Heedlessly Hijacking Content

By DAVID CARR

Published: June 27, 2010

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal was not the only one who had a tough week at the office.

Last Monday, the word got out that Rolling Stone had a stunning piece about General McChrystal, in which he and his aides were critical of the White House. It’s the kind of scoop that thrills magazine editors, and no doubt they couldn’t wait to get their issue on the stands.

The problem was, nobody else could wait either. On Tuesday morning, a PDF of the piece the magazine had lovingly commissioned, edited, fact-checked, printed and distributed, was posted in its entirety on not one but two Web sites, for everyone to read without giving Rolling Stone a dime.

It was a clear violation of copyright and professional practice, and it amounted to taking money out of a competitor’s pocket. What crafty guerrilla site or bottom-feeder would do such a thing?

Turns out it was Time.com and Politico, both well-financed, reputable news media organizations, that blithely stepped over the line and took what was not theirs.

Both companies said that a frenzy involving a significant national issue was under way and that because Rolling Stone itself did not post the article on its site, they took matters into their own hands. Each said that when Rolling Stone protested, it was taken down, and that when the magazine put up the piece at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, their sites linked to that instead.

Content-makers had a rough week across the board. A federal judge granted summary judgment to Google, whose subsidiary, YouTube, had been sued by Viacom for $1 billion for copyright infringement. Judge Louis Stanton of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that even though thousands of clips of Viacom shows had been uploaded to the site, YouTube was shielded from damage claims because of “safe harbor” provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Google was busy elsewhere, filing an amicus brief in a New York case against an aggregator called Theflyonthewall.com, for its appropriation of proprietary bank research. Lawyers for Google, along with Twitter, asked a federal appeals court to reverse a decision upholding the so-called hot news doctrine, which gives the publishers of up-to-the-minute news the sole rights to that content. They called that doctrine obsolete.

News organizations, including The New York Times, The Associated Press, Gannett and others, filed a brief of their own in the case, suggesting that, “unless generalized free-riding on news originators’ efforts is restrained, originators will be unable to recover their costs of news gathering and publication, the incentive to engage in the news business will be threatened and the public will ultimately have fewer sources of original news.”

In the Rolling Stone case, it wasn’t tech companies arguing for the right to appropriate content, but content-makers themselves.

The magazine delivered an advance copy to The A.P. on Monday afternoon (many magazines try to promote coming articles that way) with some restrictions. When The A.P. article ran with some highlights and excerpts, other news outlets, including networks and major newspapers, asked for a copy. Politico and Time Inc. did not receive copies from Rolling Stone directly.

Some party, probably a news outlet seeking comment, gave copies to both the subject and the White House — a pretty naughty move in and of itself. And by some point on Tuesday morning, the Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings had become a piece of electronic samizdat, passed around and, eventually, published.

Several commentators suggested that Rolling Stone brought this on itself by not immediately publishing the McChrystal article on its own site (the magazine had planned to publish online but on its own schedule).

“That’s like saying, ‘She had it coming,’ ” Eric Bates, executive editor of Rolling Stone, said in an interview on Thursday. “The decision about when to publish our material is ours and ours alone. It was completely inappropriate.”

Reached by e-mail on a plane, Jim VandeHei, executive editor and a founder of Politico, suggested that the imperatives of the news cycle superseded questions of custody. “Our reporters got the article from sources with no restrictions,” he wrote. “It was being circulated and widely discussed among insiders, and our team felt readers should see what insiders were reading and reacting to. Rolling Stone raised a reasonable objection once they posted the story, so we quickly agreed to link to their URL.”

Time Inc. is in the print magazine business, and Ann Moore, its chief executive, has been a vigorous public defender of copyright. Last year, in an interview with The Telegraph of London, she said, “Who started this rumor that all information should be free, and why didn’t we challenge this when it first came out?”

The folks running Time.com apparently missed the memo, but they are now in receipt of its message.

“Time.com posted a PDF of the story to help separate rumor from fact at the moment this story of immense national interest was hitting fever pitch and the actual piece was not available,” a spokeswoman for Time wrote in an e-mail message. “We always had the intention of taking it down as soon as Rolling Stone made any element of the story publicly available, and we did. It was a mistake; if we had it do over again, we would only post a headline and an abstract.”

(A spokeswoman for Ms. Moore said Ms. Moore believed it was a mistake and that it would not happen again.)

Publishing a PDF of somebody else’s work is the exact opposite of fair use: these sites engaged in a replication of a static electronic document with no links to the publication that took the risk, commissioned the work and came up with a story that tilted the national conversation. The technical, legal term for what they did is, um, stealing.

Media organizations can file all the briefs they want about protecting their work product from free-riders and insurgent hordes of digital pilot fish, but once they break their own rules and start feeding on one another, the game is sort of over.

These were decisions made in the midst of a white-hot news cycle, and perhaps cooler heads will prevail the next time around. But if some of the biggest names in the business are not above cut-and-paste journalism when it suits their needs, how can they point a finger at others?

“This is not about our slow-footedness on the Web, but our right to publish on a schedule we chose. To me, this was really a transitional moment,” said Mr. Bates of Rolling Stone. “We’ve had fan sites that have published the text of some stories, but what these two big media organizations did was really off the charts. They took something that was in a prepublished form, sent out to other media organizations with specific restrictions, and just put it up.”

