The future's so bright you're gonna need shades!

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1) Cyberspace as Savior http://www.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.dir/ethnic.dir/r4cyb.dir/r4cybh.htm  

In the early 1990s the internet was flooded with various versions of the "cyberspace manifesto," most of which contained something like this passage from John Perry Barlow:

Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not
where bodies live. We are creating a world that all may enter without
privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military
force, or station of birth.

It might be easy to write off such declarations as uninformed optimism, were it not continually echoed by computer experts such as the MIT Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte: "While the politicians struggle with the baggage of history, a new generation is emerging from the digital landscape free of many of the old prejudices" (Negroponte 1995:230). To those gasping for breath in the ozone-rich atmosphere of superlative cyberspace promises, the crucial question is not necessarily why outrageous promises are offered, but rather precisely how do such promises sustain themselves against their own speculative appearance?  How do the utterances of scientists, engineers, hucksters and marketeers literally move and shape worlds, channel flows of institutional funding, and exert enormous influence in shaping the meaning of life. How is it that such claims are offered and sustained?

Technoscience is considered in the science studies idiom to be that body of knowledge and practices that links representation to intervention, maps strategies for taking action, and encapsulates the skill and technique that evacuates the social and political from itself.    As such, contesting its claims to truth as socially contingent proves quite difficult, although hardly impossible  One cannot merely say that the knowledge it produces is “not so.”  So well entrenched is its status as the purveyor of truth that finding the loopholes, the regions of possible contestation, is an arduous process, requiring sustained investigation and intimate knowledge of the practices of technoscience.

Ravenous Foreign Pests Threaten National Treasures

By Zenaida Gonzalez Kotala Dec. 6, 2010

Related Contacts and Links:

Betsy Von Holle, Biology

407-823-0916

Foreign pests are eating their way through our national forests, destroying majestic scenery and costing taxpayers millions of dollars.If enforcement efforts to prevent
their importation aren’t stepped up, irreplaceable resources will be lost forever and taxpayers can expect to fork over billions of dollars more by 2019, according to a comprehensive study published today in BioScience. 

Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Michigan State University, the University of Central Florida, and the United States Department of Agriculture
Forest Service analyzed the impact of invasive insects and pathogens introduced into the United States through 2007. What they found was a staggering list of more than 455 insects and 16 pathogens that are destroying everything from oak trees in California to redbay trees in Central Florida. Based on the pattern, the researchers predict one especially destructive pest will sneak into the nation every two years. “Entire forests are being wiped out, and it is costing taxpayers millions as the government tries to eradicate these invaders that threaten industries dependent  on trees and plants,” said Betsy Von Holle, a biologist at UCF who worked on the project. “We’re losing a variety of native species as a result of importing these pests. It’s  not just aesthetics. It’s impacting our economy.” These pests and diseases sneak into the country on everything from horticultural (or plant) imports to the wooden pallets used to transport everything from building supplies to electronic goods.  “Global trade has had tremendous benefits for Americans,” said lead author Juliann Aukema from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in  Santa Barbara. “Unfortunately, it also has resulted in the introduction of destructive insects and other organisms that threaten native ecosystems and the services they provide.” No section of the country is immune. Laurel wilt disease is one of the latest organisms to be spread by a foreign beetle in the southeastern United States. It is wiping out redbay trees in Georgia  and last month was discovered in Seminole County, Fla. Redbay trees are important to wildlife and certain butterflies depend on them for survival.  But it is just a recent import.  California has been battling sudden oak death, a pathogen that is destroying oak trees in California and Oregon since the 1990s. California has spent millions trying to stop it, because the trees are a state treasure.And the Midwest is not immune. The Asian Longhorned beetle, which came into the United States hidden in wooden packing pallets, has ravaged all sorts of trees in New York City and Chicago. So far, those communities have spent $220 million to fight the infestation. Another beetle, the emerald ash borer, has been destroying trees in the Midwest since 2002, and it is estimated municipalities will spend more than $10 billion for landscape and tree treatment or removal in the next 10 years battling the ash borer.  “Once here, these invasive species are virtually impossible to stop,” Von Holle said. “And it is very expensive to control them.” Recommendations include better screening before letting items into the country. The department within the USDA that is in charge of screening at airports and ports is now part of Homeland Security. “These screening agents have too much to do and right now the focus is on finding bombs and weapons,” Von Holle said. “That’s absolutely right, but we also need to be more aggressive about these biological threats that could undermine large parts of the U.S. economy that rely on trees and other native plants, not  to mention the loss to the environment.” The research was supported by the Nature Conservancy and the National Center for Ecological Analysis, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, as part of a larger effort to assess economic impacts of nonindigenous forest pests. The team also included Deborah G. McCullough at Michigan State University, Andrew Liebhold with  the Northern Research Station of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kerry Britton with the USDA Forest Service and Susan J. Frankel of the USDA Forest Center at the Pacific Southwest Research Station in Albany, Calif.

Quarantines - Rshopno
It should be pretty obvious by now who the REAL terrorists are. ... Asian Longhorned Beetle. Length: 2:43 - Rating: 4.357143 (14 ratings) - View: 12268 ...
www.ronginshopno.com/rs/browse_vidfee... -

The Threat of Agroterrorism and Bioterrorism in Florida ...Now we know that the possibility of attack is very real. Indeed, ... serious outbreak of Asian longhorn beetle or citrus
 longhorn beetle .... A potential terrorist could loose a plague of toad and frogs on the ...www.flsart.org/PDF/Lesson%2520Plan%25... -

Harvard Forest Previous Month's Highlighs  A recent article in Smithsonian Magazine featured the Asian Longhorned Beetle with ... to monitor and control instruments and to
 collect and analyze data in real time, ... Harvard Forest to study impacts of Asian Longhorned beetle. ...
harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/highlig... -

Environment News Service: AmeriScan Index February 2002  Asian Longhorned Beetle Invades Central Park; EPA Lifts San Francisco Highway Sanctions ...
 Indian Point Nuke Plant Could be Terrorist Target ... www.ens-newswire.com/ens/archives/200... -

USDA: PPQStrategicPlan2005-2009 Mission Evolution • • • • Pests Agro-terrorism Technology Trade Along with .... citrus canker, plum pox virus, Asian longhorned beetle, and other exotic ...
www.scribd.com/doc/1445699/USDA-PPQSt... -

Beetles, Bears, and Climate Change WBUR and NPR - On Point with ... Jul 29, 2010 ... I myself have seen the Asian long-horned beetle (It is likely it won't ...
 you choose not to believe that Global Climate Change is not real, ... www.onpointradio.org/2010/07/beetles -

http://photographyblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/12/

December 3, 2010 Comments   Recommended
"South Korea Ghost Town" 7:42 PM Fri, Dec 03, 2010  Permalink  Yahoo! Buzz  G.J. McCarthy/Photographer Bio E-mail News tips
Most of my close colleagues and other photo friends know that I worship at the altar of David Guttenfelder.
Gutten Who??? Is that the guy who printed the bible?" Uhm, no. That's Johannes Gutenberg.

David Guttenfelder has been a photojournalist with the Associated Press for more than a decade and-a-half. He's currently based
in Tokyo, but from what I see, following his work on the AP Wire, he's everywhere.I first came across his name and images back
in 2007 during POYi judging in Columbia, Missouri. I was well into my first year at the city paper -- the Columbia Daily Tribune-
- and was about as green as you could get. One of his pieces that won -- about a whole culture of Japanese worker, which you can
see here -- totally blew me way. Stylish and cutting-edge but with content up the wazoo. All around, fantastic.Anyway, I've
religiously followed him ever since; I pretty much weekly type his name into a wire search to see what he's been up to.Which
leads me to the point of this post.Recently Guttenfelder did a great series of still life's following the North Korean bombardment
of their southerly neighbor. Subtle stuff, compared to much of what he usually brings back from conflict, but beautiful work
nonetheless. Thought I'd share.And PS -- I'd love to take credit for finding these images, but I've been way out of the loop on
this kind of thing. Big thanks to amigo Logan Mock Bunting .Categories: Good Work,Just for fun
http://photographyblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/12/

http://mingus.charlesmingus3art.com/index2.php?artikel=96&searchquery=fractal&PHPSESSID=905998b3918809d9ccb1bebe02824b30

http://accuracyandaesthetics.com/?page_id=790

Gayla Chandler       
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Gayla+Chandler&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

http://mingus.charlesmingus3art.com/index2.php?artikel=96&searchquery=fractal&PHPSESSID=905998b3918809d9ccb1bebe02824b30

vip fractal
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gNQOsPjhOl4J:local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/symmetry/MathEd_PDF_PresentIt.pdf+This+presentation+is+copyright+%C2%A9+Gayla+Chandler&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us

This is the html version of the file http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/symmetry/MathEd_PDF_PresentIt.pdf.
Google automatically generates html versions of documents as we crawl the web.
http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/symmetry/MathEd_PDF_PresentIt.pdf.

