2012 Chapbook Contest Guidelines

The New Michigan Press / DIAGRAM chapbook contest announces our guidelines for 2012. We pick the majority of our chapbook list each year from the ranks of the chapbook contest finalists, so this is the best way to get your work read by our eager readers.

The Prize		$1000 plus publication; finalist chapbooks also considered for publication
The Entry Fee		$17.00
The Mailing Deadline		March 30, 2012
What we want		Interesting, lovely unpublished work (unpublished as a whole; individual pieces may be published already of course), prose or poetry or some combination or something between genres, 18-44 manuscript pages (no more than one poem per page if you're sending poems unless they are very, very short)
Images okay?		Yes. You must be able to obtain reprint rights (and high-res image files) for any images you include, though we recommend the manuscript be at a relatively low-res to keep file size down; please don't send originals of anything, since we cannot return manuscripts.
Other questions?		It's fine with us if individual works have been published elsewhere, but the manuscript can't have been published as a whole before. Please include specific acknowledgments if any of the works have appeared elsewhere: tell us where individual pieces appeared, as we do consider submitted and unpublished individual pieces for possible publication in DIAGRAM. We recommend that your manuscript be as coherent--as much a project--as possible. Not to say everything needs to be thematic or narratively related, but most of our winning chapbooks have a feeling of aesthetic unity or resonance:books should make sense as books. Chapbook manuscripts do not necessarily have to be diagrammatic (though the diagrammers among us do enjoy those). Co-authored manuscripts are fine. Submitting multiple manuscripts is fine with entry fees for each. Please don't put your name/identifying info on the piece itself. If you send electronically, it'll be in the submitter info only. If you send via the mail, include a detachable cover page. Email nmp--at--thediagram.com with further questions if you have them.
How to Get Your Work to Us (electronic, preferred)		REQUIRED STEP ONE: Pay contest fee through Paypal* by filling out the form below with your last name and the manuscript title, then clicking on the [Add to Cart] button just below this paragraph. You may use a credit card if you like (or a checking account etc.). No need to create an account. Once you complete step one it will click through to a page with step two on it (also copied below just in case).   Last Name/Title of Entry   Great. Note that the payment goes to New Michigan Press, the publisher of DIAGRAM.  *If you have a hard time with paypal for any reason, drop us a line. We can take credit cards directly if you'll send us the info via email (card #, CVV (3 digit code on back), expiration date, billing address w/zipcode) at nmp--at--thediagram--dot--com. REQUIRED STEP TWO (COPIED FROM THE PAGE THAT PAYPAL WILL DIRECT YOU TO AFTER PAYMENT: submit your manuscript through our Submissions Manager system [here]. You'll have to create an account with the system if you haven't submitted to us before. Make SURE, SURE, that when you enter the submission's genre, you choose CHAPBOOK CONTEST SUBMISSION ONLY. Do NOT select "fiction," "poetry," or anything else. That way it gets read, processed, and responded-to properly (our contest submissions go through a different reading process than regular submissions). If you submit under something else things will get munged (though we are happy to read your non-contest submissions whenever, of course) and you'll have to resubmit. Please give us some kind of cover letter if you like. Or not. Note: only one file may be submitted through the submissions manager. PDF preferred, or Word format (.doc, .docx), or .rtf is fine if necessary (we cannot read any other word processing formats; sorry). If your submission is more than one file, copy and paste it into one file or otherwise attach it. A zipfile would be acceptable if that's easier. If you'd like your complimentary copy of the winning chapbook (or another chapbook in our series—please specify which, if any, on the envelope), mail us a self-addressed 6" x 9" envelope with $2 of postage (in USA—$6 is a safe bet if you're sending from overseas). If you do not care, there is no need for this. If you send electronically you'll be notified electronically by default. No SASE required unless you want a copy of the winning chapbook. If you'd like us to send you a hardcopy results letter, that's fine (then send us a SASE as specified below).

Call for Papers:

Madness and Mayhem

in Women's Novels

of the Black Diaspora

(MLA Convention, Boston)

 

Deadline: 15 March 2012

Female madness is well represented within European and Anglo-American literature, letters, and scholarly endeavors. From Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s inaugural The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) to Elaine Showalter’s The Female Malady (1987) and more recent forays into madness as a trope of female (dis)empowerment, mental illness has been largely feminized and reified into a space of literary whiteness. Nevertheless, this is paradoxical, considering the multiplicity of female writers of the black diaspora who incorporate mental illness into their work.

