Zim Ngqawana - Qula Kwedini (Jazz Fusion)

MANHATTANVILLE COLLEGE
MASTERS OF ARTS IN WRITING PROGRAM
&
INKWELL
ANNOUNCE

Submissions for Contests must be postmarked between August 1 and October 30, 2010

THE 13TH ANNUAL SHORT FICTION CONTEST
$1500 GRAND PRIZE & PUBLICATION IN INKWELL
COMPETITION JUDGE: Catherine Lewis

GUIDELINES

1. Up to 3 previously unpublished stories, 5,000-word limit
2. Text must be typed, 12pt. font, double-spaced, one-sided
3. Cover sheet with name, address, phone, e-mail, titles and word counts
4. No name or address anywhere on manuscripts
5. SASE for contest notification only – manuscripts will be recycled
6. Entry fee: $15 per story
7. Checks (USD ONLY) made out to Manhattanville – INKWELL

 

THE 14TH ANNUAL POETRY CONTEST
$1000 GRAND PRIZE & PUBLICATION IN INKWELL
COMPETITION JUDGE: Mark Doty

GUIDELINES

1. Up to 5 previously unpublished poems, 40-line limit per poem
2. Only typed entries will be considered; 12pt. font
3. Cover sheet with name, address, phone, e-mail, titles and line counts
4. No name or address anywhere on manuscript(s)
5. SASE for contest notification only – manuscripts will be recycled
6. $10 for first poem, $5 per each additional poem
7. Checks (USD ONLY) payable to Manhattanville – INKWELL

NOTE: Please indicate Poetry or Fiction Competition on envelope.
If submitting to both Poetry and Fiction Competitions, please use separate envelopes.

Submissions not adhering to the above guidelines will not be considered.

Mail to:

INKWELL - Manhattanville College
2900 Purchase Street
Purchase, NY 10577

Inkwell is produced in affiliation with the Master of Arts in Writing Program at Manhattanville College.  The program offers a highly flexible schedule of day and evening courses taught by distinguished authors and editors. Our Summer Writers’ Week, held each June, is open to writers and aspiring writers.

For information on the Master of Arts in Writing program, please visit www.mville.edu/writing or call (914) 323-5239.

 

Literary contest open to poetry, fiction and nonfiction

The 2010 New Southerner Literary Contest is open to previously unpublished poetry, fiction and nonfiction from April 1 through October 1. Although the contest theme is open, we are especially interested in work that relates to our mission, which is promoting self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship and local economies. We are also interested in works by writers with a Southern connection, and works written with a Southern slant or that focus on Southern issues, people and places.

• Prizes: $200 for winners of Fiction, Nonfiction and the James Baker Memorial Prize in Poetry; publication in the literary edition; invitation to read at a special event;
• Finalists in all categories receive $15 and publication in the New Southerner Literary Edition;
• Submit fiction and nonfiction up to 5,000 words;Submit poems up to 100 lines;
• Contest fee: $10 per entry;
• Multiple entries are accepted;
• Simultaneously submitted entries are accepted as long as you notify us promptly if your work is accepted elsewhere; entry fee is not refundable;
• Postmark deadline: October 1;
• Winners will be notified by November 20;
• Finalists and winning entries will be announced in The New Southerner Literary Edition, available online and in print at www.newsoutherner.com in December.
• Final judges are Sena Jeter Naslund (fiction), Jason Howard (nonfiction) and Jeff Worley (James Baker Hall Memorial Prize in Poetry);
• Easy online submission process. Click here to enter.

via newsoutherner.com

Editors' Prize Contest

20th Annual
Jeffrey E. Smith
Editors' Prize in
Fiction, Essay and Poetry

Not Just Any Contest!

Select winning entries in the past have been reprinted in the Best Americanseries Click here to see previous winners!

$5,000 Fiction | $5,000 Poetry | $5,000 Essay

The 2009 submission period is now closed.-->

We are now accepting submissions for our 2010 contest. Submissions must be postmarked by Oct. 1, 2010.

Click here to submit your entry online!

Or download the entry form for print submissions.

Complete Guidelines

(No other information is needed to enter)

• Page restrictions: Please include no more than 25 typed, double-spaced pages for fiction and nonfiction. Poetry entries can include any number of poems up to 10 pages in total. Each story, essay, or group of poems constitutes one entry.
• Entry fee: $20 for each entry (make checks payable to The Missouri Review). Each fee entitles the entrant to a one-year subscription to TMR (print or digital!), an extension of a current subscription, or a gift subscription. Please enclose a complete address for subscriptions.
• Entry instructions: Include the printable contest entry form. On the first page of each submission, include author’s name, address, e-mail and telephone number. Entries must be previously unpublished and will not
  be returned. Mark the outside of the envelope “Fiction,” “Essay,” or “Poetry.” Each entry in a separate category must
  be mailed in a separate envelope. Enclose a #10 SASE or e-mail address for an announcement of winners.
• Mailing address:
  Missouri Review Editors’ Prize
  357 McReynolds Hall
  University of Missouri
  Columbia, MO 65211
• Go Green: Enter Online! We are also accepting electronic submissions. Submit electronically here.
• EARLY SUBMISSION BONUS: The entry fee of $20 includes a year-long, 4-issue subscription.  To take advantage of our special offer, simply submit your entry between June 1st and June 30th, and your subscription will automatically be upgraded to include a 5th issue, in digital format, for free.  You may choose to receive the rest of your subscription in hard copy or in digital format.  (Digital format includes full access to our print version—plus the audio version of the magazine.)

