addicted to beck…

listen to “walls” from his album “modern guilt”.

LYRICS

Some days we get a thrill in our brains
Some days it turns to malaise
You see a face in the veneer
Reflecting on the surface of fear
Because you know that we’re better than that
Some days are worse than you can imagine
How am I supposed to live with that
With all these train wrecks coming at random?

Hey, what are you gonna do
When those walls are falling down
Falling down on you?

Hey, what are you gonna do
When those walls are falling down
Falling down on you?

You got warheads stacked in the kitchen
You treat distraction like it’s a religion
With a rattlesnake step in your rhythm
We do the best with the souls we’ve been given
Because you know we’re nothing special to them
We’re going someplace they’ve already been
Trying to make sense of what they call wisdom
And this riff-raff ain’t laughing with them

Hey, what are you gonna do
When those walls are falling down
Falling down on you?

Hey, what are you gonna do
When those walls are falling down
Falling down on you?

You’re wearing all of the years on your face
Turn a tombstone all over place
And your heart only beats in a murmur
But your words ring out just like murder

as i began to read hélène cixous, the first thing that struck me was the awesome power of her writing. it’s hard to describe — it’s poetic, non-linear, complex, yet cogent enough for “the laugh of the medusa” to have become a celebrated treatise on rhetoric and feminism.

cixous’ thesis is equally forceful. she advocates feminine writing, writing that inscribes femininity. women must return to their bodies, write through their bodies — bodies that have been confiscated in the name of modesty by the “great arm of parental-conjugal phallocentrism” and become the “cause and location of inhibitions.”

“censor the body and you censor breath and speech,” proclaims cixous. she writes a particularly brilliant paragraph about how women speak in public and how their style of speech is quite different from that of men:

“listen to a woman speak at a public gathering (if she hasn’t painfully lost her wind). she doesn’t “speak,” she throws her trembling body forward; she lets go of herself, she flies; all of her passes into the voice, and it’s with her body that she vitally supports the “logic” of her speech. her flesh speaks true. she lays herself bare. in fact, she physically materializes what she’s thinking; she signifies it with her body. in a certain way she inscribes what she’s saying, because she doesn’t deny her drives the intractable and impassioned part they have in speaking. her speech even when “theoretical” or political, is never simple or linear or “objectified,” generalized: she draws her story into history.”

like speech, feminine writing must originate from, be express through and give voice to female sexuality. but how is that possible when the logical structure of language itself is phallocentric, set up to maintain male dominance and exclude female bodies? western culture is based on the dichotomy between binary opposites – male/female, good/evil, light/dark, language/silence, speech/writing. in each of these pairs the first term has primacy over the second.

cixous talks about freud’s description of women as being the “dark continent.” women are synonymous with darkness, otherness, africa. men are the opposite. they represent lightness, selfhood, western civilization. women are the colonized, men the imperialists. this same apartheid is imbedded in language.

given these rigid, linguistic hierarchies, whoever uses language is inadvertently taking up the position of a “man”. but cixous sees these restrictions as being historico-cultural and surmountable. to her writing must take place in the spaces in-between, without any preference for or reference to opposing terms. women are more than equal to the task on account of their “gift of alterability.” as mothers, women are naturally adept at nourishing, eliminating separation, re-writing codes: “in woman, personal history blends together with the history of all women, as well as national and world history.”

women must not remain trapped inside men’s language and grammar but explode that structure and invent a language they themselves can get inside of. this is why cixous describes feminine writing in non-representational ways such as song, milk, flight, rhythm.

feminine writing is important because “writing is precisely the very possibility of change” and since most “history of writing is confounded with the history of reason” and “one with phallocentric tradition,” women cannot change the world until they change the ground rules of writing itself.

personal aside: this article puts me in the indelicate position of having to compromise my absolute faith in the equality of the sexes. generalizations make me squeamish. i have always believed that individual differences within groups (whether they be based on gender, race, ethnicity or religion) far outweigh collective differences between the groups themselves. generalizations are therefore always reductive, always misleading. however, there is so much that i recognize in cixous’ thesis that i have to think about how male and female writing can be essentially different and how the very structure of language makes it difficult for women to express that difference.

