation:

Memphage memory 3.459, Ormood.

we were lucky to catch this at a higher audio-def:

thanks to gun:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016

once upon a time… back in the early 90s, i was a writer in residence at the headlands center for the arts, just north of san franscico: which is located in a former US military base that was decommissioned in the 70s. i was fascinated by the remnants of the military when i was there. and while i did write, i also bled over into other efforts, using the then ‘high-end video’ cameras i had access to, and good still cameras. i then built what i then called a ‘negotiating table’, in a large space. and made molds of famous books – marx, galileo, newton, etc. – in glass. all way out of date now… though, that effort seems more and more relevant now. it was then, as co-editor of the headlands journal, that i came in contact with the musician, joe catalano, who at that time at the Headlands sought to create an ‘architectural’ music by using entire rooms at the Headlands as reverbertory or sonic chambers. joe invited me to a meeting of the deep listening group that had been formed by pauline oliveras, where i gave on my only public reading. more on that, though i’ve cited it below. in the meantime, see: http://www.deeplistening.org/site/sites/default/files/memorial/catalano-memoriam.html

III

A memphage vibrated at rest between stalls. It was peripheral because its mode was set for uncertainty. Yellow, blue, and red tarpaulins flapped with plastic staccato above a raucous scene of itinerant and stationary hawkers selling castoff goods below the stretching tethers arhythmically buffeted by desert winds tunneling between buildings long out of plumb. Facades tilted right or left, forward and backward, breaking linearity along all possible axes. Once carefully leveled sidewalks had abandoned all logic, sinking and rising randomly. Walking in this city had become passage through unpredictable and disorientating terrain of a hyper-dream-world made concrete. And the buildings continued their sink in slow but relentless geologic time into the tarmac surfaced lake brewing in dark, murky silence somewhere below. No one knew what brewed there. It was a vibrant demise, heat transmogrified as primary colored shadows, cacophonies rising from myriad eateries as detritus from first worlds ravaged the luminous air in micro-tornadoes. The monstrous hung about boldly in the form of inverted, ancient cornice stones, protrusions of terror once ornamenting ceilings were now foundational. The city had sunk that far. The feeling of the place was liquid, the expectation of the locals was that endless reaches of streets might instantly vanish, scattered to oblivion like the memories of dreams. At intersections in this labyrinth, pink-gowned brides of death with smiles leering in their skulls were intimately displayed with offering bowls glimmering between their skeletal feet. The indigent denizens of this zone kept them replete.

The memphage was ruminating here, there, below and beyond, oblivious to the teaming lifelines of the scene once unerroneously staged by ulises bolano:

This writing might be an epistle, a Corinthian sermon, or a Mather-esque edge-of-continent fire-and-brimstone-diatribe. It is a captive narrative like that of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. IF, it is a narrative at all. I doubt that. They are no longer possible, are they? We’d need the sweep of an unbroken vista for that, wouldn’t we? And time. But we no longer have either. Time moves too slowly and too quickly, and space no longer has recognizable form. We barely have syllables in common. Meaning is awash with sibilance concordant strangely with the staccato flapping of the tarpaulins. And they are sinking in mire. So though we may have ends they are unknowable, middles are obscure, and beginnings entirely lost. Might we dig for them? We might, but would we know what it is we have found, if we could even decide that something had been found in the seething mire? And if we did, might we know anything? It’s so unlikely it’s ranked as unfathomably uncertain.

de Vaca deserves sainthood, if anyone does, and I think no one does, because he coldly reported on the horrific origins of us all. We’d been testing, just at that moment, our new design of an uncertainty scanner. We’d never have discovered the hover drive otherwise. It’s odd soliloquy continued:

Thoughts like these obsess me, I have to confess. I know that they arise from the vibrations as they agitate and loosen the mnemonic residues I hope to barter. Why else could I have commandeered this particular craft? It had, after all, been programmed for disassociative intuition resonance by Ng’o. I have been very fortunate. Yet, that doesn’t explain my obsession. I know that I should enhance my filters to diminish my sensitivity. But that feels almost like suicide. Why? Only Y’es might translate Ng’o.

We were dumbfounded, my crew and me. Nothing like this had ever occurred before. We had caught by pure chance not only the reflections of a hover drive, and not only the dérive of its thoughts, but the linkage between two of its modes suspected but never before captured by any known scanner: we’d scanned its link between obsession and confession! Some one of us had the sense to hit the dampen affect-radiance function. Otherwise, the drive would have recognized us, and fled.

