Dance More

Jul 20, 2012 / Written by Mykal Monroe

The Paris Literary Prize is an international novella competition for unpublished writers. Any topic is welcome.

When the de Groot foundation came to us with the idea for the Paris Literary Prize in 2010, we immediately said yes. Shakespeare and Company has a long-standing tradition of opening its doors to aspiring writers and in keeping with that philosophy, the 10,000€ Paris Literary Prize is open to writers from around the world who have not yet published a book.

We have long been admirers of the novella, a genre which includes such classics as The Old Man and the Sea, Animal Farm, L'Étranger and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The Paris Literary Prize celebrates this small but perfectly formed genre while giving a unique opportunity to writers whose voices have not yet been heard.

Awards

There are three Paris Literary Prize awards:

The Paris Literary Prize award: 10,000 Euros
Two Paris Literary Prize Runner-up awards: 2,000 Euros each

All three winners will be invited to a weekend stay in Paris to attend the
Prize ceremony and read from their work at a special event at
Shakespeare and Company.

Last year, the winner of the Paris Literary Prize was Rosa Rankin-Gee for The Last Kings of Sark ; the two runners-up were Adam Biles for Grey Cats, and Agustin Maes for Newborn.

 

Selection Process & Jury

The selection process for the Paris Literary Prize occurs in two phases. First, our dedicated team of readers (numbering 12 in 2011) goes through each submission in search of exceptional stories, voices and craft and a long list of roughly 10% of entrants is then chosen for closer inspection. After many hours of reading and debate, this is again reduced to form the short list, between 10 and 15 entrants. This is where our Jury takes over, spending a month with the texts before selecting the winner and two runners-up.

To ensure the quality and diversity of the selections, each submission is considered by several readers (for instance, in 2011 each text was viewed at least five times).

The identity of all entrants is withheld throughout the process.

 

2012 Jury

Erica Wagner will again be chairing the jury for this year’s prize, with the remaining members to be decided shortly. For the list of 2011 readers and jury click here.

Erica Wagner is Literary Editor of The Times and writes a weekly column in the Saturday Review section of the paper. She has interviewed many of the world's leading writers. Erica's books include Gravity, a collection of short stories, and Ariel's Gift, a biographical gloss on Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters. Her novel, Seizure, was published in Britain and the US in 2007. Seizure is published in France as La Coupure by Au-delà du Raisonnable. She has judged many literary prizes; the Man Booker, the Orange Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Forward Prize. She lives in London with her husband and son. www.ericawagner.co.uk

 

Rebecca Carter is a literary agent with Janklow & Nesbit. She worked for fifteen years as an editor at Random House UK. As a publisher, her acquisitions were wide-ranging, from literary to more genre-led fiction, novels light and dark, for old and young, set everywhere from Afghanistan to Acton, and non-fiction in the areas of history, memoir, travel, food- and nature-writing, political and cultural polemic, often mixed together and with a strong emphasis on story.

 

Born in Paris in 1981, Sylvia Whitman was educated in Edinburgh, and studied History at University College London. She has been the manager of Shakespeare and Company in Paris since 2006, perpetuating the spirit of the legendary bookshop, founded by her father George Whitman in 1951.

 

Open to All Inspired Writers:

The Young Leaders’

Poetry Competition 2012

(organized by

UN- Accredited

Olof Palme Peace Foundation)

Deadline: 30 August 2012

Olof Palme Peace Foundation (OPPF) is a United Nations-accredited, not-for-profit, non-political, non-governmental organisation that seeks to protect and uphold the rights of those being marginalised. The organisation was founded in Ghana in 1986 by Osoronko Nana-Yabani, a linguist, historian, international poet and a UN peace messenger of Ghanaian origin. The OPPF headquarters were relocated to New York in 2007 to further build upon the organisation’s association with the United Nations Department of Public Information (UNDPI). Following the establishment of an OPPF chapter in Nairobi, Kenya, and in Stockholm, Sweden, along with close partnerships amongst various local women’s groups in eastern Kenya, OPPF is currently initiating a larger project focusing on women and children exposed to violence.

ANNOUNCING THE 2012 YOUNG LEADERS’ POETRY COMPETITION

All inspired and interested high school students are encouraged to participate and speak out !

