SUPERFLEX


MAY 20-22. 2005
FREE BEER AT VOLKSB?úHNE, BERLIN
At the Volksb?ºhne, Berlin – we are launching the open source beer FREE BEER 1.1. We are applying modern open source ideas and methods on a traditional real-world product – beer. The recipe and the whole brand of FREE BEER is published under a Creative Commons license, which basically means that anyone can use the recipe to brew the beer or to create a derivative of the recipe. You are free to earn money from FREE BEER, but you have to publish the recipe under the same license and credit our work. You can use all the design and branding elements, and are free to change them at will, provided you publish your changes under the same license (“Attribution & Share Alike”).

Creative Commons license

OUR BEER
The first open source beer “Vores ?òl” (our beer) was made with a group of students at the IT-University in Copenhagen.

more on OUR BEER:
http://voresoel.dk

ERSATZSTADT ‚Äì REPR?ÑSENTATIONEN DES URBANEN
VOLKSB?úHNE AM ROSA LUXEMBURG-PLAT
more info.. http://ersatzstadt.org

More on hero McSwane.


By John Aguilar, Rocky Mountain News
May 20, 2005

The fallout from an Arvada teenager’s investigative piece for his school newspaper is one reason Army recruiters nationwide will “stand down” today for a refresher class in ethics.

David McSwane never thought his story would get so big when he gave his 15-year-old friend a camcorder, his 11-year-old sister a still camera, and enlisted his mother to keep him out of legal hot water.

When McSwane was finished, Army recruiters in Golden had been caught encouraging him to manufacture a fake high school diploma and accompanying him to a head shop to buy him a drug detox kit.

U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., called on the Army secretary to launch an investigation. The Army subsequently suspended McSwane’s recruiters and began a probe, which is still ongoing.

Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army recruiting command in Fort Knox, Ky., said that although the one-day recruitment freeze at 1,700 offices is partly routine, it is largely the result of recent allegations of impropriety.

“We’re going to reassess how Army values play into our jobs. We’re going to address the kind of improprieties that we’ve seen. There’s no avoiding the issue,” he said.

Among the Army’s concerns are those uncovered by the 17-year-old Arvada West High School honors student with a full class schedule and after-school job.

McSwane’s story nearly died before it ever got off the ground.

“I told him not to do it,” said his mother, Shelly Hansen. “I thought he might get arrested.”

Her son, who had read about military enlistment challenges and had seen recruiters working the grounds of Arvada West, wanted to know “just how far will Army recruiters go to get one more.”

McSwane had been inspired by the 1961 book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, who darkened his skin and documented what it was like to live as a black man in the segregated South.

But McSwane had another motivation when he began his investigation in January.

“I wanted to do something cool, go undercover and do something unusual,” he said this week.

The premise was simple: McSwane would try to join the Army as a high school dropout with an insatiable fondness for marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms. No matter how stoned and stupid McSwane acted, a pair of recruiters wouldn’t wouldn’t let him go.

McSwane insisted to the recruiters that he couldn’t lick his drug habit, but one recruiter told him to take some “stuff” that would “clean you out.” It turned out to be a detoxification kit the recruiter said had worked with other applicants. McSwane said the recruiter even offered to pay half the cost of the kit.

McSwane’s claim of being a dropout didn’t discourage his recruiters either. He was encouraged to take a high school equivalency diploma exam, which McSwane deliberately failed. That’s when he said one recruiter introduced him to the “home-school option.”

McSwane was told to order a phony diploma and transcripts from an online diploma mill.

Continue reading →

Recruiting Office Shot Up After TV Report

Army Suspends Recruiter, Calls Another Back For Investigation

POSTED: 9:03 am MDT April 29, 2005
UPDATED: 1:52 pm MDT April 29, 2005

DENVER — A U.S. Army and Marine Recruiting office was shot up after a television report alleged that recruiters coaxed a would-be recruit to lie.

