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In this episode we interview China Miéville. China Miéville is the multi-award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes The City and the City, Embassytown and This Census-Taker. He has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. His non-fiction includes the photo-illustrated essay London's Overthrow. He is also the author of October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. He has written for various publications, and is a founding editor of the journal Salvage. He is also a former member of multiple socialist party formations and organizations. In this conversation China joins the podcast to talk about his latest book, A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto. The book provides an introduction to The Communist Manifesto which provides readers with a guide to understanding the Manifesto and the many specters it has conjured. Through his unique and unorthodox reading, Miéville offers a spirited defense of the enduring relevance of Marx and Engels' ideas. The book also contains the full text of the Manifesto and multiple prefaces penned by Marx & Engels. You can pick the book up directly from Haymarket Books at 40% off currently. We really want to thank Haymarket and China Miéville for donating 40 copies of the book (!!) and also for making a donation to help cover the cost of postage to our incarcerated book club through our partnership with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill. We do still need to raise about $150 more dollars to cover the cost of postage to get this book inside, and we'll include a link to contribute to that effort in the show notes. Last month we were able, along with some donations from Massive Bookshop and our patrons to provide 40 copies of Saidiya Hartman's Scenes of Subjection to those incarcerated readers. As for the show itself, It is December, currently for the month we've had more nonrenewals than we have new patrons, which is not unexpected this time of year as people try to balance holiday expenses. However if you have the capacity to become a patron of the show, you can do so for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year, at patreon.com/millennialsarekilingcapitalism. We really want to thank all of the folks who support the show, or have supported it when they've been able to, as it is only through your support that conversations like this are possible. Links: To purchase A Spectre, Haunting (currently 40% off): https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1990-a-spectre-haunting To donate to the Prisons Kill book club (to help with postage for the donated copies): https://massivebookshop.com/products/prisonskill-book-club-donation To check out the Salvage journal that Miéville talked about in the episode: https://salvage.zone To support the show: patreon.com/millennialsarekilingcapitalism
Lauren W. will be co-hosting this non-fiction quarter of Reading Envy Russia. We share books we have already read and freely recommend, and also chat about the piles and shelves of books we are considering. Let us know your recommendations and where you hope to start in the comments, or join the conversation in Goodreads.Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 244: 2nd Quarter - Russian Non-Fiction Subscribe to the podcast via this link: FeedburnerOr subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: SubscribeOr listen through TuneIn Or listen on Google Play Or listen via StitcherOr listen through Spotify Or listen through Google Podcasts Books we can recommend: Memories from Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me: The Best of Teffi by TeffiSecondhand Timeby Svetlana AlexievichThe Unwomanly Face of Warby Svetlana AlexievichLast Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Pevear & VolokhonskyZinky Boysby Svetlana AlexievichVoices of Chernobyl (also titled Chernobyl Prayer) by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Keith GessenOther Russias by Victoria Lomasko, translated by Thomas CampbellThe Future is History by Masha Gessen Never Rememberby Masha Gessen, photography by Misha FriedmanWhere the Jews Aren't by Masha Gessen Pushkin's Children by Tatyana Tolstaya The Slynx by Tatyana TolstayaImperium by Ryszard Kapucinski, translated by Klara GlowczewskaA Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy by Deborah McDonald and Jeremy DronfieldPutin Country by Anne GarrelsLetters: Summer 1926 by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Rainer Maria Rilke Sovietistan by Erika Fatland The Commissar Vanishes by David King Gulag by Anne Applebaum The Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum The Magical Chorus by Solomon Volkov, translated by Antonina Bouis Shostaskovich and Stalin by Solomon Volkov The Tiger by John Vaillant Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan Slaght How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut Please to the Table by Anya von Bremzen Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen Books we are considering: All Lara's Wars by Wojchiech Jagielski, translated by Antonia Lloyd-JonesGulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by Eric Ericson (there is a unabridged 1800+ pg, and an author approved abridged version, 400-some pages) Journey into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg, translated by Paul Stevenson, Max Hayward Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov, translated by John GladRiot Days by Maria AlyokhinaSpeak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov The Life Written by Himself by Avvakum Petrov My Childhood by Maxim Gorky Teffi: A Life of Letters and Laughter by Edythe Haber Hope Against Hope by Nadezhda Mandelstam, tr. Max Hayward The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Eugene Yelchin Putin's Russia: life in a failing democracy by Anna Politkovskaya ; translated by Arch Tait. A Russian diary: a journalist's final account of life, corruption, and death in Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya Notes on Russian Literature by F.M. DostoevskyThe Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece by Kevin Birmingham The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses by Kevin BirminghamLess than One: Selected Essays by Joseph Brodsky Tolstoy Together by Yiyun Li The Border by Erika Fatland Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson Red Plenty by Francis Spufford Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder The Last Empire: Final Days of the Soviet Union by Serhii PlokhyThe Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii PlokhyChernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe by Serhii PlokhyNuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Serhii PlokhyMan with the Poison Gun: a Cold War Spy Story by Serhii PlokhyBabi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by Anatoly Kuznetsov, tr. David Floyd Manual for Survival: An Environmental History of the Chernobyl Disaster by Kate Brown Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters by Kate BrownA Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland by Kate BrownOctober: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Mieville Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev Across the Ussuri Kray by Vladimir Arsenyev, translated by Slaght An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army by Vasily GrossmanThe Road by Vasily GrossmanStalking the Atomic City: Life Among the Decadent and Depraved of Chernobyl by Markiyan Kamysh Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia by David Greene Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine & beyond by Olia HerculesRed Sands by Caroline EdenBlack Sea by Caroline Eden Tasting Georgia by Carla Capalbo Other mentions:PEN list of writers against PutinNew Yorker article about Gessen siblings Thanksgivukkah 2013 League of Kitchens - Uzbek lessonLeague of Kitchens - Russian lessonMasha Gessen on Ezra Klein podcast, March 2022Related episodes:Episode 067 - Rain and Readability with Ruth(iella) Episode 084 - A Worthy Tangent with Bryan Alexander Episode 138 - Shared Landscape with Lauren Weinhold Episode 237 - Reading Goals 2022Episode 243 - Russian Novel Speed Date Stalk us online:Reading Envy Readers on Goodreads (home of Reading Envy Russia)Lauren at GoodreadsLauren is @end.notes on InstagramJenny at GoodreadsJenny on TwitterJenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors. You can see the full collection for Reading Envy Russia 2022 on Bookshop.org.
For September we read October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Mieville. We discuss our feelings on the book, a brief timeline and other questions such as our favorite slogans! We had a minor tech hiccup towards the end of the podcast so excuse the weirdness. In October, we will be reading A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture by Marguerite Feitlowitz - https://www.amazon.com/Lexicon-Terror-Argentina-Legacies-Epilogue-ebook-dp-B004O6LW9Y/dp/B004O6LW9Y/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=
For the month of August, we attempted to read The Long Twentieth Century! We briefly discuss and recap the beginning of the book and what would need to happen for the US to not be a global hegemonic economic power. Also countries making space colonies, it could happen! For September we are reading October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Mieville. https://www.versobooks.com/books/2731-october
Third installment of a wander through the history of capitalism taking in Fordist Mass production, the Bolshevik Revolution and The Crash of 1929. Historical Capitalism Part 3 Jacobin Special 1916 Edition, Between The Risings (2016), https://jacobinmag.com/issue/between-the-risings James Connolly, ‘The Coming Revolt in India’ (1908), https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1908/01/india1.htm James Connolly, ‘The Friends of Small Nationalities’ (1914), https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1914/09/friends.htm James Connolly, ‘What is a Free Nation?’ (1916), https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1916/02/whtfrnat.htm Neil Faulkner, ‘A Marxist History of the World, Part 81: The Roaring Twenties’, Counterfire, 24 June 2012, https://www.counterfire.org/a-marxist-history-of-the-world/15860-a-marxist-history-of-the-world-part-81-the-roaring-twenties F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929 (1955) David Harvey, The Condition of Post-Modernity (1989), Chapter 8 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century (1994), Chapters 1-4 Conor Kostick, Revolution in Ireland: Popular Militancy 1917 to 1923 (2009) V.I. Lenin, ‘The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination’ (1916), https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/x01.htm Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet (The Crisis of German Social Democracy) (1915), https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/index.htm China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution (2017) Vijay Prashad, Red Star Over the Third World (2017) John Reed, The Ten Days that Shook the World (1919) Dave Sherry, Empire and Revolution: A Socialist History of the First World War (2014) John Tully, The Devil’s Milk: A Social History of Rubber (2011)
(From May 2017)China Miéville reads from October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, published by Verso Books. On the centenary of the Russian Revolution, China Miéville tells the extraordinary story of this pivotal moment in history. China Miéville is the multi-award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes The City and the City, Embassytown and This Census-Taker. He has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. His non-fiction includes the photo-illustrated essay London’s Overthrow and Between Equal Rights, a study of international law. He has written for various publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, Conjunctions and Granta, and he is a founding editor of the quarterly Salvage.
