Thinking of Laura
Friday, April 23, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Michael Benton: If language is a virus, then I'm going to create an epidemic (2.0)
(As always, for Laura)
She munches slowly a morpheme served up as he hungers for her taking the chance to sally the edges of abstraction as antidote to confusion and angst his struggle is for memory flowing through desire released in language initiating possibilities how will she receive my scribblings what will they mean is communication possible I recall her inner beauty standing now solitary I listen to the stillness of my world missing her laughter lacking a singing voice or a painter’s eye I offer up words as a humble offering walking alone along boulevards of color and light I play word games gathering winged thoughts that circle above me turning eros into pages that her passionate eyes might touch as time skips a beat, if, as William Burroughs states, language is a virus, then I am going to create an epidemic
She munches slowly a morpheme served up as he hungers for her taking the chance to sally the edges of abstraction as antidote to confusion and angst his struggle is for memory flowing through desire released in language initiating possibilities how will she receive my scribblings what will they mean is communication possible I recall her inner beauty standing now solitary I listen to the stillness of my world missing her laughter lacking a singing voice or a painter’s eye I offer up words as a humble offering walking alone along boulevards of color and light I play word games gathering winged thoughts that circle above me turning eros into pages that her passionate eyes might touch as time skips a beat, if, as William Burroughs states, language is a virus, then I am going to create an epidemic
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
UCLA African Studies Center: Discussion of the film Darfur Now
Discussion of the film Darfur Now
African Studies Center (UCLA)
Ted Braun, film director, Stephen Rapp, former chief prosecutor for the United Nations-International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Edward Alpers, UCLA History Chair, along with UCLA alum and activist Adam Sterling... Executive Director of Sudan Divestment Task Force and subject in Darfur Now.
To Listen to the Panel
African Studies Center (UCLA)
Complexities can't be an excuse for not taking action.
Ted Braun, film director, Stephen Rapp, former chief prosecutor for the United Nations-International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Edward Alpers, UCLA History Chair, along with UCLA alum and activist Adam Sterling... Executive Director of Sudan Divestment Task Force and subject in Darfur Now.
To Listen to the Panel
Seeing Red Radio: Haiti, Melvin Jones III, MLK and Tony Cliff 2.2
Haiti, Melvin Jones III, MLK and Tony Cliff 2.2
Seeing Red Radio
This week we look at the hidden history of Haiti and the devastation exacted by global capital long before the earthquake struck, juxtaposing Pat Robertson’s hateful words with the “curse” inflicted by the World Bank and others. Also, horrific video is released of a white Springfield, MA police officer beating an African-American man while he was subdued by other officers, we’ll examine the racist legacy of the officer in question and the city’s infamously brutal police department. The last half-hour includes two talks from the Seeing Red archives: Martin Luther King speaking about protest and SWP founder Tony Cliff on the revolutionary party.
Audio montage includes clips from Blackbox Radio, Al Jazeera, Raj Patel, Naomi Klein and Pat Robertson
What You’re Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be) by Carl Lindskoog
Obama Received $20 Million from Healthcare Industry in 2008 Campaign by Brad Jacobson
Tea Party Convention Squeezes Fans
Frustrated With Government Lies, Mexican Electricians Declare Wildcat Actions by Kristin Bricker
Savage Police Brutality Revealed by Gary Lapon
Audio of Paul Robeson Interview
Music:
Lafayette Afro-Rock Band – Hihache
Gift of Gab & Lateef – Kalakuta Show
Leadbelly – Bourgeois Blues
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings – Stop Payin’ Taxes
Background music from John Zorn, Bad Plus, Utah Philips & Ani DiFranco and others
To Listen to the Episode
Seeing Red Radio
This week we look at the hidden history of Haiti and the devastation exacted by global capital long before the earthquake struck, juxtaposing Pat Robertson’s hateful words with the “curse” inflicted by the World Bank and others. Also, horrific video is released of a white Springfield, MA police officer beating an African-American man while he was subdued by other officers, we’ll examine the racist legacy of the officer in question and the city’s infamously brutal police department. The last half-hour includes two talks from the Seeing Red archives: Martin Luther King speaking about protest and SWP founder Tony Cliff on the revolutionary party.