THEME: Engaging young women and men to advance gender equity!

SUGGESTED SUB-THEMES :

• Gender violence (prevention, elimination, causes and effects)
• Promoting gender equity (Reducing inequality think equal)
• Women empowerment
• Role of women in addressing global issues (peace building, sustainable development, ending poverty)
• Overcoming gender stereotypes and traditional roles

HOW TO PARTICIPATE: Please submit one unpublished poem of no more than 300 lines that relates to the themes mentioned above to the mailing address below. You can also submit by email. The deadline for submission is August 30th 2012.

2012 AWARD CEREMONY: Award ceremony for winning poets will be held November 28th. Awards include 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finalists and honorable mentions. All awardees will have opportunity to read their poems in front of invited esteemed delegates from the UN agencies, UN missions, development partners and other young leaders.

For any inquiries and questions please contact information send an email to info@oppfoundation.org, or write us through the following address: 215 Park Avenue, South Suite 2010 New York, NY 10013.

 

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For queries/ submissions: info@oppfoundation.org

Website: http://oppfoundation.org

Brand New Sparkle Trailer

Is All Cee Lo

+ Lots Of New Footage 

By Tambay A. Obenson

 

August 6, 2012 12:07 PM 

Here's the second full trailer for at Sony Pictures' Sparkle remake, which stars Jordin Sparks, Whitney Houston, Carmen Ejogo, Tika Sumpter, Derek Luke, and Mike Epps, shepherded by Salim and Mara Brock Akil.

This one plays more like a music video, with Cee Lo on the mic, singing what is likely one of the songs from the film's soundtrack, which was released on July 31, from RCA Records. It also features a number of new scenes that weren't in the first trailer.

The film opens in 2 weeks, on August 17th, 2012. We've seen it, as well as interviewed some of the cast and crew; so look out for that coverage next week!

In the meantime, here's the new trailer:

Get More: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

Can Twitter Help

Rape Victims Find Justice?

 

By Amanda Hess

Posted Monday, July 23, 2012

 

A teenage sexual assault victim took to Twitter to out her assailants and now faces jail time.

Last summer, 16-year-old Savannah Dietrich went to a party, had some drinks, and passed out. Then, two acquaintances sexually assaulted her, took pictures, and forwarded them to their friends. News of the public assault tore through Dietrich’s Louisville high school. Dietrich was forced to “just sit there and wonder, who saw, who knows?” The public humiliation culminated this June, when her assailants struck a plea deal on charges of felony sexual abuse and misdemeanor voyeurism that Dietrich felt amounted to a “slap on the wrist.” And the court had an order for Dietrich, too: Don’t talk about it, or risk 180 days in prison and a $500 fine.

First, Dietrich cried. Then, she logged online. "There you go, lock me up," she tweeted to a couple hundred Twitter followers, outing her assailants by name. "I'm not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.” These men had made their assault on her public. Now, they had convinced a court to keep it all under wraps. “If reporting a rape only got me to the point that I'm not allowed to talk about it, then I regret it,” she wrote in a note on her Facebook wall. “I regret reporting it.”

Public officials and victim’s advocates have long grappled with the question of why more than one-half of rape victims do not report the crime to police. Rape trials can be long, grueling, humiliating, stigmatizing, alienating, and ultimately difficult to prove. But as Dietrich's case shows, the criminal justice process can also rob the victim of control over her own narrative. Reporting to official channels often means keeping quiet in social ones. Even when the story hits the press—as is the case of the local Louisville report on Dietrich, now 17—the accused rapists’ names often remain unpublished.

Now, young victims like Dietrich are "reporting" the assault directly to the people who need the information most—other women living in these rapists' communities. And they’re risking their own names and reputations in order to bring their assailants out into the open. In 2010, 19-year-old American University student Chloe Rubenstein took to Facebook and Twitter to out two men on campus she said had victimized several of her friends (“ATTENTION WOMEN,” she wrote. “They are predators and will show no remorse for anyone.”) In 2007, a group of women at Portland’s Lewis & Clark College, led by sophomore Helen Hunter, created a Facebook group calling one of their classmates a “Piece of S--- Rapist.” When the administration caught wind, it suspended the man for just a semester. But five years later? Google his name, and the online rape allegations still register as the fourth hit.