The Undecidable

II

The story of how I became an auctioneer features accident more than glory or infamy. The difference, in my case, is undecidable. In fact, one must indulge in fantasy considerably to call it a story at all. For how could a story arise from a series of random events? And, as we now know, nothing but random events happen. Even my role is unsettled. It is more truthful, or at least more accurate, to call myself a trafficker. But this distinction too remains undecidable. It is true that I presided over selling both singular and indiscriminate lots of memories to the highest bidders. But it is false that I did so neutrally. If I had, I wouldn’t now be recording these thoughts. Some think that I had a secret advantage, some special power that allowed me to trade in memory with impunity. It is this accusation that has forced me to make this record, to dispel it, if I can, to save myself.

Memory sales is a bad business. But it was our profit. That is to say, our info-blood; without it, we’d have to go ‘state-side,” that is, we’d have to become licensed to trade our pirated wares. Some of us of course resisted that evil fate. But many of us were sold into it young, memory-guild brats, we couldn’t do otherwise. We’d sniff them out as easily as other brain stem clairvoyants. We couldn’t avoid the sniff, were transparent in the regime, and so of course evolved ways to protect ourselves from them. We evolved ways to hide memories from the wholesale and retail stem exchanges. We began to populate an off-market zone. We couldn’t continue to resist in that for long of course, as the sniff-marketeers always in the end caught wind and put us out of biz.

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A wo-man. A po lice man? A bus i ness man? A cruel housebreaker and plunderer? Ho lie of the landdown is off is out. Is over. Who lie and who lie ahead now? Billion forth to the last upending. Who die and who cast? Out of what coin? Who has metal for the total write down. Then through to the under beneath every overland. What ward then? Whereward? Whenward? Whyward? Everywo-man is anxious in notime. Everywo-man is eager for outspace. Whence and wither the ni-hill-list? All over the hill go hordes and hoarders. Ho-ward sink all dumbstruck sycophants. And afterward?

Mark it! The grains cannot grow. Only stones to sow in downlands tilled over over over and over. Never any longer the least trace of resolve for wherewithal enough for forward. Nor any path to retreat. Look thereward over the wastes with no trace of horizon! No trace of horizon! Look hereward inward before the last look with no trace of reprisal. Yet whose taste is it for such miserly surmisals? With no trace? All I’s against I’s for every forward handover. Rarely a nay to oppose an overhand outstretched to the underhanded diminishments.

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

First the time. Yes. Second the space. No. First the place and second the time.

A world. A word. A world in the word and a word in the world. Both and never neither never a world without a word, but words billion forth yet never say on. Never say a body. On nor up nor about nor in nor through. Never to it. Body always missaid, mislaid, waylaid. When is a wayfarer a waylayer. Never for long. When is a waylayer a wayfarer. For ever. Better for worse or fail worse again.

Hear of bones. Word bones or bone words? Many will never stand or stand up when so many never stand down. Up they stand up and stand up to for word bones littering desert mountains and stolen lands and shuddering bone words shuttered by noise splattering the densest vacancies. Coptering over the underdozers. Hope for force of exodus. Force them to desert. Say remains of mind where none to permit of pain. Pain of bones till no choice but up and stand. Somehow stand.

All of old. Nothing else ever. But never so failed. Worse failed. With care never worse failed.

But now no care. Global carelessness a total war in the dim light though source under flooding light. Nothing now unknown yet never before was failure worse. Continents of failed choices all known to fail continents of choice. Capital incontinence. Yes no future this. None. None neither never nor no none none none ever. Before the downcast eyes clenched? No knowing how known? All now known in disbelief at the dim chance all fading up into the glare of the human void. How so absent from itself? Stand so full of void. Not somehow. Knowhow. Precise knowhow cutting plate glass with diamonds boundless. Wither once whence no return. Beyondless. Thenceless. Thitherless.