This panel will focus on twentieth and twenty-first century novels by black women authors writing from Africa, the Americas, and Europe, who incorporate madness as a site of political, cultural, and artistic resistance, particularly as embodied in the use of experimental writing practices. This panel thus creates a conversation at the crossroads where aesthetic praxis morphs into political engagement. Interdisciplinary scholarship is welcomed. There is the potential for an edited volume.

Submit a 300 word abstract to Caroline Brown (at caroline.brown@umontreal.ca) by March 15, 2012. Please note, special sessions must be approved by the MLA.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For inquiries: caroline.brown@umontreal.ca

For submissions: caroline.brown@umontreal.ca

Website: http://www.mla.org/convention

 

 

Poetry International Prize

A prize of $1,000 and publication in Poetry International is given annually for a single poem. Jericho Brown will judge. Submit up to 3 poems with a $15 entry fee. You may submit additional poems for a $3 reading fee per poem. Please make checks payable to Poetry International. The winner will be announced on our website in the fall of 2012. Please mail your submissions to:

Poetry International Prize 2012
Dept. of English and Comparative Literature
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Dr. San Diego, CA 92182-6020

DEADLINE: March 30, 2012

 

Please refer to our contest guidelines below.

A Note to Previous Poetry International Prize Contestants

You are welcome to enter this year's contest, whether or not you won a prize in the previous year.    

Information about the winner of the 2011 award:   

Congratulations to the winner of the 2011 Poetry International Prize, Ellery J. Akers! Her poem, "Mud Lake," was chosen by judge Steve Kowit for a $1,000 prize and publication in an upcoming issue of Poetry International. Kowit called "Mud Lake" "an exquisite piece of work." Congratulations, Ellery!

Information about the winner of the 2010 award:   

Our winner is Rochelle Hurt, an MFA student at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Her poem, "Helen's Confession," was chosen by judge Bruce Boston for publication in an issue of Poetry International, and a $1000 cash prize.

Information about the winner of the 2009 award:

Congratulations to Rebekah Stout, winner of the Poetry International Prize 2009! Stout's poems 'Midas' and 'In the Garden' will appear in Poetry International 17. Sandra Alcosser judged. Kudos to finalists Melissa Stein, Ann Struthers, Noreen Ayres, Sierra Nelson, and Michael Lee Phillips.

Information about the winner of the 2008 award:

Winner of Poetry International Prize for 2008 is Sasha Parmasad for her poem, Memory of Sugarcane-worker Off Duty. Ms. Parmasad has received the prize of $1000, and her poem will appear in the next issue of Poetry International.

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Guidelines for Poetry International Contests

• Provide your contact information & titles of all poems submitted, on the title page.

   

• Author name and information should appear only on the title page.

   

• No handwritten entries, please.

   

• Please make your entry easy to read--no illustrations, fancy fonts or decorative borders.

   

• Simultaneous Submission Allowed: You may submit your poems simultaneously.  Please contact us if we need to withdraw your poem(s) because they have been accepted elsewhere.

   

• Please make checks out to "Poetry International."

   

• Poems translated from other languages are not eligible, unless you wrote both the original poem and the translation.

   

• No SASE necessary. We will announce the winners on our website and blog. All manuscripts will be recycled."

Take A Peep At

"Tales From The Bass Line"

About Double Bassist

Chi-Chi Nwanoku

Video by Sergio | February 28, 2012

Here's an advance look at a five minute clip from the new upcoming documentary Tales from the Bass Line about the Nigerian/Irish classical double bassist, teacher and broadcaster Chi-Chi Nwanoku.

A member of the British period instrument ensemble The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a chamber player and soloist as well, Chi-Chi is world reknowned in the classical music world.

O.K. I have to make a confession. I'm rather biased here.  I know Chi-Chi personally and not only is she a wonderfrul friend, but a brilliant artist with a genuinely vibrant and infectous personality which I think is pretty evident in this film clip. In fact, she told me last fall that there was documentary about her life and career in the works and after seeing this clip it makes me even more anxious to see it.

Hope you will be too:

After Sunset

‘Ghosts of Empire,’

by Kwasi Kwarteng

Universal History Archive/Getty Images

A map of the world showing, in red, the extent of the British Empire in 1901.