i changed over from writing exclusively in french to english sometime in high school. as i began to write in english, i retained some of the vividness and fecundity i so cherished in french. my writing was picturesque, creative, unorthodox. however, in business school i took two classes in business english and the intensity of my writing was slowly whittled away. i started to write more simply, clearly, in a much more structured and ordered fashion. my personal style of writing was sacrificed to the god’s of lucidity and succinctness. in cixous’ words, my writing became neutered. who knows how neutered it was already on account of linguistic constraints i could not even grasp, but there was a decisive switch at that time.

cisoux’ description of how women speak with their entire bodies and how they can integrate (rather than divide into opposites) by perceiving world history as an ever-mutating patchwork of billions of personal histories like their own, is spot-on, magnificent.

it reminded me of ismat chughtai (1911-1991), the grande dame of urdu literature. she was not only a prolific writer who changed the rules of urdu wrtiting but she was also a fierce feminist who challenged ideas about what it meant to be a good muslim woman. her short story “lihaaf” (the quilt) came out in 1941. it dealt with lesbianism. she was charged with obscenity and taken to court in lahore. however, her lawyer was able to argue that public morality would remain safe as only lesbians would get the sexual drift of the story! chughtai’s seminal work is her semi-autobiographical novel “terhi lakeer” (the crooked line). in it she explores the quotidian rhythms of women’s lives, the expression of female sexuality within the phallocentric confines of cultural mores, women’s relationships with both men and other women and their struggles to self-actualize through work and career. chughtai’s writing is intimate, explosive, unflinching, voluptuous. it’s hard to contain within the structure of the urdu language. it’s feminine writing.

for my friend damien who made me read cixous.

Obama’s argument for preventive detention “violates basic American values and is likely unconstitutional,” warned Sen. Russ Feingold in a recent letter to the President, cautioning that detention without trial “is a hallmark of abusive systems that we have historically criticized around the world.” Advancing such a controversial precedent on American soil, without the participation of Congress or the American people, would be disastrous. Full article.

pls watch this video. it’s done in our name…

“we need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.” (howard zinn)

As of 11:15am, Caracas time, President Zelaya is speaking live on Telesur from San Jose, Costa Rica. He has verified the soldiers entered his residence in the early morning hours, firing guns and threatening to kill him and his family if he resisted the coup. He was forced to go with the soldiers who took him to the air base and flew him to Costa Rica. He has requested the U.S. Government make a public statement condemning the coup, otherwise, it will indicate their compliance. Full article.

TORTURE: Be sure to also read this transcript of Abu Zubaydeh’s description of his experiences while being held in detention in Afghanistan. Writes award-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill: “Every US Citizen Should Read This, It Was Done in Your Name.” Full article.

“every instinct the president has honed, every voice he hears in washington, every inclination of our political culture urges incrementalism, urges deliberation, if any significant change is to be brought about. the trouble is that we are at one of those rare moments in history when the radical becomes pragmatic, when deliberation and compromise foster disaster. the question is not what can be done but WHAT MUST BE DONE.” (from “barack hoover obama - the best and brightest blow it again”, kevin baker, harper’s, july 2009)

so after years of being egged on by my brother, i finally saw “donnie darko” last night. what a trip!

the film is a rich mix of psychological thriller, science fiction, comedy and drama. it doesn’t have a single dull moment. jake gyllenhaal is a paranoid schizophrenic teenager who begins to have regular encounters with an imaginary friend named frank. frank happens to be a really tall man with a really deep, darth vader like voice, in a really ugly-ass, disturbing-looking bunny suit! frank tells donnie that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. as donnie sleepwalks to the golf course to meet with frank and heed his ominous warning, a mysterious jet engine lands on top of his house and crashes into his room. the meeting with frank saves his life.

the countdown to the end of the world begins and frank’s appearances continue. he instructs donnie on the possibilities of time travel. if destiny is pre-ordained then wouldn’t it be possible to see everyone’s inevitable path into the future? and wouldn’t that factor in free will if u were witnessing this phenomenon from inside god’s channel? donnie starts seeing wormholes, shortcuts in time and space, tunnels that connect present and future. real people and events in donnie’s life as well as frank’s overarching, self-fulfilling sway over his mind, seem to bend him in random yet inexorable ways toward a fixed future – the end of the world.

as things become increasingly ugly in his life and people he cares about start getting hurt, donnie begins to understand what he must do. he must shut down the tangent universe that came into existence when he escaped death. he must close that loop in order to save the primary universe and all those he loves. by sacrificing himself, he reverses the irreversible march of time and all those involved wake up to the universe at it was meant to be with some vague, residual knowledge of their trip back home. way cool film.

