Young boys in the two cities are decorating their bikes!

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jLfvqdESTekUEkDqlepaTpLDoTGg


http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_9081956?source=rss

sounds like fun!
link for directions to start secondlife: http://tinyurl.com/ypzyq7

Avatars of the world, unite!

Italian union's virtual demonstration against IBM launches new world of job actions.

Dateline: Monday, September 03, 2007

by Derek Blackadder

The effective use of the Internet by unions has long been a subject for discussion inside the labour movement and amongst labour-friendly academics.

The debate just took a big, fast, sharp left turn with an announcement last week from the union representing Italian IBM employees.

A virtual job action allows participation from teleworkers and home workers around the globe.

With the decline of trade union density in the face of globalization and new forms of work organization (home work, telework and such) in the North, the Internet seemed to offer at least a partial solution (where access was relatively easy) to retaining members and recruiting new ones.

To some segments of labour movements in crisis, particularly that of the US, the internet took on the role of a life raft. Unions, this school of thought went, were to be judged on the extent to which they effectively used the net. Those that did well by these criteria would survive and grow; those which didn't, were likely to continue to decline.

But even amongst the most fervent of internet advocates, within the labour movement there was a recognition that certain kinds of very basic organizing and action would require, demand really, face-to-face contact and communication between workers.

Last week those nay-sayers may have been proved wrong.

Rappresentanza Sindacale Unitaria IBM Vimercate (RSU), has, announced online (naturally) that sometime this month its 9,000 members, employees of IBM, will mount a job action, an information picket designed to inform the public (but especially IBM clients) about the company's employment policies — online.

They won't be refusing to touch their computers. This isn't really a strike. To the contrary, union members will probably be spending more time at their keyboards than ever, when the action starts.

What the union is organizing is a picket of IBM's "island" on Second Life, the online alternate world.

The RSU's statements indicate absolutely nothing odd or unusual or groundbreaking in what the RSU members are looking for from IBM:

"While IBM is one of the companies with major profits," said the RSU, "its employees are receiving very few fruits of this big mountain of money. (sic)"

What is unusual, to say the least, is the choice of Second Life as the place to confront IBM.

Second Life is an immense computer game (for lack of a better word) in which something like nine million users adopt cartoon characters called avatars which they then direct, (anonymously if they wish), though an online existence. The avatars shop, eat, buy, sell, work, paint, talk, romance and vacation.

Second Life is one of several current flavours of the month when it comes to social networking websites. Corporations (and some governments: you can get investment and tourism information for several countries at their Second Life "embassies") have been quick to see the advantages to having a presence there.

You can take your avatar shopping and buy stuff for your avatar to use within Second Life, or buy merchandise for use by the real you in what Internauts call "meatspace".

There's been some use of Second Life as an alternative to tele- and video-conferencing, but for the most part corporations see Second Life (and other sites like it) as one big advertising/retail tool. IBM has made what most observers agree is a large commitment to its corporate avatar or presence on Second Life.

So, on the face it, it only makes sense for RSU to follow IBM onto Second Life and fire something of a warning shot by having a small army of avatars inform the Second Life population about the their employer's behaviours.

The job action would be no different than picketing a store or a meeting or a conference and handing our leaflets, right?

Yes. But there are a few added dimensions to this effort that have the potential to add some new items to the workers' toolbox.

First, the action involves 9,000 people (or their avatars) converging on one location (albeit virtual). Something that, if it happened in the real world would take a lot of time and resources to organize and execute.

More importantly perhaps, this is an action that can literally take place at a moment's notice, which makes it much harder for an employer to react to.

Second, and the RSU itself recognizes this, this is the kind of action which could unite IBM employees around the world:

The high offices of the company are worried, because this action will spotlight the creation of a global union alliance — that is, engaging the unions from over 16 countries worldwide, including the new IT boundary: India.(sic)

While technically the dispute is between IBM Italia and RSU, there's nothing to stop IBM workers around the world from expressing their unhappiness with the corporation by joining in.

