The Rag Blog

BOOKS / Jonah Raskin : Chinua Achebe’s ‘British-Protected Child’

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Chinua Achebe’s sharp and inspiring essays:
The Education of a British-Protected Child

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / January 4, 2010

[The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays, by Chinua Achebe. (Knopf, October 6, 2009, 172 pp., $24.95)]

Here’s a contemporary writer of compelling fiction and non-fiction alike with whom I can really identify, and feel a sense of genuine comradeship. In part, that’s because he talks about the “Third World,” “imperialism,” and “neocolonialism” — words that don’t seem to be fashionable in academic circles these days.

The writer’s name is Chinua Achebe, and while he was born in Nigeria, he has spent much of his life in the United States, teaching, writing, and observing American ways and American literature. His latest book — The Education of a British-Protected Child — is a collection of 16 sharp and inspiring essays about politics and language, oppression and the human spirit.

The essays are all written clearly and poetically. They express the perspective of a man of true wisdom, and not just learning or education, and, like the title itself, the essays embody a playful sense of irony. When he was a child the British didn’t protect him at all, he explains, and they didn’t bring democracy to Africa, either, he says. “British colonial administration was not any form of democracy, but a fairly naked dictatorship,” he says.

The author of Things Fall Apart — one of the most widely read and best-known 20th-century African novels — Achebe writes with a sense of compassion and partisanship too. He knows clearly which side he’s on — the side of the oppressed against the oppressors — but he also values what he calls “the middle ground — that place where the human spirit resists an abridgement of its humanity.”

He goes on to say that this quality is “to be found primarily in the camp of the colonized, but now and again in the ranks of the colonizer too.” So, he acknowledges his intellectual debt to British scholars, such as Basil Davidson, the author of The African Slave Trade.

Achebe also gives a nod in the direction of my book, The Mythology of Imperialism, first published in 1971 and reprinted in 2009 by Monthly Review Press. “Mr. Raskin’s title,” Achebe writes, “defines the cultural source out of which Joseph Conrad derived his words and ideas.” Conrad’s work, he adds, “is grounded quite firmly in that mythology of imperialism which has so effectively conditioned contemporary civilization and its modes of education.”

It’s nice to be acknowledged by Achebe, if I do say so myself. What’s more, Achebe’s book provides useful tools for understanding the role of imperialism today, and the ways that individuals buy into it no matter what their skin color.

In an essay entitled “African Literature as Restoration of Celebration,” Achebe describes his own education in Nigeria in a school modeled on the British public school. As a boy, he read books about Africa and Africans by white authors such as John Buchan and Rider Haggard. Achebe came to identity with the white characters not the Africans. “I went through my first level of schooling thinking I was of the party of the white man in his hair-raising adventures and narrow escapes,” he says.

In the 1960s, of course, African Americans who thought they were of the party of the white man were sometimes called “Oreos.” I remembered that word and the image it conjures while reading Achebe’s book, and I thought also of President Obama.

Could it be, I wondered, that like the youthful Achebe, Obama thinks he’s of the party of the white man? And could it be that like Achebe he’ll have an awakening and a kind of conversion? Perhaps Mr. Achebe ought to send Mr. Obama a copy of this book, along with his brilliant first novel Things Fall Apart, which has helped to change the ways that readers around the world see Africa.

Perhaps our president will come to see, along with Achebe, that “Our humanity is contingent on the humanity of our fellows. No person or group can be human alone. We rise above the animal together, or not at all.”

[Jonah Raskin is the author of The Mythology of Imperialism (Monthly Review Press), and Field Days (University of California Press.)]

Find The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays, by Chinua Achebe, on Amazon.com.

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Africa, Books, Jonah Raskin, Literary Criticism, Literature, Nigeria, Nonfiction | Leave a comment

Tom Hayden : Afghanistan and a Reluctant NATO

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Cartoon from Florida Times-Union / Netizen News Brief.
The Peace Exchange:
NATO and the Afghan War

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / January 3, 2010

The White House and Pentagon are lobbying hard for an increased NATO troop commitment for the Afghanistan escalation, as public opinion in America, Canada and Europe — and Afghanistan — is increasingly skeptical.

Placing pressure on the U.S. and NATO governments from the bottom up, country by country, will be necessary to reverse the unsustainable dynamic towards militarism and empire.

In Afghanistan itself, “nearly everyone agrees that the Afghan government must negotiate with the insurgents,” according to the New York Times [11/6/09]. Even the discredited Afghan president Hamid Karzhai complains that the U.S. is blocking his efforts to talk with the Taliban [see my earlier post in the LA Times], and continues to condemn U.S.-inflicted civilian casualties. In Pakistan, a powerful 64 percent regards the U.S. as their enemy and 72 percent want the American forces out of Afghanistan (here).
In the United States, President Obama is competing with his critics to win back his Democratic base. So far he has succeeded in winning back about 10 percent, but still depends on Republicans to support his escalation. An AP Dec. 10-14 poll showed 57 percent of Americans opposed overall, while an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll also in mid-December (11-14) found 41 percent against the current Afghanistan approach, and with 44 percent in favor.

In Europe and Canada, opposition to the escalation runs highest, with 69 percent of Germans opposed, 66 percent of Canadians, 58 percent of Italians, and 56 percent in the United Kingdom.

Troop withdrawals currently are scheduled for Canada [2,800 troops by 2011], the Netherlands [1,770 troops by 2010], while Switzerland has already pulled their 31 troops.

In summary, there are three political battlegrounds of public opinion in addition to the secretive military ones being invaded by foreign troops, Special Ops and drones. The fight against the war is also a fight for democracy and majority rule against the elite global planning for a Long War. [See Hayden on Kilcullen in The Nation.]

The Obama administration’s diplomatic offensive to cement greater NATO support is being under-reported. The British and German governments are planning a late January European conference to “set a timetable for transferring security responsibilities to Afghan forces” at a date uncertain. [Reuters, Nov. 16, 2009]

Like Obama’s two-pronged approach to escalation/de-escalation, the British-German formula is likely to result in short-term escalation of at least 7,000 troops combined with an ambiguous timetable for departure, enough to placate restive public opinion.

In response, the UK’s Stop the War Coalition is sponsoring an anti-war demonstration in London on January 28.

Already the Obama lobbying effort is being hampered by the pressure of public opinion. The U.S. is seeking a commitment of 7,000 new troops from the Europeans, but it appears that 1,500 are those sent to Afghanistan to guard the presidential election this year, and who will not be withdrawn. The 5,000 scheduled by Canada and the Netherlands for withdrawal in the next two years may leave the net numbers approximately the same, but barely increased. The likely increases are from Britain [500], Poland [1000], Italy [600], Spain [400], and smaller nations. Pressure is being applied to Germany and France for another 3,500 [NYT, Dec. 17, 2009]

The logic behind British support for Afghan escalation was expressed recently by the British defense minister, Robert Ainsworth, who offered a domino theory, as follows: “If Afghanistan is not secure, then Pakistan is not secure, and if Pakistan is not secure, Britain is not secure.” [NYT, Nov. 5, 2009] Many European security experts, like Peter Neumann of the Center for Defense Studies at King’s College, claim a “broad agreement” that Europe is a “nerve center for the global jihad.” [Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, p. 247] Europe and Canada’s human rights laws, they say, create “legislative safe havens” for terrorists to plot and strike.

This argument may gain currency with the recent anxiety over the successful penetration of Western defenses by a 23-year old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted to blow up an airliner flying through Amsterdam to Detroit.

But instead of arguing that bombing Afghanistan and Pakistan, and restricting human rights laws, will make Westerners safe, homeland security officials need to examine once again the institutional incompetence that in this case permitted travel by someone whose own father, a top Nigerian banker, warned American officials that his son had taken a violent and dangerous turn.

After Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano claimed that “the system worked” in the airline bombing attempt, saying the passengers had played an “important” and “appropriate” role, she could have been forced to resign. Napolitano, a captive of her bureaucracy, was repeating the infamous role of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice who denied the relevance of a CIA memo warning of al Qaeda attacks shortly before September 11, 2001. As a result, the Obama White House was put on the defensive by the Republican hawks responsible for loopholes in airline security made possible by either incompetence or an ideological commitment to air travel.