The tactic has its risks. Women who report rapes through unofficial channels can be shamed for making public claims that have not been proven in a court of law—or else for ruining the reputations of “boys” who have made "mistakes." Dietrich faces jail time. Rubenstein fielded late-night threatening phone calls from her rapists’ friends. Victims with even less social clout—Dietrich is white and middle-class, and is speaking out with the help of her family and legal counsel—can expect even less support. But the costs of staying silent are high. In her Facebook note, Dietrich said that her attackers gave “people the impression that it’s okay to do that to me … making me look like a whore and increasing my chances of getting raped again.” We know that the majority of acquaintance rapists are repeat offenders. When campus and criminal processes fail to catch these predators, social media can provide a powerful patch.

Last night, Dietrich unlocked her Facebook page to the hundreds of strangers—myself included—who have requested to make her a “friend.” They have flooded her wall with offers of financial support and links to Change.org petitions calling for justice in her case. Of course, Dietrich is also fielding spammy notes from strangers with dogs for avatars (“since they took pictures isn’t this child pornography?”) and all-caps rants about the sex offender registry.

But here, Dietrich is the editor of her own story. She has the power to delete the comments she doesn’t like and promote the ones she does. Thanks to a few brave tweets, a 17-year-old rape victim is now curating an international conversation about sexual assault in America. She’s created a public Twitter account to represent her new online role. And she’s speaking out not only about the details of her own assault, but the ways that the justice system is failing others like her. “All I am hoping for out of this is to get not only justice for myself but to future victims,” she wrote in response to one commenter offering of financial support. “The laws that protect criminals shouldn’t cross over and take away victims rights. Victims rights should come first. And thank you.”

__________________________

Savannah Dietrich

Doesn't Face

Contempt Charge

For Revealing Names

Of Sexual Attackers

Savannah Dietrich was threatened with a contempt charge for tweeting the names of the teens who sexually assaulted her.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Kentucky teenager frustrated by light punishment for two boys who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her was spared Monday from having to face a contempt charge for naming them on Twitter in violation of a court order.

The case of Savannah Dietrich, 17, quickly gathered supporters nationwide who were upset that the victim of an assault could be punished for speaking out against her attackers.

The girl turned to Twitter after she said she was frustrated with what she felt was a lenient plea deal. The judge had ordered no one to speak about the case, which was in juvenile court.

On Monday, attorneys for the boys dropped their motion to charge her with contempt. David Mejia, an attorney for one of the boys, said the decision to withdraw the motion had nothing to do with public sentiment and online attention to the case.

He said the purpose of the motion had been to enforce the law that protects juveniles and their actions from disclosure.

"The horse is out of the barn," he said. "Nothing is bringing it back."

The Associated Press does not generally identify victims of sexual assault, but Dietrich and her parents wanted her story to be made public. She gave her account to The Courier-Journal newspaper in a story published Saturday. She has not responded to the AP for comment and her lawyer, Emily Farrar-Crockett of the public defender's juvenile division, did not immediately return telephone calls.

Jeff Dion, deputy executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, said victims who feel cheated by the justice system sometimes file civil lawsuits in an effort to get information in the public, but social media has turned that on its head.

"It's all about giving victims a voice," Dion said.

In one day, an online petition on Change.org had garnered 62,000 signatures in support of Dietrich's action.

"When I read it, I was appalled and outraged and thought, `Somebody has to do something about this. Who is going to do something about this?'" said Elizabeth Beier, 22, of Cockeysville, Md., who started the petition even though she doesn't know Deitrich. "Everyone wants this girl to have peace and time to recover and not another trauma like jail time."

Beier said the two women have not spoken, but she congratulated her.

"I think what she did was very brave by coming forward ... and I think a lot of people who may have been victims or survivors of assault and didn't get the justice they deserve probably see themselves in her," she said.

Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, said the motion to withdraw the contempt of court charge was "a huge victory not only for Ms. Dietrich, but for women all over the country."

Deitrich told The Courier-Journal that after the sexual assault, the boys posted photos of the attack on the Internet.

"These boys shared the picture of her being raped with their friends and she can't share their names with her Twitter community? That's just crazy," O'Neill said.