By ISAAC CHOTINER

Published: March 2, 2012

 

The question of whether, say, India or Nigeria are “better off” because of British imperialism contains an inherent contradiction: before colonialism there were no states called India or Nigeria. But to prove the horrors of imperial rule — or to dispute the historians who recommend that the United States self-consciously adopt Britain’s former “burden” — one has only to examine the catastrophic choices of British colonialists that continue to influence events today.

GHOSTS OF EMPIRE

Britain’s Legacies in the Modern World

By Kwasi Kwarteng

Illustrated. 466 pp. PublicAffairs. $29.99.

“Our only justification for 200 years of power was unification,” says a character in Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet, reflecting on the ugliness of partitioning the subcontinent into India and Pakistan. “But we’ve divided one composite nation into two and everyone at home goes round saying what a swell the new viceroy is for getting it sorted out so quickly.”

While it is true that colonial policy was often formulated in London, it is equally true that Britain could become the greatest power on earth only by delegating power — either to Britons who served as imperial representatives or to local forces intent on doing the empire’s bidding. But Kwasi Kwarteng, in this fine book, argues that the empire granted far too much authority to the wrong people. “Accidents and decisions made on a personal, almost whimsical, level have had a massive impact on international politics,” Kwarteng writes.

“Ghosts of Empire” explores six cases where this impact was felt: Iraq, Nigeria, Sudan, Hong Kong, Kashmir and Burma. This is a list without many success stories, and Kwarteng, who is a Conservative member of Parliament with Ghanaian parents and who claims to want to transcend “sterile” debates about the empire, ends up making a damning case. “The British Empire is a bizarre model to follow for fostering stability in today’s world,” he says. “Indeed, much of the instability in the world is a product of its legacy of individualism and haphazard policy making.”

Kwarteng’s examples all provide him with common themes. Although the kingdom of Iraq, which arose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, was under an imperial mandate only until 1932, the British retained significant control until the late 1950s. Yet by repeatedly putting its faith in unpopular rulers who could be depended upon to ensure a steady supply of oil, London inadvertently set off several nationalist explosions. A string of army coups, starting in 1958, eventually led to Saddam Hussein. Kwarteng convincingly argues that the trust placed in the pro-Western Hashemite rulers was largely a function of the snobbery and arrogance of the people who actually administered the empire.

One sees the same arrogance in London’s treatment of Africa. Britons in Nigeria had an innate distrust of educated “natives” and decided to grant resources and autonomy to more traditional tribal chieftains, who were intent on pursuing local, not national, interests. Britain’s decision to join the Islamic north of the country with non-Muslim settlements in the south fed tribal conflicts and insurgencies that have lasted to this day.

In Sudan, meanwhile, British authorities ruled the north and south separately, ultimately to calamitous effect. Southern Sudan has recently become a separate country after decades of bloodshed, and the last 10 years have seen unconscionable war and genocide in the Darfur region, which was mindlessly tacked on to Sudan during World War I. Kwarteng quotes Rudyard Kipling, who, with astonishing condescension, wrote that the Sudanese “will honestly believe that they themselves created . . . the easy life which they were bought at so heavy a price.” Here as elsewhere, Kwarteng is critical but not patronizing, allowing the reader to grasp the motivations of the British while simultaneously seeing the shortcomings of their decisions.

Hong Kong, with its successful economy and relatively free society, is the one example in this well-written book that does not quite fit Kwarteng’s pattern. He ably conveys the unwillingness of British administrators to allow a functioning representative government. But it is still worth pointing out that the partial autonomy China has granted Hong Kong — largely because of the territory’s history as a British possession — compares favorably with the liberties allowed on the mainland.

Kwarteng is extremely effective at showing the problems with British policy, but his discussion of Kashmir reveals the limitations of his analysis. Yes, British rule in this beautiful state (which, despite its largely Muslim population, became part of majority-Hindu India after partition) was shortsighted. And yes, by ensuring Hindu domination in the century leading up to partition, British civil servants exacerbated the region’s problems. But Kashmir became an incredibly dangerous and volatile place only because of the much larger decision to partition India into two countries. If that fateful decision had not been made, the myopia of officials in Kashmir would have been localized. Similarly, in Iraq, the selfishness and greed of British civil servants must be set alongside the disturbing lack of knowledge about Sunnis and Shiites that was exhibited by officials in London (like Winston Churchill, then the secretary of state for the colonies), who insisted on British control in the first place. Big decisions can also have big consequences.