Police were called to the store front office at 7355 W. 88th Ave. Friday morning on a criminal mischief complaint.

Officers found shattered glass at the front of the office and said that it was the result of eight gunshots fired into the building in the early-morning hours Friday.

Four large windows and two doors will have to be replaced as a result of the damage.

Police said they believe the incident is related to an investigative report broadcast Thursday night that said two Army recruiters who work at the office are under investigation for allegedly telling a teenager he could enlist by making a fake diploma and using detox pills to pass a drug test.

According to the report, 17-year-old David McSwane made up a story about being a high school dropout and drug user to see how far recruiters would go.

McSwane is actually an honor student and works for his high school’s newspaper in Arvada.

But when he called a local Army recruiter, he said he was a high school drop out. McSwane recorded the recruiter telling him he could make a fake diploma from a nonexistent high school.

McSwane also said he had a marijuana problem — and the recruiter suggested detoxification capsules, according to the recording. Another recruiter drove McSwane to a store to purchase the detox kit.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Brodeur, who oversees Army recruiting for the region, was shocked and angered after hearing his recruiters on tape. He said they violated trust, integrity, honor and duty.

One recruiter was suspended from recruiting Friday until completion of the Army investigation. The other recruiter, who was in transition to a new duty location, was called back to the area for the investigation

Brodeur said he neither pressures nor punishes recruiters if quotas aren’t met, though there are rewards when goals are surpassed. He promised a full investigation into the matter.

“We began conducting an investigation immediately upon finding out about the allegations made toward these recruiters and are required to complete the investigation within 30 days,” said Brodeur.

Any person with information regarding on the shooting at the recruiting office is asked to <a href=”mailto:editor@arthurmag.com”email Arthur magazine’s editor.

Arthur Machen, the Apostle of Wonder

the 27 April 2005 Times Literary Supplement
Arthur Machen, the Apostle of Wonder
Phil Baker

THE LIFE OF ARTHUR MACHEN
Edited by Roger Dobson
John Gawsworth

394pp. | Leyburn: Tartarus. Available upon application to the Friends of Arthur Machen, 78 Greenwich South Street, London SE10 8UN. | 1 8726 2181 3

Notably independent of contemporary fashionî was Jocelyn Brookeís comment on Arthur Machen, which was admirably diplomatic, if lacking the flourish of J. P. Hoganís ìFew people read Arthur Machen nowadays; he is the preserve, zealously guarded, of lonely men who step into the gutter when the bowler-hatted jostle them in the streetî. Interviewing Machen at his Lisson Grove flat (ìa shrine to which no one pays homageî) in 1919, Ben Hecht felt that the writer now lived in an era that ignored him, while clinging to an era that had overlooked him, in effect pinning him down as a minor Nineties writer.

That was before the 1920s revival, after which Machen was allowed to join the ranks of the reforgotten, where he has largely remained until quite recently. ìThe Apostle of Wonderî is nowadays intensely appreciated, and although he notionally dealt in tales of horror, he is surely read more in hope than in dread. For all his nightmare unveilings and horrible transmogrifications, Machen was fighting a rearguard action to keep open a space of romantic and mystical possibility, resisting the ìdisenchantment of the worldî that Max Weber saw accompanying the rise of science.

Much of Machenís work involves a re-enchantment of London as a place of infinite and ultimately mystical possibilities, like the fabulous glimpsed park that opens up in one of his finest stories, ìNî, within a transfigured Stoke Newington. Barry Humphries has described discovering Machenís London by reading him in Australia, so that when he finally arrived in 1959, ìI wandered in the streets that I felt I had got to know through the Machen guidebook, in Clerkenwell, in Camden Town, in Kentish Town, in Islington. The gaslight was still there to my surprise, there were still dark corners, there were traces of the eighteenth century . . .î. Humphries was also an enthusiastic reader of M. P. Shiel, the Caribbean fantasy writer, and admired the John Gawsworth introduction to Shielís Best Short Stories. In his own introduction to Gawsworthís Life of Arthur Machen, Humphries recalls wandering around Notting Hill Gate, then run-down and associated with race riots and the murderer Christie, and finding himself in a pub on Westbourne Grove called the Alma. He noticed an old drunk, with ìthe look of a failed actor or minor literary gentî, holding forth to a small group of duffel-coated listeners, and it was an appropriately Machenesque moment when the barman told him this character was none other than Gawsworth: ìI decided I had been led to this horrible little pub by Fateî.