There is another explanation for the zealous American lobbying to keep NATO in Afghanistan which is never mentioned. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the glue that holds NATO and the “Western alliance” together and that create incentives for increased militarization in countries like Canada, Germany, and even non-NATO nations like Sweden and Japan. Why, after all, is an armed entity called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invading and occupying South Asia? The reason was given by Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, in 2007, when he previously commanded NATO forces:

In committing the alliance to sustained ground combat operations in Afghanistan…NATO has bet its future. If NATO were to fail, alliance cohesion would be at grave risk. A moribund or unraveled NATO would have a profoundly negative geostrategic impact.” [in Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos, p. 373]

Approvingly, the influential Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, writes that in Afghanistan NATO “would find meaning for its continued existence and recreate the unity that Western Europe showed during the Cold War.” [Rashid, ibid., 372]

This same alarm is voiced by Zbigniew Brzezinski in the current [Jan.-Feb. 2010] issue of Foreign Affairs:

Nothing would be worse for NATO if one part of the alliance [Western Europe] left the other part [the United States] alone in Afghanistan. Such a fissure over NATO’s first campaign initially based on Article 5, the collective defense provision, would probably spell the end of the alliance.

Democracy and domestic priorities will be the casualties in the United States, Canada and Europe if the US-NATO military expansion holds sway.

[A political activist for more than four decades, Tom Hayden is director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center . A founder of SDS and a former California State Senator, Hayden is the author of The Long Sixties (Paradigm, 2009).]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Afghanistan, Europe, Imperialism, NATO, Obama Foreign Policy, Tom Hayden | 1 Comment

South Africa’s Dennis Brutus : A Poet for Human Rights

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Dennis Brutus. Photos by Victor Dlamini / Flickr.
He will be remembered for his art and for his life:
Liberation poet Dennis Brutus (1924-2009)

By Mariann G. Wizard / The Rag Blog / January 2, 2010

See ‘The Poetic Justice of Dennis Brutus,’ by Amy Goodman, Below.

South African liberation poet Dennis Brutus passed away during the recent holidays. Of several online obituaries and tributes, the following, from Amy Goodman, best illustrates Brutus’ importance to poets and human rights activists worldwide.

At the Rag Blog, some felt a special kinship with the deceased through his connection with our sister, imprisoned anti-imperialist activist and poet Marilyn Buck. Marilyn’s CD, Wild Poppies (2004, Freedom Archives), was recorded while she was — as she still is — in a federal prison in California. She recorded some of her work for the CD, over the telephone — recording equipment is not allowed in prison visiting rooms — with the chaos and pain around her adding their ragged, random accompaniment.

Many other poets (myself included) contributed to Wild Poppies by reading Buck’s poems for her; Dennis Brutus was by far the best-known. (Kwame Ture, the former Stokely Carmichael, voices a tribute to Buck on the CD.)

Some poets who participated read their own poems, touching on themes that pervade Marilyn’s work, or poems Marilyn has translated from Spanish, but the South African Poet Laureate read one of her poems (“One-Hour Yard Poem”) — a very fine compliment from this man who was himself a prisoner of conscience and of apartheid, alongside Nelson Mandela. He also read one of his own (“Letter #18”). (Listen to Dennis Brutus reading these two poems, below.)

Like the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Brutus will be remembered for his life and times as well as his lines, a poet lucky enough to witness extraordinary events, using his gift to open not only prison doors, but the doors of perception.

From Marilyn Buck’s Wild Poppies:

Dennis Brutus reads Marilyn Buck’s ‘One Hour Yard Poem’:

Dennis Brutus reads his ‘Letter #18’:

Photo by Victor Dlamini / Flickr.

There will come a time
There will come a time we believe
When the shape of the planet
and the divisions of the land
Will be less important;
We will be caught in a glow of friendship
a red star of hope
will illuminate our lives
A star of hope
A star of joy
A star of freedom

— Dennis Brutus, Caracas, October 18, 2008

The poetic justice of Dennis Brutus

We are going to say to the world: There’s too much of profit, too much of greed, too much of suffering by the poor… — Dennis Brutus

By Amy Goodman / December 29, 2010

Dennis Brutus broke rocks next to Nelson Mandela when they were imprisoned together on notorious Robben Island. His crime, like Mandela’s, was fighting the injustice of racism, challenging South Africa’s apartheid regime. Brutus’ weapons were his words: soaring, searing, poetic. He was banned, he was censored, he was shot. But this poet’s commitment and activism, his advocacy on behalf of the poor, never flagged.

Brutus died in his sleep early on December 26 in Cape Town, at the age of 85, but he lived with his eyes wide open. His life encapsulated the 20th century, and even up until his final days, he inspired, guided and rallied people toward the fight for justice in the 21st century.

Oddly, for this elfin poet and intellectual, it was rugby that early on nagged him about the racial injustice of his homeland. Brutus recalled being sarcastically referred to by a white man as a “future Springbok.”

The Springboks were the national rugby team, and Brutus knew that nonwhites could never be on the team. “It stuck with me, until years later, when I began to challenge the whole barrier — questioning why blacks can’t be on the team.” This issue is depicted in Clint Eastwood’s new feature film, Invictus. President Mandela, played by Morgan Freeman, embraces the Springboks during the 1995 World Cup, admitting that until then blacks always knew whom to root for: any team playing against the Springboks.

In the late 1950s, Brutus was penning a sports column under the pseudonym “A. de Bruin” — meaning “A brown” in Afrikaans. Brutus wrote, “The column… was ostensibly about sports results, but also about the politics of race and sports.” He was banned, an apartheid practice that imposed restrictions on movement, meeting, publishing, and more. In 1963, while attempting to flee police custody, he was shot. He almost died on a Johannesburg street while waiting for an ambulance restricted to blacks.

Brutus spent 18 months in prison, in the same section of Robben Island as Nelson Mandela, where he wrote his first collection of poems, Sirens, Knuckles, Boots. His poem “Sharpeville” described the March 21, 1960, massacre in which South African police opened fire, killing 69 civilians, an event which radicalized him:

Remember Sharpeville
bullet-in-the-back day
Because it epitomized oppression
and the nature of society
more clearly than anything else;
it was the classic event

After prison, Brutus began life as a political refugee. He formed the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee to leverage sports into a high-profile, global anti-apartheid campaign. He succeeded in getting South Africa banned from the Olympic Games in 1970. Brutus moved to the United States, where he remained as a university professor and anti-apartheid leader, despite efforts by the Reagan administration to deny him continued status as a political refugee and deport him.

After the fall of apartheid and ascension to power of the African National Congress, Brutus remained true to his calling. He told me,

As water is privatized, as electricity is privatized, as people are evicted even from their shacks because they can’t afford to pay the rent of the shacks, the situation becomes worse… The South African government, under the ANC… has chosen to adopt a corporate solution.

He went on:

We come out of apartheid into global apartheid. We’re in a world now where, in fact, wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few; the mass of the people are still poor… a society which is geared to protect the rich and the corporations and actually is hammering the poor, increasing their burden, this is the reverse of what we thought was going to happen under the ANC government.

Many young activists know Dennis Brutus not for his anti-apartheid work but as a campaigner for global justice, ever present at mass mobilizations against the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund — and, most recently, although not present, giving inspiration to the protesters at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

He said, on his 85th birthday, days before the climate talks were to commence: “We are in serious difficulty all over the planet. We are going to say to the world: There’s too much of profit, too much of greed, too much of suffering by the poor… The people of the planet must be in action.”

[Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the author of Breaking the Sound Barrier, recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Apartheid, Deaths, Human Rights, Mariann G. Wizard, Marilyn Buck, Nelson Mandela, Peace Activists, People, Poetry, Poets, Rugby, South Africa, Sports | 4 Comments

Life During Wartime : Courts Release Terrorists!

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Political cartoon by Joshua Brown / Historians Against the War / The Rag Blog
Thanks to Dr. S.R. Keister /The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Blackwater, Iraq, Joshua Brown, Mercenaries, Political Cartoon, Political Satire, Terrorism | 1 Comment

Antibiotic Abuse : Controlling the Super Bug

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Cartoon by Nick Kim.
(Hint: Chill with the antibiotics)
Controlling MRSA, the Super Bug

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / January 2, 2010

There is a very scary bacteria called Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). It is scary because the nasty Staph infection is resistant to virtually all the antibiotics that would be used to treat bacterial infections. Back in October of 2007, I wrote a post about MRSA being found here in Texas. In the slightly more than two years since that post, the incidence of MRSA has virtually exploded and is now found all over the world.

