Daily Show: Darwin's Theory of (Political) Evolution of Gay Marriage

That's Illegal --- God Hates You --- God Hates You But Will and Grace Is Entertaining --- How About a Civil Union? --- Congrats Mr. and Mr. Smith

Danbert Nobacon Reflects on Chumbawamba's song "Tubthumping"

Gonzo Tubthumping, Getting Knocked Down And Getting Up Again Danbert Nobacon Wednesday, February 27, 2013 BEN AFFLECK SAID while accepting his Oscar for Best Picture for Argo that: “… It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life. That’s gonna happen. All that matters is that you gotta get up.” He was talking about the resolve of artists, which we all encounter in the struggle to keep creating art. It is a testament to the spirit of human resilience in the face of sometimes overwhelming odds, which goes all the way back to our human core in the fact that homo sapiens even made it this far through the evolutionary maze. We feel it when we get the rejection letter but keep on writing or go on to do another show, or whatever it is our passion to do. We feel it in the small daily triumphs over the constraints imposed upon us by the capitalist business model. We feel it when we make the effort to go out instead of staying home. We feel it when our broken hearts begin to mend. We feel it in those moments when we transcend the pain and are fully present in the moment. We feel it when we stand up for what we believe in, and in a thousand different other ways. Chumbawamba once wrote a song called Tubthumping (and check this out for a flash mob) which unknowingly tapped into this quintessential strand of the human condition. It became a world-wide hit. It made us one-hit wonders despite us having eleven studio albums, some of which contained far better songs. It gave the eight people in the band, and still gives us, a modicum of financial security to subsist as working artists in increasingly varied fields. We got lucky, and for that and many other reasons, I still love that song. And as an artist I accept that sometimes your work rebels like a petulant teenager and goes off and has a life of its own over which you have no control. “The songs that inspire the troops on the road to Baghdad” This was a headline from the English Daily Telegraph when the invasion of Iraq was in full swing in early April 2003. The article was about DJ Jonathan Bennett, who was working for British Forces Broadcasting Services, Middle East, based in Kuwait. Because the US army had not set up their own locally based troops’ radio station, as they had done in the first Gulf War, Bennett had become a “GI’s favourite.” In addition to serving British troops, his show also reached and had a large listenership amongst US troops. Moreover, “improvements in mobile technology mean(t) that Bennett and his colleagues (were) broadcasting right to the front line.” “The guys can actually tune in while they are fighting, if they want,” Bennett was quoted as saying. The article went on, “Bennett has no doubt that the music he plays provides a vital emotional outlet for the troops. Indeed, some of the soldiers most popular requests, such as Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping (“I get knocked down, but I get up again / You never gonna keep me down”) sounded like rallying cries against not just the enemy in the desert, but the significant anti-war section of the British public.” I can only speculate, but to think a soldier may have a tune that one co-wrote running through his head as an earworm, in the moments before he kills or is killed is unsettling. That the song would be perceived as an anthem against anti-war sentiment is simply beyond. How sour the irony? It is one thing to have our taxes pay for wars we do not agree with — and this must surely be one of the most flagrantly abused shortcomings of our so-called democratic system. It is quite something else to have unwittingly provided part of the soundtrack for one of those wars as well. Whilst on reflection it did not come as a shock to us, as the authors of the song, that it would be used in this way, there was something shocking about the idea that part of ones’ art was being used to boost morale in fighting a war which we opposed with every bone in our collective political body. There are of course other cultural implications. The song had been popular for an eighteen-month period from summer 1997 into 1998. Having been an anarchist band for the previous fifteen years, inhabiting the underground or the distant fringes of the mainstream, it was in many ways a genuine, though not unpleasant, shock to us to have an international hit record. In so doing, through the mass mediums of daytime radio and TV, we reached a significantly younger audience than we would normally have done, not least in the United States. It meant that we were being heard by children, as well as older teenagers and beyond, and it began to show in the audiences at our live gigs. Quite suddenly we started seeing ten, eleven, twelve-year-olds down at the front of the stage, whilst in the back would be their sometimes hipster, sometimes bewildered, sometimes anxious-looking parents. Looking out into the crowd in Tempe in Arizona, in March 1998, during our song Big Mouth Strikes Again, where Alice Nutter comes on stage dressed as a cigarette-smoking, whiskey-drinking nun, we could see a worried parent stand up behind her daughter, putting her hands over the girl’s ears. That song was a tip of the hat, or should I say habit, to dead American comedian Lenny Bruce. Having had a hit record which did not necessarily reflect many of the other aspects of our work, not least the adaptation of Bruce’s exploration of profanity in the nun repeating the mantra “bullshit, motherf**ker, bullshit,” the parental reaction was hardly surprising. None of us in the band had children at the time, but we did perform that song late last year at the Chumbawamba farewell show in front of our own pre-teen children. ....... Read the full article HERE at the Weeklings.