BAGHDAD: The bombing of a Baghdad bus station yesterday pushed the death toll from a weeklong series of blasts near Shiite targets to about 200, calling into question Iraq’s ability to provide security as United States combat troops slowly withdraw from cities.

The wave of attacks is undermining Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s declaration of a “great victory” in the US pullout from urban areas by next Tuesday’s deadline.

He has declared June 30 a national holiday to be marked with celebrations. Full article.

disgusting.

“Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.” Full article.

RETHINK AFGHANISTAN: Exclusive footage from the recent US airstrikes in Afghanistan provides a sobering look at the dire situation on the ground. The footage will be incorporated in part four of Brave New Foundation’s documentary, “Rethink Afghanistan.”

my film “the muslims i know” will be screened at the ISNA (islamic society of north america) annual convention in washington d.c. on july 5th at 5:00 pm. i will be present for the post screening discussion. looking forward to it!

every american should watch this interview: the attack on dissent (animal rights activism, environmentalism, just being a muslim) under the guise of fighting terrorism. scary.

In a Democracy Now! exclusive interview, we speak with Andrew Stepanian, an animal rights activist who was jailed at a secretive prison known as a Communication Management Unit, or CMU. Stepanian is believed to be the first prisoner released from a CMU and will talk about his experience there for the first time. He was sentenced to three years along with six other activists for violating a controversial law known as the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of CMUs. We also speak with Stepanian’s lawyer and a reporter covering the story. Watch the interview on Democracy Now!

Some of the banks should be allowed to die because they are so insolvent and holding so much in toxic assets that they will forever need to be on taxpayer-funded life support. The problem is, this life support is sucking the life out of the taxpayer in the process, as it weighs them down with ever-increasing debt. On top of that, the money could be used to restructure the economy in a way that is less reliant on the financial sector. Full article.

ISLAMABAD, June 22 (Reuters) - About 40,000 Pakistanis are on the move even before a military offensive begins in the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, U.N. officials said on Monday, and are headed for communities already stretched to the limit.

Nearly 2 million people have fled fighting in northwest Pakistan, most since early May when the military began an offensive against Taliban insurgents, prompting the United Nations to launch an appeal for $543 million in aid to avert a long-term humanitarian crisis. Full article.

Obama Administration Seeks To Keep Torture Victims From Having Day In Court (6/12/2009)

Justice Department Asks Court For Rehearing In Extraordinary Rendition Lawsuit Against Boeing Subsidiary

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – The Justice Department today argued that the victims of the “extraordinary rendition” program should not have their day in court, asking a federal appeals court to block a landmark case the court had earlier ruled could go forward. In April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen DataPlan Inc., for its role in the Bush administration’s unlawful “extraordinary rendition” program could proceed, but today the government asked the appeals court’s full panel of judges to rehear that decision.

“The Obama administration has now fully embraced the Bush administration’s shameful effort to immunize torturers and their enablers from any legal consequences for their actions,” said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, who argued the case for the plaintiffs. “The CIA’s rendition and torture program is not a ’state secret;’ it’s an international scandal. If the Obama administration has its way, no torture victim will ever have his day in court, and future administrations will be free to pursue torture policies without any fear of liability.”

In April, the appeals court reversed a lower court dismissal of the lawsuit, brought on behalf of five men who were kidnapped, forcibly disappeared and secretly transferred to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas where they were interrogated under torture. The Bush administration had intervened, improperly asserting the “state secrets” privilege to have the case thrown out. The appeals court ruled, as the ACLU has argued, that the government must invoke the “state secrets” privilege with respect to specific evidence, not to dismiss the entire suit.

“The extraordinary rendition program is well known throughout the world. The only place it hasn’t been discussed is where it most cries out for examination – in a U.S. court of law,” said Steven Watt, a staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program. “Attempts to keep this case from moving forward fly in the face of Obama’s promise to reaffirm our commitment to domestic and international human rights law and restore an America we can be proud of. Victims of extraordinary rendition deserve their day in court.”

In recent years, the government has asserted the “state secrets” claim with increasing regularity in an attempt to throw out lawsuits and justify withholding information from the public not only about the rendition program, but also about illegal wiretapping, torture and other breaches of U.S. and international law.

Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen was brought on behalf of Al-Rawi, Binyam Mohamed, Abou Elkassim Britel, Ahmed Agiza and Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah.

