After nearly nine years, Hartford IMC has decided to discontinue operations, as volunteers pursue other projects.  We would like to thank all of the contributors over the years who made our print publication, The Hartford Undercurrent, the website, and the radio show, RadioActive, such a huge success.  We would also like to thank all the readers/listeners who have supported us and hopefully have benefited from our work.  Finally, thanks to all of our guests and interviewees for working with us over the years.

While we haven’t ruled out the possibility of return, effective at the end of July 2011 HIMC will cease all operations.  The website will remain intact to preserve an archive of writings, and RadioActive MP3s.  Please feel free to peruse the body of work we have amassed here.  We are tremendously proud of what we accomplished, against many odds and always with a grassroots spirit and a commitment to the Hartford and central Connecticut areas.

Thank you for the years of support and participation.

Sincerely, HIMC volunteers

In our final RadioActive program, Robert Jensen discusses the state of media today, his latest projects, and his entry into the church community as a venue for progressive organizing and community.

Click here to download MP3

“When humans created a computer with the ability to collect information and learn from it, they signed the death warrant of mankind”
Sister Becca the Finite

In 1965 Frank Herbert had a book published entitled, Dune. I came across the book at the Ft. Lewis base library in Tillacum Washington at the age of fifteen. An avid reader of science fiction I picked up the book and could not put it down. The character development was phenomenal and the story line was unbeknownst to me, prophetic. A brief synopsis follows.

Humankind has spread to the stars, but rather than relying on technology and machinery per se computers, genetically modified humans pilot and man the space vessels. Man is ruled by an Imperium, headed by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam, of House Corrino. Space travel is controlled by the Guild Navigators, genetically altered humans who plot courses through the Space continuum without computerized technology by using the cinnamon mélange spice. The Spice, a potent addictive spatial psychoactive drug is found on only one planet, Dune. This planet is a desert world populated by a native people called the Fremen. The Fremen are deep desert dwellers and wear a device called a stillsuit, the totally recycles body fluid. Water is such a precious revered substance that a dead Fremen’s water is given to the tribe. It is added to the tribal water pool at their sietch, or village. There are ongoing political military struggles over the spice. No one except the Fremen know the connection between the Spice, water and the giant desert worms. Into this maelstrom comes the Atreides family and the boy Paul. The Zensunni beliefs of the Fremen are the prophetic part of this story.

Paul Atreides flees into the desert after his father Leto is assassinated. The Fremen shelter him after he takes the spice and has prophetic visions that fit the Fremen beliefs. Here is where the language of the book takes on a scary prophetic note. Paul is renamed Mau Dib, (the Madhi) the expected one. His faithful militant warriors are called Fedaykeen, death warriors, the fedayeen mujahideen. Mau Did launches a Jihad, holy war, against the Imperium and its contracted soldiers, the Sardauker. His strategy is based around control of the Spice(Oil). He states, “He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing”

Forty years ago Frank Herbert wrote the future. We are waging war against mujahideen led by a Madhi army over oil(the spice). Water is becoming more and more valuable and scarcer. A contractor army is being used to install puppet rulers. Part of his Dune history is the revolt against the machines. The Butlerian Jihad was a reaction to AI (artificial intelligence) computers enslaving humanity. Today computers and adjunct technology, cell phones I-pods, blackberrys and I phones are taking away our livelihoods and our souls.

Attention must be paid to what we are doing to ourselves as a people. Meaningful work is being destroyed by technology. Computers take jobs away, they don’t create them. A Jihad against the machines will happen unless we can reach a balance. Books and libraries will disappear unless we say no. War will go on forever unless we say no.

Dave Ionno
Each breath carries the risk that there may not be another one
Ancient saying

Mims Butterworth is a 93-year-old activist who has traveled extensively, worked under the Ella Grasso administration, was a delegate to the 1968 Democratic National Convention and lived in Germany in the summer of 1938 as a college student. Her memoir Just Say Yes was published by Antrim House this year.

Click here to download MP3

Mims Butterworth is a 93-year-old activist who has traveled extensively, worked under the Ella Grasso administration, was a delegate to the 1968 Democratic National Convention and lived in Germany in the summer of 1938 as a college student. Her memoir Just Say Yes was published by Antrim House this year.

Click here to download MP3