Kwarteng does not spend much time on religion, even though the British “legacy of individualism” that he highlights no doubt had something to do with the country’s Protestant character. Delegating authority probably contributed to British military successes in wars against more hierarchical Catholic powers like Spain and France, but the darker side of this aspect of Protestant individualism is visible throughout Kwarteng’s book. This is not to say that the Spanish or French empires were any less brutal than the British Empire — on balance they were probably more savage — but for the sake of his argument Kwarteng should have dwelt longer on how their religious beliefs influenced Britain’s imperialists.

In Simon Raven’s novel “Sound the Retreat,” a colonel in the British Army is having a conversation with an Indian friend on the eve of independence. After being informed that Indians “wish to order their own affairs,” the officer turns sour: “It’s your fault. You will insist on the British leaving.” To which his Indian interlocutor responds, “Partly because we do not like being spoken to in that tone of voice.” The British Empire would never have been what it was if its servants did not believe that they were part of a mission civilisatrice, something larger than themselves. But as George Orwell detailed in his fiction and essays about Burma, one of Kwarteng’s case studies, you cannot really rule over people for too long without losing a bit of your own humanity, no matter what your original mission.

It is no wonder that the men tasked with administering the British Empire were too often loftily arrogant and too often inclined to take the tone that Raven identifies. Kwarteng’s book does not condescend toward its subjects, even if they were much too condescending toward the people they viewed as their own subjects.

 

Isaac Chotiner is the executive editor of The Book: An Online Review at The New Republic.

How Can We Help Kids

Define What Is and Isn’t

Healthy Sexuality?

Credit: istockphoto/Alija

 

 

Monday, March 5 2012

 

I had one of my first major lessons about gender and power dynamics in third grade playing Catch a Girl, Freak a Girl during recess at Henry C. Lea School in West Philadelphia. In our version of the game, which is known in other regions as Hide and Go Get It and—alarmingly—Rape, the boys would chase girls around tag-style. If a girl got caught, her captor would dry-hump her on the spot or march her off to a less visible crevice of the schoolyard for dramatic effect.

Now, as a precocious child hopped up on the late ’70s sex positivity of “Where Did I Come From?: The Facts of Life Without Any Nonsense and Illustrations,” I found Catch a Girl, Freak a Girl irritating. If a boy wanted to freak, wouldn’t it be more efficient and pleasurable for both parties if he simply asked?

I tested out this theory one day when a kid known as Bad-Ass Edward targeted me for Catch a Girl, Freak a Girl. While I routinely met his hellos with the requisite eye-rolling and called him all kinds of ashy, ugly and stupid when he teased me about my African name, I had a thing for this towering butterball of hyperactivity. So that recess when Edward chased me, I slowed down to a trot, pivoted to face him—and stood still. Horrified by my breach of protocol, poor Edward darted away. Sadly, I spent the last few minutes of that recess chasing him up and down the schoolyard, hoping to express my consent and submit to the much ballyhooed act of freaking. I never did catch him.

I’ve been wondering if and how Catch a Girl, Freak a Girl, a game that I remember fondly, fits into what activists call rape culture. I had never pondered it—until XXLmag.com posted a disastrous video of 45-year-old Too $hort schooling middle school boys on how to “turn out” girls by pushing them against walls and inserting spit-covered fingers into their underwear. In a widely celebrated interview with Detroit-based writer, filmmaker and mother dream hampton, the rapper later placed it within the context of his own childhood experiences with sexually charged games:

“I was in the sixth or seventh grade when I started doing some of the things I was talking about doing in (the video). … [It] is actually reminiscent of when we as little boys were being bad and (what) we were doing something or learning or practicing. But know I’m understanding that it’s actually it’s a form of sexual assault. And it’s crazy that I’m just now understanding this.”

Hampton shares her own painful recollections of these rituals:

There is a lot of sh*t that passes for playing (around) amongst us, and…it’s sexual assault. I remember being in the pool and boys pulling my bikini top off. I remember eighth/ninth graders smooching my booty when I was in the second grade. I remember boys trying to hump me. And I’m not the only one, it’s not like I’m out here traumatized and mad about that stuff. Of course I am traumatized and I am mad. But I don’t know a girl who didn’t have that type of thing happen to them. Where boys just thought that they would practice on us. And that is what we were there for. … It makes young girls not want to leave the house. Or we take the long route home or we go the other way and we are like, “Oh, this is how boys like me, boys like me if they put their hands up my (skirt) It doesn’t matter that I’m not in the eighth grade yet…this is what boys like and if I want boys to like me than this is what I have to let them do…”

So what do we do with such a disconnect? How can adults help children navigate sexual exploration, particularly within a media environment that inundates children with exploitative portraits of girls and women, equates manhood with promiscuity and sexual aggression, and criminalizes boys when they exhibit normal sexual behavior?