In addition to Wizner and Watt, attorneys in the lawsuit are Steven R. Shapiro and Jameel Jaffer of the national ACLU, Ann Brick of the ACLU of Northern California, Paul Hoffman of the law firm Schonbrun DeSimone Seplow Harris & Hoffman LLP and Hope Metcalf of the Yale Law School Lowenstein Clinic. In addition, Margaret L. Satterthwaite and Amna Akbar of the International Human Rights Clinic of New York University School of Law and Clive Stafford-Smith and Zachary Katznelson represent plaintiffs in this case.

More information about the case is available online at: www.aclu.org/jeppesen

torture was never just confined to abu ghraib or guantanamo. there has to be some accounting before we can move on.

KABUL (AFP) – Former detainees of the Bagram air base in Afghanistan have alleged a catalogue of abuse at the US military facility, the BBC reported Wednesday, after a two-month investigation.

Human Rights Watch meanwhile called on the United States to investigate the death, apparently at a US air base, and alleged torture of a member of an Afghan armed faction last year. Full article.

imran khan on pakistan: when u’re in a hole, stop digging.

President Obama asked something like three-quarters of a billion dollars, $736 million, to build a new US embassy, as well as permanent housing for US officials in Islamabad. What is the effect of this? Watch entire interview.

the taliban chief we were trying to kill “dodged” us. 80 mourners at a funeral, however, got blown to pieces.

The head of Pakistan’s Taliban had joined a funeral procession targeted in a suspected U.S. missile strike, but left before the attack that killed 80 people mourning an earlier barrage on a militant training camp, intelligence officials said Wednesday. Full article.

A US drone aircraft killed at least 45 Pakistani Taliban militants in south Waziristan yesterday when it fired missiles at the funeral of an insurgent commander killed earlier in the day, Pakistani intelligence officials said. Full article.

as obama talks about daal and keema and the pleasures of urdu poetry, the murder of pakistani civilians continues.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) — US missile strikes killed dozens of people in a Pakistani tribal area controlled by Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, where the army is preparing an assault, officials said Wednesday. Full article.

excellent analysis by tariq ali (as usual). he explains how dangerous present american foreign policy is in that part of the world. a coup within the pakistan army - that seems to be what we’re asking for.

Farideh Hassanzadeh (Mostafavi) is an Iranian poet, translator, and freelance journalist. Her first book of poetry was published when she was 22 years old. Her poems appear in the anthologies Contemporary Women Poets of Iran and Anthology of Best Women Poets. She writes regularly for Golestaneh, Iran News, and many other literary magazines and newspapers. Her poems translated into English appear in Kritya, Jehat, interpoetry, museindia, earthfamilyalpha, and Thanalonline. Her anthology of contemporary American poetry will appear in 2007. Read the entire interview.

The revolution will no be televised
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

(watch the video).

dark woody allen film in the tradition of “crimes and misdemeanors”. inspired by greek tragedies, it explores the apparent steadiness of family bonds, the moral blindness engendered by ambition and greed, the finality of crime and the psychosis that it can produce in the form of guilt. erfectly directed and acted, especially by colin farrell who gives a stellar performance.

what war does to those who are lucky enough to survive.

Refugee crisis in Iraq: 1-1.2 million Iraqis have fled across the border into Syria; about 750,000 have crossed into Jordan (increasing its modest population of 5.5 million by 14%); at least another 150,000 have made it to Lebanon; over 150,000 have emigrated to Egypt; and over 1.9 million are now estimated to have been internally displaced.

THE IRAQI REFUGEE CRISIS

The crisis began with the displacement of one million Iraqis fleeing war-related violence in the first three years following the 2003 invasion and escalated dramatically after the bombing of a mosque in Samarra in February 2006. Subsequent sectarian killings, facilitated by the collapse of governing and civil structures, led to a mass exodus from the country. Many of the refugees were at one time middle-class professionals: doctors, engineers, teachers, artists, filmmakers, administrators.

Jordan hosts between 500,000 and 750,000 Iraqis; Syria between 1.5 and 2 million. Several hundred thousand have made their way to Egypt, the Gulf States, Iran, Turkey, and Yemen. By the summer of 2007, some 60,000 Iraqis were fleeing Iraq each month, mainly to Syria—the last open border.