International solidarity is nothing new to the labour movement, but this is something remarkable: focussed, simultaneous, potentially global and, quite possibly effective in drawing in workers who are not (yet) unionized. To date, non-union workers have been largely left out of actions like these. As well, international actions are almost always an afterthought and are effectively time-delayed and step-removed from the target employer (eg, dockers refusing to handle struck goods).

Third, the labour movement globally has had huge difficulty in organizing home workers generally, teleworkers in particular.

Unlike in a factory or office, teleworkers don't have routine, non-task-related communication amongst themselves. There is no lunchroom, no after-work beer for these workers. They don't, in other words, have informal opportunities to organize amongst themselves.

In addition, teleworkers tend to perceive themselves as "professionals", a term used by their employers to distinguish them from "workers". The Second Life job action presents an unusual opportunity for contact, communication and organizing among and between the IBM workers.

Lastly, this is an action and a venue for that action that speaks the language of the workers themselves. It is a high-tech picket for high-tech workers aimed at a high-tech employer.

Unless IBM changes its tune, sometime later this month we'll see just how effective an action like this can be.

On paper — er, on screen — this looks like it may mark a significant shift in the way unions in some industries can effectively confront employers, all while organizing workers in industries with traditionally low union density.

Stay tuned to Workplaces for more information about innovative job actions in today's changing workplaces.

Derek Blackadder works as a National Representative for the Canadian Union of Public Employees' Ontario Region. He is also the senior Canadian correspondent for the international labour website called LabourStart.org.

To read more on this subject, follow the links below. A further article by Derek Blackadder is available at www.ourtimes.ca/organizing/organizing_8.html.

Community organizations and public housing residents from across the nation, along with Miami Workers Center and Power U Center for Social Change, stormed the Housing Agency of New Orleans (HANO) office at around 12:30 PM today. The organizations we are acting in solidarity with displaced residents of New Orleans public housing. HANO, under federal HUD leadership, has fenced off four public housing projects and will not let people return to their homes even though the units were not damaged by the storm  two years ago.

After a three-hour standoff, surrounded by police, the National Guard and the SWAT team the residents and activists gave up their occupation of the building and held a national press conference. They put out the message that housing is a human right, not only in New Orleans but throughout the country, and that communities faced with displacement will not go down without a fight. The action was also a move to claim dignity for public housing residents from New Orleans, most of whom are African-American, who have been criminalized, disregarded, and robbed of their homes.

Below is an account of the takeover from Ms. Yvonne Stratford, LIFFT leader, and Tony Romano, Organizing Director of the Miami Workers Center.

Ms.Yvonne

People from New York, from Chicago, from Miami, and California, we all went into the HUD office. We were looking for the director of HUD. They said he wasn't there. They said he was out of town. So we decided we wanted to see the second in charge.
    A lot of people around here don't have places to go. They need housing down here. We said we were going to stay down here until 5 PM. We were occupying the place. They told us that if we left we wouldn't be arrested.
We decided that since the media was there we could hold a press conference and tell people about what is going on instead of getting arrested, so we did.
We were demanding to get the housing back. I wasn't scared. I didn't back down. I would have gone to jail. People are getting displaced everywhere.
You know, you get tired, and when you get really tired that's when you got to take a stand.


Tony Romano

This was a national action of groups from around the country. We are calling for justice for public housing residents in NOLA. We all stormed the HANO office. The key objective was to meet with the man in charge. He has played a strong role in keeping public housing residents out of public housing. All the military was there. This is the beginning, this is part of a national movement of public housing residents, not just for justice in NOLA, but through out the country. After a three-hour standoff we held a press conference.
    We see today as victory even though we didn't meet with the head of HANO because of the unity and the message that got out. Housing is a human right and this wont go down without a fight.

I'm not sure how to respond to this letter, but it's thoughtful and about the occasion.