In search of a foolproof set of principles, I talked to three New York City educators who work with adults and children of color on issues of domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment and healthy masculinity.

These fine folks couldn’t provide a magic formula for an issue so complex, nuanced and dependent on individual experience. But what I got from my discussions with CONNECT’s Quentin Walcott and Girls for Gender Equity’s Joanne Smith and Nefertiti Martin were four key ideas:

Discuss sex and sexuality early and often:

“We have to create a culture of conversation and exploration,” says Smith. “Children need to have a space to talk about what they see in video games, online and what they hear.”

Boys and men often perform for one another:

Males are taught to “live in gender boxes,” says Walcott. “When they step outside of that box, someone is liable to question their manhood.” And that sense of manhood is often built on “how hypermasculine we are, at the cost of a young girl. Boys and men are often thinking, ‘Aww man, this is foul.’ But they’re not going to say it because they don’t want to be questioned, bullied or kicked out of their gender group.”

Rape is embedded in people’s ideas of power:

“I remember doing a workshop with a boy who mentioned that a girl had been [sexually] harassing him [regularly]. Fed up, he told her, ‘If you come up to me again I’m going to rape you.’ He felt like he was being disrespected, like his power had been taken away. So the way he responded was to assert his power and to him, rape looked like power,” says Martin. “[In a case like that one], you have to ask if he understands what rape is and explain how that language isn’t an acceptable way to let someone know that you mean business.”

Talk about choice.

“Ultimately [girls and boys] have to understand that their bodies are their own,” says Walcott. They should know that “they should have control over their bodies and who they want to be with, that they are [entitled] to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and for that to mean something.”

Clearly this is a huge topic. Expect to hear lots more about it.

In the short term, click here for tips for protecting kids from sexual assault from RAINN (Rape, Abuse National Network) and check out “Hey Shorty: A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets,” Smith’s book of best practices.

Gulf fisheries in decline

after oil disaster

Nearly two years after BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fishermen and scientists say things are getting worse.

 

Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 05 Mar 2012

Fishermen, like Greg Perez in Louisiana, are seeing huge declines in their catches [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

 

New Orleans, LA - Hundreds of thousands of people living along the US Gulf Coast have hung their economic lives on lawsuits against BP.

Fishermen, in particular, are seeing their way of life threatened with extinction - both from lack of an adequate legal settlement and collapsing fisheries.

One of these people, Greg Perez, an oyster fisherman in the village of Yscloskey, Louisiana, has seen a 75 per cent decrease in the amount of oysters he has been able to catch.

"Since the spill, business has been bad," he said. "Sales and productivity are down, our state oyster grounds are gone, and we are investing personal money to rebuild oyster reefs, but so far it's not working."

Perez, like so many Gulf Coast commercial fisherman, has been fishing all his life. He said those who fish for crab and shrimp are "in trouble too", and he is suing BP for property damage for destroying his oyster reefs, as well as for his business' loss of income.

People like Perez make it possible for Louisiana to provide 40 per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental US.

But Louisiana's seafood industry, valued at about $2.3bn, is now fighting for its life.

'The shrimp are all dead'

Perez is not alone.

"They said they'd make things right and they never did," said Nicholas Harris, a fourth-generation oyster fisherman in eastern Louisiana. "Business has been s****y, and BP kept low-balling us with how much money they said they'd give us for compensation, so we got our attorneys involved."

Harris, like Perez, is suing the oil giant for property damage and loss of income.

His family has a 4,000-acre private lease for oysters, but it was destroyed when the State of Louisiana diverted fresh water from the Mississippi River in a failed attempt to flush BP's oil from the oyster fishing grounds in his area.

The situation in Mississippi for shrimpers is nearly as grim.

