Ashley Smith: Follow the lead of veterans standing up against Obama’s state. Go to Standing Rock if you can. Don’t listen to the liberal guilt trippers. Solidarity is the only way to win. The more people the better for the struggle. And if you can’t go, donate. As the Water Protectors have made clear we all must stand together or the corporations, the two capitalist parties, and the state will divide and conquer us.
Month: November 2016
#StandWithStandingRock #NoDAPL #WaterIsLife
from my dearest friend Isabelle Bartter, who’s at standing rock right now. pls help, support, donate in any way u can. this is an important moment in history.
…
I am alive and well here at Standing Rock. I had my medic orientation on Monday and have been going nonstop.
My comrades and I built a cabin for our use while we are here and we have worked out a deal with the medics that when it’s not in use it will be emergency shelter for folks who have had tents destroyed by the weather. Tomorrow we will be putting up a community solar charging station.
So far, comrades and I have put in nearly every waking hour to working for the camp. Winter came very fast and the camp has been a buzz winterizing and getting ready to receive 1500-3000 veterans this weekend.
There is so much need here at camp as far as people power goes. If you are a builder, a doctor or nurse, an IT person, or someone with the motivation to get up every morning and wash dishes or cook for thousands of water protectors, and you have a week or more to spare, come here. Come with a mind set on waking up early and working all day. Come with a mind to listen to the elders and permanent residents when they tell you what needs to be done. Come with needed supplies. Come with others who have the same mindset.
Or don’t come. Donate to the camp directly. Send supplies. Don’t send your old broken flashlights though cause I had to sort through like 100 of those today and it wasn’t fun…
Anyway, sorry for the stream of consciousness here. Hope to find signal soon to fill y’all in more.
#NoDAPL
#KillTheBlackSnake
#WaterIsLife
#MniWiconi
27% of Europeans say rape may be acceptable in some circumstances
besides many other things, the framing of rape in this survey is so disturbing. it’s presented as an immigrant/refugee problem and solutions include germany’s “courses for refugees with the declared aim of teaching newcomers respect for women.” FFS. is this going to overthrow patriarchy and misogyny in europe?
read article here.
Amalia Rodrigues – Solidao – 1969
Amália Rodrigues (1920-1999) was a Portuguese fadista (fado singer) and actress. She became one of the most important figures during the genre’s revival in the twentieth century and was a leading female fadista during her 50-year recording and stage career. As of 1999, she had sold over 30 million records worldwide. Amália remains the best-selling Portuguese artist of all times.
screening of “the muslims i know” at SJFC
got back home from NC after driving for 15 hours yesterday, dropping our son off to college on the way. but no time to slouch today. i screened half of The Muslims I Know for a class at st john fisher college and got to talk to students afterwards.
i was invited by the brilliant Roja Singh who’s been teaching her anthropology class about globalization, immigration, ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
the discussion went well, with students asking about minor clarifications related to cultural and geographic specifics they had noticed in the film. there were also larger questions about both islam and american politics that i was happy to address.
as we were ending the class, a student asked me how i felt about what was going on in the country. he said: “u’ve made a very sensible film and provided a lot of information here, but it cannot be easy. how do muslims feel right now?” i had to be honest and tell him that in all our family conversations over the holidays we had shared ideas about relocating to other countries/parts of the world.
it’s particularly sad to have these discussions with our kids. it’s not something i had to contend with when i was growing up. i always felt i had choices – stay on and study in europe, remain in pakistan, settle in the US, etc without these choices being forced on me, on account of fear. what a privilege that was. it’s not so easy for most…
thank u to professors like dr Singh for creating the space necessary for this type of dialogue in smaller, predominantly white colleges and universities. it’s so very needed.
MSM’s recent concern with human rights
Zoe Lawlor on Fidel Castro’s “human rights record” being taken up so enthusiastically by mainstream media – she’s talking about Ireland but a million more things could be said about the US: “WHO KNEW human rights were so incredibly important to mainstream journalists and politicians? This concern has really fucking passed me by over the years….the 8th amendment, homelessness, direct provision, hundreds on trolleys, austerity, refugees drowning, Fortress Europe, war crimes, Shannon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo…and the rest. Who knew?”
Cuban medics in Haiti put the world to shame
Nina Lakhani: A third of Cuba’s 75,000 doctors, along with 10,000 other health workers, are currently working in 77 poor countries, including El Salvador, Mali and East Timor. This still leaves one doctor for every 220 people at home, one of the highest ratios in the world, compared with one for every 370 in England.
Wherever they are invited, Cubans implement their prevention-focused holistic model, visiting families at home, proactively monitoring maternal and child health. This has produced “stunning results” in parts of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, lowering infant and maternal mortality rates, reducing infectious diseases and leaving behind better trained local health workers, according to Professor Kirk’s research.
Medical training in Cuba lasts six years – a year longer than in the UK – after which every graduate works as a family doctor for three years minimum. Working alongside a nurse, the family doctor looks after 150 to 200 families in the community in which they live.
This model has helped Cuba to achieve some of the world’s most enviable health improvements, despite spending only $400 (£260) per person last year compared with $3,000 (£1,950) in the UK and $7,500 (£4,900) in the US, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development figures. More here.
Eduardo Galeano on Fidel Castro
And his enemies never mention that Cuba is one rare country that does not compete for the World Doormat Cup.
And they do not say that the revolution, punished for the crime of dignity, is what it managed to be and not what it wished to become.
