Repost: Top 5 Books for the Post-Apocalypse

(This article was originally published at www.lastearthdistro.blogspot.com.)

1. Atlas Shrugged
Lugging Ayn Rand's "masterpiece" through the burnt-out carcass of civilization might seem counter-intuitive, since it weighs roughly the same as three gallons of potable water. But that same 35lbs that will cost you calories on the long trek between abandoned super-markets will come in mighty handy when you're attacked by marauding zombies: simply abandon the weakest member of your party to their ravages, climb up a tall structure directly above your ersatz-comrade, and drop Atlas Shrugged on top of the zombie ruck. It's guaranteed to instantly kill whoever it lands directly on, and the aftershock from impact will at least daze everyone in a ten-foot radius.

Plus let's recall the importance of firestarter: each of those 1,168 pages is the beginning of its own campfire, to fry up those bean and gathered corpse-meat sausages.

And, finally, if you're fixing to kill-and-eat a member of your own party but you're having moralistic second thoughts, just read Fransisco D'Anconia's speech about the virtue of selfishness. Rand hated metaphorical cannibalism, but that was only when the poor were doing the eating. As long as you're stronger and more angularly-faced than your prey, well, dig in!

2. Moby Dick
First of all, Melville's magnum opus includes explicit, unabridged instructions for sailing and whale-hunting. If these skills don't come in handy after the demise of gas-powered engines and the rise of radioactive gerbil-mammoths, I don't know what will.


Plus--to return to the theme of How To Kill Your Comrades--the sections on abandoning Pip and slaughtering baby whales will surely steel your spleen. KILL!



3.  How to Make Friends and Influence People
 Dale Carnegie's perennial bestseller is so bent on fucking with people, even its title is a lesson in realpolitik. By "making friends" he means "recruiting allies," and by "influence" he means "manipulate."


How does one Make Friends and Influence them? Flattery, mostly. Do stuff like remember people's name and ask about their baby and pretend to listen to them blather for five minutes about their collection of I Love Lucy memorabilia, and they'll be addicted to your presence. I'm thinking about using his methods when I become a parent: I'll make my love implicitly contingent on my childrens' school-grades and table-manners. Positive reinforcement!


And of course if you listen to Billy-Bob's sob-story of how his entire family was devoured by a pack of rabid toddlers, he's likely to let down his guard. At which point you put down your Carnegie, pick up your Rand, and BASH THAT HEAD IN.

Dinner is served.


4. The Book of Mormon
Look, let's not beat around the bush: in the end times, insular social groups with well-secured buildings in a locale far removed from other major cities are going to survive. I.e. the Mormons will inherit the nuke-scarred earth. They do what they're told, and they've got the land and resources to withstand a first-strike on Washington DC or wherever. So you'll wanna be ready to convince them that you're one of them...


...So that you can lure them, one by one, to an isolated forest path. Then say, "Is that a Muslim over there?" and point to a spot behind them. When they turn to look, you know what to do: ATLAS STRIKE!


5. The Cannibal's Cookbook
Do I even need to explain this one?

An Ode to the Movement: Jensen brings it back home

In stock at Last Word Books!

Review of Truths Among Us: Conversations on Building a New Culture, a collection of interviews by Derrick Jensen, PM Press, 2012

By Sasha

Derrick Jensen can be a very enigmatic author. At one point he is talking about preserving nature by destroying civilization, and then in a blink of an eye he is engaging you on the subject of violence against women or civil war in Guatemala. This is because, for Jensen, the datum of abuse is civilization. We will finally be able to heal from our trauma and abusive behavior when we dismantle the idea of civilization and live in peace with one another. In his books, Jensen is constantly referring to his friends—his socialist friend, his feminist friend, his indigenous activist friend—who are reminding him to remain humble and informing his thoughts all the time. But who are these friends, and how can we figure out where their independent thoughts intersect with Jensen’s?

That is where Truths Among Us comes into play. Interviewing a diverse array of activists, scientists, and theorists, Jensen strikes to what is personal in all of our experiences with abuse, and finds the healing kernel of love in an intimate relationship with one another, mediated by nature. Civilization, here, is the abusive intervention in natural relationships; it is—via capital, commercialism, colonialism, etc—what pits us against one another through shame, competition, or outright victimization.