Audio montage includes clips from Blackbox Radio, Al Jazeera, Raj Patel, Naomi Klein and Pat Robertson
What You’re Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be) by Carl Lindskoog
Obama Received $20 Million from Healthcare Industry in 2008 Campaign by Brad Jacobson
Tea Party Convention Squeezes Fans
Frustrated With Government Lies, Mexican Electricians Declare Wildcat Actions by Kristin Bricker
Savage Police Brutality Revealed by Gary Lapon
Audio of Paul Robeson Interview
Music:
Lafayette Afro-Rock Band – Hihache
Gift of Gab & Lateef – Kalakuta Show
Leadbelly – Bourgeois Blues
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings – Stop Payin’ Taxes
Background music from John Zorn, Bad Plus, Utah Philips & Ani DiFranco and others
To Listen to the Episode
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Otto Rene Castillo: Apolitical Intellectuals
APOLITICAL INTELLECTUALS
One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.
They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.
No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with "the idea
of the nothing"
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.
They won't be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward's death.
They'll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total life.
On that day
the simple men will come.
Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they'll ask:
"What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?"
Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.
A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.
Your own misery
will pick at your soul.
And you will be mute in your shame.
--Otto Rene Castillo
One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.
They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.
No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with "the idea
of the nothing"
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.
They won't be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward's death.
They'll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total life.
On that day
the simple men will come.
Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they'll ask:
"What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?"
Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.
A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.
Your own misery
will pick at your soul.
And you will be mute in your shame.
--Otto Rene Castillo
Seeing Red Radio: Black Panther Party, Zionist Racism in the Knesset and the Winnipeg General Strike
(Essential history of the BPP)
Black Panther Party, Zionist Racism in the Knesset and the Winnipeg General Strike
Seeing Red Radio
Seeing Red remembers the Black Panther Party, featuring the voices of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Bobby Rush, Fred Hampton and others. We follow with Israel’s right-wing coalition lashing out at Israeli Arabs in the Knesset with a trio of bills that would criminalize any commemoration of the Nakba, any refusal to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state”, and demand of Israeli Arabs to sign loyalty oaths or lose their citizenship. Finally, we remember the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.
Israeli Parliament OKs Bill to Outlaw Denial of Israel as ‘Jewish State’ by Jason Ditz
In Israel, Democratic Rights in Peril by Daniel Rosenberg
World Bank Report Reveals Disparity of Water Supply to Palestinians by Rory McCarthy, The Guardian
90th Anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike by Alex Grant
Music:
Panther – The Last Poets
Comrade’s Call – Dead Prez feat. M1
All Hid – Camille Yarborough
Let My People Go – Darongo
Message From a Black Man – Derrick Harriot
Socialism – Dillinger
If I Had a Rocket Launcher – Bruce Cockburn
To Listen to the Episode
Black Panther Party, Zionist Racism in the Knesset and the Winnipeg General Strike
Seeing Red Radio
Seeing Red remembers the Black Panther Party, featuring the voices of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Bobby Rush, Fred Hampton and others. We follow with Israel’s right-wing coalition lashing out at Israeli Arabs in the Knesset with a trio of bills that would criminalize any commemoration of the Nakba, any refusal to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state”, and demand of Israeli Arabs to sign loyalty oaths or lose their citizenship. Finally, we remember the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.
