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Sunday, January 30, 2011
Vancouver Rallies in Solidarity with the Peoples' Struggles in the Middle East and North Africa
Vancouver Rallies in Solidarity with the Peoples' Struggles in the Middle East and North Africa: "
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(Click on the first photograph above to scroll through all of the full images.)
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"No More Fear": Hope for the Future
by Sandra Cuffe
Many people from different communities, organizations, and other residents of Vancouver gathered outside the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library on January 29th to express their support for the people's movements in Egypt, Tunisia, and throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Local organizers and residents from the Egyptian and other communities, as well as anti-war activists, addressed the rally with speeches and chants. Many children were in attendance, and many of the rally's messages centered on the struggles today for the future of their children.
Passionate chants kept spirits high despite the rain.
"We want democracy! No more dictatorships!"
"We worked hard for our kids! We worked hard for our future!"
"We want hope for our kids!"
"We want dignity! We want freedom!"
"No more corruption! No more fear!"
Rally speakers emphasized that "the new awakening in the Arab world has been noticed," and that the inspiration for the uprising of people in the streets throughout the region was the movement and victory in Tunisia. Other highlighted that the current movements demanding change are not happening through political parties, but in the streets.
The Vancouver rally was one of hundreds of actions taking place around the world in solidarity with the recent people's uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
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Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Beyond
by Masrour Zoghi
Another rally that took place in Vancouver on the same day was one organized by the Iranian community who gathered outside the Art Gallery to voice their disgust with the recent executions of workers, members of the gay and lesbian community and women.
The two rallies happened within an hour from each other, which was a reminder of the segregation that persists in the Middle East. Egypt and Jordan are, in some sense, the mirror images of Iran: whereas the former group consist mostly of religious populations, upon whom a secular government has been imposed, the latter is a largely secular society that is forced to tolerate a theocracy. It is these contradictions (together with the usual inability to see more than one facet of an issue) that have led to the disempowerment of the people in those parts.
Perhaps the most interesting part of both rallies was the repeated expressions of the fact that it is not grandiose ideals that motivate people to pour into the streets by the thousands, almost guaranteeing their own persecution, but simple needs like health care and jobs. One of the speakers at the first rally spoke extensively about the erosion of the welfare state in Egypt over the last 30 years, during which Hosni Mubarak has been ruling the country with an iron fist. Similarly, part of the current trend in Iran that is most alarming is the elimination of the subsidies that used to make life in Iran's dysfunctional economy moderately tolerable.
Dictatorships tend to be expensive to maintain because a substantial portion of the population needs to be bribed into complicity, while the rest are beaten into submission. And given the current food crisis and the more general economic turmoil, it is not easy to bribe an entire country.
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Album Review: Death, Spiritual • Mental • Physical
Album Review: Death, Spiritual • Mental • Physical: "
Spiritual • Mental • Physical
(Drag City, 2011)
When Drag City rolled out the first batch of Death material, it was a revelation. Out of nowhere, the masters for an obscure pre-punk collector’s gem found their way into the venerable label’s capable embrace, and so they did their best to right the wrong committed by Columbia Records in the early 1970s. Columbia refused to release the record when Death refused to change what the suits considered an unmarketable band name, and so what would’ve been a rock music game-changer (ironically titled For the Whole World to See) faded into obscurity. So powerfully ahead of its time, so energized and catchy, it’s amazing that a mere pigheaded label could spell the end, but so it did, and so did it cheat Death out of opportunities then present and future. Thirty-plus years overdue, the release of that album and the following critical amazement inspired the surviving members of Death to perform and record once again, although that comeback has only just barely gotten started. In the meantime, rather than wait for their proper stab at a follow-up, Death and Drag City decided to keep our enthusiasm fluffed with Spiritual • Mental • Physical, a modest platter of the dusty shelved demos that might have been nurtured into songs for a follow-up thirty years ago.
