Que Revolu.....

DJ Earworm - United State of Pop 2008 (Viva La Pop) - Mashup

2009-01-04T13:44:00.001-06:00

A Message from the Brooklyn Tourism Board

2008-12-17T14:28:00.001-06:00

Race....

2008-11-26T15:09:00.000-06:00

Black does not equal African American. Spanish does not equal Latin@. yes, Black Latin@s do exist. Nationality, Ethnicity, & Race are different things.....

What did the 5 fingers say to the face?

2008-11-18T22:43:00.001-06:00

2008-11-18T08:11:00.000-06:00

Heartless from kwest on Vimeo.

2008-10-24T03:17:00.001-05:00

http://view.break.com/592648 - Watch more free videos

Bernard Hopkins vs Monse

2008-10-22T00:35:00.001-05:00

Obamania in Brazil elections - 04 Oct 08

2008-10-22T00:32:00.001-05:00

Gook: John McCain's Racism and Why It Matters

2008-10-22T00:28:00.001-05:00

Misconceptions of Obama fuel Republican campaign - 13 Oct 08

2008-10-21T03:15:00.001-05:00

This is the country we live in......

2008-10-20T00:47:00.002-05:00

OCTOBER 9, 2008

What Do You Get For Two Million MySpace Friends and 26 Million Streams?

Atlantic rapper T.I. has passed two million MySpace friends, his MySpace page has over 82.6 million views and his hit single "Whatever You Like" has over 27 million streams at MySpace. Right now all of the songs at his MySpace page are collectively getting well over one million streams per day and to date have streamed over 138 million times.

How does all that translate into cash?

First-week sales of the album Paper Trail were 568,000. The album will have a big second-week drop but should top one million units within a few weeks. First week sales of the song "Whatever You Like" totaled almost 335,000 units. That's 0.13 song purchases per MySpace stream, or $0.09 of download revenue per song stream. (I'm comparing U.S. sales to global MySpace statistics. Comparing numbers across territories like that isn't the best way to compare artist statistics, but it's the only way I can do it.)

Having a #1 song will influence traffic at an artist's MySpace page. At a penny per stream, T.I.'s MySpace page can bring in $15,000 per day if visitors listen to 1.5 million streams (which T.I. will easily exceed today). Those streams would generate even more revenue if the songs had an Amazon.com buy button (which they do not yet have). That's $105,000 in ad revenue for one week. Album sales, assuming a 15/85 digital/physical split, brought in (roughly) $5.42 million. First-week sales of "Whatever You Like" brought in $235,000 (I don't know a la carte sales from other tracks on the album, so I am ignoring them as well as ringtones). The total of the three is $5.76 million. That's $3.75 per MySpace friend (again, not including ringtones).

Robin Thicke released an album last week as well. Something Else sold 137,000 units. His MySpace page has 8.52 million visits to date and he has 279,000 friends. Even though Thicke's MySpace page has streamed 17 million songs, he doesn't currently have a #1 single as does T.I. Thicke's MySpace page has streamed his latest single only 130,000 times. The page is getting about 30,000 streams per day. That's only $300 per day at a penny per stream and $2,100 per week. Just to get in revenue from a single, let's say Thicke sold 50,000 units last week. That's $35,000 in revenue. With a 15/85 split on the album, that's revenue of $1.31 million. The total for the three is about $1.35 million. That's $4.82 per MySpace friend.

Let's compare to another debut last week, The Glass Passenger by emo band Jack's Mannequin. The album debuted with sales of 49,000 units. Relative to the band's number of MySpace friends, that's the same as T.I. but worse than Thicke. If friends of Jack's Mannequin had purchased the album at the same rate Robin Thicke friends bought his record, they would have sold about 104,000 units. The band's MySpace page had streamed over 14 million songs to date and is currently doing less than 100,000 streams per day. That's $1,000 per day at a penny per stream. With a 20/80 split on the album (a bit higher because it's rock) that's first-week revenue of about $467,600 without taking into account a la carte track purchases and ringtones. That's only $2.21 per MySpace friend.

• T.I.: 0.263 albums per MySpace friend, 0.026 MySpace friends/profile views
• Thicke: 0.491 albums per MySpace friend, 0.0327 MySpace friends/profile views
• Jack's Mannequin: 0.23 albums per MySpace friend

Peep the original article from Coolfer Here

New McCain Attack Ad

2008-10-13T15:52:00.001-05:00

Special Comment - Palin's Terrorist Tie's 10-6-08

2008-10-08T18:19:00.001-05:00

Rebel Diaz "A Trillion"- NO BAILOUT FOR WALL ST. CROOKS!!

2008-10-08T11:21:00.001-05:00

Don't Vote

2008-10-02T11:47:00.001-05:00

Pimp my Piragua

2008-10-02T11:15:00.009-05:00

The NY Times has a niece piece(w/video) on Puerto Rican artist Miguel Luciano's new project "Pimp My Piragua." Miguel is one of my favorite artists. His work addresses the "playful and painful exchanges between Puerto Rico and the United States, questioning the efficacy of a colonial relationship that continues to exist today." If you haven't seen his other work, you must. His Pure Plantainum project is one of my favorites.

Luciano's "Pimp my Piragua" project is currently being exhibited in the Queens Museum of Art

Here is some more of Miguel's other work:

"Luciano critically reconstructs, subverts and establishes
new hierarchies, meanings and allegories that redefine
the Puerto Rican paradigm."
-Juan Sánchez

For more info on Miguel click Here

Kanye West - Love Lockdown (Mysto & Pizzi Electro House Remix)

2008-10-02T00:04:00.001-05:00

Dope Remix...Props to Kanye for releasing the stems

Hipster Rap

2008-09-29T23:48:00.001-05:00

Been meaning to post this for a while.....Jay Smooth gives us his take on "Hipster Rap."

Lil Wayne, A Tribe Called Quest - A Milli (The Sample)

2008-09-29T23:09:00.001-05:00

Pew/Internet: African Americans and the Internet

2008-09-29T22:59:00.003-05:00

African Americans and the Internet

Tom Spooner
Lee Rainie

While there has been strong growth, African-American adults still lag far behind their peers in other ethnic groups. This growth has been primarily driven by women, creating a notable gender gap that isn’t found in other ethnic user populations. Also, the African-American Internet population is younger, has more modest incomes and a higher proportion of users without college diplomas. When African-Americans go online, looking for information that is beneficial to their lives, like searching for a new job or place to live, is especially popular. Entertainment features online are also popular, which is most likely a result of the relative youthfulness of the African-American Internet population. Because of the relative inexperience of the average African-American user, the Web has not been fully integrated into his or her daily life. African-Americans are less likely to use the Internet on a daily basis and also spend less time online than their peers.

View the full report Here

More to Come

2008-09-29T22:51:00.002-05:00

Haven't been posting regularly because I've been out of the country most of the summer, more posts to come soon. Here are a few of my pics from Puerto Rico....

Kitundu PhonoKora Demonstration

2008-09-27T03:05:00.001-05:00

Tim Wise: On White Privilege (Clip)

2008-07-02T23:04:00.001-05:00

Runnin' Scared From Brooklyn, a Rap Campaign Against Tight Clothes

2008-06-29T23:38:00.002-05:00

Runnin' Scared
From Brooklyn, a Rap Campaign Against Tight Clothes
You can call their rhymes tight, just not their jeans
by Arcynta Ali Childs
June 24th, 2008 12:00 AM

If clothes make the man, do tight clothes make the man a homosexual? A Brooklyn-based rap group thinks the current trend in hip-hop—medium tees and sagging jeans cinched tightly below the hips—is causing some confusion. And they are not alone.

Members of the rap group Thug Slaughter Force—three brothers and two friends calling themselves Drama, Filthy, Tempa, Rebel, and Blanco the Don—walk the streets of Brooklyn in XL T-shirts with the words "Tight Clothes" slashed through with a red stripe: their message of protest against what they see as the move away from traditional baggy clothing and toward tighter-fitting outfits in today's hip-hop. The "No Tight Clothes" campaign is their latest idea in a decade of trying to make it in the rap game.

"Where'd you get that shirt from?" yells Elijah Bilal, sitting outside Lalove Uniform on Fulton Street. "Bring me one!" the 40-year-old adds, and then offers a reporter his own observation about the direction of hip-hop attire: "The tight clothes—what, the boys is gay now? Boys walking around thinking they girls, girls walking around thinking they boys . . . No wonder all the girls are dating girls—because the boys are gay!"

And Bilal isn't alone in his analysis. "I like that shirt," says a 28-year-old NYPD officer on foot who didn't want to be named. "This movement of everyone wearing tight-fitting clothes—it's not nice."

"That's a beautiful thing," says 26-year-old Thug Slaughter Force member Tempa. "You walk through the street and don't have to say nothing—the product sells itself."

Besides the shirts for sale, TSF are also promoting themselves with (no surprise) a YouTube video, which shows scores of young people wearing their own shirts and leaping to the lyrics of TSF's anthem, "No Tight Clothes."

The video opens with an over-the-top "Slaughter General's Warning": "Wearing tight clothes by men may result in feminine tendencies, homosexuality, possible yeast infection, severe hemorrhoids, permanent wedgies, and genetically inherited transsexual characteristics in your son."

And then come the lyrics:

Take them tight-ass fuckin' clothes off

That shit ain't gangsta, nigga

We don't wear tight clothes . . . we let it hang!

. . . Shirt extra-small and you six feet tall

Lookin' like you got your pants off a Ken doll

Silk speedo cheetah-print Superman drawers . . .

. . . And what the fuck is this shit?

Rude boy rockin' Prada

Rhinestones on his collar

Cowboy belt buckle with a chain like a rocker

You forgot you was Rasta

You need to puff on the ganja. . . .

Are these rappers for real? "It basically boils down to: You are in a homosexual attire, and you are claiming to be something else," says 28-year-old TSF member Blanco the Don. "That's what I have a problem with—not the homosexualism. You're a front artist, and you're promoting homosexuality with your actions and dress code, but you're promoting gangster lifestyle with your lyrics. The two don't match up."

To be clear, the "you" he's referring to are the artists who set trends—the ones who wear rhinestones, big belt buckles, tight shirts, and small jackets, and carry "man bags."

"It's a string of rappers with the man bag . . . calling it a 'man bag,' but you're wearing a purse," says Tempa. Blanco and Tempa both say that the language of the "Warning" is meant in jest, but not everyone is convinced.

"I think it's offensive," says Park Slope resident Jenny Brauer. "It's homophobic, inflammatory, and highly prejudicial." Although, she added, "there is a humorous aspect to this; it's not lost on me."

Blanco, for his part, insists that "it's not a gay-bashing movement." On the other hand, he added, "if you are homosexual, you are not gangsta. There's nothing gangster about being homosexual."

Homophobia in rap is nothing new, of course. And there's a growing awareness of homosexuality in hip-hop.

"You walk in urban communities [like] Harlem, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and you see these young people walking around with pants sagging way down below their ass cheeks and underwear showing—what are you selling? That's much more homoerotic than fitted jeans," says Terrance Dean, author of Hiding in Hip Hop: On the Down Low in the Entertainment Industry—from Music to Hollywood, a book that electrified the music industry when it was published last month and hinted at the homosexuality of numerous unnamed music figures.

"It just so happens that heterosexual people are always emulating gay style," Dean says. "Most stylists are gay," and, he points out, those styles then make their way from international runways to inner- city neighborhoods. "I don't think it necessarily correlates with people being gay or feminine," he adds. "I think it's just fashion and hip-hop go hand in hand."

But he doesn't share TSF's fashion sense: "It's about time that people started wearing clothes that fit."

Among some residents of Brooklyn, however, this is a minority view. One such young man, emerging from the Brooklyn Courthouse in a Boston Celtics jersey stopped briefly to talk with Blanco and Tempa and, upon hearing they were rappers, even kicked a little rhyme: "As I reminisce/with two of my bros/tell them niggas/don't wear no tight clothes!"

Here's the video for TSF's "NO TIGHT CLOTHES"

Lil Wayne and the Afronaut Invasion

2008-06-24T10:50:00.002-05:00

Lil Wayne and the Afronaut Invasion
Why have so many black musicians been obsessed with outer space?

By Jonah Weiner
Posted Friday, June 20, 2008, at 1:50 PM ET
In 1927, the Rev. A.W. Nix, a preacher from Birmingham, Ala., entered a recording studio to commit several of his sermons to wax. He intended to release them commercially on the burgeoning gospel-music circuit. A Southern Baptist, Nix had an ear for the musical possibilities of oratory and a taste for fire and brimstone. His sermons, delivered in the rich, ravaged singsong of a Delta bluesman, bore darkly chastening titles like "Death Might Be Your Christmas Gift" and "The Prayer Meeting in Hell." Tucked into this catalog of apocalyptic warnings, though, was "The White Flyer to Heaven," a rapturous, six-minute homily about riding a spaceship piloted by Jesus up to the pearly gates: "Higher and higher! And higher! We'll pass on to the Second Heaven, the starry big Heaven, and view the flying stars and dashing meteors and then pass on by Mars and Mercury, and Jupiter and Venus and Saturn and Uranus, and Neptune with her four glittering moons."

"White Flyer to Heaven" is probably the earliest recorded evidence of a phenomenon that's persevered in black music ever since: Call it the Afronaut tradition. Last Tuesday, rapper Lil Wayne put this tradition atop the pop charts with his No. 1-debuting album Tha Carter III, which sold a stunning 1,005,545 copies in its first week. Lil Wayne starts from a hardened gangsta-rap template, but outer space has figured into his increasingly loopy songs for more than a year now: During the 2006 freestyle "Dough Is What I Got," he claimed Martian provenance in a boast about his otherworldly skills; on the woozy 2007 drug track "I Feel Like Dying," he imagined playing "basketball with the moon," adding, "I can mingle with the stars and throw a party on Mars." On Tha Carter III, Wayne devotes an entire song, "Phone Home," to the subject of his alien origins: "We are not the same, I am a Martian," he announces in an E.T.-inflected croak.

The last rapper to post comparable first-week sales was Kanye West (957,000), who is currently traveling the world with a space-themed tour titled Glow in the Dark; West's set features a rocket ship named Jane, animatronic shooting stars, and a stage designed to resemble rocky, lunar terrain. The Afronaut has been a hip-hop trope since Afrika Bambaataa recorded "Planet Rock" in 1982, but this is the first time it's occupied such a significant spot in the pop mainstream.

Many white rockers—Pink Floyd and David Bowie, most prominently—have taken to the cosmos for inspiration, but space has played a particularly vital role in the articulation of African-American musical identity. As a worldview, Afronautics began to take form in the late 1930s with a Birmingham-born college student named Herman Poole Blount. While meditating one afternoon, Blount said, he was beamed to Saturn by friendly aliens, who explained that his purpose in life was to speak truths of the universe through music. By the late 1950s—around the same time that Sputnik went into orbit—Blount had renamed himself Sun Ra, claimed Saturn as his true birthplace, and formed an elaborately costumed jazz collective called the Arkestra, specializing in noisy jams full of chants about space ways, satellites, and, in one of Ra's most-quoted formulations, "other planes of there." In songs, poems, and interviews, Sun Ra mapped out the fuzzy contours of his philosophy, which combined mystical futurism with an interest in ancient Egyptian civilization, and found sympathetic ears among avant-gardists, psychedelia heads, and hippies.

Ra grew up an outsider twice over: once for his refusal to participate in military service during World War II, which earned him brief imprisonment and ostracism from his family, and again for the simple fact of being black in the American South. We can glimpse the psychological framework of his space obsession through the lens of his alienation. His 1972 poem "Tomorrow's Realm" mixes images of solitude, slavery, and cosmic escape:

I'll build a world of otherness …
Other-abstract-natural design
And wait for you.
In tomorrow's realm
We'll take the helm
of a new ship
Like the lash of a whip, we'll be suddenly
on the way.

The whip's appearance in this fantasy brings to mind a compelling formulation from "Black to the Future," a 1993 essay on black sci-fi by cultural critic Mark Dery: "African Americans are, in a very real sense, the descendants of alien abductees." In Ra's mythology, the future is inextricable from the past: His spaceship carries the specter of the slave ship within itself.

Another likely influence on Sun Ra—and a considerable influence on many hip-hop stars of the late '80s and early '90s—was the Nation of Islam, whose pamphleteers the jazzman associated with in '50s Chicago. Sun Ra never claimed membership in the Nation of Islam, and he disagreed with many of its teachings; still, his encounters with the group are interesting, since a racialized cosmology is central to both his and the NOI's beliefs. In Elijah Muhammad's 1965 tract Message to the Blackman in America, Muhammad writes of a massive "mother plane"—built by ancient black scientists and containing inside its metal hull "fifteen hundred bombing planes with most deadliest explosives"—that hovers above Earth, poised to rain damnation upon "the white man's evil world."

Echoes of Sun Ra and NOI are audible in the music of George Clinton, who must have had both in mind when he transformed Parliament from a doo-wop group into a mother-ship-worshipping acid-funk congregation in the 1970s. Clinton's mother ship, of course, was likelier to drop megatons of booty and cocaine than warheads, but hedonism wasn't the only goal. In the opening bars of "Mother Ship Connection," Clinton announces, "We have returned to claim the pyramids"—a nod to paleocontact theories, which hypothesize that ancient astronauts shared technological secrets with North Africans. Perceptible in this ripple of the Afronaut impulse is the yearning for and fantastical reclamation of an ennobling African history: A trip to space doubles as a return to roots.

The Afronaut universe, of course, comprises more performers than those mentioned here and extends beyond music, from the hero of Brother From Another Planet to Astronaut Jones, Tracy Morgan's ridiculous SNL creation. Where hip-hop is concerned, though, the first Afronaut to speak of is Afrika Bambaataa. A gang leader turned community activist and DJ, Bambaataa spun Parliament-Funkadelic records alongside reggae, techno, and rock vinyl and wore elaborate African-Samurai-Cherokee-cyborg costumes doubtless inspired by the Arkestra. In the burnt-out South Bronx of the early '80s, Bambaataa's Afronaut mythology—championing Zulu valor and an interstellar utopianism—offered both racial pride and an escapist-hatch out of the bleak, inner-city quotidian.

Ironically, a George Clinton fan named Dr. Dre helped push space to hip-hop's margins for the better part of a decade. In 1988, Dre co-produced Straight Outta Compton, the epochal album by ur-gangsta-rap posse N.W.A, which made the group's stone-faced "reality rap" hip-hop's dominant perspective. Cosmic journeys became fanciful departures from hip-hop's so-called "true" locus, the flesh-and-blood, asphalt-and-concrete street. In the mid-to-late-'90s, bling-era hip-hop supplanted gangsta rap, trading an exaggerated narrative of urban despair for an exaggerated narrative of upward mobility—but not the sort you get from a shuttle blastoff.

Rappers continued to construct Afronaut fantasies, of course. Underground New York MC Kool Keith fashioned himself a star-humping Marquis de Sade; Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliott filled music videos with cyberpunk imagery and goofy zero-gravity effects. But Atlanta duo OutKast did more than anyone else to put the Afronaut back on the hip-hop radar. OutKast's 1996 album, ATLiens, came packaged with a comic book in which rappers Big Boi and Andre 3000, armed with holographic lions and purity of spirit, battle an alien warlord named Nosamilli. When OutKast announced that they were "extraterrestrials" in their songs, their purpose was twofold. As Southerners, they'd been excluded from hip-hop's dominant East/West axis, and they sought to turn that outsider status into a weapon. But just as important, these students of Funkadelic and Prince, bored by the conservatism of steely thugs and dollar-eyed hustlers, were arguing for the rightful place in hip-hop of that crucial figure in black postwar pop, the boa-sporting, id-unleashing, out-of-this-world freak.

