Full Meltdown:

Fukushima Called the

'Biggest Industrial Catastrophe

in the History of Mankind'

Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public.

Al Jazeera / By Dahr Jamail

June 16, 2011  |  

 "Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.

Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.

Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.

"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively."

TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.

"The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"

Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.

"The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water."

Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive "hot spots" around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.

"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl."

Radiation monitors for children

Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns.

TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.

Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable.

In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.

The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.

"There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera.

Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat continues to be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but added: "There are going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's 20km mandatory evacuation zone where radiation is higher. So that could mean evacuation zones in those areas as well."

Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported.

"They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."

According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".

"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."

Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well.

The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.

"These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."

Blame the US?

In reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe, Germany is phasing out all of its nuclear reactors over the next decade. In a referendum vote this Monday, 95 per cent of Italians voted in favour of blocking a nuclear power revival in their country. A recent newspaper poll in Japan shows nearly three-quarters of respondents favour a phase-out of nuclear power in Japan.

Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?

Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.

Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University in Japan.
He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the fact that most of them are of US design.

"Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care for the effects of earthquakes," Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. "I think this problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan."

Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large component of the problem.

"Most of the Japanese scientists at that time, the mid-1950s, considered that the technology of nuclear energy was under development or not established enough, and that it was too early to be put to practical use," he explained. "The Japan Scientists Council recommended the Japanese government not use this technology yet, but the government accepted to use enriched uranium to fuel nuclear power stations, and was thus subjected to US government policy."

As a 13-year-old, Dr Sawada experienced the US nuclear attack against Japan from his home, situated just 1400 metres from the hypocentre of the Hiroshima bomb.

"I think the Fukushima accident has caused the Japanese people to abandon the myth that nuclear power stations are safe," he said. "Now the opinions of the Japanese people have rapidly changed. Well beyond half the population believes Japan should move towards natural electricity."   

A problem of infinite proportions

Dr Ramana expects the plant reactors and fuel cores to be cooled enough for a shutdown within two years.
"But it is going to take a very long time before the fuel can be removed from the reactor," he added. "Dealing with the cracking and compromised structure and dealing with radiation in the area will take several years, there's no question about that."

Dr Sawada is not as clear about how long a cold shutdown could take, and said the problem will be "the effects from caesium-137 that remains in the soil and the polluted water around the power station and underground. It will take a year, or more time, to deal with this".

Gundersen pointed out that the units are still leaking radiation.

"They are still emitting radioactive gases and an enormous amount of radioactive liquid," he said. "It will be at least a year before it stops boiling, and until it stops boiling, it's going to be cranking out radioactive steam and liquids."

Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units.

"Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and four."

Gundersen's assessment of solving this crisis is grim.

"Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."

Dr Sawada says that the creation of nuclear fission generates radioactive materials for which there is simply no knowledge informing us how to dispose of the radioactive waste safely.

"Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations," he explained. "To do otherwise is simply an immoral act, and that is my belief, both as a scientist and as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing."

Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and implement the plan.

"So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been dismantled, and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water," Gundersen said. "We are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the allowable limits in the water table at Fukushima. Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean. So I think we will have a contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site for a long, long time to come."

Unfortunately, the history of nuclear disasters appears to back Gundersen's assessment.

"With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end."

++++++++++++

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist and author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, and The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight In Iraq and Afghanistan.

‘The truth is not easy to tell’:

The story of

Palestinian women in Israel

by Eleanor Kilroy on June 19, 2011

Fatma Kassem was required to delete the word Nakba from her Ph.D. research proposal by Professor Yigal Ronen, former dean of the Krietman School of Advanced Graduate Studies at Ben-Gurion University in Israel; he also sent it to the university’s legal advisor for an opinion. It was only when the new dean convened an examination committee to consider the proposal that it was accepted without this erasure of the history of Palestinian women – the subject of her doctoral research. “When a Jewish Israeli scholar makes a critique of Zionist history, contemporary state policy or ideology, s/he is practising the freedom of research as evidence of Israeli democracy. However, a Palestinian researcher who addresses similar topics is accused of being a traitor or an anti-Semite”, writes Kassem in the book based on her research, Palestinian Women: Narrative histories and gendered memory (Zed Books, 2011). Her experience has also taught her that Palestinian women scholars are less valued than their male counterparts.

In a chapter, ‘The researcher’s story’, Kassem describes in detail the approval process for her proposal entitled ‘Between Private and Collective Memory: The Case of Palestinian Women from Lyd and Ramleh’. After initial approval by her supervisor, it was sent to the Krietman School, headed by Professor Ronen. In a meeting with Kassem, Ronen raised four main objections, the first of which was to the term she had used to define the purpose of her research: “he ‘could not accept that an Israeli citizen refer to our Independence Day as the Nakba’.... Professor Ronen reproduces in the Israeli academy the same denial of responsibility exhibited at the official state level in Israeli society for what happened to the Palestinians in 1948, especially those who became Israeli citizens.” The second objection was to her use of the term, ‘Hebraizing’ for the names of cities and villages after the creation of Israel in 1948; he insisted that all the names go "back to their Jewish origins" and if she refused to change the term, she should erase any sentences referring to this theme. Towards the end of the meeting, Ronen assured Kassem that he was “left wing politically”.