Gayla Chandler     
http://accuracyandaesthetics.com/?page_id=790 

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Gayla+Chandler&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

http://classes.yale.edu/fractals/Panorama/Astronomy/Galaxies/Galaxies.html

PowerPoint Presentation File Format: Microsoft Powerpoint - View as HTML
Here is a link to a PowerPoint presentation “created by Mrs. Gamache using the collection of ...
Photo by Gayla Chandler. Post Processing by Kim Letkeman ...
http://www.public.asu.edu/~starlite/Fractals_a_Symmetry_Approach/MathEd_PPP_PresentIt.ppt -

Grand Canyon Natural Fractals Screensaver/Background Images
After downloading and viewing my associated presentation, you should be able to recognize ...
The contents of this web page are © Copyright Gayla Chandler. ...
http://www.public.asu.edu/~starlite/GrandCanyonFollowUpFractals.html -

Fractals: a Symmetry Approach http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/symmetry/

"This presentation is a richly illustrated introduction to fractal geometry ... Other formats and fractal resources from Gayla Chandler can be found here. ...
http://www.local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/symmetry/ - [PDF]
PowerPoint Presentation
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Photo by Gayla Chandler. Post Processing by Kim Letkeman ... this Introduction to Fractals PowerPoint presentation. out of Florida Atlantic University by ...
http://www.local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/symmetry/MathEd_PDF_PresentIt.pdf - Similar pages of a Fractal Nature photographic Math-Art essays highlighting mathematics in the natural world(geometric fractals mimic magnification/dilitational symmetry in Nature)inspired by the teachings and scientific investigations of Heinz-Otto Peitgen and Richard F. Voss http://www.fractalnature.com/
 
 Shown here, the stage-4 Sierpinski tetrahedron provides a powerful visual introduction to fractal geometry and the concept of "self-similarity", in which a shape can be broken into smaller copies of the whole. Each new stage is composed of 4 smaller copies of the previous stage. As the number of stages increases, the Sierpinski tetrahedron approaches "exact self-similarity".
Such geometric fractals provide an important scientific model for characterizing many of the complex processes and shapes found in the natural world, that are echoed in the settings of the tetrahedra. Trees, land formations, clouds, and their images exhibit "statistical self-similarity" in which a small part "looks like", but not "exactly like" the whole. Just as a part of the Sierpinski tetrahedron reminds one of the whole, a small branch of a tree reminds one of the entire tree.
      The mathematics of fractal geometry and the science of chaos are now bridging the gaps between math, science, art, and culture. They treat the messiness of the everyday world. They are based on natural self-similarity and observations of complicated behavior from simple equations. They provide a new mathematical language for capturing, manipulating, and simulating nature.

(Richard F. Voss) * Web-Based Fractals Presentations (PDF/PPT)  Fractals: an Introduction through Symmetry  (accessible for beginners: highlights magnification symmetry and fractals-chaos intersections) Fractals in Nature at Grand Canyon Ntnl Park(along with misc. fractal topics, highlights a prominent
 pattern of mutually orthogonal joints present on many scales throughout the walls and rim of Grand Canyon) plus accompanying Follow-up Images

At the Parliament of World Religions in 1993, over sixty indigenous delegates drafted a Declaration of Vision, which was originally "endorsed by resolution in a near unanimous vote" of the Parliament (Taliman 1994). It reads, in part:We call upon the people of conscience in the Roman Catholic hierarchy to persuade Pope John II
to formally revoke the Inter Cetera Bull of May 4, 1493, which will restore our fundamental human rights. That Papal document called for our Nations and Peoples to be subjugated so the Christian Empire nd its doctrines
would be propagated. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. McIntosh 8 Wheat 543 (in 1823) adopted the same principle of subjugation expressed in the Inter Caetera bull. This Papal Bull has been, and continues to be, devastating to our religions, our cultures, and the survival of our populations. 
 
Home Background Appeal to the Vatican Delegate to the Vatican Updates contact information The first annual papal bulls burning took place on October 12, 1997 in front of the Catholic Diocese of Honolulu. Here, 'Ululani Po'ohina burns a papal bull. In the background, from left to right, Kanaka Maoli Hawaiian rights activists Eric Po'ohina, Kekuni Blaisdell, and Soli Niheu look on, while Tony Castanha reads from...
 

Christopher Columbus The Untold Story    
Pope Gives the Americas to Spain Following Columbus' "discovery", Pope Alexander VI issued a May 4, 1493,
papal bull granting official ownership of the New World to Ferdinand and Isabella. To these monarchs, the
Pope declared:"We of our own motion, and not at your solicitation,do give, concede, and assign for ever to you and your successors, all the islands, and main lands, discovered; and which may hereafter, be discovered, towards the west and south; whether they be situated towards India,or towards any other part whatsoever,
and give you absolute power in them."

[9] http://www.understandingprejudice.org/nativeiq/columbus.htm

Robert Anton Wilson Quotes:Maybe Logic Robert Anton Wilson 
stagevu.com/video/ncuhonsrdxan

Robert Anton Wilson All Perception Is Gamble Philosophy Finance ...

Who Is Robert Anton Wilson Robert Anton Wilson Born Robert Edward Wilson January
18 ... Mechanics The German Philosopher Husserl Said That All Perception Is ...

www.financecharts.info/topic/robert-a... - Cached - Similar

Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson ...

Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson -- Little Movies ....
Long before quantum mechanics, the German philosopher Husserl said that all ...

www.naderlibrary.com/maybelogictransc... - Cached - Similar

White Woman Exposes Truth About White Supremacy - Full Version
(5 of 5)         
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White Woman Exposes Truth About White Supremacy - Full Version
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http://vodpod.com/watch/4450296-white-woman-exposes-truth-about-white-supremacy-full-version-2-of-5

White Woman Exposes Truth About White Supremacy - Full Version
(4 of 5)          
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Search results for* White Woman Exposes Truth About White Supremacy -
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White Woman Exposes Truth About White Supremacy - Full Version
(5 of 5)         
http://vodpod.com/search/browse?q=White+Woman+Exposes+Truth+About+White+Supremacy+-+Full+Version

tim wise on white supremacy            
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&expIds=17259,17291,24472,27147,27342,27615&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=tim+wise+on+white+supremacy&cp=27&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1280&bih=615

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Wed, 29 Mar 2000

Giuliani, the Manhattan Institute, and Eugenics: The Ugly Truth Behind "Quality of Life"

-NY Times 3/10/2000 Giuliani Won't Move on Art Show

There's a fundamental question about the Giuliani as Hitler controversy nobody seems willing to ask let alone answer. Does comparing Giuliani to Hitler demean the Holocaust if Giuliani is in fact a modern day exponent of Nazi-like ideas on race?

In order to intelligently answer this question one needs a historical understanding of Nazism beyond knowing that Hitler killed six million Jews. While the systematic extermination of European Jewery is among the most uniquely horrific episodes in human history it was not all that Hitler, Nazism or the Third Reich were trying to achieve. Eliminating Jews was actually a localized subset of a much larger idea known as Eugenics.

Proponents of Eugenics don't necessarily hate those of other races. There are economic and social aspects of Eugenics distinct from the blatant hatred of anti-Semitism or the anti-Black prejudice that's common in the U.S. Often the justifications offered by proponents of Eugenics focus on economic and social gains to society that can be achieved by its application.