So, what does space mean to Lil Wayne, the biggest Afronaut in the world right now? When he says he was born on Mars, it's a brag: He means it takes an alien system of thought to conduct his chaotic assault on sound, rhythm, and meaning. But Wayne's Afronautic vision goes beyond this. He redefines what it means to be a gun-toting gangsta, importing the anarchic values of a black spaceman: For him, space seems to signify the excesses of emotion, imagination, and appetite banging around his body and brain, dark matter the gangsta-realist idiom typically excludes. Whereas Jay-Z and 50 Cent boast about focus and composure, Wayne allows himself to sound genuinely unhinged—sobbing, spewing gibberish, breaking into fits of laughter. And whereas many rappers talk about destroying their competition, Wayne is certainly the first to fantasize so extensively about munching on his.* On "Phone Home," he raps, "I just eat them for supper, get in my spaceship, and hover." Any gangsta can level a Glock at his enemies. It takes a Martian to whip out the cutlery.

Correction, June 23, 2008: The article originally stated that Lil Wayne was the first hip-hop artist to fantasize about munching on his competition. In fact, other rappers have contemplated consuming their rivals. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Jonah Weiner is a senior editor at Blender and has written about music for the Village Voice and the New York Times.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2193871/

One Man Beat Box Band

2008-06-20T23:56:00.001-05:00

Gentrification in Brooklyn, One Bodega at a Time

2008-06-20T19:40:00.002-05:00

Gentrification in Brooklyn, One Bodega at a Time
by Lisa Chow

NEW YORK, NY —Rising rents and housing prices are changing this city. Much of the discussion has focused on the residents moving out of certain neighborhoods and into others. WNYC’s Lisa Chow looks at businesses at the front edge of gentrification in Brooklyn, and sees how they’re managing the change.

REPORTER: The Papa and Sons bodega stands at the busy corner of Flatbush Avenue and Lincoln Road, an express stop on the B-Q train. On the same block, there’s a new coffee shop and restaurant. Both opened last year, replacing a Trinidadian restaurant and a hair salon catering to black women. The bodega is trying to adjust to the new customers in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

CROUSSET: White people, they like a lot of organic

REPORTER: Francesco Crousset has been running Papa and Sons for 12 years. He started stocking organic milk a few months ago.

CROUSSET: This neighborhood we have everything. We have blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, Caucasians, Jamaicans, Haitians. So when they come to us, I don’t like to say I don’t have.

REPORTER: On this afternoon, most people come in to play the lotto.

CROUSSET: They’re looking for the 177 million today.

REPORTER: Lester Johnson shops at Papa and Sons 3 times a week. He’s lived in the neighborhood for more than a decade.

JOHNSON: It has what I want. It may not have everything I want but it has basically milk. Some of the vegetables are not bad. Some of the canned foods you get is not bad.

REPORTER: It’s also a stop for Rashad Hines, who goes to school a few blocks away. He’s 13.

HINES: The store it makes great sandwiches cause like, they always melt the cheese. That tastes real good. They got real nice people in the store like if we don’t have enough money, they just let you go.

REPORTER: The manager says his top selling items are …

CROUSSET: Sugar, coffee and soup. You know, like canned soup. Like Campbell’s. That’s fast fast.

REPORTER: That, may change. Bilal Solmaz runs Pacific Green Gourmet, a corner grocery store in Brooklyn’s fully gentrified Cobble Hill.

SOLMAZ: Now we are selling fancy fancy soup. It’s called Wolfgang Puck. You know him, right?

REPORTER: Solmaz walks over to his soup section, where you can get all kinds of varieties of Wolfgang Puck soup.

SOLMAZ: Before we had this, we had Campbell’s and Progresso. I had those. And I put them away because they don’t sell. They just stay there forever. Campbell’s especially.

REPORTER: He canceled those product lines in 2002.

SOLMAZ: I put them on the shelf. I put like crazy price, 99 cents. Just get rid of them you know. And I get this Wolfgang Puck. There is organic. There is regular. And it sells great. My customers are happy. I’m happy and Mr. Wolfgang Puck is happy.

REPORTER: Solmaz says when customers suggest new products, which they do every day, he researches them, gets samples from suppliers, and watches to see if they sell in his store. He works with more than 200 suppliers. He goes to Manhattan on his days off, to see how stores there are stocking their shelves. He prefers to have stuff that nearby stores don’t have, so that he’s not competing on price. And with his limited store space, there’s a tradeoff in every decision he makes. For example, he’d rather sell Spanish-imported tuna for 20 dollars, than 99 cent-tuna.

SOLMAZ: I don’t work for 40 cents. You have limited space. You cannot waste your two line, half of your shelf for 40 cents.

REPORTER: Solmaz wouldn’t give specific sales numbers, but he did offer a minimum. He says the store brings in at least two and a half million dollars a year. The store in Prospect Lefferts Gardens has double the space but brings in a million dollars less. The manager there explains where he goes to get ideas for new products.

CROUSSET: I go to Park Slope because it’s an area where there are more white people. I see the merchandise that they have in the stores, and it’s something I’d like to have too.

REPORTER: Jennifer Sun moved to the neighborhood from the Upper West Side, eight months ago. She says she goes to Papa and Sons when she needs something quick, or when her car’s stuck in the snow and she can’t go out to Park Slope or Costco. She says with a few changes, the store could attract more business from residents like her.

SUN: The location is awesome. It’s right on the corner but the outward appearance and inside appearance of the store isn’t as clean as we go to a C-Town or we go to another grocery store in Park Slope.

REPORTER: The manager says he’s planning a full renovation of the store this fall.

CROUSSET: I want to fix the floors, fix the aisles, the shelves, and the refrigerators.

SUN: Their mix of items is so great. The fact that they have so many low end products that totally don’t appeal to us make me feel like they’re in this transition of trying to serve 2 different populations of people. You know for example, they’ll have a can of spam, which I know is very popular for some people but we would never eat that. And you know, part of me says I would not want to go to a grocery store that sells that.

REPORTER: Not stocking certain items doesn’t appear to be on this manager’s to-do list.

CROUSSET: As I add products that my white customers want, my business grows. At the same time I still have the products that my black and Hispanic customers use.

REPORTER: The neighborhood is at a crossroads. Crousset knows his rent’s going to go up and he’ll need to increase his profits, so each decision he makes right now is critical. Spending 100-thousand dollars to renovate the store may mean a loan, and more risk. Right now he works with 10 suppliers. He’ll have to build new relationships as he sells more products. Doreen Howe moved here a year ago from Park Slope and she offers her wish list.

HOWE: Definitely coffee beans, different kinds of bread products that are a little more, it doesn’t even need to be organic, but a little more varied, the cheeses, and I guess organic vegetables.

CROUSSET: Maybe she no see, the other side …

REPORTER: I told Crousset she wanted organic vegetables. Crousset walks me over to another aisle. He points to rows of canned vegetables.

CROUSSET: You see organic sweet pea, organic green bean, organic Kenney corn. You see, we start.

REPORTER: But do you have any organic fresh vegetables?

CROUSSET: This one I have to ask the person at the market. I don’t know. Do they have organic fresh vegetables?

REPORTER: He says now, he has to make those orders too.

For WNYC, I’m Lisa Chow.

FREE REBEL DIAZ!!!

2008-06-19T13:01:00.001-05:00

No Justice No Peace

Hispanics suffer highest workplace death rates

2008-06-11T15:56:00.002-05:00

Hispanics suffer highest workplace death rates

Reuters
Thu Jun 5, 2008 3:23pm EDT
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hispanic workers in the United States are killed at work at a 25 percent higher rate than other U.S. workers with many deaths coming in construction, federal health officials said on Thursday.

Hispanics disproportionately take dangerous jobs like construction. Some may hesitate to speak up about safety hazards and may accept risky tasks for fear of being fired, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The most common causes of death were falls at construction sites and roadway incidents including crashes or being hit by a car while working on a road crew, the CDC said. Deaths from workplace falls increased about 370 percent from 1992 to 2006.

The report tracked Hispanic workplace fatalities of U.S. citizens, legal immigrants or illegal immigrants.

Immigration has become a potent political issue in the United States where about 12 million illegal immigrants live, many from Mexico, Central America and South America.

In 2006, the death rate for Hispanics was 5 per 100,000 workers, compared with 4 per 100,000 for all workers, 4 per 100,000 for non-Hispanic whites and 3.7 per 100,000 for non-Hispanic blacks, the CDC said.

Hispanics are the nation's fastest-growing minority. There were 19.6 million Hispanic workers in the United States in 2006, 56 percent of them foreign born.

They have become an increasingly important source of labor in U.S. construction.

An analysis of construction deaths found that Hispanic workers had higher rates than non-Hispanics in the same occupations such as laborers or roofers, the CDC said.

Dr. Sherry Baron of the CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said inadequate training and supervision of workers, often made worse by language barriers or literacy problems, were factors behind this trend.

From 1992 to 2006, 11,303 Hispanic workers -- 95 percent of them men -- died due to workplace injuries, accounting for about 13 percent of overall such deaths in the United States.

The CDC said 67 percent of Hispanics killed in job injuries were foreign born, almost three quarters from Mexico. It said the work-related injury death rate for foreign-born Hispanic workers is about 70 percent higher than U.S.-born Hispanics.

The highest job fatality rates for Hispanics were in South Carolina (22.8 per 100,000 Hispanic workers), Oklahoma, Georgia and Tennessee, the CDC said.

(Editing by Alan Elsner and Maggie Fox)

For a link to the original article click Here

Murdoch of Fox News Admits Manipulating the News for Agenda

2008-06-11T03:47:00.001-05:00

Nas - Black President

2008-06-07T23:51:00.001-05:00

Dancehall and Doiley Boyz: dancehall and its rituals in Jamaican Culture

2008-06-05T15:07:00.007-05:00

Dope exhibit, definitely worth checking out if you're in chi town.

Dancehall and Doiley Boyz
dancehall and its rituals in Jamaican culture

By Terry Glover

Ebony G. Patterson is a Jamaican artist exploring issues of gender, body and cultural identity. Her Dancehall Series, included in the Art Chicago exhibition this spring, is especially striking for its depictions of Jamaican dancehall culture and the practice of skin bleaching among its men. Holding a place very much like hiphop in the United States, dancehall has been criticized for its violent, misoginist, and homophobic stance. Patterson takes these cultural notions and addresses them in a way that allows for no response other than candid discussion. She sat down with ebonyjet.com to explain the origins and evolution of the series.

Describe your objectives in creating the Dancehall series.
The Dancehall series explores masculinity but as it relates to dancehall space within Jamaican culture -- the quintessential idea of what it is to be male, and how notions of homosexuality function there.

My explorations talking about bodies in general as objects, especially in terms of limbs, a removal of parts, more of an object, we can see the body.

For the last couple of years I’ve been exploring that notion with skin bleaching, I’ve always had an interest in discussions of beauty and the grotesque and the objectification, something more urgent to speak to. I am a huge supporter of dancehall culture and have been scrutinized by my colleagues for my support of dancehall. Colleagues would get at me for being interested in the music. Could be me becoming a little older and therefore a little wiser, but I can appreciate certain aspects. This unapologetic stance it takes – very raw, very in your face. That’s the essence of dancehall.

And your work…
Thank you. Always felt it was my responsibility to confront my audience and have them question the way they see things and the discussion that’s going on between my work and them.

Dancehall is coming under a lot of scrutiny now. But, it’s very different when you immerse yourself in the space.

I’m thinking about what happens in a lot of songs and what happens in terms of gender relationships within dancehall and how that echoes out into Jamaican society. By extension it’s quite difficult. Here in the States, Black men are expected to be aggressive, powerful, aggression is measured for what it means to be black – very very sad.

I decided to take these people who are put on a platform within that dancehall space -- worship of a don or a “shotta” -- a bad man -- and peel it down to the very feminine, beautiful men using all of the things that are within the dance hall vernacular. Particularly as it relates to the rise of skin bleaching among these guys. Such a work, I thought, would call into question what it means to be masculine.

Bleaching used to be predominantly among women – at one point men doing this was considered gay. Now, it’s far more popular among men and the women have been marginalized. Bleaching used to be for purposes of social mobility. Now people involved in illegal activities are doing it.

When did you start focusing on the practice as a subject for your work?
About two years ago. One of my friends’ family members was bleaching – a young boy – about 2 years ago, I had driven on the street to drop off my friend, and here was this tall silhouette, dark skin and I saw this yellow glow in the dark. Who is that? I was in total shock. Here was this incredibly beautiful young man with the most amazing skin who saw it necessary to bleach his face.

So I did a photo shoot and sat with them to find out why they were doing this. This was the wrong crowd, They were not bleaching skin, putting on a suit and going uptown for work. Something else was motivating it.

I wanted to discuss how beauty meets criminality. There was an article in the Jamaican Gleaner about criminals bleaching skin to elude the police -- all very interesting to me at the time. It wasn’t until going downtown to teach at the summer camps that I would see a lot more of these men with brown faces and dark necks. So, I started with the premise of just painting what I saw. Which evolved to ‘what if I took mug shots of criminals – to see wouldn’t it be interesting to see what the criminals in mug shots would look like?’ Straddling the line between criminality and beauty.

This, of course, depends on what parts of dancehall we’re talking about. Not Sean Paul, but gangsta lyrics called “gun lyrics,” a lyrical assassination. But even outside of gun lyrics, sometimes you hear DJs applauding or bigging up persons who are wanted by the police – a “shotta” essentially a shooter, a bad man.

My interest in doing this project really had a lot more to do with looking at issues of gender, ideas of beauty and how the grotesque is now sought after as beauty -- kind of the emasculation of black identity thru the skimming of pigmentation. Almost see people who bleach skin as hybrid beings.

A cultural hybrid?

In some ways, yes.

There was a show back home, “Our Voices” and during one show, they brought 2 or 3 people who had been bleaching their skin and brought on a doctor to talk about the effects and why they should stop. One guy was incredibly dark naturally, and he was pink. He had bleached his entire body, straightened his hair, and according to Jamaican constructs he was unequivocally gay. He took metrosexuality to a whole other level.

The interviewers asked about daily regimen – buying creams in cases, “If I have a dance coming up in 2 weeks, we’ll bleach intensely for the next 2 weeks because being brown has a particular cleanness to it.”

The Michael Jackson bleaching cream was a favorite of his.

These creams are loaded w/ steroids. Some are legal and fine to use on market, a lot of third world countries are dumping grounds for inferior products. Britain has a heavy crackdown on illegal, steroid based cream. The Minister of Health has had an anti-bleaching campaign going on for a while. Once you stop bleaching, you go back to your original color, but it’s a very unnatural hue.

But, even if they were to get all creams – legal and illegal – people know how to make their own concoctions. Some use bleach – household detergent. I’ve also been told about yellow curry – very popular in the Caribbean – mix a little curry in. People are incredibly creative in the way they go about creating these concoctions.

Aside from the health hazards, do the guys understand the negative implications bleaching carries?
As far as younger people are concerned, it has nothing to do with social mobility or self hatred. The guys I interviewed said its all about reinventing self, a new self image. They get tired of the same look. They will tell you, “I‘m not bleaching because I hate myself.” They are very proud.

When I was growing up, if you were a man who pierced your ear, it was frowned upon – incredibly feminine. Eventually it became accepted that piercing the right side was OK, The left side? Homosexual. Interesting that the once homosexual has now been taken up by homophobic men. One of the ironies of the Black community.

But it still doesn’t change mentality or attitudes about the way we determine what happens among genders within Black families. White families don’t relate masculinity to a particular level of aggression.

Have any of the dancehall guys seen your finished work?
No, this body of work has not seen Jamaica yet. Earlier this year I was invited to do installation at National Gallery. Photos I’d taken of two young men were used in the installation. Lot of response from art community.

But, dancehall isn’t integrated into the mainstream in the same way hiphop is here. There is no interests in visual expression of dancehall – it is strictly about the music, maybe the fashion. There has always been an incredible divide between uptown and downtown. They are poor people -- don’t need to worry about that. Bringing a piece like this that brings this problem into an “elitist” space reveals something to an audience they may not have been aware of it. It will open up their eyes a lot more, so not so much a lost cause.

What about The Doiley Boyz?
I’m expanding the series. It’s the same thing as with males but with young male boys as subjects. Skin bleaching is affecting a much younger age range now. I’m interested in the implications of how men’s experiences affect younger boys.

I’m always thinking of the repetitious nature of making something that’s incredibly delicate, beautiful. I wanted to find an object that was domestic in relation to the feminine. I started with silhouette cut-outs of boys’ portraits – all on doilies, very floral. So again, aligning with the feminine, which I thought appropriate.

What’s next?
I just worked on my first video installation in Kentucky “Another Dance” about dancehall sound clash culture (when two sound systems – many people -- “Stone Love” is one of the oldest collide) “Murder ‘Pon a Sound Boy” – the lyrics are quite violent, but people continue dancing on this very beautiful background.

I felt like there was something incredibly earnest that nobody was talking about. Not my objective to do something sensationalist, but it is my responsibility to talk about what is going on in my country. To talk about it and what do we really consider to be Jamaican and how does this contribute to the way we are constructing our identity.

I’m working on my first curatorial project, bringing in several Jamaican artists who explore identity as relates to gender, as relates to identity. Thought it would be interesting to have a visual conversation to talk about these things that aren’t articulated enough -- self and understanding who we are as a people. Eventually we start to carbon copy everything. We’ve lost a lot of things that were inherently Caribbean. The question has always been thrown out to young people about not being “Caribbean enough” by our parents. What does that mean? If it comes from us, it’s still Jamaican.

I am passionately Jamaican, even when the shit is hitting the fan. If everybody leaves, how will things get better? My work has always, in one way or another, dealt with issues of identity and notions of body politics and the way I see myself within the space I exist in – Jamaica.

I don’t know how much more Jamaican I can get.

For a slideshow click Here

Terry Glover is Senior Editor for ebonyjet.com. She writes about art, culture and popular trends.

Former VP Candidate Fails to See Her Own White Privilege

2008-06-04T22:27:00.003-05:00

June 4, 2008

Former VP Candidate Fails to See Her Own White Privilege
By Adam Mansbach

"Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama's historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama's playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They're not upset with Obama because he's black; they're upset because they don't expect to be treated fairly because they're white. It's not racism that is driving them, it's racial resentment."

When former Vice Presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro made the remarks to which she refers in her May 30 Boston Globe op-ed, pundits and commentators across the ideological spectrum consistently fell all over themselves to avoid accusing her of racism. Seldom in political life has the sinner been granted so much immediate distance from her sin.

What Ferraro actually said bears little resemblance to the facile pseudo-summary she offers in her editorial. Her comments were not about "the influence of blacks" on the Obama campaign. Her exact words to a California newspaper were "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," and she defended them by arguing that she, likewise, would not have been on the 1984 Democratic ticket if not for her gender.