The Courier-Journal reported that the boys were charged with first-degree sexual abuse, a felony, and misdemeanor voyeurism, according to information in a court motion the newspaper filed asking Judge Dee McDonald to allow the paper to see motions filed by attorneys for Dietrich.

The teens pleaded guilty to those charges in late June, though Dietrich and her family told the newspaper they were unaware of the plea bargain and recommended sentence until just before it was announced in court. The attack occurred in August 2011.

Dion said the Kentucky law on gag orders in juvenile cases presupposes that information revealed came from reading the court record. In Dietrich's case, he noted, she was the victim, and she had independent knowledge of the crime.

"And I think a restriction or gag order on a victim creates some First Amendment issues," Dion said.

He added that prosecuting a victim "sends a terrible message."

"We created victims' rights out of a recognition that we need victims to come forward in order for our justice system to work," he said. "Really, what do they get for that?"

Chris Klein, an attorney for one of the boys, said publicizing their names may create problems for them in the future.

"There's always that possibility and in any type of scenario like this you run that risk," he said. "Now whether both these boys can overcome those hurdles, it's too early to determine that."

Klein said it's possible, but unlikely, that prosecutors would make the same contempt charge against Dietrich. Both sides will still be bound by the confidentiality of the juvenile court proceedings.

"I think her behavior will dictate whether it's the end of it or not," Klein said. "If all the parties abide by the confidentiality of juvenile court, then I think that's the end of it."

Bill Patteson, a spokesman for the Jefferson County Attorney's office, said he could not comment because of the confidentiality on juvenile cases.

>via: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/savannah-dietrich-contempt-charege_n...

A LOT LIKE YOU

Eliaichi Kimaro is a mixed-race, first-generation American with a Tanzanian father and Korean mother. When her retired father moves back to Tanzania, Eliaichi begins a project that evocatively examines the intricate fabric of multiracial identity, and grapples with the complex ties that children have to the cultures of their parents.

A Lot Like You raises questions about the cultures we inherit and the cultures we choose to pass down, and reveals how simply bearing witness to another's suffering can break silences that have lasted lifetimes.

__________________________

<p>The High Bar w/ Warren & Eliaichi Kimaro (Episode 308) from The High Bar on Vimeo.</p>

Victoire still in prison,

Congo still

a human catastrophe

August 4, 2012

 

by Ann Garrison

KPFA Weekend News

 

Rwandan opposition leader and political prisoner Victoire Ingabire has appeared in court in handcuffs and the shaved head and pink uniform of a Rwandan prisoner since her arrest in October 2010. She was not allowed to enter the presidential race that year against Rwandan Gen. Paul Kagame. The crowd behind her in this photo montage was marching to the Rwandan Embassy in Brussels to call for her freedom and that of all Rwandan political prisoners.

In July 2010, Victoire Ingabire told Womens’ International News Gathering Service that the warring that followed refugees from Rwanda into eastern Congo must be brought to an end with dialogue, not invasion:

“The stumbling block is the refugees issue. For the last 16 years or so, the current regime has attempted to settle this refugee problem through military invasion. It is this problem which poisoned the relation between Rwanda and Congo – DRC – and Uganda. And we have to resolve this problem, not militarily, but through dialogue.”

“The stumbling block is the refugees issue. For the last 16 years or so, the current regime has attempted to settle this refugee problem through military invasion. It is this problem which poisoned the relation between Rwanda and Congo – DRC – and Uganda. And we have to resolve this problem, not militarily, but through dialogue.” – Victoire Ingabire

Is it any wonder she’s been in Rwandan Gen. Kagame’s 1930 maximum security prison since October 2010? Twelve years of U.N. investigations have proven that what Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front party have described, since 1996, as a hunt for the perpetrators of the Rwanda Genocide, who fled to eastern Congo, has been very profitable for Gen. Kagame and for Uganda’s Gen. Museveni and their elite collaborators, nationally and internationally.