Whereas the percentage of Staph infections caused by MRSA used to be small (1% or 2%), it now makes up a majority of Staph infections in many countries. Here are some representative countries with the percentage of their Staph infections caused by the drug-resistant MRSA:

United States																				63%
United Kingdom																				45%
Greece																				38%
Israel																				44%
Japan																				80%
Norway																				1%

Please note the last country — Norway. That figure of only 1% is for real, and is the lowest percentage of MRSA-caused Staph infections in any country. How have the Norwegians been able to control the spread of MRSA and keep it to such a tiny percentage (and that tiny percentage is mostly made up of cases imported from other countries)?

Jan Hendrick-Binder, Oslo’s MRSA medical advisor, says, “It’s a very sad situation that in some places so many are dying from this, because we have shown here in Norway that Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) can be controlled, and with not too much effort. But you have to take it seriously, you have to give it attention, and you must not give up.”

How did they do it? Most notably by changing the way they use (or don’t misuse) antibiotics. Here in the United States, if you get a sniffle you’ll probably go to the doctor and ask for an antibiotic, and that doctor will most likely prescribe one for you. While it may help you get rid of that cold or minor infection, it also does a couple of other things. It will cause you to become resistant to that antibiotic eventually, and it will cause bacteria to mutate and become resistant to the antibiotic.

You won’t be prescribed that antibiotic for a minor infection in Norway. A doctor will refuse to prescribe it. Instead, they will tell you to take some over-the-counter drugs like aspirin or tylenol, cough syrup or antihistamines. These will help you to be more comfortable while your body fights off the infection (as the body can and will do most of the time). The antibiotics are saved for only the most serious infections, and because of this they work better when they are needed.

This is the Norwegian way of dealing with MRSA (which is reaching epidemic proportions in most other countries):

Norway’s model is surprisingly straightforward.

Norwegian doctors prescribe fewer antibiotics than any other country, so people do not have a chance to develop resistance to them.

Patients with MRSA are isolated and medical staff who test positive stay at home.

Doctors track each case of MRSA by its individual strain, interviewing patients about where they’ve been and who they’ve been with, testing anyone who has been in contact with them.

The truth is that any country could do what the Norwegians have done. But they must first stop misusing antibiotics. Antibiotics are truly miracle drugs, but we are destroying their effectiveness by abusing them — using them for infections that the body can easily fight off without their help.

Can we change the way we use antibiotics in the United States? I don’t know. I’m afraid that too many patients (and doctors) are locked-in to the wasteful and ultimately hurtful way we use the gift of antibiotics. I’m afraid most people would be very resistant to change. And after viewing the reaction of many to reforming health care reform, I doubt that many would be receptive to legislation to fix the problem.

We can expect Big Pharma to fight this change tooth-and-nail, because they are making tons of money off the misuse of antibiotics (if you’ve paid for a prescription of antibiotics recently, then you know that). Don’t think they will act in the best interest of patients. Like most huge corporations, their only concern is today’s profits — not the future problems this is going to cause for all of us.

We must begin a dialogue in this country — with an eye to changing the public’s (and the doctors’) perception of how antibiotics should be used. And this dialogue must happen now, because we are running out of time.

I do know one thing. If we don’t change this soon, it won’t be too far in the future before we’ll wish that we had.

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Health, Medicine, Ted McLaughlin | 1 Comment

MUSIC / Dynamic Compression : Yes, It Really is Too Loud!

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Christopher Clark graphed the peak levels of and RMS levels of three hit songs a year over the past three decades. Here is a link to a PDF of his full poster, “A Visual History Of Loudness.”
The loudness wars:
Why music sounds worse

By Carrie Brownstein / January 2, 2010

As we have come to the end of the decade, we turn to one of the more dramatic changes we’ve heard in music over those 10 years: It seems to have gotten louder.

We’re talking about compression here, the dynamic compression that’s used a lot in popular music. There’s actually another kind of compression going on today — one that allows us to carry hundreds of songs in our iPods. More on that in a minute.

But first, host Robert Siegel talked to Bob Ludwig, a record mastering engineer. For more than 40 years, he’s been the final ear in the audio chain for albums running from Jimi Hendrix to Radiohead, from Tony Bennett to Kronos Quartet.

Bob pointed to a YouTube video titled The Loudness War. The video uses Paul McCartney’s 1989 song “Figure of Eight” as an example, comparing its original recording with what a modern engineer might do with it.

“It really no longer sounds like a snare drum with a very sharp attack,” Ludwig says. “It sounds more like somebody padding on a piece of leather or something like that,” Ludwig says. He’s referring to the practice of using compressors to squash the music, making the quiet parts louder and the loud parts a little quieter, so it jumps out of your radio or iPod.

Ludwig says the “Loudness War” came to a head last year with the release of Metallica’s album Death Magnetic.

“It came out simultaneously to the fans as [a version on] Guitar Hero and the final CD,” Ludwig says. “And the Guitar Hero doesn’t have all the digital domain compression that the CD had. So the fans were able to hear what it could have been before this compression.”

According to Ludwig, 10,000 or more fans signed an online petition to get the band to remix the record.

“That record is so loud that there is an outfit in Europe called ITU [International Telecommunication Union] that now has standardization measurements for long-term loudness,” he says. “And that Metallica record is one of the loudest records ever produced.”

Old news

“The ‘Loudness Wars’ have gone back to the days of 45s,” Ludwig says. “When I first got into the business and was doing a lot of vinyl disc cutting, one producer after another just wanted to have his 45 sound louder than the next guy’s so that when the program director at the Top 40 radio station was going through his stack of 45s to decide which two or three he was going to add that week, that the record would kind of jump out to the program director, aurally at least.”

That’s still a motivation for some producers. If their record jumps out of your iPod compared with the song that preceded it, then they’ve accomplished their goal.

Bob Ludwig thinks that’s an unfortunate development.

“People talk about downloads hurting record sales,” Ludwig says. “I and some other people would submit that another thing that is hurting record sales these days is the fact that they are so compressed that the ear just gets tired of it. When you’re through listening to a whole album of this highly compressed music, your ear is fatigued. You may have enjoyed the music but you don’t really feel like going back and listening to it again.”

Ludwig’s final assessment of the decade in music?

“It’s been really rough, folks,” he says. “But it can get better and I think it will get better. I’m glad it’s going to be over.”

Digital compression

Digital compression is the process that allows a song to go from being a very big sound file in its natural state to a very small file in your iPod — so you can carry your entire record library in your pocket. But at what cost?

Dr. Andrew Oxenham is a professor in the psychology department at the University of Minnesota. His specialty is auditory perception — how our brains and ears interact. He also started out as a recording engineer.

Robert Siegel asked him to explain digital compression.

“Really, the challenge is to maintain the quality of a CD, but to stuff it into a much smaller space,” Oxenham says. “Let’s think about how digital recording works. You start out with a very smooth sound wave and we’re trying to store that in digital form. So we’re really trying to reproduce a smooth curve [with] these square blocks, which are the digital numbers [the 1s and 0s that are used to encode sound digitally].

“Now, the only way you can make square blocks look like a smooth curve is by using very, very small blocks so it ends up looking as if it’s smooth. Now using lots and lots of blocks means lots of storage, so we end up using [fewer] bigger blocks. Which means we end up not representing that curve very smoothly at all.”

Lost? Go back and re-read it — you’ll get it.

“The difference between the smooth curve and the rough edges you end up with in the digital recording, you can think of as noise because that is perceived as noise,” Oxenham says. “It’s perceived as an error, something that wasn’t there in the original recording. The trick is to take the noise — which is the loss of fidelity — and just make it so you can’t hear it anymore.”

In hiding

It’s called “masking.” Think of it this way: You’re having a conversation in a quiet room, and you can hear every word, every mouth noise, every stomach rumble. But if you were having that same conversation outside on a busy street, you’d get the gist of what was said, but you’d probably miss a few words. The traffic noise would mask them.

So let’s say you’re listening to a Brahms symphony.

