Tick-Tock What’s on the Clock?

Well, the timing of things has been changed by an unforeseen, somewhat bizarre, event: during a recent back-packing trip in Upper New-York, I was bitten by a tick and contracted Lymes disease! Fortunately it was diagnosed early enough (I hope) so no evidence was found in my spinal fluid and a course of rest and antibiotics should lead to my recovery. It was a good thing I did not leave for the Dominican Republic thinking it was just a bout of severe flu, for indeed I was feeling better and was only tipped off to the possibility of a lingering problem by a tell-tale rash that made its appearance just in time.

So much for the personal medical drama – for the present entry, the important issue is what this has meant for the recently announced intentions of studying and writing and taking some action in my net activism with respect to the crisis in Haiti. Because of the severe headaches and extreme fatigue for the prior two weeks to the scheduled departure September 23, I had in fact failed to complete my scheduled meetings and research with the Haitian Diaspora in Brooklyn or the online development of contacts in Santa Domingo. Even without the diagnosis, I had contemplated delaying the trip. In the last week or so I have made some progress here in Brooklyn.. in a sense, the delay, which will be protracted while I see about my recovery, the opportunity to more fully prepare is a kind of blessing in disguise.

Here are the guidelines to the present activism in the new situation:

1. The more day to day provision of readings entered via blogging will continue to be posted at the Zmag site as that is where more frequent posting will benefit with regard to exposure from the information organization of my Zspace page and linked blogging afforded by that activist community site. The less frequent posting to the Blogger site will consist only of the more personal opinion pieces and the most significant articles, and not so much the daily news on conflict situations I am covering. These are the two blog sites:

http://www.zmag.org/zspace/stefandav

http://stefandav.blogspot.com/

2. Annotated bookmarks of all my on-going research continues to be collected and organized at the social bookmarking site provided for public access at Delicious:

http://delicious.com/stefandav

It is pretty obvious… but you can get the main topic areas of my research by applying the tags as follows:

Nepal Maoist Revolution: http://delicious.com/stefandav/nepal

Crisis in Haiti: http://delicious.com/stefandav/haiti

Political philosophy of Peter Hallward: http://delicious.com/stefandav/hallward

Political Philosophy of Alain Badiou: http://delicious.com/stefandav/badiou

Political Philosophy of Savoj Zizek: http://delicious.com/stefandav/zizek

3. The specific study for me at this time is focused on gaining knowledge and understanding in some specific ways:

a. Study of the political theory thesis of Peter Hallward’s current project as introduced in his article :

The Will of The People: Notes Towards a Dialectical Voluntarism

b. Emphasis on research regarding on-going developments and the historical context in Haiti by real-time collection of news development from aggregators to my Delicious bookmarking annotations – to include key writings published in recent years on the net.

c. Reading and related research keyed to the political arguments and perspectives provided in the detailed history, interviews and analysis by Peter Hallward in his book “Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment”

d. Direct involvement with the Haitian Diaspora in Brooklyn. This is emerging by establishing a relationship to the organization Haitian Liberte and the activist and filmmaker Tim Ives. This is the immediate physical space of my situation, so I hope the involvement can be fruitful.. ultimately if I am to explore direct action in Haiti (or based nearby in the Dominican Republic), I need to making the rather daunting commitment to start some study of the Kreyol language.

4. I am writing this in anticipation of a series of blog entries germane to the writing about and providing linkages to important texts on the Haitian crisis. The following is an introductory outline to existing and planned entries:

US-Haiti: Noam Chomsky March 9, 2004

International Crisis Group - Haiti 2009: Stability at Risk

Kim Ives: Lavalas and Haiti's Student Union Unite

Haitian Government Raises Minimum Wage to $5.50 per day

Haiti: Dialogues With Tim Ives (1) - Activist Author and Filmmaker

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

news books articles people topics culture politics philosophy activism badiou zizek

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