News & Reviews

by

Fifth Estate # 347, Spring, 1996

The prolific III Publishing group, PO Box 1581, Guala CA 95445, recently released two new books. Saab Lofton’s A.D. is set in 2410 where society is organized according to libertarian principles, but a menace from the past threatens the future. J.G. Eccarius, author of the blasphemous The Last Days of Christ the Vampire, latest book. Resurrection 2027, is a post-apocalyptic thriller set in the year of the title where rebellion is the only way out for children resurrected from the dead. III is also publishing Anti-Christ magazine, formerly The Stake, and wants to exchange ads with other zines.

Contrary to reports we heard, Kick It Over magazine, PO Box 5811, Station A. Toronto Ont. NSW 1P2, $3, is alive and kicking. Issue #35 is a special issue on work containing a provocative piece entitled, “Anarcho-Syndical ism. Technology and Ecology” by Graham Purchase, an interview with the ubiquitous Noam Chomsky, and other interesting articles on the subject.

The Yule 1995 dispatch of the Earth First! Journal (non-official journal of the EF! non-organization) contains updates on the fight against the salvage logging frenzy in the Western U.S., a pullout section on the Western Shoshone Defense Project, dumpster diving for revolution, and crying wolf over terrorism. EF! Journal, PO Box 1415. Eugene OR 97440; $3.50.

The latest issue from Do or Die, described as “Apocalypse. Recuperation and Resistance,” is a lively discussion, analysis, regional and international news reporting rag from UK Earth First! It includes heart-pounding stories of stringing cable walkways above forests to be cut, as well as tree-sittin’, car-burnin’, squat-fightin’, machine wrenchin’ madness. Get it from Dead Trees EF!, Box 25. 82 Colston St.. Bristol. England. BS 1 5BB. Send some bucks.

Department of Information about Technologies We’re Not Particularly Interested In, But Others Might Be: “Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media,” winner of 15 international awards. is available as a two-volume video boxed set for $59.95 from Zeitgeist Films: call 1-800—MANU-CON.

Radio for Peace International is a global community shortwave radio project which includes diverse programing and beams its signal around the world from five transmitters located in Costa Rica. There is a Far Right Radio Review Show, FIRE and WINGS, women’s programs, and other shows devoted to peace and ecology. They broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week in English, Spanish, German, and French Creole. Write RFPI, P.O. Box 88, Santa Ana, Costa Rica. or P.O. Box 20728, Portland, OR 97220 for broadcast information.

With the FCC in a dither about licensing requirements for low frequency radio, pirate stations have been broadcasting radical news and music unimpeded by the communication police. The phenomena is perhaps most developed in the Bay Area where numerous stations presenting inventive programming dot the FM band. The Free Communications Coalition publishes Reclaiming the Airwaves from 1442A Walnut St., #406, Berkeley, CA 94709, e-mail: frbspd@crl.com. Or try Zoomin’: Voice of Zoom Black Magic Radio, 8 Kaviland St., Fresno, CA 93706. Zoom is one of the pioneers of pirate radio and has been on the air since 1985. They broadcast sporadically since being busted by the FCC four times.

The Revolutionary Toker purposely confused its name with the maoist RCP’s rabidly anti-drug publication, The Revolutionary Worker. The Toker is the voice of the Green Panthers!’s resistance to the War on Drugs. These militant stoners have abandoned the reformist tactics of liberals and say don’t write your congressman—”Fuck the Vote.” Bulk copies $15 for 100 copies: PO Box 31231, Cincinnati, OH 45231.

Extraphile #6, titled “No nations, No work” is the latest from Len Bracken and friends. The everyday abasement of work gets full voice with a look at american labor history, “Factory Work” by Simone Weil, and “Play is everything work is not.”

Bracken includes a detailed review, critique and reinterpretation of Fredy Perlman’s Continuing Appeal of Nationalism. A section of satire is highlighted by a witty question and answer dialogue about population. Includes the extranational edition of Revolutionary Self-Theory. Send $3 to POB 5585, Arlington, VA 22205.

Dancing, drumming, wild, and loving. That is Jesse Wolf Hardin’s novel of the future. Often the artist is the prophet. We know the numbers from Worldwatch Institute, we know the late breaking eco-news from Earth Island Journal and Earth First! but it takes the artist like Wolf to put together the bigger picture.

Given the acceleration of time, Hardin’s novel, The Kokopelli Seed, looks ahead a few years, a year, maybe six months. The novel not only paints the big picture, but is also an interior picture. It is every one of us as the exploding world society meets the dwindling resources of the dying planet. We feel, we cry, we love, we are determined. as we make our way through the confusion of our “interesting times.”

The story—our story, is set in the rural West in a right now, real reality. Four mystic-realist, “earthies” play out the near future with a backdrop of local backwoods “patriots,” all illuminated from backstage by a resource-hungry transnational elite who appear in the form of ultra-high tech rapid deployment forces.

Wolf, the Earth First! pencil and brush artist, the poet and stage dramatist, follows his first book, Full Circle: A Song of Ecology & Earthen Spirituality, with this new offering. This new volume is personal. It is a war diary to be kept—on one’s person—in the trenches, as we speed toward 2000. Lyrical, poetic; this is our story retold by our bard. In this tale of the four earthies, Blue, Llyn, Kiva and Able, you will see us.

Yes, we need the fast-breaking, econews, but we also need our poets if we are to persevere.

—Wm. H. Koethke

The Kokopelli Seed may be ordered from: The Earthen Spirituality Project, POB 708, Reserve, NM 87830, Spiral Bound First Edition. $24 postpaid.

Koethke is the author of The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future, available from FE Books for $15.

Top