Founded in 2008, The Zeitgeist Movement is a sustainability advocacy organization, which conducts community based activism and awareness actions through a network of global/regional chapters, project teams, annual events, media and charity work.The movements principle focus includes the recognition that the majority of the social problems that plague the human species at this time are not the sole result of some institutional corruption, absolute scarcity, a political policy, a flaw of human nature or other commonly held assumptions of causality. Rather, the movement recognizes that issues such as poverty, corruption, pollution, homelessness, war, starvation and the like appear to be symptoms born out of an outdated social structure.

While intermediate reform steps and temporal community support are of interest to the movement, the defining goal is the installation of a new socioeconomic model based upon technically responsible resource management, allocation and design through what would be considered the scientific method of reasoning problems and finding optimized solutions.

This Natural Law/Resource-Based Economy (NLRBE) is about taking a direct technical approach to social management as opposed to a monetary or even political one. It is about updating the workings of society to the most advanced and proven methods known, leaving behind the damaging consequences and limiting inhibitions which are generated by our current system of monetary exchange, profit, business and other structural and motivational issues.

The movement is loyal to a train of thought, not figures or institutions. The view held is that through the use of socially targeted research and tested understandings in science and technology, we are now able to logically arrive at societal applications that could be profoundly more effective in meeting the needs of the human population, increasing public health. There is little reason to assume war, poverty, most crime and many other monetarily-based scarcity effects common in our current model cannot be resolved over time. The range of the movements activism and awareness campaigns extend from short to long term, with methods based explicitly on non-violent methods of communication.

The Zeitgeist Movement has no allegiance to any country or traditional political platforms. It views the world as a single system and the human species as a single family and recognizes that all countries must disarm and learn to share resources and ideas if we expect to survive in the long run. Hence, the solutions arrived at and promoted are in the interest to help everyone on Earth, not a select group.

Read this article:

About | The Zeitgeist Movement UK

Just because students leave for vacation doesnt mean Maines colleges and universities shut down. All summer long, they still provide cool cultural programming for the rest of us. Here are four dont-miss events happening this month. Will Grunewald

No need to sign up for Netflix and plant yourself on the couch. If you have the itch to do some serious binge-watching, USM has arranged for an edifying one-day alternative, with 10 hours of fun, family-friendly, enlightening entertainment shown on its planetariums dome screen. Youll travel from outer space to the ocean floor, from the dawn of time to the present day all from the comfort of a reclining seat.

July 1. 10 a.m. $10 adults; $8 under-18. Southworth Planetarium, 70 Falmouth St., Portland. 207-780-4249.

Sure, you know the story of Muhammad Ali. But have you ever seen it told through dance? As part of the Bates Dance Festival, the INSPIRITperformance troupe led by Middlebury College dance professor Christal Brown uses movement, narration (The Greatest provided plenty of quotable quotes), and period-specific projections to evoke issues of race, social activism, and freedom. And what better venue than Lewiston, site of the famous AliListon phantom punch?

July 8. 7:30 p.m. $20. Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St., Lewiston. 207-786-6381.

The third Thursday of every month, Bowdoins Harriet Beecher Stowe House where the famous writer penned Uncle Toms Cabin hosts an afternoon tea and discussion about the so-called little woman who made the great war. This months topic: the history and local color that inspired The Pearl of Orrs Island, Stowes novel set just down the way in Harpswell, written 10 years after shed moved away.

July 20. 1 p.m. Free (reservations required). Harriet Beecher Stowe House, 63 Federal St., Brunswick. 207-725-3155.

Summer is T-shirt season, and no one understands the subtleties of short-sleeved style better than New York photographer Susan Barnett, who traveled the country taking photographs of the shirts on strangers backs. Her aim is to investigate the zeitgeist through the silkscreened words and images full of political, personal, religious, and cultural meaning that we wear around every day.

Through September 2. Free. University of Maine Museum of Art, 40 Harlow St., Bangor. 207-581-3300.http://umma.maine.edu

View original post here:

School's (Not) Out for Summer - Down East

Victory Gardens Theater announces the lineup for the 2017 IGNITION Festival of New Plays, including Tuvalu, or The Saddest Song by Antoinette Nwandu; This Land Was Made by Tori Sampson; Spin Moves by Ken Weitzman; Tell Them I'm Still Young by Julia Doolittle; Wolf Play by Hansol Jung; and Suspension by Kristiana Rae Coln.

The 2017 Festival runs August 4-6, 2017 at Victory Gardens Theater, located at 2433 N Lincoln Avenue. All readings will be free and open to the public, though a reservation is encouraged. For more information or to RSVP, visit http://www.victorygardens.org/ignition or call the Victory Gardens Box Office at 773.871.3000.

INGITION's six selected plays will be presented in a festival of readings and will be directed by leading artists from Chicago. Following the readings, any number of the plays may be selected for intensive workshops during Victory Gardens Theater's 2017-18 season, and Victory Gardens may produce these plays in an upcoming season.

"At Victory Gardens, we bridge Chicago communities through innovative and challenging new plays by giving playwrights the time and space to develop their work. We are thrilled to welcome these six remarkable and unique voices in the American theater to our IGNITION Festival," comments Artistic Director Chay Yew. "These playwrights not only reflects the challenges in our current political climate, but push us to imagine a greater future."