Download the entry form for print submissions.

If you have any questions regarding the Editors' Prize Contest, please feel free to e-mail us at: contest_question@moreview.com.

The postmark deadline is Oct. 1, 2010.

August 22, 4:30 pm
Black Nature at The Hudson Valley Writers' Center

Contributors to the landmark anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry Tara Betts, Myronn Hardy and Kamilah Aisha Moon gather for a reading overlooking the Hudson Valley. $5 admission. Co-sponsored with The Hudson Valley Writers' Center.

The Hudson Valley Writers' Center
300 Riverside Drive
Sleepy Hollow, NY

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Tue, Aug 17, 2010

Naomi Klein
PM Press (2009)  
Reviewed by Bill Templer
University of Malaya

 

 

Investigative journalist Naomi Klein speaking on “The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” is a PM Press DVD produced by Bonobo Films. It consists of a brilliant 65-minute talk Naomi gave on May 19, 2008 at the Friends Meeting House in London introducing the paperback edition of her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York, 2007), plus a remarkably insightful 10-minute interview with Naomi done in London the next day.  Some sections of the talk are on youtube (1), but the whole is not, and is worth having in its entirety.

The talk was part of a fundraiser organized by the ‘Hands Off Iraqi Oil’ coalition (very active in 2007-2008, http://www.handsoffiraqioil.org/), along with activists from the Britain-based ‘War on Want’ associated with Hands Off Iraqi Oil, and many other anti-war and environmental groups. War on Want is a non-profit organization long committed to the struggle against neoliberal globalization, world poverty, Israeli apartheid and much more (www.waronwant.org).

Many of you will know Naomi’s book, and its thesis of how casino capitalism in its present phase is using ‘shock’ tactics — from 9/11 and the ‘war on terror,’ to natural disasters like the Dec. 2004 tsunami, Katrina, resource wars in West Asia, the serial disasters of climate change — as a platform for taking over markets, raking in spectacular profits, extending corporate control in the wake of disaster and its aftermath, and the “collective vertigo” it often leaves people in.  For Naomi, “The market is the disaster itself and the response to it,” emphasizing the utter bankruptcy of the current economic model, a “class war waged by the rich against the poor,” and the need for “deep democracy” and a people’s alternative.  In the states, she stresses, 9/11 is

key to understanding how we got to where we are […] People know they’ve been living the ‘shock doctrine’ since Sept. 11. That shock, that blow to the psyche of this country, was expertly harnessed by the administration to push through policies that they could not push through otherwise (2).

In the May 2008 interview on the DVD, Naomi emphasizes that she wrote the book:

precisely to make people more resistant to the shock doctrine I hope the book would be a kind of ‘shock shield’  in a way, because these tactics are all about lack of information and disorientation,  What we need to get out of shock is a story, a narrative that explains what is happening around you. 

The most ‘opportune time’ for deregulation and neoliberal restructuring, Naomi convincingly argues, is during severe crisis and its aftermath. And the architects of such free marketeering in the midst of chaos – the “privatization of disaster response” — know how to rationalize their greed full well, putting a ‘moral veneer’ on their rapaciousness. Naomi begins her talk with data from a 2008 empirical study on how corporate execs and conservatives are very good at ‘rationalizing’ inequality to justify their own actions, part of their own “ideological tranquillizer,” the psychology of guiltless greed.

The London talk centers more on theses and facts drawn from the Part 5 of the book: “Shocking Times: The Rise of the Disaster Capitalism Complex,” Part 6 “Iraq Full Circle; Overshock,”  Part 7 “The Movable Green Zone: Bugger Zones and Blast Walls,” and the conclusion “Shock Wears Off: The Rise of People’s Reconstruction.” Naomi also talks a lot about what’s happening in New Orleans by big capital developers, a “city that’s been stolen,” where public housing has been destroyed to make way for expensive new condos, and charter schools are enjoying a huge boom. Not in her book is a whole section in the London talk on crony capitalism in Burma and the push there in 2008 by the military junta to sell of much of the state-owned economy, and push privatization of prime agricultural land in the wake of the powerful cyclone that ravaged the coast, exemplifying what could be a neoliberal catchphrase across the crisis-ravaged planet: “the more people die, the more land there is to grab.”

These past months, the BP oil spill and its aftermath (3), the record heat and fires in western Russia and the incredible monsoon flooding across much of northwestern Pakistan are prime examples of serial crises of ‘extreme weather events’ multiplying under our eyes. What big bucks will be made off these crises, what new development projects railroaded through?  Naomi’s thesis will be reflected there too. As well as the idea that when most people respond to a disaster, it’s the expression of mutual aid, helping each other — not profiteering or looting. People show incredible resilience in the face of disasters. Disaster capitalists tend to see just the opposite of that: a blank slate, a clean sheet, an opportunity to invest and earn big profits.

The core idea for the book was sparked in part by the collapse of the Argentinian economy, which she experienced directly, and the “shock and awe” attack on  Iraq and what has ensued there since. Her concrete vision of people’s alternatives touched on in the book briefly and at the end of the London talk was shaped by “the movement of ‘recovered companies,’ two hundred bankrupt businesses that have been resuscitated by their workers, who have turned them into democratically run cooperatives” in Argentina.