Sorry to Bother You is a hilarious film about the dead-serious shittiness of life under neoliberalism's flexibilized and precarious labor regime, a system teetering upon a thin line between free labor exploitation and a form of expropriation reminiscent of full-on slave labor — all at the mercy of the thinly veiled barbarity of Palo Alto-style techno-utopianism. It's about how capitalist society divides and conquers friends and family to claim not only our obedience but also our very souls, and about how the task of left organizing is to see through that game and fight together. Dan's guest today is Boots Riley, who wrote and directed the film and also fronts the left-wing hip-hop group The Coup. Live recording of The Dig coming up in New York City. Friday, August 17, 7 PM at Verso Books (20 Jay Street in Brooklyn). It's called Blockadia and Beyond: Left climate politics for the 21st century https://www.facebook.com/events/2042636042656908/?active_tab=about! Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot versobooks.com/books/2732-out-of-the-wreckage And October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Miéville versobooks.com/books/2731-october. Support this podcast with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig to receive our weekly newsletter
Watch the video here. In conversation with Joel Nichols, Data Strategy & Evaluation Administrator, Strategic Initiatives Acclaimed for his ''unparalleled inventiveness'' (Chicago Tribune), China Miéville is the author of a score of fantasy novels, comics, novellas, short story collections, Marxist nonfiction, and essay collections. Associated with the ''New Weird'' writing movement, his books include This Census-Taker, Railsea, The City & The City, and Perdido Street Station. A contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, and a founding editor of the quarterly Salvage, he has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. In October, Miéville plunges into the extraordinary 1917 political tumult that led to the creation of the world's first socialist state. (recorded 5/16/2017)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a 28-year old Latina working-class champion committed to social transformation who beat one of the most powerful men in Congress: the King of Queens. Dan had an extended conversation with her about how organized people won her election, how she’ll stay accountable to those movements now that she’s a rock star, establishment myopia and denial, The Congressional Progressive Caucus' shortcomings, and where the insurgency goes from here. Then Intercept D.C. Bureau Chief Ryan Grim on left media and left electoral politics, why mainstream media missed Ocasio-Cortez, and why Emily's List fails to support left women challengers. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx with Sven-Eric Liedman versobooks.com/events/1785-a-world-to-win-the-life-and-works-of-karl-marx-with-sven-eric-liedman And the new paperback edition of China Miéville’s October: The Story of the Russian Revolution versobooks.com/books/2731-october And support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig
Vox immigration reporter Dara Lind, one very bright spot in an often disappointing landscape of mainstream immigration journalism, discusses the historical, political, and legal context of Trump’s family separation policy. Dan also just wrote a lengthy piece on this for Jacobin, which you can read at jacobinmag.com/2018/06/trump-immigration-child-family-separation-policy Thanks to Verso Books. Check out the new paperback edition of China Miéville’s October: The Story of the Russian Revolution versobooks.com/books/2731-october And register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.org. And support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig.
