OUT OF BALANCE

Indigenous cultures across the planet have been warning for eons that American “civilization” (entertainment-technology complex) undermines us all by devoting so much of itself to pandering to teenage boys’ worst impulses in such an overwhelming way.

Don’t believe it? Check out In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations by Jerry Mander.

Or, watch this one-hour documentary about Ladakh. See what happens when the American entertainment-technology complex enters a stable, peaceful culture:

http://vimeo.com/21643212

ALL THE RIGHT-ON BEAUTIFUL ANARCHO-TAOIST-FEMINIST WISDOM-FABLES YOU NEED

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The Unreal and the Real

by Ursula K. Le Guin

published November 2012

For fifty years, National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Ursula K. Le Guin’s stories have shaped the way her readers see the world. Her work gives voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider, and speaks truth to power. Le Guin’s writing is witty, wise, both sly and forthright; she is a master craftswoman.

This two-volume selection of almost forty stories taken from her eleven collections was made by Le Guin herself, as was the organizing principle of splitting the stories into the nominally realistic and fantastic.

More info: Small Beer Press

INFO FOR RETAILERS WISHING TO STOCK THE JUST-PRINTED ARTHUR NO. 33

If you wish to stock Arthur Magazine, please click here to contact us via email and we will respond near-immediately with details on how to order quantity directly from us.

Alternatively, if you have an account with Forced Exposure (Mass.), you can order Arthur through them.

Or, if you have an account with Forte Music Distribution (UK), you can order Arthur through them.

ANOTHER TREASURE FILM FROM HISHAM MAYET

Above: Sublime Frequencies announces a new film by Hisham Mayet: The Divine River: Ceremonial Pageantry in the Sahel. Condensed from 40 hours of footage shot between 2007 and 2012, The Divine River is an exhilarating, hallucinatory, harrowing record of music, ritual, life, and landscape along the Niger River — which the Tuareg call “Egerew n-Igerewen,” or “River of Rivers” — as it winds through Mali and the Republic of Niger.


Purchase the dvd for $18.50: go here for info

REPEAL THE SECOND AMENDMENT

Stop complaining — start organizing — please.

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And to the paranoid gun freaks out there who keep doing comment board drive-bys:

1. Why yes, I know firsthand about high-powered guns and the culture around them — because I copyedited SWAT Magazine (edited by Danny Hansen) for nine months (five issues) in 1995, as well as Modern Gun magazine (edited by Jim Schultz) during that same period. It was an exercise in experiencing willful ignorance. I am grateful for the insights it gave me, even as I regret that I participated in that culture.

2. Why yes, I know about guns in the country/wild, *because that’s where I live*. A simple handgun might come in handy maybe once a decade. Not worth it. Grow up and use your brain. Learn the old ways of dealing with stuff.

3. Why yes, I know that most gun control is unconstitutional. That’s why I favor changing the Constitution itself. I favor repealing the Second Amendment.

4. Arthur Magazine is not going to sponsor a debate with you here. I am going to continue to delete your comments.

Jay Babcock
Arthur Magazine editor

Pandit Ravi Shankar at the Kremlin, 1986: “Shanti Mantra”

From Sandip Roy:

“Ravi Shankar was our Columbus. While one explorer came looking for India, the other took India to the world. Perhaps that’s why it’s only fitting that the first time I saw him perform was not in India, but at the Kremlin in Moscow.

“I was no classical music connoisseur, just a callow student, part of an Indian youth delegation and he was performing with a Russian folk ensemble and the Moscow chamber orchestra. I remember the draughty, rather dreary hotel dining room, the cold windy Red Square and the rickety Aeroflot airplanes. But most of all I remember the Kremlin vibrating with Ravi Shankar’s Shanti Mantra…

IT LIVES AGAIN

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Tim Goodyear and Morgan Enfield give a close inspection to Arthur No. 33, the publication’s first issue in four years and the first in our new giant-sized compostable newspaper format.

Arthur No. 33 is available for $5 starting today at Portland, Ore.’s Floating World Comics, and the rest of the planet (more or less) on the day after the Winter Solstice, December 22, 2012.

Click here to order a copy direct from us thru the mail.