 

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;
twitter.com/carr2n

Brooklyn’s Finest | Film Review

June 17, 2010 by Hugo Salvaterra  
Filed under Film, Reviews

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The director of Training Day trades L.A.’s warmth and light for the cold darkness of New York City. Photography adjusts aptly as Brooklyn’s Finest is shot with absolute honesty and no artificial gloss. The rawness only strengthens the plot – much like The Dark Knight did, but with a much bigger budget. Antoine Fuqua is formulaic casting his directorial spells and he should be so – if he wants to establish himself as an identity director, Spike Jonze, Michael Mann, Scorscese, Terrance Malick and Terry Gilliam all have their little idiosyncrasies. He should fight for his.

Fuqua is a humanist in the sense that his movies make you reflect in the condition of society, society versus the individual and how slim the line between good and evil is. His tools of choice tend to be masterfully picked flawed protagonists whose lives fall under the category of heroes and villains simultaneously – anti-heroes if you will – leading his concoction of slowly brewed story-telling. Paired with a consistently fantastic choice of actors [even in the detail of the extras] and “keeping it real” scripts, these are Fuqua’s trademark weapons from Training Day to Tears Of The Sun to King Arthur – but it’s in the Crime genre he really excels and where we can find his best work.

Criticism that Brooklyn’s Finest is a copy of Training Day is beyond unfair; it’s dumb. They are alike in the whole spectrum of his directorial identity – but it stops there. If there’s any handicap in the movie at all, it is instead the fact that it’s slow-burner, focusing more on narrative and the hard choices people have to make in America right now amidst economic despair and mountainous responsibilities. The action was clearly sacrificed for the sake of dramatic poetry.

The focus on “the actions men make and its consequences” is told incredibly, spiralling Magnolia/Crash style making it three movies wrapped up in one thematically through police/crime scenarios. Intersecting only briefly, the intensity culminates placing the three protagonists in a life and death situation: Don Cheadle persues revenge, Ethan Hawke greed and Richard Gere the cowardly broken man, redemption.

The build-up towards the punch-line is the highlight and the novelty of this crime/good cop-bad cop action drama genre. Heat is a good comparison – but where it excels in action and cinematic awe it lacks in substance, precisely the contrary to Brooklyn’s Finest take your pick.

The genre has repeatedly overdosed but somehow always manages to amaze and make us run for a quick fix – and it always will when done in this superior fashion. Essentially for the same reason people still read the bible nowadays, the problems it tackles persist making their existence pertinent. In this genre from Serpico to Goodfellas, very few inspire you morally. This one tells the tale of the importance of decisions and how we are all fallible and noble given the circumstance.

Antoine is a classic film maker, clearly interested in truth rawness and the power of storytelling . This movie paints a real picture of America, particularly New York. It shows us Lady Liberty’s arm still holds the torch but it has a black eye and her dress has holes, contrary to the festival of futility and emptiness recent movies in this city have portrayed. I see Fuqua as a sort of potential ‘Black Scorsese’ – I only hope his love of genuine cinema doesn’t shadow commercial appeal to a point he is unable to reach the status he deserves. So far the balance is promising.

–Hugo Salvaterra

Brooklyn’s Finest is in UK cinemas now.

TRAILER

Afro-German vocalist Joy Denalane

Joy Denalane - Sometimes Love

Music video by Joy Denalane performing Sometimes Love. (C) 2007 Nesola GmbH

Joy Denalane - Lover Man - Billie Holiday-Song

Joy Denalane - Geh Jetzt

Music video by Joy Denalane performing Geh jetzt. (C) 2002 Sony Music Entertainment (Germany) GmbH & Co. KG/Four Music/Columbia

Joy Denalane - Im Ghetto von Soweto (Auntie's House)

Music video by Joy Denalane performing Im Ghetto von Soweto (Auntie's House). (C) 2003 Sony Music Entertainment (Germany) GmbH & Co. KG/Four Music/Columbia

Music Intervention: Snoop Dogg, Please Be Gangsta Again!

By Tambay, on June 25th, 2010

Some Friday humor for ya… In defense of Snoop Dogg, the brotha’s gotta stay busy, current, and keep expanding his brand. So, even if it means an appearance on a daytime soap opera, so be it. C.R.E.A.M! But this was still funny though

2010 RRofihe Trophy
For an unpublished short story
(up to 5,000 words)
Winner Receives:
$500 cash
Trophy
Publication in Open City
Judged by Rick Rofihe
2010 Contest Assistant: Carolyn Wilsey
Carolyn Wilsey has read fiction for Esquire and Swink

Guidelines
--Stories should be typed, double-spaced, on 8 1/2 x 11 paper with the author’s name and contact information on the first page and name and story title on the upper right corner of remaining pages.
--Submissions must be postmarked by October 15, 2010
--Limit one submission per author
--Author must not have been previously published in Open City
--Mail submissions to RRofihe, 270 Lafayette Street, Suite 1412, New York, NY 10012
--Enclose self addressed stamped business envelope to receive names of winner and honorable mentions
--All manuscripts are non-returnable and will be recycled.
--Reading fee is $10. Check or money order payable to RRofihe

Rick Rofihe is the author of FATHER MUST, a collection of short stories published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Grand Street, Open City, Swink, Unsaid, and on epiphanyzine.com, slushpilemag.com, and fictionaut.com. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, SPY, and The East Hampton Star, and on mrbellersneighborhood.com. A recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award, he has taught MFA writing at Columbia University. He currently teaches privately in New York City, and is an advisor to the Vilcek Foundation for their 2011 prizes in the field of literature. Rick is the editor of the new online literary journal, anderbo.com.