Ferraro appeared not to recognize the obvious difference between being appointed to a ticket, as she was, and winning a record number of primary votes across the entire nation, as Obama has. In the days following her initial remarks, she claimed, as in her Boston Globe op-ed, that "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

Ludicrous-and sad. Ferraro has officially ruined her own obituary by adding a crimson asterisk of aggressively divisive, ill-informed, race-baiting to her own trailblazing career in public service. More important than assessing the magnitude of her self-destruction, though, is examining the notion she puts forth: that whites in America have been rendered voiceless, that "you can't open your mouth without being labeled a racist," that to be black is to be 'lucky' (to paraphrase another of her comments about Obama).

I have no problem believing that people have been stopping Ferraro - although I suspect 'sidling up to' would be more accurate - to voice this 'common sentiment.' It is one that cuts to the heart of a crucial, under-examined aspect of America's problem with race: the deeply-held conviction, on the part of many whites, that they have been marginalized, treated 'unfairly,' and cannot speak honestly about it. That they, despite all appearances to the contrary, represent the new racial underclass.

Obama himself, in his landmark address on race, noted that many whites do not feel significantly advantaged because of the color of their skin. In the single greatest misstep of that speech, he put this sentiment - the resentment, fueled by a lack of opportunity, felt by the critical Democratic voting block of working-class whites - on a par with the ravaging effects of institutional racism on people of color.

Implicit in the white resentment Obama identified, of course, is whites' belief that they should be significantly advantaged because of their race. The entitlement they feel no longer squares with reality, and thus they feel cheated in a way they dare not articulate.

So, meanwhile, do their children. One of the most fascinating trends of the last thirty years is the way cultural capital and hard capital have diverged. American coolness is coded, more than ever, as American blackness, and young whites all over the country - many of them with little or no personal access to black people but with extensive cable TV packages - assume, based on the signifiers flashing on their screens, that blackness equals flashy, sexy wealth.

They feel locked out of the possibility of attaining that (imaginary) lifestyle, because of their skin color. This strikes them as oppressive, and fuels a silent resentment. They have no language with which to discuss it, and no interest in looking at the reams of evidence that would prove to them just how wrong they are - the inheritance of wealth, for instance, or the rates of home-ownership, traditional markers of prosperity that reveal just how privileged whites remain relative to blacks.

The supposed unfairness of affirmative action may be their parents' signature racial issue; the difficulty of crafting a strong cultural identity as a young white person in this country is theirs.

Both are important to examine, but we can only do so against a backdrop of understanding the far more pernicious and persistent reality of institutional racism - a cancer metastasizing through the educational system, the justice and penal systems, law enforcement, and every other aspect of American life. It is this reality that Ferraro and her nameless common-sentiment-expressers fail to see - the essence of white privilege lies in not even realizing you have it - or to address honestly.

Instead, Ferraro rails against a racial gag order even as she proves unaffected by it, citing a silent-majority of whites able to muster outrage at their own 'unfair treatment' without acknowledging anyone else's. She denies their 'racism, but acknowledges and justifies their 'racial resentment.' Which is different how, exactly?

Adam Mansbach is the author of the novels The End of the Jews (Spiegel & Grau, 2008) and Angry Black White Boy (Crown, 2005).

Complaint at UN for death of Ojeda Ríos

2008-06-03T22:09:00.002-05:00

The Associated Press
May 31, 2008

The Puerto Rico chapter of the American Association of Jurists will present to the United Nations (U.N.) in June a complaint against the Government of the United States for what they understand to be the execution of Machetero leader Filiberto Ojeda Ríos by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

The organization, through attorneys Fermín Arraiza and Ricardo Alfonso, will also appear between June 2 and 6 before the U.N. Human Rights Council to denounce this act and obtain support from other non-governmental organizations for the complaint.

“We will go there to denounce the assassination of Filiberto Ojeda and the cover-up by governmental authorities,” said Hiram Lozada, president of the Puerto Rico chapter of the American Association of Jurists.

The U.N. investigator before whom the complaint will be submitted at the end of June will be Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions.

To press for profound investigation

“We will include in the denunciation the federal government’s refusal to give any type of relevant information so that an impartial and profound investigation could be conducted,” Arraiza stated.

The Puerto Rico Department of Justice resorted, with no success, all the way to the United States Supreme Court, seeking to oblige the U.S. government to offer the information under its control about the death of Ojeda Ríos at the hands of an FBI agent in an operation to arrest him in 2005 in Hormigueros.

Arraiza elaborated that the investigator may receive a complaint about the Ojeda Ríos case, even though the investigations under way in the Island have not terminated and even though all local government remedies have not been exhausted.

Once the rapporteur receives the complaint, he will notify the United States government, and the U.S. Department of State must extend to Alston a formal invitation to travel to Puerto Rico to carry out his investigation.

Podemos Con Obama

2008-05-29T15:27:00.001-05:00

Si Se Puede

Si Permítame: Reggaeton Currents

2008-05-28T14:20:00.004-05:00

So I'm a big music head & one of my favorite genres of music is Reggaeton. I've been studying Reggaeton for about 4 years now and wrote my undergraduate senior thesis on the it( Representations of ‘Blackness’ and Racial Identity in Puerto Rico: Reggaeton Shifts the Periphery… Racismo Al’Garete). I haven't really been keeping up with most new stuff because of school, but the other day I got a chance to listen to a few new tracks. Two that struck me were Tony Dize's "Permitame" and Daddy Yankee's "Pose." The two tracks are sonically very different from traditionally Reggaeton, the dembow is almost non-existant & the music is at a much faster tempo. The tracks intrigued me, especially Tony Dize's song, which reminded me of a Timberland produced Justin Timberlake track. So I decided to hit up my friend & Ethnomusicologist/Producer/MC/DJ, Wayne Marshall & ask him to lend his musical ear to the songs. Here is the follow-up:

I wrote:
So the other day I was listening to Tony Dize’s new album “La Melodia de la Calle” & one track struck me. The song “Permitame” feat. Yandel, which also happens to be the 1st single off the album is a completely different sound for Tony Dize & I would argue much of Reggaeton. The track is infused with Timbaland/Timberlake type sounds & I could envision someone like Justin Timberlake singing over this track & it being a hit.

I was wondering if you could lend your musical ear to the track & let me know what you think. I haven’t been on my Reggaeton game as much as I used to, my MA thesis is has been taking up most of my time, so maybe this track is something not out of the ordinary. Anyway, I find it musically intriguing & wonder if this American Pop style of Reggaeton (is it even Reggaeton anymore?) could possibly be a new wave of the genre? The track is getting a lot of play in PR & is making its way to the radio here in the states, I heard it the other day on “La Kalle” here in Chicago.

I also asked Wayne to check out Daddy Yankee's track "Pose"

Here's Wayne's Response:

Hey Tito,
These are some interesting examples. Thanks for bringing them to my attention. They definitely depart from recent orthodoxy in reggaeton (though perhaps suggest an emerging new orthodoxy). For one, they’re faster than a lot of reggaeton ca. 03-07; instead of around 100bpm, they’re closer to 120/130, so more like house/techno/club/dance tempo, which is — as usual — pretty consistent with contemporary hip-hop/r&b/pop. Also significantly, — perhaps in part b/c of the tempo — I don’t hear any “Dem Bow” samples; there’s still that ol’ boom-ch-boom-chick (which some might hear as a general “dembow” rhythm), but even then it’s less pronounced/consistent. And the type of synths in use on both tracks, that buzzy/tactile, mid-range wheeze — which perhaps is what suggests the work of Timbaland/lake to your ears — is pretty au courant, not just in hip-hop but all kinds of genres. I think that’s, to some extent, a matter of shared software, but it’s also an aesthetic thing: a return to “ravey” synths that may have been reinitiated, at least in the mainstream, by Lil Jon’s refitting of rave presets for crunk tracks a few years ago (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/arts/music/28sher.html?_r=1&oref=slog).

To my ears, once again, reggaeton shows itself very in touch with contemporary global/American pop trends, while maintaining a distinctive sonic profile all its own.
Cheers,
Wayne

Wayne's analysis is on point & speaks to new trends in reggaeton. I'm curious to see how the genre develops & changes over time. The recent trend in reggaeton to break away from the dembow & to clarify, as Wayne states, "referring not to the rhythm in general but to the specific sounds associated with that dancehall break") speaks to the various influences in Reggaeton music & the global appeal it is seeking to attract.

As I listen to more, I will keep writing....

Fidel Castro Responds to Barack Obama

2008-05-26T22:35:00.002-05:00

26 May, 2008

REFLECTIONS BY COMRADE FIDEL

THE EMPIRE’S HYPOCRITICAL POLITICS

It would be dishonest of me to remain silent after hearing the speech Obama delivered on the afternoon of May 23 at the Cuban American National Foundation created by Ronald Reagan. I listened to his speech, as I did McCain’s and Bush’s. I feel no resentment towards him, for he is not responsible for the crimes perpetrated against Cuba and humanity. Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries an enormous favor. I have therefore no reservations about criticizing him and about expressing my points of view on his words frankly.

What were Obama’s statements?

"Throughout my entire life, there has been injustice and repression in Cuba. Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known freedom. Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the people of Cuba known democracy. (…) This is the terrible and tragic status quo that we have known for half a century – of elections that are anything but free or fair (…) I won't stand for this injustice, you won't stand for this injustice, and together we will

stand up for freedom in Cuba," he told annexationists, adding: "It's time to let Cuban American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime. (…) I will maintain the embargo."

The content of these declarations by this strong candidate to the U.S. presidency spares me the work of having to explain the reason for this reflection.

José Hernandez, one of the Cuban American National Foundation directives who Obama praises in his speech, was none other than the owner of the 50-calibre automatic rifle, equipped with telescopic and infrared sights, which was confiscated, by chance, along with other deadly weapons while being transported by sea to Venezuela, where the Foundation had planned to assassinate the writer of these lines at an international meeting held in Margarita, in the Venezuelan state of Nueva Esparta.

Pepe Hernández’ group wanted to renegotiate a former pact with Clinton, betrayed by Mas Canosa’s clan, who secured Bush’s electoral victory in 2000 through fraud, because the latter had promised to assassinate Castro, something they all happily embraced. These are the kinds of political tricks inherent to the United States’ decadent and contradictory system.

Presidential candidate Obama’s speech may be formulated as follows: hunger for the nation, remittances as charitable hand-outs and visits to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable way of life behind it.

How does he plan to address the extremely serious problem of the food crisis? The world’s grains must be distributed among human beings, pets and fish, which become smaller every year and more scarce in the seas that have been over-exploited by the large trawlers which no international organization could get in the way of. Producing meat from gas and oil is no easy feat. Even Obama overestimates technology’s potential in the fight against climate change, though he is more conscious of the risks and the limited margin of time than Bush. He could seek the advice of Gore, who is also a democrat and is no longer a candidate, as he is aware of the accelerated pace at which global warming is advancing. His close political rival Bill Clinton, who is not running for the presidency, an expert on extra-territorial laws like the Helms-Burton and Torricelli Acts, can advice him on an issue like the blockade, which he promised to lift and never did.

What did he say in his speech in Miami, this man who is doubtless, from the social and human points of view, the most progressive candidate to the U.S. presidency? "For two hundred years," he said, "the United States has made it clear that we won't stand for foreign intervention in our hemisphere. But every day, all across the Americas, there is a different kind of struggle --not against foreign armies, but against the deadly threat of hunger and thirst, disease and

despair. That is not a future that we have to accept --not for the child in

Port au Prince or the family in the highlands of Peru. We can do better. We

must do better. (…) We cannot ignore suffering to our south, nor stand for the globalization of the empty stomach." A magnificent description of imperialist globalization: the globalization of empty stomachs! We ought to thank him for it. But, 200 years ago, Bolivar fought for Latin American unity and, more than 100 years ago, Martí gave his life in the struggle against the annexation of Cuba by the United States. What is the difference between what Monroe proclaimed and what Obama proclaims and resuscitates in his speech two centuries later?

"I will reinstate a Special Envoy for the Americas in my White House who will work with my full support. But we'll also expand the Foreign Service, and open more consulates in the neglected regions of the Americas. We'll expand the Peace Corps, and ask more young Americans to go abroad to deepen the trust and the ties among our people," he said near the end, adding: "Together, we can choose the future over the past." A beautiful phrase, for it attests to the idea, or at least the fear, that history makes figures what they are and not all the way around.

Today, the United States have nothing of the spirit behind the Philadelphia declaration of principles formulated by the 13 colonies that rebelled against English colonialism. Today, they are a gigantic empire undreamed of by the country’s founders at the time. Nothing, however, was to change for the natives and the slaves. The former were exterminated as the nation expanded; the latter continued to be auctioned at the marketplace —men, women and children—for nearly a century, despite the fact that "all men are born free and equal", as the Declaration of Independence affirms. The world’s objective conditions favored the development of that system.

In his speech, Obama portrays the Cuban revolution as anti-democratic and lacking in respect for freedom and human rights. It is the exact same argument which, almost without exception, U.S. administrations have used again and again to justify their crimes against our country. The blockade, in and of itself, is an act of genocide. I don’t want to see U.S. children inculcated with those shameful values.

An armed revolution in our country might not have been needed without the military interventions, Platt Amendment and economic colonialism visited upon Cuba.

The revolution was the result of imperial domination. We cannot be accused of having imposed it upon the country. The true changes could have and ought to have been brought about in the United States. Its own workers, more than a century ago, voiced the demand for an eight-hour work shift, which stemmed from the development of productive forces.

The first thing the leaders of the Cuban revolution learned from Martí was to believe in and act on behalf of an organization founded for the purposes of bringing about a revolution. We were always bound by previous forms of power and, following the institutionalization of this organization, we were elected by more than 90 percent of voters, as has become customary in Cuba, a process which does not in the least resemble the ridiculous levels of electoral participation which, many a time, as in the case of the United States, stay short of 50 percent of the voters. No small and blockaded country like ours would have been able to hold its ground for so long on the basis of ambition, vanity, deceit or the abuse of power, the kind of power its neighbor has. To state otherwise is an insult to the intelligence of our heroic people.

I am not questioning Obama’s great intelligence, his debate skills or his work ethic. He is a talented orator and is ahead of his rivals in the electoral race. I feel sympathy for his wife and little girls, who accompany him and give him encouragement every Tuesday. It is indeed a touching human spectacle. Nevertheless, I am obliged to raise a number of delicate questions. I do not expect answers; I wish only to raise them for the record.

1) Is it right for the president of the United States to order the assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext may be?

2) Is it ethical for the president of the United States to order the torture of other human beings?

3) Should state terrorism be used by a country as powerful as the United States as an instrument to bring about peace on the planet?

4) Is an Adjustment Act, applied as punishment on only one country, Cuba, in order to destabilize it, good and honorable, even when it costs innocent children and mothers their lives?

If it is good, why is this right not automatically granted to Haitians, Dominicans, and other peoples of the Caribbean, and why isn’t the same Act applied to Mexicans and people from Central and South America, who die like flies against the Mexican border wall or in the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific?

5) Can the United States do without immigrants, who grow vegetables, fruits, almonds and other delicacies for U.S. citizens? Who would sweep their streets, work as servants in their homes or do the worst and lowest-paid jobs?

6) Are crackdowns on illegal residents fair, even as they affect children born in the United States?

7) Are the brain-drain and the continuous theft of the best scientific and intellectual minds in poor countries moral and justifiable?

8) You state, as I pointed out at the beginning of this reflection, that your country had long ago warned European powers that it would not tolerate any intervention in the hemisphere, reiterating that this right be respected while demanding the right to intervene anywhere in the world with the aid of hundreds of military bases and naval, aerial and spatial forces distributed across the planet. I ask: is that the way in which the United States expresses its respect for freedom, democracy and human rights?

9) Is it fair to stage pre-emptive attacks on sixty or more dark corners of the world, as Bush calls them, whatever the pretext may be?

10) Is it honorable and sound to invest millions and millions of dollars in the military industrial complex, to produce weapons that can destroy life on earth several times over?

Before judging our country, you should know that Cuba, with its education, health, sports, culture and sciences programs, implemented not only in its own territory but also in other poor countries around the world, and the blood that has been shed in acts of solidarity towards other peoples, in spite of the economic and financial blockade and the aggression of your powerful country, is proof that much can be done with very little. Not even our closest ally, the Soviet Union, was able to achieve what we have.

The only form of cooperation the United States can offer other nations consist in the sending of military professionals to those countries. It cannot offer anything else, for it lacks a sufficient number of people willing to sacrifice themselves for others and offer substantial aid to a country in need (though Cuba has known and relied on the cooperation of excellent U.S. doctors). They are not to blame for this, for society does not inculcate such values in them on a massive scale.

We have never subordinated cooperation with other countries to ideological requirements. We offered the United States our help when hurricane Katrina lashed the city of New Orleans. Our internationalist medical brigade bears the glorious name of Henry Reeve, a young man, born in the United States, who fought and died for Cuba’s sovereignty in our first war of independence.

Our revolution can mobilize tens of thousands of doctors and health technicians. It can mobilize an equally vast number of teachers and citizens, who are willing to travel to any corner of the world to fulfill any noble purpose, not to usurp people’s rights or take possession of raw materials.

The good will and determination of people constitute limitless resources that cannot be kept and would not fit in a bank’s vault. They cannot spring from the hypocritical politics of an empire.

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 25, 2008
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art84.html

Obama en Puerto Rico

2008-05-26T02:01:00.003-05:00

Barack Obama at Wesleyan

2008-05-25T05:58:00.003-05:00

Barack Obama commencement speech today at Wesleyan University's 176th commencement ceremony.

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Also, Peep 6th Sense's "Ignite the People (Like Obama)" Video

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

2008-05-25T04:20:00.005-05:00

Found this article very interesting, but also disturbing. Quite frankly I find the Professor to be elitist and think the piece reveals more about the instructor than about the students or the kind of academic system in place in the United States. More thoughts on this article to come.

The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth. An instructor at a “college of last resort” explains why.

BY PROFESSOR X

I work part-time in the evenings as an adjunct instructor of English. I teach two courses, Introduction to College Writing (English 101) and Introduction to College Literature (English 102), at a small private college and at a community college. The campuses are physically lovely—quiet havens of ornate stonework and columns, Gothic Revival archways, sweeping quads, and tidy Victorian scalloping. Students chat or examine their cell phones or study languidly under spreading trees. Balls click faintly against »

bats on the athletic fields. Inside the arts and humanities building, my students and I discuss Shakespeare, Dubliners, poetic rhythms, and Edward Said. We might seem, at first glance, to be enacting some sort of college idyll. We could be at Harvard. But this is not Harvard, and our classes are no idyll. Beneath the surface of this serene and scholarly mise-en-scène roil waters of frustration and bad feeling, for these colleges teem with students who are in over their heads.

I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé.

Some of their high-school transcripts are newly minted, others decades old. Many of my students have returned to college after some manner of life interregnum: a year or two of post-high-school dissolution, or a large swath of simple middle-class existence, 20 years of the demands of home and family. They work during the day and come to class in the evenings. I teach young men who must amass a certain number of credits before they can become police officers or state troopers, lower-echelon health-care workers who need credits to qualify for raises, and municipal employees who require college-level certification to advance at work.

My students take English 101 and English 102 not because they want to but because they must. Both colleges I teach at require that all students, no matter what their majors or career objectives, pass these two courses. For many of my students, this is difficult. Some of the young guys, the police-officers-to-be, have wonderfully open faces across which play their every passing emotion, and when we start reading “Araby” or “Barn Burning,” their boredom quickly becomes apparent. They fidget; they prop their heads on their arms; they yawn and sometimes appear to grimace in pain, as though they had been tasered. Their eyes implore: How could you do this to me?