As it turns out, “demo” is a somewhat generous term for a number of the tracks collected here. Some were made in a proper studio, some on a two-track reel-to-reel stereo recorder, and none apparently demonstrate a full song ready to be rerecorded in earnest. A few are instrumental, including 90 seconds of lone bass riffing called “Bobby Bassing It”, and a separate, isolated two-plus minute drum take labeled “Dannis on the Motor City Drums”, both of which beg the question, was it really necessary to release this? The answer is a resounding no, especially given that Death’s story is now poised to enter a chapter in which such false starts will hopefully be rendered irrelevant. The fact that it was even necessary to pad a basket of rough sketches with filler to stretch it into the half-hour range of running time makes it hard to justify this release as a standalone product. Had these recordings been discovered before the LP For the Whole World to See, it still wouldn’t have made much sense to release them on their own, although they would have made for a fascinating Disc 2/“extras” package.
That said, for a pile of thoroughly nonessential snippets, Spiritual • Mental • Physical does nevertheless succeed in indicating that Whole World was no fluke, and that Death could’ve been a contender; they could’ve been somebody (and hopefully still will). If you’ve already turned For the Whole World to See completely inside out and cannot wait another second for further exploration of this brilliant, portentous hard rock anomaly, you may be thrilled by “The View”, which presages the Red Hot Chili Peppers by about a decade. “The Masks” then centers itself on the rippin’est punk riff of the bunch, although it does also alternate into verses that are either homage, tribute, or flagrant rip-off of the verse to the Beatles‘ “Got to Get You Into My Life”, and then cuts off altogether when the singer either fumbles the lyrics or simply runs out of them. Vis a vis Whole World‘s “Let the World Turn”, SMP‘s “The Change” and “David’s Dream” both balance mellow psych vibes with the R&B/jazz Death at first imagined themselves making before Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop showed them the light, and both then wash suddenly out on tides of noise that suggest an unfulfilled experimental bent. These are fascinating moments. Inspiring, even. But to release these in such close proximity to the reunited band’s actual effort at a follow-up is a disservice that seems almost to bet that there’s no way they can improve upon the magic of the old days. That may turn out to be true, but we could have at least waited to find out.
Listen: Various tracks at Myspace
"Vegans: Cowardly, moderately advanced, and continually radiating Anti-Gravitons
Vegans: Cowardly, moderately advanced, and continually radiating Anti-Gravitons: "
From BB pal Jeff Simmermon's blog, a detail from Essential Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe
Vol. 1, No. 11, November 1983. (thanks, Jeff!)
Smoking and the Slave Trade
Smoking and the Slave Trade: "
To Africa and back again.
[Queen Nzinga (smoking a pipe) with Her Entourage, Kingdom of Kongo, 1670s]--------->
In the 17th Century, tobacco, the prototypical New World stimulant, was introduced to Africa by European traders. By 1607, tobacco was being cultivated in Sierra Leone, and in 1611 a Swiss doctor commented on how the soldiers of the “Kingdom of Kongo” fought hunger by grinding up tobacco leaves and setting them on fire, “so that a strong smoke is produced, which they inhale.”
It did not take long for the true motivations behind this botanical boon to be revealed. Tobacco served two crucial functions for the slave traders of the Middle Passage: Once Africans had acquired the smoking habit, tobacco could be used in lieu of cash as payment for purchasing slaves. In addition, tobacco was frequently handed out to slaves during the horrific Atlantic voyage. This was not done out of altruism, or common decency, of course. In an article for Slavery and Abolition Journal, Jerome S. Handler writes: “European slavers apparently believed that such measures were useful in their efforts to control their ‘cargo’ and avoid or minimize social unrest and revolts—or even put the enslaved in a better mood prior to their being sold or transshipped from one American port to another.'
How did the slaves smoke the tobacco enroute? With clay pipes supplied by the slave traders. The Europeans had introduced an easily grown, highly addictive plant drug, so it was inevitable that white traders would use that addictive property to their advantage. And they were happy to create an additional market in paraphernalia.
Handler, writing in the African Diaspora Archaeology Network Newsletter, notes that, while Africans produced their own pipes, “white clay pipes of Europeans manufacture, particularly English and Dutch, were commonly used to purchase slaves…. In general it appears that European pipes were often preferred to African ones.” The pipes came in long and short versions, the long “elbow bend” pipes being preferred on shore, with the short pipe being preferred for use onboard. Jean Barbot, an agent for the French Royal African Company, reported that the slaves onboard were occasionally given “short pipes and tobacco to smoak upon deck by turns.”