Over the Edge New Writer of the Year: 2010 Competition

 

2010 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition sponsored by Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop & Michael D. Higgins TD

In 2010 Over The Edge is continuing its exciting annual creative writing competition. The competition is open to both poets and fiction writers. The total prize money is €1,000. The best fiction entry will win €300. The best poetry entry will win €300. One of these will then be chosen as the overall winner and will receive an additional €400, giving the overall winner total prize money of €700 and the title Over The Edge New Writer of The Year 2010. The 2010 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year will be a Featured Reader at a reading to be scheduled in Galway City Library in Winter 2010/11. Salmon Poetry will read without prejudice a manuscript submitted to them by the winner in the poetry category.

Entries should be sent to Over The Edge, New Writer of the Year competition, 3 Carbry Road, Newcastle, Galway, Ireland with an accompanying SAE. Entries will be judged anonymously, so do not put your name on your poem(s) or story. Put your contact details on a separate sheet.

Criteria: fiction of up to three thousand words, three poems of up to forty lines, or one poem of up to one hundred lines. Multiple entries are acceptable but each must be accompanied by a fee. The fee for one entry is €10. The fee for multiple entries is €7.50 per entry e.g. two entries will cost €15, three entries €22.50 and so on. Fee payable by cheque or money order to Over The Edge. To take part you must be at least sixteen years old by September 1st 2010 and not have a book published or accepted for publication in that genre. Chapbooks excepted. Entries must not have been previously published or be currently entered in any other competition.

The closing date is Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010. A longlist will be announced in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010. A shortlist will be announced at the Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library on Thursday, August 26th. The winners will be announced at the Over The Edge reading in Galway City Library on Thursday, September 30th, 2010.

This year’s competition judge is James Martyn. James is from Galway where he is a member of The Talking Stick Writing Workshop. James writes both fiction and poetry. He has had work broadcast on both RTE and BBC and won the Listowel Writers Week Originals Short Story Competition. His work has appeared in The Cúirt Journal, West 47, Books Ireland, Crannóg, TheSunday Tribune, The Stinging Fly and The Shop. He was shortlisted for a Hennessy Award in 2006. He was shortlisted for the Francis McManus award in both 2007 and 2008 and for The William Trevor International Short Story Competition in 2007. His first collection of poetry, Shedding Skin, has just been published by Arlen House.

For further details contact Over The Edge on 087-6431748, e-mail over-the-edge-openreadings@hotmail.com

 

Submit    

Viz. Inter-Arts welcomes work in most media and genres including but not limited to poetry, prose, visuals, performance-writing, essays, videos or any combination thereof.  We plan to include a collection of short inter-arts videos.  We are especially interested in trans-genre work and intermedia, including but not limited to prose poetry, visual-text, collage,  etc.

Please familiarize yourself with our current theme, “Interventions,” and Mission, then browse our Archive to become acquainted with the publication before submitting work.
E-mail inquiries and work to the editor:
viz@ucsc.edu
Subject:  Viz.

Submissions due:  July 15, 2010 (though we would very much appreciate earlier submissions).

Payment:  One copy.

Please send a follow-up e-mail within a few weeks to ensure your work has been received.
Though rare, “junk mail” has been known to perform unwanted interventions!

Videos: We are seeking short inter-arts videos relating to the theme of Interventions.
Please send DVD to address below and query editor with any questions.

If you are submitting a video, or if your work cannot be e-mailed, please mail to

Roxi Power Hamilton, Editor
Viz. Inter-Arts
Kresge College, 1156 High Street
University of California
Santa Cruz, CA.  95064

Please include a brief cover letter and a SASE if you want your material returned.

Send previously unpublished work unless you are able to secure permission from your previous publisher to republish.  Simultaneous submissions are ok if you inform us.

Text: E-mail Word attachments preferred.  Length:  approximately 2-10 pages, though decisions will be made on an individual basis.

Images: Black and white preferred. E-mail low-res digital files (.jpg or .gif) to viz@ucsc.edu. High resolution files will be requested if accepted for publication: 300 dpi files and under 1mb per image uncompressed. Images should be sent in .jpg, .tiff, or .eps format. If your .eps image includes type, please ensure that all fonts are included and outlined.

June 11, 2010

Who Knows It Feels It

By Robert Christgau

 

As Chris Salewicz's Bob Marley: The Untold Story isn't the first to report, many human beings worldwide—he cites Hopis, Maoris, Indonesians, and of course Africans—regard Bob Marley as a "Redeemer figure coming to lead this planet out of confusion," and some consider him nothing less than the literal second coming of Jesus Christ. Say what you will about the adoration accorded John Coltrane, John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Um Kulthum—this is another order of iconicity. Say what you will about the religious dimensions of pop fandom—Marley's Rastafarianism renders the metaphor literal. These mystifications bode ill for Marley's biographers, who number at least 15 or 20 by now. Take for instance Stephen Davis, who closes with two triple-indented lines: "Bob Marley lives. He's a god./'History proves.'" And Davis's bio is one of the good ones.