Subject: A Farewell Letter on the Second Anniversary of Katrina

A Message from an Organizer to the Left and Progressive Forces inside the USA

by
Curtis Muhammad

With this second anniversary of Katrina upon us, there are a few words
I wish to speak. This letter is written to the progressive, left
movement for justice in the USA. In the last two years, every left
organization has been in New Orleans, but despite that there is still
no sign of a mass movement. There is still no sign that most activists
are willing to put their knowledge and resources at the service of the
grass roots and take their leadership from the bottom. I have found
myself wondering, have poor black people been so vilified and
criminalized that they are completely off the radar even of the
so-called left? When Katrina happened, I hoped and expected that this
would be the trigger to once again set off a true mass movement
against racism and for justice in the US, led by those most affected:
poor, black working people. When it became abundantly clear that this
was not happening, I found myself at the crossroads of hope and
hopelessness, and began to wonder how to spend the last years of my
life in the service of my people.

The thing that I remind myself when I'm contemplating hopelessness is
the beauty of humanity and the fact that people have always fought for
what was right even when they knew they couldn't win. They tried
because they loved each other; I think it's because it's built into
human beings for people to look out for each other. There is a drive
in humanity to be just, to live in a society that is just, equal and
respectful. I believe that ultimately people will achieve a just
society; I believe humanity came out of a just society and will create
it again.

I do believe that there was a time that the lovers of life, the lovers
of humanity, the lovers of justice dominated the world. Some say this
was so during the hunter-gatherer days, when though there were evil
people they could never gain dominance. Their numbers were always
small, less than 1%; people ran their lives collectively, and
therefore the greedy could not dominate. Well then, I say what
happened, there is only that same 1% who dominates the world now.

This thinking, this logic has been the motivating factor in my life of
movement work: the belief that there is a basic humanity that is
inside the soul of most people. That this humanity can be harvested
and organized into a movement for justice to free our people from
slavery, bondage, oppression and exploitation. That the 80% of the
world who live on an average of $2 a day can and will overcome the 1%
and return us to a collective life organized around love, justice and
equality.

Most of you who know me also know I'm a storyteller and believe story
to be a universal language that can be a vehicle for voice – the voice
of all regardless of status, class, cast, race, gender. Story is an
egalitarian language. So I wish to share with you my story, an
abbreviated story of my organizing work from SNCC in Mississippi
through the ghettoes of the US to the villages and jungles of Africa,
to CLU, PHRF, NOSC, POC and finally the International School for
Bottom-up Organizing. My story is meant to clarify why I now choose to
live, work, teach and write outside the US and away from the grip of a
drastically de-energized and often opportunistic and reactionary left
in the USA.

* * *

I grew up in a community that, of necessity, had to take care of its
own. In rural Mississippi in the 40s, 50s and 60s, mothers and
fathers, grandparents, uncles and cousins protected the children from
the hostile, racist world and collectively helped each other meet
their needs. Nonetheless, when I was a child traveling to church on
Sundays, I had to pass the tree from whose branches my cousin was
lynched. The community of my birth gave me both my strength -- my
faith in the people, my dedication to egalitarianism – and my undying
hatred of racism and the oppressive few that control the world.

When SNCC came to town, I found my direction. It was both a community
of love and a set of organizers devoted, at the risk of their lives,
to the folk on the bottom: the poorest black folk in Mississippi,
those who had nothing, not even the knowledge of how to read. SNCC
introduced me to the struggles of my brothers and sisters around the
world, and particularly in Africa. I became an internationalist and a
revolutionary. The lessons of Ella Baker and SNCC have stayed with me
throughout my life; I labored to make them a reality from Mississippi
to the ghettoes of our major cities, from my time in the revolutionary
movement in Africa to my work as a labor organizer, and I have done my
utmost to apply them in post-Katrina New Orleans.

In 1998, I helped to organize Community Labor United (CLU), a
coalition that was founded with a commitment to bottom-up organizing.
(CLU principles included "ending the exploitation of oppressed peoples
everywhere; educating, organizing and mobilizing the masses within our
organizations and communities from the bottom up.") After eight years
of organizing in some of the poorest areas of New Orleans, it became
the "first responder" after Katrina, and led the formation of the
People's Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF).

As a founding member of PHRF and an organizer and New Orleans
resident, I was back in the city within 8 days of the flood,
struggling with overwhelming pain and anger. I felt that Katrina
represented an historic moment. Never before had all levels of
government united to attempt genocide of 100,000 black people at the
same time. Even in the 60s in Mississippi, they were murdering us in
ones, twos and threes. I threw myself into the attempt to put the
knowledge and resources of the left and nationalist organizations and
"movement" people under the direction of the bottom: the poor and
working class black folk who had been left to die in New Orleans. PHRF
became a coalition that committed itself on paper to that goal.