In today’s heated terrain of ideological polarization and alienation, Truths Among Us comes as a breath of fresh air. What strikes the reader at first are the names on the front cover. Jensen interviews sociologist Stanley Aaronowitz, feminist Jane Caputi, activist Luis Rodriguez, and a careful selection of other important thinkers. Throughout the book, Jensen’s own voice is subsumed within a broader discourse about science, activism, biodiversity, and social issues. Aaronowitz’s marxian socialism illuminates a surprising link with Jensen’s autonomous, primitivist views on the basis of a critique of technological civilization and contemporary science. Here, the alienated stance of scientism is challenged by appealing to the traditions of the philosophy of science, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and a host of other thinkers whose thoughts have been sacrificed at the alter of “method”.

In place of science as it exists in today’s highly professionalized and corporatized world, Jensen seeks out Marc Ian Barasch, the former editor of The New Age Journal, for some actionable medical knowledge. Barasch pulls on ideas of the collective unconscious hashed out across the world, from Carl Jung to Hasidic tradition to Buddhism. Presenting an interesting case for curing cancer through a personal quest of self-healing, Barasch explains that by listening to his dreams and following his desires he was able to win his battle with the scourge of modern civilization.

Accompanying self-healing, Jensen makes special inquiries into bioremediation with renowned mycologist Paul Stamets. Through the activities of fungi and mycelial mats, ecosystems are able to regenerate to a mind boggling extent, Stamets declares. Pursuing this knowledge base might be the key to restoring devastated ecosystems and returning to wild nature. Another interview with activist John Keeble exposes that the connection between bioremediation of Super Fund sites and other biohazard locations might have a lot to do with a sociological turn away from white supremacy and corporate control. Corporations “rob the world of its subjectivity,” says Keeble, “They are culturally sanctified, supported, and protected in their role of turning the living—forests, oceans, mountains, rivers, human lives—into the dead: money” while hate groups “serve that same function of objectifying. Their entire self-definition is based on this objectification.”

To get a closer understanding of the problems of hate and objectification, Jensen turns to influential professor and critic of patriarchy, Jane Caputi. In this interview, Jensen’s personality shines through; he draws on his own experience and strikes to the core of our collective trauma as well as the need for recovery. What Caputi shows us is that oppression is afflicted within before it is afflicted without; in rape for instance, what the perpetrator is “afraid of—perhaps even more profoundly than getting a dose of their own violence—is the feminine within themselves, the chaos represented by the wilderness.” Hence, the connection between the assault against nature and the assault against particular groups grows more keen, and is elucidated further by Jensen’s discussion with Luis Rodriguez.

A best-selling author whose autobiographical work, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Life in L.A., describes life as a gang member in South Central LA. Rodriguez discusses the need for place amongst inner city youth whom economic structures have abandoned. “[Gangs] are products of the industrial age,” declares Rodriguez, who also touches on the subject of the collective unconscious. “[W]e all have an ancestral pool of knowledge and experience that we’ve somehow forgotten about… in their bones these kids are indigenous people.” Raised on a reservation in New Mexico and trained as a Tzutujil Mayan shaman in Guatemala, Martín Prechtel also provides Jensen with an important connection to the indigenous: “We are all still human beings. Some of us have buried our humanity deep inside, or medicated or anesthetized it, but every person alive today, tribal or modern, primal or domesticated, has a soul that is original, natural, and, about all, indigenous in one way or another.” In contrast to the notion of indigeneity, love, and appreciation, professor Richard Drinnon provides a sweeping analysis of the connections between modernity, industrialism, and racism, asking the question, “Where can an attempted dominion over nature and self lead but to the eradication of feelings in any kind of fully human way?” The answer comes through Jensen’s interview with trauma expert Judith Herman: “If you’re part of a predatory and militaristic culture, then to behave in a predatory and exploitative way is not deviant, per se.”

