Challenging Subject Matter
The “landscape of systemic personal, cultural, societal, and global oppression” may sadly appear without horizon, but we will most often narrow our focus to familiar ground. This ground covers, but is not limited to, crimes of the state in Western nations and their intersections with private organized and corporate criminal networks, non-state torture, trafficking, and human experimentation, and how these hidden realities affect the general condition of our world, and our day to day lives. You’ll hear directly from survivors and from researchers and advocates who’ve spent years recovering, exploring, and investigating, and who are considered experts in their still marginalized fields.
Quality Writing
We will deliver it, as close as we are able, in form and substance. I gratefully rely on my co-editor Janet who offers no small mastery of form. My particular concern is with substance, specifically accuracy. When a subject is shrouded in mystery, or secrecy by design, it is far too easy to grasp hard at speculation, and in some cases, get lost in webs of fantasy. There is so much disinformation surrounding the subjects of our interest, it’s imperative to present information that can be verified, and to be clear when that is not possible, and what it means. For those of us who’ve been lost in the darkness at times, when all else fails, tests of simple logic may offer a way out, as well as a comfort with ambivalence.
Great Art
There is perhaps no better evidence of the light of freedom in the human spirit than creative expression. Our symbolic languages have the power to validate, affirm, and uplift. They can transmit, in alternate form, emotions, thoughts, and deeds that are otherwise unspeakable. I look forward to introducing you to works by courageous, but little known artists, poets, writers, and others who should, in a cultural landscape governed by different values, be well known.
I hope you enjoy Borne, though perhaps enjoyment may come only in tangent to discovery and empowerment, which are of greater lasting impact.