KKK Child and African American State Trooper (1992 Photo)

Poynter has the background on the photo HERE. [click to enlarge]

Movies and the 98%: It's a Wonderful Life

I just finished watching It's a Wonderful Life for the umpteenth year (I try to make it a holiday tradition every December), and like Dickens' A Christmas Carol, as heartwarming and inspirational as the film is, the implicit message of the film seems to echo the political campaign we just experienced this year.
This scene was one that really stood out as local tycoon Henry Potter attempts to shut down the Bailey Building and Loan that has housed many working class families in Bedford Falls. With Peter Bailey recently deceased, Potter looks to dissolve the institution during the Great Depression and at a time when Peter Bailey's son George is hoping to finally leave the small hometown that has been confining his dreams for years. As Potter ridicules the idea of decency and fairness, George Bailey speaks up for the values of his father:

Mr. Potter: Peter Bailey was not a business man. That's what killed him. Oh, I don't mean any disrespect to him, God rest his soul. He was a man of high ideals, so-called. But ideals without common sense can ruin this town. Now, you take this loan here to Ernie Bishop...you know, that fellow that sits around all day on his brains in his taxi, you know. I happen to know the bank turned down this loan, but he comes here and we're building him a house worth five thousand dollars. Why?

George Bailey: Well, I handled that, Mr. Potter. You have all the papers there. His salary, insurance. I can personally vouch for his character.

Mr. Potter: A friend of yours.

George Bailey: Yes, sir.

Mr. Potter: You see, if you shoot pool with some employee here, you can come and borrow money. What does that get us? A discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class. And all because a few starry-eyed dreamers like Peter Bailey stir them up and fill their heads with a lot of impossible ideas. Now, I say...

George Bailey: Just a minute. Just a... Just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. You're right when you say my father was no business man. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap penny-ante Building and Loan, I'll never know. But neither you nor anybody else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was... Why, in the twenty-five years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself. Isn't that right, Uncle Billy? He didn't save enough money to send Harry to school, let alone me. But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter. And what's wrong with that? Why...here, you are all businessmen here. Doesn't it make them better citizens? Doesn't it make them better customers? You...you said that uh...what'd you say just a minute ago... They, they had to wait and save their money before they even thought of a decent home. Wait! Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they're so old and broken-down that they...Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about...they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, it is too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle. Well, in my book, he died a much richer man than you'll ever be.

Mr. Potter: I'm not interested in your book. I'm talking about the Building and Loan.

George Bailey: I know very well what you're talking about. You're talking about something you can't get your fingers on, and it's galling you. That's what you're talking about, I know. Well, I, I, I've said too much. I... You're, you're the Board here. You do what you want with this thing. There's j-just one thing more though. This town needs this measly one-horse institution if only to have some place where people can come without crawling to Potter.

Writing on Christmas Eve 2012 after a brutal election season, Chris Powell gets to the heart of it:
"Of course this is Capra's metaphor for politics and the world: that there is progress when everyone is given a chance, a little capital and credit; when people play by the rules, look out for each other, and don't take too much more than they need; and that selfishness is the ruin of everything. Something like this -- more or less a policy of helping to make middle-class everyone who aspired to it and would indeed play by the rules, a policy of democratizing capital and credit -- made the United States the most prosperous country and the most successful in elevating the human condition. But for a few decades now the price of obtaining and maintaining those "two decent rooms and a bath" and the middle-class life to go with it has risen as real wages have fallen for most, largely under the pressure of government's unrelenting taxes in the name of services that have not really been rendered, a welfare system that has subsidized what somehow is not permitted to be called the antisocial behavior it is, and a plutocracy that has gained control of both major political parties. There seem to be more people who, if too confused or demoralized to be dangerous, are still closer to being a "rabble" than the country saw even during the Great Depression. Even at its best now Christmas is seldom more than an itinerant charity that, necessary as it may seem, tends to suppress the great political question of the day after Christmas, the question of how things can be organized to ensure that everyone has a good chance to earn his way in decency. But the great joy of Christmas is that the answer has been given, that we are not lost, that the country has been shown the way and can recover it -- that society can work for all, that it really can be a wonderful life if enough selfless people make it a political one."