"I was at a BP coastal restoration meeting yesterday and they tried to tell us they searched 6,000 square miles of the seafloor and found no oil, thanks to Mother Nature," Tuan Dang, a shrimper, told Al Jazeera while standing on a dock full of shrimp boats that would normally be out shrimping this time of year.

Mississippi shrimper Tuan Dang is not catching enough shrimp to turn a profit - just one of many in the Gulf Coast seafood industry affected by the BP disaster [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

 

Dang's fishing experience has been bleak.

"Normally I can get 8,000 pounds of brown shrimp in four days," he explained. "But this year, I only get 800 pounds in a week. There are hardly any shrimp out there."

When he tried to catch white shrimp, he said he "caught almost nothing".

He is suing BP for loss of income, but does not have much hope, despite recent news of an initial settlement worth more than $7bn. "We'd love to see them clean this up so we can get our lives back, but I don't see that happening anytime soon."

Shrimp boat captain Song Vu is hoping that he will catch more shrimp next season, because the last times he fished he caught very few [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

 

Song Vu, a shrimp boat captain for 20 years, has not tried to shrimp for weeks, and is simply hoping that there will be shrimp to catch next season.

His experience during his last shrimping attempts left him depressed.

"The shrimp are all dead," he told Al Jazeera. "Everything is dead."

BP has 'taken its toll'

Henry Poynot, the owner of Big Fisherman Seafood in New Orleans, has been selling seafood for 28 years.

Al Jazeera asked him how his business was doing.

"2010 was the worst year we've had in 15 years," he said. "Then 2011 was worse than 2010. Some of this was the economy, but most of it is due to BP. BP has taken its toll."

Seafood vendor Henry Poynot says people are buying less seafood than ever, a situation he blames on the BP oil disaster [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

 

Given that 20 per cent of the total US seafood production comes from the Gulf Coast - where the major commercial fishing ports bring in over 1.2 billion pounds of fresh seafood annually - this is not good news.

Poynot said that many people, even some of his employees, continue to be afraid to eat seafood from the Gulf, for fear of contamination by BP's oil and dispersants.

"It's hard to believe the impact of the spill," Poynot added. "I have heard that some folks are still catching tar balls in their crab traps."

Apparently, the fact that the State of Louisiana received $18m from BP for the Louisiana Seafood Safety Plan to test seafood, water and soil from across the coast is not helping to assuage fears.

Keith Ladner, a third-generation seafood processor in Bay St Louis, Mississippi, has it even worse.

"I'm worried about the entire seafood industry of the Gulf being on the way out," Ladner told Al Jazeera in Biloxi, Mississippi. "We have taken constant hits like Katrina, the economy, and now BP. I'm now unsure how many of us will come back from this."

Ladner reiterated what Al Jazeera has been hearing from fishermen, seafood processors and distributors all along the coast - that there has been a two-thirds drop in brown shrimp production, and white shrimp season was basically non-existent.

"The only brown and white shrimp we see now are from Texas or western Louisiana, where the oil didn't impact directly," he said. "And for oysters, Mississippi's oyster reefs have been closed since the spill started. I have not purchased one single sack of oysters since the spill, and I won't eat any from this area."

Ladner was in the process of rebuilding his business after Hurricane Katrina completely devastated it, and was set to reopen new facilities on May 1, 2010.

BP's oil disaster began on April 20, 2010.

"I've had no way to generate income because of the spill, and I've been shut down to this day," he explained. "I'm waiting for the fisheries to come back, and I cannot reopen until, or unless, they do."

Ladner's business, which transported Gulf seafood to 15 states, remains closed. Ladner has filed a lawsuit against BP for loss of income. He remains wary about his future.

"Looking at the scene now, should I invest what I need to invest to get back to where I was before, if these fisheries don't come back?" he asks. "We're dead in the water until the fishermen go back to work. The whole economy will feel it."

'Worst crisis I've seen'

Fishermen and scientists continue to deal with the aftermath of BP's disaster.

Louisiana's oyster harvest in 2010 was the lowest in 44 years, due to BP's oil disaster. Scott Gordon, Mississippi's director of the Shellfish Bureau of the Office of Marine Fisheries, said in the summer of 2010, "I fully expect to have 100 per cent mortalities of the oysters in the western Mississippi Sound". His predictions have come true [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

 

"We are in the worst crisis I've ever seen," Brad Robin, a sixth-generation fisherman and seafood proprietor, told Al Jazeera last September, while out on a boat surveying the crippled oyster population where he fishes. "The [oyster] industry might do 35 per cent this year, if we're very lucky."

