Blood Diamonds: Is Human Misery the Cost of Bling?

By Lawrence Watkins on May 25th 2010 1:46PM
Filed under: News

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Rappers talk about their "bling," and women lust for the brightest engagement ring they can get. Some people even wear diamonds in their teeth to show how much money they've got. Black Americans are dying to have the hottest diamonds around our necks, while other black people are literally dying to supply them.

In Africa, "blood diamonds" are intimately related to brutal conflicts throughout the continent, as groups use the diamond trade to finance civil and other wars that have resulted in the slaughter and disfigurement of millions.

The United States is the largest purchaser of diamonds. Each year, we buy 65 percent of the diamonds available on the open market -- and at a very high cost.

Rebel armies in Angola and Sierra Leone, for example, take over diamond mines once owned by the government and use diamond sales to finance their horrific goals. Groups such as Unita in Angola and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone are among the most prominent organizations to sell blood diamonds on the open market, according to Essence.com.

Over half a million civilians have been killed by landmines placed by groups such as these, and another 90,000 people have been maimed. Four million have been displaced as the result of African conflicts paid for by blood diamond purchases. Rebels supported by blood diamonds often chop off the limbs of innocent civilians, including young children. The United Nations placed an embargo on diamonds from Angola in 1998 to try to stop the violence. This has not stopped the flow of blood diamonds into the market however, since they can be difficult to distinguish from "clean" diamonds.

The diamond industry has finally started to act to stop this bloodshed, thanks to the threat of a world-wide boycott. The industry has agreed to create a coding system that allows the owner of a diamond to trace it back to the country of origin. Another company, Gemprint, has created a process that can store a unique image of a diamond on an international database, thus allowing it to be traceable. In America, U.S. Rep. Tony Hall has sponsored the CARAT Act, which is designed to control the diamond trade more carefully. Right now, you can ensure that you're not buying blood diamonds by asking for the diamond's certificate of origin whenever you buy one mined as part ofKimberley Process Certification Scheme.

By paying attention to where our diamonds are coming from, we can save thousands of lives. By eliminating our lust for diamonds completely, we can do even more to help ourselves and others by better spending our money. Africa needs our help. Funding wars with diamond purchases is a human rights abuse. 

Lawrence Watkins is the founder of Great Black Speakers. He is also the owner of speakers' bureaus dedicated to Hispanic speakers and Christian motivational speakers. His book 'Frame Your Future: 8 Principles to Effectively Focus on the Future and Not Dwell in the Past,' will be released in August. If you would like Lawrence's articles delivered directly to your e-mail, please click here.

 

The 'Blood Diamond' Resurfaces

By MICHAEL ALLEN

CAFUNFO, Angola—On paper, Angola is a poster child for the global effort to keep "blood diamonds" out of the world's jewelry stores.

International pressure helped end a vicious civil war a decade ago by strangling the ability of rebels to trade diamonds for weapons. Angola is now a leading member of the so-called Kimberley Process, an industry-wide effort to prevent commerce in rough diamonds by insurgent groups. Today, Angola is the world's fifth-largest diamond producer by value, and its gems are coveted for their size and purity.

But a visit to Angola's diamond heartland reveals that plenty of blood still spills over those precious stones. Here in the sprawling jungle of northeast Angola, a violent economy prevails in which thousands of peasant miners eke out a living searching for diamonds with shovels and sieves. Because they lack government permits, miners and their families say they are routinely beaten and shaken down for bribes by soldiers and private security guards—and, in extreme cases, killed.

Cutting to the Heart

View Slideshow

Seamus Murphy/VII Network for The Wall Street Journal

At an illegal mine near Angola's border with Congo, about 500 young miners, known in Portuguese as garimpeiros, have been digging deep into the earth for more than a year.

• More photos and interactive graphics

This sort of violence, which has made headlines in nearby Zimbabwe, is threatening to tear the Kimberley Process apart. Diamond retailers can ill afford more bad publicity about tainted stones. But many of Africa's diamond-producing nations are wary about any effort to beef up the industry's policing of human rights.