In 2001, the first of the U.N. Panel of Experts on Illegal Minerals Trade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reported that militias allied with both Rwanda and Uganda were smuggling minerals across Congo’s eastern borders and that Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni were “on the verge of becoming the godfathers of illegal resource exploitation and ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

In 2001, a U.N. Panel of Experts reported that militias allied with both Rwanda and Uganda were smuggling minerals across Congo’s eastern borders and that Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni were “on the verge of becoming the godfathers of illegal resource exploitation and ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

Rwandan prosecutors asked that Victoire Ingabire be found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, but the verdict that was to be handed down on June 29 has been postponed to Sept. 7.

KPFA Weekend News

On the first day in court, the prosecution argued that Victoire Ingabire’s lawyers, Iain Edwards, left, and Gatera Gashebana, could not be trusted because they were defending a suspected criminal, Victoire Ingabire, center.

Rwandan political prisoner and opposition leader Victoire Ingabire has refused to return to the Rwandan courtroom where she was on trial, and she asked her lawyers not to return either. KPFA spoke to her British lawyer, Iain Edwards.

 

Transcript

KPFA Weekend News Anchor Cameron Jones: Rwandan political prisoner and opposition leader Victoire Ingabire has refused to continue playing the role of defendant in her show trial in Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s kangaroo court and asked her lawyers not to return either. Ingabire has been in prison for almost two years and on trial for the past six months for challenging the constitutionally codified history of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and the injustice of its aftermath in both Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has the story.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Victoire Ingabire issued a statement saying that she had lost all faith in the Rwandan justice system, that she would not return to the courtroom and that she had asked her lawyers to do the same, after Rwandan security intimidated her first witness, Michel Habimana, a former FDLR militia commander now serving life in a Rwandan prison. Habimana was interrogated, his cell was searched, and he was ordered from the courtroom after testifying that Ingabire had never had any contact with the FDLR militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, whom she is accused of conspiring with to commit terrorist acts in Rwanda.

Iain Edwards and Victoire Ingabire confer in court.

Habimana also testified that the prosecution’s lead witness was lying about his own contact with Ingabire and his own rank within the FDLR. Ingabire’s British lawyer Iain Edwards, speaking to KPFA from London, said that Habimana had no doubt given this testimony at great risk to himself, even though he is already serving life in prison. Edwards also described one of Rwanda’s unique rules of court, which he said most any other court in the world would consider a violation of a defendant’s right to fair trial:

 

Iain Edwards: There are various rules of procedure that would almost universally be thought of as very much a violation of a defendant’s fair trial rights. The rule in Rwanda that a person against whom the prosecution have reason to believe is guilty of an offense … such a person is unable to provide sworn testimony before the judges. The judges can in practice hear such a person, who is suspected of being guilty of a crime, but only by way of a person providing information. Consequently, their “evidence” will necessarily be given significantly less weight.

KPFA: Well, there was one point in this trial when it was reported that the prosecution stood up and said that Victoire’s testimony couldn’t be trusted, because she’s a genocide criminal, meaning guilty of genocide ideology and … and that you shouldn’t be trusted, you and Gatera Gashebana, because you were defending a criminal.

Iain Edwards: That was at the very beginning of the trial. That was a really bizarre afternoon in court.

KPFA: For Ingabire herself, Edwards had nothing but praise:

Iain Edwards: She’s been an absolute joy to represent. She is an extraordinarily courageous woman. She’s an intelligent woman. She’s a fiercely independent woman. She’s a person that I’ve got on extremely well with. She’s loyal and it’s my very firm belief that what she wants is the very best for the Rwandan people. She makes absolutely no distinction whatsoever between Hutu, Tutsi, Twa. She sees the Rwandan people as simply that, the Rwandan people.

Victoire “is an extraordinarily courageous woman. She’s an intelligent woman. She’s a fiercely independent woman … and it’s my very firm belief that what she wants is the very best for the Rwandan people. She makes absolutely no distinction whatsoever between Hutu, Tutsi, Twa. She sees the Rwandan people as simply that, the Rwandan people.” – Iain Edwards

She wants peace in her country. She wants the population to live in harmony. Where there are differences, to embrace those differences, and to live with those differences, but fundamentally to live in peace and harmony.

Victoire Ingabire’s supporters will ask the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to declare her a political prisoner.

She wants there to be reconciliation in Rwanda, something which just does not exist in the way that the government likes to portray it as existing. And, in order to achieve that goal, she is prepared to act with complete selflessness. She knew that she ran a very, very high risk of being arrested and imprisoned when she traveled from the Netherlands to Rwanda in January of 2010.