Amen, Chris. Amen.

Former North Korean Propaganda Artist Turns to Pop Art

CNN

After escape from North Korea, artist turns from propaganda to pop art
By Paul Ferguson, CNN
updated 12:26 AM EDT, Sun March 25, 2012

Atlanta (CNN) -- Song Byeok had every reason to be pleased with his success. A gift for drawing led to a prestigious career as a propaganda artist and full membership in North Korea's communist party.

Then the food shortages started.

Like tens of thousands of other North Koreans in the mid-1990s, Song made forays across the Tumen River to find food in China. Despite witnessing a better material life across the border, he says, he never doubted that North Korea was culturally superior. He never considered leaving his homeland for anything more than food.

"I was a believer. I saw North Koreans as pure," Song said. "And we needed the Great Leader to protect us from outsiders."

Today, Song paints in Seoul, South Korea, his art haunted by his former whole-hearted belief in the North Korean regime. Song's paintings chronicle a personal, often agonizing journey from child-like allegiance to the country's founder and "Great Leader," Kim Il Sung, and his son, "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, to Song's life today as a contemporary artist.

In his former life, he would paint boyish-looking soldiers with heroic features across an entire side of a factory to inspire workers with the same patriotism he believed in.

His current paintings explore themes of freedom while skewering his former devotion to North Korea's leaders. He paints children in military uniforms, their heads bowed and eyes closed. His trademark work shows Kim Jong Il's face atop Marilyn Monroe's famous film pose on a sidewalk grate, holding down her skirt as it billows around her hips.

The painting created a stir in South Korea, where American Greg Pence saw it and raised funds on Kickstarter to exhibit Song's work this winter in Washington and Atlanta.

Song is passionate and sometimes brooding when discussing North Korea but gracious and open about his deeply personal passage from propaganda artist to painter who anguishes over oppression in North Korea.

Song's journey to disbelief began the moment he watched, helpless, as his father was caught in a current during a river crossing to China and drowned. Song was halfway across when his father was swept away; he swam back but was unable to rescue him. Despondent, Song searched for his father's body along the riverbank but was captured by North Korean border guards.

Despite his rank as a party member, getting caught meant questioning and torture by North Korean guards to confirm that he was not working for the South Koreans or the foreign missionaries based in China who proselytize among defectors.

"There were no exceptions," he said. "All who are caught are investigated."

In North Korea, a brutal choice

The torment of not recovering his father's remains was much greater than the broken teeth and beatings, Song said. The beatings were so harsh, he said, he was close to death, and he believes that he was released so he would not die in custody.

More than bones, the guards' treatment broke Song's belief in the regime. He describes the moment he left jail as if a veil had been lifted: He saw the world with a new clarity. As he hobbled through the streets, wondering how he'd get home, he decided he wanted a different life. He decided to defect.

In a country of 25 million, only about 20,000 have defected and settled in South Korea, according to the South Korean government. There are no precise figures for how many defectors live in hiding in China; estimates from governments, researchers and non-governmental organizations vary from 25,000 to more than 400,000.

"When people are picked up in China and repatriated, they face prosecution back in North Korea if they are believed to have met with South Koreans or missionaries," said Marcus Noland, a North Korea specialist at the Peterson Institute.

China labels North Korean escapees "economic migrants" and forcibly returns them despite accounts of torture and execution. So those hoping to defect must make their way across China to a third country.

Of those North Koreans interviewed in China, only about one in 10 say they left because of a longing for freedom, according to W. Courtland Robinson, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University who has studied the issue for more than a decade.

The vast majority who leave give the same explanation Song did for his pre-defector forays into China during the famine: the search for work or food.

"The (North Korean) system is so integral to who you are," Robinson said. "People generally don't say 'I am frustrated, and I want out.' "

Song's paintings explore that theme: a devotion to serving North Korea's leaders so strong that citizens view it as part of their identity.