She and Avi Lewis made a powerful documentary film The Take (2004) about this movement, though the film goes unmentioned in her book. You can download it cost-free and show widely, to students and activists (4). Naomi likes to see such indigenous responses by working people to the violent inroads of Capital as a form of what a New Orleans activist friend of hers calls “disaster collectivism,” the art of resilience in solidarity.

At the end of her talk and the very end of the book, Naomi highlights efforts by indigenous Thai ‘stateless’ fisher communities along the Andaman Sea coast, known as Moken or Chao Lay, who spearheaded a people’s movement to reclaim their own ‘undocumented’ land by direct action and rebuild their own settlements, a people’s resistance to the corporate developers poised to move in, She notes: “a manifesto drafted by a coalition of Thai tsunami survivor communities explains the philosophy: ‘The rebuilding work should be done by local communities themselves, as much as possible. Keep contractors out, let communities take responsibility for their own housing” (Klein, 2007, p. 465).  A year after Katrina, activists from New Orleans met with Thais in the grassroots reconstruction efforts, and told them: “In New Orleans, we’re waiting around on the government to do things for us, but here you all are doing by yourselves […] When we go back, your model is our new goal” (5).

Naomi also reminds us that resistance to neoliberalism has been led by indigenous groups in Latin America, like the Zapatistas. I think that her entire argument, and several strands of analysis on the broader left, would be strengthened by looking in depth at the work of political anthropologist James C. Scott, in particular his most recent study The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009), and his earlier path-breaking studies (6). Scott’s ideas on how simple people resist hegemony and the state are very relevant to what is going on, maybe even in working-class school classrooms. As is his critique of “high modernist ideology” and the failed mega-schemes of the authoritarian state.

Naomi ends both her book and talk on this upbeat note:

Such people’s reconstruction efforts represent the antithesis of the disaster capitalism complex’s ethos, with its perpetual quest for clean sheets and blank slates on which to build model states. […] local people’s renewal movements begin from the premise that there is no escape from the substantial messes we have created and that there has already been enough erasure—of history, of culture, of memory. […] As the corporatist crusade continues its violent decline, turning up the shock dial to blast through the mounting resistance it encounters, these projects point a way forward […]  Radical only in their intense practicality, rooted in the communities where they live […]  they are building in resilience—for when the next shock hits (p. 466).

As a social historian, Naomi also knows this disaster capitalism complex is another high-tech chapter in Western imperialism, and that the “shock doctrine” is nothing new. She notes in her London talk that in colonizing Massachusetts, the Puritans saw the spread of smallpox as a kind of “Divine plague” that helped cleanse the ‘Heathens’ from the land the settlers coveted. God was on the side of these ‘new Israelites,’ using disaster as murderous sickness to assist in the ‘conquest of New Canaan’ (7). And we are in deep denial about the history of this country, and the myths it was founded on. History, and understanding it better, is, Naomi reminds us, our “shock resistance.”

Buy the DVD. It is a lecture, the camera mainly on Naomi. But can serve as a good introduction to Naomi Klein’s ideas for students, local activist groups, and anyone interested in changing this System. She’s a remarkable speaker. There are other lectures of Naomi’s on youtube (8; see also [2]), but this one is special. Part of the proceeds from the sale of this first-rate DVD are being passed on by PM Press to War on Want.

Notes

1. London Talk, first 10 minutes:  ; excerpt on climate change: ; excerpt on ecological debt, ‘the key idea of our time’: . 

2. Naomi Klein, Portland, 54-minute talk, April 28, 2008:

3. See comments by Naomi on the BP oil spill, May 28, 2010:  ; idem, Gulf Oil Spill; A Hole in the World, The Guardian, 19 June 2010 http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2010/06/gulf-oil-spill-hole-world

4. See  http://tinyurl.com/2u8cnfx . The Take  (English subtitles).

5. Klein (The Shock Doctrine, 2007), p. 466. On the Moken/Chao Lay ‘sea gipsies’ struggle for reclaiming land and land rights, see http://www.seapabkk.org/newdesign/fellowshipsdetail.php?No=442 ; but Naomi probably knows this positive light she ends her book on is largely unresolved even today, and the current situation is full of uncertainty regarding the land claims of the ‘landless’ and ‘stateless’ Chao Lay, see http://speakupblog.typepad.com/speak_up/2009/12/chao-lay-update.html . Thailand remains awash with inequity, especially for its many indigenous minority peoples, largely in the northern hills, and the bottom 70% of its working families everywhere.

6. Scott, James C. (1987) Weapons of the Weak: Every Day Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale UP); idem, (1992). Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (Yale UP); idem, (1999). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed  (Yale UP).

7. See Templer, Bill (2006). The Political Sacralization of Imperial Genocide: Contextualizing Timothy Dwight’s The Conquest of Canaan, Postcolonial Studies 9(4), 358-391.

8.  See talk in Vancouver, Feb 27, 2007  http://tinyurl.com/266pkeh ,  6 parts.

“America is beat up, confused”:

Antoine Fuqua Interview

July 27, 2010 by Hugo Salvaterra    

On the eve of the worldwide release of Brooklyn’s Finest, SoulCulture’s Hugo Salvaterra delved into the cinematic motivations of director Antoine Fuqua – exploring why he wants to tell us another Street story and its contrast with other projects, his choice of actors and his perspective on America. From Hollywood L.A. to London, let’s gets into Antoine Fuqua’s mind…

Hugo Salvaterra: First of all, after the success of Training Day why another movie in the same genre, why would you want to explore that again after all the accolades that you got?