 

KPFA: In her statement, Ingabire said, “Shall I die or live, be detained or freed, what we have achieved will never go back. This movement is even stronger than I am.” Rwandan refugees all over the world have thanked her for finally making it possible for them to tell their stories, and her supporters will now seek to have her declared a political prisoner by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights.

 For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison.

San Francisco writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, Colored Opinions, Black Star News, the Newsline EA (East Africa) and her own website, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, Weekend News on KPFA and her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at ann@afrobeatradio.com. This story first appeared on her website. If you want to see Ann Garrison’s independent reporting continue, please contribute on her website at anngarrison.com.

 

__________________________

Documenting

The Day The USA

Dropped The Bomb

mamitah:

1871atboe:

On August 6th, 1945, Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Yoshito Matsushige, a 32 year old cameraman, was one of the handful of people who managed to photograph the city that day, and the only person who documented the carnage around the epicenter.

This is the story of how these photos were taken. Of why so few such photos exist (in a nutshell, the survivors were too shocked from the suffering around them to take pictures of it). And how the existing photos were kept away from the public eye, both in Japan and in the West. [Text below and photos above from Iconic Photos. Emphasis mine.]

Nuclear blast and wind destroyed buildings within its 1.5-mile radius. Yoshito Matsushige was barely out of this radius at a little over 1.6-miles from the ground zero. Heading out to the citycentre, Matsushige took the only photographs taken of Hiroshima on that calamitous day. Matsushige himself was not seriously injured by the blast, but the scenes of carnage and dying people prevented him from taking further pictures. (He had 24 possible exposures, in the 10 hours he spent wandering the devastated city, but only seven came out right).

The importance of scenes that Mr. Matsushige documented were not immediately realized in the outside world. Another bomb would follow a few days later, and the war in Far East was finally over. The tone of the Western Press, from the New York Times to Life, was almost triumphal. They would not receive the photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki until months later, and even then, only the heavily censored ones. In addition, the radiation sickness was dismissed as a Japanese effort to undermine American morale, and the stories to that effect were frequently killed. This type of censorship was so prevalent that when MGM had a scene casting doubts on whether an atomic weapon should have been used, the White House called the studio to change the script.

In Japan, the censorship was more draconian. It was not just buildings that were annihilated in Hiroshima; an entire collective memory too was erased. For many years the sole images of the bombings in Japan were sketches and paintings by survivors. General Douglas MacArthur had declared southern Japan off-limits from the foreign press. Wilfred Burchett — who secretively sneaked on a train — had his camera stolen, photos confiscated and was expelled and banned from Japan. Live footage taken by Akira Iwasaki was seized and taken to the United States, and was not returned until 1968. For Matsushige himself, his films were so toxic that he was unable to develop them for twenty days, and even then had to do so at night and in the open, rinsing it in a stream. When he tried to publish them, they were confiscated. Under the blanket rule that “nothing shall be printed which might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility,”graphic photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not printed until the U.S. occupation ended in Japan in April 1952. The magazine Asahi Gurafu opened the floodgates by publishing them in August 1952.

YOSHITO MATSUSHIGE’S ACCOUNT :

“I had finished breakfast and was getting ready to go to the newspaper when it happened. There was a flash from the indoor wires as if lightening had struck. I didn’t hear any sound, how shall I say, the world around me turned bright white. And I was momentarily blinded as if a magnesium light had lit up in front of my eyes. Immediately after that, the blast came. I was bare from the waist up, and the blast was so intense, it felt like hundreds of needles were stabling me all at once. The blast grew large holes in the walls of the first and second floor. I could barely see the room because of all the dirt. I pulled my camera and the clothes issued by the military headquarters out from under the mound of the debris, and I got dressed. I thought I would go to either either the newspaper or to the headquarters.