Mayor Giuliani's defenders claim he's not a racist. In a very limited sense they may be right. The Mayor's ideology in terms of race and Eugenics focuses on economic issues and so-called quality of life. Let us not forget however that the main justification the Southern States offered for slavery was also economic
as was Hitler's justification for euthanizing and sterilizing millions of German citizens, for invading Eastern Europe and to a large extent for the Holocaust itself. German business interests reaped huge economic benefits from the Holocaust and from the application by the Nazis of Eugenics. Here in New York City, business interests also have been the prime beneficiaries of Giuliani's Eugenics based policies.

Eugenics treats human beings as breeding stock, like farm animals. Eugenicists are preoccupied with issues of racial superiority, racial mixing, racial degeneration and the effects on modern economic society of race generally. So-called "positive" Eugenics deals with promoting socially and economically advantageous human breeding while "negative" Eugenics focuses on the culling out of those with undesirable traits.

Long before Hitler created German laws requiring forcible sterilization, euthanasia and his ultimate Eugenics program, the Holocaust, the pioneers of Eugenics
who originated Hitler's ideas were British and American scientists. With the financial backing of some of the world's most famous industrialists like John D. Rockefeller, Cecil Rhodes, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford, they were able to promote Eugenics to an amazingly successful degree. Thanks to a century of propaganda distorting and disguising their real purposes, the influential foundations these men endowed with their wealth are viewed as humanitarian, even
as mankind's hope for salvation.

By the 1920's many States had passed Eugenics laws requiring involuntary sterilization of mental defectives. Tens of thousands of African Americans, Native Americans and other minorities were deliberately mislabeled as defectives and then sterilized by our government in order to prevent them from reproducing.

Most of those sterilized were actually normal. By the 1930's States were proposing even more extreme policies including compulsory euthanasia for chronic
criminal behavior, for the mentally ill and for those with certain diseases. Hitler publicly acknowledged that he directly modeled the Eugenics laws of Nazi
Germany on those of the United States.

Due to revelations about the Holocaust that surfaced after WWII the Eugenics movement was forced to reinvent itself under various fronts. Nevertheless, it has continued its work to the present day with programs like the Human Genome Project, the Center for Disease Control, various "humanitarian" Population Councils within the UN and in private organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, The Pioneer Fund and the Manhattan Institute. The ideas and goals of Eugenics
are behind issues as diverse as the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the African AIDs crisis and genetically manipulated seeds being forced on farmers.

Not all Eugenics proponents wear white sheets or decorate their homes with Nazi memorabilia. Mainstream Eugenics is usually presented as beneficent aid to
poor people, as scientific research or as enlightened social policy and reform. At its opposite extreme the ideas manifest as murder and mayhem committed
against ethnic and racial minorities.

A common belief of the proponents of American Eugenics in the early part of this century was that poor immigrants who were coming to the United States in the millions each year such as the Irish, Italians and Eastern European Jews were unhealthy, mentally inferior and a dangerous army of potential Marxists who would destroy the nation genetically, economically and politically. Today the immigrant groups that are the focus of this ideological attack in the United States are primarily Latino. In Austria, Hitler's birthplace and today the stronghold of Giuliani's recent dinner pal Jorg Haider, it's the Turks who are the hated and feared immigrant threat. In other words Eugenics ideology is not focused solely on the Jewish people. The Japanese, to take just one more outstanding national example, had a comparable Eugenics program to Hitler's which viewed Chinese and Koreans as inferior races. Millions of innocent civilians were interned, murdered, raped and experimented on by the Japanese in acts as horrific as anything done by the Nazis.

Hitler claimed that hundreds of years of Jewish participation in German society was responsible for Germany's economic, social and spiritual troubles. According to Hitler, Jewish intermarriage and social influence was a poison destroying the Aryan race. These claims are virtually identical to those made today by the White Supremacy movement in the U.S. against Blacks, Asians and Latinos. However it's not only fringe groups and fundamentalists who hold these beliefs. American governmental officials at the highest level and many of the nation's top bankers and industrialists knew about the Holocaust before it had begun and did nothing whatsoever to stop it. In fact, they helped finance it.

It was not only Jews that Hitler and his financial backers had a problem with. Eastern Europeans, Slavs, Russians, Gypsies, Africans and Latin Americans were also races they intended to decimate. Communists, not a race but adherents of a political ideology, were also a key target of Hitler's world-wide Eugenics program. In other words, what Hitler intended was not just a Jewish Holocaust but a plan to eliminate hundreds of millions of representatives of various racial, ethnic and political groups around the world. The motivation was at least as much about gaining economic advantage as about racial prejudice.

One might reasonably ask how the German people, considered by many to be the best educated and most cultured population in the world at that time, could accept this ideology. German Jews made a tremendous contribution to German society and culture over hundreds of years and were a major force in its economy,
its military, its government and its industry. German Jews were the most assimilated Jews in the world, often indistinguishable from their non-Jewish neighbors.

Millions of Germans including Hitler and various other top Nazis had Jewish relatives whose existence they made great efforts to hide.

One way to understand how the German people could participate in the Holocaust is to look at how African Americans are viewed in this country. Despite the undeniable historical fact that Black Americans helped build this nation, established much of it's wealth and made countless contributions to it's culture, its science, its political and social progress and that black soldiers fought and died in every American war, many White Americans believe Blacks are mentally, socially and morally inferior and that they are a threat to the continuation of the so-called American Way Of Life.
                                                           

Crooks and Liars   http://crooksandliars.com/node/37090/print:00

Newt Gingrich says President Obama is Nazi-Commie "threat to our way of life."

                                                                                                                         
Will Howard Kurtz ask Chris Wallace why FOX News decided to make Newt Gingrich's new book their number one segment of the day? Then they followed it up by interviewing Laura Bush and proceeded into their wingnut panel discussion. Not one opposing view to Newt's movement conservative high jinks.
And about Gingrich's book: Newt's proclamation that President Obama is running a Nazi-style political machine that is as dangerous as Stalin and Hitler should be enough to drum him right out of his elitist DC Beltway bubble.
Wallace seemed upset that Gingrich went all wingnutty on President Obama:

Wallace: You also write this on the screen: "The secular socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did." Mr. Speaker, respectfully, isn't that wildly over the top?
Gingrich: No, not if by America you mean....Just listen to President Obama's language. He gets to decide who earns how much. He gets to decide when it's too much.
Wallace: We're not talking about any company. We're talking about companies that the government has put billions of dollars in...Gingrich: No, no..he has said publicly and generically. Some Americans earn too much. So now he's going to decide that?Wallace:No, he's not. He has said that some Americans earn too much.

What Gingrich is doing is slyly trying to defend the CEO fat cats and his chummy Wall Street elites who screwed up the economy and their companies while they raked in millions of dollars, but he doesn't come right out and say it.

Movement conservatives like Newt are very adept at talking around their far-out beliefs in a way that almost makes them seem reasonable. They know how to manage the language and play it like an instrument. His tone is muted, never going off pitch and always in control. That's their edge. Karl Rove does it as well.

Gingrich, who has changed his religion almost as much as his wives then uses God to justify his odious assertions about the President and what he calls his "secular-socialist machine."

Gingrich was a bit surprised, methinks, that Wallace called him out on his "wildly over the top" attacks on Obama and I think it's because Newt is parroting the exact same beliefs as Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the Teas Partiers which have caused quite a bit of unrest for the GOP elders. And yet, Gingrich is one of the elders---never forget that.

Gingrich is a talented manipulator of the American people and he's the one that suffers no pain when the economy crashes and burns under conservative rule. It's the average working class Americans that feel the hurt.

Newt's argument frames the usual fear-mongering, boogie man beliefs that have been passed on for generations through the Republican Party. The "Commie threat" has been used for decades and was made popular by Joe McCarthy until he was ousted as a nut. But the College Republicans of the 80s--people like Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed--took the Soviet Union "spies have infiltrated our government" paranoia to the kind of heights that can only be described as downright delusional, coupled with a Robert Ludlum-hero worship syndrome. These guys read Russian spy novels and dressed up in army fatigues, flying around the world trying to embed themselves into the action, fighting against communism while supporting the South American Apartheid regime. And it's this mindset untethered by facts that Gingrich philosophizes on.