Antoine Fuqua:  I think there’s a lot of human drama on the streets, the abuse of power, authorities, you get to close to the elements you’re chasing and its a recipe for corruption, confusion, despair. I felt with a world like today, people aren’t making enough money in trying to take taking care of their families and the system not taking care of their own. It’s a recipe for disaster so I just wanted to explore that angle.

HS: So the repetition of the theme, good cop/bad cop, the institution vs. the people comes out of a need to mirror  a social problem?

AF: 100% absolutely. I believe there’s a social problem not only in America; I spend some time in Italy, I hung out with some of the police officers there and they have the same issues. They’re not making enough, their life is on the line and their on the streets dealing with criminals and sometimes the police become criminals they become too close to the people they’re chasing and they start to behave and act just like them. And I think it’s a problem.

HS: Brooklyn’s Finest I feel was less action and more drama, do you feel the story was more important the creating suspense on this one?

AF: Yeah I mean I was just focusing on the characters, for me it was mainly the story of Joe, it was just really about, “Are there any good men left?” – that is the question. It’s about men under pressure, and the decisions that they make, it wasn’t so much about action as much as it was about decisions.

HS: Exactly exactly that’s a good premise, I love how the story builds up like three movies wrapped in one revolving around the same theme and that particular phrase – “are there any good men left” – I think that, in good away, summarises the movie. The three stories culminate at the same time, was that the original plan?

AF: Yeah. Michael Martin wrote the script and when I read it was very similar to that and I just wanted to play a little you know? broke some rules,  creatively it was very operatic… Another thing is this happens so often especially in the projects because they look the same; a narcotics shop can be in one building doing some undercover work while a street cop can be in another building doing something and it can all pop up at the same time. In a movie you can think, ‘Well that’s really convenient’ – but I lived in that and I’ve seen it happen. It seems like coincidence but the neighborhoods are so small and you know, it breeds out the same tree… It’s real.

HS: It’s very real. So this theme is something you can relate to on a personal level? Do you have a personal affinity with these stories? maybe that’s why it feels you have a very good perception of what´s really going on out there on the streets…

AF: Yeah, I lived in it and I lived in the projects for years. I lived in Brooklyn for years. I know just what it is. So I was trying to say something. I was also trying to say something with these characters. I worked with guys like that who’ve made some bad mistakes who lived in that hustle game that realised it was a dead end and even when they get out jail they realise that now they cant get out of it, because they’re in the system.

HS: That’s so real. Antoine can you tell me if possible, I don’t know if you’re gonna find this a pertinent question, what is it that you feel the lesson should be or what should we learn from this story, what are you trying to tell with Don, Gere and  Ethan what should we learn from that?

AF: I’m trying to say… Decisions. Well you live and die by your decisions in this life, you know? If you make a selfish decision normally it’s gonna lead to destruction. If you can, you have to make unselfish decisions, but in these contexts [you do] the best you can and I wanted to mirror that.

HS: Every action has a reaction… of course.

AF: Exactly! If you make the bad ones, there’s a price to pay.

HS: Don Cheadle’s chase of revenge that decision lead him to a horrible place. With Richard Gere that decision that he made not to kill himself led him to redemption, all these three men were in the crossroads and Ethan Hawke of course was greed out of love and that’s beautifully done. Now let’s talk about technicality a little bit. The photography on this one was darker, edgier then Training Day, I feel it really represents Brooklyn and N.Y. in general, what movie was harder to make technically Training Day or Brooklyn’s finest?

AF: Technically it was Training Day because I shot under motion and there’s that scene with that car moving around LA. Just trying to move around in car with guys, it was something difficult I had to do to keep it interesting. To keep the camera in interesting places and moving around the camera in the traffic in LA is a fucking nightmare… Now with Brooklyn, I had more fun in a sense – I was down and dirty, I took more chances. I had a guy from Mexico, he was ballsy not spoiled. I would say, ‘I want to light this with one light and I want to be ready in 15 minutes’ and he was brave. I had fun doing that.

HS: And it your home I mean that make sense. And i feel it’s more about the drama then the action on this one…

AF: Yeah it wasn’t about the action i was in an apple box with my actors, I had the most fun just doing that.

HS: Speaking about the actors, Ethan Hawke is a formidable all round actor and I would like to congratulate you on the whole ensemble, every character seems very well thought out, but with Ethan it’s magic. You seem to get the best out of him. Do you feel you have a special relationship, like a Scorsese/Deniro type of vibe?

AF: Yeah I do. Ethan’s a person that right at the initial meeting, we sat down for four hours and just hung out; we didn’t even talk about movie; we talked about life, we were able to relate about a lot of different things… He’s already a great serious actor. I just kinda love the guy, I think he’s great and it’s all about the work and for me and him.

It’s just second nature in a way and we just clicked, I know he’s going to show up every day giving everything and he knows the same about me and we protect each other. He’ll come to me, check on me, make sure I’m alright and if he thinks I’m a little tired he’ll pick up the slack.

HS: The chemistry between you guys… We can see it, it jumps of the screen its great. Anymore partnerships with him in the horizon?

AF: Oh yeah! No question about it. I mean anything I can do, we’re actively looking now for something to do together, I like to think of him as my Deniro, Scorsese and Deniro are just genius together…

HS: That’s funny because we always had an eye on you and we look up to you as a potential black Scorsese and Ethan is like your muse, it’s kind of cool to figure these thing out… Moving on, are you a fan of The Wire?