The goal of English 101 is to instruct students in the sort of expository writing that theoretically will be required across the curriculum. My students must venture the compare-and-contrast paper, the argument paper, the process-analysis paper (which explains how some action is performed—as a lab report might), and the dreaded research paper, complete with parenthetical citations and a listing of works cited, all in Modern Language Association format. In 102, we read short stories, poetry, and Hamlet, and we take several stabs at the only writing more dreaded than the research paper: the absolutely despised Writing About Literature.

Class time passes in a flash—for me, anyway, if not always for my students. I love trying to convey to a class my passion for literature, or the immense satisfaction a writer can feel when he or she nails a point. When I am at my best, and the students are in an attentive mood—generally, early in the semester—the room crackles with positive energy. Even the cops-to-be feel driven to succeed in the class, to read and love the great books, to explore potent themes, to write well.

The bursting of our collective bubble comes quickly. A few weeks into the semester, the students must start actually writing papers, and I must start grading them. Despite my enthusiasm, despite their thoughtful nods of agreement and what I have interpreted as moments of clarity, it turns out that in many cases it has all come to naught.

Remarkably few of my students can do well in these classes. Students routinely fail; some fail multiple times, and some will never pass, because they cannot write a coherent sentence.

In each of my courses, we discuss thesis statements and topic sentences, the need for precision in vocabulary, why economy of language is desirable, what constitutes a compelling subject. I explain, I give examples, I cheerlead, I cajole, but each evening, when the class is over and I come down from my teaching high, I inevitably lose faith in the task, as I’m sure my students do. I envision the lot of us driving home, solitary scholars in our cars, growing sadder by the mile.

Our textbook boils effective writing down to a series of steps. It devotes pages and pages to the composition of a compare-and-contrast essay, with lots of examples and tips and checklists. “Develop a plan of organization and stick to it,” the text chirrups not so helpfully. Of course any student who can, does, and does so automatically, without the textbook’s directive. For others, this seems an impossible task. Over the course of 15 weeks, some of my best writers improve a little. Sometimes my worst writers improve too, though they rarely, if ever, approach base-level competence.

How I envy professors in other disciplines! How appealing seems the straightforwardness of their task! These are the properties of a cell membrane, kid. Memorize ’em, and be ready to spit ’em back at me. The biology teacher also enjoys the psychic ease of grading multiple-choice tests. Answers are right or wrong. The grades cannot be questioned. Quantifying the value of a piece of writing, however, is intensely subjective, and English teachers are burdened with discretion. (My students seem to believe that my discretion is limitless. Some of them come to me at the conclusion of a course and matter-of-factly ask that I change a failing grade because they need to graduate this semester or because they worked really hard in the class or because they need to pass in order to receive tuition reimbursement from their employer.)

I wonder, sometimes, at the conclusion of a course, when I fail nine out of 15 students, whether the college will send me a note either (1) informing me of a serious bottleneck in the march toward commencement and demanding that I pass more students, or (2) commending me on my fiscal ingenuity—my high failure rate forces students to pay for classes two or three times over.

What actually happens is that nothing happens. I feel no pressure from the colleges in either direction. My department chairpersons, on those rare occasions when I see them, are friendly, even warm. They don’t mention all those students who have failed my courses, and I don’t bring them up. There seems, as is often the case in colleges, to be a huge gulf between academia and reality. No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces—social optimism on a large scale, the sense of college as both a universal right and a need, financial necessity on the part of the colleges and the students alike, the desire to maintain high academic standards while admitting marginal students—that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty. No one has drawn up the flowchart and seen that, although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment.

Recently, I gave a student a failing grade on her research paper. She was a woman in her 40s; I will call her Ms. L. She looked at her paper, and my comments, and the grade. “I can’t believe it,” she said softly. “I was so proud of myself for having written a college paper.”

From the beginning of our association vis-à-vis the research paper, I knew that there would be trouble with Ms. L.

When I give out this assignment, I usually bring the class to the college library for a lesson on Internet-based research. I ask them about their computer skills, and some say they have none, fessing up to being computer illiterate and saying, timorously, how hopeless they are at that sort of thing. It often turns out, though, that many of them have at least sent and received e-mail and Googled their neighbors, and it doesn’t take me long to demonstrate how to search for journal articles in such databases as Academic Search Premier and JSTOR.

Ms. L., it was clear to me, had never been on the Internet. She quite possibly had never sat in front of a computer. The concept of a link was news to her. She didn’t know that if something was blue and underlined, you could click on it. She was preserved in the amber of 1990, struggling with the basic syntax of the World Wide Web. She peered intently at the screen and chewed a fingernail. She was flummoxed.

I had responsibilities to the rest of my students, so only when the class ended could I sit with her and work on some of the basics. It didn’t go well. She wasn’t absorbing anything. The wall had gone up, the wall known to every teacher at every level: the wall of defeat and hopelessness and humiliation, the wall that is an impenetrable barrier to learning. She wasn’t hearing a word I said.

“You might want to get some extra help,” I told her. “You can schedule a private session with the librarian.”

“I’ll get it,” she said. “I just need a little time.”

“You have some computer-skills deficits,” I told her. “You should address them as soon as you can.” I don’t have cause to use much educational jargon, but deficits has often come in handy. It conveys the seriousness of the situation, the student’s jaw-dropping lack of ability, without being judgmental. I tried to jostle her along. “You should schedule that appointment right now. The librarian is at the desk. ”

“I realize I have a lot of work to do,” she said.

Our dialogue had turned oblique, as though we now inhabited a Pinter play.

The research-paper assignment is meant to teach the fundamental mechanics of the thing: how to find sources, summarize or quote them, and cite them, all the while not plagiarizing. Students must develop a strong thesis, not just write what is called a “passive report,” the sort of thing one knocks out in fifth grade on Thomas Edison. This time around, the students were to elucidate the positions of scholars on two sides of a historical controversy. Why did Truman remove MacArthur? Did the United States covertly support the construction of the Berlin Wall? What really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin? Their job in the paper, as I explained it, was to take my arm and introduce me as a stranger to scholars A, B, and C, who stood on one side of the issue, and to scholars D, E, and F, who were firmly on the other—as though they were hosting a party.

A future state trooper snorted. “That’s some dull party,” he said.

At our next meeting after class in the library, Ms. L. asked me whether she could do her paper on abortion. What exactly, I asked, was the historical controversy? Well, she replied, whether it should be allowed. She was stuck, I realized, in the well-worn groove of assignments she had done in high school. I told her that I thought the abortion question was more of an ethical dilemma than a historical controversy.

“I’ll have to figure it all out,” she said.

She switched her topic a half-dozen times; perhaps it would be fairer to say that she never really came up with one. I wondered whether I should just give her one, then decided against it. Devising a topic was part of the assignment.

“What about gun control?” she asked.

I sighed. You could write, I told her, about a particular piece of firearms-related legislation. Historians might disagree, I said, about certain aspects of the bill’s drafting. Remember, though, the paper must be grounded in history. It could not be a discussion of the pros and cons of gun control.

“All right,” she said softly.

Needless to say, the paper she turned in was a discussion of the pros and cons of gun control. At least, I think that was the subject. There was no real thesis. The paper often lapsed into incoherence. Sentences broke off in the middle of a line and resumed on the next one, with the first word inappropriately capitalized. There was some wavering between single- and double-spacing. She did quote articles, but cited only databases—where were the journals themselves? The paper was also too short: a bad job, and such small portions.

“I can’t believe it,” she said when she received her F. “I was so proud of myself for having written a college paper.”

She most certainly hadn’t written a college paper, and she was a long way from doing so. Yet there she was in college, paying lots of tuition for the privilege of pursuing a degree, which she very likely needed to advance at work. Her deficits don’t make her a bad person or even unintelligent or unusual. Many people cannot write a research paper, and few have to do so in their workaday life. But let’s be frank: she wasn’t working at anything resembling a college level.

I gave Ms. L. the F and slept poorly that night. Some of the failing grades I issue gnaw at me more than others. In my ears rang her plaintive words, so emblematic of the tough spot in which we both now found ourselves. Ms. L. had done everything that American culture asked of her. She had gone back to school to better herself, and she expected to be rewarded for it, not slapped down. She had failed not, as some students do, by being absent too often or by blowing off assignments. She simply was not qualified for college. What exactly, I wondered, was I grading? I thought briefly of passing Ms. L., of slipping her the old gentlewoman’s C-minus. But I couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be fair to the other students. By passing Ms. L., I would be eroding the standards of the school for which I worked. Besides, I nurse a healthy ration of paranoia. What if she were a plant from The New York Times doing a story on the declining standards of the nation’s colleges? In my mind’s eye, the front page of a newspaper spun madly, as in old movies, coming to rest to reveal a damning headline:

THIS IS A C?

Illiterate Mess Garners ‘Average’ Grade

Adjunct Says Student ‘Needed’ to Pass, ‘Tried Hard’
No, I would adhere to academic standards, and keep myself off the front page.

We think of college professors as being profoundly indifferent to the grades they hand out. My own professors were fairly haughty and aloof, showing little concern for the petty worries, grades in particular, of their students. There was an enormous distance between students and professors. The full-time, tenured professors at the colleges where I teach may likewise feel comfortably separated from those whom they instruct. Their students, the ones who attend class during daylight hours, tend to be younger than mine. Many of them are in school on their parents’ dime. Professors can fail these young people with emotional impunity because many such failures are the students’ own fault: too much time spent texting, too little time with the textbooks.

But my students and I are of a piece. I could not be aloof, even if I wanted to be. Our presence together in these evening classes is evidence that we all have screwed up. I’m working a second job; they’re trying desperately to get to a place where they don’t have to. All any of us wants is a free evening. Many of my students are in the vicinity of my own age. Whatever our chronological ages, we are all adults, by which I mean thoroughly saddled with children and mortgages and sputtering careers. We all show up for class exhausted from working our full-time jobs. We carry knapsacks and briefcases overspilling with the contents of our hectic lives. We smell of the food we have eaten that day, and of the food we carry with us for the evening. We reek of coffee and tuna oil. The rooms in which we study have been used all day, and are filthy. Candy wrappers litter the aisles. We pile our trash daintily atop filled garbage cans.

During breaks, my students scatter to various corners and niches of the building, whip out their cell phones, and try to maintain a home life. Burdened with their own assignments, they gamely try to stay on top of their children’s. Which problems do you have to do? … That’s not too many. Finish that and then do the spelling … No, you can’t watch Grey’s Anatomy.

Adult education, nontraditional education, education for returning students—whatever you want to call it—is a substantial profit center for many colleges. Like factory owners, school administrators are delighted with this idea of mounting a second shift of learning in their classrooms, in the evenings, when the full-time students are busy with such regular extracurricular pursuits of higher education as reading Facebook and playing beer pong. If colleges could find a way to mount a third, graveyard shift, as Henry Ford’s Willow Run did at the height of the Second World War, I believe that they would.

There is a sense that the American workforce needs to be more professional at every level. Many jobs that never before required college now call for at least some post-secondary course work. School custodians, those who run the boilers and spread synthetic sawdust on vomit, may not need college—but the people who supervise them, who decide which brand of synthetic sawdust to procure, probably do. There is a sense that our bank tellers should be college educated, and so should our medical-billing techs, and our child-welfare officers, and our sheriffs and federal marshals. We want the police officer who stops the car with the broken taillight to have a nodding acquaintance with great literature. And when all is said and done, my personal economic interest in booming college enrollments aside, I don’t think that’s such a boneheaded idea. Reading literature at the college level is a route to spacious thinking, to an acquaintance with certain profound ideas, that is of value to anyone. Will having read Invisible Man make a police officer less likely to indulge in racial profiling? Will a familiarity with Steinbeck make him more sympathetic to the plight of the poor, so that he might understand the lives of those who simply cannot get their taillights fixed? Will it benefit the correctional officer to have read The Autobiography of Malcolm X? The health-care worker Arrowsmith? Should the child-welfare officer read Plath’s “Daddy”? Such one-to-one correspondences probably don’t hold. But although I may be biased, being an English instructor and all, I can’t shake the sense that reading literature is informative and broadening and ultimately good for you. If I should fall ill, I suppose I would rather the hospital billing staff had read The Pickwick Papers, particularly the parts set in debtors’ prison.

America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns.

Sending everyone under the sun to college is a noble initiative. Academia is all for it, naturally. Industry is all for it; some companies even help with tuition costs. Government is all for it; the truly needy have lots of opportunities for financial aid. The media applauds it—try to imagine someone speaking out against the idea. To oppose such a scheme of inclusion would be positively churlish. But one piece of the puzzle hasn’t been figured into the equation, to use the sort of phrase I encounter in the papers submitted by my English 101 students. The zeitgeist of academic possibility is a great inverted pyramid, and its rather sharp point is poking, uncomfortably, a spot just about midway between my shoulder blades.

For I, who teach these low-level, must-pass, no-multiple-choice-test classes, am the one who ultimately delivers the news to those unfit for college: that they lack the most-basic skills and have no sense of the volume of work required; that they are in some cases barely literate; that they are so bereft of schemata, so dispossessed of contexts in which to place newly acquired knowledge, that every bit of information simply raises more questions. They are not ready for high school, some of them, much less for college.

I am the man who has to lower the hammer.

We may look mild-mannered, we adjunct instructors, but we are academic button men. I roam the halls of academe like a modern Coriolanus bearing sword and grade book, “a thing of blood, whose every motion / Was timed with dying cries.”

I knew that Ms. L.’s paper would fail. I knew it that first night in the library. But I couldn’t tell her that she wasn’t ready for an introductory English class. I wouldn’t be saving her from the humiliation of defeat by a class she simply couldn’t handle. I’d be a sexist, ageist, intellectual snob.

In her own mind, Ms. L. had triumphed over adversity. In her own mind, she was a feel-good segment on Oprah. Everyone wants to triumph. But not everyone can—in fact, most can’t. If they could, it wouldn’t be any kind of a triumph at all. Never would I want to cheapen the accomplishments of those who really have conquered college, who were able to get past their deficits and earn a diploma, maybe even climbing onto the college honor roll. That is truly something.

One of the things I try to do on the first night of English 102 is relate the literary techniques we will study to novels that the students have already read. I try to find books familiar to everyone. This has so far proven impossible. My students don’t read much, as a rule, and though I think of them monolithically, they don’t really share a culture. To Kill a Mockingbird? Nope. (And I thought everyone had read that!) Animal Farm? No. If they have read it, they don’t remember it. The Outsiders? The Chocolate War? No and no. Charlotte’s Web? You’d think so, but no. So then I expand the exercise to general works of narrative art, meaning movies, but that doesn’t work much better. Oddly, there are no movies that they all have seen—well, except for one. They’ve all seen The Wizard of Oz. Some have caught it multiple times. So we work with the old warhorse of a quest narrative. The farmhands’ early conversation illustrates foreshadowing. The witch melts at the climax. Theme? Hands fly up. Everybody knows that one—perhaps all too well. Dorothy learns that she can do anything she puts her mind to and that all the tools she needs to succeed are already within her. I skip the denouement: the intellectually ambitious scarecrow proudly mangles the Pythagorean theorem and is awarded a questionable diploma in a dreamland far removed from reality. That’s art holding up a mirror all too closely to our own poignant scholarly endeavors.

Professor X teaches at a private college and at a community college in the northeastern United States.

The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/college.

Puerto Rico’s Moment in the Sun

2008-05-22T13:29:00.004-05:00

NY Times
May 22, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Puerto Rico’s Moment in the Sun
By MICHAEL JANEWAY

PUERTO RICO, an afterthought trophy for the United States 110 years ago at the end of the Spanish-American War and an island in limbo since, has become an improbable player in the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Its primary on June 1 could bolster Mrs. Clinton’s claim to a majority of the popular vote — the combined tally for all the Democratic primaries and caucuses held across the country over the past six months.

Puerto Rico’s formal role in the process is indeed weighty. Its 63 voting delegates — 55 elected ones and eight superdelegates — at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer will outnumber delegations from more than half the states (including Kentucky and Oregon) and the District of Columbia. Yet Puerto Rico does not have a vote in the Electoral College, nor will its 2.5 million registered voters cast ballots for president in November.

How in the world did this happen? From the beginning, the question of Puerto Rico has perplexed the United States. The island was essential to the defense of the Panama Canal, so we did not make it independent, in contrast to two other Spanish possessions we gained in the war, Cuba (which become independent in 1902) and the Philippines (1946). And we judged it foreign in language and culture — and worse, overpopulated — so New Mexico-style Americanization leading to statehood was out of the question.

Similarly, Puerto Ricans have never resolved their relationship with the United States. For almost 50 years after the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rican sentiment was divided between dreams of statehood and of independence. This ambivalence deterred the island from ever petitioning Congress for one or the other. And until mid-century, sporadic outbursts of violent nationalism haunted the scene.

Partly to put such extremism out of business, Congress in 1948 allowed Puerto Rico to elect its own governor and then in 1950 gave it an intricately designed, semi-autonomous “commonwealth” status short of statehood. Two years later, the island adopted its own Constitution, and Congress quickly ratified it.

Puerto Ricans elect their own Legislature, along with the governor. They enjoy entitlements like Social Security, but they do not pay federal income taxes. They retain their own cultural identity (Spanish is the prevailing tongue) but live under the umbrella of the American trade system and the American military. They have been citizens since 1917, but they have no vote in Congress or for the presidency.

The man who brought forth this unique arrangement, which has come to seem permanent, was Luis Muñoz Marín, who dominated Puerto Rico’s politics beginning in 1940. In 1948 he became the island’s first elected governor. He won three more terms and could easily have been “president for life.” A stretch of 116th Street in Manhattan’s Spanish Harlem is named Luis Muñoz Marín Boulevard in his honor.

Muñoz was an eloquent advocate of independence until, faced with daunting statistics at the end of World War II, he concluded that Puerto Rico’s impoverished economy could not support nationhood. So he began packaging his third-way brainchild.

When pitching commonwealth on the mainland, Muñoz — an artist of words and imagery who also enjoyed a drink or two — would observe that Puerto Rico is the olive in the American martini. The phrase went down well in Washington, but Muñoz used different language at home. Neither Congress nor the American courts have ever embraced Muñoz’s Spanish-language phrase for “commonwealth,” universally recognized in Puerto Rico: “estado libre asociado,” or free associated state. Those three words suggested an autonomy (or even statehood or independence) beyond what came to pass. But Muñoz was too popular on the island for that to cause him trouble.

Still, Muñoz always intended to bring “enhanced autonomy” in trade, self-governance, taxation and entitlements to Puerto Rico. But Fidel Castro’s seizure of power in Cuba in 1959 moved Washington’s attention away from the commonwealth.

Muñoz left office in 1965. His dreams faded. The economy he jump-started went flat. Today, the government accounts for 30 percent of Puerto Rico’s work force (compared with 16 percent on the mainland).

Then in 1974, the Democratic National Committee and some shrewd local political strategists came up with an idea for how to play to lingering discontent over the island’s status: Why not make nice with Puerto Rico (and, as important, with the Puerto Rican vote in American cities) by awarding it the number of delegates to the Democratic presidential nominating convention that its population would yield as a state? But not until this year has a presidential race been close enough, long enough, to yield Puerto Rico a role in the endgame.

On the island, politics is focused on the longstanding deadlock between the two dominant parties, whose identities — one is for statehood and one is for enhanced autonomy — today bear no relation to those of the Republicans and Democrats in the 50 states. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are, gingerly, bidding for support from both of them.