 

Maybe it's the ganja—well, definitely it's the ganja, with its built-in third eye, its aura of secret significance. More fundamentally, though, it's the transport, the release—the suprarational rewards music lovers love music for, which Marley claims are owed solely to the divinity of the Ethiopian autocrat Haile Selassie. Who are we to gainsay him, especially we white Babylonians? He has bestowed upon us this feeling of transcendence, and not only that, articulated a political consciousness that needs articulating. "I remember on the slave ship/How they brutalized our very souls/Today they say that we are free/Only to be chained in poverty" might not turn many heads at a socialist scholars conference, but by pop standards it's a smart, blunt, hard-headed augury of militance. As a result, many all too readily suspend their disbelief when the politics turn out to herald twistier "reasonings," as Rastas call their stoned biblical bull sessions.

 

So when I noticed Salewicz embellishing his first-chapter account of Marley's fatal cancer with matriarch Cedella Booker's conspiracy theories and backup singer Judy Mowatt's lightning-bolt premonition, I said uh-oh. But these were feints. Davis's Bob Marley is wrenching on Marley's final months, Timothy White's Catch a Fire provides unmatched blow-by-blow on the Marley estate, and both bring their own details to the life story proper. But Salewicz's book is faster, fuller, and fairer than either. It's faster because through plenty of incident it sticks to the story, a welcome improvement on Salewicz's bloated 2007 Joe Strummer bio. It's fuller due not to Salewicz's relatively late and limited personal contact with his subject, but to the spadework of the 11 other biographers he cites, the low-lying fruit he picked up during two years of living in Jamaica, and what looks from here like some plain old digging. As for fairer, well, Salewicz admires Bob Marley deeply without deifying him. That's what I call reasoning.

 

Marley was born in 1945 to the 18-year-old daughter of a locally prominent black family in the Jamaican high country and a much older white bureaucrat who married the mother but barely knew the son. He moved to Kingston's Trench Town ghetto at 12 and cut his first record at 17. For the next decade, he and fellow Wailers Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston grew in skill and Jah love as they negotiated the rough and tough Jamaican music business. Advised by a motley crew of thuggish Kingston minimoguls, devious Rastafarian elders, and small-time American bizzers, twice joining his mother in Delaware to replenish his capital in working-class jobs, he and the Wailers were the biggest thing in Jamaica by 1970. They performed in the States, undertook an abortive Swedish film project, and ended up in London. And in early 1972 they connected with Island Records' Chris Blackwell, the great white record man who staked them to the breakthrough album Catch a Fire.

 

For most of his fans, Marley equals his Island output, and understandably so. Not only does it remain music of the highest quality, it was the engine of the cultural, spiritual, and political quest that led to his deification—his "legend," to cite the title of the Island compilation that has poured from the dorm rooms of millions of stoners since 1984. Nevertheless, this output reflects only a quarter of his tragically foreshortened 36-year-life, for the previous quarter of which Marley was just as prolific. More than White and much more than Davis, though in less musical detail than the scrupulous academic Jason Toynbee (whose study is entitled, what else, Bob Marley), Salewicz respects this truth without tackling the monumental job of codifying it. Near as I can count, the 1970 Jamaican hit "Duppy Conqueror," later re-recorded for Catch a Fire's ruder, stronger follow-up Burnin', has appeared on some 300 Marley and reggae comps.

 

The first disc-plus of Tuff Gong's Songs of Freedom box is a good introduction to Marley's strictly Jamaican period, overlapping only slightly with Sanctuary's highly recommended The Essential Bob Marley & the Wailers and barely at all with Heartbeat's earlier, weaker One Love at Studio One 1964-66. But none of these include "Nice Time," "Treat Her Right," "The World Is Changing," or "Black Progress," all of which Salewicz tipped me to, or the Toynbee faves "I'm Still Waiting" and "Jailhouse," not to mention "Milk Shake and Potato Chips," a touching trifle I streamed because I liked the title. There's not all that much sense to be made of a discography that embraces half a dozen producers, a hazily documented myriad backup musicians, and material ranging from "Black Progress" to "Milk Shake and Potato Chips." But dip in and many things become clear.

 

As a teen, Bob would do anything for a hit, including covers of "And I Love Her" and "What's New Pussycat." He loved American soul music but wasn't always so great at it. He was militant early, as on 1968's "Bus Dem Shut (Pyaka)," "bus" meaning "bust" and "pyaka" meaning "liar." He was on top or ahead of every rhythmic shift in Jamaican pop and several elsewhere. He shared with certain country songwriters the ability to express deep content in simple language, both personal (think Hank Williams) and social (Merle Haggard). And most important in the long run, he had the gift of tune, devising songs so compelling that many from his 1969-71 flowering were inevitably reprised on Island: "Concrete Jungle," "Slave Driver," "Small Axe," "Trench Town Rock," "Lively Up Yourself," "Kaya."