Continue reading →

ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN No. 0018

“COMMAND PERFORMANCE” -THE ARTHUR MAILING LIST BULLETIN

No. 0018

FRIDAY MAY 20, 2005

1. “It is quite clear that gluttony, greed and lack of compassion have caused America to become the most despised nation on this Earth. And the sad thing is, as my Polish wife tells me, we were and still could be, the hope of all. Instead we have not one friend on earth despite the babblings of that Texas millionaire in Washington.” — Lew Welch, 1967.

2. A PLACE TO COMMINGLE: We’ve added more space to our Arthur message board at www.arthurmag.com. Drop in if you’re in the mood.

3. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!: Brian Eno is interviewed by Kristine McKenna in the next issue of Arthur, out June 14.

4. SAVE THE DATES. SERIOUSLY: September 4 and 5, 2005: Arthur Festival, Los Angeles, California. More information in the coming weeks.

5. KANDY KORN CARTWHEELS AND YOU: From David Keenan’s review in the May issue of THE WIRE: “We’ve got the closest thing to a high fidelity release here from the confirmed kings of the under-the-counter-culture, Sunburned Hand Of The Man. No Magic Man bundles a selection of some of Sunburned’s most punishingly rhythmic heart-punches to date. There are pieces here that sound like Pete Cosey-era Miles cut up with Lhasa street song and stand-up stonerskits, while others make out like the logical Heavy Metal extension of Tony Williams’ experiments with electricity as part of Lifetime alongside guitarist John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young. Guitarist Marc Orleans can generate kandy korn cartwheels as well as The Magic Band’s Jeff Cotton and combined with Rob Thomas’s bass, the two provide a steam-rolling backline that various drummers — John Moloney, Phil Franklin — work to bolster and undermine. Much of No Magic Man is possessed of a uniquely squelchy analog bottom end and 

between tracks there are some wowing cut-ups from various found sources that add a beautiful veneer of mystic shit to the already precariously dosed proceedings.”

“No Magic Man” is available Arthur’s Bastet label for only $12US/$14Can/$17World, postage paid. Or FREE with a new subscription. Go to www.arthurmag.com to order.

6. ARTHUR ON DUBLAB.COM‘S DUBSTREAM: Arthur editor Jay Babcock just did a 60-minute sequence of music selections that is in random, schedule-less rotation with other folks’ sessions now on dublab.com‘s live “dubstream” thingamabobber. Features Babcock ramble plus new music by Vetiver, A Band of Bees,  Psychic Paramount, Sleater-Kinney, Gang Gang Dance, Growing, Marissa Nadler, Colleen and Radar Bros. and old music from Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Hawkwind, Incredible String Band and Gary Higgins. Listen in at www.dublab.com

7. ARIK MOONHAWK ROPER’S “TOUGH WIZARD” ARTHUR T-SHIRTS ALMOST GONE, MORE ON THE WAY.

Arik Moonhawk Roper: you’ve seen his illustrations on the covers of High on Fire albums, Black Crowes tour posters and accompanying Daniel Pinchbeck’s column in Arthur. Recently you may have seen his artwork in a new place: on someone’s chest. Yes, Arik designed the very popular bullets-and-mushrooms-wielding Wizard who graces the current Arthur t-shirt. Well, we’re almost out of the mustard-on-earth color variety, so hurry up and order if you want those. They’re cheap and available from www.arthurmag.com We’ve got some new shirts on the way incorporating the same design, but with a different color scheme. What is the new color scheme? It’s a secret, silly.