“[The loud parts of the music are] giving the coding system a lot of leeway to code things not quite as accurately as it would have to,” Oxenham says, “because the ear is being stimulated so much by the loud sound it won’t pick up very small variations produced by the coding errors.”

In other words, the loud parts of a recording are used to “mask,” or hide that noise produced by the rough-edged squares of those digital 1s and 0s.

But are we missing something?

“There are really different levels of MP3 coding,” Oxenham says. “You can go from much less data — which people can hear the difference — to higher levels of coding which take up more space on your MP3 player but sound better and are basically indistinguishable from a CD. And I would argue that under proper listening conditions — if it’s really indistinguishable from the CD as far as your ear is concerned — then you really haven’t lost anything perceptually.”

Oxenham likes the convenience of portable MP3 players. But ultimately, he says, he prefers going to concerts.

Source / National Public Radio

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Entertainment, Music, Popular Music, Technology | 2 Comments

Harvey Wasserman : A Blue-Mooning, Baby-Booming New Year

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

The second full moon in a single month is commonly known as a ‘blue moon,’ and that’s what we saw on New Year’s Eve.Photo by Vatsyayana / Getty.
Our blue-mooned, baby-boomed 64th birthday baptism…

When we believed ourselves immortal, as all young people do, there was nothing we could not do. Now we count the victories, and assess what we might win in the time left us.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / January 2, 2010

‘Will you still need me? Will you still feed me…?’ — The Beatles

The moment has come. The first Baby Boomer cohort has turned 64.

It officially happened on midnight December 31-January 1, 2009-10.

I celebrated the moment seven hours and 24 minutes early by jumping into a tiny cove in the Florida Bay.

The chilly but exhilarating water demanded an answer: Will we green the Earth? Will we win social justice? Will we get to Solartopia?

Unlike so many of you reading this, I am not a Boomer. The demographic officially extends from January 1, 1946 to December 31, 1964. It is a giant elephant of a population explosion swallowed by a decades-long python of a population decline.

The soldiers coming back from World War II multiplied like rabbits. The Boom was worldwide. In the U.S. it birthed some 76 million children.

My dad was a submarine welder in Boston’s shipyards, so I came early: at 4:36 p.m., December 31, 1945. Thus the leap into the Bay, which is in desperate need of protection from the ravages of agricultural monsters who are destroying the Everglades on which this fragile but irreplaceable eco-system depends for a clean, steady flow of water.

Those of us who took that astonishing tour through the 1960s have to think of ourselves as “forever young.”

But 64 is a big number. It means many of us have lost one or both of our parents, or are taking care of them as they become increasingly infirm.

It also means WE are meeting such ailments. “Parts wear out,” my mother said.

And we’re “at that age” when we lose friends and lovers, spouses and siblings, and sometimes, worst of all, even children.

“Learning experience” can never fully cover the losses of loved ones. But they do remind us our own days are numbered.

When we believed ourselves immortal, as all young people do, there was nothing we could not do.

Now we count the victories, and assess what we might win in the time left us.

In our lifetimes, undeniable strides have been made in civil rights — for African-Americans and, in tandem, for women, for GLBT and for other national and ethnic minorities, as well as for those with special challenges.

Social justice is another story. Since the end of the New Frontier/Great Society, with the horror of the Vietnam War, income disparities have worsened. Those social programs did work. Now the gap between rich and poor, a downfall of all great nations, is escalating, with no end in sight. We have long had the means to end poverty and hunger, and have chosen simply not to do it.

The root of that choice is war. The Vietnam assault was the biggest blunder of our lifetime. Everything is worse because of it, from homelessness and poverty to the decline of our educational and health systems. That successive Boomer presidents have chosen to repeat the error in Iraq and Afghanistan is beyond tragic.

Likewise the environment. The green movement has many roots. But the fight against nuclear power was the first to put thousands of Americans onto the streets and into the jail cells, and must be ready to do so again. Talk of reviving this failed technology is beyond lunatic.

Above all, in our lifetime, the globalized corporation has metastasized into the most powerful institution in human history. A cancerous beast that has usurped human rights without human responsibilities, the trans-planetary corporation is now beyond the reach of the nation-state. Only a global green movement, tied through the internet and whatever else we can contrive, can overcome the sinister power of these interlinked financial machines, whose only goal is profit.

To fight back, we need a vision, a Solartopian greenprint.

We need to attack the corporation at its root, in its legal charter and wherever we can find a foothold.

To kill the cancer, we must eliminate waste and its worst expression, war, the ultimate breeding ground of illegitimate power.

Only with peace can we win a true democracy, based on social justice. All humans have the right to food, shelter, clothing, medicine, educatio, and dignity. In tandem must come the paper ballot, hand counted, with universal automatic voter registration.

Our food needs to be organically raised, with sustainable agricultural practices.

The question of how many humans our planet can sustain will be answered with the empowerment of women. With equal access to education, employment and reproductive rights, the mothers of our species will bring us a sustainable number of children.

As that happens we can eliminate fossil and nuclear fuels, replacing them with the Solartopian technologies that really work, including solar, wind, sustainable biofuels, geothermal, ocean thermal, tidal, wave, current and other forms of renewables not yet conceived. In a maximally efficient world, with revived mass transit, the green transition we must win to survive does become doable.

So this Blue-Mooned New Year’s Eve, with my growing-up-all-too-fast daughter on my back, we jumped into the Barley Basin to commemorate that moment 64 years ago when my saintly mother gave her final push to get me into this world. The demographic deluge would boom in less than eight hours.

With Bonnie Raitt’s “Nick of Time” running through our brains, the equation simplified:

“With justice comes peace… with peace comes freedom… with freedom, all is possible… even Solartopia.”

That should keep us busy for a while, yes?

The next blue mooned New Year’s Eve is scheduled for 2028. See you then… on a green-powered Earth.

[Harvey Wasserman’s Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with A Glipmse of the Big Light: Losing Parents, Finding Spirit, and Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged 2009, 2010, American History, Baby Boomers, Environment, Green Movement, Harvey Wasserman, New Years, Sixties, Social Change | 2 Comments

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn : Gaza Freedom Marchers Clubbed by Cairo Cops

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Cairo riot police confront Gaza Freedom March. Top photo from AP. Bottom photo by Brandon Delyzer from rabble.ca.
Gaza Freedom March:
Lively demonstration at the Egyptian Museum

By Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn / The Rag Blog / January 1, 2010

Also see ‘Egyptian security forces attack Gaza protesters,’ by Max Ajl, Below.

CAIRO — In Cairo yesterday, a spirited, highly visible and noisy demonstration held sway at a central traffic point — the Nile Corniche — across from the Egyptian Museum for seven hours, affixing huge banners in Arabic and English to trees and fences. In Gaza, a peace march took place including the 80 GFM participants who were able to enter the blockaded and occupied part of Palestine.

More than 500 people converged in small groups at the museum at 10 a.m. to press for freedom for Gaza and Palestine. Police blockaded the small hotels where marchers were staying, preventing dozens of people from leaving for several hours, and harshly attempted to contain the demonstration.

As the groups came together in the street, numerous marchers were clubbed to the ground, kicked and thrown into the center of Tahrir Square where police barricades and circles of Egyptian security quickly closed in. Those covering the action, observers, and members of the legal team, were seized by security police and pushed into the square.

Medical team personnel treated gashes, lacerations, broken noses, and bruised ribs. As has been true all week, Egyptian citizens who joined in or manifested support were treated most severely or were taken away.

The day before, the French GFM delegation had gone to the pyramids; someone faked an illness and while security forces moved in to respond, they unfurled a giant Palestinian flag across the pyramid. From that photo, they made an enormous color streamer, stamped with GAZA, now rippling in the square. The endless stream of Cairo traffic (23 million people living in this city), buses, taxis, cars and crowds, heard and saw the protest.

At 11:30 pm, under a full moon, we participated in a candlelight vigil in Tahrir Square where we danced and sang in the New Year.

Five days of rallies, actions, frustration and setback: the GFM wanted to enter Gaza 1,400 strong to express solidarity with civil society, witness their struggle for survival and self-determination, and join in a massive peace march. Instead, we found ourselves in Cairo for the week, a determined group from 42 countries trying mightily to realize our original goal in different circumstances.