That was about 40 minutes after the blast. Near the Miyuki Bridge, there was a police box. Most of the victims who had gathered there were junior high school girls from the Hiroshima Girls Business School and the Hiroshima Junior High School No.1. they had been mobilized to evacuate buildings and they were outside when the bomb fell. Having been directly exposed to the heat rays, they were covered with blisters, the size of balls, on their backs, their faces, their shoulders and their arms. The blisters were starting to burst open and their skin hung down like rugs. Some of the children even have burns on the soles of their feet. They’d lost their shoes and run barefoot through the burning fire. When I saw this, I thought I would take a picture and I picked up my camera. But I couldn’t push the shutter because the sight was so pathetic. Even though I too was a victim of the same bomb, I only had minor injuries from glass fragments, whereas these people were dying. It was such a cruel sight that I couldn’t bring myself to press the shutter.

Perhaps I hesitated there for about 20 minutes, but I finally summoned up the courage to take one picture. Then, I moved 4 or 5 meters forward to take the second picture. Even today, I clearly remember how the view finder was clouded over with my tears. I felt that everyone was looking at me and thinking angrily, “He’s taking our picture and will bring us no help at all.” Still, I had to press the shutter, so I harden my heart and finally I took the second shot. Those people must have thought me duly cold-hearted. Then, I saw a burnt streetcar which had just turned the corner at Kamiya-cho. There were passengers still in the car. I put my foot onto the steps of the car and I looked inside. There were perhaps 15 or 16 people in front of the car. They laid dead one on top of another. Kamiya-cho was very close to the epicenter, about 200 meters away. The passengers had stripped them of all their clothes. They say that when you are terrified, you tremble and your hair stands on end. And I felt just this tremble when I saw this scene. I stepped down to take a picture and I put my hand on my camera. But I felt so sorry for these dead and naked people whose photo would be left to posterity that I couldn’t take the shot. Also, in those days we weren’t allowed to publish the photographs of corpses in the newspapers.

After that, I walked around, I walked through the section of town which had been hit hardest. I walked for close to three hours. But I couldn’t take even one picture of that central area.There were other cameramen in the army shipping group and also at the newspaper as well. But the fact that not a single one of them was able to take pictures seems to indicate just how brutal the bombing actually was. I don’t pride myself on it, but it’s a small consolation that I was able to take at least five pictures. During the war, air-raids took place practically every night. And after the war began, there were many foods shortages. Those of us who experienced all these hardships, we hope that such suffering will never be experienced again by our children and our grandchildren. Not only our children and grandchildren, but all future generations should not have to go through this tragedy. That is why I want young people to listen to our testimonies and to choose the right path, the path which leads to peace.”

Photo details: the mushroom cloud; the shadow of a person who was disintegrated at the moment of the blast (these steps were cut out and now inside the Hiroshima Peace Park museum); people who escaped serious injury applying cooking oil to their burns near Miyuki bridge (two photos); a policeman, his head bandaged, issues certificates to civilians; the damage to Matsushige family’s barbershop.

and the perpetrators have still not been made to pay for this horrendous crime against humanity

>via: http://fuckyeahmarxismleninism.tumblr.com/post/28863160286/mamitah-1871atboe-...

Monday, July 23, 2012

First Listen:

Out Of Many:

50 Years Of

Reggae Music

(album stream)

Gregory Isaacs.

Celebrating 50 years of Jamaican independence with a hit song from each year, starting in 1962.


Hear Disc One Of 'Out Of Many' In Its Entirety
» Launch/PopUp NPR Player

Hear Disc Two Of 'Out Of Many' In Its Entirety
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Hear Disc Three Of 'Out Of Many' In Its Entirety
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Review by Jacob Ganz for NPR.org.

The concept of the compilation Out of Many: 50 Years of Reggae Music is simple. 50 years ago, Jamaica won independence from the British-ruled West Indies Federation. Around that same time, popular music in Jamaica began solidifying into some of the many sounds we now think of as reggae. Out of Many tells those two stories in parallel, with one song selected to represent the sound of each year from 1962 to 2012.

There's a third story, too: that of VP Records, the label responsible for the compilation itself, and the family behind the label. The "V" and "P" in VP Records are Vincent and Patricia Chin, the Chinese-Jamaican owners of Randy's Records, a shop that opened in Kingston in 1961. Vincent also opened a recording studio called Studio 17 and produced many early ska and rocksteady songs. The family started VP in 1979 after moving to New York as a way of distributing popular Jamaican music to the United States. It's now the largest independent reggae label in the world.