But the mainland population of Puerto Ricans (like the island’s, almost four million) is watching, too. That fully enfranchised constituency is up for grabs in November. Republicans have fished in these waters, too.

Presidential candidates usually offer Puerto Ricans hazy promises that are sure to be unfulfilled. First on the list: We’ll do whatever you want about the island’s status if you deliver us an overwhelming majority for one or another option. That’s not going to happen.

Since 1967, public support on the island has seesawed inconclusively between statehood and enhanced autonomy — a better version of the deal they already have. Muñoz’s commonwealth helped eclipse independence; that course enjoys only limited support today. An overwhelming majority of Puerto Ricans wants, one way or another, to be American.

The next president could just appoint another commission, more high-level and forceful than past ones, to reopen the dormant question of Puerto Rico’s status. But there is an additional option.

Fidel Castro is gone from office, Hugo Chávez’s influence is growing, Brazil is becoming an oil power, and the United States has no Latin American policy to speak of. John F. Kennedy wisely turned to Puerto Rican leaders to help him frame a new policy for the region in 1961. Similarly, the next president could ask Puerto Rico, with its democratic tradition and its past success with economic development, to help us plan for the post-Castro Caribbean.

The United States is overdue in re-engaging with this special place, which landed in our lap as a stepchild of imperialism in 1898, and which we have never seen clearly.

Michael Janeway, a former editor of The Boston Globe and a professor of journalism and arts at Columbia, is writing a history of the United States and Puerto Rico in the 20th century.

Zillah Eisenstein: "Hillary is White"

2008-05-19T10:23:00.002-05:00

Published on Sunday, May 18, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Hillary Is White
by Zillah Eisenstein

It seems clear that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for president this fall. Nevertheless, it is crucial to clarify how wrong-headed Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been so that the legacy she leaves does no more damage to a multi-racial, multi-class based feminism/womanism both here and abroad.

None of the pundits and journalists appears to be wondering and worrying about black women in this post-Indiana-North-Carolina-West-Virginia moment. Instead, all eyes, and especially Hillary and Bill’s are on the so-called “white-hard-working working class”. Hillary’s preoccupation with white voters is a dead give-a-way of how she thinks about gender, and being a woman. Gender is white to her, like race is black. Bill and Hillary Clinton have thrown African-Americans to the wind because they thought they could play the gender card with its history of whiteness and win.

And here lies the rub. Hillary Clinton presents herself to the electorate as a woman. She argues that she wants to break the glass ceiling of/for gender. But the truth is that she is not simply a woman but both a woman and also white. The very fact that she ignores her own race, in a way that Obama cannot, is proof of the normalized privileging of whiteness. In this instance white is not a color, but the color, the standard, by which others are judged. So she silently, inadvertently but knowingly, uses her color to write her meanings of gender and mobilize older white women and angry white men by doing so. She presents herself as a woman but her real power here is as white. Misogyny — the fear, hatred, punishment, and discrimination towards women — ensures that Hillary’s privilege is her whiteness.

Most often the term white is not spoken alongside the term woman; there is no need. One only specifies color when it is not white. Women are assumed to be white if not specified otherwise, especially if you are speaking about gender or women’s rights, or feminism. Forget the fact that it was a group of black women that initially challenged the Supreme Court in the first sex discrimination case in this country years ago.

Hillary speaks of herself as a woman, and then speaks separately about race, as though she does not embody both at the same time. She has as much ‘race’ as Barack, but her race is not a problem for her. It is for him, even though it may not be as much as a problem as she is trying to make it. As such, Hillary, as a (white) woman pits herself against Barack (as black) with a race so to speak. So Hillary (as a woman) is falsely, wrongly, pitted against Barack (as black). Her whiteness privileges and pits gender against race. She encodes her whiteness as though it is central to her gender, and to her kind of feminism without saying a word. She re-awakens and rewrites the history of 19th century U.S. feminism that pitted black men getting the vote before white women had that right. More recently, women’s rights rhetoric was used to justify the bombing of the Taliban and brown people in Afghanistan and Iraq. Feminism has a history of being bankrupt on this issue so this is nothing new. What is forgotten here is that women’s rights come, or should come, in all colors.

Barack Obama has said he wants to embrace the new notions of race and the racial progress that has occurred. He is not post-racist, but recognizes the newly raced relations as they exist at present. Nevertheless, he must give a speech on race although he says he does not want to be a racial candidate. He recognizes that the country has new-old racial hierarchies with complex identities and that he himself represents white and African blackness, whatever this might mean for him. Meanwhile Hillary says she is running as a woman, and never gives a speech on gender because white angry men and women, would not be pleased by this. So patriarchy, or sexual discrimination, or the structural hierarchy of masculinity with its racialized and class aspects is never mentioned in her campaign. She uses whiteness as her weapon and pretends to be speaking about gender. But she never once mentions the unacceptable misogyny of this country, or the sexual hierarchy of the labor force, or any of the great racial and class inequities that define women’s lives today. This is a misuse and abuse of her gender.

Feminisms of all sorts have moved beyond the idea that feminism is a white woman’s thing; or that feminisms should be particularly beholden to the white mainstreamed part of the U.S. women’s movement. Large numbers of women, especially women of color, but many white women as well, know that race and gender are inseparable and that is why most of these women, whatever their color, are voting for Barack Obama. Hillary should not be allowed to push feminism backwards for her own political ambition. It is not surprising that it is older white women who disproportionately support her. They identify with old notions of womanhood-a homogenized notion that all females share an identity, and race and class are not connected issues to be named and spoken. This is why younger women and progressive women from the civil rights and women’s movements, some of whom are older, disproportionately support Obama.

My thoughts about Hillary Clinton have their own history, which also coincide with her history. I have not been a fan of hers. I have written critically of her for more than a decade now. She has never spoken on behalf of women or as a candidate with a woman’s agenda, let alone as a feminist when she was in the White House. Many of us who are her contemporaries were active in the Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Movements and Anti-Vietnam War movement — while she chose not to be. Her one speech addressing the exploitation of women was delivered in Beijing, China, as though it is women outside, but not inside the U.S. who face untold discrimination. Now she runs for president and has become a gun-toting, war mongering white woman who asks for your vote if you are an angry white Reagan Democrat. Maybe she thinks manly gender is the answer for breaking glass ceilings for women.

I would argue that she is not breaking gender boundaries but rather has embraced and extended masculine/misogyny for females. And misogyny always comes in racialized form. She remains female in body and hence parades as a decoy for feminist claims. And her white self is central to this decoy status. Susan Faludi wrote in the New York Times that Hillary is having a success with white male support because she is willing to battle, and engage in rough play like one of the boys. She is supposedly willing to “join the brawl” and as such has won their confidence. She has “broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys” opening the way for women to finally make it “through the glass ceiling and into the White house”. Barbara Ehrenreich in The Nation hesitantly embraces this assessment and then more forcefully criticizes Clinton for her ruthlessness. Ehrenreich writes that Clinton has “smashed the myth of innate female moral superiority in the worst possible way…demonstrating female moral inferiority.”

Hillary has proven that sometimes the best man for the job may be a female posing to be a man. In other words, Hillary has simply clothed herself in men’s tactics and strategies. She can nuke with the best of them. Hillary not only authorized the war in Iraq but she repeatedly continued to do so for several more years — up until the time she began running for president. She allowed, along with Bill Clinton, the egregious trade blockade against Iraq as hundreds of thousands of children starved to death after the ‘91 war. She more recently has supported Israel’s terror bombing of Lebanon and has newly endorsed “the total obliteration” of Iran.

But this is just part of the sad story. Hillary’s embrace of a masculinist machismo embraces the very misogyny that most feminists want to dismantle. Instead of challenging the gender divide Hillary simply slides over to the other side of it. Instead of offering a new vision of what it might mean to have a female president she offers us old versions of white privilege and war mongering. But the structural privilege of patriarchy is ignored and obfuscated with Hillary’s race card.

Nevertheless many (white) women write, like Marie Cocco in the Washington Post (May 15, ‘08), that she won’t miss the misogyny of the campaign when it’s over — she lists the sexist T-shirts, and array of commercial goods circulating at present. While I abhor any form of degradation of girls and women, or any human being for that matter, I am also hesitant to see this as a sufficient critique of the problem.

Hillary Clinton should never be demeaned for being a woman. But being a woman comes in all colors and classes. Hillary has done the unforgivable. She has used race — the whiteness card — on behalf of gender. We, the big “we” — the huge diversely defined feminisms in this country and across the globe — are better than this. Black feminists in this country, during the 1970’s and 80’s women’s movement made sure to break open the race/gender divide and clarify that gender is always racialized and race is always gendered. No person ever experiences one with out the other. Only when whiteness parades as an invisible standard can you think that gender and race can be separate. As such Hillary is white and a female and Barack is black and male. They are each both. Everyone is.

Hillary’s manipulation and misrepresentation of her gender reveals her sexual decoy status. Being female is not enough to allow one to claim their gender as a political tactic. Such claims must be rooted in a commitment to end gender discrimination and their racial and class formulations; not pit races and classes against each other in the hopes of being the first woman president. Clinton does not share a political identity with women of all classes and colors and nations simply because she has a female body. She first needs to claim that body and demand rights for it — reproductive, day care, health, education, etc. She has no multi-racial woman’s agenda because she has no anti-racist agenda. Meanwhile she is thrilled that she won big in West Virginia. West Virginia is “almost heaven” to Hillary. She says it shows the country that she can win the “hardworking white Americans” in November. But West Virginia is not heaven, nor is it like much of the rest of the country. It may look like what the U.S. used to be, but that is exactly the point. It does not have the diversity of color, age, culture that defines the U.S. today. Neither does Hillary’s vision.

Hillary is a sexual decoy. She looks like a woman but is not a feminist nor does she speak for or on behalf of most women. She speaks for white people while identifying with her gender, as a woman. But she has trumped herself here. If a female prepares to bully the rest of the world with war and white privilege hopefully we — the big “we” — the “we” that spans across our differences will defeat the political forces she represents. And this means building a coalition for the November elections that makes sure that a non-misogynist agenda is part of the anti-racist politics of the Obama campaign.

Zillah Eisenstein is professor of politics at Ithaca College, a feminist anti-racist activist, and author of ten books in feminisms and feminist theories across the globe. Her most recent book is Sexual Decoys: Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy (London: Zed Books, 2007).

The Masculinity Project

2008-05-19T01:01:00.001-05:00

from The Masculinity Project:

What does it mean to be a man? The Masculinity Project will gather multi-generational voices to explore this question, with a focus on the black community in the 21st century. This project addresses the critical topic of masculinity in the African American community by exploring how young men are represented and perceived, investigating the obstacles they encounter, and celebrating the contributions they make.

Si Se Puede

2008-05-19T00:56:00.001-05:00

Police Brutality at Wesleyan University

2008-05-16T12:27:00.002-05:00

Last night police used exsessive force to disrupt a party on Fountain Ave. at Wesleyan University. Pepper sprary/Pepperballs, tear gas, k-9's, and paintball guns/rubber bullets were used on the students.

Here are some news clips about the incident.

More to come.

Fuck the Police.

20080516-WTHN-Noon
by spazeboy

Keith Olberman tells Bush to shut the hell up...in so many words

2008-05-15T17:25:00.000-05:00

Blockbuster Video Living Museum

2008-05-14T02:48:00.002-05:00

Netflix & Digital movie downloads are taking over.....Pretty soon DVD's will be the new VHS. I can't even remember the last time I
rented a movie from Blockbuster/Hollywood Video. I'm an avid Netflix user, just more convenient & cheaper. If I want a movie on the spot, I just download it! Any thoughts?

Historic 2018Blockbuster2019 Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past

Beverly Hills Chihuahua Trailer

2008-05-13T12:48:00.001-05:00

Wow......

In the great tradition of Walt Disney.....Here is Disney racism at its best.......Now we're dogs.....but dogs who are descendants of the Aztec.

In the Age of TiVo and Web Video, What Is Prime Time?

2008-05-13T12:34:00.010-05:00

I don't know how I lived without my DVR.....

May 12, 2008
NY Times

In the Age of TiVo and Web Video, What Is Prime Time?

By BRIAN STELTER

This week, the television upfronts — in which the broadcast networks present their schedules to advertisers — will open with a mystery. Who stole six million viewers?

That’s the number who were watching prime time television last May, a month affectionately known as “sweeps,” but have disappeared this year, according to the overnight Nielsen ratings. Each of the major broadcast networks, save for Fox, has seen its audience decline this season. The ratings for hit shows like “American Idol” and “CSI” have approached record lows.

Where some of last May’s 44 million viewers went is not a mystery, according to the networks. The writers’ strike this winter deflated the ratings and accelerated the flight of viewers to cable channels.

But the more significant shift can’t be blamed on the strike. In the past television season, there has been a sharp increase in time-shifting. Some of the six million are still watching, but on their own terms, thanks to TiVos and other digital video recorders, streaming video on the Internet, and cable video on demand offerings. So while overall usage of television is steady, the linear broadcasts favored by advertisers are in decline.

The mystery, then, is what the networks should do now.

Brad Adgate, research director of the advertising agency Horizon Media, said that advertisers were paying attention to the changes.

“Part of the reason why advertisers buy television is because of its immediacy,” Mr. Adgate said. As more consumers time-shift their viewing, “there becomes less of a difference between ads in magazines and ads on television.”

Broadcast television remains the dominant medium for advertising, as the $9 billion upfront market attests, but its prime-time audience is gradually shrinking. Time-shifting has cushioned the declines, but in ways that are trickier to measure and pitch to marketers. With on-demand options available in more households than ever, networks have no choice but to adapt.

For starters, the prime-time schedules crafted by television programmers might become less important with each passing year. David Wolf, a senior executive with the consulting firm Accenture’s media and entertainment practice, said that “must-see TV” — the longtime slogan for of NBC’s Thursday night lineup — might become a television relic.

“The days of the ‘lineup’ are numbered,” Mr. Wolf said. In other words, with fewer viewers watching linear over-the-air television, networks can’t assume that a heavyweight lead-in like “Dancing With the Stars” will keep viewers watching all the way to the late local news, a pattern that has helped networks introduce new shows.

It may also mean that matching up programs becomes less important, or at least less potentially damaging. Last fall’s powerhouse Thursday at 9 p.m. match-up — ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” versus CBS’s “CSI” versus NBC’s “The Office” — was a scheduling move influenced by time-shifting. All three shows are popular among the young, upscale viewers who record and stream shows most often.

“I think that scheduling decision would have been a lot harder to make in a non-DVR world,” said a senior network executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about the issue. “It would have been more of a zero-sum game then.”

Many of the top-rated broadcast shows now have 20 percent to 25 percent ratings gains when DVR viewing is calculated. In urban areas, the gains are even greater. In Los Angeles, fully half the 18- to 49-year-old viewership for some shows, including “The Office” and another NBC sitcom, “30 Rock,” happens on a time-shifted basis.

Some viewers shift their viewing only slightly, overlapping shows scheduled later in the evening.

Of 20 shows time-shifted most often, only one (“Medium”) is on at 10 p.m. As appointment viewing wanes, hit franchises — ones that viewers will record or watch online each week — become even more important.

“As a result of time-shifting, the biggest shows are getting bigger and some of the smaller shows are getting negatively impacted,” the senior television executive said.

At a series of upfront presentations this week, the networks are likely to discuss the dizzying number of new ways to watch television. Last week, for example, the General Electric unit NBC started streaming some episodes to the Apple iPhone, and Microsoft added show downloads to its online store.

The availability of television shows online has become widespread surprisingly quickly. Some series are viewed millions of times a week via free, advertising-supported streaming Web sites like Hulu, Veoh and Fancast (and the network sites themselves). DVRs and online streams offer “a fairly large library of content available on an on-demand basis,” said Amy Banse of Comcast Interactive Media.

“The Hills,” the most popular show on Viacom’s MTV, is a leading example of the shift. Comparing television ratings with online streams is imprecise, but the audience for the series soars when on-demand options are factored in. Since the show returned on March 24, premiere episodes have averaged 3.7 million “live” viewers on Monday nights. Almost a million more viewers have watched each episode using DVRs. On the Internet, episodes and excerpts have been streamed another 32 million times. Some overlap undoubtedly exists, as some fans watch the episode both on TV and online. But every viewing is another advertising opportunity for MTV.

Streaming is particularly popular among younger viewers, who are able to sample shows they would otherwise miss. In a first-of-its-kind experiment, the CW decided last month to stop streaming the teen drama “Gossip Girl” on its Web site and steer viewers to the television broadcast in an effort to bolster its over-the-air ratings. Stephanie Savage, an executive producer, said she worried that the move would alienate viewers. After all, each episode put online had been streamed hundreds of thousands of times.

“There were a lot of question marks,” she said.

But executives at the CW, a joint venture between a Time Warner unit and the CBS Corporation, were pleased with the results when the ratings rose slightly in late April, Ms. Savage noted, and the episodes are still for sale for $1.99 each at Apple’s iTunes store, where they regularly rank No. 1.

Cable operators offer yet another on-demand option. Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the country’s two largest cable providers, are increasingly promoting their video-on-demand platforms, which are mostly associated with movies and premium programming. One-third of United States households now have on-demand capabilities, and Comcast said its platform recorded more than 300 million video views in March, up 50 percent over the previous year.

But of all the time-shifting technologies, digital video recorders are the most popular. One in four American households now uses a digital video recorder to time-shift shows and skip commercials, up from about 15 percent last May. The broadcast networks experienced a 60 percent rise in recorded viewing this season. Last year, in recognition of the growth of DVRs, many television networks converted to a new ratings metric for buying and selling ad time that includes shows watched within three days of the broadcast.

For networks, the DVR is a friend and an enemy: “the classic frenemy,” said Alan Wurtzel, the head of research for NBC.

While they enable viewers to watch more hours of television, they hurt the rate of commercial recognition, as about half of all commercials are skipped in time-shifting modes.

“Honestly, if I could wish away the DVR, I would,” Mr. Wurtzel added. “But I can’t. It’s growing.”

Time Warner is trying a half-measure: letting viewers start an episode anytime during the hour of its broadcast. “I’d like to see this get to the point where we have so much content that consumers can actually plan their lives around knowing that they don’t have to plan their lives,” said Peter C. Stern, the executive vice president for product management at Time Warner Cable.

Ollie North

2008-05-12T15:32:00.000-05:00

Dominican Family Guy Part 5

2008-05-11T19:17:00.001-05:00

Luis Posada Carriles, a terror suspect abroad, enjoys a 'coming-out' in Miami

2008-05-09T01:13:00.002-05:00

So a man that the U.S. Dept. of Defense once labeled a "terrorist" & who has been linked to the deaths of innocent people is allowed to walk free on the streets of Miami & lead a normal life, while the Cuban 5 are still in jail for fighting to defend their country? The hypocrisy of this country & its policy towards its "war on terror" is so blatant it's disgusting. & now Carriles is honored?

Luis Posada Carriles, a terror suspect abroad, enjoys a 'coming-out' in Miami

A dinner with 500 fellow Cuban exiles honors the militant and former CIA operative, now 80 and still wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges.

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 7, 2008
MIAMI -- The dapper octogenarian in a crisp blue suit, his face smoothed by plastic surgery, swanned from table to table in the candlelit banquet hall, bestowing kisses and collecting accolades.

An aging movie star being feted by fans? A veteran politico taking his bows?