"Flower Children" shows a gaggle of smiling, uniformed schoolgirls waving and holding North Korea's standard reading primers, "The Story of Kim Jong Il's Childhood" and "History of Kim Il Sung."

The girls exude childish charm, but some faces show a weariness that only comes with age, and their eyes are all closed. Their shoes have holes.

"They believe they are happy," Song said. "They believe they are so much better off than the rest of the world because of their two leaders, who are like two suns."

Read the full story and view images HERE.

Updated Ayn Rand Book Title

Daughter of ‘Dirty War,’ Raised by Man Who Killed Her Parents

One of the many horrible stories of Argentina's "Dirty War."

NYT

October 8, 2011
Daughter of ‘Dirty War,’ Raised by Man Who Killed Her Parents
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

BUENOS AIRES — Victoria Montenegro recalls a childhood filled with chilling dinnertime discussions. Lt. Col. Hernán Tetzlaff, the head of the family, would recount military operations he had taken part in where “subversives” had been tortured or killed. The discussions often ended with his “slamming his gun on the table,” she said.

It took an incessant search by a human rights group, a DNA match and almost a decade of overcoming denial for Ms. Montenegro, 35, to realize that Colonel Tetzlaff was, in fact, not her father — nor the hero he portrayed himself to be.

Instead, he was the man responsible for murdering her real parents and illegally taking her as his own child, she said.

He confessed to her what he had done in 2000, Ms. Montenegro said. But it was not until she testified at a trial here last spring that she finally came to grips with her past, shedding once and for all the name that Colonel Tetzlaff and his wife had given her — María Sol — after falsifying her birth records.

The trial, in the final phase of hearing testimony, could prove for the first time that the nation’s top military leaders engaged in a systematic plan to steal babies from perceived enemies of the government.

Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the military during Argentina’s dictatorship, stands accused of leading the effort to take babies from mothers in clandestine detention centers and give them to military or security officials, or even to third parties, on the condition that the new parents hide the true identities. Mr. Videla is one of 11 officials on trial for 35 acts of illegal appropriation of minors.

The trial is also revealing the complicity of civilians, including judges and officials of the Roman Catholic Church.

The abduction of an estimated 500 babies was one of the most traumatic chapters of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The frantic effort by mothers and grandmothers to locate their missing children has never let up. It was the one issue that civilian presidents elected after 1983 did not excuse the military for, even as amnesty was granted for other “dirty war” crimes.

“Even the many Argentines who considered the amnesty a necessary evil were unwilling to forgive the military for this,” said José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch.

In Latin America, the baby thefts were largely unique to Argentina’s dictatorship, Mr. Vivanco said. There was no such effort in neighboring Chile’s 17-year dictatorship.

One notable difference was the role of the Catholic Church. In Argentina the church largely supported the military government, while in Chile it confronted the government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and sought to expose its human rights crimes, Mr. Vivanco said.

Priests and bishops in Argentina justified their support of the government on national security concerns, and defended the taking of children as a way to ensure they were not “contaminated” by leftist enemies of the military, said Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Nobel Prize-winning human rights advocate who has investigated dozens of disappearances and testified at the trial last month.

Ms. Montenegro contended: “They thought they were doing something Christian to baptize us and give us the chance to be better people than our parents. They thought and felt they were saving our lives.”

Church officials in Argentina and at the Vatican declined to answer questions about their knowledge of or involvement in the covert adoptions.

For many years, the search for the missing children was largely futile. But that has changed in the past decade thanks to more government support, advanced forensic technology and a growing genetic data bank from years of testing. The latest adoptee to recover her real identity, Laura Reinhold Siver, brought the total number of recoveries to 105 in August.

Still, the process of accepting the truth can be long and tortuous. For years, Ms. Montenegro rejected efforts by officials and advocates to discover her true identity. From a young age, she received a “strong ideological education” from Colonel Tetzlaff, an army officer at a secret detention center.

Read the full story HERE.

See also the excellent film The Official Story.

Steven Colbert on the USA as a "Christian Nation"

Syrian Pianist Performs in Washington, Syrian Police Beat His Parents in Syria

CNN
Syrian musician blames security forces for his parents' beating
By Tom Watkins, CNN
July 30, 2011 7:53 a.m. EDT

(CNN) -- Malek Jandali, a pianist who performed last week at a rally in Washington in support of the Syrian opposition, blamed his work for what he said was an attack Thursday night by government security forces on his parents.