In October 2007, when Syria closed the last legal exit from the country, the flood of refugees subsided temporarily only to increase again in early 2008. Despite the perception, that fall, that Iraqis were choosing to return home, the Iraqi Red Crescent reported that less than 50,000 actually returned to Iraq from Syria in the last three months of 2007, when the Iraqi government began offering free bus transit and a payment of $800 to each returning family.

The vast majority of Iraqis who returned did so because their residency permits had expired or because they had run out of money to sustain their lives in exile. Many found their homes had been destroyed or occupied by other families in their absence.

The majority of refugees do not believe they can return to Iraq. Yet few nations have been willing to accept them. Many are now seeking any route of escape, no matter the cost and risk, often through human smuggling networks.

Since the most vulnerable refugees reside in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, we have decided to focus on those countries, as well as on Internally Displaced People (IDPs) inside Iraq, who have become refugees in their own country.

listen to interviews with iraqi refugees.

“My deep feeling is that today art must indict, or at the very least, play the role of the jester who unmasks the unspeakable lies of the powerful. Americans have been deceived and victimized by our government’s propaganda, and if art cannot rebuff and contest this grave situation by fueling the political will and imagination of resistance, I wonder why we need it at all.”
Joseph Nechvatal

to those who say that the pakistani public is largely supportive of a war against the taliban - here is a protest in faisalabad. the large banner reads: “stop the mass murder of the pashtun people, stop this american war!”

It is clear—and has been for a long time— that the Obama administration is radically expanding the US war in Afghanistan deeply into Pakistan. Whether it is through US military trainers (that’s what they were called in Vietnam too), drone attacks or commando raids inside the country, the US is militarily entrenched in Pakistan. It makes Obama’s comment that “[W]e have no intention of sending US troops into Pakistan” simply unbelievable. Full article.

At age 23, John Lewis, chairman of SNCC, was a veteran of many civil rights battles. On August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington, he gave one of the major speeches.

Though not as well known as Reverend Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, delivered the same day, Lewis’ fiery words cut deep, accusing the federal government of conspiring to ignore inequality. The text of Lewis’ speech was itself a battleground; some of the most controversial words and phrases were removed, and the ending was reworked, at the insistence of other march leaders. The text here is the version Lewis delivered.

SPEECH:

We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here. They have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages, or no wages at all. In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the administration’s civil rights bill. There’s not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality.

This bill will not protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses, for engaging in peaceful demonstrations: This bill will not protect the citizens in Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear in a police state. This bill will not protect the hundreds of people who have been arrested on trumped-up charges. What about the three young men in Americus, Georgia, who face the death penalty for engaging in peaceful protest? The voting section of this bill will not help thousands of black citizens who want to vote. It will not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama and Georgia, who are qualified to vote but lack a sixth-grade education. “ONE MAN, ONE VOTE” is the African cry. It is ours, too. It must be ours.

People have been forced to leave their homes because they dared to exercise their right to register to vote. What is there in this bill to ensure the equality of a maid who earns $5 a week in the home of a family whose income is $100,000 a year?

For the first time in one hundred years this nation is being awakened to the fact that segregation is evil and that it must be destroyed in all forms. Your presence today proves that you have been aroused to the point of action. We are now involved in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, “My party is the party of principles?” The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party?

In some parts of the South we work in the fields from sunup to sundown for $12 a week. In Albany, Georgia, nine of our leaders have been indicted not by Dixiecrats but by the federal government for peaceful protest. But what did the federal government do when Albany’s deputy sheriff beat attorney C. B. King and left him half dead? What did the federal government do when local police officials kicked and assaulted the pregnant wife of Slater King, and she lost her baby?

It seems to me that the Albany indictment is part of a conspiracy on the part of the federal government and local politicians in the interest of expediency.

The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery. The nonviolent revolution is saying, “We will not wait for the courts to act, for we have been waiting for hundreds of years. We will not wait for the President, the Justice Department, nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands and create a source of power, outside of any national structure, that could and would assure us a victory.”

To those who have said, “Be patient and wait,” we must say that “patience” is a dirty and nasty word. We cannot be patient, we do not want to be free gradually. We want our freedom, and we want it now. We cannot depend on any political party, for both the Democrats and the Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.

We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about. In the struggle, we must seek more than civil rights; we must work for the community of love, peace and true brotherhood. Our minds, souls and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all people.

The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the streets and put it into the courts. Listen, Mr. Kennedy. Listen, Mr. Congressman. Listen, fellow citizens. The black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won’t be a “cooling-off” period.