In the end, we found unity among differences, common ground, and new alliances. There was a gallant effort to make a way out of no way, to keep focused on Gaza and the needs and desires of the Palestinian people, and to press forward to a more robust international peace and justice movement. If there was a silver lining here, perhaps this was it.

Egyptian security forces
Attack Gaza protesters and blockade hotels

By Max Ajl / December 31, 2010

CAIRO — Egyptian security forces were attacking protesters in Tahrir Square, at the core of downtown Cairo, after they sat down in the middle of a busy Cairo street, protesting the imprisonment of the people of Gaza. Others were literally barricaded inside their hotel, the entrance surrounded by steel riot barriers. Egyptian security forces refuse to allow them to leave. Green personnel carriers line the streets. It is pandemonium.

The protesters are part of the Gaza Freedom March, a group of 1,400 delegates from 42 countries, including France, the United States, the Philippines, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Brazil, Australia and Japan. They converged on Cairo intending to march with Gazan civil society in a massive show of nonviolent resistance against the blockade, which 16 international NGO’s and charities condemned in a report released December 22 as “preventing reconstruction and recovery” in the Gaza Strip and which the United Nations Development Program has criticized as contributing to Gaza’s “de-development.”

But Egypt refused them entry into Gaza, just days before most of the marchers were to arrive in Cairo. Since then, the marchers have convoked a series of vigils, demonstrations and marches, accompanied by song, chants and bright banners. The Egyptian state has responded with repression, putting groups of riot police around marchers, harassing hunger strikers, canceling permits, detaining marchers and threatening them with water cannons, arrest and deportation.

Two days ago, Egypt attempted to placate the marchers by offering the organizers permission for a token 100 marchers to enter Gaza. Initially, a segment of the steering committee accepted the offer.

But after many of the core delegations refused to submit to tokenism, including the French EuroPalestine group, which has spent nearly a week sleeping in tents in front of their embassy, and the South African contingent, with leadership strengthened in the crucible of the anti-apartheid struggle, a fuller, more representative segment of the steering committee rejected the offer in deliberations that lasted until dawn, and attempted to prevent the buses from leaving.

Two young Palestinian-American sisters, Dana and Lara Elbrno, their father from Gaza, were among those who refused to go. They said they could not accept the offer and were unwilling to accept the terms the Egyptian government had imposed: the buses allowed into Gaza under the auspices of CodePink and not the Gaza Freedom March, their purpose framed explicitly as a humanitarian convoy and not a political symbol — ultimately, they said, the conversion of a political statement against the siege into charity.

Others, selected among the 100, refused the offer too. Palestinian author Ali Abunimah and Filipino politician and writer Walden Bello of the Akbayan Party disembarked when they heard that the Gaza Freedom March’s core partners in Palestinian civil society, including Haidar Eid, a literature professor at Al-Aqsa University and Omar Barghouthi, the founder of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign, also spurned the offer, claiming it was divisive, and so, “we deeply feel, terrible for the solidarity movement.”

The GFM steering committee in Gaza reportedly abstained from receiving those who boarded the buses in Cairo. The real Gaza Freedom March remains “stalled in Cairo,” says march communications coordinator Ziyaad Lunat.

Or surrounded. A huge group of internationals attempted to march in the direction of Gaza from Tahrir Square. The marchers, hundreds of them, came to the streets from cafes, hookah bars, the KFCs and Hardees that sit on the sidewalks surrounding the square, swarming in from points all around, stopping traffic on the circular ring road around the center of the square. Then they collided with Egyptian riot police.

They sat down, blocking several lanes of traffic for 45 minutes. Retaliation was violent. The plainclothes police picked the protesters up, one by one, pulling them by the hair, roughly throwing them around, until they had them cloistered on a corner, and then closed the museum and the metro. They broke cameras and video cards, and left one delegate with several fractured ribs.

Several were hit, some left bloodied and bruised. One, Suleika Jaouad, a student at Princeton University, was punched in the face. As she says, “I was witness to bloody, indiscriminate violence.” She was on the periphery of the protest and says she was “assaulted just for being there and attempting to film the police brutality – evidence that they clearly did not want to be documented.”

Things got much quieter when the protesters were no longer blocking traffic. They quickly set up an encampment. Conscripted riot police, in visored black helmets, stood around them, blocking sight of anything except for the multi-colored banner hanging from the tree around which they were clustered. Gael Murphy, one of the organizers of the march, says that the protesters “renamed Tahrir Square Free Gaza Square” and sang songs, played the accordion and waved banners reading “those who stand up for human rights will never be wrong.”

There were many chants of “Free Gaza.” Marchers were jumping up and down, practically screaming. One attendee, Max Geller of Brookline, Massachusetts, said, “It’s at a fever pitch, it looks like a rock concert.” The excitement level was alpine. Bill Ayers added, “We shine a light on a dark spot in Gaza,” in the process offering “solidarity with the people of Gaza, letting them know that they’re not alone.”

While the protesters were alternately sitting down and being slammed around in Tahrir Square, others were trapped inside their hotels. Egyptian security forces had preemptively barricaded many of them, in a desperate bid to prevent them from joining today’s protests.

One march participant, Desiree Fairoz, after speaking to the police from outside, attempting to convince them to remove the barriers, “was lifted by the Egyptian police forces and literally tossed over the fence.”

Nonetheless, over 300 internationals made it to the protest, in a show of solidarity with Gaza’s inhabitants and Palestinian society that has riveted the world’s attention on Gaza, and made front-page news in the Egyptian press. Despite not getting to Gaza, it was unprecedented. As one South African marcher commented, “The Gaza Freedom March got 1,400 people to Cairo to march in solidarity with the Palestinian people. That’s amazing.”

Source / truthout

Also see Bernardine Dohrn : Gaza Freedom March: Reimagining Change / The Rag Blog / December 31, 2010

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Bernardine Dohrn, Cairo, Egypt, Gaza, Middle East, Palestine, Peace Movement, Police Brutality, Protest, William Ayers | 5 Comments

New York : Marching for the Children of Gaza

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Thousands marched in New York on Dec. 27, 2009, in support of the people of Gaza. Photo by Bud Korotzer / NLN.
Marching for the children of Gaza:
Thousands demonstrate in New York City

By Fran Korotzer / The Rag Blog / January 1, 2010

NEW YORK — On December 27, the first anniversary of Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza that left 1,400 dead (mostly civilians), thousands wounded, and hundreds of thousands homeless, 2,000 people met in New York’s Times Square.

The throng marched through streets filled with New Yorkers and tourists in holiday mode, passed crowded Rockefeller Center, and ended at the Israeli Consulate at 42nd Street and 2nd Avenue. Participants represented all ages and all racial and ethnic groups. The march was timed to coincide with marches in solidarity with the people of Gaza that are taking place all over the world.

As the marchers moved through the streets they carried signs and Palestinian flags and chanted, “Israel, Israel, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.” Or, “Gaza, Gaza, don’t you cry. Palestine will never die.” Many wore buttons supporting the Palestinian liberation struggle. One woman had “Resistance is not Terrorism” printed on the back of her jacket.

A large group of orthodox Jews who oppose the Israeli state marched too. Seeing them, some Jewish people in the streets cursed them and spit at them. They appeared to take it in stride.

At one point a call came in from Kevin Ovington, one of the leaders of the Viva Palestina convoy which was in Jordan with 500 people from 17 countries, and 250 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza. Egypt was not allowing them to pass through to Gaza so a hunger strike had begun. He said that they were “determined to enter Gaza and break the siege.” He said, “One day we will all be together in a free Palestine.” The marchers were asked to call the Egyptian Embassy and urge them to allow the Freedom Marchers and humanitarian aid to pass into Gaza.

Outside the Israeli Consulate in New York, the marchers demanded an end to the blockade which protesters argue is a violation of international law.

[Fran Korotzer is an independent journalist and a contributor to Next Left Notes, where this article also appears.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Fran Korotzer, Gaza, Israel, New York City, Palestine, Political Protest, Social Action | 1 Comment

Rush Limbaugh : Get Well, Class Clown

Posted on December 31, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Rush Limbaugh. From “Republican Clowns” / Daniel Kurtzman / Ask.com.
Sick, sick, sick…
Rush Limbaugh, Class Clown

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / December 31, 2009

There’s one in every classroom. Competing with the teacher for attention, cracking jokes, disrupting the course of study. It doesn’t matter if few other students laugh along with him, a couple will do.