 

There are purists who claim Marley's music went north once he signed with Island, or broke with Tosh and Livingston, or enlisted American guitarist Al Anderson. But Salewicz isn't among them. Like most observers, he sees Blackwell as an essentially benign force who helped Marley achieve "the international sound we were expecting to have"—a quote not from Marley but from Livingston, who felt so ill at ease in Babylon that he rejected the touring life for a sporadically inspired solo career as Bunny Wailer. Marley's internationalism was better assimilated in Britain, where Jamaicans dominated the small black population, than in the U.S., where, as Marley knew all too well, a much larger black population preferred competing musics of its own. A cordial but ultimately rather private man, Marley drove himself hard, perfecting his stagecraft and writing a song a day as he studied scripture, pondered politricks, acted the don, played soccer barefoot, bedded innumerable women, and fathered what Salewicz reckons as 13 children by eight of them including his wife Rita, though estimates do vary.

"Dear Dad," by Ky-Mani Marley

Unsurprisingly, Marley's choices and circumstances embroiled him in contradictions. I hesitate to say his insatiable womanizing is the least of them, especially since some of his kids had it so much better than others—his son Ky-Mani's Dear Dad is a much better book about growing up in a drug-dealing culture than about music or his dear dad. But at least it's a familiar pattern. Less so the man of peace who delivered the occasional beatdown and hired ropey-haired toughs who promoted his records by delivering many more. And what are we to make of the Marley who Salewicz reports watched the private executions of three men who'd tried to assassinate him shortly before his 1976 Smile Jamaica concert—a comeuppance that came down a week or so after his 1978 One Love Peace Concert, which Salewicz unconvincingly judges "one of the key civilising moments of the twentieth century" because Marley got two warring politicians to grasp hands onstage for an awkward spell? But I was in fact more shocked by the famously generous philanthropist dropping 35 grand on a Miami dinner with a daughter of the Libyan oil minister, 1953 Chateau Lafite Rothschild included—and more saddened by Salewicz's account of Marley's embattled 1980 visit to a newly independent Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe's cohort was already proving more autocratic than Ras Tafari's.

 

To repeat, it was righteous of Salewicz to tell these tales. But that's only because they don't turn his book into a debunk. If it's foolish to deify Bob Marley, it's far more foolish to dismiss him, in effect blaming him for not living up to the magnitude of his achievement. Praise Peter and Bunny all you want—they deserve it. But credit Marley's reservations: "Is like them don't want understand mi can't just play music fe Jamaica alone. Can't learn that way. Mi get the most of mi learning when mi travel and talk to other people." And recognize in that one-world bromide the seriousness of his cultural-spiritual-political ambitions. Salewicz reports that the assassins just mentioned were armed by the CIA, while others blame the right-wing Jamaican Labour Party. Probably not much difference, and either way you can trust his enemies to know his power. Most of the 14 million Americans who've bought the calculatedly anodyne Legend are in it for the herb. But Marley is very different for people of color such as the Tanzanian street vendors of Dar es Salaam's Maskani district, one of many Third World subcultures to integrate his songs and image into a counterculture of resistance.

 

Peter and Bunny wouldn't have brought Marley near such a consummation. Nor would the rhythmic muscle and dubwise byways of Lee "Scratch" Perry, who the purists reasonably account Marley's best and toughest producer. In fact, it worked pretty much the opposite. The gunmen who invaded Marley's Kingston compound in 1976 managed to crease Bob's arm and Rita's skull. After playing the concert in bandages two days later, the two fled to England, where Marley took musical vengeance not by screaming bloody murder but by fulfilling his crossover dreams with heightened understanding, focus, and subtlety. In six months he recorded all of Exodus, which Time magazine hyperbolically declared the greatest album of the century in 1999, and the equally blessed Kaya, which leads with the languorous "Easy Skanking" and climaxes with "Runnin' Away" and "Time Will Tell"—this normally unalienated visionary's haunted meditation on the confusions of fame followed by a promise of justice no tougher than anything else on his gentlest albums sonically and his most acute aesthetically. Exodus and Kaya opened the door on a three-year period in which he cemented his international fame while fighting the cancer he might have beaten if Rastafarianism looked more kindly on Babylonian medicine, amputation in particular—the disease began in a long-troublesome big toe he reinjured playing soccer barefoot.

 

Marley's big Kingston concerts didn't prevent Jamaica from turning into the most gun-ridden state in the western hemisphere. Lee "Scratch" Perry relocated to Switzerland. The Maskani district has been plowed under to make room for a bank. And reggae has evolved into a beat-dominated music of crotch-first sexism and toxic homophobia that's far livelier than the Bob-worshipping hippie and Afrocentric crap that surfaces wherever spliffs are smoked or tourists go dancing. In short, Bob Marley has yet to remake the world—a failing he shares with just about everyone else who's tried. But that doesn't mean he hasn't changed it. Gandhi and King and Mandela didn't leave utopias behind either, and unlike them, Marley was merely a musician no matter how much praise he proffered Jah. His music is as firmly ensconced in the pop pantheon as the Beatles' or James Brown's, and it signifies a remade world even if that doesn't make it so.

 

A Redeemer? We don't play that. "Redemption Song"? That we play. "Won't you help to sing, these songs of freedom/Cause all I ever had/Redemption songs, redemption songs/Redemption songs."

 

 

ABOUT THE COLUMNIST

Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide column appears monthly at msn.com. He is a critic at All Things Considered, writes for the National Arts Journalism Program's ARTicles blog, teaches in NYU's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, and has published five books. His highly searchable website is robertchristgau.com.

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Nnedi's Wahala Zone Blog

The adventures of writer Nnedi Okorafor and her daughter Anyaugo Okorafor. Companion to the nnedi.com website.