To fit this many observations in a single work while pulling so many voices into a bricolage of diverse and complimentary discourse is a momentous achievement by Jensen, and it is sorely needed today. Which brings me to the next interesting aspect of Truths Among Us: many of the interviews took place before 9/11 and the Green Scare, bringing together a number of voices in an interesting time capsule; a point when “the movement” had the ability to articulate particular demands with far more discursive freedom. One can see in the history of Jensen’s writings a complicated tension between the right-wing anarchist-primitivist tradition and left wing socialist thought. Jensen’s own writing, which culminated in the monumental, prophetic lamentations of, Endgame, has always played along a tight-wire of resistance, moving between prison advocacy to animal welfare sympathies to feminism and post-colonial theory, while maintaining what one might call an autonomous political position. While the anarchist right has chided him for endorsing a liberal mindset, much of the liberal left has disassociated itself from Jensen’s antipathy for reforms.

When Jensen released Deep Green Resistance with controversial anti-vegan primitivist Lierre Keith and anarchist Aric McBay, he was criticized heavily from the left, which blamed DGR for adding fuel to a cultish right-wing tendency within primitivism that has attacked at various times vegetarianism, antiracism, feminism, and queer activism. This “backlash” against the left, however, is far from Jensen’s line of thought. The release of these interviews dating back to the late nineties is a relief from the infighting and disruption that has plagued activists in recent years, and an invitation to escape the repressive dead ends of reactionary discourse.

The glance back at the wonderful things that activists have done and said in solidarity with a global movement against oppression and pathological abuse serves as an inspirational (if not nostalgic) reminder of the relationships of solidarity that Jensen has helped to protect over the past two decades, and a motivation to embrace different people, different ideas, and different walks of life. It is a rewarding book, well worth the read, and is, ironically, perhaps a better reference point for Jensen’s thought than any other of his works that I have read.

Fukushima Update: Why We Should (Still) Be Worried

After the catastrophic trifecta of the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan last March—what the Japanese are referring to as their 3/11—you would think the Japanese government would be doing everything in its power to contain the disaster. You would be wrong—dead wrong... Read More...

The return of radical bookshops In a sorely troubled time for booksellers, these hubs of campaigning passion are proving surprisingly resilient. Natalie Hanman finds out why

by Natalie Hanman of the Guardian

"Things are looking up for radical books ... The problems of the past few years – shops closing, publishers folding – seem to be lifting." So runs the opening of Making the Connections: Radical Books Today, published in 1988, at the height of Margaret Thatcher's reign – but these rousing words of resistance could have been written today. For while the independent books sector in the UK has indeed been beset by bad news – independent bookshops closed at the rate of two a week in 2009, according to the Booksellers Association – the radical bookshops that have survived are witnessing a revival of interest, and are guardedly optimistic about their futures.

"In the last five to 10 years there has been a massive resurgence in interest in grassroots politics and activism," says Mandy Vere of Liverpool's radical bookshop News From Nowhere, where she has worked since soon after its launch in 1974. The shop, named after William Morris's utopian novel and run by a not-for-profit women's collective, is, she says, benefiting from the anti-globalisation movement, the anti-capitalist backlash provoked by the current financial crisis, the recent growth in climate change and green activism, and the re-energised feminist movements.

"This has created a critical mass of participation – young people and older activists, like myself – and we're noticing massively more people using the bookshop as a meeting point," Vere says. "Feminism, for example, has been very big online for a few years, and we're starting to see that resurgence come out of the blogs and into what I would call 'real life'. This year, there's a number of feminist books coming out, as well as Reclaim the Night and International Women's Day marches, which we haven't seen for a while."

Andrea Butcher of Bookmarks, a socialist bookshop in the heart of Bloomsbury, agrees. "There's a lot of resistance at the moment. [In March], a quarter of a million PCS workers went on strike. There's the railways, British Airways, the colleges, the fight against the BNP – we see a lot of people coming in and reading about the history of fighting fascism and how to take that forward in the context of the BNP. And with the credit crunch, we saw a lot of people coming in for basic economics – Marx and Engels – wanting to understand what's going on. The Communist Manifesto made an appearance in our top 10 last month, which it doesn't always! The other area of growth is feminist and women's liberation literature. There's a new group of young women getting engaged."