One 70 year-old potential interviewee responded by phone to Kassem that she would not tell her own story and, giving the author the name and contact details of women and men from Lyd and Ramleh, warned her: “you should know that they won’t tell you the truth. The truth is not easy to tell”. Another elderly woman said, “What is there to tell, about the huge extortion that happened to us. I’ll give you a clue if you understand: we used to say Yaffa-Tel Aviv, now we say Tel Aviv-Yaffa.” The women feared their 'dangerous knowledge' of 1948 might cause them trouble as Palestinian citizens of Israel. The researcher found that another factor that silences women is the view of people that the independent voice of a woman is not perceived as deserving of academic inquiry. One interviewee, Um Fathi said: “I don’t have a life story. I don’t know how to talk like my husband. I only want to tell you the story of when we got lost.” When the Israelis expelled the Palestinians from Ramleh in 1948, Um Fathi and her 8 year-old brother became separated from their family and slept in wheat fields for a week until they were found and expelled to Khan Younis.

Ramleh appears on the road sign in both Arabic and Hebrew as ‘Ramla’, which is its Hebrew spelling, but this form has not been assimilated in the language of the city’s residents, according to Kassem. In a June 2006 article in Haaretz, the mayor of Ramleh, Yoel Lavie, proposed to change the name of the city to a Hebrew name. He argued: “The root of the word ‘Ramleh’ means sand… This name does not mean anything to the 12,000 immigrants from the Soviet Union and the 5,000 Ethiopians living in the city. It also means nothing to the large population of Ashkenazi Jews in this city. The name has no value, no uniqueness.” Palestinian resident (and director of the New Israel Fund Shatil’s Mixed Cities project), Buthaina Dabita, claimed at the time that, “The name change proves that Lavie feels he has not finished the occupation of Ramleh yet.”

Before and after the Zionist invasion of Ramleh and Lyd, many Palestinians sent female family members away or hid them in their homes. In a chapter entitled ‘The Body’, Kassem recounts that some women testified to covering their bodies with dirt or animal excrement to avoid being raped by Jewish soldiers. An interviewee, Um Usif, insisted to her, “You’ve heard about the village Deir Yassin, where there were lots of bad incidents. Rape. Murder of a child in his mother’s lap… I heard about Deir Yassin before we migrated. That’s why our mother pressured our father to migrate. If my mother could have, she would have gone much further than Ramleh.” In the same chapter, the author states that today Palestinian women’s bodies continue to be oppressed and discriminated against in two ways: “First, Palestinian patriarchy seeks to actively control and supervise women’s bodies, and women consequently experience a range of violence, including ‘honour killings’. Second, their bodies are regarded as a source of the demographic threat that increasingly concerns Israeli authorities – that is their capacity to reproduce represents a threat in itself.”

Many women Kassem interviewed moved rapidly back and forth between contemporary reality, events of 1948 and the ‘Day of the Arabs’, which pre-dates 1948. Most stories include the demolition of either their family home or those of relatives. Salma recounts that following the earthquake in 1927, families who could afford to built new homes outside the old city, which meant the houses were relatively new in 1948: “They didn’t allow us to come back to our homes. We lived in the house of other Arabs, and Jews took our house. [Later] they destroyed it… I don’t understand why they destroyed the houses! They were new and in good condition… They [Israelis] left us nothing in the house near the mosque… Until this day, we did not go back to it.” Those Palestinians who did not leave, and those who returned, were never allowed to live in their original family homes. Their struggles for entitlement to their homes continue to this day, with women commonly describing living in the 'ghettos' of Lyd and Ramleh.

Kassem cites Israel academic, Haim Yacobi’s research into the origins of the term ‘ghetto’ amongst Palestinians, “originally used by Jews to mark out Palestinian territory in the city and simultaneously clear it of its ‘primitive’ Palestinian past in order to turn the space into a ‘modern’ Jewish city.” Salma describes her life in the ghetto to the author: “The people lived in the old houses and they [Jews] put a wire around them. They were not allowed to go out from this area… If they wanted to bury a dead person they needed a permit… And there were old men [allowed to go out to bury the dead], so it was hard for them to carry the corpse a long distance, so they would bury them [in the nearby cemetery]… After two or three years, they [Palestinians] started to go out to buy and sell… If a man collected olives, they imprisoned him and hit him. They did not allow us to collect our own olives… The Jews patrolled with tractors on the land… What can we do? [We were stealing] from our own olive groves.” Another interviewee describes the Palestinians' initial unfamiliarity with the term 'ghetto', and her eventual knowledge that historically in Europe ghettos were used by the Nazis to enclose, control and humiliate the Jewish people.

Language is important: when Kassem started writing up her research, the Hebrew editor kept changing the way she wrote 'Palestinian' to 'Philistine'; Bible stories describe the Philistines as barbaric invaders of the land of Israel: "Reference to Palestinians as Philistines is also present in academic articles, Israeli television subtitles, and popular forms of writing". It is a shame that the English editors of this edition did not ask an Arabic speaker to read the final proofs – where the original language of a term is included, the script is broken and back to front.

