what i've been reading...

May 68 and Its Afterlives by Kristin Ross 

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 LIES-A journal of Materialist Feminism 

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Okay, Okay by Diana Hamilton

palos verdes. peninsula in the fog. brian disappears behind a oily black boulder, climbs to the jagged top, sits legs crossed, eyes closed. i must squint to make out his form in the viewfinder; his cream t-shirt almost indistinguishable from the sky so full of weak white light. M overturns pebbles with the edge of his black boot, scours the sand-less beach for driftwood, tangles of thorns, bleached branches we bend into makeshift crowns. we pose and preen in front of the camera. we wade in the water, crowns slipping, falling into the foam. we watch for the quick swish of a baby jellyfish, sea snakes twice as poisonous as river moccasins, or so brian says. when i slip on a rock, M catches me, steers me back to shore, two fingers wrapped around my wrist. we unfold a blue quilt on a hillside of sage scrub. no need for shade. the breeze blows our cloth napkins away. bean sprouts stuck between our teeth. salt and vinegar chips. i wipe potato grease on my dress. nipples poking through the thin, red paisley print fabric. i snap pictures of brian laying legs akimbo, hands folded, hidden behind his head. “don’t,” he says. i click, click, click. the sun sinks low, brushing the horizon, teasing it. this image is all we get: the fog rolls down from the hills, snuffing the highways.

an interesting article about the funding of keystone opposition groups like 350.org, etc

The Keystone XL campaign, stage managed to appear grassroots while completely avoiding grassroots direction and controlled by massive foundation funding (the largest philanthropic foundations in the US now funnel their money through the Tides Foundation– and Tides has managed to garner complete control of the funded anti-tar sands movement on both sides of the border, while Rockefeller is the primary millions of dollars funder for 350.org) is now wielded by power to keep us busy. [....] 

Hydraulic Fracturing, or “fracking,” has become so widespread it even threatens to shadow tar sands– and given that the climate is planetary and knows no nation, fracking is now competing with tar sands around fossil fuel extraction, and the resultant emission damage as well as fossil fuel expansion. There’s a part of this story you likely don’t know, and people like Bill McKibben [of 350.org]– as well as Canadian public figure Tzeporah Berman– (who runs an outfit that legally exists as a project of the Tides Foundation called the North American Tar Sands Coalition, a secret outfit that determines both strategy and funding for literally dozens of environmental NGO’s and community groups across North America) would prefer it stays that way.Many of the largest foundations now have a policy that they simply do not spend money opposing natural gas, even the natural gas that is fracked. [....]It goes deeper than that; First Nations who have campaigned against tar sands pipelines and development in Western Canada can not receive funding if they also publicly state opposition to natural gas/fracking pipelines– even when there is reason to believe that the gas feeds the construction of tar sands.

READ MORE from "The Problem with Bill McKibben and John Kerry," by Macdonald Stainsby in Counterpunch.