This quirky, somewhat hilarious and critical summary of the debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden arrived on my desk unbidden. It arrived anonymously. And it struck me as so economical, disturbingly insightful and amusing that I had to share.
I offer it up for those who missed the debate and don’t care to sit through two hours of verbal mush to see what they missed — and, as an eye-witness poem of what presumably many Americans are experiencing as the political insanity that is Sarah Palin for VP.
Sarah Palin and Joe Biden walk on stage …
May I call you Joe? She says?
Her fetching locks are down
She is not looking at him
Cribbing her notes? ew she has a American flag panel thing on her lapel
Kids soccer games – yah evoking the family things
I betcha!!!!!
Fear fear fear she says
She winks!
A Team of mavericks?
Put partisan politics aside? Wha?
Crinkle her face she does
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Image from Isuma TV
The Alianait! arts festival in Nunavut is being streamed live on the internet on Isuma.TV every night this week beginning at 7 pm. From the festival website:
The Alianait Arts Festival is an annual event in its fourth year. No less than ten days (and nights) of art, music, film, storytelling, circus arts, dance and theatre. Alianait is an Inuit expression of joy and celebration and to celebrate our fourth annual festival, the theme for Alianait 2008 is String Games – an ancient Inuit tradition.
The festival started on June 21 and runs until July 1. Here’s the webcast schedule for Isuma.TV:
June 21: 7 to 10 pm EST –
ALIANAIT GRAND OPENING – LIVE at www.isuma.tv from the Big Top
June 22 : 7 to 9 pm EST –
FIBONACCI CIRCUS PERFORMANCE – LIVE from the Big Top
June 23: 7 to 9 pm EST –
NUNAVUT ARTS FESTIVAL WITH LIVE MUSIC – LIVE from the Old Residence
June 24: 7 to 9 pm EST –
ARTICIRQ/OATIARIO – LIVE from the Big Top
June 25: 7 to 10 pm –
STORYTELLING PERFORMANCE – LIVE from Parish Hall
June 26: 7 to 10 pm EST-
SAQIYUQ THEATRE PERFORMANCE – LIVE from the Parish Hall
June 27: 7 to 9 pm EST –
ART EXHIBIT – LIVE from the Nunatta Museum
June 28: 7 to 9 pm EST –
YOUTH MUSIC CONCERT – LIVE from the Big Top
June 29: 2 to 5 pm EST –
FREE MUSIC CONCERT – LIVE from the Big Top
June 30: 7 to 10 pm EST –
STRING GAMES FINALE CONCERT – LIVE from the Big Top
July 1: 2 to 5 pm EST –
FREE MUSIC CONCERT – LIVE from the Big Top
Stalags, a documentary film about Israeli Nazi porn paperbacks of the same name, is exposing audiences in North America to one of history’s most bizarre literary genres. The film asks probing questions about post-Holocaust Jewish identity and sexuality, in an attempt to explain why Israeli teens had an irresistible infatuation with busty blonde Nazis.
Read under the table by a generation of pubescent Israelis, often the children of survivors, the Stalags were named for the World War II prisoner-of-war camps in which they were set. The books told perverse tales of captured American or British pilots being abused by sadistic female SS officers outfitted with whips and boots. The plot usually ended with the male protagonists taking revenge, by raping and killing their tormentors.
After decades in dusty back rooms and closets, the Stalags, a peculiar Hebrew concoction of Nazism, sex and violence, are re-emerging in the public eye. And with them comes a rekindled debate on the cultural representation here of Nazism and the Holocaust, and whether they have been unduly mixed in with a kind of sexual perversion and voyeurism that has permeated even the school curriculum. (New York Times)
Salon.com has an interesting review of the film, which is not surprisingly gathering mixed reviews.
Stalags is screening in New York City until next week.
The members of Collectif Ressources d’Afrique, Édition Écosociété and their editorial board out of Montreal have been served with a SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) by Canadian mining company Barrick Gold in light of the release of their upcoming publication, Noir Canada: Pillage, corruption et criminalité en Afrique.