Palestinian Women by Fatma Kassem is a powerful historical document of the Nakba; her book examines the narratives of ordinary women who became involuntary citizens of Israel after witnessing the events of 1948, and whose subversive accounts have often not been heard outside the home. The women survived the expulsion from their homes during the Nakba, but continue to endure miserable circumstances. Recent demolitions of seven homes of the Abu Eid family in Lyd left over 50 members homeless. Alex Kane reported in January that during the December 2010 demolitions, Israeli police brutalized the family: “Police hit them with batons and kicked women and children, including a pregnant woman". In April, the Electronic Intifada attended the weekly demonstration against the demolitions and spoke to Suhad Bishara, senior attorney with Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, who said “what’s happening in Lydd and Dhammash is similar to building restrictions imposed on Palestinian neighborhoods across Israel and in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The process of obtaining building permits is very difficult. People are trapped, because they need to build homes, but the authorities won’t give them permits. All claims related to the history of these families who have been in the area... it almost doesn’t play a role [in the legal procedures],” she said.

Maxwell

Maxwell – Storytellers

(Full Episode) | TV Catch-Up

June 18, 2011 by Verse    

 

Last night VH1 aired double GRAMMY award winning, multi platinum soul legend Maxwell‘s Storytellers episode.
The amazing singer/songwriter was joined by his 10-piece, all-star band and took an intimate 150-member audience on a journey through his epic back catalogue of hits, performing several tracks from his latest release the Grammy Award-winning, BLACKsummers’night, he also performed classic fan favourites and took the audience behind his thought process and inspirations behind the music.
Watch the full episode below (UK viewers may not be able to view the video due to STUPID country restrictions. *Shakes fist at MTV & VH1*, but we will add a globally viewable viewer as soon as possible. Now viewable globally courtesy of Yardie.)

Watch individual performances after the jump. 

Tags: Maxwell Storytellers, Maxwell

Tags: Maxwell Storytellers, Maxwell

Tags: Maxwell Storytellers, Maxwell, Live Performances, Music Videos

Tags: Maxwell Storytellers, Maxwell, Live Performances, Music Videos

Tags: Maxwell Storytellers

Tags: Maxwell Storytellers, Maxwell, Live Performances, Music Videos

Tags: Maxwell Storytellers, Maxwell

 

Lil Wayne

Lil Wayne Covers Tupac,

Premieres New Music

on MTV Unplugged

• 6/13/11 at 09:30 AM
• 1Comment

While the world was watching Dirk Nowitzki best LeBron James, Lil Wayne's highly anticipated MTV Unplugged performance was premiering over on MTV. And while the whole thing — featuring Wayne's reliably spirited renditions of "A Milli," "6 Foot 7 Foot," and "Drop the World" — is probably worth your time, there are two moments that stand out. First: At eighteen minutes in, Wayne takes on Tupac's "Hail Mary." It's notable enough because rappers almost never cover other rappers; also, it turns out that it's really fun to hear Lil Wayne make "Hail Mary" sound like a Lil Wayne song (more covers, please, sir). Then, at 31 minutes in, comes the premiere of Tha Carter IV track "Nightmares of the Bottom." Says Wayne as introduction: "Now, I had the choice to do any song off the album, and I said I figured I have a pretty intelligent crowd, so I’d rather not do nothing too hype, nothing too crazy. I wanted to do something that ya’ll can listen to and say, that [blank] actually said such and such. And I’m leave here and get that album where that [blank] said such and such." Falling somewhere in between the slower moments on Tha Carter III and the later-career work of Common — and packing an ominously peppy keyboard line that will get stuck in your head — it's a nice reminder as to why we've been so eagerly awaiting Carter IV.

Third Annual Poetry Contest

 

Narrative’s third annual poetry contest runs from May 22 until July 16. In a continuing effort to encourage and support talented poets, we’re offering prizes, publication to the top three winners, and widespread public announcement of all winners and finalists via the Internet. Narrative is always looking for new voices, so all entries will be considered for publication in the magazine.

 

The contest is open to all poets. Entries must be unpublished and must not have been previously chosen as winners, finalists, or honorable mentions in other contests. Each entry may contain up to five poems. You may enter as many times as you wish, but we encourage you to be selective and to send your best work. All entries will be considered for publication.

Click here to submit your work.

 

 

Notes on the contest: As with literary reading in general, poetry reading has been declining. There’s debate about the exact statistical rate and the causes of the decline, and there are many good venues for poetry today, yet the number of adults who read poetry, as surveyed by the NEA, has decreased by approximately half in the past two decades. Less than 10 percent of adults read any poetry at all. More than ever, the economics of poetry are such that poetry is for the most part a subsidized, rather than a profitable, enterprise. Poets and poetry publishers are engaged in labors of love, aided by donors who believe in the importance of poetry.

Narrative is a nonprofit organization, and its poetry program, like its other programs, depends largely on the support of many dedicated individuals who contribute resources and time to make the magazine possible. We are committed to paying our authors as well as possible and to creating as much attention as possible for their work. The overall cost of publishing poetry (payments to authors, production costs, awards and prizes, promotion) is far more than what comes in from poetry-related reading and entry fees—the income is nowhere close to the expense. The reason we publish poetry is not about fees but about wanting poetry to be an important part of what we do and wanting to give back as much as we can, because literature contributes so much to life.

Narrative has a more than 100,000 readers and receives more than a million page views a month. The audience is large and growing, and its size gives us a chance to put poets and poetry in front of many more readers than most venues. We’re working hard to get the magazine, and all our authors and artists, into the world via digital and other means—for free—to as many people as possible.