However humane the practice might sound, the motivations of the traders “were the same as those which prompted them to distribute beads and allow African board games aboard the ships, that is, an attempt to mollify or placate the captives in situations that were always fraught with tension and possibilities of insurrection.” Presumably, it also diminished hunger and helped keep the slaves on their feet during auction in the New World.
Not every ship’s captain went along with the pipes. A French slave ship captain wrote that “for fear of fire, tobacco should be grated and given as a powder.” Handler, a Senior Scholar at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, notes that “there are no data on whether the enslaved were allowed to keep the pipes they received aboard the slave ships. “
Probably not. “Chances are that pipes were collected by the ship’s crew after each use to be re-used at another time,” according to Handler. But it is likely enough that at least some pipes were successfully smuggled ashore. And while most of the white clay pipes found in African descendant archaeological sites in America were probably local in origin, “it may be that an occasional pipe was brought by some enslaved African via the Middle Passage.”
Handler, J. (2009). The Middle Passage and the Material Culture of Captive Africans Slavery and Abolition, 30 (1), 1-26 DOI: 10.1080/01440390802673773
Graphics Credit: Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia Library,
www.slaveryimages.org.
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To Africa and back again.
[Queen Nzinga (smoking a pipe) with Her Entourage, Kingdom of Kongo, 1670s]--------->
In the 17th Century, tobacco, the prototypical New World stimulant, was introduced to Africa by European traders. By 1607, tobacco was being cultivated in Sierra Leone, and in 1611 a Swiss doctor commented on how the soldiers of the “Kingdom of Kongo” fought hunger by grinding up tobacco leaves and setting them on fire, “so that a strong smoke is produced, which they inhale.”
It did not take long for the true motivations behind this botanical boon to be revealed. Tobacco served two crucial functions for the slave traders of the Middle Passage: Once Africans had acquired the smoking habit, tobacco could be used in lieu of cash as payment for purchasing slaves. In addition, tobacco was frequently handed out to slaves during the horrific Atlantic voyage. This was not done out of altruism, or common decency, of course. In an article for Slavery and Abolition Journal, Jerome S. Handler writes: “European slavers apparently believed that such measures were useful in their efforts to control their ‘cargo’ and avoid or minimize social unrest and revolts—or even put the enslaved in a better mood prior to their being sold or transshipped from one American port to another.'How did the slaves smoke the tobacco enroute? With clay pipes supplied by the slave traders. The Europeans had introduced an easily grown, highly addictive plant drug, so it was inevitable that white traders would use that addictive property to their advantage. And they were happy to create an additional market in paraphernalia.
Handler, writing in the African Diaspora Archaeology Network Newsletter, notes that, while Africans produced their own pipes, “white clay pipes of Europeans manufacture, particularly English and Dutch, were commonly used to purchase slaves…. In general it appears that European pipes were often preferred to African ones.” The pipes came in long and short versions, the long “elbow bend” pipes being preferred on shore, with the short pipe being preferred for use onboard. Jean Barbot, an agent for the French Royal African Company, reported that the slaves onboard were occasionally given “short pipes and tobacco to smoak upon deck by turns.”
However humane the practice might sound, the motivations of the traders “were the same as those which prompted them to distribute beads and allow African board games aboard the ships, that is, an attempt to mollify or placate the captives in situations that were always fraught with tension and possibilities of insurrection.” Presumably, it also diminished hunger and helped keep the slaves on their feet during auction in the New World.
Not every ship’s captain went along with the pipes. A French slave ship captain wrote that “for fear of fire, tobacco should be grated and given as a powder.” Handler, a Senior Scholar at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, notes that “there are no data on whether the enslaved were allowed to keep the pipes they received aboard the slave ships. “
Probably not. “Chances are that pipes were collected by the ship’s crew after each use to be re-used at another time,” according to Handler. But it is likely enough that at least some pipes were successfully smuggled ashore. And while most of the white clay pipes found in African descendant archaeological sites in America were probably local in origin, “it may be that an occasional pipe was brought by some enslaved African via the Middle Passage.”
Handler, J. (2009). The Middle Passage and the Material Culture of Captive Africans Slavery and Abolition, 30 (1), 1-26 DOI: 10.1080/01440390802673773
Graphics Credit: Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia Library,
www.slaveryimages.org.
