SAME AS IT EVER WAS
VERSION FESTIVAL 10:
Infrastructures and Territories
April 22, May 2, 2010
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: March 1, 2010.
Version is an annual springtime convergence that brings together hundreds of artists, musicians, and educators from around the world to present some of the most challenging ideas and progressive art initiatives of our day.
This is the Ninth edition.
Submit your proposal online:
http://www.lumpen.com/V10/theme.html
Please spread the word to all of your networks. Thanks.
We are excited about the release of another issue of Lumpen magazine. Issue 114 should be out this Friday, February 5, during the Save the Whale fundraiser at the Co-Prosperity Sphere. Plural Design’s tender care in creative direction makes printing on paper worth it.
The Supreme Court just made Corporations even happier, by giving them unlimited opportunity to pour money into politicians coffers.
“With its ruling today,” he said, “the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”
- Justices Overturn Key Term Limits, NYT, 1/21/10
Look. If you haven’t figured it out already, Obama’s Health Care scam is yet another bailout to corporations. We believe the Obama presidency is the Re-branding of the corrupt American political system in which the Corporate Whores win again and again at the expense of schmucks like us. The worst excesses of the Bush administration have become codified as business as usual and the Big Corporations continue to suck Americans dry.We are glad the filibuster proof do-nothing Democratic Senate faces the fact that their moment of hegemony is gone. We prefer gridlock to the type of Obama Change we DON’T want to see.
From the NYT:
BOSTON — Scott Brown, a little-known Republican state senator, rode an old pickup truck and a growing sense of unease among independent voters to an extraordinary upset Tuesday night when he was elected to fill the Senate seat that was long held by Edward M. Kennedy in the overwhelmingly Democratic state of Massachusetts.
You’re not going to believe what you’ve been eating the last few years (thanks, Bush! thanks meat industry lobbyists!) when you eat a McDonald’s burger (or the hamburger patties in kids’ school lunches) or buy conventional ground meat at your supermarket:
According to today’s New York Times, The “majority of hamburger” now sold in the U.S. now contains fatty slaughterhouse trimmings “the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil,” “typically including most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass” that contains “larger microbiological populations.”
This “nasty pink slime,” as one FDA microbiologist called it, is now wrung in a centrifuge to remove the fat, and then treated with AMMONIA to “retard spoilage,” and turned into “a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips”.
Dear Friends,
Many of you heard about the horrible fire that happened in Pilsen last week – it was at the Whale, home of our friends Kenneth Morrison, Nat Ward, and Michelle Faust, plus their pet chickens, Osso the Cat, and Macky the Dog.
You guys might know these people as the folks behind the Ever So-Secret Order of the Lamprey or Punk Band or the Hideout Panto or a million other things: they’re family.
All people and pets are safe, but – as you can see in the photo above – their home is devastated. If you can help us restore it then that would be really awesome.
There are two ways to help: the first is donating money. You can do that by going to the Paypal account here (http://tiny.cc/whale547) and typing in natmichellehideout@gmail.com. We know money’s tight right now. Everything helps! Think about it like buying them a drink or a bone, then donate more if you can.
The second is by donating things or services – to find out what the Whale needs and when people are gutting, drywalling, and salvaging, join the Facebook group here (http://www.tiny.cc/whale785) or email Mairead Case at mairead.case@gmail.com.
You can also forward this email to people you think might want to help!
Thank you very, very much.
– Jerry Boyle, Mairead Case, Ed & Rachael Marszewski, and the Whale
Artists take over a subway station to display a group exhibition.
more pics here.
Totally exciting reclamation of public space.
Early this morning the Senate passed a version of its health care overhall. Democrats say the changes are seismic and the reform package will most likely be delivered by Christmas.
We have to say we are utterly confused as to what exactly this health care reform bill means. All we know is that there is no public option and that the lack of resistance from some quarters of the health care industry made us believe the bill would probably not be in our common interest. When Big Pharma’s stocks go up when the Senate signs a health care reform bill we know that is a bad sign.
Some reading:
How Health Reform was Killed by Triangulation