We all know,

Arthur Information Bureau

Los Angeles, California

Images from the past 16,000 years…

U.S. Widens Its Protective Frame for Indian Rock Art

A ceremony at China Lake will mark the 36,000-acre expansion of the historical landmark.
By Fred Alvarez
Times Staff Writer

May 20, 2005

RIDGECREST, Calif. No matter how many times archeologist Russell Kaldenberg roams Renegade Canyon, its volcanic rock reveals new magic. Depending on the season or the slant of the sun, the dark stone will erupt with chalk-white images, carved over the past 16,000 years, that he hasn’t seen before.

There are bighorn sheep and long-tailed cougars scratched into the walls of the high desert corridor. There are snakes and dragonflies and mammoth-like creatures, captured in rock carvings by the native people who once hunted and gathered their food on the western edge of the Mojave Desert.

There are so many images, in fact, that they can’t all be counted. All anyone knows for sure is that the carvings, set deep within the Navy’s testing range at China Lake, make up the largest concentration of Indian rock art in North America. And that every visit yields new discoveries.

“The harder you look, the more you see,” said Kaldenberg, who as base archeologist is responsible for preserving dozens of canyons peppered with prehistoric art at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. “It’s magical to me, with the light and shade and angles of the sun. If the clouds move just right, you can almost see things move.”

Continue reading →

J.G. Ballard, 2004: "A soft totalitarianism prevails, as obsequious as a wine waiter."

From a 2004 interview with Jeannette Baxter in The Guardian, touching on themes from Ballard’s latest novel, Millennium People…

JGB: I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic. A Buick radiator grille is as much a political statement as a Rolls Royce radiator grille, one enshrining a machine aesthetic driven by a populist optimism, the other enshrining a hierarchical and exclusive social order. The ocean liner art deco of the 1930s, used to sell everything from beach holidays to vacuum cleaners, may have helped the 1945 British electorate to vote out the Tories.

… There is something deeply suffocating about life today in the prosperous west. Bourgeoisification, the suburbanisation of the soul, proceeds at an unnerving pace. Tyranny becomes docile and subservient, and a soft totalitarianism prevails, as obsequious as a wine waiter. Nothing is allowed to distress and unsettle us. The politics of the playgroup rules us all.

The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change. When Markham [not JGB] uses the phrase “upholstered apocalypse” he reveals that he knows what is really going on in Chelsea Marina. That is why he is drawn to Gould, who offers a desperate escape.

My real fear is that boredom and inertia may lead people to follow a deranged leader with far fewer moral scruples than Richard Gould, that we will put on jackboots and black uniforms and the aspect of the killer simply to relieve the boredom. A vicious and genuinely mindless neo-fascism, a skilfully aestheticised racism, might be the first consequence of globalisation, when Classic Coke and California merlot are the only drinks on the menu. At times I look around the executive housing estates of the Thames Valley and feel that it is already here, quietly waiting its day, and largely unknown to itself.”

Q: Am I right in thinking that one critique which your latest novel throws up is that, in the glare of the consumerist spectacle, we have lost all sense of critical distance to the realities of capitalism and globalisation? I’m thinking specifically here of the reality of terrorism. John Gray propounds a similar thesis in Straw Dogs (your chosen book of the year for 2003) when he suggests that al-Qaida is “a byproduct of globalisation, it successfully privatised terror and projected it worldwide.” What’s your feeling on this?

JGB: I agree with John Gray, and was very impressed by both Straw Dogs and his al-Qaida book. What is so disturbing about the 9/11 hijackers is that they had not spent the previous years squatting in the dust on some Afghan hillside with a rusty Kalashnikov. These were highly educated engineers and architects who had spent years sitting around in shopping malls in Hamburg and London, drinking coffee and listening to the muzak. There was certainly something very modern about their chosen method of attack, from the flying school lessons, hours on the flight simulator, the use of hijacked airliners and so on. The reaction they provoked, a huge paranoid spasm that led to the Iraq war and the rise of the neo-cons, would have delighted them.