Israeli Parliament OKs Bill to Outlaw Denial of Israel as ‘Jewish State’ by Jason Ditz
In Israel, Democratic Rights in Peril by Daniel Rosenberg
World Bank Report Reveals Disparity of Water Supply to Palestinians by Rory McCarthy, The Guardian
90th Anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike by Alex Grant
Music:
Panther – The Last Poets
Comrade’s Call – Dead Prez feat. M1
All Hid – Camille Yarborough
Let My People Go – Darongo
Message From a Black Man – Derrick Harriot
Socialism – Dillinger
If I Had a Rocket Launcher – Bruce Cockburn
To Listen to the Episode
9500 Liberty (USA: Eric Byler and Annabel Park, 2009)
Full report on the documentary 9500 Liberty: 9-11 Not the Same as 7-11
Also check out:
Change: "Arizona: One Step Closer to a Police State"
Monday, April 19, 2010
UCLA African Studies Center: Stephen Lewis -- Promises in AIDS Fight Not Met
Promises in AIDS Fight Not Met
African Studies Center (UCLA)
Focusing on Africa, former UN envoy Stephen Lewis expresses amazement at the passivity of the international community as the HIV/AIDS epidemic traumatizes women, creates orphans, and continues on its decades-long path of devastation.
To Listen to the Speech
African Studies Center (UCLA)
Focusing on Africa, former UN envoy Stephen Lewis expresses amazement at the passivity of the international community as the HIV/AIDS epidemic traumatizes women, creates orphans, and continues on its decades-long path of devastation.
To Listen to the Speech
Seed Salon: Robert Trivers and Noam Chomsky
Seed Salon discussion between Robert Trivers and Noam Chomsky on deception. Very interesting examples and theories.
Seed Magazine: Michel Gondry and Robert Stickgold discuss dreams, filmmaking and the scientific method
Michel Gondry and Robert Stickgold discuss dreams, filmmaking and the scientific method
Claire Cain Miller: Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley
Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
The New York Times
CANDACE FLEMING’S résumé boasts a double major in industrial engineering and English from Stanford, an M.B.A. from Harvard, a management position at Hewlett-Packard and experience as president of a small software company.
But when she was raising money for Crimson Hexagon, a start-up company she co-founded in 2007, she recalls one venture capitalist telling her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have business cards, because all they would say was “Mom.”
Another potential backer invited her for a weekend yachting excursion by showing her a picture of himself on the boat — without clothes. When a third financier discovered that her husband was also a biking enthusiast, she says, he spent more time asking if riding affected her husband’s reproductive capabilities than he did focusing on her business plan.
Ultimately, none of the 30 venture firms she pitched financed her company. She finally raised $1.8 million in March 2008 from angel investors including Golden Seeds, a fund that emphasizes investing in start-ups led by women.
“I didn’t know things like this still happened,” says Ms. Fleming, 37. “But I know that, especially in risky times like the last couple years, some investors kind of retreat to investing via a template.” A company owned by a woman, she adds, “is just not the standard template.”
Though many people say that outright sexism is rare in the tech world these days, the barriers that Ms. Fleming encountered aren’t unusual. Tech communities in Silicon Valley and in other hubs — like New York, Austin, Tex., and Boston, where Ms. Fleming lives — pride themselves on operating as raw meritocracies ready to embrace anyone with a good idea, regardless of education, age or station in life.
For women, though, that narrative often unfolds differently.
Women own 40 percent of the private businesses in the United States, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. But they create only 8 percent of the venture-backed tech start-ups, according to Astia, a nonprofit group that advises female entrepreneurs.
That disparity reaches beyond entrepreneurs. Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech companies, and 22 percent of the software engineers at tech companies over all, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. And among venture capitalists, the population of financiers who control the purse strings for a majority of tech start-ups, just 14 percent are women, the National Venture Capital Association says.
That reality is even more complex when race is factored into the mix. Small percentages of workers in information technology are African-American, Asian or Hispanic, and that number is even smaller for women.
“It’s not like people are making an effort to exclude people, but I see very little diversity in the candidate pool,” says Aileen Lee, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the big venture capital firm. She says this could reflect the different educational paths men and women follow in high school and college: men, for a variety of reasons, are more likely to pursue computer science and engineering degrees and subsequently rise through start-up or management ranks.
WOMEN now outnumber men at elite colleges, law schools, medical schools and in the overall work force. Yet a stark imbalance of the sexes persists in the high-tech world, where change typically happens at breakneck speed.
And analysts say more than social equity is at stake. A dearth of ideas and participation by women in the technology churn has business consequences as well.