The father, Dr. Mamoun Jandali, 73, was carrying groceries from his car to his home in Homs when a man grabbed him from behind and asked him to help care for someone who had been injured, Jandali told CNN Friday in a telephone interview from Orlando, Florida.

When the doctor agreed to do so, the man spoke into his cell phone and said to bring the patient. Moments later, two other men showed up unaccompanied by any patient. They handcuffed the doctor, covered his mouth and nose with duct tape, then took him upstairs, Jandali said. The musician's 66-year-old mother, Linah, was in bed.

"All of a sudden, she finds two men attacking her while the guy was holding my dad and ordering the other two to beat my mom in the head and eyes," Jandali said. "My dad, he couldn't do anything other than watch this atrocity."

The three men broke his mother's teeth and beat his father, then locked them both in their bathroom and ransacked the house, their son said. After the attackers had departed, the father, who had held on to his cell phone throughout the ordeal, called relatives. He had to call security forces to remove his handcuffs.

The doctor then sewed shut a cut in his wife's face, said Jandali.

Jandali said his performance in Washington had provoked the attack. During his mother's beating, "they were telling her that ... 'we're going to teach you how to raise your son.'"
Read the full story HERE.

What Will Happen If Gay Marriage Becomes Legal? (Chart)

Congrats, NY. Cali should have done it ahead of you but could not pull it off.

From Sunday's NYC Pride March (owned, California):

Political haiku - Anthony Weiner Sex Scandal edition

Weiner's politics
I didn't need a screenshot
To know he leans left.

[punchline stolen from a Jon Stewart joke]

Does the Anti-Jewish Foreskin Man Comic Cover Contain Neo-Nazi Code?

The Anti-Defamation League has a post HERE regarding the anti-Jewish/racist comic book published by supporters of the anti-circumcision ballot initiative in San Francisco. (There is also a move to get it on the ballot in Santa Monica.) For background on the ballot initiative, check some of the major California newspaper sites. What I want to talk about is a comic book put out in support of this initiative that portrays Jews as vile monsters, like this: [click to enlarge]

To be clear, I am not claiming that all supporters of the anti-circumcision ballot are anti-Semitic, racist, or whatever. I am specifically addressing the comic book put out by a prominent supporter of the initiative. The publishers claim that the comic is pro-human rights and not anti-Jewish, but that seems a stretch when you have a blond superhero (called Foreskin Man) fighting grotesque Jewish characters that tap into the very old stereotype of depicting Jews as sub-human, bloodthirsty barbarians/vermin/creatures. When one recalls the European myths of Jews sacrificing Christian children for blood rituals, you've got some serious historical tropes at work. And of course, more recently we have the examples of the 1900s Elders of Zion crap and 1930s Nazi Germany propaganda. And look at the Jewish characters. How the hell could this not be offensive?

Here are some more panels from the first issue, which is apparently set in San Diego [facepalm + sigh]:

The Jewish characters are a combination of evil thugs or monsters. If you think I'm exaggerating about the monster part, the gang leader is named Monster Mohel:

In these comics, doctors and thugs tie up unwilling beautiful big-breasted mothers so they can circumcise their sons against their will (but with the father's permission), an act they anticipate with almost sexual/sadistic pleasure. Granted, one has to get past the ridiculousness of a hero called Foreskin Man whose costume has a uncircumcised phallus tip as a logo he wears on his chest. This is so ridiculous it's almost a parody that one would find in The Onion or a bad SNL skit. But all this ridiculousness aside, this is some vile stuff. I mean check out the eyes and dripping teeth of Monster Mohel:

When I saw the cover for issue 2, the thing that really jumped out at me was the fact that Foreskin Man is visibly holding an 8-ball in the very weird setting for a circumcision, a pool table (plus you get a good look at that logo):

So, if one is going to set a circumcision as taking place on a pool table, why out of all the things the superhero (who is able to fly through the air) would do be to pick up a pool ball? Weird, but okay, so maybe he does. Well, out of all fifteen pool balls, he just happens to pick up the 8-ball? Chance, coincidence? Given the fact that 88 serves as a dog whistle for Neo-Nazis (Neo-Nazi code for "Heil Hitler," derived from Heil Hitler = HH = 88, "H" being the eighth letter of the alphabet) is seems too much of a stretch to me. Comic book images in general and covers in particular are very deliberate, and this seems like a subtle little signal put out there for "the right people" to get.