Nor do they say that the wall separating desire from reality grew ever higher and wider thanks to the imperial blockade, which suffocated a Cuban-style democracy, militarized society, and gave the bureaucracy, always ready with a problem for every solution, the alibis it needed to justify and perpetuate itself.
And they do not say that in spite of all the sorrow, in spite of the external aggression and the internal high-handedness, this distressed and obstinate island has spawned the least unjust society in Latin America.
thanksgiving 2016
nov 23, 2016: in NC with family. saag gosht, beef biryani, aloo gosht, kheer – and we just barely got here!
nov 24, 2016: hanging out at chachu and khala’s brand new house in charlotte. so good to have all three of our puppies with us.
nov 26, 2016: with my sister in charlotte, NC.
From Octavia Paz
When history sleeps, it speaks in dreams: on the brow of the sleeping people, the poem is a constellation of blood. . . .
(Octavia Paz, “Toward the poem”)
What the Trees Say
Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees breaks entirely new ground. Wohlleben is a professional forester who works for the local community in Hümmel, a small village in the Eifel Mountains of western Germany. For years he managed the forest of beech, oak, pines, and spruce on conventional lines, felling the trees for their timber when they were mature and extracting the logs with heavy machinery. But gradually he came to look at the trees in a new light.
He writes, “Suddenly, I was aware of countless wonders I could hardly explain even to myself.”
Meanwhile new generations of scientists were exploring his local forest, including a team from Aachen University. And both there and in the university in Vancouver, five thousand miles away in British Columbia, discoveries were made that astounded Wohlleben.
What both teams discovered was nothing less than a vast underground network, called a mycorrhiza, in which fungi connect trees of different species by passing chemical and electrical signals among the trees’ roots. It was an arboreal Internet—christened the “wood wide web.” Trees could actually communicate by exchanging carbon through their roots. The exchange offered mutual support. Carbon is the food of trees, created by photosynthesis, using the leaves as solar panels. Sometimes one tree would act as mother to its neighbors, giving them more carbon than it received in return. Later the debt would be repaid as the roles were reversed.
As the subtleties of this underground network were explored, it became clear to scientists that trees not only benefited by mutual exchange of food. They exchanged vital information, warning their neighbors (and children) of threats and advising them of opportunities to seize. For example, if a tree’s leaves are bitten by a caterpillar, it will send a message though the mycorrhiza, prompting other trees in the network to release chemicals that repel caterpillars.
For Wohlleben these discoveries confirmed what he had come to recognize himself: that, in their own way, trees had feelings, that they knew how to communicate with one another, and that the strong were able to assist the weak. More here.
A Thanksgiving Message From Standing Rock
my thoughts today are with the water protectors at standing rock. thank u for reminding us that we all share this incredible planet, that we must not assimilate into destructive systems but rather resist them with courage and perseverance. thank u for ur vision of a unified, empowered and safe world where justice, balance and beauty become a compelling reality. #standwithstandingrock #NoDAPL #waterislife
President Obama: Prevent Trump’s Muslim Registry
Petition by DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving): Pls sign here.
To be delivered to President Barack Obama
President Obama must immediately revoke the regulatory framework of the Bush-era registry program called National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), which predominantly targeted Muslim immigrants based on their countries of origin. In the hands of Donald Trump, this program can potentially be used to target, register, and deport Muslims–on a much larger scale than previously implemented. This is the moment to shut this program down once and for all and to resist any new effort.
My review of Mustang
Last night I saw Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s film Mustang about five beautiful, orphaned sisters being duly oppressed in a Turkish village. The film has been compared to Sophia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides because of its “dream-like intensity and mostly female cast,” but it made me think of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock.
The soft-focus, the beauty and nymph-like youth of the girls who function more as a sensual ensemble rather than fully fleshed out individuals, their otherworldly mystery (a kind of bafflement that appeals deeply to the male gaze) and the intimacy of shots capturing them in various states of undress, are all reminiscent of Weir’s atmospheric film.
It’s a v French aesthetic and certainly reflects Ergüven’s sensibilities – she studied and lives in Paris, the cosmopolitan daughter of a Turkish diplomat. What doesn’t ever gel in this story though, is its location in a nondescript Black Sea village.
The film makes a feminist statement by fetishizing the girls’ bold rebellion against a patriarchal, small-minded, asexual backdrop, but the question that I wanted to ask throughout, and which Selin Gökcesu asked in her excellent review “Five French girls walk into an Anatolian village,” was: how did a tiny backward village produce these Bardot-like, free spirited, European-looking creatures (down to their swimsuits, Converse shoes, skinny jeans and uninhibited sexual ease)?
The girls are completely alienated from their grandmother, who’s supposed to have raised them after the death of their parents, and everyone else around them. Perhaps that makes it easier for Western audiences to relate to them and be awestruck by their defiance, but it doesn’t make any sense.
This bizarre disconnect is impossible to ignore, and so the relentless tyranny suffered by the sisters becomes an operatic performance, rather than something urgent and real.
The film won four César awards in France and was the French submission for the best foreign-language film Oscar. Ergüven thinks it’s a surprising choice considering France’s questionable relationship with Islam and Muslim women in particular. I think not so much.
Umm al-Hiran
In a few hours, Israel is planning to demolish this family’s home in the Palestinian Bedouin Village of Atir-Umm al-Hiran. By tomorrow morning, about 30 Palestinian Bedouins will be displaced by the state of Israel.