Participating in Narrative, whether simply by reading, by becoming a donor, or by introducing a friend to the magazine, is a vote to encourage and sustain literary work at a time when its existence is challenged.

 

If you have any questions regarding the contest, please contact us.

 

We look forward to reading your poems and to the new pleasures and insights we may discover there.

Click here to submit your work.

 

 

Awards: First Prize is $1,500, Second Prize is $750, Third Prize is $300, and ten finalists will receive $75 each. All entries will be considered for publication.

 

Submission Fee: There is a $20 fee for each entry. And with your entry, you’ll receive three months of complimentary access to Narrative Backstage.

 

Timing:  The contest entry deadline is July 16, 2011, at midnight Pacific daylight time.

 

Judging: The contest will be judged by the editors of the magazine. Winners and finalists will be announced to the public by September 21, 2011. All writers who enter will be notified by email of the judges’ decisions.

 

Submission Guidelines: Submissions may contain up to five poems. Your submission should give a strong sense of your style and range. We accept submissions of all poetic forms and genres but do not accept translations. Please read our Submission Guidelines for manuscript formatting and other information.

 

Other Submission Categories: In addition to our poetry contest, please review other Submission Categories that may interest you.

 

Contest Guidelines

Literal Latté Short Shorts Contest

First Prize
$500

1. Send unpublished shorts. 2,000 words max. All styles welcome.
2. Postmark by June 30th.
3. Name, Address, Telephone Number, Email Address (optional) — on Cover Page only.
4. Include Self Addressed Stamped Envelope or Email Address for reply.
5. Include $10 Reading Fee per set of up to 3 Shorts — OR —
   $15 Reading Fee per set of 6 Shorts.

All entries considered for publication.

Literal Latté Poetry Awards

First Prize
$1000

Second Prize
$300

Third Prize
$200

1. Send unpublished poems, 2,000 words max. All styles welcome.
2. Postmark by July 15th.
3. Name, Address, Telephone Number, Email Address (optional) — on Cover Page only.
4. Please put poem titles/first lines on Cover Page as well.
5. Include Self Addressed Stamped Envelope or Email Address for reply.
6. Include $10 Reading Fee per set of up to 6 poems — OR —
   $15 Reading Fee for set of 10 poems.

All entries considered for publication.

Literal Latté Essay Awards

First Prize
$1000

Second Prize
$300

Third Prize
$200

1. Send unpublished personal essays. 8,000 words max. All topics.
2. Postmark by September 15th.
3. Name, Address, Telephone Number, Email Address (optional) — on Cover Page only.
4. Include Self Addressed Stamped Envelope or Email Address for reply.
5. Include $10 Reading Fee per essay — OR —
   $15 Reading Fee for two essays.

All entries considered for publication.

Literal Latté Food Verse Contest

First Prize
$500

1. Send unpublished poems with food as an ingredient. 2,000 words max. All styles and subjects welcome.
2. Postmark by January 31st.
3. Name, Address, Telephone Number, Email Address (optional) — on Cover Page only.
4. Please put poem titles/first lines on Cover Page as well.
5. Include Self Addressed Stamped Envelope or Email Address for reply.
6. Include $10 Reading Fee per set of up to 6 poems — OR —
   $15 Reading Fee for set of 12 poems.

All entries considered for publication.

All currency above given in US dollars.

Remember: email submissions are NOT accepted.

All reading fees (by check or money order)
should be made out to

Literal Latté
and mailed with entry manuscripts to

Literal Latté Awards

200 East 10th Street, Suite 240
New York, NY 10003
(212) 260-5532

The 5th Wordstock Short Fiction Competition

SUBMIT YOUR STORY!

This international contest is a “double blind” competition. The judges, a collection of writers, academics, publishers, bookstore owners, and literary critics, will choose 10 finalists. All 10 finalists’ stories will be published in the Wordstock Ten, an anthology that will be available at the festival, at Portland-area bookstores, and online through the Wordstock website. Every writer who enters the competition will receive a copy of the anthology.

The winner of the competition, chosen from this field of 10 finalists, receives a first prize of $1,000 and publication in the October 2011 issue of Portland Monthly magazine. The final judge for this year’s competition will be novelist and story writer Aimee Bender.

This year, for the first time, Wordstock will only be accepting electronic entries to this competition. (Click here to go to the submission page!)

Submission guidelines
- All short stories must be works of fiction written in English
- Stories must be an original work and not previously published
- The entry fee is $20 per short story entry
- There are no genre restrictions, and comics are acceptable
- Manuscripts may be in Word or PDF format
- Manuscripts must be double-spaced
- Stories should be no less than 1,500 and no more than 3,000 words
- Each submission file you upload must omit the writer’s contact information—DO NOT put this information on the manuscript!
- Entries that do not follow these guidelines will be disqualified

Deadline for 2011: July 15, 2011

SUBMIT YOUR STORY!

Any proceeds from the Wordstock Short Fiction Competition are used to support Wordstock’s work with teachers and students.

Lupe Fiasco

What's The Difference Between

Osama and Obama?

Part I

By Russell Simmons June 16, 2011

I created GlobalGrind a few years ago for moments like this. Lupe Fiasco, one of the great poets of his generation, made some comments that didn't sit well with a lot of people, when he called President Barack Obama a "terrorist." I decided to reach out to Lupe to give him a platform to further explain why he felt this way and discuss the overall state of our country, our politics and the world.