Later they meet in the recreation yard to idolize their rebel leader. This is the guy who will save them from having to read books and consider other people’s points of view, save them from being educated, indoctrinated into the modern adult order. Later, this is the kid who will hopefully give them a job, even though they never got a diploma, when he inherits his father’s auto dealership.

Who do you want to be like, the cool fat kid who mouths off in class or the poor hysterical obviously underpaid teacher? Disrespect can definitely work to make you respectable in the USA. Anti-intellectualism is still very often the smart way to go. We got this far being wrong, who’s going to stop us now?

That’s why so many people worship the ground Rush Limbaugh tramples on.

Rush to judgment (off the radio).

Rush to the hospital. In Hawaii, one of only two states in the Union to have fully socialized medicine. But that’s alright folks, Rushie’s rich and he has made sure to tell everyone that he is self-insured and paying his own way. Being rich will also protect him from having his insurance cancelled for having a problem with a “pre-existing condition.”

Just a few days ago he was castigating Obama for being in Hawaii, possibly not even really part of the USA. (That’s a fallback position in case it turns out BO was actually born there.) But that’s also okay, because Class Clown thrives on being able to drive inconsistencies home by force of his personality. Being wrong and still always sounding right is the best act he’s (we’ve) got. In America, relentless self confidence in the face of adversity/reality is the mechanism that has so far never failed to unlock the gold rush.

After the Gold Rush?

Word has it that Limbaugh’s words were halting and slurred when he called in to his guest-hosted radio show yesterday. Perhaps the man has had a stroke. Obesity, hard drug use and a generally apoplectic personality will eventually add up, even with the best of them.

Although he would never do the same himself for any of us, we would like to join the other members of the liberal blogosphere to wish Rush Limbaugh a speedy recovery.

Free speech is what we should all respect the most. In the world of words, being wrong is far better than being silent or being suppressed. If we are busy hiding lies we may just as soon be hiding the truth.

Class Clown should always have a place in our education system. Let the teachers stop the class to reason it out with the young person. Create a debate. Perhaps the heckler is right. (I sure thought I was. Still do.)

If we learn to take our time in the field of education we might not have so many “children left behind.” People with obvious intelligence but also an eternal ax to grind.

Why Rush?

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Broadcast Media, Carl R. Hultberg, Clowns, Education, Indigenous People, Public Schools, Republican, Right Wing Media, Rush Limbaugh | 1 Comment

Bernardine Dohrn : Gaza Freedom March: Reimagining Change

Posted on December 31, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

UPDATE: See ‘Gaza Freedom march converges on Midan Tahrir,’ Below.

Above, photo from Palestine Chronicle / Aljazeera. Below, holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, center, and Gaza Freedom March activists in Cairo Tuesday. Photo by Amr Nabil / AP / Christian Science Monitor.
A Movement reimagining change:
Freedom marchers head for Gaza

By Bernardine Dohrn / The Rag Blog / December 31, 2009

More on the Gaza Freedom March, Below.

CAIRO — It has been a tumultuous 15 hours. Two buses, carrying 100 people from the GFM and loads of humanitarian supplies, just departed from Cairo for Gaza. This was a victory and a concession. The decisions and the manner in which this opportunity was framed and promoted by various actors fractured the GFM participants in familiar and unlikely, real and sectarian ways — all documented by media cameras and hundreds of Egyptian security forces.

Ali Abunimah, Veterans for Peace organizers, Israeli journalist Amira Hess, and this writer were among the 100 people on the list to go, who arrived at 6:30 this morning, on the corner of Ramsis by the 6th October Bridge at the Al Gona Bridge, to depart for Gaza.

Tuesday morning, delegates from several countries went to their embassies in Cairo to plead for help getting to Gaza. Most were met with predictable bureaucratic intransigence. The French, however, staged an extraordinary encampment in front of their embassy and their ambassador and his wife came out and spent time speaking with them individually and in small groups.

That action continues today. Bill [Ayers] and I went to the American Embassy at 10 a.m. and asked to see the Ambassador. We were ushered into a holding pen a block away from the embassy building where we joined 35 people already there, surrounded by Egyptian soldiers. Over the next four hours, another dozen Americans arrived, and those of us who asked to leave were denied.

Meanwhile, Medea Benjamin, Kit Kiteredge, and Ali Abunimah were meeting with an embassy official and stressing that we intended to go to Gaza on a nonviolent, humanitarian mission, and requesting their assistance. Further, they asked that the embassy officials release the U.S. citizens who were now clearly being detained outside.

Ali emerged first to tell us that their discussion achieved nothing, and they were now requesting that we be free to go. This process took another hour. Ali refused to enter the holding cage, and spoke to us from outside. At one point, out of nowhere, military personnel grabbed Ali, and Medea — who was standing a few feet away — sprang to action, shouting “No! No!” and grabbing Ali’s arm and pulling him down to the ground with her. As soon as they were prone, the security backed off. It was an impressive display of nonviolent direct action and solidarity in-the-moment, performed with speed, force and clarity.

In late afternoon, a huge demonstration took place outside the Syndicate of Journalists, a traditional site of political mobilizations in downtown Cairo. The GFM was a force, and joined by large numbers of Egyptian citizens chanting in solidarity with Palestine and in opposition to the visit that day by Netanyahu. This action got widespread coverage throughout the Arab world.

Late last night, it was announced at the nightly team leaders’ meeting that our three days of actions across Cairo, the international pressure around the world, and consistent efforts by CodePink leadership to meet with high level Egyptian officials — including a meeting yesterday at the offices of Suzanne Mubarak — resulted in an agreement with the Egyptian government that two buses could leave for the Rafah crossing into Gaza early Wednesday.

The names of the 100, however, had to be submitted to Egyptian officials by Tuesday evening. This resulted in a (necessarily) rushed process, without the opportunity for full debate, discussion, and input about criteria for selection, or about the strategic goals of sending a smaller, incomplete team of people to enter Gaza and participate in the New Year’s freedom march with the people there. By mid-evening, whole delegations (South Africa, New York) announced that they would not participate. In part, they critiqued the process of decision-making; in part, they took the position, “all of us or none.”

As we stood in the morning chill of the stunningly polluted Cairo sky, those boarding the buses felt that it was a partial victory to have two busloads depart for Gaza, that we would take supplies, and witness the realities of life under the occupation/blockade. We thought that our primary objective was to break the isolation of Gaza, and to join with the civil society forces there who wanted us to come join them. The GFM forces opposed to the compromise that left 1,300 of the GFM still in Cairo, gathered at the departure point and began painting banners and chanting against the departure of the buses. Egyptian security grew.

We boarded the buses, loaded supplies, handed over our passports and sat on the buses, excited and exhausted, watching the opposition to our departure gather steam. Signs were hoisted, some began shouting and crying, and chants to Don’t Go, Get off the Bus, and All of Us or None grew in force. Many, unhappy to have worked so hard to get here and who built critical support for Palestinian solidarity and human rights, felt that it was unfair to be left behind, and not to have been consulted. People wavered.

Resentment and criticism of leadership (legitimate and small-minded) and the obvious manipulation of the situation by the Egyptian (and Israeli and U.S.) governments escalated. Al Jazeera ran a story quoting the Egyptian Prime Minister who proclaimed that only the reliable and respectable people had been selected to travel to Gaza (!), leaving behind the rabble rousers and unruly GFM marchers, and claiming credit for delivering the humanitarian supplies to the people of Gaza.

It was clear to us in the hours of debate and delay that some would leave for Gaza, and that others would stay in Cairo to press the demand that the border be opened, the blockade ended, and that all of the GFM participants be allowed to enter Gaza. One of the great difficulties throughout these several days has been to keep ourselves and all participants focused on Gaza.

We find ourselves unwillingly in Cairo, drawn into clashes with authorities and one another on side issues, when what we most want it to keep our eyes on the Palestinian people and our spirits with those confined in Gaza. This is the challenge of the next three days. A large group of us is planning to try to walk to Gaza starting tomorrow, December 31. Buses and taxis containing smaller groups have been turned back all week, and the situation remains fluid, dynamic, and fraught.