Here's the panel after he hits "Monster Mohel" with the 8-ball. Notice how the hand is now claw-like. This is typical propaganda art that demonizes one's enemy as non-human, a monster. (Remember, it's not anti-Jewish!)

Apparently in Foreskin Man's world, circumcision is so bad that it is better to kidnap a child from his parents than to let them circumcise him.

...and apparently there are sexy hippie chicks (also with large breasts) that will raise kidnapped children "their way"; certainly with their foreskins but probably also raised to hate Jews as well. (For you San Diegans, the foreskin-loving hippies choose Ocean Beach near the pier for their meeting place, which considering the freak factor of OB, makes sense, doesn't it?)

Check out the kid: in all the illustrations the babies' faces are drawn to look like little men instead of newborns, and they react like very alert kids instead of little babies. Anyway, so while I might be off on the 8-ball symbolism, it seems rather clear that the work is clearly anti-Jewish, but really, this is so far off the WTF scale... I never dreamed I would write a blog post about [sigh] FORESKIN MAN.

In the linked story, the comic's creator hints at creating a different kind of story. I anticipate a subsequent edition with a Muslim storyline involving Foreskin Man to deflect charges of anti-Semitism. It will be interesting to see what happens to the ballot measure.

Final note; I obviously do not own the copyright to these images, which are made freely available on the Internet by the creators. I report them here in the spirit of criticism as permitted by copyright law.

UPDATE: Ah hell, there is a Foreskin Man card set too. Check out this SF Gate post HERE.

Roentgenizdat: Soviet Era "X-Ray LPs" of Banned Western Recordings

From Weird Vibrations

October 12, 2009
Roentgenizdat: Sentimental Songs on X-Ray

In the 1950s, music enthusiasts in the Soviet Union made copies of banned Western records using sheets of x-ray film purchased from clinics and hospitals. Photographic film, like wax, acetate, or vinyl, is thick and firm enough to be used with commercially available music engraving machines. X-rays weren’t the ideal medium, being prone to warping, but they worked well enough, and were cheap to boot.

Comments on roentgenizdat have been floating around for a few years, and Princeton English professor Eduardo Cadava is writing a book on the subject, out soon.

Roentgenizdat are interesting, first, as a series of artifacts. Prefiguring picture disks, non-circular shapes, and other graphically novel record gimmicks, these albums feel like an early example of what few people got into until the 70s and 80s – experimentation with records as objects. Although dubbing onto x-ray was in this case a matter of political necessity rather than unprovoked aesthetic tinkering, the dubbers quite clearly paid attention to the images they chose, as well as the placement of the center holes.

.....
Read the entire post HERE.

Street Artist Banksy Directs Dystopian Simpsons Opening Sequence

Westborough Baptist Church vs. Comic-Con

and Comic-Con wins.

You know the Westborough Baptist Church, the hate group that holds up signs saying "God Hates Fags" as they protest soldier's funerals? Well, they came back to San Diego to protest Comic-Con. And while the best way to deal with these lunatics often is to ignore them, the colorful contingent that met them today was pretty damn excellent. How you gonna win an argument against a cartoon robot, a Vulcan, a princess in a steel bikini, a wizard, an anime nymph, and a Jedi? (Oh, and Robin, who is most probably gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.)




More at San Diego Comic-Con and Comic Alliance.

Teaching African American Studies in Russia

Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog has some guest bloggers this week, and I have really enjoyed a couple of posts by Jelani Cobb (who has a blog HERE) on the experience of teaching African American history in Russia. Here are some excerpts:


From "A View From the East":

Jun 17 2010, 1:15 PM ET | Comment
[Jelani Cobb]

Some years back I made a resolution to ignore the second half of any sentence that began with the words "We are the only people who..." Almost always the next clause featured some shortcoming of the race and after years spent drenched in the backwaters of Afrocentrism (the patchouli era), I'd had my fill of black specificity.