The latest Web start-ups — for socializing, gaming and shopping — often attract more women than men as users. And many products from tech giants are aimed at women. But when Apple unveiled its new mobile computing device, it called it the iPad — a name that made many women wince with visions of feminine hygiene products.
Research indicates that investing in women as tech entrepreneurs is good for the bottom line. Venture-backed start-ups run by women use, on average, 40 percent less capital than start-ups run by men and are increasingly involved in successful initial public offerings of stock, according to a recent white paper by Cindy Padnos, a venture capitalist who compiled data from 100 studies on gender and tech entrepreneurship.
“When you have gender diversity in an organization, you have better innovation, and I don’t know where innovation is more important than in the high-tech world,” says Ms. Padnos, who recently founded Illuminate Ventures, which invests in start-ups led by women.
To Read the Rest of the Article
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
The New York Times
CANDACE FLEMING’S résumé boasts a double major in industrial engineering and English from Stanford, an M.B.A. from Harvard, a management position at Hewlett-Packard and experience as president of a small software company.
But when she was raising money for Crimson Hexagon, a start-up company she co-founded in 2007, she recalls one venture capitalist telling her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have business cards, because all they would say was “Mom.”
Another potential backer invited her for a weekend yachting excursion by showing her a picture of himself on the boat — without clothes. When a third financier discovered that her husband was also a biking enthusiast, she says, he spent more time asking if riding affected her husband’s reproductive capabilities than he did focusing on her business plan.
Ultimately, none of the 30 venture firms she pitched financed her company. She finally raised $1.8 million in March 2008 from angel investors including Golden Seeds, a fund that emphasizes investing in start-ups led by women.
“I didn’t know things like this still happened,” says Ms. Fleming, 37. “But I know that, especially in risky times like the last couple years, some investors kind of retreat to investing via a template.” A company owned by a woman, she adds, “is just not the standard template.”
Though many people say that outright sexism is rare in the tech world these days, the barriers that Ms. Fleming encountered aren’t unusual. Tech communities in Silicon Valley and in other hubs — like New York, Austin, Tex., and Boston, where Ms. Fleming lives — pride themselves on operating as raw meritocracies ready to embrace anyone with a good idea, regardless of education, age or station in life.
For women, though, that narrative often unfolds differently.
Women own 40 percent of the private businesses in the United States, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. But they create only 8 percent of the venture-backed tech start-ups, according to Astia, a nonprofit group that advises female entrepreneurs.
That disparity reaches beyond entrepreneurs. Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech companies, and 22 percent of the software engineers at tech companies over all, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. And among venture capitalists, the population of financiers who control the purse strings for a majority of tech start-ups, just 14 percent are women, the National Venture Capital Association says.
That reality is even more complex when race is factored into the mix. Small percentages of workers in information technology are African-American, Asian or Hispanic, and that number is even smaller for women.
“It’s not like people are making an effort to exclude people, but I see very little diversity in the candidate pool,” says Aileen Lee, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the big venture capital firm. She says this could reflect the different educational paths men and women follow in high school and college: men, for a variety of reasons, are more likely to pursue computer science and engineering degrees and subsequently rise through start-up or management ranks.
WOMEN now outnumber men at elite colleges, law schools, medical schools and in the overall work force. Yet a stark imbalance of the sexes persists in the high-tech world, where change typically happens at breakneck speed.
And analysts say more than social equity is at stake. A dearth of ideas and participation by women in the technology churn has business consequences as well.
The latest Web start-ups — for socializing, gaming and shopping — often attract more women than men as users. And many products from tech giants are aimed at women. But when Apple unveiled its new mobile computing device, it called it the iPad — a name that made many women wince with visions of feminine hygiene products.
Research indicates that investing in women as tech entrepreneurs is good for the bottom line. Venture-backed start-ups run by women use, on average, 40 percent less capital than start-ups run by men and are increasingly involved in successful initial public offerings of stock, according to a recent white paper by Cindy Padnos, a venture capitalist who compiled data from 100 studies on gender and tech entrepreneurship.