And it's not just buying and reading books that's feeding this seeming hunger for resistance. Radical bookshops have become venues, too: holding frequent events, from launches to lectures and pre-demonstration meet-ups; acting as a physical base where like-minded people endeavour to turn ideas into action. "Holding the events is very important because people need that area where they can get together and meet other activists and discuss these issues," says Butcher as she clears up empty wine glasses from the previous evening's well-attended in-store gathering.

But despite such positive anecdotes, radical bookshops are still clearly engaged in a struggle for survival. The sector isn't anywhere near as healthy as it was in its 1980s prime, when the now-disbanded Federation of Radical Booksellers was, says Vere, "a force to be reckoned with in the booktrade", and there were about 60 radical bookshops across the country, including Compendium, Collets, Silver Moon and Central Books in London, Grassroots in Manchester, Frontline in Leicester, Greenleaf in Bristol and Mushroom in Nottingham.

At Housmans, in Kings Cross, London – one of the longest-running radical bookshops in the country, launched by a group of pacifists – wiry co-manager Malcolm Hopkins, dressed head to toe in black, pulls up a chair in front of a row of Trotsky biographies and recounts the changes he's seen in the sector in past decades.

"Regretfully over the years we've seen a massive decline," he says. "Whereas once you could draw up a list of them, you can now count them, I would guess, on one hand. And it's a great loss. The important thing about radical bookshops is that they were more than just places that sold commodities, they were centres for activists, they held events, they encouraged people."

The story of the decline of radical bookshops will be all too familiar to followers of the independent and second-hand sector. "Amazon and the internet had a phenomenal impact," says Hopkins, "and the abolition of the net book agreement, which meant that the big stores, the chains – and specifically Amazon – could discount books ... that really hit the small independents. They just don't have the purchasing power; they can't compete on price, and they're suffering. Everybody I know who works in independent bookshops is nervous about the future."

With the mainstreaming, to a certain extent, of what was once perceived as radical politics – you're now quite likely to find the latest queer theory text, for example, in your local Waterstone's – the need for specifically radical outlets was also called into question. Now, only six members of the Booksellers Association fall into the radical/alternative category: Bookmarks, Housmans, News From Nowhere, October Books in Southampton, Radish in Leeds, and Word Power in Edinburgh. There are others, including Freedom, the anarchist publisher and bookshop based in east London, and the Cowley Club in Brighton, a co-operative run cafe and bookshop, where you're likely to bump into both anarchists and supporters of Caroline Lucas's bid to become the first Green MP.

Despite being small in number, however, there are real signs of a fightback in the radical bookselling sector, and a mounting backlash among the public against mainstream chain book stores – and mainstream politics. "A growing number of people are becoming aware of where they shop [and] more interested in ideas of how they are living," says Elaine Henry, owner of Word Power. "People are looking for something a bit different. A lot of customers come in with their printout from Amazon, which is evidence of them making a choice that they want to support an independent."

Henry isn't sure whether today's activists will want to put their energy into "ideas and books, as opposed to campaigning", but this is where the traditionally versatile radical bookshop might just have a chance to shine.

"The radical bookshops that have survived will continue to do so because we've carved out a niche," says Vere. "We've built up our reputation over the years, we've got a loyal readership, and while we can't compete in price we can offer something distinctive – knowledge, passion, meaningful books that come on trusted recommendations rather than being pushed by the publishers, and connections with other politically aware people."

Hopkins, who has witnessed waves of resistance – from gay liberation, to the battle against the violent far-right group Combat 18 – ferment in the basement of Housmans during his 30 years there, hasn't lost any of his fighting spirit. Last month, Housmans launched a new online bookshop, a "politically conscious" alternative to rival Amazon. "We can't offer the massive discounts," Hopkins says, "but if people value something they have to support it. And I get quite bored with people bemoaning the fact that their high street is desolate. If you do not use your local shops, or if you don't value places, they will go."

He has had a lot of discussions recently about whether the prospect of an incoming Conservative government might fan the flames of resistance. From his contact with young activists, he senses that "there's a tremendous level of discontent. We're hopeful that something will come of this. Each generation has to evolve it's own particular way of responding ... We would encourage people to just question everything that's going on."