Around Angola's mines, tales of confrontation abound. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Linda Moisés da Rosa, 55 years old, denounced the killings of her two sons, both diamond miners. In September, she said, Angolan soldiers descended on a large mine near here to chase away diggers. When some refused to leave, she said, the soldiers caved in the mine, burying alive around 45 men, including her son Pereira Eduardo Antonio, 21. "These kids were stubborn," she said, adding that the soldiers said that the killings "should serve as a lesson to anyone who wants to come dig here again."

In February, she said, her oldest son, 33-year-old Tito Eduardo, the family's sole breadwinner, got into a dispute with private security guards at another mining site. She said the guards had agreed to let local diggers sift gravel for diamonds in exchange for around $30 a day. They accused her son of failing to pay the bribe, and when he argued back, she said, "they killed him with a machete."

Military officials didn't respond to requests for comment. Angola's secretary of state for human rights, António Bento Bembe, blames his nation's long civil war for creating a climate of abuse. "I know lots of these cases happen, and I know of many other cases you haven't heard of yet," he said in an interview in Luanda, Angola's capital. "It is urgent to cultivate a culture of human rights."

The issue has plunged the Kimberley Process into the worst crisis in its brief history. Born at a time of great bloodshed on the African continent, the 75-nation Kimberley Process was initially lauded for its commitment to human rights. Rebel movements had seized control of diamond regions in Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo and used the gems to finance marauding guerrilla armies. Facing a public-relations nightmare, world diamond companies agreed to buy rough stones only if they are certified by internationally recognized governments. The Kimberley Process says well over 99% of the world's rough-diamond trade is now "conflict-free."

But critics say there's a big loophole in that definition: It doesn't take into account human-rights abuses in diamond territory controlled by governments themselves. "The Kimberley Process cut the financial lifeline of rebels, but at the same time it gave legitimacy to corrupt governments that abuse their own people," says Rafael Marques, a human-rights activist who has worked extensively in northeastern Angola.

Much of the recent controversy is focused on Zimbabwe, where the group Human Rights Watch last year reported that government soldiers massacred over 200 people in a fight to control diamond fields in the east of the country, raped local women and press-ganged peasants into mining work. The Kimberley Process temporarily suspended exports from the area on the grounds that the turmoil was allowing undocumented stones to be smuggled into the world market. Last month, a monitor installed by the Kimberley Process recommended that the ban be lifted, kicking off a fierce debate. A Kimberley Process committee has been deliberating the recommendation and the issue will be taken up in a meeting of the entire group in Tel Aviv starting Monday.

Global Witness, a human-rights organization that helped conceive the Kimberley Process, called for Zimbabwe to be suspended from the group. "Thanks to the impunity and violence in Zimbabwe, blood diamonds are back on the international market," said Elly Harrowell, a Global Witness activist.

Jewelers are starting to worry that the bad publicity could spook consumers. Matthew Runci, chief executive of Jewelers of America, a trade group which represents jewelry chains from Tiffany & Co. to Zale Corp., says the Kimberley Process should either figure out a way to incorporate human-rights monitoring into its oversight of member countries or invite an outside organization to do it for them. "It's essential that the public's confidence in diamonds be maintained at a high level," he says. Once a diamond has been cut and polished, it's virtually impossible for the consumer to tell its country of origin.

Cecilia Gardner, a former New York federal prosecutor who serves as the general counsel of the World Diamond Council, says the Kimberley Process is a voluntary organization and isn't equipped to enforce human-rights compliance. "We don't have an army, we don't have a police force," she says.

In Angola, which far overshadows Zimbabwe in importance to the jewelry market, the Kimberley Process appears to have little appetite for human-rights issues. Last August, when a Kimberley Process peer-review team arrived to check the country's compliance procedures, Angolan forces were just mopping up a major operation to expel some 30,000 illegal Congolese miners from Angolan territory near here. According to a U.S. State Department report citing local media and nongovernmental organizations, military and police "arbitrarily beat and raped detainees" and forced them to march to the border without food or water. The government has denied committing abuses and says the army was merely securing the nation's borders.

A confidential Kimberley Process report on the review visit makes no mention of alleged human-rights abuses, although it criticizes Angola for failing to present a plan to better document the output of peasant mining. The group spent just two days in Lunda Norte, an area near the Congo border that has become a flashpoint for clashes between diggers and security forces. According to a draft of the internal report, the delegation intended to visit the site of a large illegal mining operation but was thwarted by "a last-minute decision to participate in a graduation ceremony for new border patrol security officers." As the team was preparing to depart, the chairman of the Kimberley Process at the time, Namibian politician Bernhard Esau, pronounced the visit a success and brushed off questions about alleged abuses of peasant miners. "The Kimberley Process is not a human-rights organization," he told reporters.