“When you have gender diversity in an organization, you have better innovation, and I don’t know where innovation is more important than in the high-tech world,” says Ms. Padnos, who recently founded Illuminate Ventures, which invests in start-ups led by women.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Dave Lindorff: I’m Not Shedding Any Tears for Daryl Gates
RedI’m Not Shedding Any Tears for Daryl Gates
by Dave Lindorff
Common Dreams
The former Los Angeles police chief, Daryl Gates, who died last Friday of cancer at his home in California, is being widely credited in mostly laudatory newspaper obituaries as the man who developed the idea of Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT)units--those paramilitary police teams so loved by Hollywood filmmakers--who bring the art and weaponry of modern warfare into communities, breaking into houses with faces covered in ski masks, and carrying assault weapons in order to make arrests for often minor offenses, or blowing away people--often innocent people--in what the modern military calls "force escalation incidents."
But Gates was more than just the Sultan of SWAT.
He was also a proponent of the police-state tactic of massive surveillance and spying. Not that he invented it. As a deputy chief under Chief Ed Davis, and later as chief of police, Gates inherited the LAPD's notorious "Red Squad," known as the Public Disorder Intelligence Division (PDID), which had a sordid history going back into the 1920s, but he certainly expanded it dramatically.
I had my own experience with the PDID when I was an editor of the little alternative news weekly, the Los Angeles Vanguard, founded by myself and several other Los Angeles journalists in 1976, after the demise of the venerable Los Angeles Free Press. Our publication, which took on the issue of police brutality and especially the all-to-frequent shooting of unarmed citizens, very quickly became a special focus of the PDID. We learned, years after our publication had folded, that our volunteer staff had been infiltrated by a young PDID officer named Connie Milazzo, a woman just out of the Police Academy, who came to us posing as a journalist wannabe.
In a depositions taken by attorneys with the Southern California American Civil LIberties Union as part of a class action suit against the LAPD and the City of Los Angeles in the early 1980s, after Milazzo and other equally young Red Squad spies had been discovered infiltrating over 200 peaceful organizations in Los Angeles ranging from our newspaper to the local chapters of NOW, the Peace & Freedom Party, and even the office of City Councillor Zev Yaroslavsky, we learned that the PDID was gathering dossiers on literally thousands of local political activists, infiltrating and spying on protected political activities like peace demonstrations, anti-nuclear demonstrations and even political campaigns, and also engaging in provocateur activities, trying to encourage peaceful groups to cross the line into criminal actions.
To Read the Rest of the Remembrance
by Dave Lindorff
Common Dreams
The former Los Angeles police chief, Daryl Gates, who died last Friday of cancer at his home in California, is being widely credited in mostly laudatory newspaper obituaries as the man who developed the idea of Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT)units--those paramilitary police teams so loved by Hollywood filmmakers--who bring the art and weaponry of modern warfare into communities, breaking into houses with faces covered in ski masks, and carrying assault weapons in order to make arrests for often minor offenses, or blowing away people--often innocent people--in what the modern military calls "force escalation incidents."
But Gates was more than just the Sultan of SWAT.
He was also a proponent of the police-state tactic of massive surveillance and spying. Not that he invented it. As a deputy chief under Chief Ed Davis, and later as chief of police, Gates inherited the LAPD's notorious "Red Squad," known as the Public Disorder Intelligence Division (PDID), which had a sordid history going back into the 1920s, but he certainly expanded it dramatically.
I had my own experience with the PDID when I was an editor of the little alternative news weekly, the Los Angeles Vanguard, founded by myself and several other Los Angeles journalists in 1976, after the demise of the venerable Los Angeles Free Press. Our publication, which took on the issue of police brutality and especially the all-to-frequent shooting of unarmed citizens, very quickly became a special focus of the PDID. We learned, years after our publication had folded, that our volunteer staff had been infiltrated by a young PDID officer named Connie Milazzo, a woman just out of the Police Academy, who came to us posing as a journalist wannabe.