AF: Yeah, oh yeah. I love that show. I didn’t watch as much as people think I did. I’m not a big TV guy… I caught it on DVD but I love that show. I wasn’t happy that they ignored it so much at the award times so with Brooklyn’s Finest I wanted to reward them, especially Michael K. Williams – he’s from Brooklyn – and I wanted to put them on a movie, on the big screen because they deserve it. They did a great job.

HS: I noticed some of the characters, some of the most charismatic ones, you already emphasised Michael Williams as Omar, a legendary role a definitive role. Clay Davis played by Isaah Whitlock. A realistic show with incredible display of human drama where there are no real “bad guys” everybody’s got their qualities and faults from the cops to the dealer selling crack to little children topped by and a gay king of the hood. I see a lot of similarities between The Wire and “Brooklyn’s Finest but the contrasts are just as evident as the differences.

AF: Yeah I wanted to highlight them, they deserved it, I wanted them to be seen in a cinema all around the world especially because they didn’t get the awards. They deserved it.

HS: Fantastic. We’re coming down to the end. Any particular point on that freeze frame on Richard Gere at the end. Were you trying to say something with that?

AF: Yeah absolutely. America is beat up, confused, busted up, you know? America is a great place to live obviously. But right now we got a black eye, blood dripping on one side, we’re kind of wobbling here and there. To me it’s like if we don’t get it together… I mean we gotta figure out what direction were going in. Obviously if you do the right thing if you move straight ahead that path will be clearer. But that freeze frame, to me, that’s the image of how I see this country. If you lift up lady liberties dress she’s probably got some scars up under that [laughs] and a black eye.

HS: Any new projects on the horizon?

AF: Yeah I’ve been talking with Bruce Wills about this movie The Tomb which is exciting. But right now I got the Tupac Shakur movie coming out in September, I’ve been working on that for a while…

HS: That’s very interesting! I’ll definitely will be on the look out for that… Antoine it was pleasure talking to you thanks so much for your work and what you do and best of luck in the future. I think you mirror reality and with the industry moving towards fantasy and pressure for blockbusters to come out, it’s really brave of you to keep it real, props on that particular interest in genuine stories and genuine people.

AF: Thank you man, I greatly appreciate it. Be well.

 

Trailer – “GhettoPhysics: Will the Real Pimps and Hos Please Stand Up?” (Learn The Game)

By Tambay, on August 17th, 2010

Attention-grabbing title, certainly; but it’s probably not quite what you think it is.

Samuel Goldwyn Films has picked up the political documentary, GhettoPhysics: Will the Real Pimps and Hos Please Stand Up?, directed by William Arntz (What the Bleep Do We Know!?) and E. Raymond Brown, for an October theatrical release.

Based on E. Raymond Brown’s novel Will the Real Pimps and Hos Please Stand Up: Peeping the Multi-leveled Global Game, the film uses interviews, staged scenes, and satire to shed light on how the interplay between pimps and prostitutes is simply a variation of the power dynamic that exists in broader social, political and corporate relationships we all experience.

As the synopsis reads: “From the street to the boardroom, from the Hood to the Oval Office, its the same. The only difference is that while the street Pimps wear colorful clothes, and the streets Ho’s wear little at all, their corporate/government counterparts hide behind marketing slogans and slick double talk to effect the exact same thing… The basic tenet of GhettoPhysics is that the interplay between the Pimp and the Ho is the simplest expression of the fundamental way that people interact in the world… looking at the world through the Pimp/Ho dynamic… it becomes very easy to see the manipulations that keeps society’s Ho’s forever in debt, disempowered and marching off to war.”

 

We’re all players, right? And as the saying goes, don’t hate the player, hate the game. GhettoPhysiccs, the documentary, hopes to expose “the game.”

Director Arntz’s last work, 2004’s documentary What The Bleep Do We Know!?, was something of a sleeper hit, playing in theaters for an entire year, thanks to strong word-of-mouth and “strategic marketing,” raking in about $10 million at the box office. I didn’t see it. Let’s see if this one is just as successful.

GhettoPhysics features interviews with Dr. Cornel West, Ice-T, KRS-One, Too Short, John Perkins, Norman Lear, and others.

Here’s it’s trailer, which gives little (it needs to be recut, me thinks):

Uncovering the Lies That Are Sinking the Oil

Monday 16 August 2010

by: Dahr Jamail and Erika Blumenfeld, t r u t h o u t | Report

James "Catfish" Miller, Mississippi commercial fisherman-turned-whistleblower. (Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)

The rampant use of toxic dispersants, out-of-state private contractors being brought in to spray them and US Coast Guard complicity are common stories now in the four states most affected by BP's Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

Commercial and charter fishermen, residents and members of BP's Vessels Of Opportunity (VOO) program in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana have spoken with Truthout about their witnessing all of these incidents.

Toxic Dispersants Found on Recently Opened Mississippi Shrimping and Oyster Grounds

On Monday, August 9, the Director of the State of Mississippi Department of Marine Resources (DMR), Bill Walker, despite ongoing reports of tar balls, oil and dispersants being found in Mississippi waters, declared, "there should be no new threats" and issued an order for all local coast governments to halt ongoing oil disaster work being funded by BP money that was granted to the state.

BP had allocated $25 million to Mississippi for local government disaster work. As of August 9, Walker estimated that only about $500,000 worth of invoices for oil response work had been submitted to the state. Nobody knows what the rest of the money will be used for.