Gingrich: Democrats Want to Impose 'Secular-Socialist Machine'

Gingrich said that he stands by his argument that the "secular-socialist machine" represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, not in the sense of the immorality of those deadly regimes, but as a "threat to our way of life."

"The degree to which the secular-socialist left represents a fundamental replacement of America, a very different world view, a very different outcome, I think is a very serious threat to our way of life.

I have a lot of problems with the way the President has handled certain issues, as we've documented on the pages of C&L, but to say he's a threat to our way of life is cowardly and immoral and should exclude Gingrich from our political landscape.

Of course, in the Village, conservatives can say anything without consequences.

Bush- Nazi http://www.google.com/images?q=bush+nazi&btnG=Search&hl=en&um=1&tab=wi

Bush Nazi  http://www.google.com/images?q=bush+nazi&btnG=Search&hl=en&um=1&tab=wi

Within the dominant White society's views of Black Americans there is a very wide spectrum of belief. For those with the most extremely racist viewpoint, Black Americans are not even human and should be separated from White society or eliminated. For those with more politically acceptable rhetoric if not belief, Black Americans are socially flawed, economically dependent, intellectually inferior and prone to violence. Not all white American's hold these beliefs any more than all Germans hated the Jews and believed Hitler's outrageous lies about them. Ultimately, what's most important is not what average people think but what those in power believe and plan to do.

Which brings us back to New York City and to the question of whether or not it is reasonable to compare Giuliani to Hitler. Is Giuliani in some sense a Nazi? Once we understand clearly what Hitler and Nazism
actually represented the answer is clear.

Giuliani routinely admits his policy ideas are taken directly, almost verbatim, from the Manhattan Institute, a CIA initiated "think tank" funded by far right Eugenics advocates like the Pioneer Fund and corporations such as the Rockefeller's Chase Bank which have historically promoted the Eugenics agenda. The Manhattan Institute has sponsored research projects and books like the Bell Curve, Fixing Broken windows and numerous others which propose the idea that blacks are mentally inferior. While the Manhattan Institute is not publicly advocating mass extermination or mass relocation of minorities the policies it does promote are mostly about targeting black and Latino inner City populations in such a way as to make relocation an attractive option and elimination a day to day reality. They take full credit along with Mayor Giuliani for the City's aggressive policing, it's stop and frisk policy, the remedial budget cuts at CUNY, the ending of welfare, the destruction of SRO's and low-income housing, attempts to eliminate rent control, the workfare program, the cleansing of the streets of homeless people, bulldozing community gardens, the privatization of parks, schools and hospitals and many other controversial ideas. Economic improvement is the attractive
facade of these policies. Behind that facade are assumptions about minorities that are fundamentally racist.

You won't find swastikas or paintings of Hitler decorating the walls at the Manhattan Institute nor will its staff be seen wearing Nazi uniforms. Their stable of well paid academics, writers and intellectuals are masters of using politically correct terminology to advance and express racist ideas. They are often the most effective guest speakers on television programs and at university conferences on social issues. While the ideas they advance may superficially appear to be about improving quality of life, cutting government waste, improving education and perfecting police strategy the common thread is that every policy is aimed at targeting minorities, immigrants and the poor while benefiting the corporations and wealthy individuals with whom they are aligned and by whom they are funded.

These ideas are very similar to those espoused by Adolf Hitler with one notable exception. There is no anti-Semitism involved. The despised groups in this contemporary NYC branch of Eugenics are African Americans and Latinos. However, if one looks to the early years of this century one will find the exact same attitudes were expressed about New York City's millions of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. They were considered to be uneducable, diseased, mentally inferior, crime prone, violent, unfit parents, socially toxic and a ruinous drain on the economy and infrastructure. To top it all off they were also considered
 politically subversive Marxists who would destroy the American political system.

For the minority residents of Harlem, Bedford Styvesant or the Bronx, the comparisons between Giuliani and Hitler are self-evident and universally understood. Unfortunately, the well-justified rage within these communities is often directed at police officers who have no part in creating policy and are not in many cases aware of the ideology they are enforcing. The so-called police "training" the Mayor and Police Commissioner are so proud of is a military system of brainwashing and desensitization invented by the Gestapo which trains police officers to view minority males as armed and dangerous suspects with no rights who are to be treated with maximum force even when unarmed. As the Mayor said after the Diallo shooting, "They are trained to shoot to kill".

The corporations, banks and far right race-obsessed groups that fund the Manhattan Institute today were in many cases backing Hitler's rise to power just 70 years ago. They are also the same groups behind Giuliani's Senate campaign and GW Bush's Presidential bid. Chase Bank, the Manhattan Institute's main sponsor, has publicly apologized on numerous occasions for its avid support of Hitler and its enthusiasm to turn over Jewish Bank accounts to the Nazis before they were ever asked to do so. Chase and other U.S. banks helped Hitler seize the gold reserves of European nations that had been deposited in their vaults in order to fund the German military buildup. When Hitler invaded Europe his troops were flying planes, driving tanks and firing ammunition manufactured by German subsidiaries of U.S. companies like GM, Ford and Chrysler, all fueled by the German branch of Standard Oil, The Rockefeller's oil company.

One must not imagine these were simply business decisions intended to protect the corporate bottom-line. The Rockefeller's, owners of Chase Bank, were major advocates of Eugenics and funded Eugenics institute's and experiments around the world as they continue to do today. One of the darker chapters of Rockefeller involvement was their economic sponsorship of Josef Mengele, the Nazis Doctor of Death. Much of Mengele's research material was acquired by conducting monstrous human experiments on Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz. After WWII that research material was brought to the U.S. by those associated with the Eugenics movement within our own government. Today that same research is used by the U.S. military, by the Human Genome Project and by pharmaceutical and chemical companies whose advertising dollars sponsor every aspect of popular American culture from game shows to soap operas to PBS.

The Manhattan Institute's founder, former CIA director William Casey, helped bring leading Nazis to America after WWII where they were given positions in the military, in intelligence, in scientific research and in universities. The results surround us today in the form of militarized police departments, efforts to end affirmative action, the governmental importation of drugs into minority areas, the psycho-chemical dosing of children, the criminalization and imprisonment of millions of black and Latino males, the prison-industrial complex and the attendant destruction of minority families and communities. The government itself, saturated by the influence of the Eugenics movement, is promoting and executing these racist policies.

When a Federal agency like the CDC announces that they will test a new experimental vaccine solely on minority children in urban ghettos and on Native Americans living on Indian reservations you are seeing Eugenics not public health at work. When the government works with giant chemical companies, many of whom were owned and operated by the Nazis before the end of WWII, to force genetically engineered foods, artificial hormones or mandatory vaccines on the public, you are seeing Eugenics at work. When Mayor Giuliani has Malathion, an organophosphate nerve gas known to weaken immune systems and cause birth defects, cancer and asthma, indiscriminently sprayed on NYC to fight a viral "epidemic" that may not even exist, you are seeing Eugenics at work. When every NYC social program is cut despite a billion dollar surplus or when schools, hospitals, libraries, police, parks, prisons the courts and emergency medical services are privatized at the expense of minority communities, you are seeing Eugenics at work. And when hundreds of thousands are selectively stopped, frisked, harassed and intimidated based on their race you are seeing Eugenics, rather than garden variety police brutality, at work.

Those actually carrying out these policies on the ground, the inner city police officer, the welfare bureaucrat, the underpaid school teacher, the emergency room doctor, may have no more idea of what the master plan is than those who are being targeted. People needn't be racists in order to carry out racist policies. That's why the Mayor is currently recruiting so many minorities into the NYPD. Just as the Nazis used Jewish capos to help run the concentration camps, Giuliani's anti-minority police state will run more efficiently with fewer complaints if all the cops are Black and Latino. Doctors injecting experimental vaccines into the arms of millions of African children can be well-intentioned humanitarians with no idea what the vaccine is really intended to do. The NYC public school teacher struggling to teach her overcrowded class to read in an unheated crumbling building may have no idea that she is part of a Eugenics policy that intends for her students to be miseducated, unemployable and illiterate and that is actually preparing them for a prison cell.