The roots of Angola's current blood-diamond problems have much to do with geology. Unlike in Botswana and South Africa, where multinational corporations use heavy machinery to extract diamonds out of deep shafts, much of Angola's diamond reserves are alluvial, meaning the stones have been washed out of the earth and scattered across the countryside. They're available to anyone with a shovel and wood-framed sieve, and are difficult for mining companies to secure. More than a million people world-wide earn a living from artisanal mining in alluvial fields, including tens of thousands in Angola alone.

Angola's artisanal miners, known in Portuguese as garimpeiros, played a pivotal role in the country's civil war, which lasted for 27 years and left at least a half-million people dead. U.S.-backed troops of the Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or UNITA, fighting to depose a Soviet-supported socialist government, controlled much of the country's diamond territory. To fund their war effort, they enlisted peasant diggers from here as well as neighboring Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

While UNITA forces committed plenty of atrocities, some people here in Cafunfo say they generally treated garimpeiros fairly. They allowed diggers to keep a percentage of the diamonds they found and established an immigration policy to bring in Congolese workers on 30-day permits, says Enoque Jeremias, a local human-rights investigator. "It was a fair system," he adds.

The war's end led to a surge in diamond production, as large mining companies dusted off old claims and launched new operations. Among the players are Odebrecht SA of Brazil, Russia's state-owned Alrosa; and a company controlled by Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev, all of which operate in joint ventures with the government diamond company Endiama.

But the garimpeiros were hardly prepared to put away their shovels. There's little agriculture here and almost no jobs outside of the mining sector. Plus, vast parts of the countryside haven't even been explored yet, much less mined. The peasants proved adept at finding diamond deposits that the big companies missed, and this so-called informal production continued to account for more than one-quarter of the country's diamond exports, according to the Partnership Africa Canada, an Ottawa-based nongovernmental agency that deals with mining issues.

To soak up those diamonds, Angola authorized foreign-run buying operations to be established in the bush. U.S. diamond giant Lazare Kaplan International Inc. became a fixture in the area, signing a technical agreement with the government to set up buying houses. Lazare Kaplan says it let the agreement expire in 2008, when world diamond prices collapsed, and is now winding down operations in Angola. Lazare Kaplan Chairman Maurice Tempelsman, the late-life companion of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, says the company was trying to bring development to the area and help strengthen Angola's Kimberley Process controls. "I am strongly committed to the protection of human rights," Mr. Tempelsman says, adding: "I believe in this imperfect world, involvement in trying to bring about constructive change is the best course."

Lazare Kaplan's withdrawal has left a wide-open field for other buyers, including a company controlled by Israel's Mr. Leviev, as well as a flood of newcomers from West Africa and the Middle East. Their storefronts line the muddy streets of Cafunfo, trying to outdo each other with mirror-signed bling.

For Ahmad Mouein, a Lebanese buyer who bills himself as "Boss Mouein," it's a great business opportunity despite the recession in the diamond market. "Sometimes a digger here can sell you a $500,000 stone for $5,000, $10,000," he marvels. He says the Kimberley Process hasn't succeeded in its primary mission of halting smuggling. "Kimberley or not Kimberley, my friend, for the diamond, you can do what you want."

By many accounts, the presence of these buying houses has only fanned the violence by encouraging more peasants to get into the mining business at the same time that government security forces have been tasked with stopping them.

At one such illegal mine, an hour's motorcycle ride over trails outside of Cafunfo, a Dantesque scene unfolds. Perhaps 500 young men are clambering over a vast pit dug deep into the red earth. They've been at it for a year now, and figure they have months to go until they hit a vein of gravel they believe will contain diamonds. Their tools are rudimentary—pikes and shovels—and the work is backbreaking, alleviated only by the homegrown marijuana many smoke and the small sachets of alcohol that can be had everywhere for a dollar.

They live on the site in homemade tents and work in shifts. To support themselves, they say, they make agreements with buyers, especially the West Africans, to split the take.