What followed was a dramatic learning experience for me and for all
those whose commitment is truly to the people and not to their own
particular grouping. Within months, mainly as a result of a speaking
tour I went on for PHRF, we had raised about a million dollars from
folk across the country who were deeply moved by the attempted
genocide of over a hundred thousand black folk. And by December, there
was already conflict over who controlled that money and how it was to
be used.

The New Orleans Survivor Council was organized by PHRF with the
understanding that it was to become the leadership of the organization
and the movement, and should control all resources. By April of 2006,
when the NOSC began to sound like it wanted oversight of the funds,
the interim leadership of PHRF took the money and ran, firing its own
organizers for daring to tell the poor black residents in NOSC that
they had the right to control the resources raised in their names.
Undaunted, the young organizers continued working for the survivors
and formed a new group called People's Organizing Committee (POC).

This event was a turning point for me. I realized that the words of
those who I had considered my comrades were empty, that their
so-called commitment to bottom-up was a fiction; that their real
commitments were to various organizations and their own egos. Our
attempt to institutionalize bottom-up had led instead to a coalition
of opportunists.

When I had spoken to mass audiences about Katrina in the fall of 2005,
I had spoken of my discovery of the depth of the fear and hatred
America has for poor, black people. The images on the media of those
left to die could have been taken in sub-Saharan Africa or the
Caribbean: those people were very poor and very black. With the
desertion of PHRF, I was confronted by the knowledge that this hatred
of poor black people extended into and throughout the progressive
movement, even within exclusively black organizations. I felt very
lonely in my continued commitment to lift up precisely that segment of
oppressed Americans to lead the movement.

But POC plunged ahead, still dedicated to that vision. Thousands of
volunteers came in the spring and summer, and many continue to come to
this day. The hearts of so many people are in the right place. The New
Orleans Survivor Council and its member group Residents of Public
Housing continue to work to put bottom-up leadership on the map and
fight for the right of our community to return and control its own
destiny. But the past year has also revealed further weakness and lack
of vision in our movement.

>From the days immediately following the flood, we recognized that
immigrants – brown people, some of the poorest and most desperate of
our brothers and sisters from countries to the south – were being
brought into our city. They were put to the dirtiest, most dangerous
clean-up tasks, and later to replace the forcibly dispersed black
labor force, for slave wages and in slave conditions. From the start,
we called for organizing this new part of the New Orleans community in
unity with and under the leadership of the black folk on the bottom.

This call was part of my message in the speeches I made in the fall of
2005, and several immigrant organizers heeded the call and came to
work with us. However, despite many serious attempts to develop unity
between black survivors and immigrants, it has become clear that those
organizers refuse to unite with and take leadership from black folk.
They have organized immigrant slaves into separate groupings with no
contact with the NOSC, despite their initial commitment to unity. They
are essentially, wittingly or unwittingly, following the government's
agenda, which is to build a racist, assimilationist immigrant
"movement" that will serve the needs of a war economy and patriotism.

And so we come to the second anniversary of Katrina. Bottom-up
organizing is still embryonic, though hanging on to life and with a
small, dedicated band of survivors, organizers and volunteers. But the
rest of the movement is in shambles, or under direct or indirect
influence of our enemies.

Through the experience of the last two years, I have also come to the
conclusion that the infiltration of and direct attacks on the movement
that started (in my lifetime as an activist) in the late 60s and early
70s with Cointelpro have never stopped. Our movement has been
successfully divided into thousands of groupings, non-profits and
NGOs, and the left has been rendered ineffectual. It is not an
accident that, for forty years now, the movement has been so totally
reformist, or that those who want to be revolutionaries are so
isolated as to be irrelevant. The government and its agencies have a
stranglehold on the people, the culture and even the left. I do not
think it is possible in the U.S. at this time – for me – to develop
and train organizers with a real understanding and commitment to the
folk on the bottom.