Politically motivated Eugenics can be applied in many ways. The Cold War, covering Viet Nam with Agent Orange, the embargoes of Cuba and Iraq causing starvation and disease and the funding of the Contras can all be understood as Eugenics policies applied to political situations. When former President Bush depicted Sadaam Hussein as a modern day Hitler armed with chemical and biological weapons, he neglected to mention that it was U.S. corporations and the
U.S. government that gave them to him.

That far more Americans are killed by doctors each year than by car accidents, AIDs and guns combined may turn out to be something other than massive medical malpractice. With giant profit-oriented HMO's replacing doctors in the making of virtually
all medical decisions Americans are increasingly in the position where being downsized by a corporation can have a permanent and far more sinister meaning than just losing a job.

Eugenics affects virtually every aspect of our lives although it is rarely acknowledged. The recipient of Mayor Giuliani's endorsement for President, GW Bush, has spoken at the Manhattan Institute and warmly praised its policies. Consistent with the pattern of many Giuliani and Manhattan Institute associates the Bush
family were intimately involved in funding Hitler and were economic partners with the Third Reich in a variety of business endeavors. The U.S. Congress was forced to seize many of the Bush families' banking assets in 1942 to stop the flow of money to Hitler as the U.S. entered WWII. Ironically, as I'm writing this a news report on the radio states that GW Bush is celebrating his Primary victory at a Jewish center in Austin Texas. No doubt he is wearing a yarmulke and affirming his commitment to the State of Israel while collecting campaign contributions. His appearance at Bob Jones University, covered ad nauseum by the media, was never once depicted for what it actually was; confirmation that Bush represents the most extreme kind of racial and religious bigotry. Apparently Governor Bush even has his own Eugenics program going on in Texas, the state that has executed more than half of all the people killed under the U.S. death penalty in recent years. The "compassionate conservative" has signed a death warrant on average about once every two weeks since being elected Texas Governor.

When political pundits scratch their heads over Giuliani being pro-choice at the same time he is massively soliciting donations from the anti-abortion religious right, the answer is again, Eugenics. From a Eugenics perspective the more abortions among minorities the better. Our Eugenics oriented government will be glad to give Blacks and Latinos abortions, condoms, Norplant, chemical exposure that causes sterility, crack, heroin, epidemics of asthma and AIDS, risky medical experiments and anything else that will lower their rate of reproduction.

Giuliani's infamous temperament is usually offered as the reason he refused to meet with a single black NYC elected official for the first six years of his Mayoralty. Isn't a far more reasonable explanation that he had no need to meet with those he was trying to eliminate? Ex-Police Commissioner Bill Bratton says Giuliani "missed an opportunity" to resolve racial tensions in NYC between the NYPD and minorities. What Bratton is not saying is that resolving those tensions would have been counterproductive to the Mayor's Manhattan Institute-inspired Eugenics agenda.

Does the Mayor deny any of this? Not at all. In fact, his only response during more than six years of being compared to Adolf Hitler is that such comparisons, "denigrate the Holocaust", are "hate speech" and are "anti-Semitic". So far this debate chilling technique has been very effective. To quote Mayor Giuliani's favorite newspaper, "As soon as a dissenting opinion is labeled hate, it need not be countered with reason, and those who hold that opinion need not be taken seriously -- except inasmuch as they are a threat to decency and order and must be suppressed." -NY Post 3/12/2000.

One can hardly expect a media that is financed by the very corporations behind Eugenics to expose these
policies. Mainstream media depictions of Giuliani ossilate between showing him as a dress-wearing buffoon,
a hot tempered "nasty man" or as an admired public servant. No matter how naughty or nicely reporters
depict him the ideologybehind his policies is never allowed to be exposed.

The time has come to look beyond the Mayor's feeble knee-jerk labels absurdly mischaracterizing these accusations as hate speech and anti-Semitism. They are not. I am very proud of my Jewish heritage. I know hundreds of other Jews who despise Giuliani and everything he stands for. These are Jews who understand the history of Nazi Germany very well and see the shadow of Hitler lurking behind every Giuliani pronouncement. Neither are these accusations an attempt to trivialize or deny the Holocaust. If the Holocaust is to be more than just a monument to Jewish suffering the cry, "never again" has to be applied not just to the Jewish people but to all present or future targets of the Eugenics movement. To do less than that is truly to denigrate the Holocaust and the memory of those who perished in it.

[A few quotes in support of the above follow] From:

"A victim of the notorious eugenics programmes that once flourished in America is suing the local authority that forcibly sterilised him in a landmark case that could precipitate thousands of similar lawsuits. Fred Aslin, 73, has brought an action against the state of Michigan more than half a century after he was rendered unable to have children by a policy seeking to achieve "race betterment". Mr Aslin was one of a family of nine Indian children who were taken from a mother struggling to care for them and placed in a mental institution. There, when they reached the age of 18, each was sterilised. "They said it was because
we were feeble-minded morons and that any children we might have would be just like us, or worse," Mr Aslin said. In fact, records show that there is no evidence that the Aslins were backward in any way...The eugenics movement started in the early decades of the last century, and although Hitler's sterilisation of as much as 1 per cent of the German population forced many to reconsider, it remained popular in many states in America...It is believed that 60,000 or more Americans were sterilised in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s."

"Currently housed...on the second floor of a building near Grand Central Terminal, the institute was founded
as a free-market education and research organization by William Casey, who then went off to head the Central Intelligence Agency in the Reagan Administration....Mr. Giuliani and his campaign staff began meeting with institute members in 1992, and since that time have absorbed many of its ideas, particularly on such issues as
the city's tax structure, economic development, education policy, policing and quality of life."

The Manhattan Institute: Launch Pad For Conservative Authors "The Manhattan Institute was founded in 1978 by William Casey, who later became President Reagan's CIA director...Funneling money from very conservative foundations, the Institute has sponsored many books by writers opposed to safety-net social programs and affirmative action...Charles Murray's Losing Ground -- a denunciation of social programs for the poor -- catapulted him to media stardom in 1984...As Murray wrote in the book's preface, the decision by Manhattan Institute officials to subsidize the book project was crucial: "Without them, the book would not have been written."...Shortly after The Bell Curve was published [in late 1994], the Manhattan Institute sponsored a luncheon to honor Murray and the book, in which he proposes a genetic explanation for the 15-point difference in IQ between blacks and whites that is the basis for his dismissing affirmative action policies as futile."...Along with ongoing subsidies from a number of large conservative foundations, the Manhattan Institute has gained funding from such corporate sources as the Chase Manhattan Bank, Citicorp, Time Warner, Procter & Gamble and State Farm Insurance, as well as the Lilly Endowment and philanthropic arms of American Express, Bristol-Myers Squibb, CIGNA and Merrill Lynch. Boosted by major firms, the Manhattan Institute budget reached $5 million a year by the early 1990s."

"Among the organizations whose mailing lists the Giuliani campaign has rented from Response Unlimited are the American Center for Legislative Reform, which apparently believes that blue-helmeted United Nations troops will soon replace rangers at Yellowstone National Park; the Catholic Alliance, an anti-abortion offshoot of the Christian Coalition; and the American Patriot Donors, which opposes gay rights. Richard Viguerie, the controversial right-wing direct-mail magnate, was enlisted by Giuliani operatives to arrange for the list rental....A leading right-wing warrior, he has worked for Jesse Helms, Oliver North, George Wallace and Patrick Buchanan...His marketing strategies helped launch the conservative revolution in the early 1960's, when he did mass mailings for Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. He raised cash for Wallace in the early 1970's, and helped organize Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority in the 1980's. He threw his direct-mail empire behind Mr. North, an insurgent candidate for Senate in Virginia, in 1994. Mr. Viguerie has also done direct mail for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church...Meanwhile, the Giuliani campaign has rented a list of 6,000 names from English Language Advocates, a group that drafted a controversial initiative to make Arizona an English-only state...And the campaign has paid for the services of Pinnacle List Company, which offers...names of those who have donated to "U.S. Border Control," a group whose Web site warns darkly of "the ethnic cleansing of European Americans."

Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)

ARTISTpres@aol.com

(718) 743-3722 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (718) 743-3722      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

 The Race for Cyberspace: Information Technology in the Black Diaspora

Barbara Christian's seminal essay, "The race for theory," analyzed the ways in which the academic competition to create a theory of black women's writing had overshadowed the potent theoretical content of the writing itself. Similarly, this essay examines how the hype over application of new information technologies to racialized social problems has overshadowed the potent technological content of the communities themselves. Focusing on the black diaspora, we broaden the category of "information technology" to show how traditions of coding and computation from indigenous African practices and black appropriations of Euro-american technologies have supported, resisted, and fused with the cybernetic histories of the west, and provide a strong source for changes in reconstructing identity, social postition and access to power in communities of the black diaspora.

1) Cyberspace as Savior

In the early 1990s the internet was flooded with various versions of the "cyberspace manifesto," most of which contained something like this passage from John Perry Barlow:

Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not
where bodies live. We are creating a world that all may enter without
privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military
force, or station of birth.

It might be easy to write off such declarations as uninformed optimism, were it not continually echoed by computer experts such as the MIT Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte: "While the politicians struggle with the baggage of history, a new generation is emerging from the digital landscape free of many of the old prejudices" (Negroponte 1995:230). To those gasping for breath in the ozone-rich atmosphere of superlative cyberspace promises, the crucial question is not necessarily why outrageous promises are offered, but rather precisely how do such promises sustain themselves against their own speculative appearance?  How do the utterances of scientists, engineers, hucksters and marketeers literally move and shape worlds, channel flows of institutional funding, and exert enormous influence in shaping the meaning of life. How is it that such claims are offered and sustained?

Technoscience is considered in the science studies idiom to be that body of knowledge and practices that links representation to intervention, maps strategies for taking action, and encapsulates the skill and technique that evacuates the social and political from itself.    As such, contesting its claims to truth as socially contingent proves quite difficult, although hardly impossible  One cannot merely say that the knowledge it produces is “not so.”  So well entrenched is its status as the purveyor of truth that finding the loopholes, the regions of possible contestation, is an arduous process, requiring sustained investigation and intimate knowledge of the practices of technoscience.

One can take solace in the possibility that the worlds technoscience makes are not the only possible ones.  We need not go far for proof of this important axiom.  Popular film, particularly of the science-fiction genre, is one arena wherein such possibility may be found. Film is particularly useful in considering what technoscience is insofar as film makes plain the linkages between representation and action, between image and metaphor and their effects: this is homologous to technoscience to the extent that the representation of artifacts is what makes possible their role as actors that can change the world.

Trucage is Christian Metz’s expression for cinematic techniques that trick the spectator’s eye. The correspondence between trucage and technoscience is that they are both crafted and “made” artifactually, cobbled together with extraordinary ingenuity, skill, and savvy in an effort to produce the appearance of “reality.” On the side of the trucage, it is the cinematic apparatus at the level of film production and related technical considerations that must not impinge upon the spectator’s enjoyment of the filmic narrative.  The expression of this cloaking is revealed when “the wires are removed.”  This is a reference to a concrete practice in trick cinematography whereby a system designed to support, for instance, a motorcycle making a jump from a height that exceeds margins of safety uses metal wires of such gauge that they appear on film.

Curiously though, film buffs and film makers alike delight in just such exposures, such as the The Making of Jurassic Park.  Here we are shown in extraordinary detail the secret procedures, cloistered and cubicled artists, and the high-tech machines used to sustain the imperceptible special effects.  Industrial Light and Magic, the normally clandestine, top-secret agency responsible for block-buster special effects production, is cracked open, revealing the wires and pulleys that conjure the Jurassic Park magic. Given the back stage look of how Jurassic Park is done, to what extent is the film’s drama un-done?  Does revealing the artifice of Jurassic Park destroy the credibility of the film’s drama?  Of course  not.  It is as if film production is aware of its own artifice, of the craftwork that goes into producing appearances of the “really real,” so that the film sustains such appearances during its viewing and, afterwards, one may derive enjoyment in finding out how it was all done.  But this is not just a strategy to awe the ardent film buff and further reap the financial rewards attendant to a major motion picture; it must also be seen in this context as a mode of self-criticality, a kind of self-reflexive and ironic attachment to one’s work that is nigh absent from the work of technoscience.

It might seem as though a heavy dose of pessimistic social analysis would be just the thing needed to expose the wires of cyberspace hyperbole. But doing so would merely produce the optimists' mirror image, a demonology of technoscience filled with passive victims and a nostalgia for romantically organic peasants and savages. While the trucage of cyberspace liberation depends on its claim that technological advances eliminate the need for social movements, it is equally dependant on the claim that social movements make no contribution to technological advances. It is this second illusion that we seek to expose in this essay, focusing on what Paul Gilroy calls "The Black Atlantic" -- that is, the histories of people of African descent, here referred to as the black diaspora. While a technoscience trucage might show these black communities waiting in misery while information technology comes to the rescue, we invite the reader to come backstage, as it were, and examine the unacknowledged traditions of coding and computation from indigenous African practices and black appropriations of Euro-american technologies, their fusion with cybernetic histories of the west, and their role in constructing identity and access to power in communities of the black diaspora.
 

2) Information technologies in the black diaspora: master's tools or indigenous invention?

The appropriation of technology by marginalized groups has always been an important component of resistance, and its significance in the black diaspora all the more so because of the extremes in brutality, subjugation and geographic scope. As Michael Adas notes in Machines as the Measure of Man, technological superiority provided justification for the mythology of genetic differences in intelligence, the means of domination, and the  colonial relation which restricted Africans to the position of laborers. But it would be misleading to write a history of technological appropriation in the African diaspora as a simple path of resistance and revolt. We are reminded here of Audre Lourd's admonition that "the master's tools will never tear down the master's house." Lourd's warning not to take up the tools of our opponents -- for example to counter racism against black people with racism against white people -- was in the context of cultural politics. While it can be taken too far (for example one black university professor  has claimed that writing is a European invention unsuitable to black cultural expression), it is quite descriptive of the disasterous technology mis-matches in socio-ecological disasters such as high-yield variety rice (which required renting motorized harvesting equipment and special fertilizers), or the post-colonial castrophes in which African governments poured bank loans into gigantic prestige projects, such as Nkruma's steel mills, which then became useless due to the lack of infrastructure. Second, it does nothing against  primitivism; in fact it supports the myth that Africans had to "borrow" all science and technology from Europeans.
 

This myth is particularly ironic in the case of information technologies, given that the binary code appears to have a distinct African origin (Eglash 1997a). The modern binary code, essential to every digital circuit from alarm clocks to super-computers, was first introduced by Leibnitz around 1670. Leibniz had been inspired by the binary-based "logic machine" of Raymond Lull, which was in turn inspired by the alchemists’ divination practice of geomancy (Skinner 1980). But geomancy is clearly not of European origin. It was first introduced there by Hugo of Santalla in twelfth century Spain, and Islamic scholars had been using it in North Africa since at least the 9th century, where it was first documented in written records by the Jewish writer Aran ben Joseph. The nearly identical system of divination in West Africa associated with Fa and Ifa was first noted by Trautmann (1939), but he assumed that geomancy originated in Arabic society, where it is known as ilm al-raml ("the science of sand").

The mathematical basis of geomancy is, however, strikingly out of place in non-African systems. Unlike Europe, India, and Arabic cultures, base 2 calculation is ubiquitous in Africa, even for multiplication and division. Doubling is a frequent theme in many other African knowledge systems, particularly divination. The African origin of geomancy -- and thus, via Lull and Leibnitz, the binary code -- is well supported.

Other indigenous African information technologies include computational aspects of Owari, geometic algorithms, and the codes of drums and whistle languages (Ansu-Kyeremeh 1998, Eglash 1999). Thus it is important, when examing the appropriation of technology, to consider not only the down side of appropriation -- the possible disadvantages of attempting to "use the master's tools" -- but also the fact that Africans already had many technologies to begin with, and thus some of the supposed appropriations may have had African influences in their own histories of invention.