"
How China censors Egypt news, and why the story is so sensitive in China
How China censors Egypt news, and why the story is so sensitive in China: "
China: Bridging news on Egypt (Global Voices Advocacy, via Ethan Zuckerman)
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At Global Voices Advocacy, Oiwan Lam has a piece up about the censoring of terms and news related to the Egypt uprising, inside China.
As our readers confirmed in comments on a previous BB post, Oiwan reports that that the word 'Egypt' has been blocked from search in major social media websites, and Chinese state media outlets have been downplaying the news.
On Xinhua news' front page, above, Egypt news is absent but the term 'Egypt New Government' (circled in green above) appears as a popular/trending term.
The filtering of search result and the blocking of search term “Egypt” in social media websites is to prevent certain interpretation of the political situation in Egypt. The scenes of Tanks moving into the city center, the confrontation between the people and the soldiers are very likely to recall Chinese people's memory of the June 4 incident back in 1989 and the criticism of the authoritarian government in Egypt can easily turn into a political allegory in China. The propaganda department certainly has to issue censorship alert to web-portal and social media websites, where opinions can spread rapidly and become mainstream public discourses in a few hour time.
Nevertheless, micro-bloggers still find their way to get around censorship and bridge the news. Many bloggers keep updating the political situation in Egypt by translating and transcribing the Al Jazeera TV news reports and other overseas media outlets. Wang Xiaoshan is among one of the key news curators. And even though the term “Egypt” is blocked from keyword search, info-activists can always create a separate user account to spread the information, like this livecast of Egypt unrest in Sina Weibo..
China: Bridging news on Egypt (Global Voices Advocacy, via Ethan Zuckerman)
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Reason responds to Ayn Rand going on the dole
Reason responds to Ayn Rand going on the dole: "I'm on friendly terms with quite a few of the fine folks at Reason magazine, and we share similar opinions on the importance of civil liberties. This morning Tim Cavanaugh, a Reason columnist and Hit & Run contributor wrote a good response to my post on Friday (which was basically a link, excerpt, and some added snark to Michael Ford's post over at HuffPost).
Here's something that I haven't been able to find out. Did Ayn Rand take her social welfare payments under the name of Ann O'Conner (as stated in the HuffPost piece I linked to, and which one person told me is her legal name) or Ayn O'Conner (as it appears on her grave marker)? What was her legal name? If that could be cleared up, then we'd know whether or not she was trying to hide the fact that she was getting Social Security and Medicare payments.
Unless it's revealed that Rand didn't pay income tax or Social Security 'investments' during her working life, I'm not seeing the hypocrisy here. You don't have the legal right to opt out of income tax. You also can't avoid paying into the Social Security pyramid unless you are a government worker (a piece of hypocrisy that is far more widespread and of much greater moment than the hijinx of an old lady three decades dead). Some commenters are making the case that Rand used her married name 'Ann O'Connor' and thus must have been up to something sneaky, since she was using an assumed name. But wasn't 'Ayn Rand' the assumed name? Presumably the O'Connor name was the one under which taxes and FICA were taken from her in the first place. It would be a scandal for more than libertarians if that were not the case, but details of Rand's life are as opaque to outsiders as the circumstances of L. Ron Hubbard's death.
Stephens notes that the other two founding broads of libertarianism - Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson - went to considerable lengths to avoid taking charity from Uncle Sam. (It's harder to turn down Social Security than you think.) I'd be happy if this dustup resulted in a boost for either of those two over Rand, whose unquestioning dittoheads I can never get along with: A while back I ran into some Ayn Rand Institute folks, and our conversation - no exaggeration - began with my saying Anthem was a pretty shady book and within three minutes had reached the inevitable conclusion that I would propagandize for the Nazis if the pay was right because my life has no meaning. They really are like that!
Here's something that I haven't been able to find out. Did Ayn Rand take her social welfare payments under the name of Ann O'Conner (as stated in the HuffPost piece I linked to, and which one person told me is her legal name) or Ayn O'Conner (as it appears on her grave marker)? What was her legal name? If that could be cleared up, then we'd know whether or not she was trying to hide the fact that she was getting Social Security and Medicare payments.
By the way, Cavanaugh says he finds Rand to be 'quite charming, in an eccentric-maiden-aunt kind of way, and points to this 1979 Phil Donahue interview: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5.)
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