And thus, I find myself at the crossroads of hope and hopelessness. I
find myself possibly in the position of writing not mainly to the
current readers of these words, but to those future revolutionaries
who will learn from our impasse. I find myself deciding to work toward
creating an international organizing school as a vehicle to discover,
recruit and train radical organizers. I want to continue my
investigation of the movements in Mexico and South America among very
poor -- members of the informal economy, workers, campesinos and
landless people -- learn more about how class and hue interact to
shape oppression, take inspiration from the fact that the struggle
continues, un-abandoned, worldwide, and share my own knowledge and
experience with the rebels of today and tomorrow.

I have lived 64 years and have struggled intentionally for justice for
about forty-six of those years. I am thankful and appreciative to all
those who have traveled some of that distance with me: those who
helped nurture my children, who stood with me when I was imprisoned
and tortured, those who have always supported my work and stood by me
when all seemed to stand against me. To these worthy friends, comrades
and loved ones, I will always honor you, be there for you, and know
you are there for me.

Still, I have arrived at a place in my life where I wish to share
everything I have and know with the "sufferers." My principle
continues to be the struggle to engage the poor, oppressed, voiceless,
and those who have the least and suffer the most. The only struggle
that matters to me now is finding justice for those who have never had
it.

This is me, where I am, trying to figure out how to organize our folk
in a way that we always look at need as the principle of justice. If
you are looking for me, look among the youth, the poor, and the
struggling masses trapped in slave-like conditions throughout the
world, for I am no longer available to an opportunistic and racist
left. I NOW SEEK REFUGE AMONG THE POOR.

This is my struggle.

Wish me well,

Curtis

Movie spans Vietnam‘s north-south divide Staff and agencies
19 August, 2007

By BEN STOCKING, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago

HANOI, Vietnam - A new breed of characters has replaced the old communist heroes on Vietnam‘s big screens: hustlers and dancing girls, drug dealers and cross-dressers.

Vietnam‘s film world is changing fast. The government is easing control over content, old taboos are fading, and private money is for the first time entering an industry that was entirely state-run until 2003.

"I was surprised that the government allowed my film to be shown," said director Bui Thac Chuyen, 39. "The censorship committee didn‘t cut anything."

The film, while financed with government grants, has an independent spirit befitting its director, a northerner who admires Quentin Tarantino and Stanley Kubrick. It is based in part on the experiences of a real-life southern soldier who spent 15 years clearing unexploded ordnance from his farm.

Each time he picks up a land mine on his 10-acre farm, we wonder whether it‘s going to blow up in his hands. Each time he goes into the field, we wonder whether he‘ll return.

Southern soldiers suffered discrimination for years after the war. They were indoctrinated with Marxist dogma in "re-education camps" and had trouble finding anything better than menial jobs. Their children were turned away from schools and universities.

Chuyen‘s film has been screened at several international festivals and U.S. colleges but hasn‘t found a U.S. commercial distributor. It was among the last produced under the old government system. Now moviemaking has become a full-blown commercial industry, typified by the crowds that flocked to 2003‘s "Dancing Girls," which dealt with previously off-limits themes such as drug addiction and prostitution.

Instead of grungy state-run theaters showing formulaic films, American-style cineplexes are springing up complete with air conditioning, comfy seats, big screens and popcorn.

The most successful so far is "Two In One," a slapstick comedy about a man impersonating a woman — and falling in love with a real woman who doesn‘t know he‘s actually a man.

Michael DiGregorio, who manages Ford‘s cultural programs in Hanoi, hopes the budding filmmakers will document the rapid social changes in Vietnam by telling compelling human stories.

"The more the Vietnamese free themselves from the sort of stereotypical films they made in the past, the better they will be able to represent the world as it is today," DiGregorio said.

http://www.newsone.ca/hinesbergjournal/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=37368

way too ironic.

U.S. Backs Free Elections, Only to See Allies Lose

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates Aug. 9 — Lebanon’s political spin masters have been trying in recent days to explain the results of last Sunday’s pivotal by-election, which saw a relatively unknown candidate from the opposition narrowly beat a former president, Amin Gemayel.