"We are the only people," came to be an advance warning that I was talking to someone who probably didn't know much about any people other than (a small segment of) black ones. More subtly, an expression of the speaker's fixation on the values of a wider world they both rejected and envied.

I spent the past spring semester teaching African American history at Moscow State University. People tend to toward a common reaction when I mention this. "What was that like?" The inflection hinting that two decades after the end of the Cold War, Russia -- at least in the minds of Americans -- remains foreign in a way that few other places are. There's a lot I could say about that experience but the shorthand version is the we are not the only people.

.............

In the thirteen years I've been teaching African American history, the common theme has been the way in which the black experience has stood outside of, and therefore defined, American democracy. But from the first day in my classroom at Moscow State University, the unintentional theme was the common threads of the past and its weight in the present. Paul Robeson once said that of all the places he'd visited, Russians reminded him the most of Negroes. He had a point.

Russia's serfs were freed just two years before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
.....

During World War II somewhere between 20-25 million Soviet citizens were killed, meaning on its most basic terms, that they lost more people in four years than died in the entire course of the Transatlantic slave trade.
.........

I traveled 7000 miles and found myself immersed in a culture that was defined, but not destroyed by brutal history, whose people bore the mark of that past even as they took pride in the fact that other people might not have survived such trials. Familiar.

.......... I was reminded of that blues truth that suffering doesn't recede into the past, it gets handed down through history like an inheritance. What one chooses to do with that inheritance is ultimately the only thing that matters.

So no, we aren't the only people. And the only problem comes with needing to be.

It's great stuff, please read the full post HERE.


And a post "That Russian for 'Hope'":

Jun 18 2010, 12:41 PM ET | Comment
[Jelani Cobb]

If you are a black man teaching African American history in Russia in 2010 you will be asked about Barack Obama. A lot. I began my class by projecting an image of black slaves picking cotton on a plantation alongside a picture of the Obama inauguration and explained that my goal for the semester was to explain how we moved from the picture on the left to the picture on the right.

Yesterday the NYT ran a story on a Pew study of Obama's impact on foreign perceptions of the U.S. abroad. Given the previous administration's antagonism toward the UN and references to "old Europe" it's not exactly surprising that the country's popularity in Western Europe surged post-Bush.

But it was worth noting that Russia was one of the two countries that showed the largest increase in positive sentiment toward the United States since Obama's election.

...........

For it's own reasons, the Soviet Union highlighted the history of slavery, lynching, disfranchisement and Jim Crow. As a consequence, even now the Russian students had more base knowledge of African American history than many students I've taught in the United States.) That said, the election of a black president might have been farther outside their expectations than many other places.

The question I encountered most often was whether or not Obama was actually calling the shots. I initially took that as a matter of racial skepticism—surely the black guy was some sort of racial PR stunt. But at some point I realized that the question also had to be understood in context of who was asking it. Many of the Russians I talked to didn't believe their own president was calling the shots. It wasn't cynical, it was raw experience that made it reasonable to doubt whether Barack Obama was actually in charge.

Read the full post HERE.

Mohammad Reza Shajarian: Iran's soulful voice stings hardline regime

CNN

Iran's soulful voice stings hardline regime
By Azadeh Ansari, CNN
June 12, 2010 1:42 p.m. EDT

(CNN) -- A year after a fierce crackdown silenced erupting street protests, not many Iranians living in the country can defy the hardline Islamic government without fearing for their life.

But Mohammad Reza Shajarian, is using his voice like never before.

"Art by its nature is a form of objection," the legendary musician said in an interview during his tour of the United States. "It can object against love, life, or governments and when art becomes rebellious, it can intimidate governments."

Shajarian, 69, sparked his a high-profile protest last year when he publicly objected to state TV and radio broadcasting one of his most popular anthems, "Iran, Ey Saraye Omid" (Iran, the land of Hope), to celebrate the contested re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The song was first performed by Shajarian back in the early days of the 1979 revolution when a popular movement dethroned the Shah. Shajarian was outraged the current Iranian government used his work to drum up patriotic support.

"I'm not going to allow my own work to be used against me," said Shajarian, an outspoken critic of the hardline regime.

In order to channel his own discontent with the escalating violence at the time, Shajarian collaborated with his colleagues and within a day composed "Zabaneh Atash" (Language of Fire) to capture the political and social climate of the post-election fallout. The song begins this way:

Lay down your guns!