In a depositions taken by attorneys with the Southern California American Civil LIberties Union as part of a class action suit against the LAPD and the City of Los Angeles in the early 1980s, after Milazzo and other equally young Red Squad spies had been discovered infiltrating over 200 peaceful organizations in Los Angeles ranging from our newspaper to the local chapters of NOW, the Peace & Freedom Party, and even the office of City Councillor Zev Yaroslavsky, we learned that the PDID was gathering dossiers on literally thousands of local political activists, infiltrating and spying on protected political activities like peace demonstrations, anti-nuclear demonstrations and even political campaigns, and also engaging in provocateur activities, trying to encourage peaceful groups to cross the line into criminal actions.
To Read the Rest of the Remembrance
Negar Mottahedeh: Green Is the New Green
Green is the New Green
by Negar Mottahedeh
The Negarponti Files
The Persian language blogosphere is a rich, varied and dynamic sphere of over 60,000 frequently updated blogs. In 2005, out of the 100 million blogs registered around the world, 700,000 were registered Persian blogs inside Iran and in the diaspora. With over 20 million Iranians connecting to the internet, and over 600,000 Iranians signed up on Facebook by the Presidential elections of the summer of 2009, the Iranian cyber community is by far the most dynamic community in the Middle East, and one that is unambiguously diverse. Of the over 60, 000 Persian language blogs, three quarters may be characterized as non-political in content, interested rather in questions of religion, poetry, and sexuality.
Shortly after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election as president in June 2005, there were clear indications of a campaign for the centralization of state power over traditional media. During the first two years of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, more than 100 newspapers and other periodicals were banned. 70% of the press outlets were run by active supporters of Ahmadinejad. It is important to note that what remained of the opposition's news outlets was banned or put under strict surveillance in the aftermath of the June 12th Presidential elections in Iran in 2009. On the eve of the 2009 election, foreign reporters were either imprisoned or expelled from Iran. This, in part led to the rise of online “underground” papers, such as Kalam Sabz ( Green Word) and Khiaban (The Street), and more urgent uses of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and the Iranian social media site: Balatarin.com
...
The thousands of supporters the Green Movement on Twitter and Facebook became nodal points of information for what was happening on the ground, in the absence of foreign news agencies and independent media in Iran. Many of these supporters continued to help spread the news about various online and in-person campaigns. Others came to the aid of Iranian protesters by identifying safe havens for the wounded on Google maps as word spread that the wounded were being picked up and imprisoned by military forces upon their arrival to hospitals around Tehran.
To Read the Entire Post
by Negar Mottahedeh
The Negarponti Files
The Persian language blogosphere is a rich, varied and dynamic sphere of over 60,000 frequently updated blogs. In 2005, out of the 100 million blogs registered around the world, 700,000 were registered Persian blogs inside Iran and in the diaspora. With over 20 million Iranians connecting to the internet, and over 600,000 Iranians signed up on Facebook by the Presidential elections of the summer of 2009, the Iranian cyber community is by far the most dynamic community in the Middle East, and one that is unambiguously diverse. Of the over 60, 000 Persian language blogs, three quarters may be characterized as non-political in content, interested rather in questions of religion, poetry, and sexuality.
Shortly after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election as president in June 2005, there were clear indications of a campaign for the centralization of state power over traditional media. During the first two years of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, more than 100 newspapers and other periodicals were banned. 70% of the press outlets were run by active supporters of Ahmadinejad. It is important to note that what remained of the opposition's news outlets was banned or put under strict surveillance in the aftermath of the June 12th Presidential elections in Iran in 2009. On the eve of the 2009 election, foreign reporters were either imprisoned or expelled from Iran. This, in part led to the rise of online “underground” papers, such as Kalam Sabz ( Green Word) and Khiaban (The Street), and more urgent uses of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and the Iranian social media site: Balatarin.com
...
The thousands of supporters the Green Movement on Twitter and Facebook became nodal points of information for what was happening on the ground, in the absence of foreign news agencies and independent media in Iran. Many of these supporters continued to help spread the news about various online and in-person campaigns. Others came to the aid of Iranian protesters by identifying safe havens for the wounded on Google maps as word spread that the wounded were being picked up and imprisoned by military forces upon their arrival to hospitals around Tehran.