There has been talk of the Christian vote and the Armenian vote, of history and betrayal, as each side sought to claim victory. There is one explanation, however, that has become common wisdom in the region: Mr. Gemayel’s doom seems to have been sealed by his support from the Bush administration and the implied agendas behind its backing.

“It’s the kiss of death,” said Turki al-Rasheed, a Saudi reformer who watched last Sunday’s elections closely. “The minute you are counted on or backed by the Americans, kiss it goodbye, you will never win.”

 

I don't write very often, but sometimes you just gotta share.  I knew that California hasn't passed its budget, but I didn't know why.  Well, here's the reason.

from the NYT:

A $145 billion budget, due on June 15, was approved by the State Assembly on July 20, but it has languished in the Senate, where Republican lawmakers are holding out for cuts that would render the document without deficits. Senate members met Wednesday night but failed to break the impasse. Democrats, who control both houses, have been unwilling to make cuts to some programs that serve the poor, like Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. They have also opposed a proposed $300 million trim to an entitlement program for children that Republicans would like to see tightened for families that do not comply with certain requirements.

Republicans, led by their most conservative members in the Senate, argue that the state cannot afford extensive programs at a time of deficits, and have asked for over $800 million in additional cuts.

I'm blogging about the forum at www.apen4ej.org/blog

check out this cool video about the work of laotian organizing project in richmond!  sereneguppie worked on it last summer.

Call the President's Office at 650.723.2481 BEFORE 5PM!

Stanford students hold sit-in at president's office

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/22/BAGDDPVEE14.DTL

(05-22) 13:38 PDT STANFORD UNIVERSITY -- Eleven Stanford University students are staging a sit-in today at the university president's office in an attempt to convince officials that they should not use sweatshop labor to produce Stanford gear, protest organizers said.

The students were joined by about 50 protesters -- a few of whom were naked -- who marched from White Plaza and rallied outside Hennessey's office for about an hour. The naked protesters were a bit shy, and several were covering their private parts.

The students were cheering loudly, chanting ""What do we want to be? Sweat-free!" and carrying signs reading "Make Stanford sweat-free."

The students are members of the Stanford Sweat-free Coalition, organizers said in a press release, and have been meeting for three months with University President John Hennessey and other officials in the hopes of halting the use of sweatshops for producing apparel that features the Stanford University logo.

Sophomore political science major Dan Shih said the 11 protesters walked into Hennessey's office peacefully around 11:30 a.m. and sat down. Two hours later they were still there, reading books and working on laptops, and were expected to stay there until the late afternoon.

"We've had three months of meetings, they have all the info they need, and we want to show the president we care about this issue," he said.

Stanford officials said today that they agreed with the students' point and were working on a plan to ensure Stanford gear is produced in responsible factories.

E-mail the writers at dwalsh@sfchronicle.com and mlagos@sfchronicle.com.

does anybody think this article (and all the other ones out there who makes this type of comparison) is racist?  the washington post last friday had an article connecting Cho Seung Hui's actions to Oldboy (yeah, the movie) and John Woo's movies.  Check it out: WP staff writer Stephen Hunter's Cinematic Clues to Understand the Slaughter: Did Asian Thrillers Like 'Oldboy' Influence the Va. Tech Shooter?

and if you don't want to spend time reading the whole thing, here are some exciting excerpts and comments:

* The search for movie influences is part of the search for the explanation behind the frenzy: We need to understand what caused this young man to step off into the oblivion of nihilism on a massive scale. What was the mechanism -- or was there even one? Too many movies? Too many video games? Too many rude shoves in the locker room? A genetic predisposition for mass murder? Too many date-night turndowns? Why? (This passage was not supposed to be sarcastic in the article.  The article's actually looking for cause of murder through movies & "rude shoves.")
* It's [Oldboy] a Korean story -- he would have passed on the subtitles and listened to it in his native language -- of unjust persecution and bloody revenge.
* As with the Park movie, it is not certain that Cho saw Woo's films, though any kid taken by violent popular culture in the past 15 or 20 years almost certainly would have, on DVD, alone in the dark, in his bedroom or downstairs after the family's gone to bed.
* So when you see any of the famous photos of Cho with his arms outstretched and a gun in each hand, you cannot help but think, if you've seen any of them, of the Hong Kong gangster movies and the super-cool Chow.
* In at least three regards, Cho's activities so closely reflect the Woo oeuvre that it seems somewhat fair to conclude that in his last moments, before he blew his brains out, he was shooting a John Woo movie in his head.
* "The Killer" also features an intellectual posture that might have been extremely attractive to Cho's mental state. In it, the killer is presented as both hero and victim, rather than villain. His difference from other men, his moral nature, is repeatedly stressed.
And the concluding paragraph:
* These similarities between fact and fiction, of course, raise striking issues that all creative artists -- but especially those who deal in stories that offer visceral violence as part of their pleasure principle -- must deal with. Woo built engines of excitement and stimulation that pleased millions and made him a wealthy, internationally known man. Yet now, all these years later, a young man might have used them as the vessel of his rage and alienation, taken the icon of the movie gun and moved from the intimacy of the DVD player and the arena of his imagination to the public arena, and there reenacted the ritual. This time the carnage is for real.

Is the writer serious?  Out of all the possible reasons why a young person would resort to violence, the writer is postulating that it's movies, and Asian movies nonetheless, since he's Asian (American)!  The writer doesn't even know if Cho Seung Hui has even seen ANY of these movies!

And isn't it weird that the article is written like a text analysis?  In college, we used this method of analysis to understand and interpret a text (books, movies), NOT a real-live person.  Hunter's making a direct & LITERAL comparison between (Asian!) movies and what little materials he has to understand Cho Seung Hui as a person.  All Hunter has to go on about Cho is what has been in the paper and in the public media: photographs he sent to NBC, what happened at the scene, and nothing else about Cho's life!  You can't even make a good analysis of a book from that much material, let alone an analysis of an obviously complex and troubled person!  I mean, if you're going to make that kind of literal analysis, at the very least, Hunter could have used an Asian American movie like "Better Luck Tomorrow."  Oh, but wait, Hunter wouldn't have watched an Asian American movie in the first place, and he doesn't think Cho is in anyway American - Asian or not - cuz we're perpetual foreigners.

HOLLANDALE, Miss. — For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states.

The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors...

To the shock of Mississippi officials, the national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee, Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.

Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say, rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well above the national average.

Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the large racial disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those among whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.)

 

 

Argentina was brought to a near standstill on Monday amid protests over the killing of a teacher in the south-west of the country last week.

Tens of thousands took to the streets of Buenos Aires and other cities.

Schools closed, public transport was halted and banks and many offices shut for a couple of hours.

Carlos Fuentealba, a chemistry teacher, was killed during a protest over pay after being hit by a tear gas canister fired by police.

Public transport stopped for a couple hours on Monday and banks and some offices shut their doors in a protest called by the country's main trade union movement.

Mr Fuentealba,40, died after being hit on the head by a teargas canister fired by police during a protest in the south-western province of Neuquen.

He had joined his colleagues to demand a pay rise.

Clashes between provincial police and protesters are common around Argentina, but the killing of the popular, gentle family man, Carlos Fuentealba seems to have angered the nation.

Protesters in Buenos Aires marched from the centre of the city, calling for the killers to be prosecuted and for the resignation of Neuquen province governor Jorge Sobisch who, they say, is responsible for police brutality.

The government of President Nestor Kirchner has so far kept quiet on the issue which seems to have struck a nerve in the Argentine population just months before the general election.

I just saw a Vietnamese film tonight called "Living in Fear" (Sống Trong Sợ Hãi).  It's about a man who was in the South Vietnamese Army, sent to re-education camp after the war was over, and had no job after he returned to normal life that he had to learn how to clear mines and bombs to sell the metal scraps to make a living for his family.  It's a scary story, but a common one for Vietnamese folks post-war to risk their lives and find the bombs that were left by the US Army.  The director Bui Thac Chuyen was there, and he said that this was inspired by a true story of a man who cleared mines and was able eventually able to to farm on the land that he has cleared.