3) Analog representation in indigenous African knowledge systems

While binary coding is widely used in African divination systems, there is also an extraordinary pre-colonial utilization of analog representation. Unlike digital representation, which is based on physically arbitrary signals, analog representation is created when variation in the physical structure of the signal is proportionate to variation in the information structure it represents. In a digital medium, like a CD-ROM, music is encoded as a series of binary digits, strings of ones and zeros represented by long bumps and short bumps in the aluminum layer of the plastic disk. But in an analog medium, like a record player (phonograph), the waveforms we see in the vinyl grooves are proportionate to (that is, tiny models of) the waveforms we hear in the air. Analog systems are not necessaily "old-fashioned" however, since contemporary cybernetics includes neural net computation, nonlinear phase space analysis, and other sophisticated, cutting-edge technologies that are forms of analog representation.
 
 

Indigenous African analog representation forms are closely related to two pervasive cultural traditions: music and animism. Animism is a religion in which the life force that sustains living beings can be transferred to other systems (organic, inorganic, or mixtures of the two), often by sacrifice. Bamana divination priests have diagrammed this force as a spiral waveform, marked by their binary code and eminating from the sacrificed life (figure 1).

 

A vodun priest in Benin provided a similar interpretation for the helix in figure 2, the royal memorial staff of King Ghezo (1818-1858). He told a story in which Ghezo defeated a buffalo by grabbing his horns with his hands, and explained that the royal staff showed this puissance (power or energy) flowing between his hands. Blier (1995) notes that such representations are closely related to images of the umbilical cord, as a symbol of the life force. As in the case of the Bamana waveform, this energy in vodun is closely associated with communication (cf. Ellipsis 1997 p. 23). The power of the ancestors to solve particular problems, for example, can be released if they are dancing the appropriate dance, so the use of particular drum patterns in vodun rituals is actually a communication system with the dead.

 
 
 

Visualization of these waveforms can be quite sophisticated, as shown in figure 3, a textile from the Ijebu Yoruba which they describe as the pattern of movement made by the drummembrane when it is struck (Aronson 1992:56). In European mathematical physics these are know as Chladni patterns, and they have been an important source for the development of theories of waves and vibrations (Waller 1961).

 

Concepts of phase relations are also evident in African textiles, such as that of figure 4. Robert Farris-Thompson (1983:207) describes such patterns as a visualization of "the famed off-beat phrasing of melodic accents in African music," noting that indigenous terminology used to describe these strip cloth weavings makes explicit use of musical analogies. Jola musicians in the Casamance region of Senegal also report striking indigenous terminology, distinguishing between oscillation ("owowogene," which applies to both instrument strings and the way that plam trees sway in the wind), resonance ("ebissa," in which a plucked string can cause a nearby string tuned in harmony to vibrate), and pitch.

 

The pitch terms are inversely linked to owowogene, such that high frequency ("chob") is said to have short owowogene, and low frequency ("xi") has long owowogene; an indigneous counterpart of the western equation w = 1/l (frequency is the inverse of wavelength). Figure 5 shows a possible visualization of this understanding from indigenous musicians in Cameroon, a double flute in which a short wave is etched into the high pitch pipe (top) and a long wave is etched into the low pitch pipe (bottom).

 

Movement is also closely linked to the indigenous understanding of these analog waveforms, as most vividly portrayed in dance, where resonance, hysterisis, feedback, and phase relations are used to provide visual analogs for social dynamics (Chernoff 1979, Kozel 1997). Such traditions are quite old in Africa; even ancient Egyptian images often show movement as an oscillatory waveform in time (figure 6).

4) Mathematics across the middle passage: Africanisms in American information technology

In the 1940s a debate raged between Melville Herskovits, who had documented the cultural retention of African traditions in the Americas, and E. Franklin Frazier, who argued that slavery had caused American blacks to be "stripped of their social heritage." Phillips (1990), reviewing this debate and its contemporary legacy, suggests a synthesis, noting that in addition to Africanisms among blacks, there are African cultural influences among white Americans, non-African cultural legacies of slavery among black Americans, and various syncretic mixtures of all three. Phillips' interest in de-racializing cultural heritage is particularly appropriate to the history of information technology, where such mixtures can thrive, recombine, and mutate in ways unpredicted by static social codes.
 
 

Figure 7 shows an iron drill bit created around 1821 by Old Solomon, a "Negro blacksmith" in Natchitoches Parish, Lousianna. Christian (1972:23) notes that this double helix is "reminiscent of a piece of sculpture out of African ancestor worship," and indeed the geographic areas that Christian notes as origins for most slaves brought for iron work -- from present day Benin to Angola -- do have helical sculptures; usually in reference to the umbilical cord as a symbol of life (e.g. Swiderski 1970 fig 12).

What would such cultural and technological syncretism mean to the enslaved blacksmith who created this? Under such circumstances survival itself is an act of resistance, and this is true not only for physical survival but cultural and technological as well. Taking a line from poet Audre Lourde, "never meant to survive" became the title for Aimee Sand's interview with Evelynn Hammonds, a description of Hammond's experience as a black physics graduate student at MIT. In his aptly titled essay, "Tools of the Spirit," Alton Pollard (1996:1-2) reflects on Africanisms in American slavery as a survival strategy:

5) Information technologies and African American identity in the modern era

Just's work did not remain isolated; G. Ross Henderson brought his framework to the scientific community that would later become General Systems Theory. This is part of a longer history in which more subtle influences from black culture were also at work, informing, contesting, and appropriating mainstream technologies. Historian Rayvon Fouché, for example, has described the ways in which black inventors used both social and technical strategies to get around Jim Crow restrictions from patent rights. Fouché notes that Granville Woods (1856-1910), inventor of the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph, developed expertise in patent interference claims to counter corporate attempts to use his race to cheat on contracts. Technology often served as a sign of white priviledge, and it is no surprise that black fiction often played with new visions of technology. In 1938 African American journalist George Schuyler published Black Empire, a science fiction in which a black revolt of "intellectuals, scientists, and engineers" includes a black biologist named "Ransom Just." Even black literature not typically considered science fiction, such as Ellison's Invisible Man or Bambara's Salt Eaters, often have strong technological themes.

Science fiction is also credited by some black scientists as playing a pivotal role in their dedication to technological careers. Derek Harris, the president of the first black-owned computer company, recalled that the Mission Impossible character "Barney Collier," an African American electronics wizard, was a major influence in his childhood fascination with technology. There is, of course, a big difference between black science fiction, and black characters in science fiction written by white authors. Samuel Delany makes this point in an interview where he rejects the figures of the "Rastas" in Gibson's Neuromancer as providing an oppositional political stance (Dery 1994:194-197). And it is worth keeping in mind how those ficitional roles are filled. During the 1960s, for example, we saw black technological characters restricted to the roles of "communications officer" (read secretary?) -- as in the case of Greg Morris' Barney Collier, Ivan Dixon's "Sgt. Ivan Kinchloe" in Hogan's Heros, and Nichelle Nichols' "Lieutenant Uhura" in Star Trek. But when Nichols announced that she was planning to leave the show at the end of the first season, she was confronted by none other than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who told her "you cannot leave… you have opened a door that must not be allowed to close." Decades later, the first African-American woman in space, Dr. Mae Jemison, credited Nichols with her early aspirations towards space.

While the intertwinings between black popular culture, science, and science fiction are an important part of this story (and typically disregarded by the "minorities in science education" efforts), the success of African Americans in information technology is hardly a matter of easy dreaming. Best known is probably John P. Moon, a silicon valley engineer who dedicated years of work to studying memory storage systems, culminating in what is still the most popular transportable storage medium in existance today, the 3.5" floppy disk. At the other end of the high-tech/lowtech spectrum, black appropriations of information technology by members of economically disadvantaged communities have often utilized a bricollage of cast-off hardware, as described in this 1995 message from a DJ at KPOO radio in San Francisco to the listserv for the National Urban League:
 

The folks working with the Save Mumia Committee utilized CDs, ISDN lines, the internet, laser printers and faxes to quickly spread information about Mumia's case that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars if done using traditional means of organizing (printers, newspaper ads, phone trees). …[W]e have found that the biggest thing keeping technology from marginalized communities are the myths that the technology is expensive and hard to use. It's not in the best interest of the computer industry, trying to make a buck off of everyone having the biggest and fastest computer, 600x600 dpi laser printer and …T-3 links. [We need] to let people know that they can successfully get on line free with an XT, 2400 baud modem and a inexpensive dot matrix printer. This is what I'm using right now and my whole setup cost less than $75, and it's not hard to find people willing to give away XTs or 286s. The San Francisco Public library offers free, text only internet dial-in access and the San Francisco Bay Guardian has free e-mail service. However you won't hear about this in the computer press.… The key is getting the word out and making low cost on-line communications as accessible in the hood as Old English and St. Ides.