It's only natural that the three stories should twist into one: Randy's Records, Studio 17 and later VP have been there for nearly every step in reggae's development, from a hyper-local folk art to international force. The opening song on Out of Many, a celebratory historical narrative called "Independent Jamaica," was recorded in 1962 in Studio 17 by the Trinidadian singer Lord Creator and produced by Vincent Chin; it was also the first single Chin released. Like so many Jamaican records that would follow, it speaks directly to its audience of specific events they knew personally — in this case, the effort to win independence.

From there, Out of Many follows the developing musical history of the island like a three-hour fireworks show: it moves from ska ("Malcolm X") to rocksteady ("Take It Easy") in the 1960s; lovers rock ("Everything I Own") and roots (the socio-economic warning shot "Fade Away" and the apocalyptic "Two Sevens Clash") in the '70s; the tightly-wound electronic riddims that arose in the '80s (a string of hits including "Under Me Sleng Teng" and "Rumours") and dancehall ("Who Am I" and "Get Busy") that has dominated since the '90s.

All the music here was made to pull you onto the dance floor, but if you slow down and listen with an open mind (and many open browser tabs), it's also an education in the complex, layered history of a nation, a record label and a family. These songs are distracting, though, in the best way. Good luck staying off the dance floor for long.

Track Listing

Disc 1
Independent Jamaica – Lord Creator (1962)
Blow Roland Blow – Joanne Gordon/ Roland Alphonso (1963)
Malcolm X – The Skatalites (1964)
Mouth A Massy – Alton Ellis (1965)
Take It Easy – Hopeton Lewis (1966)
Ba Ba Boom – The Jamaicans (1967)
Such Is Life – Lord Creator (1968)
Love The Reggay – Gaylads (1969)
Love Of The Common People – Nicky Thomas (1970)
Cherry Oh Baby – Eric Donaldson (1971)
Java – Augustus Pablo (1972)
Westbound Train – Dennis Brown (1973)
Everything I Own – Ken Boothe (1974)
Fade Away – Junior Byles (1975)
I'm Still In Love With You – Marcia Aiken (1976)
Two Sevens Clash – Culture (1977)
Smoking My Ganja – Capital Letters (1978)
We Got Love – Freddie McGregor (1979)
Ice Cream Love – Johnny Osbourne (1980)

Disc 2
Wah-Do-Dem – Eek-A- Mouse (1981)
Fattie Boom Boom – Ranking Dread (1982)
Zungguzungguzunggezeng – Yellowman (1983)
Here I Come – Barrington Levy (1984)
Under Me Sleng Teng – Wayne Smith (1985)
Hello Darling – Tippa Irie (1986)
Rumours – Gregory Isaacs (1987)
Telephone Love – JC Lodge (1988)
Twice My Age – Krystal & Shabba Ranks (1989)
Mr. Loverman – Shabba Ranks & Deborah Glasgow (1990)
The Going Is Rough – Home T, Cocoa Tea & Cutty Ranks (1991)
Gal Wine – Chaka Demus & Pliers (1992)
The Return – Father & Son – Ninjaman & Ninja Ford (1993)
Under mi Sensi (94 Spliff) – Barrington Levy (1994)
Can't Stop A Man – Beres Hammond (1995)
Give Me The Reason – Lady Saw (1996)

Disc 3
Who Am I – Beenie Man (1997)
Heads High – Mr. Vegas (1998)
Can You Play Some More – Beres Hammond & Buju Banton (1999)
Down By The River – Morgan Heritage (2000)
Give It To Her – Tanto Metro & Devonte (2001)
Just One Of Those Days – Sizzla (2002)
Get Busy – Sean Paul (2003)
Pon De River Pon De Bank – Elephant Man (2004)
Living In Love – I Wayne (2005)
These Streets – Tanya Stephens (2006)
Weh Dem A Do – Mavado (2007)
Roots – Etana (2008)
I Feel Good – Beres Hammond (2009)
Hold You – Gyptian (2010)
Zungguzungguguzungguzeng (Horsepower Prod Remix) - Yellowman (2011)
Independent Jamaica – Peetah Morgan & Hollie Cook (2012)

Review by Jacob Ganz for NPR.org. Please visit that link to show your appreciation and to support them and/or to stream track by track.