 

Friday, June 25, 2010

The Witch Strikes Back

 

 

 

 

I'm going to nip this in the bud right now.

 

Let me preface by saying that most Africans have been very supportive of my work. Even one of my favorite authors, the legendary Ngugi wa Thiong’o, has been cheering for me from that lofty pedestal reserved for Great African writers. All this support is priceless to me. I send love right back to you all. 

Nonetheless, since winning the Wole Soyinka Prize for my first novel, Zahrah the Windseeker, I continue to receive chastising emails from Africans (in this case, my definition of “African” is: African folk who currently live on or have recently immigrated from the African continent) who have a problem with what I write, the juju I play with within my stories (most of which is based on some real stuff), the cultures I mix, and the traditions I often address. 

This year, I’ve been called a witch (amusu!), a heathen, some Ghanaian guy said that he was sure I was possessed by something evil and ungodly. One Nigerian guy (whom I think was a priest or something) said something like, “Where is your husband? I need to speak to him immediately! Or have you eaten him? Witch!” Can you imagine?! 

Of late, the focus has been on the fact that I addressed female circusison in Who Fears Death. It started at my first book signing in Michigan (which I blogged about earlier this month), but it's continued with angry emails from others who hear about the book. 

Since the anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death is on my mind right now, a scene from Thriller comes to mind. Remember the part where he’s changed into a werewolf and dramatically cries, “GO AWAY!!! ARGH!!!!” I can relate. 

If you don't recall, here's the video. The moment I speak of is at 2:25 minutes. 

 

 

Who Fears Death is a story about a woman who has to fight to be what she is. There is a herd comprised of camels, hawks, antelopes and wild dogs. There’s a great masquerade with a sick sense of humor and its raffia is laden with dangerous needles. There is a trickster house. There's a love story. And there are dragons...sort of. Who Fears Death looks reality right in the face but it’s not some simpleminded diatribe against female circumcision and African cultures as a whole. THAT would be boring. 

Before I continue, let me stop calling it “female circumcision”. This word implies that it is the equivalent of male circumcision. It is certainly is not. The equivalent for men/boys would be cutting off the entire penis but saving a sperm sample for the sake of procreation. And along with the man not fully enjoying sex, have him experience pain during sex, too. Yeah, that’s about the right. “Female genital mutilation” works as a better phrase but some feel this is a biased way of referring to it. So let’s go with “female genital cutting”. For those unclear on the practice, see here. It is practiced in many parts of Africa and the Middle East. It’s also performed in the West. 

In my novel, Who Fears Death, there is a scene where some girls are…cut. In this future world, the mythos behind the practice has been forgotten but a girl is still expected to have the cliterectomy done. If it is not done, then the girl is not considered marriageable. Still, no girl is forced. It is her choice to have it done. ;-). Clean medical tools are used and the girls receive proper medical care afterwards. In other words, in this African future, girls do not die from this practice as they do today. The scene strips the practice down to exactly what it is. 

Back in the early stages of this novel, I workshopped this scene in my novel writing class during my PhD program. My class was all white, from what I recall. After reading it, two women became particularly upset with me. During the critque, I sat there quiet as they accused me of defending female genital cutting. I guess they wanted me to demonize the culture and shout “Barbaric! Barbaric people! Look at what they are doing to their girls and women!” Over the years, the circumcision scene in Who Fears Death has not changed much. So now here I am being accused of the opposite, publically disrespecting traditional African culture. 

 

 

Some points: 

1. In many cultures of the world, women damage themselves in order to appeal to men (which translates to “finding a mate”). And parents damage their girls to make them marriageable. In American society, much of this “mutilation” is psychological (though plenty is physical) but no less painful or harmful. However, plenty of people are writing about all this. I don’t feel enough are writing about female genital cutting. 

2. I am Igbo. And though I’ve been lucky to have no family members scarred by the practice (as far as I know, at least), female genital cutting is traditionally practiced amongst the Igbos, though it is on its way out (See more on that here). In this way, the issue is rather close to me. 

3. I am a very proud of my Igbo-ness. However, culture is alive and it is fluid. It is not made of stone nor is it absolute. Some traditions/practices will be discarded and some will be added, but the culture still remains what it is. It is like a shape-shifting octopus that can lose a tentacle but still remain a shape-shifting octopus (yes, that image is meant to be complicated). Just because I believe that aspects of my culture are problematic does not mean I am “betraying” my people by pointing out those problems. 

Twice now, I’ve been asked (once at my book signing and once in a rather angry email) if I’d ever been to a circumcision ceremony in the Middle East or Africa. At the book signing it was implied, in the email it was flat out declared, that if I had not been present at one of these ceremonies, then I had no right to speak on the issue.

First of all, I speak about what I choose to speak about. Let’s see you try to stop me. Secondly, if writers only wrote about what they’d experienced, then few people would write about wizards and unicorns. Thirdly, let’s be honest here, you can lace the practice of female genital cutting with whatever elaborate stories, myths and traditions you want. What it all boils down to (and I believe the creators of this practice KNEW this even a thousand years ago) is the removal of a woman’s ability to properly enjoy the act of sex. Again, this is about the control and suppression of women. And I do NOT have to be right there between a little helpless girl’s legs to know this to be true.