I haven't seen "Journey from the Fall," but I can imagine this is a deeply different movie, even though both is about Vietnamese lives post-war.  If you've seen "Journey from the Fall," I'd love to hear what you think.  I would recommend you to go see Living in Fear, but it was showing for only one night at the Pacific Films Archives.  Maybe one day we'll be able to have the vietnamese movies distributed here.

Never thought this picture would come in useful, but here it is, a presidential candidate and me in 1999 in Chicago (no photoshop magic here).

Recently, it seems like there are only two ways of talking about Obama: white America praising him as the magic bullet or black folks denouncing him as white hope, sellout, insufficient, and all the other names.  Here's one of the latter, thanks to  rvltnrygup for this article.  There has to be more ways to think about a presidential candidate right?  illogic82 has talked about this a little bit.  I'd still vote for Obama over the Clinton-Bush reign.

Obama the 'Magic Negro'

This NYT article is dedicated to the Midwesterners out there who've migrated to the West Coast and the Super Bowl brought us back home. Rensselaer, IN is confused about who to root for in the Super Bowl; I'm not.

And finally, GO BEARS!

Oh, the Rivalry! And That’s Off the Field.

RENSSELAER, Ind., Jan. 24 — The happy couple, Indianapolis Colts fans, bounded into the tattoo shop on the main square of this small city, unaware they had just crossed into enemy territory.

“We’re getting married,” Ruben Cantu exclaimed with his fiancée, Maranda Riley, at his side. Soon, wedding talk turned to Super Bowl talk, as so much conversation here does these days.

Little did Mr. Cantu and Ms. Riley know that despite his Indiana address, the shop’s owner, Tim Gross, professes undying allegiance to the Chicago Bears, the Colts’ opposition in Super Bowl XLI this Sunday.

“So, congratulations,” Mr. Gross told them. “Now get out.”

 

 

I've been asking this question too after seeing "An Inconvenient Truth" - is it environmentally unsound to root for Venezuela's oil profits to keep going up so Chavez can continue to fund the revolution?  Found this article online, and it actually provides some good framework to think about oil in a poor country.

Venezuela - an ecologically sustainable revolution?

Zoe Kenny 26 January 2007
At a meeting in Brazil on April 26, 2006, plans moved ahead between Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil for a major transcontinental oil pipeline. The pipeline would be 10,000 kilometres long and would link the four countries plus Paraguay and Uruguay.

This isn't, and I'm still thinking about that post... but here's something worth sharing too.  Courtesy from Claire Tran's new column
tee hee

More thoughts about being at home to come, including an entry on Paris by Night, but for now "Yes, oil from Venezuela" by Joseph P. Kennedy II.

THERE'S BEEN a lot of controversy lately over whether Citizens Energy Corp. should distribute -- and the poor should accept -- discount heating oil from Venezuela while that country is under the leadership of President Hugo Chávez.

But those who have no problem staying warm at night should not condemn others for accepting Venezuela's oil.

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Southwest was delayed yesterday, and illogic82 and I didn't get in until 2am Chicago time. Boy, was I tired!
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My sisters still came to pick me up at 2am even though the one who was driving was on East Coast time, and that was already 3am her time, plus, she's a teacher and she usually doesn't go to bed past 10. Boy, was SHE tired!
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We got home and there was chao (Vietnamese congee) ready for me. It's so hard to find good chao in Oakland, so I requested that my Mom make chao ga. Chicken pieces mixed with cabbage and cilantro dipped in gingered fish sauce in my hot soupy congee. That was awesome!
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My parents moved 3 years ago while I was still in college, so I never really lived in this house. It's so hard to feel at home.
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My mom and my younger sister made banh tet yesterday even though it's not Vietnamese New Year. The house smelled of boiled banana leaves and warmed everything up.
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I woke up this morning and there was banh tet ready. Cut into slices ready for consumption. That was yummy!
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My mom stocks bathroom stuff like there's no tomorrow. I took a couple of toothpaste tubes, cuz in Cali,illogic82 and I have been using the travel size.

I have to say, my life is pretty good right now. I'm just waiting for the next time to be fed