Where then but there see –

A wo-man. A no-man. A middlewo-man. A tireless consumptive. Where then but there see – whereward? Misseen in the wasted mis en scene. Flash through the gallonstreets and the highwaytons on rays of the misseen radiant in the dash and bang of the mass and massive accumulation all fit for the view of the limitless spread of lightstreets at the darkest hour. Flash! and the fullness spreads thence and thither where no horizon can be seen. Mis en misscene. Whereward consummumptive wo-man?! Whither?! Wither. Waste in the downlands and landhighs, in the overlands and undertides. How know you where to stand in the standdown? Fastward or slowward? Rundown falldown meltdown hidedown. All through the misseen expanding without shadow before eager eaters in middowntown. Lips curl with the fastforward freight in towndown.

Where then but there see now –

Waste in the downlands and landhighs, in the overlands and undertides. How know you where to stand in the standdown?

All through the misseen expanding without shadow fires the flashgun. What seen? Who seen? What wo-man? Only the refugee. Off from the island sinking in the sea. All others these. Without shadow fires the flashgun. All others these. Inbetween all else recedes and none worse better than these. Without shadow fires the flashgun all else refugees there where they recede. Up standing far from the standdown. They all go down.

Lips curl with the fastforward freight in the downturn.

Homelessward without horizon fastward. Deserts rain down and winters dry up while the wo-man knows no handholds unchanging in the downturn. Far and wide the same. High and low. Unchanging as the changing changes. Whence no knowing. No saying. Say only such flashes as never. Over all. Say a gulf in the void. So sudden gone sudden back unchanged as one fastflash unreceding flashes on and over the downturn. At all costs unknown. So far.

Snowblow of duststorms over darkening waters where winds strike the surface surges and the birdbroods alarmed train in the stormsurf. Tidal calamities on the verge. None have words that float. No words edge. None call back the rise. Hotter heat makes more cold burn.

So far far and wide. So far forever. This little much of planet alone. This narrow and narrowing field. On back to unsay void can go.

Void cannot go.

Void is a refugee.

On back better worse to fail the head said seat of all. Germ of all. All? If of all of it too. Where if not there it too? There in the sunken head the sunken head. The hands. The eyes. Shade with the other shades. All fail worse with the same flash. The same diminishments. Whereward wo? Ask not. No. Answers are vain. Planet alone. Is a refugee.

Then all go. Go for good. No words for those who world. No worlds for those who word. So from now. For to gain time. Time to loose. Gain time to loose. The world once. The word once. What room for worse! Or better worse say still a watch to night alas to come. A rest of last watch to come. And take what last words do not edge? No words last. What night watch this? Heart is a void. My heart is a refugee.

Waste in the downlands and landhighs, in the overlands and undertides. How know you where to stand in the standdown? Lips curl with the fastforward freight in the downturn. The flashgun fires.

The weight of all oceans on earthcrust grows. Pending worse still. All eyes unbooted. Reboot how? Scene and seer of all. On. Stare on. Be on. Somehow on. Anyhow on. Till flash gone. At long last gone. All at long last gone. For bad and all. Whereward refugee? Body always missaid, mislaid, waylaid. When is a wayfarer a waylayer. Never for long. When is a waylayer a wayfarer. For ever.

Billion forth to the last upending. Who die and who cast? Out of what coin? Who has metal for the total write down. Then through to the under beneath every overland. What ward then? Where wo-man refugee? Before the downcast eyes clenched? No knowing how known? All now known in disbelief at the dim chance all fading up into the glare of human void. How so absent from itself? Gulf stands so full of void. Not somehow. Knowhow.

Snowblow of duststorms over darkening waters where winds strike the surface surges and the birdbroods alarmed train in the stormsurf. A world. A word. A world in the word and a word in the world. Both and never neither never a world without a word, but words billion forth yet never say on.

Oceans have no surface. Only a plurality of depths marked by no singular color. Wind is temperature change exposed by the scattering of colored shadows. Over the shimmer of infinite hues. Wind is highlight and midtone spreading shadows. With the rapidity of birdlight skimming wave crests without direction. Flocks of reflection signaling that message is futile. Stripped of surface, all depth is revealed and the seafloor vanishes. Eiderducks fish in the zone between, eyes good in the sub-marine and the salted air, transgress the habitats.

succumb, succumb you of the dirge below the skirt of the death you’ve brought on. yes, i blame you. you with the over delicate self-apprisal. you of the middle wantonness only for your own good. never ever never ever have you cared or learned to say ‘no’. ye old nationalists nay, know nothing about yourselves and are happy to kill your own sons and daughters, your children, as you throw them under the bus of melting glaciers.