The activists who entered Gaza were joined by a few hundred Palestinians as they marched to the Erez crossing. Photo from AFP.

Protesting the siege:
International contingent marching to Gaza

CAIRO — Following Egypt’s refusal to allow the Gaza Freedom Marchers to enter Gaza, the more than 1,300 peace-and-justice activists are setting out on foot. Despite police blockades set up throughout downtown Cairo in an attempt to pen the protesters in and prevent them from demonstrating in solidarity with Palestinians, the internationals are unfurling their banners and calling on supporters of peace around the world to join them to demand the end of the siege of Gaza.

Egypt’s offer to allow 100 of the 1,400 marchers to enter Gaza was denounced as insufficient and deliberately divisive by the organizers. Meanwhile, the Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs has sought to spin this last-minute offer as an act of goodwill for Palestinians and isolation of “troublemakers.” The Gaza Freedom March categorically rejects these assertions. Activists are in Cairo because they are being prevented by the Egyptian government from reaching Gaza. “We do not wish to be here, Gaza has always been our final destination”, said Max Ajl one of the marchers.

Some individuals managed to overcome the police barricades and began the march at the meeting point in Tahreer Square in downtown Cairo. They were joined by Egyptians who also wished to denounce the role of their government in sustaining the Gaza siege. The authorities have sought to separate international from the locals. The police is brutally attacking the nonviolent marchers.

Many plainclothes police officers have infiltrated the crowds and are violently assaulting them. “I was lifted by the Egyptian police forces and literally tossed over the fence,” said Desiree Fairooz, one of the protesters. Marchers are chanting and resisting the attempt to disperse them, vowing to remain in the square until they are allowed to go to Gaza. The GFM banner is hanging up high in a tree in the square. Some marchers are bleeding and riot police destroyed their cameras.

The Gaza Freedom March represents people from 43 countries with a diversity of backgrounds. They include peoples of all faiths, community leaders, peace activists, doctors, artists, students, politicians, authors and many others. They share a commitment to nonviolence and a determination to break the siege of Gaza.

“Egypt has tried every way possible to isolate us and to crush our spirit,” the march organizers say. “However, we remain as committed as ever to standing up against tyranny and repression. We will march as far as we can towards Gaza, and if we are stopped by force, we will hold our ground in protest. We call on those committed to justice and peace everywhere to support our stand for freedom for Palestinians.”

Among the participants are Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, Filipino Parliament member Walden Bello and former European Parliamentarian Luisa Morgantini from Italy. More than 20 of the marchers, including 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, have launched a hunger strike against the Egyptian crack-down and are now entering their fourth day.

Source / Gaza Freedom March!

Photo from Reuters.
Endorse the Gaza Freedom March!

Israel’s blockade of Gaza is a flagrant violation of international law that has led to mass suffering. The U.S., the European Union, and the rest of the international community are complicit.

The law is clear. The conscience of humankind is shocked. Yet, the siege of Gaza continues. It is time for us to take action! On Dec. 31, we will end the year by marching alongside the Palestinian people of Gaza in a non-violent demonstration that breaches the illegal blockade.

Our purpose in this March is lifting the siege on Gaza. We demand that Israel end the blockade. We also call upon Egypt to open Gaza’s Rafah border. Palestinians must have freedom to travel for study, work, and much-needed medical treatment and to receive visitors from abroad.

As an international coalition we are not in a position to advocate a specific political solution to this conflict. Yet our faith in our common humanity leads us to call on all parties to respect and uphold international law and fundamental human rights to bring an end to the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967 and pursue a just and lasting peace.

The march can only succeed if it arouses the conscience of humanity.

Statement of Context

Amnesty International has called the Gaza blockade a “form of collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza, a flagrant violation of Israel’s obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention.” Human Rights Watch has called the blockade a “serious violation of international law.” The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Richard Falk, condemned Israel’s siege of Gaza as amounting to a “crime against humanity.”

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter has said the Palestinian people trapped in Gaza are being treated “like animals,” and has called for “ending of the siege of Gaza” that is depriving “one and a half million people of the necessities of life.”

One of the world’s leading authorities on Gaza, Sara Roy of Harvard University, has said that the consequence of the siege “is undeniably one of mass suffering, created largely by Israel, but with the active complicity of the international community, especially the U.S. and European Union.”

The law is clear. The conscience of humankind is shocked.

[….]

Sources of Inspiration

The Gaza Freedom March is inspired by decades of nonviolent Palestinian resistance from the mass popular uprising of the first Intifada to the West Bank villagers currently resisting the land grab of Israel’s annexationist wall.

It draws inspiration from the Gazans themselves, who formed a human chain from Rafah to Erez, tore down the border barrier separating Gaza from Egypt, and marched to the six checkpoints separating the occupied Gaza Strip from Israel.

The Freedom March also draws inspiration from the international volunteers who have stood by Palestinian farmers harvesting their crops, from the crews on the vessels who have challenged the Gaza blockade by sea, and from the drivers of the convoys who have delivered humanitarian aid to Gaza.

And it is inspired by Nelson Mandela who said: “I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. … I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.”

It heeds the words of Mahatma Gandhi, who called his movement Satyagraha-Hold on to the truth, and holds to the truth that Israel’s siege of Gaza is illegal and inhuman.

Gandhi said that the purpose of nonviolent action is to “quicken” the conscience of humankind. Through the Freedom March, humankind will not just deplore Israeli brutality but take action to stop it.

Palestinian civil society has followed in the footsteps of Mandela and Gandhi. Just as those two leaders called on international civil society to boycott the goods and institutions of their oppressors, Palestinian associations, trade unions, and mass movements have since 2005 been calling on all people of conscience to support a non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions until Israel fully complies with its obligations under international law.

The Freedom March also draws inspiration from the civil rights movement in the United States.

If Israel devalues Palestinian life then internationals must both interpose their bodies to shield Palestinians from Israeli brutality and bear personal witness to the inhumanity that Palestinians daily confront.

If Israel defies international law then people of conscience must send non-violent marshals from around the world to enforce the law of the international community in Gaza. The International Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza will dispatch contingents from around the world to Gaza to mark the anniversary of Israel’s bloody 22-day assault on Gaza in December 2008 – January 2009.

The Freedom March takes no sides in internal Palestinian politics. It sides only with international law and the primacy of human rights.

The March is yet another link in the chain of non-violent resistance to Israel’s flagrant disregard of international law.

Citizens of the world are called upon to join ranks with Palestinians in the January 1st March to lift the inhumane siege of Gaza.

Please join us.

Go here to learn more and to sign the pledge.

UPDATE:
Gaza Freedom march converges on Midan Tahrir

By Joshua Brollier / December 31, 2009

CAIRO — Today at 10 a.m., the Gaza Freedom march converged on Midan Tahrir, or Liberation Square in English. This was no easy task for the marchers. We left in small groups to avoid being followed by police who were monitoring our hotels. Several of the larger hotels were monitored more closely, and the Lotus Hotel was completely barricaded, making it impossible for most of the Marchers to leave.

Many marchers, maybe three to four hundred, did make it to the square and a delegation of women gave the signal to converge by waving large flags. We moved into the streets with the intention to occupy a major thoroughfare and march towards Gaza.

Egyptian police and riot cops fanned out of alleyways and side streets as quickly as we came together. The police then attempted to push us out of the street and into the square. As planned, we continued to try to march, but things quickly came to a head. Most of the marchers decided to sit down and lock arms.

The Egyptian cops swiftly became violent and began grabbing, beating, and pulling marchers who did not leave the street. I was kicked in the side and back, punched in the head and slapped in the face. My glasses were broken and one plainclothes officer pulled violently on my hair for what seemed like nearly a minute.

I managed to hold on to one of my comrades,and we held the space in the street for a while longer. Many of the police in uniform were trying to avoid violence, but a handful of plain clothes officers were taking pot shots at the crowd of peaceful and non-violent protesters. Eventually the police succeeded in moving the marchers to the sidewalk where we were barricaded and surrounded by several rows of cops.

I emerged alright from the incident, but several others were not so fortunate. One young man had his shoulder dislocated and others were close to passing out from the trauma of the encounter.