I understand why one would be defensive about the way African cultures and practices are portrayed. One need only look at the media and the way Africa is presented within it. One need only take a glance at the point of view of world history. But don’t hate the messenger, hate the message. I’ve got Africa’s back. Always. First and foremost. So please, with all due respect, back off. And again I say, read the book. It’s a great story, if I do say so myself.

I leave you all with some words from another of my idols, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. This isn’t directly on the topic but it’s thought provoking:

 

 

 

Posted by Nnedi Okorafor, PhD at 8:42 PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gaza factories remain paralysed despite Israel pledge to ease blockade

 

After three years of deadlock, Palestinian businesses are hoping for a better future. But some fear that the new Israeli trade rules could actually mean a fresh squeeze. Donald Macintyre reports from Gaza City

 

Saturday, 26 June 2010

Saleh Jadallah

Salama al-Kishawi in the Gaza Juice Factory, Gaza City

• enlarge

The chilled Tropika that Salama al-Kishawi proudly serves guests in his office tastes, unusually for a processed Juice, of real oranges – especially refreshing on a 35C midsummer day in Gaza. But the flagship product of the Gaza Juice Factory has a significance that goes way beyond its taste.

 

The factory employs 65 workers and is one of very few industries to function despite the siege of Gaza imposed by Israel after Hamas seized full control of the territory three years ago this month.

How long it continues to function may well depend on just how the deal easing the Israeli blockade announced last Sunday works in practice. The future of Tropika has become a litmus test for Gaza's real economy.

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In diplomatic terms, the deal negotiated between Israel and international envoy Tony Blair was a breakthrough. Israel is still refusing – apart from internationally supervised exceptions – to allow in anything, including cement badly needed for rebuilding bombed out homes, which it deems Hamas could use for military purposes.

But the announcement signified a real change of policy: in theory at least, all other goods will, for the first time in three years, be allowed to enter.

But nearly a week after the announcement, the people of Gaza, while content about the prospect of an increase in consumer goods from Israel, are demanding that the much more fundamental promise in the agreement, to allow the expansion of "economic activity", will also be honoured.

"If consumer items are allowed to come through the crossings, but at the same time we don't allow materials and the means of production to enter, that will have a negative effect," said Amr Hamad, Gaza director of the Palestinian Federation of Industries.

The Gaza Juice Factory, which is in the eastern suburb of Shajaia, in full view of the Israeli border, is a perfect illustration of the problem. Its neatly tended gardens and the bustle of forklift trucks loading the newly bundled bottles on to vans for shipment to local supermarkets testify that this is –unusually for Gaza – a going concern.

Their are tracks left by the Israeli tanks that smashed through the green metal perimeter fence during the military offensive of 2008-9, and the remains of what company boss Ayed abu Ramadan thinks must have been an Apache missile have been hung on the front wall as a memento to everything the factory has been through.

Its history is inextricably woven with that of the territory's turbulent and blood-splashed politics over the last 15 years.

An imposing plaque reminds visitors that it was opened by Yasser Arafat just two days after his triumphant return to Gaza from exile in Tunis in July 1994. The factory became a success, exporting to Egypt, the US, Europe, and Israel itself for more than a decade.

In 2006, however, the exports ground to a halt. Hamas had won the elections, the land crossings were mostly closed. By then Gaza's famous citrus groves had been almost destroyed by the Israeli military during its frequent incursions since the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000.

"Here in Gaza we have always had the best oranges in the world," said Mr Kishawi. "Now most of it has gone."

Yet the 87p bottles of Tropika on the shelves of Gaza stores today are a testament to the company's remarkable adaptability. Its managers diversified into Tropika, but also strawberry and tomato juice, along with ketchup, jam, and a popular range of candied fruits.

From being a 100 per cent exporter, the company now caters 100 per cent for the home market. And although it would have greatly preferred to buy its raw materials much more cheaply from Israel, it was obliged by the closure to bring in bottles, packaging, flavouring and colouring additives through the tunnels from Egypt, paying what Mr Ramadan delicately calls the high "subway tolls" demanded by the tunnelers to pay their own costs – including levies to the Hamas de facto government.

Scarcity of fruit was the first problem. "Last year I needed 9,000 tonnes of citrus to meet demand," said Mr Kishawi, "but I was only able to find 1,000 tonnes."

Oranges from Israel were half of what they cost in Gaza but only eating – as opposed to juicing – oranges were allowed in by the Israeli authorities.

To underline the Alice in Wonderland economics of Gaza it was also possible to import from Egypt, through the tunnels, identical concentrate to that which it used to export to Egypt. "In June 2007 I was selling concentrate at $1,350 (£900) a ton but now it costs me $4,000 a ton to bring in," explained Mr Kishawi. "Where is the competition in that?"

As if this wasn't enough, eighteen months later the factory suffered devastating damage from Israeli ground and air assaults during the 2008-9 offensive, which hit hundreds of industrial sites. The damage prompted Amr Hamad of the Federation of Industries to remark: "What [Israel] were not able to reach by the blockade, they have reached with their bulldozers."

The main tube in the juice factory's key evaporator, wrecked by a missile, was quickly repaired, but the huge, 2,000-tonne capacity freezer, along with its contents, was destroyed. Then, toward the end of last year, the firm hit another obstacle. It thought it had done a deal with Israeli suppliers to supply 500 tonnes of badly-needed grapefruit.