To Read the Entire Post
Seeing Red Radio: The One-State Solution and the Truth behind the Employee Free Choice Act
The One-State Solution and the Truth behind the Employee Free Choice Act
Seeing Red Radio
The Two-State Solution is a non-starter with the Zionist regime of Netanyahu. On this edition of SRR we examine the proposal for a secular one-state that represents all of the people of historic Palestine. We also expose the heinous lies of pro-corporate opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act, including the glaring statistic that reveals the number of unfair labor practice filings with the National Labor Review Board against unions amounts to “only 42 cases of misconduct over seven decades—while there are nearly 30,000 unfair labor practices against workers by companies every year.” So much for “union intimidation”… We also commemorate the horrific end of the first acquisition of state power by the working class, the Paris Commune, when it was violently suppressed in 1871.
Return of the One-State Solution: The case for a single democratic secular state in historic Palestine by Phil Gasper
CBS 60 Minutes, Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution
Workers Face Increasing Abuse in Attempts to Form Unions by Seth Michaels
Music:
They’re Building a Wall & The Key – David Rovics
Cobracoustic – Cobra Skulls
There is Power in a Union – Utah Phillips
Let Them Eat War – Bad Religion
Return & Palestine – David Rovics
People Lead – Ben Harper
Song the Songbird Sings – David Rovics
Masters of War – Pearl Jam
After the Revolution – David Rovics
To Listen to the Episode
Seeing Red Radio
The Two-State Solution is a non-starter with the Zionist regime of Netanyahu. On this edition of SRR we examine the proposal for a secular one-state that represents all of the people of historic Palestine. We also expose the heinous lies of pro-corporate opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act, including the glaring statistic that reveals the number of unfair labor practice filings with the National Labor Review Board against unions amounts to “only 42 cases of misconduct over seven decades—while there are nearly 30,000 unfair labor practices against workers by companies every year.” So much for “union intimidation”… We also commemorate the horrific end of the first acquisition of state power by the working class, the Paris Commune, when it was violently suppressed in 1871.
Return of the One-State Solution: The case for a single democratic secular state in historic Palestine by Phil Gasper
CBS 60 Minutes, Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution
Workers Face Increasing Abuse in Attempts to Form Unions by Seth Michaels
Music:
They’re Building a Wall & The Key – David Rovics
Cobracoustic – Cobra Skulls
There is Power in a Union – Utah Phillips
Let Them Eat War – Bad Religion
Return & Palestine – David Rovics
People Lead – Ben Harper
Song the Songbird Sings – David Rovics
Masters of War – Pearl Jam
After the Revolution – David Rovics
To Listen to the Episode
Friday, April 09, 2010
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Voices of the Middle East and North Africa - Jerusalem, a modern history; also, in search of Iraq's artistic life
Jerusalem, a modern history; also, in search of Iraq's artistic life
Voices of the Middle East and North Africa
In tonight's program, Khalil Bendib speaks with Director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies and Birzeit University Professor of sociology Salim Tamari about an essay published in the Jerusalem quarterly titled "Jerusalem's Ottoman modernity," in which he depicts a very different Jerusalem around the turn of the 20th century than the one we are familiar with today.
Later in the program, Malihe Razazan speaks with Hadani Ditmars, a co-editor of New Internationalist, who went to Iraq in February of this year to explore whatever is left of the art in post-invasion Iraq.
To Listen to the Episode
Voices of the Middle East and North Africa
In tonight's program, Khalil Bendib speaks with Director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies and Birzeit University Professor of sociology Salim Tamari about an essay published in the Jerusalem quarterly titled "Jerusalem's Ottoman modernity," in which he depicts a very different Jerusalem around the turn of the 20th century than the one we are familiar with today.
Later in the program, Malihe Razazan speaks with Hadani Ditmars, a co-editor of New Internationalist, who went to Iraq in February of this year to explore whatever is left of the art in post-invasion Iraq.
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