Dr Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer and a marine and oyster biologist, and Tom Soniat, a University of New Orleans oyster biologist, invited Al Jazeera to accompany them, Robin, and Robin's son to check for recovering oyster populations.

The marsh area outside of Yscloskey, Louisiana was severely affected by massive fresh-water diversions from the Mississippi River. The choice to divert river water was made to flush the marsh in order to prevent oil from washing in, but the fresh water has killed all the oysters, and Cake believes dispersed oil came in anyway.

Further complicating things, Cake has pinpointed at least two invasive species that do not bode well for a recovery of Louisiana's oysters.

"We are finding sponges growing on our oysters," Cake told Al Jazeera. "They encrust the oyster shell and that prevents new spat [baby oysters] from attaching to grow new oysters. We don't know why this is happening, but we think it came in response to the fresh water and oil. This is the first time we've seen it."

The sponge is chalinula loosanoffi, and is native to Ireland, the Netherlands, and the upper East Coast of the US.

Cake has also found a worm, poydora aggregata, native to Maine, which attaches itself to oysters and fouls their shells.

"I'm worried these sponges and worms could wreak havoc on the industry," Cake said.

Louisiana's oyster harvest in 2010 was cut in half, to a 44-year low, due to BP's oil disaster. Scott Gordon, Mississippi's director of the Shellfish Bureau of the Office of Marine Fisheries, said in the summer of 2010, "I fully expect to have 100 per cent mortalities of the oysters in the western Mississippi Sound".

His predictions have come true.

Professor Soniat explained that the oyster industry is afflicted with "multiple impacts".

"First the oil spill took away their fishing season," he said of the fishing ban put in place after the BP disaster. "Second, the fresh-water diversion took away the oysters; and third, the programme of having oystermen harvest shells from their leases to try to re-seed other areas killed the oyster reefs."

Cake recently told Al Jazeera that many of the Gulf fisheries "have already collapsed" and the only question is "if or when they'll come back".

"If it takes too long for them to come back, the fishing industry won't survive," he added.

Given that after the Exxon Valdez oil disaster in Alaska in 1989, herring have still not come back enough to be a viable fishing resource, this does not bode well for the Gulf seafood industry, whose fisheries are - according to scientists like Cake and Soniat - still in the initial phase of collapse.

Follow Dahr Jamail on Twitter: @DahrJamail

Source:

Al Jazeera

Patrice Lumumba:

the most important

assassination

of the 20th century

The US-sponsored plot to kill Patrice Lumumba, the hero of Congolese independence, took place 50 years ago

Patrice Lumumba became the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960, and was killed in 1961. Photograph: EPA

 

Patrice Lumumba, the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was assassinated 50 years ago today, on 17 January, 1961. This heinous crime was a culmination of two inter-related assassination plots by American and Belgian governments, which used Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad to carry out the deed.

Ludo De Witte, the Belgian author of the best book on this crime, qualifies it as "the most important assassination of the 20th century". The assassination's historical importance lies in a multitude of factors, the most pertinent being the global context in which it took place, its impact on Congolese politics since then and Lumumba's overall legacy as a nationalist leader.

For 126 years, the US and Belgium have played key roles in shaping Congo's destiny. In April 1884, seven months before the Berlin Congress, the US became the first country in the world to recognise the claims of King Leopold II of the Belgians to the territories of the Congo Basin.

When the atrocities related to brutal economic exploitation in Leopold's Congo Free State resulted in millions of fatalities, the US joined other world powers to force Belgium to take over the country as a regular colony. And it was during the colonial period that the US acquired a strategic stake in the enormous natural wealth of the Congo, following its use of the uranium from Congolese mines to manufacture the first atomic weapons, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

With the outbreak of the cold war, it was inevitable that the US and its western allies would not be prepared to let Africans have effective control over strategic raw materials, lest these fall in the hands of their enemies in the Soviet camp. It is in this regard that Patrice Lumumba's determination to achieve genuine independence and to have full control over Congo's resources in order to utilise them to improve the living conditions of our people was perceived as a threat to western interests. To fight him, the US and Belgium used all the tools and resources at their disposal, including the United Nations secretariat, under Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche, to buy the support of Lumumba's Congolese rivals , and hired killers.

