Now comes Jennifer Lucy Allan with an excerpt from her recently published book, Foghorn’s Lament, brought to our attention by a DP correspondent.
The images are self-explanatory, the second linking to a video documenting the “true aural obliteration” of the horn. Given the apparent impenetrability of our cognitive, emotional & spiritual fog in the midst of the Sixth Extinction, we offer this as an emblematic sound for our times.
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One of the key tidal observations throughout our DP voyages has been, simply put, that we cannot change what we do not truthfully understand.
For example: reconciliation regarding the historical experience of American slavery is impossible without coming to grips with how that history lives on in the present through densely interwoven manifestations of white supremacy, with the carceral state at its center.
Now comes the ever-lucid Eileen Crist, with thoughts on a different though related variant of subjugation, not within a single species but rather between one particularly invasive species (homo sapiens) and the rest of life on Mother Earth.
Excerpts from a recent interview below, with images relayed from the website of Joseph Wheelwright.
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Note: The entire excellent interview from within the pages of The Sun Magazine (not the tabloid, mind!) is worthy of close consideration. The magazine has generously dropped its pay wall during Covidzeit, yet relies entirely on reader support. We highly recommend trial perusal, and then subscription.
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Amidst the cacophony of a malignant regime finally exposing its white supremacist core, we bend an ear to professor Manisha Sinha, historian of slavery, abolition, Civil War and Reconstruction and the author of The Slave’s Cause and The Counterrevolution of Slavery.
Excerpts from a recent interview below; caption to the image added by DP.
THE DAY MAGALAND DISPLAYED ITS TRUE COLORS
During the largely peaceful BLM protests, Trump declared that anyone damaging federal property would be charged with felony riot and face the possibility of ten years in prison.
Let us see what punishment shall be deemed appropriate for the racist & deluded berserkers who ransacked the capitol, and for those who incited and praised them as “patriots”. Of all the lies spewed forth from the twisted MAGA delusion machine, surely that is the most repugnant – yet.
We close with the glorious voices of the Resistance Chorus, with luminous Rhiannon Giddens in the mix:
BOUND TO LOSE
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Now comes Hegel scholar and political philosopher Alexander Kojève, writing in 1943. We dare say the “records” to which he alludes in the second paragraph have surely been not just broken but shattered during the relentlessly mendacious Trump years, most notably (and dangerously) in the abundance of bunkum saturating the vast & delusional MAGA zone in the aftermath of recent elections.
The entire essay is worth your consideration; excerpts below, with a couple of emblematic images.
THE GREATEST LEADER EVER & FOREVER & A DAY UNTIL DEATH DO US PART AMEN
AND HIS MOST TRUSTED LEGAL ADVISOR
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What can art do in the face of the unfolding climate crisis? This simple question haunts the editorial offices of DP like an angry ancestor.
James Berger, author of the excellent After the End, offers a few helpful insights in an interview that first appeared a month or so before Covid 19; we relay a reprise below, with images from the now dismantled Banksy Dismaland.
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OK, now that we have your full attention: surely the time has come, for the thousandth time, to delete your Facebook account.
Listing the reasons would consume a year’s worth of DP, yet we are grateful to a DP correspondent for alerting us to a powerfully concise summary in the Opinion pages of the NYT, written by the ever-lucid Jamelle Bouie.
Excerpts below, with images and captions added by DP.
FROM THE RED PILL TO THE RED BUTTON
FAREWELL TO THE ZUCKED THUMB
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Now comes a trio of statements released in opposition to yet another spasm of human supremacist violence, this time in the shape of fish farm legislation promoted by an ecocidal administration under cover of Covid.
First up, from the Don’t Cage Our Ocean Coalition:
Next, from coalition member Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA):
And finally, from the Recirculating Farms Coalition:
Lest we forget, Mother Ocean is the mother of us all;
one day in the not so distant future she shall rise up and swallow us whole,
and bring such toxic delusions full stop.
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California wildfires once again remind us that the Climate Emergency is not something that happens in 2030 or 2050: the Climate Emergency is happening right now, and we are in the midst of its varied modes of contagion.
We turn to fire historian Stephen Pyne whose recently updated Fire: A Brief History is highly recommended to those who wish to understand how we arrived into an era he suggests we name the “pyrocene”.
Excerpts from an essay published during last year’s Season of Fire Siege below; images are from news accounts, with captions added by DP.
LITHIC LANDSCAPE AT FLASH POINT
CONTAGION UNMASKED WITHIN THE PYROCENE
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Parallel to the coronavirus pandemic, we have a toxic infodemic that magnifies the sense of helplessness and fear. Here at DP, we struggle every day with the question: what more can we do to help navigate such riptides?
At the very least, we can keep a close ear to those who best understand the genesis of what we are facing, such as the voice of David Quammen whose Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic was published in 2012. Excerpts from a recent Orion interview below.
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For a book, we would encourage settling in with Richard Powers’ The Overstory. Two of our favorite quotes below:
“People aren’t the apex species they think they are. Other creatures-bigger, smaller, slower, faster, older, younger, more powerful-call the shots, make the air, and eat sunlight. Without them, nothing.”
“You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes. . . .”
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And finally, a link to an outstanding performance of the Albinoni Adagio, offered as protection against useless panic and fear:
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We are grateful to our colleagues at Rewilding Earth for publishing an excellent, detailed report on the threat of extensive deep-sea mining, written by Abundant Earth author Eileen Crist. The article includes an extensive bibliography, as well as the outlines of a non-extractive alternative way of connecting with seaborne earthlings and their magnificent habitat.
Brief excerpts below, together with a few images of hungry ghost maw-machines relayed from the website of a “pioneering” sea-mining corporation. They communicate the dark, indiscriminate and savage sort of supremacist violence that has become the signature of an extractive capitalism gone berserk, through an “always encroaching’ (see below) greed for plunder and profit.
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Desperado Philosophy 