Caxaculo Milonga, 44, says he's on the hook with a man he knows as Boss Ibrahim from Senegal. Although Boss Ibrahim paid medical expenses when a run-in with police and soldiers sent him to the hospital, Mr. Milonga complains that the deal is unfair because he has to give Boss Ibrahim 50% of all production, then sell the rest to him at a rock-bottom price. "We work like slaves and they're cheating us," he says. "You can't argue or he'll call the police." Another garimpeiro says his sponsor at one time was a police investigator in Cafunfo, making any negotiation pointless.

Concerns about security forces are never far away. Last year, as part of the latest effort to expel Congolese diggers, the Angolan army moved into the area in force. In recent months patrols have paid a visit to the mine, harassing miners and slapping them with the flat side of their machetes, the miners say. The diggers worry that the army is just waiting until they hit gravel so they can move in and take the diamonds for themselves.

Near another illegal mining site, peasants described a similar scenario. In December, an army patrol swept through the village of Bundo in search of mining tools, says Cazanguia Andre, the 60-year-old deputy chief of the village. He says he ran into them on the way back from tilling his field, and they accused him of being a garimpeiro. They then hit him twice in the head with a rifle butt and struck him with a pole, he adds, breaking his arm. Later, after they discovered shovels at the local church, which Mr. Andre says were being used for construction, they arrested three people.

A lieutenant at a nearby temporary army encampment declined to be interviewed but said his squad hasn't committed any abuses of the local population and isn't involved in any mining activities.

Back in Bundo, four garimpeiros give a different story. They say when soldiers swept through they discovered the garimpeiros working with a water pump in a pit. The soldiers confiscated the pump. Then a negotiation ensued, says one garimpeiro, and the soldiers agreed to give back the pump in exchange for $54—as well as a split of the action. "When we hit the gravel, the soldiers will be present to get their share," he says.

Write to Michael Allen at mike.allen@wsj.com

>via: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704198004575311282588959188.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird

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A collective of Afro-German Sisters

Lauryn Hill Performs “Doo Wop (That Thing)” x “Turn Your Lights Down Low” | Video

June 18, 2010 by Verse  
Filed under Live Music

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With the confirmation of her upcoming Rock The Bells performance, many eyes and eyes are peeled for the return of Lauryn Hill…
A few days ago Miss Hill performed at the Harmony Festival 2010 in Santa Rosa, California..Is this what we can expect from Rock The Bells 2010?
Check out some footage from the show below with Lauryn Performing an *Interesting* version of “Doo Wop (That Thing)” as well as “Turn Your Lights Down Low”

That Thing

Turn Your Lights Down Low

For a review and more photos of Lauryn’s performance Click Here
Photo by Elizabeth Seward.

 

The Third-Annual Life Lessons Essay Contest

Enter your essay in Real Simple’s yearly contest.

 

Finish this sentence: “I never thought I’d. . .”

Have you ever taken a huge, surprising risk? Did you climb a mountain? Go back to school? Get married (again)? Tell us about it: Enter Real Simple’s Third-Annual Life Lessons Essay Contest and you could have your essay published in Real Simple; win round-trip tickets for two to New York City, hotel accommodations for two nights, tickets to a Broadway play, and a lunch with Real Simple editors; and receive a prize of $3,000.

To enter, send your typed, double-spaced submission (1,500 words maximum, preferably in a Microsoft Word document) to lifelessons@realsimple.com. Contest begins at 12:01 A.M. on June 1, 2010, and runs through 11:59 P.M. on September 24, 2010. Open to legal residents of the United States age 19 or older at time of entry. Void where prohibited by law. (Entries will not be returned.)

See below for complete contest rules, plus frequently asked questions. You can also read last year’s winning essay, chosen from 6,970 entries: Beauty in Motion, by Andrea Avery, 33, of Phoenix, a 10th-grade English teacher in Paradise Valley and a part-time instructor at Arizona State University in Tempe. The winner of our first contest was A Witness to Grace, by Aldra Robinson.

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Q. How should I format my entry?
A. Essays should be submitted in English at a maximum of 1,500 words and typed and double-spaced on 8½-by-11-inch paper. Essays exceeding this length or handwritten may not be considered. If submitted by e-mail, we prefer that you send the essay in a Microsoft Word document; however, we will also consider essays that are pasted into the body of the e-mail itself.