LA PLAZA: News and observations on Latin America
No, the man being honored by 500 fellow Cuban Americans at a sold-out gala was Luis Posada Carriles, the former CIA operative wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges and under a deportation order for illegally entering the United States three years ago.

Posada, 80, has mostly kept a low profile since his release from a Texas prison a year ago and a federal judge's dismissal of the only U.S. charges against him -- making false statements to immigration officials.

But recent events like the Friday dinner and an exhibition and sale of his paintings last fall show that the man who spent his life trying to topple the communist government of Fidel Castro has returned to the social forefront of this city's exile community.

"We are coming to the end of a terrible stage. The end of our struggle is near," Posada told the crowd of supporters in evening dress, referring to Castro's failing health.

Venezuela's ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, condemned the celebration of Posada as a mockery of justice and evidence of a Bush administration double standard in fighting terrorism.

"This is outrageous, particularly because he kept talking about violence," Alvarez said of Posada. "He said that the whole thing now is 'to sharpen our machetes' " for a confrontation with leftist regimes in Latin America.

The U.S. government has never given Venezuela a formal answer to its 3-year-old request for extradition of Posada, despite a treaty providing for such cooperation that has been in effect since 1922, the ambassador said.

Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, is alleged to have masterminded the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 on which all 73 on board were killed, including a youth fencing team returning from a tournament in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. He is also suspected of plotting a series of hotel bombings in Havana in the late 1990s, one of which killed an Italian tourist.

He has boasted of his many attempts to kill Castro and has allegedly been involved in, according to court documents, "some of the most infamous events of 20th century Central American politics."

Posada was serving time in a Panama prison for a 2000 assassination attempt on Castro when outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned him and three accomplices in August 2004 in what some observers saw as a favor to President Bush to rally the Cuban-dominated Florida vote for his reelection.

The three other Cuban Americans returned to Miami as heroes; Posada arrived six months later, reportedly fetched from Mexico by a shrimp boat owned by an anti-Castro benefactor.

As Venezuela, Cuba and human rights groups clamored for Posada's extradition for trial on the plane-bombing charges, federal authorities here arrested him in May 2005 for illegal entry. A federal judge in Texas ordered him deported, but another judge prohibited his being sent to Venezuela, heeding claims by Posada's lawyers that he could face torture or execution there.

None of a half-dozen friendly countries contacted by the State Department would agree to take Posada.

An immigration fraud case was brought by federal prosecutors later that year but dismissed in May 2007. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone accused federal authorities of using trickery, fraud and deceit in pursuing a criminal case against him.

Federal prosecutors appealed and are waiting for a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, said Dean Boyd, spokesman for the Justice Department.

Analysts speculate that the U.S. government has dodged calls for prosecution of Posada for fear he would disclose details of CIA involvement in coups, assassination plots and scandals, including the Iran-Contra Affair.

Peter Kornbluh, head of the Cuba Documentation Project at George Washington University's National Security Archive, has compiled declassified CIA and FBI documents on Posada that show he remained in close touch with Washington handlers throughout his covert service.

"The spectacle of a wanted international terrorist being publicly feted as a hero in Miami makes a mockery of the Bush administration's commitment to wage a war on terrorism," he said of Posada's coming-out party.

Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.) convened a congressional hearing in November on the administration's handling of the Posada case, arguing that there was "compelling evidence" implicating Posada in the plane bombing.

Delahunt said Tuesday that "there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm" under the current administration for prosecuting Posada, but that he would push again for legal action against Posada after the fall election. "To have Posada honored in such a way sends a terrible statement to the rest of the world," the congressman said of the tribute.

Posada, still under a supervision order with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, entered the banquet to a standing ovation, his face beaming and minus the scar from a 1990 attack by gunmen in Guatemala.

"He's a real hero for Cuba. He's been fighting for the freedom of Cuba since the day he arrived in the United States," said Hector Morales-George, a retired surgeon who attended the dinner.

carol.williams@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-posada7-2008may07,0,1699509.story?track=rss

fox news owned

2008-05-08T22:43:00.001-05:00

Are Immigration Authorities Going After School Children Now?

2008-05-08T14:21:00.003-05:00

Here is an article written by my girl Amanda over at New America Media.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/84718
www.newamericamedia.org

Are Immigration Authorities Going After School Children Now?
By Amanda Martinez, New American Media. Posted May 8, 2008.

If true, then it's hard to imagine the cruelty that resides in these people's hearts.

Editor's Note: Immigration raids near schools in Berkeley and Oakland have sent waves of panic in the communities and may keep undocumented students from attending class, writes NAM education reporter Amanda Martinez.

OAKLAND, Calif. - Berkeley High senior Chase Stern said he was taking an Advanced Placement test May 6, when he noticed that his classmates were fidgeting in their seats and seemed distracted.

He soon found out that the Latino students were receiving text messages and phone calls from family members, warning them that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were nearby, and that they should be cautious and find their way home because family members could not pick them up.

Scores of undocumented parents began to panic as early as 7: 30 a.m. May 6, as word got around that ICE vehicles were parked near schools in East Oakland and South Berkeley.

Parent liaison Isela Barbosa said she was swamped with phone calls all day. "Parents were so afraid to come to the school, they called family members and neighbors, whoever had papers, to pick up their children."

A community member contacted Mark Coplan, Berkeley Unified School District's public information officer to tell him that a Latino family from South Berkley had been detained at a house near Russell Street, and that neighbors had spotted ICE vehicles near school areas.

By noon, the district had received so many calls from concerned parents that they set up an automated voice message system, assuring parents that that there was no way they would allow ICE officers to pick up students from school campuses. These messages were sent out both in English and in Spanish.

At about the same time, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) officials were receiving similar calls from concerned parents and community members that ICE agency vehicles had been spotted near four Oakland schools, including Esperanza Elementary, where parents say they saw agents parked on International Blvd, 98th, 95th, and San Leandro Boulevard, a four block radius surrounding the school.

OUSD officials said they were hesitant to communicate with parents, so instead sent out e-mails to all school district staff about what was happening and reminding them that the school district's commitment was to educate all students, documented or otherwise. The e-mail also advised staff not to facilitate any immigration enforcement actions.

As word of the presence of ICE agents in the neighborhood spread, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums rushed over to Esperanza Elementary School, where a number of parents and community members had gathered.

Addressing them, the Mayor called the situation the "the ugly side of government."

He labeled the ICE actions "inappropriate and unnecessary" and reiterated that children needed education, not harassment. "There should be no raids in Oakland," he said.

"As a sanctuary city," Dellums said, "we're all in unison. We don't want this type of intimidation. Immigrants are human beings, and need to be dealt with respect."

Oakland Vice Mayor Larry Reid, who also showed up at the school, said there was no warning about the ICE raids. "ICE just rolls in and tells our police department after the fact," he said. "The students are upset and crying. The school's administration said some of the kids are very shook up."

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said that the agency is mindful of the sensitivities associated with schools. She said there was no truth to the reports that ICE was targeting schools on this day, and that the two ICE fugitive operations teams based in the Bay Area go out virtually ever day seeking immigrant fugitives.

She confirmed that on the morning of May 6, ICE officers arrested four immigration violators who were from Mexico, and were living at a residence in Berkeley. A fifth person was arrested at a residence in Oakland, she said, noting that all five have been released, pending immigration hearings.

Sara Nuno of the Family and Community Office of the OUSD dismissed ICE's assertion that there was no targeting of any schools. "They are targeting schools and we are watching them do it," she asserted.

Ellen Murry, who had come to the school to pick up her grandnephew, said that she believed these types of government actions hurt all students, not just the undocumented ones. She said that if students stayed away from school out of fear, it could impact the school district's income, the bulk of which comes from student attendance.

Troy Flint, communications officer of OUSD, pointed out that such raids distracted students who were taking the state standardized test. He assured students that the OUSD would do everything it could to allow them to finish taking the tests.

Parents and local groups, including the Alameda Labor Council, sent out more than 900 e-mails letting parents know of what was taking place.

One parent liaison, who helped to make phone calls throughout the day to concerned parents, said he thought the fear of deportation was serious. If parents sought his advice, he said, he would tell them to keep their chidren at home, even though the OUSD has assured them that the students would be protected.

NAM reporter Pete Micek contributed to this report.

Hipster Olympics

2008-05-08T01:44:00.001-05:00

Viva Hollywood...Viva Stereotypes?

2008-05-07T23:22:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I’ve been meaning to write about this show for a while. So on April 13, 2008 VH1 premiered their new reality show “Viva Hollywood.” The show follows 12 aspiring Latin@ actors who are competing for a role in one of Telemundo’s telenovelas. They all live in a house together (“la casa de los locos”) and the show is hosted by Maria Conchita Alonso & Carlos Ponce. Oh yea, Walter Mercado is around too giving the contestants their challenges, which all center around one of the “7 deadly sins of telenovelas.” This is what VH1 says about the show:

“Our cast of fiery wannabes will live together, fight together, make love together...while competing for the coveted title and a Hollywood prize package that includes a contract with Telemundo, the biggest telenovela production company in the United States.”

To perceive this show as a positive sign of the increasing Latino presence in U.S. English-speaking television is utterly wrong. “Viva Hollywood” is just a catalog of all the worst stereotypes regarding telenovelas and Latin@ culture. The show is set up in a way to exploit tons of different stereotypes about Latin@s and they succeed. The VH1 website states : "Latin telenovela stars are so hot, so sexy, so emotional, so extreme...don't you wish you knew what the hell they were saying?" In this same vein, VH1 proclaims that the show will introduce telenovelas to an “American audience.” Last time I checked millions of Latinos in this country who already watch telenovelas are American. Thus, in VH1’s subtle wording, they are making it clear that they don’t consider Latinos to be real Americans. So who is the target audience? I’m assuming just like they’re other reality hit “Flavor of Love,” the majority of viewers are white. Which poses a whole bunch of other questions about the implications of this show….
The show runs the gamut of Latin@ stereotypes from the oversexed Latino to the bitchy confrontational Latina. Everyone is “hot blooded”& this reflects VH1’s website which believes that “Latin Telenovela stars are so hot, sexy, so extreme—and so emotional.” The show does touch on some critical issues, although unknowingly. For examples, issues of language, body image, immigration, sexuality, machismo, homophobia, and others are evoked, but rarely addressed or unpacked.

Lastly, instead of competing to stay on the show like many other reality shows. The contestants are essentially asked to beg for their place in the house & justify to the judges why they deserve to stay. Hmm…kind of like the way many Latinos need to justify the right to stay in this country? Or how many of us have to legitimate our identity as authentic Americans?

So overall, there is a lot to be said about this show and a lot of issues to address & I hope to write more about it once the season is over, because VH1 will undoubtedly have a 2nd season to capitalize on its success.

One side note I found interesting is that the intro for the show is a “Viva Hollywood” Reggaeton song. Never before did I associate Reggaeton with telenovelas, but I guess this is VH1’s attempt to appeal to a young demographic because us kids respond really well to Reggaeton, right? I guess it falls in line with the whole hot, spicy, and sexy motif they were going for.

Here are the first two segments of the first episode:

video.vh1.com

video.vh1.com

I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts, reactions, and overall sentiments towards the show.

2008-05-07T14:06:00.004-05:00

So after reading this article & posting it on facebook my boy Will hit me up with some thoughts on racism in Video Games.

Below is the article that sparked the dialogue & the convo that followed, feel free to share your thoughts.

Boston Globe
A no-win situation
The debate over stereotypes in video games has become a no-win situation

By Vanessa E. Jones Globe Staff
May 5, 2008
By the time Priester was a teenager, he had decided to limit his play to mentally challenging games such as SimCity and Intelligent Qube. The series NBA: The Life alienates Priester because it shows basketball players using their salaries to buy rims and other materialistic goods. "When you're younger," says Priester, now a Boston University sophomore, "you're not cognizant of these stereotypes. As you grow older it becomes more and more glaring." Video games have long had a bad rap for stereotyping women and promoting violence. Grand Theft Auto IV, released last week, is generating controversy for its focus on an Eastern European immigrant who goes on a car theft and murder rampage. But Priester is among a growing number of gamers and scholars criticizing the lack of diversity and high proportion of stereotypes in video games.

It's a sensitive issue. "The subject of racism and games is not really discussed," says Chris Mottes, CEO of the Denmark-based game developer Deadline Games. And when it is, game developers and some gamers usually denounce the complainers as overly sensitive; a common response to critics is that these are "only games."

But the subject continues to resurface as gamers find more reasons to take offense. In a February post on MTV Multiplayer, blogger Tracey John wrote about her experience playing Carnival Games. She could change her character's pants, shirts, shoes, and hairstyles, John wrote. "But when it came to skin color, it only offered different faces in one pale hue. In other words, as a minority (I'm a Chinese woman), I could not replicate my skin color for my avatar within Carnival Games (much less if I were African-American or Hispanic). I found that a bit offensive."

Last year, the trailer for the upcoming Resident Evil 5 depicted a white soldier shooting black zombies. A contributor to the blog Black Looks wrote: "This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, [and] the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing . . ." In March the website GameDaily posted an illustrated story about the "most allegedly racist games," which included Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, LocoRoco, Custer's Revenge, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Hitman 2: Silent Assassin.

Karen Dill, a psychology professor at Lenoir-Rhyne College in North Carolina, told the congressional Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection in September that video games blatantly stereotype minorities. A recent study she co-wrote, "Playing With Prejudice: The Prevalence and Consequences of Racial Stereotypes in Videogames," analyzed the representation of minorities in photographs used to promote stories in the top video game magazines published in 2006. The study found black and Latino men were more likely to be portrayed as athletes or aggressors. Black men were less likely to wear protective armor or use technology than whites. Asians were often portrayed as intellectually superior but physically inferior.

Robert Simmons, 21, a Tufts University senior, spends about three hours a day playing video games. The majority are role playing games such as Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts and sports games such as the Madden football series. He's also delved into the Grand Theft Auto series, which generated heavy criticism in 2003 because characters in the Vice City edition encourage players to kill Haitians and Cubans. Simmons says the negative images in Grand Theft Auto leave him unmoved. "It doesn't encourage me to buy into the stereotypes," he says.

Dill said in an interview that she gets a lot of resistance from consumers and industry insiders about her findings. "No one wants to believe that the habit they have is harmful," says Dill. "A lot of people think we're saying you play a video game, you grab a gun and start shooting people. We're saying it instigates aggression. . . . This can manifest itself in different ways: a person is more insulting, a person shows someone else less respect in terms of the racial and gender issues. There's a real effect, but it's subtle."

Deadline Games CEO Mottes, a South African who worked in the anti-apartheid movement, took particular offense when his games Total Overdose and Chili Con Carnage were panned for their stereotypical depictions of Mexicans. Mottes's post on gamedaily.com last year delved into the issue of racism and the video game industry: "We have to find the nuances other than to accept that there's no place for these kind of stereotypes or storytelling methods." In an interview, Mottes defended the use of stereotypes as a form of comedy. "I can't think of a comedian or comic movie that doesn't play on stereotypes," he says.

To some, Mottes's argument for the use of stereotypes fails to provide the nuance he accuses his critics of lacking. Latoya Peterson, an avid gamer who wrote about Mottes's post on the blog Racialicious, doesn't think stereotypes can ever be seen as positive. "They say, 'Oh it's just a game, don't worry about it,' " Peterson says. "Wait a minute. The game also is a part of entertainment that . . . informs how you look at things and reinforces mindsets."

When 20-year-old Jonathan Priester was younger, his parents would talk to him about the lack of diversity in video games. They would examine the games he wanted to play. If one contained questionable content, they didn't refuse to buy it. Instead they asked him to justify the purchase.

"In making you talk about it - 'Is that something you would grow up to do? Is it something that's positive?' - you come to the conclusion yourself that maybe this isn't the best," Priester says. "This is how other people could possibly view you. Would you want to be viewed in this manner?"
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

My initial post of this article was followed by the statement "Are some video games racist? yea,racism evolves with technology"

Here is the convo that followed:

Will: Yo ok so I've actually been thinking about this all day and I think the issue has tons of different facets to address. One question that I gotta ask you though. What exactly do you mean by "racism evolves with technology"? I think I get what you are trying to say but as stated I am missing the connection to the article you posted.

Tito: So I guess what I meant by that is that as new forms of technology evolve (i.e. video games) & racism does too, in that it takes form & is deployed in various ways within these new mediums. As of right now the majority of video game makers & developers are white males, so the games will reflect that accordingly. As video become more & more a staple of American culture, they will reflect the culture as such. So video games are a form of media that also serves as a representation of American culture & values. Take our army/war games, its always American soldiers killing foreigners, often middle easterners. From Zombies to thugs, African American & Latinos are also represented in a negative light in many games.

I don't think all games are racist, but GTA clearly takes the cake on its inclusion of racial stereotypes, so I think its going to be interesting to look at the new version. Basically, I think that this discussion of racism in video games is one that has yet to really be explored & as video games continue to be a profitable industry in American society, we should expect to see more & more games that reflect the values of their creators. The article I posted talks about a study that found that people of color tend to be represented more negatively than whites in many games (i.e as criminals, weaker, etc) so I think that study illustrates the ways in which Racism has manifested itself into another medium of popular culture, in video games. I would argue that American youth, particularly male youth represent a huge market for the video game industry & most guys I know from little kids to college-aged play & have played video games, so these games are reaching a large audience, so its important to take note of the messages & ideologies that are being subverted into the games.

I also posted this video on youtube, which I found interesting as an additional to our discussion.

Will: I think I have a bit of a different take on this. But all in all we same to be on the same page, that games like this are bad. But, there are several things that cloud this argument/debate/issue.

For one the use of the word "racism" is often made incorrectly, both in that video and in general and it bothers me to no end. I would say that the majority of the games referenced are not racist. Racism (which I often mispell, if it happens here I apologize) is one of those words that gets used incorrectly alot and is used as a synonym for bigotry, prejudice and stereotyping. When in reality those words all mean distinctly different things.

This is important because the issue of racial and cultural injustice and insensitivity - as you know - is quite complicated. And it is my opinion that when we diminish the complexity of this issue we risk losing the subtleties of those "messages and ideologies that are being subverted into games" (is it weird to quote someone you just poke with). And therefore we risk misunderstanding the capacity to which this issue can affect people.

The only game I can see as out in out racist is "Ethnic Cleansing". That was the game made by the klan or skinheads or hitler youth (not sure which). I mean that thing discriminates against minorities, it infers and directly states that white people should be the ones in charge, and it is heavy on the "hatred and intolerance" of other races. In that game you actually have to embody the character of a racist homicidal maniac. Coincidently though the game is garbage, I mean the message is shit, the graphics are shit and it looks like the gameplay is shit, which brings me to my next point.

Most games that rely heavily on stereotypes and culturally insensitive imagery are usually awful. Think of that fifty cent game where you are killing middle easterners or GTA (I don’t care what anyone says that game is awful… tell Ax I’m sorry). For the most part the poorly made games use offensive content (depictions of racially insensitive characters, violent and sexual acts, etc…) to make them marketable. In reality these are are sub standard games that try and garner sales through gimmicks. These gimmicks have a high shock value that gets the games heavy media coverage*. That coverage in turn creates free buzz for the game and undoubtedly boosts sales.

Now I may be splitting hairs here but I think this is an issue of racial exploitation than it is an issue of racism. Exploitation for the purpose of making turning a profit, that result in flooding the market with ignorant and free-thought killing materials**. The question is thus, how do these games affect minority (youths and adults).