The book launch for Noir Canada, edited by Alain Denault and the Collectif Ressources d’Afrique, was cancelled April 11, 2008, when the authors and publishers (Édition Écosociété) received letters from a law firm representing Barrick Gold. The letters alledgedly refer to apparent inaccuracies in the book.
Noir Canada is a synthesis and analysis of national and international documents (reports, books, documentaries…) detailing numerous corporate abuses implicating a number of Canadian companies in Africa, which operate with the “unfailing help of the Canadian government”.
The list of corporate abuses is long: advantageous mining contracts in the DRC, partnerships with arms dealers and mercenaries in the Great Lakes region, miners buried alive in Tanzania, an “involuntary genocide” by poisoning in Mali, brutal expropriations in Ghana, using people from the Ivory Coast for pharmaceutical testing, devastating hydroelectric projects in Senegal, the savage privatization of the railway system in West Africa…
The debate the book aims to bring into the public sphere is all the more legitimised by the regular re-investment of Canadian public funds (retirement funds, RRSPs, etc.) in these companies via the Toronto Stock Exchange.
From a press release which came out Saturday, April 12th from the Collectif: “It is understood that the financial means of a powerful mining company, compared to that of the researchers who prepared the book, permits the company to proceed by intimidation.”
(Source : le Collectif Ressources d’Afrique, Montréal, le 12 avril 2008)
A previous report on the release of this book can be listened to via Horizon2, an earlier podcast of the interview with the author airing on CIBL Radio-Montreal – 101,5 FM.
We’ve all received them — pleading emails from far away places offering big sums of money in broken English for the temporary use of our bank account. The situation is always urgent, and all we need do is give them details of our account and then sit back and watch the money roll in … or so they say.
East German born Henning Wagaenbreth has assembled 36 of these scam emails and illustrated them as pop culture posters. The illustrations are chaotic and humorous renditions of the stories told in the scams. The illustrations have been assembled using woodblock, linocut and primitive typography.
The book is called Help, 36 Email Scams from Africa and is published by Gingko Press.
Wagenbreth is a visual artist and professor of visual communication at Universitat der Kunste in Berlin.
The American economy might be tanking, but savvy shoppers can come out on top by taking advantage of Fantagraphics‘ Economic Stimulus Package! One of the leading publishers of graphic novels, Fantagraphics is offering a 15% discount on all political books during the month of April. Ruffle Republican feathers by spending your tax refund on Joe Sacco’s Palestine or Steve Brodner’s Freedom Fries.
The announcement from Fantagraphics:
Good ol’ G.W. Bush hopes to kick-start the U.S. economy by giving everyone a tax rebate this year. We say, what better way to use your windfall than by affirming your freedom to read great comics! In honor of Tax Day on April 15, save 15% on select books in our Politics & World Affairs category all throughout the month of April 2008!
Whether fictional satire skewering our malevolent and/or less-than-competent leaders, journalistic comics reporting from conflict-torn regions, or trenchant commentary on societal issues, these books present the finest in topical cartooning and exemplify our time-honored tradition of freedom of speech.
The self-described “eternal voice of Haiti”, Vox Sambou (born Robints Paul) is a Montreal-based emcee and international hip-hop activist whose Creole raps and dancehall chants speak to the thorny political reality that continues to plague his countrymen. After 16 years of spitting rhymes in booming baritone from Haiti to Havana to Toronto’s Harbourfront alone or alongside Montreal’s Nomadic Massive, Paul is now set to bless us with his debut solo album.
The title of the LP is Lakay, the Haitian Creole word for home, which in Paul’s case is Litero a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city of Limbe 220 km north of Port au Prince. Also known as ‘ti Guinea, the small region is the source of the deep-rooted Caribbean rhythms that punctuated the lives of Paul’s great-great grandparents and kept his own head bobbin’ before he had ever heard of a thing called hip-hop. As he grew older, Paul also embraced Dancehall and early Reggaetone, but his true heroes were the socially conscious local musicians he saw live. Motivated by the rebellious roots music of Eddie Francois and the legendary band Bookman Eksperyans as well as Kompa groups such as Tropicana, Paul moved to Port au Prince where hip-hop was quickly becoming the subversive soundtrack of choice for the next generation of young Haitians.
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