Also be sure to include your name, address, and phone numbers (home, work, cell) in the body of the e-mail and on any copies or attachments of the essay itself.

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1. E-mail your submission to lifelessons@realsimple.com.
2. Mail your entry to the following address:
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Each e-mail submission will receive a return message verifying that the essay was received. Please be aware that due to the volume of submissions, we cannot send verification that we have received your submission by mail.

Q. What happens if I go over the word limit?
A. Your essay can be excluded from consideration. And although there is no word minimum, we strongly encourage all contest participants to submit at least 1,000 words to maximize their chances of winning.

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A. Unfortunately, we cannot consider anonymous entries for this contest.

Q. My piece has been previously published. Will you consider it?
A. No. All entries must be original pieces of work and not be previously published.

Q. I am Canadian. Why can’t I enter?
A. We’re so sorry that we cannot consider essays submitted by our Canadian readers. Unfortunately, due to the rules that bind this particular contest, we can consider only legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, age 19 or older at the time of entry. But feel free to submit your story ideas and original essays for consideration to letters@realsimple.com, labeled ATTENTION: LIFE LESSONS.

Q. Should I send in photos or other memorabilia that relate to my essay?
A. Please don’t. The essays are judged on the following criteria: originality (25 percent), creativity (25 percent), use of language (25 percent), and appropriateness to contest theme (25 percent). No supporting materials will be considered, and they cannot be returned to you.

Q. Is there anything else you can tell me about how to stand out from the crowd?
A. Certainly. Here are a few pointers from the Real Simple editors who judge the contest.

• Stick to the theme of the contest. Sounds obvious, right? But every year we get many entries that diverge—sometimes wildly—from the stated topic. You may have an amazing essay in the bottom drawer of your desk, but if it doesn’t cover the contest theme, it’s not going to win.
• Check your spelling. Double-duh, or so you’d think. But as many as one in five entries has multiple misspellings.
• Don’t feel the need to parrot back the contest theme in your essay. For example, if the theme is “What was the most important day in your life?” try not to begin the piece with “The most important day of my life was…”
• Avoid clichés. (And please don’t try to work the phrase 'real simple' into your essay. It almost never works.)
• Try writing on a less-expected subject. Many submissions cover similar ground: pregnancies, weddings, divorces, illnesses. Many of these essays are superb. But you automatically stand out if you explore a more unconventional event. In one year’s batch of submissions, memorable writers described the following: a son leaving for his tour of duty; getting one’s braces off; and learning that an ex-wife was getting remarried.

 

Complete Contest Rules

1. HOW TO ENTER: This contest begins at 12:01 A.M. eastern time (ET) on June 1, 2010, and ends at 11:59 P.M. ET on September 24, 2010. To enter online, send your typed, double-spaced submission (1,500 words maximum, preferably in a Microsoft Word document) to lifelessons@realsimple.com. To enter via postal mail, submit your essay by mailing your entry to Essay Contest, Real Simple, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, 9th floor, New York, NY 10020. Entries must be postmarked no later than September 24, 2010, and received no later than September 31, 2010. Limit one entry per person or e-mail account. Essays should be submitted in English at a maximum of 1,500 words and typed and double-spaced on 8½-by-11-inch paper. Essays exceeding this length or handwritten may not be considered. Sponsor is not responsible for lost, late, illegible, or incomplete entries; postage-due mail; or entries not received for any reason. Entries will not be acknowledged or returned. By entering, Entrant warrants that his or her entry (1) is original and does not infringe the intellectual-property rights of any third party, (2) has not been published in any medium, and (3) has not won an award.

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6. INTERNET: Sponsor is not responsible for lost or late entries nor for electronic-transmission errors resulting in omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operations or transmission, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to or alterations of entry materials, or for technical, network, telephone-equipment, electronic, computer, hardware, or software malfunctions or limitations of any kind, or inaccurate transmissions of or failure to receive entry information by Sponsor or presenter on account of technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or at any website or any combination thereof. If for any reason the Internet portion of the program is not capable of running as planned, including infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or any other causes that corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of this Contest, the Sponsor reserves the right at its sole discretion to disqualify any individual who tampers with the entry process and to cancel, terminate, modify, or suspend the Contest. Sponsor reserves the right to select winners from eligible entries received as of the termination date. CAUTION: Any attempt by a contestant to deliberately damage any website or undermine the legitimate operation of the game is a violation of criminal and civil laws and should such an attempt be made, Sponsor reserves the right to seek damages from any such contestant to the fullest extent of the law. If there is a dispute as to the identity of the Entrant, the prize will be awarded to the authorized account holder of the e-mail address. The “authorized account holder” is defined as the natural person to whom the e-mail address is assigned.