Joining us today is Sean Guillory, who teaches in the Russian and East European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh. Sean has a Ph.D. in History from UCLA. He is the host of the Sean's Russia Blog Podcast, a weekly conversation on Eurasian politics, history, and culture. You can follow him on Twitter at @seansrussiablog and support him through Patreon. Sean recently wrote a great essay for Contrivers' Review on the Russian Revolution. When I approached him for the piece, my idea was to get a meta-review: a discussion of all the takes on the Russian Revolution — a timely but controversial topic. What we got was a richer critique of how writers in general mistreat the Russian Revolution. In some ways, any history of a revolution might fall prey to these errors. But America's long history with Russia, Marxism, and anti-communism makes our reading of the Russian Revolution particularly vulnerable. Sean Guillory, "Making Sense of the Russian Revolution," Contrivers' Review. Baskar Sunkara, "The Few Who Won," Jacobin. Sheila Fitzpatrick, "What's Left?" London Review of Books. Vladimir Tismaneanu, "One Hundred Years of Communism," Public Seminar. Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain (University of California Press, 1997). Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary Under Stalin (Havard University Press, 2009). Reds (1981). Edmund Wilson, To The Finland Station (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012). Lars T. Lih, Lenin (Reaktion Books, 2012). Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution: Mob Justice and Police in Petrograd (Belknap Press, 2017) Mark Steinberg, The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921 (Oxford University Press, 2017) China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution (Verso, 2017). Mikhail Zygar, All the Kremlin's Men (PublicAffairs, 2017). The Public Sphere is a podcast from Contrivers' Review. Visit www.contrivers.org to read great essays and interviews. You can also sign up for our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, or like our Facebook page. If you have a suggestion for the podcast, or an essay or review you'd like to pitch, get in touch with us through social media or email. The Public Sphere is on iTunes where you can rate and review us. Thanks for listening. Our cover art a modified version of a photo from the Fonds André Cros, preserved by the city archives of Toulouse and released under CC BY-SA 4.0 license by the deliberation n°27.3 of June 23rd, 2017 of the Town Council of the City of Toulouse.
I denne episoden forsøker vi oss på et kort forsøk på å forklare hva den russiske revolusjonen var for noe. Pål spør og graver, Lars svarer så godt han kan. Som dere muligens vet så er den russiske revolusjon en temmelig kompleks hendelse, som man lenge ofte var enten for eller imot. Det er fortsatt uenigheter blant historikere og andre om hvordan mange av disse hendelsene skal forstås, og det er sikker noen som vil være uenige med noe av det som sies her. Men vi mener å ha fått de fleste fakta mer eller mindre korrekt, og korrigerer gjerne kommentarer som skulle vise seg å være riv ruskende gale. NB NB: Pål har helt rett, det er selvfølgelig Jahn Teigen som har sangen Glasnost, som han deltok med i den norske Melodi Grand Prix i 1988 og kom på andre plass. Lars tenkte selvfølgelig på Kjetil Stokkans Brandenburger Tor, som vant norske grand prix-finalen i 1990, men kom på delt sisteplass sammen med Finland i den internasjonale konkurransen. Vi kan vel konkludere med at norsk popmusikk var en viktig pådriver for jernteppets fall, verden hadde antakeligvis sett helt annerledes ut, og vi venter fortsatt på at ledende internasjonale eksperter på den kalde krigen skal ta dette faktum inn over seg. Mens vi venter kan vi jo høre sangene en gang til: Jahn Teigen, Glasnost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQeKE1LDAxo Kjetil Stokkan, Brandenburger Tor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzP25eqwMKw Lydutdrag brukt i episoden: Lenins tale fra mars 1919: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzf3FRSbEUk Dimitri Sjostakovitsj 12.symfoni “1917”, fremført av Leningrad symfoniorkester, ledet av Evgenij Mravinskij, i Leningrad 30.april 1984 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_IGkwov3EM Kilder: Catherine Merridale - Lenin on the train Orlando Figes - Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A history, og A people's tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 Tony Brenton (red.) - Historically inevitable? Turning points of the Russian Revolution China Miéville - October: The Story of the Russian Revolution Lenin, Slavoj Zizek (red.) - Revolution at the gates. The 