I am tired of this gruesome needless shedding of blood

Whether the gun is in your hand or another's

It is the language of fire and mayhem

Shajarian's new release became an instant hit as a battle cry especially for Iran's youth, many of whom are clamoring for change.

"You shouldn't beat people over the head with guns, you have to talk to them logically," Shajarian said.

Shajarian spent most of his life in Iran and was one of a handful of musicians the Islamic regime allowed to stay and perform in the country after the 1979 revolution. But he has also been met with opposition and has only been able to perform in fewer than a dozen concerts in Iran over the past three decades.

Shajarian's interpretations of Persian poetry is lyrical, his voice soulful. He music has captivated Iranians for decades but he has also earned international accolades, including the UNESCO Mozart Medal, the Golden Picasso Medal and two Grammy nominations.

In an effort to encourage cross cultural dialogue and reinvigorate Iran's traditional music profile, Shajarian recently toured Australia, the United States and Canada with 16-member Shahnaz Ensamble, comprised of some of Iran's finest classical musicians.

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Read the full original post (including video) HERE.

(Cuban singer) Silvio Rodriguez: Nostalgia Merchant

Cuban singer Silvio Rodriguez is touring the US for the first time in thirty years. Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez has an blog post at HuffPo

Silvio Rodriguez: Nostalgia Merchant
Yoani Sanchez

Award-Winning Cuban Blogger
Posted: June 2, 2010 09:52 PM

While young people around the world enjoyed the music of the sixties, for Cubans it was forbidden to hear anything that had imperialist echoes, including the Beatles. Just at that time there appeared in our island what ended up being called the Nueva Trova -- New Minstrel -- Movement. Silvio Rodriguez has been its signature performer with songs full of poetic lyrics and music that mixes the tonalities of our traditional minstrel songs with the chords of Bob Dylan.

Silvio's generation, touched by the euphoric effects of the Revolution, was considered anti-establishment, based on between-the-line meanings one could read into his lyrics. He was banned on some television programs and many of his songs were never broadcast. Little by little, before the eyes of followers and detractors, the Movement was absorbed by the ruling ideological apparatus to the point where there came a time when no political event lacked the accompaniment of his songs. He won admirers and spawned imitators, girls swooned over him, and requests for concerts came from all over Latin America.

.....

The 1980s, when at any hour of the day or night, you could turn the radio dial and hear Silvio's songs, are long gone. In those days he won every popularity contest and seemed like a star whose light would never fade. But the demands of tourism and Cubans' own weariness with protest songs, set the stage for the creation and spread of danceable music which, in all its rawness, is the anthem of these times: reggaeton. While Nueva Trova still has its adherents, it has been relegated to niche audiences.

Today, Silvio Rodriguez is the living representative of nostalgia for a utopia that never materialized. Some of his fans come to his concerts decked out in their Che Guevara T-shirts and sing the choruses as if they could roll back history; it's as if they are saying, "This is not dead." Increasingly rare are those who can reconcile his musical expression with his civic behavior, as few can forgive the many years he has been sitting in parliament without raising his hand to ask for an end to the immigration restrictions, the elimination of the dual currency system, or the decriminalization of political dissent.

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Read the full post HERE.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Civil Rights and Rand Paul discussion

Civil rights sit-in by John Salter, Joan Trumpauer, and Anne Moody at Woolworth's lunch counter, Jackson Mississippi, 1963. A crowd of people taunts them and pours sugar, ketchup, and mustard on them in protest.
[edit: in reading a bit more, John Salter is not only covered in condiments but also his own blood, a result of being hit by both brass knuckles and a broken glass sugar container]


Joan Trumpauer's mugshot. She was held in a Mississippi jail for two months for her civil rights actions (seen in the above photo), at times held on death row (I'm assuming that was for her protection). That's right, they sent a young White woman to a Mississippi State Penitentiary for two months because she protested segregation in a non-violent manner. She says she was motivated to act and sustained by her Christian faith. It's pretty damn humbling reading about these folks.

As I seem to recommend every month, you have got to check out Ta-Nehisi's blog at the Atlantic. His responses (and his commenters') to Rand Paul's opposition to the Civil Rights Act are well worth the read. Check HERE and HERE.

New Arizona Immigration law