Welcome to Swans Commentary http://www.swans.com/ January 11, 2010
*** May 2010 be a peaceful and creative year for all, a year when
solidarity becomes a common purpose. ***
Note from the Editors: It should not be too hard to envisage what's in
the US store for 2010, the last year of the XXIst century's first
decade. Abroad, more military intervention in the "Arc of Instability,"
which now includes swaths of the African continent, with renewed calls
to strike Iran, intervene in Yemen, and any country where the mythical
al Qaeda is supposed to have extended its Octopus- like deadly
tentacles. At home, the ratcheting of fear mongering to deflect and
keep in check through increased surveillance controls the populace's
anger caused by deepening economic dislocations, and the biennial
charade in the media that the mid-term elections will generate to the
delight of ad agencies' and networks' profits -- with in-between
coverage of tawdry celebrity scandals, a few random shootings, and
environmental crisis. In other words, changes we all can believe in!?!
What won't be discussed are the deep contradictions that are ravaging
our socioeconomic system through overproduction and ever-expanding
debt, which Michael Doliner thoroughly examines among other ever more
self-evident contradictions entrenched within capitalism. Neither will
the co-optation of NGOs in all fields of do-goodism by the moneyed
elites that Michael Barker keeps revealing enter the conversation; and
don't expect the views of Jan Baughman regarding the future of the
American polity in the name of "safety" to find any echo in the main
media; or, for that matter, the inanity of the policies enacted by the
Establishment, which Gilles d'Aymery regularly covers in his Blips and
Tidbits, as well as his stubbornly-repeated calls to move away from
individualism to a system in which the collective well being of the
whole takes precedence over the benefits of the few.
Then again, that is the role of a small publication like Swans, to be
the incubator for ideas that can bring real change -- ideas that must
come from the future, as Michael Doliner points out echoing Marx. To do
so, we will rely on an increasingly diverse bevy of contributors from
all over the world.
However, politics does not operate within a vacuum. It is only a part, a
significant one undoubtedly, but still a part of the larger culture,
which this publication will keep emphasizing with the hope that readers
do connect the dots between culture and politics. Go back in time: not
all cultural icons were revolutionaries but all revolutionaries
espoused culture without claiming the iconic label. On that note, Femi
Akomolafe waxes sardonic on all of the good things happening in the
greatest country in the world, Nigeria. Art Shay takes a humorous shot
at his journalist mission to screen for the kooky, single-subject
topic, which in this article emerges as Lake Superior State University's
annual list of banished words, while Peter Byrne pens a sobering
fiction on racism in Italy. Reaching for the book, Charles Marowitz
considers Robert Richardson's examination of Emerson's foray into the
nature of language and the secrets of good writing, and Paul Buhle
reviews the gem that emerged when left-leaning science fiction writer
Kim Stanley Robinson and radical publisher PM Press joined forces.
Silvia dello Russo and Guido Monte reach for the stars in their
multilingual poetry, and we close with your letters in praise of Femi
Akomolafe and Isidor Saslav, and in defense of Michael Barker's take on
the ICNC crowd.
Finally, we've made some subtle structural changes to Swans Web site and
welcome readers' feedback.
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Cordially, Gilles d'Aymery
-- Swans
"Hungry man, reach for the book: It is a weapon." B. Brecht
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