Marisa Olson:

Check out the info. below, on CAE's new book and Claire Pentecost's
'Reflections on the Case by the U.S. Justice Department against Steven
Kurtz and Robert Ferrell.'

Marisa

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ben at Autonomedia
Date: Jan 18, 2006 9:18 PM
Subject: [Autonogram] Mid-January Autonomedia report
To: autonogram@lists.interactivist.net

Autonogram subscribers --

Here's a mid-January update on some of what's been going on around
Autonomedia.

*
1. Critical Art Ensemble: trial update, new book
2. Shut Them Down!: New book on the G8 protests in Scotland
3. 50% off 2006 Autonomedia Jubilee Saints calendars
4. Some highlights from the Interactivist Network
*

1. Steve Kurtz (and by extension, the Critical Art Ensemble) was denied a
motion to dismiss his trial last week in Federal court. Critical Art
Ensemble are the collective authors of a series of Autonomedia books
analyzing the authoritarian uses of science and technology, particularly
where these mechanisms operate with a positive, "everyone's a winner" face
(the full-stomached promises of food genomics, for example, or the
healthy-and-smart-kids promises of the reproductive industries). Not
content to be armchair critics, the CAE also produce art and performance
that brings their analysis to museum and gallery audiences and into the
public sphere, demystifying the spectacle of what they've called the
"military techno-security cineplex."

Of course, this got Steve in big trouble with the security-happy
administration, and for close to two years now he's been under
investigation for an artwork found in his home at the time of his wife's
death. The absurdities of the case seem apparent to nearly everyone except
the court itself, which insists on draining everyone's resources to pin a
mail-fraud charge on him.

There is good news, though. Despite these many months of strain and
stress, CAE has another book in the pipes, scheduled to be published in
the early Spring of this year. It's called "Plague March", and rips apart
the fear economy at the foundation of bio-warfare alarmism. That's all
I'll say about it just now, except that one of the appendices to the book
comes from Claire Pentecost, of the CAE Defense Fund, analyzing the real
reasons the State has chosen to prosecute Steve's case. This text is well
worth reading online at our Interactivist site, at the following address:
http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/05/30/2348202

Also, please read the forwarded email at the bottom of this Autonogram,
from Lucia Sommer of the Defense Fund, and check their website from time
to time: http://www.caedefensefund.org