Though we were removed from the square, beaten and prohibited from marching, our spirits were quickly rekindled through the solidarity born out of the struggle and by remembering the much worse hardships that Palestinians often face when they attempt to hold peaceful demonstrations; it is not uncommon for Israeli troops to fire on crowds of Palestinians with rubber and real bullets merely for assembling.

It is difficult to imagine the horror of being trapped in Gaza and having to endure an onslaught like the one that occurred last January. We held a moment of complete silence as we honored those who had died. Not even a cop made a noise.

So we chanted, we marched, we danced, drummed and sang, as we were together in Midan Tahrir. We may not have liberated the Gazan border, but my spirit certainly felt liberated for standing and sitting in solidarity with the Palestinians. We held the space for approximately six hours.

We were a truly international group, and it was inspiring to hear about the different facets of the movement across the world. Many people’s commitments to resisting injustice were renewed; some talked of a Cairo Declaration to unite the worldwide struggle for Palestinian freedom.

After holding a consensus meeting among the different delegations, we decided to disperse and regroup for another action later tonight. What a way to hold a New Year’s celebration; taking action with some of the finest people I’ve ever encountered! It may be held at the French Embassy since many from the French delegation that were encamped at their embassy were prevented by the police from entering the square.

I heard that the group of 85 delegates that headed to Rafah with humanitarian aid did make it into Gaza and have marched there with 6,000 Palestinians to the Israeli border. When reaching the border, the internationals,when within 500 meters of the border,sat down while holding a press conference. I hope to find more details on the scene in Gaza soon.

I’m wishing a happy New Year to all, worldwide! I hope this year to be a year of liberation. May we have liberation in our own hearts, in our relationships, in all of our various countries and especially, liberation to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

[Joshua Brollier is a Chicago peace activist who co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence.]

Source / Voices for Creative Nonviolence

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Bernardine Dohrn, Cairo, Egypt, Gaza, Middle East, Palestine, Peace Movement | 1 Comment

Fear in 2009: Year of the Bullet

Posted on December 31, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

“Playing with Guns.” Photo from Mikesjournal.
The fear stimulus:
Year of the Bullet 2009

For every claim that the Obama landslide transformed American culture in 2009 we have ‘bullet points’ that document a grassroots prairie fire of gut fear…

By Greg Moses / The Rag Blog / December 31, 2009

As one hand of history played high keys of hope and change during the inaugural days of 2009, the other hand was reaching for more ominous sound. Across the keyboard of our national concerto, some chimed celebration, others hoarded bullets.

Reporter Harry Pierson Curtis of the Orlando Sentinel wrote about the 2009 stampede for small arms and ammo in early February: “Most in demand is handgun ammunition, including 9 mm and .45-caliber for semiautomatic pistols and .38-caliber for revolvers.” Customers, retailers, manufacturers, and interest groups all had something to say. The usual American demand for 7 billion rounds of ammo per year (23 bullets per capita?) was fixin’ to head North.

“The Ammo Boom is No Dud,” declared ESPNOutdoors.com in late March. Special contributor Colin Moore attributed the “irrational” hoarding frenzy to a “fear factor” caused by the Democratic Party landslide. Handgun owners, especially, were worried that their ammo would soon be taxed into extinction. One Winchester bullet factory was said to be working 24/7 to meet the hyped-up demand.

By Labor Day, the Los Angeles Gun Club had imposed a four-box limit on ammo sales per customer per visit, reported L.A. Times writer W. J. Hennigan. Bullet manufacturers were running “full bore.” Even the military was outsourcing contracts to fill its need for 1.6 billion rounds per year.

Quarterly excise-tax figures posted November 2 by Ted Novin for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) confirmed that the gun and ammo sector of the national economy was pumped up. Tax reports for the second-quarter of 2009, compared to the second quarter of 2008, were “up 44.4 percent for handguns, 51.3 percent for long guns, and 57.5 percent for ammunition.” Since the tax rate had not been raised, the increasing tax amounts could be roughly equated to rising sales. Gross Domestic Product meanwhile had fallen over the same two quarters, year over year. For bullet makers, fear of Obama Democrats turned out to be a stealth stimulus.

On the export front, USA ammo manufacturers also logged record sales to global customers. According to a Census Bureau database, exports of small arms ammunition through the first ten months of 2009 have exceeded $2 billion compared to $2.17 billion for all twelve months of 2008.

Through October 2009 we can sort the top eight client nations for American-made small-arms ammo into three clubs: the $Hundred-Million, $Two-Hundred-Million, and $Three-Hundred-Million Clubs. Five members of the $Hundred Million Club received small arms ammo exports ranging from $105 million to $150 million: Poland, Canada, Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia. In the $Two-Hundred-Million Club are two states: the United Kingdom, whose common-law traditions formed the foundation of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment; and Japan, the home of the Peace Constitution. One country stands alone in the $Three-Hundred-Million Club. Can you guess? Israel.

In 2008, the $Two-Hundred-Million Club was curiously occupied by The Netherlands, which has only booked about $17 million in ammunition receivables through October 2009. Israel in all of 2008 had purchased $184 million in American-made ammo supplies. So far in 2009, small arms ammo sales to Israel are up 69 percent.

As an item in the 2009 national account, small arms ammo has been good for GDP and for the balance of trade. Although imports of small-arms ammo are up slightly, edging toward $800 million for the year, American bullet makers are likely to end the year by maintaining something close to a three-to-one trade advantage over their foreign competitors. When it comes to guns and ammo, America knows her stuff.

Shopping for guns in Las Vegas. Photo by Ethan Miller / Getty Images / Life.
According to Google Trends, the “ammunition” search term has leveled out to normal since its Second Quarter spike, although its value to the news industry seems to be steadily growing these past few years. Salt Lake City ranks first for taking interest in the term, followed by Phoenix, Denver, St. Louis, Houston, Dallas, Portland, Tampa, Austin, and Orlando (three cities in Texas, two in Florida, nothing on the East Coast North of Florida or the West Coast South of Portland). If you don’t shop for bullets, you might be interested to read what “ammunition” looks like under Google shopping. Kubrick fans should check out the Winchester Full Metal Jacket Value Pack.

Political theorist Hanes Walton, Jr. developed the concept of the “political context variable” to analyze what happened to history between 1965 and 1995. In the Year of the Bullet 2009 we find hard-core evidence of a singular economic countertrend that defies deindustrialization and depression. If political contexts have a material basis, then we have something material to consider about the political context of the first Obama year.

For every claim that the Obama landslide transformed American culture in 2009 we have “bullet points” that document a grassroots prairie fire of gut fear. If progressive activists have felt tiredness in their bones, it may have something to do with a visceral recognition that fear is what we are fighting but never get the chance to confront.

“Contextual transformation in the political arena is a multi-phased process,” argues Walton, Jr. “First, a desire to transform the political context must be evident, along with a strategy. Second, that desire and strategy must become institutionalized.” What progressives generally want is a different kind of fearlessness than the kind you buy with bullets. Yet the strategy of confronting bullets is not quite the strategy of confronting the fear that organizes the production and distribution of bullets. There will not be an end to the boom in bullets until the fear itself is busted.

In parts of Obama’s agenda there seems to be a spark of fearlessness. Health care security would supplement social security as a means of reducing the daily experience of fear. But Obama is also from the Jane Addams school of social progress, which means he’s not going to make a step forward today that people didn’t first demand yesterday. In 2009, people’s fear of health care insecurity got mowed over by louder fears. How do we strategize and institutionalize a truly disarming fearlessness? In the progressive activism of our post-9/11 world, every time we turn around another fear come smashing up.

Organizers of the upcoming SHOT Show in Las Vegas (Jan. 19-22) report that interest is up for “the world’s premier exposition of combined firearms, ammunition, archery, cutlery, outdoor apparel, optics, camping and related products and services.” If you go to Vegas for the SHOT Show, make sure you are a member of the industry (or media) and don’t forget that “personal firearms or ammunition are not allowed.” You don’t see industry attorneys challenging the Second Amendment infringements of that rule. In the end, even the purveyors of guns and ammo would rather push that fear out their door.

[Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He can be reached at gmosesx@gmail.com.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged 2009, American Society, Barack Obama, Economy, Greg Moses, Guns, Paranoia | 1 Comment

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