Our readers are our only financial backers - keep Truthout afloat by supporting us today.

Recent days in Mississippi waters found fishermen and scientists finding oil in Garden Pond on Horn Island, massive fish kills near Cat Island, "black water" in Mississippi Sound and submerged oil in Pass Christian.

Boom inside Pass Christian Harbor. (Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)

Mississippi residents and fishermen Truthout spoke with believe Walker's move was from an order given by Gov. Haley Barbour, who has been heavily criticized over the years for his lobbying on behalf of the Tobacco and Oil industries.

Two days after Walker's announcement and in response to claims from state and federal officials that Gulf Coast waters are safe and clean, fishermen took their own samples from the waters off of Pass Christian in Mississippi.

The samples were taken in water that is now open for shrimping, as well as from waters directly over Mississippi's oyster bed, that will likely open in September for fishing.

Commercial fisherman James "Catfish" Miller, took fishermen Danny Ross Jr. and Mark Stewart, along with scientist Dr. Ed Cake of Gulf Environmental Associates and others out and they found the fishing grounds to be contaminated with oil and dispersants.

Their method was simple - they tied an absorbent rag to a weighted hook, dropped it overboard for a short duration of time, then pulled it up to find the results. The rags were covered in a brown, oily substance that the fishermen identified as a mix of BP's crude oil and toxic dispersants.

Shortly thereafter, Catfish Miller took the samples to a community meeting in nearby D'Iberville to show fishermen and families. At the meeting, fishermen unanimously supported a petition calling for the firing of Dr. Walker, the head of Mississippi's DMR, who is responsible for opening the fishing grounds.

Dr. Cake wrote of the experience: "When the vessel was stopped for sampling, small, 0.5- to 1.0-inch-diameter bubbles would periodically rise to the surface and shortly thereafter they would pop leaving a small oil sheen. According to the fishermen, several of BP's Vessels-of-Opportunity (Carolina Skiffs with tanks of dispersants [Corexit]) were hand spraying in Mississippi Sound off the Pass Christian Harbor in prior days/nights. It appears to this observer that the dispersants are still in the area and are continuing to react with oil in the waters off Pass Christian Harbor."

Ongoing Contamination and the Carolina Skiffs

On August 13, Truthout visited Pass Christian Harbor in Mississippi. Oil sheen was present, the vapors of which could be smelled, causing our eyes to burn. Many ropes that tied boats to the dock were oiled and much of the water covered with oil sheen.

(Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)

(Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)

A resident, who has a yacht in the harbor, spoke with Truthout on condition of anonymity due to fears of reprisal from BP. "Last week we were sitting on our boat and you could smell the chemicals," he explained. "It smelt like death. It was like mosquito spray, but ten times stronger. The next day I was hoarse and my lungs felt like I'd been in a smoky bar the night before."

Oil boom was present throughout much of the harbor. Despite this, fishermen, obviously trusting Mr. Walker's announcement about the fishing waters being clear of oil and dispersant, were trying to catch fish from their boat inside the harbor.

(Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)

"Last week oil filled this harbor," the man, an ex-commercial fisherman added. "BP has bought off all our government officials, and shut them up. You can't say the oil is gone, it's right here! Them saying it's not here is a bunch of bullshit."

Truthout spoke with another man, who was recently laid off from the VOO program. He also spoke on condition of anonymity. "Just the other day one of the Carolina Skiffs passed us spraying something," he said. "We went west instead of east as we turned and a group of Carolina Skiffs was spraying something over the water."

A Carolina Skiff is a type of boat, usually between 13' and 30' long, very versatile and can function well in shallow or deep waters. They are known for having a large payload capacity and a lot of interior space.

Alarmed by what he saw, the former VOO worker called the Coast Guard to report what he believed was a private contractor company spraying dispersants. "We were later told by the Coast Guard they'd investigated the incident and told us what we saw were vacuum boats sucking oil, and they were rinsing their tanks," he said. "But we know this is a lie and that BP is using these out of state contractors to come in and spray the dispersant at night and they are using planes to drop it as well."

He worked in the VOO program looking for oil. When his team would find oil, upon reporting it, they would consistently be sent away without explanation or the opportunity to clean it. "They made us abort these missions," he said. "Two days ago I put out boom in a bunch of oil for five minutes, they told me to abort the mission, so I pulled up boom soaked in oil. What the hell are we doing out there if they won't let us work to clean up the oil?"

He told Truthout that as his and other VOO teams would be going out to work on the water in the morning, they would pass the out-of-state contractors in Carolina Skiffs coming in from what he believed to be a covert spraying of the oil with dispersant in order to sink it. He believes this was done to deliberately prevent the VOO teams from finding and collecting oil. By doing so, BP's liability would be lessened since the oil giant will be fined for the amount of oil collected.

"BP brings in the Carolina Skiffs to spray the dispersant at night," he added, "And they are not accountable to the Coast Guard."

James Miller, who had taken the group out into the Mississippi Sound that found the oil/dispersants on August 11, told Truthout that the Carolina Skiff teams spraying dispersants were "common" and that it "happened all the time."