1917 writings Robert Service - The Penguin History of Modern Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-first Century Hans Wilhelm Steinfelds siste korrespondentbrev fra Russland, fra 2014. Her oversetter han blant annet Fjodor Tjutsjevs dikt fra 1866, som vi nevner på starten av episoden: https://www.nrk.no/urix/steinfelds-siste-korrespondentbrev-1.11795557 Et par gode podcaster om revolusjonen: Erling Sandmo, Aslak Sira-Myre og Åsmund Egge snakker om hvordan revolusjonen ble mottatt i avisene her til lands: https://soundcloud.com/nasjonalbiblioteket/arkivert-russisk-revolusjon-aslak-sira-myhre-og-erling-sandmo?in=nasjonalbiblioteket/sets/arkivert Tor Bomann-Larsen om brevet fra tsar Nikolaj den 2. til kong Haakon i februar 1917: https://soundcloud.com/nasjonalbiblioteket/brevet-fra-tsaren-den-russiske-revolusjonen-og-kongehuset?in=nasjonalbiblioteket/sets/1917-og-den-russiske-revolusjonen Sheila Fitzpatrick om den russiske revolusjon, hennes og andres tolkninger av hendelsene: https://soundcloud.com/britishacademy/ending-the-russian-revolution-reflections-on-soviet-history-and-its-interpreters?in=history-hub/sets/the-russian-revolution Historiker Judith Devlin med en kort og fin gjennomgang av hendelsene dette året: https://soundcloud.com/history-hub/judith-devlin-on-the-russian-revolution?in=history-hub/sets/the-russian-revolution Puh, det var mer enn nok. Takk så mye for at dere hører på. Vær så snill og legg igjen en liten beskjed eller noen stjerner på iTunes, det er faktisk veldig virkningsfullt med tanke på hvilke podcaster som dukker opp på listene der. Enda bedre, del podcasten med andre interesserte. Og til slutt, ingenting er hyggeligere enn å høre fra dere, på epost eller facebook, det gjør oss veldig lykkelige, og litt konstruktiv kritikk gjør hele prosjektet sakte men sikkert bedre. Anbefalingene: Pål anbefaler podcastene In our time (særlig episoden om piterne) og Joe Rogans intervju med Chris Kresser (episode 1037). Lars anbefaler boken Lab Girl av Hope Jahren (oversatt til norsk under tittelen Alt jeg vet om planter). Jahren er nylig blitt ansatt ved universitetet i Oslo, les feks intervju med henne her: https://titan.uio.no/node/1939 Takk: Takk igjen til Sveinung Sudbø som laget logoen vår, som for episoden har fått en liten kommunistisk vri. Dere finner Sveinungs arbeider på originalkopi.no, og mye mer på brenneriveien.net Musikken er laget av Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen, som blant annet driver studioet Nygrenda Vev og Dur i Grimstad. Hadde det ikke vært så langt å reise hadde vi spilt inn alle episodene i Arnes koselige låvestudio. Se http://www.facebook.com/nygrendavevogdur for mer info. Alt godt, hilsen Lars og Pål larsogpaal@gmail.com
It was an epoch-making event, buoyed by hopes of human emancipation, that still shapes our notion of revolutionary change today. The Russian Revolution, which took place a hundred years ago, was born out of war and poverty, and profoundly altered the course of the 20th century. The writer China Miéville recreates those days of revolution, in all of their ebullience, chaos, and tragedy, and reflects on the lessons of October, including whether the degradation of the revolution was inevitable. Resources: China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution Verso, 2017 The post 100 Year Anniversary of the Russian Revolution appeared first on KPFA.
Liberty’s Dim Light: Book Review of China Miéville’s “October: The Story of the Russian Revolution” and “Iron Council” China Miéville holds a Ph.D. (2001) in International Relations from the London School of Economics, is a member of the socialist democratic party in England, and the founding editor of Salvage, a quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters. He wrote ‘Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law’, but is perhaps best known as an author of fiction, where for his novels he has won among other awards the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, and Locus literary honors. Support my reading/essays on patreon: https://patreon.com/evm/
It was an epoch-making event, buoyed by hopes of human emancipation, that still shapes our notion of revolutionary change today. The Russian Revolution, which took place a hundred years ago, was born out of war and poverty, and profoundly altered the course of the 20th century. The writer China Miéville recreates those days of revolution, in all of their ebullience, chaos, and tragedy, and reflects on the lessons of October, including whether the degradation of the revolution was inevitable. Resources: China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution Verso, 2017 The post China Miéville on the Russian Revolution appeared first on KPFA.