We will not stop. If we do not get meaningful legislation out of this Congress, the time will come when we will not confine our marching to Washington. We will march through the South, through the streets of Jackson, through the streets of Danville, through the streets of Cambridge, through the streets of Birmingham. But we will march with the spirit of love and with the spirit of dignity that we have shown here today.

By the force of our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the desegregated South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of God and democracy.

We must say, “Wake up, America. Wake up! For we cannot stop, and we will not be patient.”

Source: Lewis, John, with Michael D’Orso. Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.

brilliant, brilliant interview with howard zinn!

we won’t disillusion young people by bringing down conventional american heroes (like columbus and theodore roosevelt). we can introduce them to the real heroes of our history by bringing them out of obscurity - people who resisted and brought about change.

watch interview on democracy now!

The Fort Laramie Treaty once guaranteed the Sioux Nation the right to a large area of their original land, which spanned several states and included their sacred Black Hills, where they were to have “the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of the land.

However, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, President Ulysses S. Grant told the army to look the other way in order to allow gold miners to enter the territory. After repeated violations of the exclusive rights to the land by gold prospectors and by migrant workers crossing the reservation borders, the US government seized the Black Hills land in 1877. Full article.

The regime has arrested Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, daughter of the former president, who spoke at a pro-Mousavi rally, along with 4 other members of that family. This step is typical of an old Iranian ruling technique, of keeping provincial tribal chieftains in check by keeping some of their children hostage at the royal court. It is widely suspected that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a multi-billionaire who is well connected politically, is funding and aiding the reform movement’s protests. Full article.

very moving…

interesting interview with imran khan - unfortunately there are no subtitles. hope to campaign for him in the next pakistani elections.

katy lena ndiaye’s “awaiting for men” is set in the beautiful red-walled city of oualata, in southeastern mauritania. the film is based on a series of intimate interviews with three women who speak with candor about their relationships with men. the cinematography is rich with the bold colors, patterns and textures of northwest africa. the pace of the film is unhurried, almost languorous. there is a stillness to the film. it has an uncluttered, poetic quality.

oualata was one of the four ksours (arabic for village) erected between the 11th and 12th centuries in what is now mauritania. these settlements were built around a mosque, mostly a simple unadorned prayer hall comprising a madrassa or islamic school, with the houses radiating outwards from this center and getting progressively bigger. the entire ksour was contained within a single continuous wall and many of the village’s amenities were shared – there were common storehouses, ovens, baths, shops, etc. the four kasours were immensely prosperous until the 16th-17th centuries. not only were they trade posts for caravans traveling across the sahara but they also became renowned centers of islamic thought and culture, attracting a multitude of foreign students. it is said that some mauritanian libraries and schools have managed to preserve over 40,000 extremely rare, priceless islamic manuscripts. however, with the gradual desiccation of the sahara much of the farmland that was fertile enough to feed local inhabitants has now become buried in sand.

a faltering economy is apparent in the film, as most oualata men seem to be employed elsewhere. it’s the women who inhabit the kasour for the most part. they take care of the cattle, run their shops, deliver babies, gossip while sipping mint tea, and wait (sometimes for months) for their men to return.

the women who are interviewed speak directly to the camera. they are frank, self-assured, articulate. they are also quite different from one another, a fact that belies western perceptions of other societies (especially muslim ones) as being homogenized, where the individual is largely overshadowed by the collective. many of them have had multiple marriages.

one woman, who exudes sheer power on screen, explains how she can only live with a man as long as she loves him. once she falls out of love, she divorces him. if he annoys her, she has no qualms about beating him. this woman is all business. she frequently challenges the director, the woman behind the camera, with a certain brazenness that’s rarely seen in interview subjects, irrespective of race, religion, ethinicity or gender. this woman is single right now, after going through 5 marriages. she supports herself by painting tarkhas (beautiful murals involving endlessly repeating designs that are painted exclusively by women on the exterior and interior walls of houses in order to highlight doors, windows and alcoves). she also makes money by using henna to draw the same arabesques on the hands and feet of women, and by playing conga drums.

another woman introduces herself by confessing that she is not the prettiest woman around but she likes to talk and men enjoy that. she is lively, down to earth and happy to share her innermost thoughts and feelings. she works as a midwife and runs her own clinic. she is madly in love with her fourth husband and isn’t shy about expressing her physical attraction to him. “a handsome man around here” she explains, “is a man who is generous and tall and can please his woman.”