This is a transcript from our conversation.

Me: Lupe, it is good to speak with you. I heard there was a lot of talk about the comments you made a few days ago about the President, and I wanted to give you a chance to further discuss your thoughts. I respect you as an artist and a poet and I think your opinion is important to the national discussion on where our country is going. I kinda understand that some of our foreign policy has been very hurtful and sometimes we do things that are not conscience. I didn’t really think that Obama was any more aggressive about our business interests or America’s interest in terms of the foreign policy then of the previous President, and in fact, I believe there have been changes under this administration that have been really good, like his speech in Cairo or ending combat operations in Iraq. So I just want to get clarity on your words so I can send them out there and that people understand because America in the past has made some horrible choices. Our footprint on the necks of people around the world is not really understood by the American public. When you think about 300,000 or whatever number of innocent Muslims we killed in Iraq, or when you think about some of the choices we’ve made that have hurt people but we only count our dead in Iraq. We don’t count theirs. We don’t know the amount of Islamophobia the country exudes and we say things like “we’re going on a crusade” and these things are scary...What do you think?-

Lupe:  America was based on a hypocrisy and what we had done is basically an extension of that hypocrisy. I think that the Constitution was a hypocrisy in the sense that the same way you look at somebody like Glenn Beck as a hypocrite. On one level I agree with a lot of stuff that Glenn Beck says — this is to give you context for me and where my statements come from — I agree with the ideals that he speaks about when he talks about family values and when he talks about taking care of your own community. He talks a really good wholesome kind of game. The problem is, he’s not talking to anybody but white people. It’s really just the intention and the context of it. So there’s a certain level of hypocrisy that exists in America. And it started back from the Constitution and all the people who wrote the Constitution and everything that they put in there it was good game, but all those people had slaves. The majority of the people had slaves or were sympathetic to slaveholders or were direct recipients of money from slavery and things like that and had businesses that dealt with plantations and people that had slaves. There’s a certain level of hypocrisy that existed from the inception of this country all the way up until today and we’re really just facing the remnants.

Lupe: My issue and what I try and do is expose that hypocrisy but expand the conversation to make it honest. To make the conversation honest so it speaks to everyone so people become educated to those things. So for me it boils down to everything that America does. It’s foreign policy is very hypocritical, it’s very backwards. We don’t count the other bodies, for us the war is one-way. And they’re not even wars of attrition, not even honest wars. They're not wars that were like wars that were fought 200 years ago or wars that were fought a hundred years ago. These are wars that are based on business. These are wars that are based on “let’s build these drones and we gotta try this technology but we need to make sure it works so we need to at least kill X amount of people so we can prove the value of this particular project that we spent 40 billion dollars on,” so to speak. And you multiply times how many things are going through the Pentagon military industrial complex.

So when I make the statement about Obama being a terrorist it was funny because somebody had did it … on one of the blogs or one of the news pieces or one of the internet sites that actually ran with the story or re-put it out, one of the people in the commentary related the whole situation to Osama bin Laden right? And Osama bin Laden was the unquestioned head of Al Qaeda, he was the mastermind, he was a financier, he was a politician, he orchestrated things for al-Qaeda and what have you, but Osama bin Laden wasn’t a suicide bomber. He wasn’t a soldier. If he was a suicide bomber he would be dead, because his first mission there would be no more Osama bin Laden. Other than the time that he spent in Afghanistan, as far as we know he was never the one running in to the supermarkets shooting people, he was never the one running into the mosque shooting people, he was never one at the roadside setting up IEDs, he didn’t fly the planes into the buildings or anything like that. He was the mastermind, the financier and what have you. And some instances the way al-Qaeda is set up there’s certain things that Osama bin Laden probably didn’t even know about that was occurring all throughout the Middle East, all throughout North Africa and in the U.S. as well. So he’s a terrorist even though he never really did a terrorist act.

 

Lupe (con't): So they related it to Obama and they said well Obama is kinda in the same light. Every President before him and every President that comes after him that still pushes aggression first. Whereas Obama never killed anybody. Him himself. He doesn’t know how to fly a stealth fighter. He never piloted a drone from a hundred miles away and dropped a bomb on a wedding or a birthday party. But at the same time too he should receive the same amount of credit for those actions of the people that are under him and the organizations that he heads. He should receive the same credit and the same title that Osama bin Laden gets. What’s the difference between somebody walking a bomb in strapped to their chest into a wedding full of innocent people or a bomb coming from a stealth fighter two miles up and coming into the roof into a wedding full of innocent people? What’s the difference? At the end of the day you’re killing innocent people. So for me it’s — and that’s from somebody else that was from somebody spectating and commentating on the situation. So as long as they can inspire things like that then I feel that it’s a just and a real honest and critical conversation that we’re having right now. It’s inspiring this type of thought, for people to start thinking critically about what’s going on. I can sit out and fully — ya' know if it was in a political context and we sat down and had the real political discourse and I went and quoted all of the books I read and documentaries I’ve seen and the knowledge and the numbers and the statistics that I have — I can explain why, what, when and where to a tee. But in the state that we live in and the way the media’s run and the way the internet works I’m at the mercy of the soundbite and I’m at the mercy of the attention span of 140 characters on Twitter and things of that nature. I think there’s a certain level of hypocrisy that this country was founded on and I’m just kinda trying to find out the effects of it now. If that makes any sense?