And finally I am left wondering was my initial thesis wrong. Video games could be considered racist only if you look at the bad ones beings made. You could argue that the collection of those works is a system that works to disseminate images of minorities as inferior beings. This inferiority is shown through either a lack of mental or physical ability that places them below the ability of the average member of the majority. Looking at just the racially insensitive ones -which are usually bad as well- it would appear that yes video games are in fact a racist device. But in actuality I think they are not and in order to prove they were you would have to gather enough other video games to show the whites are being depicted in grandiose manner with minorities being used as their foils and depicted as incompetent fools. *think “hot coffee” in GTA III **think Lupe Fiasco’s “dumb it down”

Tito: I agree that the title of racism is often misused, but also think that racial exploitation is a product of racism. Racism is the overarching force or ideology that is just being deployed in a variety of ways. The conversation for me changes when you are talking about race vs. ethnicity (i.e. the treatment of Italian-Americans in GTA vs. Black people) because I think that racism & prejudice are different things & the thing that separates racism for me is that it functions as a system of power.

I don't think all video games are racist or even most, but the reality is that some are and in the example of GTA or the 50 Cent game, although you may think that the games themselves are bad, they are incredibly popular (millions of copies sold within the U.S. alone). So I think racist ideology or even the deployment of race in certain video games must be analyzed & addressed.

So as you can see from the convo above there is a lot that can be said about the role that race/racism plays in video games, i'm curious to see where this discussion goes as video games become more popular aspects of American culture.

Textn is takn ovr

2008-05-06T22:31:00.001-05:00

The revenge of e.e. cummings
April 29, 2008
The Boston Globe

A new study warns that writing text messages could hurt a writer's command of standardized English.

WE HAD to LOL when we read how txt-msg lingo is replacing stndrd english in student academic pprs. 1 casualty of da trend is uz of capital letter to start a sentence. kids feel free to lowercase everything. pnktu8n is also dissed. tchaz try to help but its often 2 l8.

new paragraphs r not uzed in txting either. kids prolly think all dis iz ok cuz even Richard Sterling, emeritus xecutiv director of the ntl riting prjct, gives it the nod. natl riting prjct is sposd 2 improve riting instruxn in americas schoolz.

"i think in the future, capitalization will disappear," he sed in the nytimes. 4 lazy students dis is 2G2BT!

a big natl study by the College Board and Pew Project on the Internet and American Life finds teenagers riting more b/c of txting but in a hybrid language with conventions of its own: call it Textlish. they don't consider it frml english but 64 percent admit it seeps into their writing at school.

we get da need for shorthand when thumbs fly on tiny keypads. but we thot technology wd enhance communication, not blur every boundary b/w frml language and slang. and dont even get us started on emoticons!

1 yng friend of rs recently sent us a hand-ritten thank-u note. we were thrilled at 1st but her spelling wuz awful b/c deres no spellcheck for pen and ppr. same ish w/ txting. ppl get uzd 2 slang and 4get the real words. btw, all of us w/ email addresses r guilty 2, since email usernames r all lowercase and include many weird squiggles. somehow, tho, gnr8ns of secys managed to transl8 Gregg or Pitman shorthand squiggles n2 grammatically correct correspondence 4 their bosses.

well, tempora quid faciunt. dis not lingo but latin: times change. early america's founders wud uppercase almost every noun; maybe Sterling really is a visionary. Still, on the 25th anniversary of "A Nation at Risk," the seminal report on America's educational challenges, who wudda thot the big threat to riting wd b the cellfone?

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/04/29/the_revenge_of_ee_cummings/

80 Blocks From Tiffany's

2008-05-06T21:48:00.000-05:00

Bronx circa 1979.....

Savage Skulls & Savage Nomads....

Hip Hop....

yea, i'm a 80's baby

Preview: Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video

2008-05-06T21:46:00.000-05:00

Review by Raquel Rivera

Dreamworlds 3 is focused on analyzing how music videos both inform and are informed by our culture’s dominant attitudes regarding femininity, masculinity, sexuality and race. One of this documentary’s strongest points is its close attention to music video’s “storytelling techniques,” not only in terms of its lyrics and images, but also in terms of filmic techniques (camera angles and movement, for example) and the stories that these tecniques tell. Other strengths include its discussion of how the “pornographic imagination” and the porn industry inform music videos, as well as its portrayal of music videos as a constructed “fantasy” and “dreamworld” that is not the “real world” but is still in constant dialogue with it.

Another of Dreamworld 3’s crucial contributions to making more productive the often sterile dialogue surrounding gender and popular culture, is its framing of the question of sexism, not by asking if an image is “good or bad,” but through an analysis of whose stories are being told and how. According to the documentary, the problem is not that there is too much sex in music videos, but that there is no diversity in the stories being told since they are monopolized by the “heterosexual male imagination.” Furthermore, the documentary makes it very clear that female objectification itself is not the problem; the problem is that females are only being portrayed as objects. Once again, the key issue for Jhally is the lack of diversity in how gender is represented.

Though the aims and strategies of hyper-sexualizing women in music videos are thoroughly covered, one is left wondering how (and if) sexualization and objectification works in terms of images of men. The question of how women viewers receive and respond to all this imagery is also left somewhat unclear. Surely, it is the male heterosexist pornographic imagination constructing the dreamworlds of music videos “to draw in male viewers.” But what about women? What are the details of their attraction, repulsion and/or indifference to hyper-sexualized images (of women, of men)? How are their responses different from those of (most) men? But frankly, faulting the documentary for failing to hone in on these questions seems like nitpicking, given all that it does do.

Timbaland and Nelly Furtado: Plagiarists

2008-05-06T21:37:00.001-05:00

Come on Timbo....

2008-05-06T21:25:00.000-05:00

Spotted at Target dept. store, for the ultrahip

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand Trailer

2008-05-06T21:20:00.001-05:00

Is this what Hip Hop has evolved into...?

News

2008-05-06T21:19:00.001-05:00

Cause Lil Wayne is Hilarious....

2008-05-06T21:16:00.001-05:00

"I lost my mickey mouse socks in the hurricane"

Fewer Latino Immigrants Send Money Home

2008-05-06T20:58:00.001-05:00

Fewer Latino Immigrants Send Money Home

NY Times
By JULIA PRESTON
Published: May 1, 2008
More than three million Latin American immigrants in the United States, responding to the economic downturn and new uncertainties about their future, have stopped sending money home to their families in the last two years, according to a survey released on Wednesday by the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington.

The drop in the number of people sending remittances, as the money transfers are known, is a sign of pressures on Latino immigrants as a result of the slump in the low-wage job market and of the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, the survey shows. Of the immigrants interviewed, 47 percent said they did not have legal status. The others were American citizens and legal immigrants.

But while the number of immigrant senders declined, the total amount of remittances actually rose slightly between 2006 and this year, the study reported. It estimated total remittances to Latin America at $45.9 billion in 2008, an increase of $500 million over 2006. The amount did not decrease more sharply because Latino immigrants who continued to send funds home sent more money more frequently, the survey found.

However, the total amount of money transfers reported by the development bank slackened abruptly after a five-year period of huge growth in remittances to the region. Between 2001 and 2006, the amount of the transfers tripled, to $45 billion from $15 billion, according to figures from the bank, a multilateral organization based in Washington that finances development projects in Latin America.

“The longstanding pattern of increasing numbers of Latin American immigrants sending increasing amounts of money back home has stopped,” said Donald F. Terry, the general manager of the Multilateral Investment Fund at the bank and the official in charge of the survey. With lower income and less job security, Latino immigrants are saving their money here rather than sending it to support children, spouses and parents at home, the study indicated.

Latino immigrants said they stopped sending money to their families because life is becoming more difficult for them here. Of those interviewed, 81 percent said it was harder to find a good-paying job. Almost 40 percent said they were earning less this year. The largest group of immigrants in the survey, 18 percent, worked in construction, which has been especially hard hit in the slowdown.

A large majority of the Latino immigrants in the survey — whether or not they were illegal — said they experienced increasing hostility as a result of federal and state efforts to curb illegal immigration and punish employers who hire unauthorized immigrant workers. In the survey, 61 percent of Latinos who were American citizens and 66 percent of those who were legal immigrants said that discrimination had become a major problem for them.

As a result of the difficulties, the numbers of immigrants who said they were considering going back to live in their home countries increased notably. Among immigrants who have been here less than five years, 49 percent said they were thinking of returning home, while only 41 percent said they planned to remain in the United States. Over all, just under one-third of the immigrants said they were thinking of leaving this country.

In 2001, the last time a similar survey asked a comparable question, about 20 percent of all the immigrants interviewed said they were thinking of going home.

But Latino immigrant workers who participated in focus groups as part of the survey said they were not ready to leave the United States quite yet, said Sergio Bendixen, the Miami-based pollster who conducted the survey. Instead of going home, the immigrants said they were taking jobs at lower wages or sometimes working two jobs to try to maintain their income, he said.

“These are resourceful people who will do whatever job is available,” Mr. Bendixen said. “The major dynamic that is holding them back from sending money is fear. They don’t know whether they won’t be able to get a job anymore.”

Despite the worsening conditions in the United States, 69 percent of the immigrants in the survey said their financial situation was good or excellent compared with their prospects at home.

The families of an estimated 3.2 million immigrants who would lose income because they would no longer receive transfers from the United States were among the poorest in the region, and the majority were in Mexico, said Mr. Terry, the bank official.

The survey was conducted in Spanish from Feb. 9-23 with a sample of 5,000 interviews and a margin of error of 1 percentage point.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/us/01immig.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

What's your story?

2008-05-06T20:52:00.001-05:00

“I grew up behind the barbed wire fences of US Internment camps. What I remember is my father. He said, “Both the strength and the weakness of American democracy is in the fact that it is a true people’s democracy. It can be as great as a people can be but it can also be as fallible as people are.”
- George Takei

Tito Kayak Strikes Again

2007-11-16T21:10:00.001-06:00

Tito Kayak, known by his mother as Alberto De Jesus Mercado, once again made news this week, as the local hero of the Puerto Rican environmental movement and general social activist once again climbed the construction cranes at the Paseo Caribe project in San Juan, PR. This time, local law enforcement were ordered like goons of the mafia to take him down and arrest him.

In a daring escape watched live by many on television, Tito managed to rappel down from the crane and unto a red kayak in the water below while police officers were kept at bay by his supporters. Tito Kayak then rowed himself under a bridge whose clearance was too low for the police powerboats and somehow managed to switch out of the kayak, so when the kayak was apprehended it wasn't him on board. Instead he was swimming across to the other shore. When he was spotted by the police helicopters, other supporters jumped into the water confusing the police further and finally guaranteeing his getaway. This would have made a great scene in a movie, but until his life story makes its way to the theaters you can watch video of his escape here.

Update: Tito Kayak turned himself into the authorities yesterday

Dave Chappelle Stand Up In London

2007-11-08T22:50:00.001-06:00

"My mother is half white, how 'bout that? I'm what you call the "new Americans" cause my dad is all Black and my mom is half white, which makes me the seventy-five percenter. That's right, that's the new Americans. And my wife is Philipino, and so my kids is Puerto Ricans somehow." -Dave Chappelle

184 Countries call for end of Cuban Embargo

2007-10-31T20:27:00.000-05:00

184 Countries call for end of Cuban Embargo

For 15 years, every year, the United Nations General Assembly has voted on the issue of the Cuban Embargo imposed unilaterally by the United States. This year's vote was no different with 184 countries calling the embargo an illegal act that must come to an end.

Voting for the measure has become a tradition at the United Nations where Cuban and American dignitaries trade barbs like in a game of ping pong. This year was no different with the US calling for democracy in Cuba and Cuba calling out the hypocrisy of American policies around the world. The vote carried only one abstention and four votes against. Micronesia abstained, while the United States, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Israel voted against lifting the embargo.

The vote also reminds us of the innate inequalities present in the United nations as a democratic body. When 184 countries, which include Russia, China, and EU members, are unable change such an obvious act of imperialism as is the embargo, there is no more proof needed to say that the United nations must be changed. However that change must come from the bottom not from the top.

Calls for reform are now being fielded by the Secretary General, but only that one proposed by the United States is being given any attention or hopes for ratification.

The Non-Aligned Movement must step forward and reclaim its sovereignty, by first withdrawing from the UN as a form of protest until the General Assembly is given the right to veto the Security Council, as any congress or parliament gets to veto its executive. Only then will a palpable change come to the affairs of the world. And if the United States is truly interested in democracy it must allow this change to occur.

U.S. Virgin Islands set to begin 5th Constitutional Convention: Puerto Rico should pay attention

2007-10-30T02:05:00.000-05:00

U.S. Virgin Islands set to begin 5th Constitutional Convention: Puerto Rico should pay attention

[Analysis by Michael A. Deliz]

Today, Monday, October 29, 2007 at 10am the elected delegates to the US Virgin Islands Constitutional convention will begin meetings to draft the territory's constitution. The convention now in its fifth incarnation is required to conclude a completed draft by October 2008, which ultimately leads to a popular plebiscite to be approved by the people of the Virgin Islands. But first it must pass through the imperial filters.

The Constitutional Process

Once the delegates, which have already been selected by popular vote, draft a constitution the document is sent to the territory's governor. The governor then has ten days to deliver it to President Bush. The President will then add his own comments and suggestions (because we all know he is an expert on the needs of the people of the Virgin Islands), and then he forwards it to the US Congress (another bunch of experts!). Once Congress receives it, they have 60 days to review, modify, and approve the constitution which will then be sent back to the Virgin Islands for the constitutional plebiscite.

Essentially the people of the Virgin Islands are going to vote on whether or not to adopt the constitution the US Congress feels is best for them. This is what passes for Democracy in the colonized Caribbean.

Impact on Puerto Rico
For Puerto Rico, this is a process that should be carefully watched as the newly redrafted HR900, or "Proyecto 900" as it is known in the island, begins its process in the halls of Congress. Unlike previous status bills, this one calls for a similar process requiring a Constitutional Assembly to chart the island's future, or possibly find itself decades later still trying to come up with a constitution that pleases both the people and the US Congress like it has happened in the Virgin Islands since the 1960s.

Back in the 1980s, the last time the Virgin Islands went through this process, when the constitution came up for a vote, many voted it down due to differences in opinion regarding what a Virgin Islander is and is not as defined by the document, many simply boycotted the process and failed to vote altogether.

The "Proyecto 900" is different as it begins with a plebiscite to first decide whether the people want a change in status or not. The immediate consequence of that will be the sidelining of the island's Partido Popular Democratico which has traditionally called to maintain the status quo. The PPD, however as of late has been pushing for greater sovereignty as an Associated States, the same basic status as the Northern Mariana Islands. If the PPD sticks to this then that first plebiscite will result in the affirmative to change the island's status.

After that no one really knows what may happen. The statehood party is confident that under those circumstances the people will elect delegates that will opt for statehood. But the Partido Nuevo Progresista, seems to have forgotten one minor detail in their run for power. No one has asked the United States if they want Puerto Rico as the 51st state of the union.

That seemingly preliminary step is one the PNP hopes to deal with once they get a consensus, by whatever means, that Puerto Rico wants to be a state. The plan seems to be that if the people of Puerto Rico choose statehood they can then turn the issue into a Civil Rights fight against disenfranchisement of a minority group. Under those terms it might be easier to appeal to American sensibilities.

In the mean time the United States gets to proclaim that it is doing everything necessary to help the people of Puerto Rico in this process. In truth the US Congress is betting that the Constitutional Assembly will get bogged down into the political quagmire that is Puerto Rico, and leave the island's status as is, while being able to point to the incompetence of the Puerto Rican elite and masses at determining their own future, which is how they see the Virgin Islands.

In other words the Constitutional Assembly prescribed in HR 900 will be nothing more than a black hole of political wrangling. There are really only two alternatives to ending this impasse; either the United States unilaterally declares that it will give Puerto Rico its independence or begin the statehood process, or the island's governor unilaterally declares independence. Anything short of that will only result in a decades long fight that will be relived by every generation to come until either Puerto Rico sinks into the ocean, or the American empire crumbles. If anyone doubts that, go talk to a Virgin Islander.

New York Times: Dominicans in NYC

2007-10-29T17:42:00.000-05:00

NY Times Profiles the Dominican Community in NYC.......

NY Times

----------------------------------------------------------
-----------

October 28, 2007
Weekend in New York | Dominican Culture
Uptown in the Caribbean
By SETH KUGEL
NEW YORK doesn't look like the Caribbean, and this time of year it
doesn't feel much like it either. But decades of immigration have
brought an undeniable Caribbean undercurrent to the city. And no
country has sent more of its rhythm or soul here in recent decades
than the Dominican Republic. Dominicans number somewhere north of
600,000 in the five boroughs, and you can experience much more of
their culture in a weekend here than you would in a month in an all-
inclusive island resort.

There are streaks of Dominican culture everywhere: It's a Dominican
Thing, a Chelsea restaurant, won a glowing review from The Times in
2005. The Brooklyn Museum's current exhibition on the
Caribbean, "Infinite Island," features work by a half-dozen
Dominican artists. And Presidente beer, a Dominican import, has
moved from uptown bodegas to downtown bars.

But the heart of the community crowds the neighborhoods of Inwood
and Washington Heights in the narrowing northern tip of Manhattan.
Land right in the center of the action with a trip to 181st Street
on the No. 1 train, a ride that will seem even faster if you're
reading the Dominican-American author Junot Díaz's novel, "The Brief
Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," which Michiko Kakutani, The Times's
chief book critic, recently described as "an extraordinarily vibrant
book that's fueled by adrenaline-powered prose."

When you emerge from the train, you'll find some big changes from
wherever you got on: domino games dot the sidewalks; car stereos
demonstrate the Doppler effect with reggaetón and bachata music; the
price of plantains nose dives. And everything seems to be done a bit
louder (and with a little more laughter).

Before you even enter a restaurant, you could fill up on street
vendors' fried empanadas stuffed with meat or cheese, water coconuts
hacked open with a machete, or the ultra-Dominican sweet bean soup
known as habichuelas con dulce.

The people's choice for best habichuelas con dulce is sold on St.
Nicholas Avenue between 181st and 182nd, right near the train exit.
You'll probably find a woman nicknamed Pájaro Loco (Woody
Woodpecker) in her cart, intently ladling the thick soup, studded
with root vegetables, for a line of customers. Some bring their cars
right up to the drive-through window. (O.K., it's just the back of
the cart.)

Also good for snacking are treats found at the Dominican bakeries
dotting the area, from the unbeatable and unbeatably cheap $1 café
con leche at Kenny Bakery in Inwood to the grilled cheese at the
ever-expanding Doña Carmen's on Broadway to the baked goods at El
Panadero not far from Pájaro Loco's stand. (Ask the staff about the
rugalach — they've been known to claim it as a Dominican invention.)

For restaurants, the old-school standard bearer is El Malecón, known
for its irresistible rotisserie chickens spinning in the window 24
hours a day. They go through so many birds that if there is ever a
national egg shortage, we'll know who's to blame. For seafood and
atmosphere, there's the pricier Rancho Jubilee, whose dining room is
decked out in rural Dominican style, with squeaky chairs, rustic
tables, banana bunches and the like.

But the real excitement is at new spots that have caught on with a
diverse upscale crowd.