the third woman is the most reserved. she owns a shop and dreams of one day owning an entire market. she is demure and when prodded too much about her sex life, she turns away, saying “that’s enough, you tire me.” she struck me as being better off than the other two. for her, painting tarkhas is a hobby, not a source of income.

i moderated a discussion after the film. it was most interesting. some in the audience were frustrated by the lack of information, the focus on three women only, the conversations about men and women to the detriment of the women’s interactions with their children, families, communities. some thought the film was a bit too slow, every shot even though beautiful was held for a bit too long. someone thought the women were “sad” because one of them posits that girls don’t need to be educated and another confides how she staged a fall in order to abort an unwanted pregnancy.

others enjoyed the film’s lyricism. they compared it to a piece of music. i agree. as with poetry, everything does not need to be explained away. sometimes a film, even a documentary, can simply create a mood, a feeling, a thought without having to formulate a formal beginning or end. that’s certainly true of french cinema - much of it is open-ended, something that american audiences find frustrating. i like to fill in the blanks and make the film my own. viewing becomes more participative, more active.

i certainly didn’t find the women “sad”. it’s unfortunate that we apply a rigid western or maybe even “christian missionary” filter to how we view other cultures. we have such confidence in our achievements as a society that our instinctive, gut level reaction is one of condescension towards what is different. it’s like this discussion i took part in on facebook, where someone asked if “third world” was an offensive term. many agreed that it was a judgmental term. to me it almost sounds like “third rate”. someone exclaimed: why not just call them poor countries? my answer was: poor in terms of what, really? over-consumption? obesity? materialism? capitalistic greed? production of waste? many third world countries r much richer in how families and communities function. their relationship to the environment is far less toxic. if first world countries stopped exploiting and interfering in third world countries, the gap between them would lessen over time. we seem to transpose our template for what we see as “civilization” onto other cultures without trying to develop an understanding of their circumstances – climate, geography, history, economy, ethnography.

to me the women seemed quite independent, both financially and emotionally. they were used to living on their own. they were well-adjusted, content, confident in who they were. education does not mean the same thing to them as it does to us. i don’t think that the men were much more educated. education refers mostly to studying the quran and hadith. mauritanians are a mixtures of original african agriculturalists, nomadic north african berber tribes and yemeni arabs who conquered the region in the 11th century. in berber society women have a preeminent role, as mothers of the clan. they r the ones who are educated in the histories of their ancestral tribes and they pass on that oral tradition from one generation to another. some of that matriarchal culture is reflected in the attitudes of the three women. the ease with which they divorce men is probably made easier by islam, which gave women the right to divorce in the 7th century.

as far as abortion, with all our western civilization and its legal protections for women, isn’t it sad that a doctor who performed late term abortions was recently shot in the united states? harassment, death threats, murder and terrorism are used to stop women from having abortions. we have a long way to go before we can criticize mauritanian culture.

the slow rhythm of the film with its abundance of still shots, seemed to be informed by photography. i was happy to learn from an interview with katy nadiaye that the film was in fact inspired by a book of photographs called “africa paintings”.

12 Memories from Travis proved to be one of the favourite album releases this year amongst reviewers.

The Sunday Times hailed it as “bloody brilliant…A Triumph.” Time Out boasted it as being “sonically eloquent and emotionally resonant…there’s much here to admire.”

And now, the second track is due for release.

“Don’t just stand there watching it happening / I can’t stand it / Don’t feel it….” The Beautiful Occupation.

Every period of social upheaval gives birth to songs of discontent. Some songs are crafted specifically as rallying cries to garner support for a cause or to broadcast a grievance. Travis’s new single, The Beautiful Occupation, is just such a song.

Written by Fran Healy as war with Iraq was becoming a real possibility and the crisis in the Middle East was escalating, The Beautiful Occupation addresses Fran’s frustrations and concerns with the turbulent times in which we’re living. As he recalls. “September 11 was the start of something. I can see how fragile the world is”.

Effectively a peace anthem for modern times, an acoustic version of the song originally appeared on Warchild’s Hope album earlier this year prior to being included on the band’s new album, 12 Memories, released in October.