 

 

Me: The idea of these promises we founded this country on and to the extent that you want to make a more perfect Union, this dialogue has to be had. If we have foreign policy that is driven by corporations in some cases and sometimes it hurts innocent people and we could’ve made choices that are more compassionate then your dialogue is necessary and maybe your soundbite is how the dialogue begins for some people. Are you concerned that having this discussion is gonna affect your career?

Lupe: Um … yeah! (laughs) but I don’t think it’s gonna be in a negative way because I’m thinking ten steps ahead. I’m not thinking … I’m thinking of the effects of this, who this is gonna speak to, who’s gonna react to it, who’s gonna be against it, who’s gonna be for it. But I’m already thinking 10 steps ahead. I’m already thinking about and already have in place the — Fox News, Bill O’Reilly just did a … he just called me a pinhead on his show last night for the remark and lied and said that he reached out to get me on the show.

Me: What I was saying is I think what occurred with Fox News or whoever else is gonna try to use this as ammunition against Obama for whatever the political purposes are.

Lupe: Or whatever the GOP candidates or what have you, right? Use it as another sound bite alongside Obamacare to just put the hoopla up in the midst. And I think what happened was is people once they start to do that and they Google who I was and then they see the context of why the question was even asked in the first place was based off the song “Words I Never Said” then it’s “Oh if we put this dude on, everything that he talked about is gonna come out and he’s really talking about us too."

 

 

Me: Can I say something that I hope will put it in context? Because I don’t think your career is at risk at all. I mean you have music, you’re a poet you say things that are on your mind and people applaud you for them and they’re truthful and they listen to them more intently. Most of the people who buy your records are progressive thinkers and will listen to you but let me put it in the context of, and you see if it's ok. What I believe is that what you’re saying is American foreign policy is in many cases pushed by corporate greed, pushed by abusive lifestyles to make everybody continue to be comfortable and sometimes exploit innocent people across the globe for the betterment of the American public.They think betterment, you know most times we don’t need the shit we fight for. I don’t care if it’s the shit on the ground, the cell phones, or if it’s the oil or gold or whatever it is we’re stealing or taking from other countries.What you’re saying about American policy is that everybody should be first more educated so they can push their politicians to make better choices a and stand up to the kind of sideways rap they can give us while they do sometimes really hurtful things. Americans are not aware of the hurtful things that are done “on their behalf." But for the record, you're saying that American foreign policy has always been, and more recently more and more been, whether it's the lobbyists or the corporations or the business interests or the support systems that make this government stand on this legs. You would say that you may not like Obama, but the alternative is worse. Cause you know that I have proudly supported this President and I believe in him and I want people to be inspired to vote. I have to go out and work my ass off to make sure that a foreign policy that could be more disastrous than George Bush's is not implemented and more people are not abused — if we got a Sarah Palin or a Michelle Bachmann or a Mitt Romney ... damn. Is that a fair assessment?

 

 

 

 

 

Lupe Fiasco:

"We Actually Have

The Blood On Our Hands"

Part II

By Russell Simmons June 17, 2011

After yesterday's tremendous response to the part one of my conversation with the gifted Lupe Fiasco, I now present to you part two.  Look forward to your comments:

Lupe: But I think, you know to be honest like for me I think that the conversation is the issue that I’ve always had with America. To me the American government is second or third in the context of it. The corporations are definitely second but the people are first. I think the people have to understand that they’re conducive, that we actually have the blood on our hands. As much as we try to put that off on the politics or the politicians or the corporations or the military, we’re conducive on it because we silently agreed to it. Then we actively finance it because we pay taxes. So I always said that voting is cool. It’s theater but the actual meat and potatoes and the reality of it is you pay taxes and your taxes finance those drones and pay for that foreign policy and pay for the research programs and pay for all that stuff for international diplomacy and blah blah blah. So I think that the education I think that needs to be had and the idea that the alternative is worse I don’t necessarily agree with that. I believe that when you look at Obama I think it’s even worse-er because people idealize him to be better and you have better doing the same as the worse. It’s almost doubley worse because you’re supposed to be the guiding light, you’re supposed to be the guy. No matter what people thought of you… the only reason I agreed with Obama was because he was black but I had no any type of inkling that he would be any different from any politician for one he was trained in the Chicago machine which is the most corrupt political entity on Earth. When you come down to the nuts and bolts we have two consecutive governors one is in prison right now the other they’re deliberating his future right now in one of the courts in Chicago and Obama comes from that world. I already knew from stand up that it was basic politics but the only reason I agreed with it is because he was a black man. With him being a black man I immediately held him to a standard of other black presidents. I immediately held him up to the standard of Robert Mugabe and the better which was Nelson Mandela. If you’re gonna be a black president and you’re gonna stand up for something and you’re gonna stand up for the oppression and the quiet oppression that exists in the U.S. then you need to be like Nelson Mandela.