7. GOVERNING LAW: This Contest is governed by the internal laws of the State of New York without regard to principles of conflict of laws. All cases and claims pertaining to this Contest must be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction in the City of New York, without recourse to class-action suits.

8. SEVERABILITY: If any provision of these Rules is found to be invalid or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction or appointed arbitrator, such determination shall in no way affect the validity or enforceability of any other provision herein.

9. WINNER’S LIST: For Name(s) of Winner(s), log on to realsimple.com/lifelessonscontest after March 8, 2011, where Name(s) of Winner(s) will be available for a period of 60 days.

10. SPONSOR: The Sponsor of this Contest is Real Simple magazine, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, 9th floor, New York, NY 10020.

 

The 2011 Mississippi Review Prize

Contest begins April 2, 2010
Contest deadline October 1, 2010

Our annual contest awards prizes of $1,000 in fiction and in poetry. Winners and finalists will make up next winter's print issue of the national literary magazine Mississippi Review. Contest is open to all writers in English except current or former students or employees of The University of Southern Mississippi. Fiction entries should be 1000-5000 words, poetry entries should be three poems totaling 10 pages or less. There is no limit on the number of entries you may submit. Entry fee is $15 per entry, payable to the Mississippi Review.  Each entrant will receive a copy of the prize issue.

No manuscripts will be returned. Previously published work is ineligible. Contest opens April 2. Deadline is October 1. Winners will be announced in late January and publication is scheduled for May next year. Entries should have "MR Prize," author name, address, phone, e-mail and title of work on page one.

Key dates:

Contest starts: April 1, 2010
Postmark deadline: October 1, 2010
Winners announced: Jan 2011
Issue publication: April 2011

Send entries to:

Mississippi Review Prize 2011
118 College Drive #5144,
Hattiesburg, Mississippi 39406-0001

These are the complete contest guidelines. If you have questions please e-mail contest coordinator, or call 601-266-4321.

Guidelines for the Very Short Fiction Award category: We are interested in reading your original, unpublished very short stories! We don't publish stories for children, I'm sorry. It's fine to submit more than one story or to submit the same story to different categories. When we accept a story for publication, we are purchasing first-publication rights. (After we've published it, you can include it in your own collection.) To make a submission: Please send your work via our new online submission procedure. It's easy, will save you postage and paper, and is much easier on the environment. Just click the yellow Submissions button above to get started! Dates: The category will be open to submissions for one full month, from the first day through midnight (Pacific time) of the last day of the month. Results will be posted at www.glimmertrain.org. January. Results will be posted on March 31. July. Results will be posted on September 30. Reading fee: $15 per story. Prizes: 1st place wins $1,200, publication in Glimmer Train Stories, and 20 copies of that issue. 2nd-place: $500 3rd-place:$300 Other considerations: Open to all writers. Stories not to exceed 3,000 words.(Any shorter lengths are welcome.) We look forward to reading your work! Fearless is an interesting word, for in fact, in being fearless you are not without fear, rather you are withstanding fear. You are moving forward in spite of it. Writing a very short story requires a degree of fearlessness, and I think reading one does also. I have deep respect for the very short story for many reasons, perhaps most profoundly for its fearlessness. --Meredith Pignon

One of the most respected short-story journals in print, Glimmer Train Stories is represented in recent editions of the Pushcart Prize, O.Henry, New Stories from the South, New Stories from the Midwest, and Best American Short Stories anthologies. Glimmer Train Press, Inc., 1211 NW Glisan Street, Suite 207, Portland, OR 97209 USA Copyright © 1998-2010 Glimmer Train Press, Inc. All Images Copyright © Glimmer Train Press, Inc.