If television in the late modern era turned technologically adept African Americans into the black secretary, the postmodern equivalent would have to be the black cyborg. This includes LeVar Burton's "Lt. Geordi LaForge" from Star Trek: the next generation, Philip Akin's "Norton Drak" from War of the Worlds, and Carl Lumbly's "Dr. Miles Hawkins" from M.A.N.T.I.S. Like the double edged status of "communications officer," there are both advantages and disadvantages to this position. On the negative side, one might cynically read this as a diversity two-fer-one (you get both a disabled character and a black character in one blow). More ominously, one wonders if the figure of a technologically empowered African American man (there are apparently no female black cyborgs) was considered too threatening for an American audience, and thus the disability was required to keep him in check. Certainly such muted disguises or balances for non-white race abound in postmodern simulations (cf. Bleecker 1995).

On the other hand, one could not ask for a position more imbricated with technology than that of the cyborg. M.A.N.T.I.S. (Mechanically Augmented Neuro Transmitter Interception System), for example, is loosely based on a black comic book hero, Hardware, which was written and drawn by African American artists at Milestone Media (Dery 1994). Here a disabled black scientist seeks revenge on the corporate forces which cheated him (and eventually left him a paraplegic) by creating an alter-ego powered by a cybernetic exo-skeleton. Although gutted of much of its original political message, the television version did manage to occasionally convey themes connecting racial identity, disability, and resistance through technological metaphors.

Music critic and writer Mark Dery (1994) coined the term "Afrofuturist" to describe the self-conscious appropriation of technological themes in black popular culture, particularly that of rap and other hip-hop representations. The term has been used as an organizing principle by Alondra Nelson and Paul Miller in creating a listserv dedicated to "explor[ing] futurist themes in black cultural production and the ways in which technological innovation is changing the face of black art and culture." Nelson is a graduate student at NYU, and manager for a cybercafe in a mixed working class/middle class neighborhood in Brooklyn. Paul Miller is a senior editor at Artbyte magazine, and performs as D.J. Spooky, master of "illambiant" digital sound collage (most recently featured in the soundtrack for the film "Slam"). These dual roles in Nelson and Miller's own lives reflects the potent mixture of cultural analysis and cultural production promised by the Afrofuturist perspective.

Members of Nelson and Miller's listserv have suggested a wide spectrum of afrofuturist fore-runners and fellow travellers: analog musicians Lee "Scratch" Perry (Ska), George Clinton (funk) and Sun Ra (jazz), science fiction writers Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, Charles Sanders, and Nalo Hopkinson, cultural critics Greg Tate, Mark Sinker, Kodwo Eshun, and Mark Dery, digital musicians Singe, Tricky, and Dr Octagon, visual artists Fatima Truggard, Keith Piper, and Hype Williams, and performance artists Rammelzee and Carlinhos Brown. Conspiciously absent from this mix are the engineers and scientists. For example, Philip Emeagwali, a Nigerian-American who received the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize (based on an application of the CM-2 massively-parallel computer for oil-reservoir modeling) takes a strongly historical approach, drawing on sources as diverse as the African origin of the Fibonacci sequence and the 1938 Risenkampf partial differential equations. If there is a downside to the Afrofuturist movement, it is the tendency to dwell too much in the imaginary spaces created by fiction and music, rather than work at fusing these domains with functional science and technology.

Miller points to Bob Powell, "African american physicist, philosopher, and architect who studied in west africa and who worked with NASA and [at 80 years] still has really interesting ideas on physics, music, and African and African American art" as one of the exceptions to this elision. Writing in Black Noise, Tricia Rose suggests a promising area for historical study in positing that many of the early innovations in computer graphics, such as morphing, were based on early hip-hop visual arts such as graffiti and breakdancing. Also promising are the small clusters of black scientists engineers in particular domains. In opto-electronics, for example, we find Earl D. Shaw (physicist, co-inventor of spin-flip laser), William R. Northover (chemical innovations for laser fiber optics), Thomas C. Cannon (mechanical innovations for fiber optic cables). One wonders if this is due to the "founder effect" (similar to immigrant neighborhoods in cultural geography); if so it speaks well for the Afrofuturist thesis that culture and technology can have collaborative results. More recently black computer engineers have become leading entrepreneurs; these include Clarity CEO Howard Smith, Vice Presidents Kenneth Coleman and Marc Hannah of Silicon Graphics, Myra Peterson, President of Omniverse Digital Solutions, and Dr. Glen Toney of Applied Materials.

7) The politics of information technology: black web networks

The celebration of the "cyborg" identity in recent pop culture representations, such as "Robocop," is an important warning to those who would see the Afrofuturists' contribution as purely one of "transgressing boundaries" or "bricollage." We now live in an era in which cyborg bricollage is no longer a shocking transgression, but rather a technique for computer programming and postindustrial labor management. Nor should we rely on the mimetic theory that "role models" of black acheivement will counter problems in "self-esteem." What is significant for the Afrofuturist movement -- artists and inventors alike -- is the ability to reveal the relations of social power in the construction of technoscience. It is the ways in which this syncretism can politicize information technology that make Afrofuturism a powerful technocultural syncretism.

Perhaps the best case for such collaboration between African American cultural politics and information technology is the emergence of black web networks. The oldest of these is The Drum; launched in 1988 as an informal group of computer users it was a pioneer of Afrocentric on-line services. Another pioneer is Melanet, started 1989 by William and Rodney Jordan. Averaging 40,000 hits per month, it maintains a focus on black culture and spirituality. Net Noir, the largest commercial success, was started in 1995 by David Ellington and Malcom CasSelle. Averaging 120,000 hits per month, it includes web channels under the cetegories of  Culture, Entertainment, News, Business and Politics, and Shopping. The separation of culture and entertainment categories is unusual for web organization, and reflects Net Noir's responsibility to black cultural issues; meanwhile the fusion of Business and Politics in to a single category reflects their emphasis on entrepreneurship as a means to black liberation. The City of New Elam network was started 1994 by Rey Harris and Stafford Battle. Averaging 2,000 hits per month, they have focused on introducing black-owned small business to the web. Perhaps the strongest commerical potential can be found in  SOHH ("Support On-line Hip-Hop"): started in 1995 with Felicia Palmer and Steve Samuel as "cybermics," they are currently negotiating with Intel, CNET and Mediadome for on-line sales of music that could mount into the millions.

Conclusion

We began Barbara Christian's framework, which shifted  the focus of literary analysis from theories of black womens' writing to black women writers' theories. Our technological translation of this calls for a change of strategy would shift the focus of political analysis from  the attempts to devise a cybernetics of black communities, to searching instead for the communities of black cybernetics. Such histories of black contribution and collaboration  to information technologies are, we maintain, masked by the narrative of cyberliberation, the trucage of a culture-free technoscience. In examining this history of black cybernetics we find that the invention of technology and cultural identity are deeply intertwined.

Bleecker (1995) described the ways in which the absense of race in the virtual game SimCity allows for "raceless" urban riots; one can see that the simulation parameters of heat, crime and unemployment are all related to the propsenity for urban riots, but race itself does not exist as a simulation variable. But writing race back into SimCity -- putting race back into our social accounts of information technology in general -- means not just adding a pessimistic realism. We can seek sources of more positive confluence between the cultural capital of personal identity and the political economy of information technology in ways that offer reconfiguration and resistance.
 

Photo Credits

1) Ron Eglash
2) IFAN, Dakar
3) Lisa Aronson
4) Robert Farris-Thompson
5) Alexandre Badaway
6) Ron Eglash
7) National Geographic Magazine

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