"But then, when they realised that it was going to a juice factory and not the supermarkets, they stopped the grapefruits coming in," said Mr Kishawi.

Two weeks ago, in the wake of the international outcry that followed the crisis over the pro-Palestinian flotillas, came the first stage of the easing of the embargo and, perversely, with it a fresh threat to Tropika. The company was happy to hear the blockade was being eased – anticipating that it would now be able to import from Israel much cheaper raw materials.

Instead, it found that it was facing new competition. For the first time in three years, Israel has permitted the entry of processed fruit juice – at the competitive price of five shekels (86p) a bottle. In a final irony (though its bosses are not sure how long this will last), the company, which is effectively owned by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and has a board of directors appointed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is now depending on a lifeline from the Hamas de facto government. It has issued a protectionist warning to traders not to order processed juice from Israel.

The company has already preemptively reduced Tropika's own price, from six to five shekels a bottle, and would have no problem competing with the Israeli product if it was also to import the much cheaper raw materials available in Israel. "If we have a truly open market we can compete with anybody, including Israel," says Mr Kishawi.

Underlining the present imbalance, however, the company's chief buyer, Haitham Kannan, says: "Israel can produce a bottle of juice for around 25 cents – which is what the plastic bottle alone costs us."

As his boss, Mr Ramadan, puts it: "This is like tying someone's hands up and telling him to get into the boxing ring. After everything we have been through – closure, war, shortages, it would be crazy if we lost the business now."

Yet the Gaza Juice Factory is still – for now – operating. More typical is the fate of the Aziz Jeans factory on the edge of the Jabalya, eerily silent now, four years after it was alive with the din of 100 employees stitching teenage fashion jeans for the Aziz family's appreciative Israeli business partner.

Able neither to import the fabric or, even more importantly, export the finished jeans, the firm, like many hundreds of others, came to an abrupt halt almost immediately the blockade began.

Its highly skilled workforce dispersed – "a lot", according to Aziz Aziz, on to the Hamas payroll. The last time The Independent was here, Mr Aziz had generated a modest income by assembling electric plugs – but the competition of ready-made plugs smuggled though the tunnels made this a hopeless task.

Mr Aziz says that if the big Karni cargo crossing terminal – through which he and his brothers used to import denim and export the finished garments – was re-opened, he would bring his sewing machines back out of storage and be ready to start the factory rolling in a week.

Mr Aziz is no friend of Hamas, and would like a change of government in Gaza. But he adds that by maintaining the blockade – including on exports – over the past three years, "Israel has to know that it is not besieging Hamas; it is besieging the people of Gaza".

That view is now the consensus in the international Quartet. Israel is still resisting, on security grounds, the reopening of Karni, relying instead on an expansion of the much more limited Kerem Shalom crossing's capacity.

Most experts are convinced that Karni will have to be reopened if any semblance of Gaza's previously productive manufacturing capacity can be restored.

Nevertheless, the promised expansion of Kerem Shalom would be a modest start if it happens – provided Israel is also ready to allow exports to resume.

Israel itself is facing conflicting pressures; the fourth anniversary yesterday of the incarceration of abducted sergeant Gilad Shalit, still being denied even Red Cross visits – on the one hand, and the prospect of more pro-Palestinian flotillas on the other.

But without a jolt for Gaza's collapsed economy, Israel risks being seen as using Gaza as a captive market for its consumer goods while doing little or nothing to get people back to work.

Sari Bashi, director of the Israeli human rights agency, Gisha, said this week she was "mildly encouraged" by the explicit mention of "economic activity" in this week's government statement, but warned that this would not happen "unless Karni is opened and exports are allowed".

She added: "Israel has to abandon its policy of economic warfare and accept that it has failed."

How the blockade is changing life in Gaza

The number of trucks bringing goods from Israel into the Gaza Strip each day has not yet increased, according to Palestinian coordinators, but the range of goods – including books and children's toys, long banned – has.

At Hazem Hasuna's supermaket in Gaza City's western Rimal district, Egyptian razors, smuggled in through tunnels, were summarily replaced on Thursday by Gillette Fusion razors legally imported from Israel. But the comprehensive range of smuggled goods has made some Gazans cynical about the new imports. "Nothing has really changed," said Mr Hasuna, 38, "People haven't been missing ketchup and mayonnaise [two of the newly permitted products]. The only real change will be if they start bringing in cement for reconstruction and what the factories need to give people work."

One of his customers, Rasha Farhat, 33, was asked by her Saudi-based relatives, who came to visit after the opening of the Rafah crossing this month, what she needed. "I told them 'nothing'." She added that, thanks to the tunnels, "we have never had as many products as we have now".

Up to a point. Although still active, the tunnels have shown a sharp drop in activity in the past two weeks as wholesalers wait to assess the new blacklist of security sensitive goods Israel has promised to substitute over the next week for its heavily restrictive "permitted" list as part of the new "liberalising" imports regime.

Acknowledging that Gazans have become used to "tunnel products" over the past three years, a prominent Gaza economist, who preferred not to be named, said: "Of course Israel is capable of saying one thing and then acting differently. We will have to wait to see what are the consequences of the new policy." But confessing that he had just filled his own car with Israeli diesel in preference to Egyptian, he added: "Palestinians have been receiving Israeli goods for 40 years. They regard products from Israel as extremely high quality compared with their Egyptian equivalents."