Mamajuana, probably the most popular new place, draws many from the
Dominican-American second generation. Similar to some other
newfangled uptown restaurants, the menu (and live guitar music at
brunch) is more Spanish than Dominican (paella, Serrano ham,
Manchego cheese), but for dessert, there's crème brûlée made with
majarete, a Dominican corn pudding. And at 809 Sangria Bar and
Grill, the swank spot named after the main area code of the
Dominican Republic, the menu includes mashed green plantains fried
into little cups and filled with seafood.

And of course, there is music. Old-school merengue halls of yore
(i.e., the late '90s) are largely gone, replaced by modern, hip
clubs where the music ranges from American hip-hop and Puerto Rican
reggaetón to more traditionally tropical merengue and bachata. One
nexus is on 10th Avenue in Inwood, isolated by day but booming after
midnight as Umbrella and Ambaroom go head to head across 202nd
Street. For a more intimate spot, try tiny Arka Lounge, the original
uptown lounge.

Beyond food and the club scene, if you're a Spanish speaker, stop by
Librería Caliope, the Dominican bookstore and neighborhood
intellectual hub. And check out what's going on at public colleges
like Lehman and Hostos in the Bronx (where you'll also find huge
Dominican communities). For example, this coming Saturday, the old-
time Dominican singers Victor Victor and Sonia Silvestre, both known
for their bachata, perform at Lehman. It's an introduction to
Dominican music for nonclubgoers.

And don't forget to get a souvenir: Brugal rum, the same stuff they
give you when you get off the plane in Santo Domingo. Take home a
bottle, often sold in a festive yellow fishnet sack, and enjoy it
with ice and a splash of Coke under your local palm tree. Or next to
your local radiator, as the case may be.

VISITOR INFORMATION

RESTAURANTS

El Malecón, 4141 Broadway; (212) 927-3812.

Mamajuana, 247 Dyckman Street; (212) 304-0140.

809 Sangria Bar and Grill, 112 Dyckman Street; (212) 304-3800.

Rancho Jubilee, 1 Nagle Avenue; (212) 304-0100.

BAKERIES

Kenny Bakery, 126 Dyckman Street; (212) 569-8414.

Doña Carmen, 4476 Broadway; (212) 942-4102.

El Panadero, 1380 St. Nicholas Avenue; (212) 923-6610.

CLUBS

Umbrella, 440 West 202nd Street; (212) 942-5921.

Ambaroom, 3795 10th Avenue; (212) 304-8611.

Arka Lounge, 4488 Broadway; (212) 567-9425.

BOOKSTORE

Librería Caliope, 170 Dyckman Street; (212) 567-3511.

UNIVERSITY SITES

Lehman Center; www.lehmancenter.org.

Hostos Community College; www.hostos.cuny.edu

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/travel/28weekend.html?ex=1351224000&en=236782964d2340f4&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

C-Walk hits Bulgaria....

2007-10-28T03:02:00.000-05:00

Talk bout a global phenomena....now we got kids c-walkin in Bulgaria to Dipset. It's clear that Hip Hop is a globalized commodity, but what are the cultural implications of transporting gang culture/affiliation (one could argue that C-walkin is more hip hop now than anything else) to white kids in South East Europe? I wonder when Soulja Boy will hit Europe......

Castro Responds to Bush....

2007-10-27T11:49:00.000-05:00

So Bush has been making plans for the take over of Cuba once Fidel passes. He is making it clear that he will not allow the transfer of power from Fidel to his brother Raul. Fidel, on the other hand, is calling Bush on his BS and not letting Cuba be bullied by the U.S.. Fidel puts it best when he says "Sovereignty is non-negotiable"

Just as a sidenote, Fidel has already said that if anything goes down in Cuba (i.e. the U.S. trying to invade), EVERY Cuban citizen is guaranteed an automatic weapon. Needless to say, Fidel aint playin around.

A Message from Fidel to Bush

[from granma.cu]
BUSH is obsessed with Cuba. Yesterday, the news was received that a White House spokesman announced the president would present new initiatives for the transition period now begun. Another spokesman from the State Department later confirmed the statement, reiterating Bush’s demanding and threatening tone.

As affirmed by Ricardo Alarcón, the president of our National Assembly, a comrade who is well-informed about Bush’s scheming and intentions, after that would come the firing squads of the Cuban-American mafia, with permission to kill everyone suspected of being a faithful member of the Party, the Youth or the mass organizations.

Mr. Bush: Your genocidal blockade, your support for terrorism, your murderous Cuban Adjustment Act, your wet-foot/dry-foot policy, your protection of the worst terrorists in this hemisphere, your unjust punishment of the five Cuban heroes who exposed the danger posed to U.S. citizens and those of other countries of dying in mid-flight, must all end.

Sovereignty is non-negotiable.

Likewise, the shameful torture being carried out in the occupied territory of Guantánamo must also end.

We were never intimidated by your threats of preemptive and surprise attacks on the 60 or more dark corners of the Earth. The outcome of that has now been seen in a single country: Iraq.

Do not attack others; do not threaten humanity with a nuclear war. The peoples will defend themselves, and all would perish in that inferno.

Thank you for your attention.

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 21, 2007

Time: 6:12 a.m
Original Spanish version-http://www.granma.cu/espanol/2007/octubre/lun22/declaracion.html

HR900 & Puerto Rico's Future Status....

2007-10-27T11:15:00.000-05:00

Here we go again....let's hope we can finally put an end to this colonial relationship & move towards Independence

Updates & Commentary to Come...

From the Serrano Report (his constituent newsletter) October 26, 2007

Serrano's Puerto Rico Bill Passes Out of Committee
Congressman Serrano’s bill to finally resolve Puerto Rico’s status, H.R. 900, was considered by the House Committee on Natural Resources this week—and won passage after several amendments.

Serrano was pleased with the markup and congratulated the members of the Committee on Natural Resources for taking this vital first step in resolving Puerto Rico’s status once and for all. The bill would have the U.S. government ask the people of Puerto Rico a simple question: Do you support the present status or would you like to change the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States? With the answer to this question, interested parties can begin meaningful negotiations about the future of the relationship between the U.S. and the island.

“There have been many criticisms of my bill from people who oppose change. I worked closely with Mr. Rahall and Mr. Fortuño to craft a compromise bill addressing the concerns of the other side. Unfortunately, their stance seemed to be that there was no concession big enough that would make my bill worthy of their support. I am saddened by this position, because I genuinely believe that we need dialogue and compromise between the two sides to eventually end this colonial relationship—a relationship that no one supports in its current form.

“The Puerto Rican people deserve leaders who will tell them the truth, and lead them into a better future. It is time that we all admit that the colonial relationship with the U.S. and the subjugation that it brings have divided us against one another.

“If we are to move toward a better, empowered future for Puerto Ricans, we must stop the infighting, and work together to solve our status problem. Until that is done, we will never move beyond it. Our heritage, our pride, and our history all call us to do what we need to do to move our people to a bright future.”

The next step for the bill would be a vote on the House floor, although this step has not been scheduled.

Convo wit Castro

2007-10-27T11:09:00.000-05:00

Castro Spittin' Truth....

Conversations with Castro
Aged 81, the world's longest-serving leader is turning his thoughts to his legacy and the succession. In an exclusive extract from his autobiography, Fidel Castro talks to Ignacio Ramonet about vanity and cruelty - and reveals his salary and plans for retirement
Ignacio Ramonet
Saturday October 27, 2007
Guardian

Those who criticise the revolution blame you entirely - they talk about "Castro's Cuba".
Those people tend to personalise, to make me the representative, as though the people didn't exist. The millions of people who have struggled, who have defended the revolution; the hundreds of thousands of doctors, of professional people; those who farm, produce, study - those people don't exist. All that exists is this evil guy named Castro.
The number of times I have to sign autographs - you can't imagine. When I meet Americans who come here and talk to me ... sometimes there are 50 people at a meeting, they give me a bouquet of flowers or something, and the number of books, cards, things I have to sign, the number of pictures I have to let them take and so many flashbulbs that you can hardly see, it's hardly to be believed. So I guess I'm some kind of strange, unreal figure ...
A star?
Yes, somebody you have to get quick, so you can say, "Look, I got a picture with so-and-so."
But I'm very self-critical. When I say too much or something comes out of my mouth that might sound a little vain, I'm hard on myself, really hard. You have to keep a watch on yourself.
Throughout the years, influence, power, rather than gradually making me conceited, vain and all that ... every day, I think, I'm less conceited, less pretentious, less self-satisfied. It's a struggle against your instincts, you know. I believe that it's education, or sincere and tenacious self-education, that turns a small animal into a man.

How do you think history will judge yo u?

That's something it's not worth worrying about. Napoleon talked about la gloire - he was constantly concerned with glory. Well, in lots of countries today, the name Napoleon is known more for the cognac than for all the things done by the real general and emperor. So I say, why worry?
Have you ever thought about retiring?
We know that time passes and that human energies fade. But I'm going to tell you what I told our compañeros in the national assembly in 2003, when they elected me president of the council of state. I told them: "Now I see that my fate was not to come into the world and rest at the end of my life." And I promised them to be with them, if they wished, as long as necessary - so long as I knew myself to be useful. Not a minute less, or a second more.
Every year, I devote more time to the revolution, I think; I give it more of my attention, because one has more experience, one has meditated more, thought more. Plato said in The Republic that the ideal age for occupying ruling positions is after 55. In my opinion, according to him, that ideal age should be 60. And I imagine that 60 in Plato's day would be somewhere around 80 today ...

How is your health?

Well, I'm fine. Generally speaking, I feel fine; above all, I feel full of energy, I have great enthusiasm for things. I feel quite, quite well both physically and mentally. I'm sure the habi t of e xercise has contributed to that; in my opinion, physical exercise helps not just the muscles, it also helps the mind, because exercise has an effect on blood circulation, on the delivery of oxygen to all the cells, including the brain cells.
In 2005 the CIA announced that you have Parkinson's disease. What comment do you have about that?
It must be a confession of what they haven't been able to do for so long: assassinate me. If I were a vain man, I might even be filled with pride by the fact that those morons now say they'll have to wait until I die. Every day they invite some new story - Castro's got this, Castro's got that. The latest thing they've come up with is that I have Parkinson's. Well, it just doesn 't mat ter if I get Parkinson's. Pope John Paul II had Parkinson's and he travelled all over the world for I don't know how many years.
If for some reason you should die, your brother Raul would be your undisputed successor?
If something happened to me tomorrow, the National Assembly would meet and elect him - there's not the slightest doubt. But he's catching up to me in years, so it's also a generational problem. We've been fortunate that we who made the revolution have brought up three generations. There have always been close ties with young people and students.
I have a great deal of hope, because I see clearly that these people I call the fourth generation are going to have three or four times the knowledge that we in the first generation had.

So you think the baton can be passed on without trouble?
Right now there wouldn't be any problem of any kind, and there won't be later, either. Because the revolution is not based on the cult of personality. It's inconceivable in modern society - people doing things just because they have blind faith in the leader. The revolution is based on principles. And the ideas that we defend have been, for quite some time, ideas shared by the entire nation.

You're a man who's admired, but others accuse you of being a cruel dictator ...
I don't understand why I 'm called a dictator. What is a dictator? It's someone who makes arbitrary, unilateral decisions, who acts over and above institutions, over and above the laws, who is under no restraint but his own desires and whims. And in that case, Pope John Paul II, who always opposed war, could be accused of being a dictator, and President Bush considered the most democratic of rulers. That's the way the industrialised countries in Europe treat him, without realising that Bush can make terrible decisions without consulting the Senate or the House of Representatives, or even his cabinet. Not even the Roman emperors had the power of the president of the United States!
I don't make unilateral decisions. This isn't even a presidential government. We have a council of state, and my functions as leader exist within a collective. I have authority, of course, I have influence, for historical reasons, but I don't give orders or rule by decree.

What about the charge of cruelty?
I really think that a man who has devoted his entire life to fighting injustice, oppression of every kind, to serving others, to fighting for others, to preaching and practising solidarity, I think all of that is totally incompatible with cruelty.
All that propaganda is based on hate and on lies. How can people say that even one man has been tortured in Cuba? Or that I've ordered a man tortured? Here, no one has ever been imprisoned for being a dissident or because they see things differently from the way the revolution does. Our courts sentence people to prison on the basis of laws, and they judge counter-revolutionary acts. Down through history, in all times, actions by people who put themselves at the service of a foreign power against their own nation have always been seen as extremely se rious.
The idea that in Cuba we send people to prison for having a belief that's different from the revolution's is ridiculous. Here, we punish acts, not ideas.

Do you agree that terrorism is the biggest threat to the world today?
Cuba condemned the crime committed on September 11 in no uncertain terms. And we have reiterated our condemnation of terrorism in all its shapes and forms. The US has cynically included Cuba among the countries sponsoring terrorism, but Cuba will never allow its territory to be used for terrorist actions against the people of the US or any other country.
I agree that terrorism is a serious threat to the world today, but I believe humanity is facing other threats of equal or greater se riousn ess: the accelerating destruction of the environment; the deepening of poverty; the lack of health care. To all of which one would have to add the hegemonic designs of the only superpower that aspires to become the ruler of the planet, and its arrogant policy of domination.
In 2005 you declared an "all-out war" on certain problems Cuba was facing - theft from the state, the misappropriation of funds.
That's right. We've invited the entire nation to take part in a great battle against any and all offences, whether petty theft or grand larceny. Because we have several tens of thousands of parasites that don't produce anything yet are getting rich. You should see how deep-rooted some of these vices are, how much pilfering was going on, how people were diverting resources, the w ay thi ngs were being stolen.

Don't you think Cuba's one-party structure is ill-adapted to an increasingly complex society?

In many countries, the classical, traditional electoral system with multiple parties becomes a popularity contest and not, really, a competency contest. People wind up electing the most likable person, the person who communicates best with the masses, even the person who has the most pleasant appearance, the best advertising on television, or in the press or on radio. Or, in the end, and this is practically a rule, the person who has the most money to spend on advertising.
Is there corruption among the Cuban leadership?
It's happened with some officials who were negotiating with powerful foreign businesses, and we've had to take measures. But it's not easy to fix.
As for me, I honestly don't own a thing. I have a few pesos, because after you've paid the amounts that have been in place since the first year of the revolution for each service, which are pretty reasonable, you may have some left over. I'm paid the same salary I always was, and out of that I have to pay the Party dues, so much per cent for housing, you pay that every month ... I lack for nothing, materially speaking. I have what I need. But I don't need much.
My salary, at the exchange rate of 25 pesos per dollar, is $30 a month. But I've been put on that list of the world's richest people twice now. I have no idea why they do it, what they're trying to achieve; it's ridiculous. I don't have a cent of my own. And I'll have the glory of dying without a penny of convertible currency. I've been offered millions to write memoirs and books, but I've never done it.

Castro on ...
Cigars
It was my own father who gave me my first cigar; I must have been 14 or 15. And I remember that I smoked that first puro, and I didn't know how it was done. Fortunately, I didn't inhale the smoke. Although you always absorb a little of the nicotine, even if you don't inhale at all. I've smoked too much in my life. Until one day, over 20 years ago, I decided to stop. Nobody made me. I just decided to m ake my self stop smoking. I believed that giving up that habit was a necessary sacrifice, for the good of the country's and the people's health.
Listening to people talk so much about the necessity of a collective fight against obesity, the sedentary lifestyle, smoking, I became convinced that the ultimate sacrifice I should make on behalf of public health in Cuba was to quit smoking.
Teach by example. I gave up tobacco, and I've never missed it.

Tony Blair
I saw Blair one time, in Geneva at a meeting of the World Health Organisation.
He had a swagger, he was haughty, as though he were looking down his nose at people. We had a few words - brief but sharp. He had been talking about child labour and I said to h im, "L isten, I saw that you were talking about child labour throughout the world, but I understand that in England there are 2 million children who are working."
I said it very calmly. I think he thought it was a piece of insolence from a nobody, a nit, a third-world know-nothing.

Wearing uniform
More than anything, I wear it for practical reasons, because with the uniform I don't have to put on a tie every day ... It avoids the problem of what suit to wear, what shirt, what socks, so everything goes together. I only put on a suit for very special circumstances, some international conference, or when the Pope came, or a meeting with some head of state.
My usual uniform is very simple. I also have another, more formal uniform that I wear for some occasions, with a shirt and tie.

Carrying a gun
Since those people in the CIA are always thinking things up - assassination attempts and so on - you can imagine that I carry a weapon, and a weapon ready to be used. I have a 15-shot Browning. I've shot a lot in my life. I've always been a good shot - it was just luck - and I still am.

The Third Way
I read Anthony Giddens' book, which contains the theory out of which a rose t he so-called "Third Way". There's nothing of a third way in it - it's the "way" taken by every turncoat in this world. Oh, I could see that it was aimed against the social-security state achieved by the Europeans: fewer resources for the retired, less aid to the unemployed, because [aid] turns [the unemployed] into a bunch of lazy bums - according to this theory - who then won't work, you have to force them in some way. Well, I admit that you have to educate people, but you don't have to force them.

The assassination of JFK
It's all very strange. With the expertise I acquired in sharpshooting, I can't imagine that with a rifle with a telescopic sight such as Lee Harvey Oswald had, you can fire, load and fire ag ain in a matter of seconds. Because when you shoot with a telescopic sight, if the weapon moves a fraction of an inch you lose your target. Firing three times in a row, so accurately, for somebody who almost certainly didn't have much experience - that's very difficult. What the official version says is quite simply not possible - not just like that, bang bang bang.
The other thing that is just incomprehensible to me is that once Oswald was a prisoner, this charitable, noble soul, Jack Ruby, was so consumed with grief that right there in front of the police and the TV cameras he killed Oswald. I don't know if anything like that has ever happened anywhere else.

Mao
I'd like to have met Mao. That wasn't possible bec ause o f all those problems and differences that came up because of Sino-Soviet conflict. Among the great political strategists, great military leaders of any era, one would have to include Mao Zedong. I can't forget the posthumous letter from Mao asking China and the USSR to put their rivalries aside and join forces.
This is an edited extract from My Life by Fidel Castro with Ignacio Ramonet, published by Allen Lane on November 1 at £25.

© Ignacio Ramonet and Random House Mondadori, 2006, 2007. Translation © Andrew Hurley 2007. To order a copy for £23 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Ecuador wants military base in Miami

2007-10-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

Ecuador wants military base in Miami
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:38:57 -0600

http://uk.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUKADD25267520071022

Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:38pm BST

By Phil Stewart

NAPLES (Reuters) - Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington
must let him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to
keep using an air base on Ecuador's Pacific coast.

Correa has refused to renew Washington's lease on the Manta air base, set to
expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for counter-narcotics
surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.

"We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami
-- an Ecuadorean base," Correa said in an interview during a trip to Italy.

"If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely
the y'll l et us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."

The U.S. embassy to Ecuador says on its Web site that anti-narcotics flights
from Manta gathered information behind more than 60 percent of illegal drug
seizures on the high seas of the Eastern Pacific last year.

It offers a fact-sheet on the base at:
http://ecuador.usembassy.gov/topics_of_interest/manta-fol.html

Correa, a popular leftist economist, had promised to cut off his arm before
extending the lease that ends in 2009 and has called U.S. President George
W. Bush a "dimwit".

But Correa, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, told Reuters he
believed relations with the United States were "excellent" despite the base
closing.

He rejected the idea that the episode reflected on U.S. ties at all.

"This is the only North American military base in South America," he sa id.

"So, then the other South American countries don't have good relations with
the United States because they don't have military bases? That doesn't make
any sense."