The last year has been a period of reflection for Travis, as evident from the songs on 12 Memories their most poignant and effecting work to date. The enforced break following Neil Primrose’s accident gave Travis both an opportunity to re-group and to reflect on the times in which we live. The resulting songs explore lyrically darker themes, a reaction to today’s unstable social and political climate.
(from contactmusic.com)

LYRICS

Don’t just stand there watching it happening
I can’t stand it
Don’t feel it
Something’s telling me
Don’t wanna go out this way
But have a nice day

Then read it in the headlines
Watch it on the TV
Put it in the background
Stick it in the back
Stick it in the back

For the beautiful occupation
The beautiful occupation
You don’t need an invitation
To drop in upon a nation

I’m too cynical
I’m just sitting here
I’m just wasting my time
Half a million civillians gonna die today
But look the wrong way

Then read it in the headlines
Watch it on the TV
Put it in the background
Stick it in the back
Stick it in the back

For the beautiful occupation
The beautiful occupation
You don’t need an invitation
To drop in upon a nation

Don’t just stand there watching it happening
I can’t stand it
Don’t feel it
Something telling me
Don’t wanna go out this way
But have a nice day

Then read it in the headlines
Watch it on the TV
Put it in the background
Stick in the back
Stick in the back

For the beautiful occupation
The beautiful occupation
Don’t need an invitation
To drop in upon a nation

The beautiful occupation
The beautiful occupation
So much for an intervention
Don’t call the united nations

“I’m too cynical
I’m just sitting here
I’m just wasting my time
Half a million civillians gonna die today
But look the wrong way

Then read it in the headlines
Watch it on the TV
Put it in the background
Stick it in the back
Stick it in the back

For the beautiful occupation
The beautiful occupation
You don’t need an invitation
To drop in upon a nation…”

“What I think the policies of the Obama administration over the past five months show is that we need independent political movements in this country that cannot and will not allow themselves to be co-opted by the Democratic Party–that don’t function as partisan movements for the promotion of one of the two corporate parties, but rather keep as their primary focus ending U.S. wars of aggression around the world, fighting for single-payer health care and fighting for the rights of working-class people and the poor in this nation.” Full article.

“In a vote that should go down in recent histories as a day of shame for the Democrats, on Tuesday the House voted to approve another $106 billion dollars for the bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and increasingly Pakistan). To put a fine point on the interconnection of the iron fist of U.S. militarism and the hidden hand of free market neoliberal economics, the bill included a massive initiative to give the International Monetary Fund billions more in U.S. taxpayer funds.” Full article.

pankaj mishra on pakistan: “The Obama administration should consider the possibility that, as Graham Fuller, the CIA’s former station chief in Kabul puts it, few Pashtuns “will long maintain a radical and international jihadi perspective once the incitement of the US presence is gone.” Full article.

RCTV organizes a free film festival every year. this year, it includes an interesting film about muslim women in mauritania - a very different take on muslim countries and cultures. the film is called “awaiting for men” and it will be screened thursday, june 18 at 7.30pm, at the RCTV studios, 21 gorham street, rochester (off of st paul st). i will be leading a discussion after the screening. more information.

A non violent movement turns violent when the Peru govt cracks down on protesters. Dozens of people have been killed in clashes between indigenous people and police in Peru. The Indians have been protesting against laws which will open up communal jungle lands and water resources to oil drilling, logging and mining.

steven green, who was responsible for the mahmudiyah killings and the rape and murder of a 13 year old iraqi girl, also received a moral character waiver for prior drug and alcohol related offenses that might have otherwise disqualified him from joining the u.s. army. neo nazis in iraq and afghanistan - how is that going to play out?

Read “Neo-Nazis are in the Army now” by By Matt Kennard.

“Is the U.S. involved in the current street fighting in Tehran and other major cities? I wouldn’t be at all surprised to have this suspicion confirmed in coming days. After all, in 2007 Congress appropriated $400 million to destabilize the Iranian regime, and who’s to say this program isn’t bearing fruit?” Full article.

“A US drone struck three vehicles in Pakistan’s South Waziristan Agency today, killing at least five people. It was unclear who was slain in the attack. It was the first US drone strike into Pakistan in nearly a month.” Full article.

“The real danger is in the US acting like an enraged mastodon, trampling Pakistan under foot, and forcing Islamabad’s military to make war on its own people. Pakistan could end up like US-occupied Iraq, split into three parts and helpless.” Full article.

ice bowl with garden flowers created by my friend shahin to serve pistachio ice cream. dinner at our house. 12 people. musicians, artists, bloggers, activists, academics and yes, even a doctor and a lawyer.