Miller, who was in the VOO, is an eyewitness to planes spraying dispersants, as well as the Carolina Skiff crews doing the same.
"We'd roll up on a patch of oil ½ mile wide by one mile long and they'd hold us off from cleaning it up," Miller, speaking with Truthout at his home in D'Iberville, Mississippi, said. "We'd leave and the Carolina Skiffs would pull up and start spraying dispersants on the oil. The guys doing the spraying would wear respirators and safety glasses. Their boats have 375 gallon white drums full of the stuff and they could spray it out 150 feet. The next day there'd be the white foam that's always there after they hit the oil with dispersants."

Some nights VOO crews would sleep out near the work sites. "We'd sleep out there and some nights the planes would come in so close the noise would wake us from a dead sleep," Miller added. "Again, we'd call in the oiled areas during the day and at night the planes would come in and hit the hell out of it with dispersants. That was the drill. We'd spot it and report it. They'd call us off it and send guys out in the skiffs or planes to sink it."

Mark Stewart, from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was in the VOO program for 70 days before being laid off on August 2. The last weeks has seen BP decreasing the number of response workers from around 45,000 down to around 30,000. The number is decreasing by the day.

Stewart, a third generation commercial fisherman, told Truthout he had regularly seen "purple looking jelly stuff, three feet thick, floating all over, as wide as a football field" and "tar balls as big as a car." He, like Miller, is an eyewitness to planes dispensing dispersant at night, as well as the Carolina Skiff crews spraying dispersant. "I worked out off the barrier islands of Mississippi," Stewart said. "They would relentlessly carpet bomb the oil we found with dispersants, day and night."

Stewart, echoing what VOO employees across the Gulf Coast are saying, told Truthout his crew would regularly find oil, report it, be sent away, then either watch as planes or Carolina Skiffs would arrive to apply dispersants, or come back the next day to find the white foamy emulsified oil remnant that is left on the surface after oil has been hit with dispersants.

Stewart added, "Whenever government people, state or federal, would be flying over us, we'd be instructed to put out all our boom and start skimming, acting like we were gathering oil, even when we weren't in the oil."

While acting as whistleblowers, Miller and Stewart have both been accused of being "troublemakers" and "liars" by persons in the Mississippi government and some of their local media, in spite of the fact that they are doing so from deep concern for their fellow fisherman and the environment.

Meanwhile, both men told Truthout they live with chronic headaches and other symptoms they've been experiencing since they were exposed to toxic dispersants while in the VOO program. Recent trips to investigate their waters for oil and dispersant have worsened their symptoms.

Mark Stewart with James Miller. (Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)

"Why would we lie about oil and dispersant in our waters, when our livelihoods depend on our being able to fish here?" Miller asked. "I want this to be cleaned up so we can get back to how we used to live, but it doesn't make sense for us or anyone else to fish if our waters are toxified. I don't know why people are angry at us for speaking the truth. We're not the ones who put the oil in the water."

Miller is bleak about his assessment of the situation. He pointed out toward the coast and said, "Everything is dead out there. The plankton is dead. We pulled up loads of dead plankton on our trip on Wednesday. There are very few birds. We saw only a few when there are usually thousands. We only saw two porpoises when there are usually countless. We saw nothing but death."

Coast Guard Complicity

"Lockheed Martin aircraft, including C-130s and P-3s, have been deployed to the Gulf region by the Air Force, Coast Guard and other government customers to perform a variety of tasks, such as monitoring, mapping and dispersant spraying," states a newsletter published in July by Lockheed Martin.

An article by the 910th Airlift Wing Public Affairs Office, based in Youngstown, Ohio, states that C-130H Hercules aircraft started aerial spray operations Saturday, May 1, under the direction of the president of the United States and secretary of defense. "The objective of the aerial spray operation is to neutralize the oil spill with oil dispersing agents," it says.

Joseph Yerkes, along with other Florida commercial fishermen and Florida residents, have seen C-130s spraying dispersants on oil floating off the coast of Florida numerous times.

But the Coast Guard denies it.

At a VOO meeting in Destin on August 3, Lt. Cmdr. Dale Vogelsang, a liaison officer with the United States Coast Guard said, "I can state, there is no dispersant being used in Florida waters."

The room, filled mostly with commercial fishermen, who were current or former members in BP's VOO program, erupted in protest and disbelief. When Vogelsang was immediately challenged on his statement, he replied, "I'll investigate the C-130s."

Two BP representatives, along with Vogelsang, found themselves confronted by a large group of angry fishermen for over an hour. At times, the meeting resembled a riot more than the question-and-answer session it was intended to be.

Yerkes, who lives on Okaloosa Island, has been a commercial fisherman and boat captain most of his life. For the last 12 years, he has owned and operated a commercial live bait business.

Employed by BP as a VOO operator for more than two months, Yerkes, along with many other local commercial fishermen in the VOO program in his area were laid off on July 20 because BP and the Coast Guard believed there was no more "recoverable oil" in their area of Florida. Yet residents, fishermen, swimmers, divers and surfers in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana have been reporting oil floating atop water, sitting on the bottom and floating in the water column, in oftentimes great amounts, for the last two weeks. There have been many reports of various kinds of aircraft, including C-130s, dispensing dispersants over oil.

Yerkes provided Truthout with a letter he wrote to document his witnessing a C-130 spraying what he believes to be dispersant.
"I witnessed [from my home] a C130 military plane flying and obviously spraying" over the Gulf of Mexico on July 30, "flying from the north to the south, dropping to low levels of elevation then obviously spraying or releasing an unknown substance from the rear of the plane. This substance started leaving the plane when it was about ½ to 1 mile offshore, with a continuous stream following out of the plane until it was out of sight flying to the south."