Those in search of inspiration might like to head to Housmans, which is currently stocking, among the top sellers of Slavoj Zizek and Naomi Klein, copies of Starting a Bookshop: A Handbook on Radical and Community Bookselling, for just £1. Among chapters on understanding the book trade and workers' rights, there's also a detailed guide to how to put up shelves. The next revolution might start down a side street where the rent is cheap, with a hammer, some nails and a radical vision of how to do things differently.

Happy Birthday to Left Bank Books!

1907 -- US: Pike Place Market dedicated in Seattle, Washington. Current home of Left Bank Books, a collectively owned & operated anarchist bookstore still going after 25 years. Next to the flower shop at the beginning of the market, you can just see the bookstore sign. Auntie Dave worked in this collective from 1978-1995, helping found their Books-to-Prisoners project, Left Bank Distribution & Publishing, & aka Used Books.

Dignidad Rebelde

Dignidad Rebelde is a graphic arts collaboration between Oakland-based artist-activists Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes. We believe that art can be an empowering reflection of community struggles, dreams and visions. Following principles of Xicanisma and Zapatismo, we create work that translates people’s stories into art that can be put back into the hands of the communities who inspire it.

We recognize that the history of the majority of people worldwide is a history of colonialism, genocide, and exploitation. Our art is grounded in Third World and indigenous movements that build people's power to transform the conditions of fragmentation, displacement and loss of culture that result from this history. Representing these movements through visual art means connecting struggles through our work and seeking to inspire solidarity among communities of struggle worldwide.

Dignidad Rebelde's graphic art is of the highest quality and versatility – our art is for museums, collectors' exhibitions, community and cultural centers, individual homes, political rallies and more. We are committed to advancing the acceptance of people's art as quality art, and to nurturing a model of art-making grounded in collaboration with community organizations and other networks of artists.

Come Visit Our Book Dome at the Okanogan/Tonasket Barter Faire

We'll be on the North end of one of the aisles, as usual. Look for the Pirate Flag!

Post-Fukushima: 44% Increase in Infant Mortality Rates Up West Coast of North America

http://pregnancy-blog.parentingweekly.com/2011/06/are-babies-on-west-coast-dying-from.html
This one's a bit older, I believe it's up to 44%. It got challenged for accuracy and alarmingly came back even worse.

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http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/lies-from-fukushima-are-killing-babies/5047
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The province of British Columbia today announced that infant mortality for the first six months of 2011 exceeded the infant mortality for all of 2010.

Officials attribute the infant mortality spike to "poor parent training."

In the CBC story on the announcement, no mention was made of Fukushima.

- http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/4550
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Infant Mortality Higher From Radiation US and Canada West Coast Study Finds
These folks touch on some interesting subjects not all of you may agree with...
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http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/health-headlines/2011/6/13/janette-d-sherman-md-and-joseph-mangano-is-the-dramatic-incr.html

Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant Underwater- References of 10 Mile Mandatory Evacuation Area Scrubbed From News Sites

Care to have our own little Nuclear disaster? Or do you not want to read about that either? Might not be much of a problem, since our spin doctors and censors are hard at work.

http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/06/28/fort-calhoun-nuclear-plant-underwater-references-10-mile-radius-evacuation-order-scrubbed-internet-news-sites-32161/

Question: How pissed off would you be

if you found out that during the month of April alone, if you live in the Seattle or Olympia areas, you breathed in 5 Hot Particles a day of Cesium, Strontium-90 or one of a variety of scarily-named other particles? How scared would we be if our newspapers and scientists and elected officials actually told us the truth about CURRENT levels of radiation in our food and water?

Decide for yourself. I'm tired and I want to go to bed. And change all your air filters in the morning.

http://fairewinds.com/content/hot-particles-japan-seattle-virtually-undetectable-when-inhaled-or-swallowed

http://theintelhub.com/2011/06/17/nuclear-doom-hot-particles-slow-death-and-cancer/

Last Earth Distro's Recent Acquisitions for Summer 2011

Any of these titles can be requested down at Last Word Books and brought in from our warehouse. Thanks for your support!

www.lastearthdistro.net