COURTESY ANDREW M.!

Garage sale to feature Burroughs memorabilia

The last time she counted, Patricia Elliott Marvin had about 30 boxes of books, posters, drawings and other assorted leftovers from the Beat Generation.

“I want to get down (to) two boxes,” Marvin said Thursday while sorting through a pile of William S. Burroughs paperbacks, many of them signed by her good friend, the author.

“I need to simplify my life,” she said.

Marvin, 56, is having a Beat Generation garage sale Saturday in her home at 810 E. 13th St.

“The art will be in the front room, the books will be in the dining room,” she said. “The cookbooks — I have about 800 of them — will be in the back library.”

Marvin met and befriended Burroughs in 1978 in Austin, Texas. “I liked him right away,” she said.

They remained close confidants until Burroughs’ death in Lawrence in 1997. He was 83.

Burroughs, best known for his experimental novel “The Naked Lunch,” and his influence on writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, settled in Lawrence in 1981.
  
“I think Lawrence restored his soul,” Marvin said.

Sale items include:

• A short stack of programs from the River City Reunion, an event that brought the best of the Beats to Lawrence in 1987.
‚Ä¢ Signed copies of Burroughs’ “The Place of Dead Roads,” “The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead,” “Tornado Alley,” “Queer,” “The Western Lands” and “Letters to Allen Ginsberg.”
‚Ä¢ A Carl Apfelschnitt poster commemorating Burroughs’ 70th birthday in New York, signed by Burroughs and Apfelschnitt.
‚Ä¢ A complete set of “City Moons,” a Lawrence-area underground newspaper from the late 1960s.
• A letter to Marvin from Burroughs, explaining how to care for his cats while he was away.
• A collection of art prints and small-press publications from Lawrence, 1968 to the present.
‚Ä¢ Black-and-white drawings by risqu?© underground comic artist S. Clay Wilson.
• Dozens of Burroughs T-shirts.

“These are the only T-shirts authorized by Burroughs that bear his image,” said Marian O’Dwyer, former owner of the Phoenix Gallery who’s helping Marvin.

So far, Marvin said, she’s not had second thoughts about parting with so many prized possessions.

“I know this is going to sound weird, but I finally figured out why I am doing this,” Marvin said. “It’s because I miss (Burroughs). I have all this stuff, sitting dead in a box. That’s not where it belongs. It’s alive, it ought to be with people who will appreciate it, who will read it. I want them to have it.”

The sale starts a 9 a.m. No early callers will be allowed.

Marvin said she expected the sale to turn into a mini-reunion of Burroughs alumni.

“I’m hoping it will be an event,” she said, “and not just a sale.”

The deserters: Awol crisis hits the US forces

The Independent

As the death toll of troops mounts in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s military recruiting figures have plummeted to an all-time low. Thousands of US servicemen and women are now refusing to serve their country. Andrew Buncombe reports

16 May 2005

Sergeant Kevin Benderman cannot shake the images from his head. There are bombed villages and desperate people. There are dogs eating corpses thrown into a mass grave. And most unremitting of all, there is the image of a young Iraqi girl, no more than eight or nine, one arm severely burnt and blistered, and the sound of her screams.

Last January, these memories became too much for this veteran of the war in Iraq. Informed his unit was about to return, he told his commanders he wanted out and applied to be considered a conscientious objector. The Army refused and charged him with desertion. Last week, his case – which carries a penalty of up to seven years’ imprisonment – started before a military judge at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

“If I am sincere in what I say and there’s consequences because of my actions, I am prepared to stand up and take it,” Sgt Benderman said. “If I have to go to prison because I don’t want to kill anybody, so be it.”

Continue reading →