 

 

Lupe Con't:  If you’re not stepping in the wave and fighting the fight that Nelson Mandela fought as it relates to the United States of America and the oppressed people here whether they’re white, black, Asian what have you and how we are the big stick in the world and how that relates to our domestic policy and domestic education relates to our foreign policy and the way we treat the rest of the world then I can’t rock with you. He doesn’t really have a polarity to me he doesn’t really have negatives and positives to me other than that he’s black and he’s black but I also have Nelson Mandela as somebody who looked back toward oppression and so to be a president and stands up and becomes an international figure and wins Nobel Peace Prizes. You can’t win the Nobel Peace Prize and then do a surge in Afghanistan. You can’t do that. The one thing that I respected George Bush for is that Bush was a gangster and he did what he said he was gonna do – go kill the dude that tried to kill his daddy and that’s why I respect him. I don’t honor him but I respect him. It’s the same thing with Barack Obama. I respect you because you’re black and we came from the same place and the only reason that we’re here is because we’re slaves. Well not him particularly because he can trace his roots back to Kenya and his mother was white but for me, the black man in America, the only reason I’m here is because I’m a slave. My ancestors were slaves. I don’t want to rehash the history but just from my political understanding I don’t look at the alternative as worse I look at what the alternative needs to be is the people.

 

 

Me: Now see the only thing I take exception to is that you’re a little bit of an idealist by saying that and something that’s not practical about that in my opinion I just left a prison just now. I left a prison yesterday as well. I’m speaking to the prisoners. I’m fighting for prison reform. Half those people who are in there are for drugs. Some of those kids lack opportunity, education, all these problems. You say the battleground is the budget it’s the president’s rap right now and on the surface it sounds okay. If somebody’s gonna cut education in the inner city where you have 80 kids in a class in Detroit. If you can’t subsidize that by taking some out of the army, some little bit out of the army… the mother who’s a teacher and the father who’s a cop are sending their kids to a school with 80 kids and that kid’s not gonna graduate because only 46 or 48 percent of those kids are gonna graduate anyway so now we know they ain’t gonna graduate. A middle class loses the battle to survive and continue to have a middle class black family. If they don’t address that, if there’s no subsidies for those educations then no matter how corrupt or backward the machine in Detroit they’re gonna need some money so they can make those classes back to the sizes they were and 46% of the boy will graduate out of school instead of 28 or whatever. So little things matter a little bit and it’s a little bit idealistic.

Lupe: Well so you just don’t think I’m a pure subjective person, to add some objectivity to my statement, to my thought process I consciously battle against the ideal versus the real and you have to have both they dance together but the reality of the situation is, the pure reality, is that if we really wanted to educate then we would. There’s no reason why the Harvard canon of books. Whatever black lawyer or black doctor that you know many of and I know many of or a professor or a graduate who read a specific set of books in Harvard or a freshman course in Harvard there’s no reason that those books, the same books that they read, that a regular person in the hood shouldn’t have access to those same books and those same canons. I asked Professor Cornell West I said give me your list of books that you teach in your class, and it’s the same books that you can get at the library and anywhere else, so I can have same amount of intensity of education and the way that you structure your courses so I can go to the people who are never gonna have it who go to the second class or third class high school or even the kids who… are at the high school where they only come to school to go to lunch…

How do we supersede that? How do we go past waiting on a subsidy in a school system that’s archaic and that’s broken? Your schools were made to send people into a manufacturing world that which no longer exists and that’s still teaching that. So even those kids who are in those schools in Detroit are being trained in a system that’s 60 years past its time. So even when they do come out they’re cut off at the legs because the education that they’re getting is archaic compared to the rest of the modern world. So how do we supersede that in my own way? So if it's about education and about books and about critical thinking then give me the canon and I’ll go buy those books. Lupe will go buy those books and I will go set up a reading program and all the kids who are willing, because there has to be a willingness as well from the actual individual, those who are willing to come on and understand this and take pride in this and take advantage and supplement the education that they’re getting with this higher level of education because it’s really just reading and writing then let’s do that. That’s assistance too. That’s gonna happen whether it’s a Republican, a Democrat or an anarchist in the White House. I’m gonna do that regardless.

 

 

Lupe Con't:  So when I say “the people” I’m talking about you, me, Barack Obama, people doing things that may have to (require) sacrifice financially but for the most part it’s not even that much of a financial detriment in comparison to what we spend just on waste or what we spend on phone bills or on cable bills and for stuff that we really don’t need if you really look at the cost of it and how much you can actually get for free if you actually just go out and do it. And give people access to the things they can really use as opposed to giving them access to things that we think they use which is in itself is an ideal. I was just watching CSPAN last night for four hours me and my mother watching them debate the cuts they were taking out of the 2012 bill for agriculture and food safety and you should’ve seen the programs they were hacking out of there just on a whim. One minute we want 1 million dollars for this and 2 million dollars for this and well nah at the end of the day they didn’t care about food stamps they didn’t care about people hungry the word of line from the politicos and politicians there was that we don’t have the money. Like “we don’t have this we’re a broke government, we need to supplement this with spending” it was always some ideology about the government and patriotism and of the American Dream and things that don’t really exist. So for me even though I stress these high minded ideals its backed up and based on practices and tested in reality. You know I’ve been to Detroit I’ve been to the high schools. I went to the gangstas and crack sellers in Detroit and politicking and trying to learn from everybody so I can have that ideal and that reality and what I’ve learned in my studies and my travels around this world is that there’s certain things that you just can’t wait on. You can’t wait on Obama you can’t wait til the next election because now we’re in election mode. Obama is trying to raise a billion dollars for his next election. Like dog why are you even shooting commercials when you could be taking 10% of that billion dollars that you’re trying to just give right back to CBS and give right back to ABC. Why don’t you give $100 million to Detroit? But he’s not gonna do that so those things, those kind of hypocrisies are the face of what’s going on. Look at the system a really different way because that’s $1 billion real dollars that’s not idea dollars. The only reason he went to Puerto Rico whatever the political, get the Puerto Ricans on the mainland to vote, he raised a million dollars while he was there! For four hours he went and did an event, a fundraiser at a hotel in Puerto Rico and got a million dollars for his campaign! I guarantee you he did not take that million dollars which he got a check for at the end of the night before he jumped on a plane and went to wherever he went, I bet you he did not go to the barrios in Puerto Rico and say “hey here’s some books! Here’s a million dollars to go pay for this or pay for that” which he can because that’s his money going to his campaign not going to government not going to anywhere else. I agree with what you’re saying you can’t be completely idealistic but at the same time you can’t negate the reality of the situation that we’re living in.