The substance, Yerkes wrote, "was not smoke, for the residue fell to the water, where smoke would have lingered." He added, "this plane was very low near the water and the flight was very similar to viewings I made over the past few weeks when dispersants were sprayed over the Gulf near our area."

A member of the VOO program provided relevant information of a "strange incident" on condition of anonymity. He was observing wildlife offshore the same day Yerkes witnessed the C-130 when he received a call from his supervisor. He told his supervisor he and his crewmember were not feeling well, so he was instructed to return in order "to get checked out because a plane had been reported in our area spraying a substance on the water about 10-20 minutes before." The employee complained of having a terrible headache and nasal congestion while his crewmember said he had a metallic taste in his mouth.

After filling out an incident report, both men were directed to go to the hospital. The following day the two men were "asked to go to the hospital for blood tests."

One week after the aforementioned meeting, The Destin Log quoted Vogelsang as saying he had contacted Unified Command who "confirmed" that dispersants were not being used in Florida waters. Vogelsang added, "Dispersants are only being used over the wellhead in Louisiana," a statement that Truthout has heard refuted by dozens of commercial fishermen from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

Yerkes told Truthout that he, too, was aware of the Carolina Skiffs coming in from out of state to dispense dispersants over the oil. In the recent VOO meeting in Destin, Vogelsang was asked about the out-of-state contractors being brought in to work in Florida waters. He replied, "The only vessels we are using in the program are local, vetted vessels."

His response caused an uproar of protest from the crowd, with various fishermen and VOO workers yelling that Carolina Skiffs were being brought in from out of state. To this, Vogelsang responded, "Vessels that are from out of the area are contractors with special skills."

Vogelsang went on to claim that the amount of "product" [oil] being found in Florida is decreasing daily. This, too, caused an uproar from the room full of fishermen.

"I can take anybody in here out and show them oil, every single day," David White, a local fishing charter captain responded. "I was in the VOO program, driving around calling in oil, telling them where it is and nobody ever came. I never saw any skimmers there and I'm talking about some serious oil. I can show you tar balls going across the bottom like tumbleweeds."

Yerkes provided Truthout with a written statement from Lawrence Byrd, a local boat captain who was a task force leader in the VOO program from June 4 to July 21. On July 27 and 28, Byrd took BP officials, Coast Guard officials and an EPA official on a fact finding mission in search of oil.

"The Coast Guard told us if we could show them the oil, they'd put us back to work," Yerkes told Truthout, "So Byrd took him, and other officials out on his boat and showed them the oil."

Byrd's statement contains many instances of the group encountering oil on the trips:

"Within 30 minutes in the Rocky Bayou and Boggy Bayou we found 4 different football field sized areas of oily sheen on the water ... We moved east from there in search of weathered oil, just past Mid Bay bridge we found a 2 acre oil slick with a water bottle full of crude oil. At this time the Coast Guard Lt. had seen enough to warrant a 2nd trip with BP officials and EPA."

The next day, July 28, Byrd wrote:

"On board were BP officials, a Parson official, 2 Coast Guard Lts and EPA. First stop Crab Island Destin where we found tar balls, dead fish and plenty of dead sargasm grass. All officials seemed very concerned about all of our findings."

The report goes on to list further oil findings and added, "In the eyes of BP officials, Coast Guard Lts. and EPA, this was more than enough oil product to warrant the need for more VOO boats to serve as a first line of defense against this toxic pollution. To this day Destin VOO is still operating with ½ task force in the bay and ½ task force in Gulf with Walton County being completely unprotected! I feel all parties have good intentions but nothing is being done!"

"Somebody is stopping that process," Yerkes told Truthout. "[Retired Coast Guard Adm.] Thad Allen stood up at Tyndall Air Force Base the same night that they sprayed dispersant on the oil in front of Destin and he said we are going to use local fishermen in each local area to do the jobs, even beyond the cleaning of the oil. The day after he said that at Tyndall ... every one of the Carolina skiffs is loaded to the hilt with boom. Nobody else got reactivated."

Yerkes expressed his frustration further. "They are lying about this whole thing and it's got me in an uproar," he said. "I'm by myself. I'm the only one willing to stand up. I have a lot of friends who want to stand up and speak out. They know the Coast Guard and BP are lying, but they won't talk because they are getting paychecks and don't want to jeopardize that. They are saying they are finding new oil all the time, but the Coast Guard claims they are testing it and saying it's safe. I know for a fact they are not testing it and we watched and heard C130s fly every night in July."

There is a clear pattern that VOO workers in all four states are consistently reporting:

• VOO workers identify the oil.
• They are then sent elsewhere by someone higher up the chain of command.
• Dispersants are later applied by out-of-state contractors in Carolina Skiffs (usually at night), or aircraft are used, in order to sink the oil.
• The oil "appears" gone and, therefore, no additional action is taken.

"There are surfers coming in with oil on them," Yerkes continued, "There are divers telling us it's on the bottom. We have VOO workers coming in after finding oil three inches thick atop the water as of last week and they go back out there and it's gone."

"There are stories of people getting notes on their cars, verbal and phone threats. I don't want to become one of those people. I'm trying to heighten my profile so they don't want to mess with me," Yerkes added. "I want the truth to come out so the public knows. I'm trying to make BP and the government come out and tell the facts instead of lying to the public about what is going on. I want to know how much dispersants they are using, where all the oil is and the effects these are having on all of us. Somebody is lying and we want the truth."