Jean Grae: ‘Let Female Emcees Co-Exist’ | Civilized Talk

June 17, 2010 by M. Gosho Oakes  
Filed under Blogs

1 Comment

“I’m usually the worst person to ask about female emcees in Hip Hop…”

Gender being an irrelevant factor when enjoying someone’s work, lyricist Jean Grae speaks on women in Hip Hop for Karen Civil’s Civilized Talk feature.

“The bigger picture: there’s tons of female emcees out there and there always have been. It’s a really difficult job because yes, it’s a male dominated business,” she says. “Other than that, the rap business – not being funded or having a machine behind you – just in general is a difficult fucking job.

“As women… there’s a lot of aspects that we have to deal with that men don’t. Rather than take it as a weakness, I see the advantage of it – I see the advantage in the topics, I see the advantage in the marketing and I see the advantage in all of that. I think what our problem is, just as a society, is we choose one person when it’s time for something.”

Receiving daily tweets from fans assuming Jean regards Young Money Barbie Nicki Minaj as a force to be destroyed, Jean responds: “Check this out: I don’t hate Nicki Minaj. Seriously, I’m fine with what she does. Let Nicki do what she does and let me do what I do – and let Invincible do what she does….

“Let us all actually be out there and let us co-exist … It’s no fun being the only person if there’s no sparring, if there’s no competition, if there’s no diversity. The consumers do it to the artists.”

Kakenya Ntaiya

PISTACHIOS: Kakenya

 

An animation for Vital Voices, an organisation working globally for women's independence. This film tells the childhood story of Kakenya Ntaiya, a Masai woman who negotiated herself out of an arranged marriage and convinced her village to collect money for her to study in the USA. She has since returned to the village and built a girls' school there. Directed by Aaron Kisner and Pistachios. Music by Dan Radlauer. Produced by Blacklist.

 

Henochowicz, unbowed: I stumbled onto this injustice because I am Jewish and American

by Philip Weiss on June 17, 2010 · 19 comments Like 20 2 Retweet

 

Emily Henochowicz--the 21-year-old art student who was protesting the flotilla raid in the West Bank on May 31st when Israelis shot her in the head with a tear-gas canister--put up a post about her lost left eye that I mentioned yesterday. The post is titled Cyclops.

Henochowicz has a troll in her comment section:

 

Robert stokes said... The cyclops and the pancake (Rachael Corrie), the 2 heroic white people that stand up to those evil Israelis, forget all the other people that die or get hurt, lets focus on the American "activists" who go to protest a country they think will not react violently towards them. The world is "shocked" by the actions of these heroic martyrs. Why don't you protest Kim Jung Il's concentration camps? Or why don't you stick up for the rights of the African Pygmies in the congo who are literally eaten by rebel groups? Or stand up against the new Karate Kid? Because your cowards.

To whom Henochowicz responds:

Now I'm not one to really respond to these things... but Robert Stokes has a point; the world is full of issues and corruption. Why Israel-Palestine and not the Congo? First I'd have to disagree that it's cowardly to face just one injustice instead of everything; it's like saying that animal rights activists don't care about the world because they are not fighting with equal vigor for immigration rights. You have to chose your battles and this is one I more stumbled into than chose. Which isn't to say that I wont expand my activism or that I don't consider the universal core of this issue like equal rights for all. It is personal because I am Jewish, and it is American because beyond all the money and weaponry we give Israel, the Middle East plays a huge role in the fate of this country. I fought to end this military occupation. Lets not forget the military occupation in Iraq...

Also you can call me a cyclops because I can call myself a cyclops because I'm alive. Rachael Corrie is dead. Have some respect.

This woman rocks.

TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 2010

Cyclops

Having one eye is really just a design problem. There's even research that suggests that "Stereoblindness might prove an asset rather than a disadvantage to an artist." Sure, there's prosthesis that look so real no one would ever know you are different, but they could be so much more - an eye for every occasion; abstract, cartoony, solid colors, etc... I could even have it be the ultimate spy camera. Then of course there's eye patches. Black is classic and I do really love simple design, but there's a million different ways you could drape your face to cover that creepy spot. Hairstyles must also be considered. And when I'm feeling bold, there's always going natural. And what about one-eyed glasses?

P.S. My profile picture is me in a costume I made freshman year. I've had it since I made this blog and it's proven oddly predictive. The older I get, the more ridiculous life seems.

POSTED BY EMILY HENOCHOWICZ AT 8:42 AM