 

 

Me: Listen it’s gonna take education and it’s gonna take individuals like you who are gonna point out hypocrisies and its gonna take people who are educated and sophisticated about our policies to change them or to fight against the corporate influences in different cases and there’ll be presidents who are gonna need people who push them to do some of the right things and make some shifts and limit the lobbyists’ power and all of these things so your voice is an important one in this way. I just want to make sure that when I frame this I frame this as you are a patriot trying to fix your country. And that you see these things, and as an artist if you don’t point them out then you aren’t a true artist. You want to tell the truth and so these truths that come out of your mouth and come from your experiences and your perceptions.  Some people will be very optimistic and try to make sure that we get the best of the choices available and they’ll just say that the world is flawed just like we know there’s suffering, there’s corruption. But they’re gonna try to be optimistic about it and try to push for the President. At the end of the day you make this country better and your words make this country better and also remind me to think and don’t let the surface blow me over because all the things that you say that are true that standout have to be part of the dialogue and we cannot ignore the suffering we’ve caused and the footprint we have or the abuse we’re promoting when we are. But at the same time that optimistic guy who wants to make sure that we have the best choice and know that it’s an imperfect world. The best thing I think we can do right now is make sure your voice is heard and make sure black people vote and I still believe black people should vote and every progressive voice should hear everything you said and digest every word.  I appreciate you and your time. 

Lupe:  Thank you.  

 

via globalgrind.com

 

 

Timbuktu Today

A Photo Essay by photojournalist Brent Stirton.

This is a modern essay on a legendary city, historically one of the wealthiest in Africa and for centuries strictly forbidden to non-Muslims. Strategically situated at the northern apex of the Niger River and the southern shore of the Sahara Desert, for hundreds of years Timbuktu dominated the trade for gold, ivory, and slaves from the African interior as well as spices, cloth, and books brought by caravan from the Mediterranean coast. It was a city of considerable scholarly endeavor. In the tenth century Timbuktu contained one of the greatest universities in the world. It was home to hundreds of learned tutors, who maintained extensive libraries of manuscripts concerning history, science, religion, literature and the study of the Koran. As its wealth grew, the city erected grand mosques, attracting scholars who, in turn, formed academies and imported books from throughout the Islamic world. As a result, fragments of the Arabian Nights, Moorish love poetry, and Koranic commentaries from Mecca mingled with narratives of court intrigues and military adventures of mighty African kingdoms.

Today’s Timbuktu is a very different place, a dusty footnote in northern Mali, the last major settlement on the edge of a vast Saharan wasteland. But amid the ramshackle mud-brick buildings, Timbuktu scholars are once again piecing together the African history that once filled vast libraries in the city’s heyday.

Photographer Brent Stirton and journalist Peter Gwin spent a month total in 2009 and 2010 documenting life in Timbuktu for National Geographic magazine, the story was published in January 2011 and is available through writer Peter Gwin.

 

 

 

Published on Jun 16, 2011

Preview “Black Hands

- Trial of the Arsonist Slave” -

Premiering In Chicago

This Weekend!

Intriguing docu-drama here, with an unfamiliar story, and one I’d very much like to see. Here’s the story:

Black Hands - Trial of the Arsonist Slave investigates… the story of Marie-Josèphe Angélique, a Black slave accused of burning Montreal in 1734. After an epic trial, this untameable slave is tortured and sentenced to death. But was she really guilty of this crime or was she the victim of a bigger conspiracy? Why this voluntary amnesia about this unknown page of Canadian history? A fascinating documentary that powerfully mixes interviews with historians and theatre re-enactments, filmed in the same style as Dogville by Lars Von Trier.

There’s a feature-length narrative film in this particular story. Don’t hold your breath though.

Produced by Bel Ange Moon Productions which was founded by sisters (and black Canadians) Tetchena Bellange and Bianca Bellange, the docudrama has played at several international film festivals since last summer, and continues to travel the festival circuit, screening next, as the opening night film, at the 9th Annual Chicago African Diaspora International Film Festival, which will be held at Facets from tomorrow, June 17 through the 23.

This will be its Chicago premiere, and both sisters will be there for a Q&A by the way.

Follow the film via its Facebook page, or on Twitter.

Watch the trailer below:

</p><p>

tambay posted to Film Festival, Preview, Trailer at 7:44 pm on June 16, 2011