In Congo, Lumumba's assassination is rightly viewed as the country's original sin. Coming less than seven months after independence (on 30 June, 1960), it was a stumbling block to the ideals of national unity, economic independence and pan-African solidarity that Lumumba had championed, as well as a shattering blow to the hopes of millions of Congolese for freedom and material prosperity.

The assassination took place at a time when the country had fallen under four separate governments: the central government in Kinshasa (then Léopoldville); a rival central government by Lumumba's followers in Kisangani (then Stanleyville); and the secessionist regimes in the mineral-rich provinces of Katanga and South Kasai. Since Lumumba's physical elimination had removed what the west saw as the major threat to their interests in the Congo, internationally-led efforts were undertaken to restore the authority of the moderate and pro-western regime in Kinshasa over the entire country. These resulted in ending the Lumumbist regime in Kisangani in August 1961, the secession of South Kasai in September 1962, and the Katanga secession in January 1963.

No sooner did this unification process end than a radical social movement for a "second independence" arose to challenge the neocolonial state and its pro-western leadership. This mass movement of peasants, workers, the urban unemployed, students and lower civil servants found an eager leadership among Lumumba's lieutenants, most of whom had regrouped to establish a National Liberation Council (CNL) in October 1963 in Brazzaville, across the Congo river from Kinshasa. The strengths and weaknesses of this movement may serve as a way of gauging the overall legacy of Patrice Lumumba for Congo and Africa as a whole.

The most positive aspect of this legacy was manifest in the selfless devotion of Pierre Mulele to radical change for purposes of meeting the deepest aspirations of the Congolese people for democracy and social progress. On the other hand, the CNL leadership, which included Christophe Gbenye and Laurent-Désiré Kabila, was more interested in power and its attendant privileges than in the people's welfare. This is Lumumbism in words rather than in deeds. As president three decades later, Laurent Kabila did little to move from words to deeds.

More importantly, the greatest legacy that Lumumba left for Congo is the ideal of national unity. Recently, a Congolese radio station asked me whether the independence of South Sudan should be a matter of concern with respect to national unity in the Congo. I responded that since Patrice Lumumba has died for Congo's unity, our people will remain utterly steadfast in their defence of our national unity.

• Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja is professor of African and Afro-American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History

D’Angelo – Live

@ The Paradiso, Amsterdam

2-2-12 (Full Set Download)

Posted on March 4th, 2012 by HighVoltage

D’Angelo’s long awaited comeback tour has been in full swing across Europe.  First we had a recording pop up from Paris, then another recording from Stockholm surfaced, but now we saved the best for last.  We are proud to present a recording of D’Angelo’s complete set @ Paradiso from Feb 2nd, 2012, taped and mastered by Justin.  Not only is this much better quality than previous recordings from this tour, but its also a fantastic show.  Check out the setlist, streams and download links below (both in MP3 and FLAC).

 

Setlist:

1. Playa Playa
2. Feel Like Makin’ Love [Roberta Flack Cover]
3. Ain’t That Easy
4. Devil’s Pie
5. Chicken Grease
6. The Line (Intro) > The Roots
7. The Charade
8. I’ve Been Watching You (Move Your Sexy Body) [Parliament Cover]
9. Shit, Damn, Motherfucker
10. Keys Solo
11. Tribute > Moment of Silence
12. D’Angelo Solo Medley
13. Another Life
14. Sugah Daddy
15. Space Oddity [David Bowie Cover]
16. Brown Sugar

MP3 Download:  Link   |   Alt Link   |   Alt Link   |   Alt Link
FLAC Download:  Link   |   Alt Link

 

Sun Ra

BBC documentary:

Sun Ra, Brother From

Another Planet

Sun Ra was born on the planet Saturn some time ago. The best accounts agree that he emerged on Earth as Herman Blount, born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, although Sun Ra himself always denied that Blount was his surname. He returned to Saturn in 1993 after creating a stunningly variegated and beautiful assemblage of earthly and interplanetary music, most notably with his fervently loyal Arkestra.

Sun Ra and his Arkestra were the subject of a few documentary films, notably Robert Mugge’s ’A Joyful Noise’ (1980), which interspersed performances and rehearsals with Sun Ra’s commentary on various subjects ranging from today’s youth to his own place in the cosmos. 

Today’s documentary, Don Letts’ ‘Sun Ra, Brother From Another Planet’  from 2005, reuses some of Mugge’s material and includes some additional interviews.