"This year's lineup exemplifies the current political and cultural zeitgeist of our city and country: a young girl's journey to self-empowerment, a movement towards a revolution, the role basketball plays in international peace, how to recover from the loss of a child, America's role in Korean adoptions, and the ancestral power of #blackgirlmagic. Come experience these new plays and hear what they have to say about the world in which we live," remarks Director of New play Development Isaac Gomez.

The 2017 Lineup Includes:

Friday, August 4, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.

Tuvalu, or The Saddest Song by Antoinette Nwandu

It is Los Angeles in the mid-nineties, and Jackie-girl is at a crossroads. This lyrical and powerful coming of age story with a soundtrack asks how the girls whose mothers' lives have been tainted by abuse, violence, poverty and shame ever grow into healthy and empowered women.

About Antoinette Nwandu

Antoinette Nwandu is a New York-based playwright via Los Angeles. Her play Pass Over is currently receiving its World Premiere production at Steppenwolf in June 2017, and her play Breach will receive a World Premiere at Victory Gardens in February 2018. She is currently under commission from Echo Theater Company in Los Angeles. Antoinette's plays have been supported by the Cherry Lane Mentor Project (mentor: Katori Hall), Kennedy Center, Page73, Ars Nova, PlayPenn, Space on Ryder Farm, Southern Rep, The Flea, Naked Angels, Fire This Time, and The Movement Theater Company. Honors include a spot on the 2016 Kilroys list, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, the Negro Ensemble Company's Douglas Turner Ward Prize, and a Literary Fellowship at the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference. Antoinette is an alum of the Ars Nova Play Group, the Naked Angels Issues PlayLab, and Dramatists Guild Fellowship. Additional honors include being named a Ruby Prize finalist, PONY Fellowship finalist, Page73 Fellowship finalist, NBT's I Am Soul Fellowship finalist, and two-time Princess Grace Award semi-finalist. Education: Harvard, The University of Edinburgh, Tisch School of the Arts.

IGNITION Opening Night Kick-Off at 9:30 p.m.

Victory Gardens Theater Lobby

Stick around for this opening night celebration with a live DJ, delicious appetizers, and complimentary drinks as we raise a glass to kick off our IGNITION Festival of New Plays.

Saturday, August 5, 2017 at 3:00 p.m.

This Land Was Made by Tori Sampson

Oakland in 1967 was a powder keg of social activism about to boil over into radical action that would soon change how the whole country engaged in politics. For the patrons of Miss Trish's Bar, however, these ain't nothing but talking points-that is, until the full seductive and explosive force of the revolution walks through the door.

About Tori Sampson

Tori Sampson is a recent graduate of Yale School of Drama, where her credits include This Land Was Made, Some Bodies Travel and If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must be a Muhfucka. Her plays have been developed at Great Plains National Theater Conference and Berkeley Repertory Theater's The Ground Floor residency program. She holds an Honorable Mention from the 2016 Relentless Award, is the Kennedy Center's 2016 Paula Vogel Playwright and second-place Lorraine Hansberry recipient. She is a 2017 finalist for the Alliance Theater's Kendeda Prize. Tori's other plays include, Cadillac Crew, Black Girl Nerd and Cottoned Like Candy. Her short play, She's our President, will be produced by Baltimore Center Stage as part of the My America: She commission. Tori is currently working on a commission from Berkeley Repertory Theater and will spend the next year as a Jerome Fellow at The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. A native of Boston, Massachusetts, she holds a B.S. in sociology from Ball State University in Muncie, IN.

Bringing New Plays To Life at 5:00 p.m.

Panel Conversation

Richard Christiansen Theater

Victory Gardens is home to some of the richest and boldest new plays premiering across the country. In a city where audiences are hungry for new theatre work, what is the current state of new play development and its future? What are the best practices for new play collaborations? Join this timeless conversation on the new play process featuring IGNITION playwrights Antoinette Nwandu, Tori Sampson, Ken Weitzman, Julia Doolittle, Hansol Jung, and Kristiana Rae Coln.

Saturday, August 5, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.

Spin Moves by Ken Weitzman

It's 1996, the inaugural year of the WNBA, and Maja dreams of playing high school basketball - but having escaped to the U.S. from the war in Bosnia, panic attacks prevent her from playing the game she loves. That is, until a new coach appears at her high school. He helps Maja to face her fears, but his unorthodox tactics alarm Maja's fiercely protective mother.

About Ken Weitzman

Ken Weitzman's most recent play, Halftime with Don is in the midst of a 2017 National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. Ken's previous productions include, among others, The Catch (The Denver Center Theatre Company), Fire in the Garden (Indiana Repertory Theatre), The As If Body Loop (Humana Festival), Arrangements (Atlantic Theatre Company). His devised work includes, Memorabilia (ALLIANCE THEATRE), Hominid (Out of Hand Theatre/Theatre Emory/Oerol Festival Netherlands), and Stadium 360 (Out of Hand Theatre). Plays-in-progress include Spin Moves (New Harmony Project) and seal boy (Keen Company Playwrights Lab, The Lark's Meeting of the Minds, (Playwrights' Center of Minneapolis). National Awards include The L. Arnold Weissberger Award for Playwriting for Arrangements, TCG Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award for The Catch, the Fratti/Newman Political Play Contest Award for Fire in the Garden, and South Coast Repertory's Elizabeth George Commission for an Outstanding Emerging Playwright Organizations who have commissioned Ken's work include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Arena Stage, the ALLIANCE THEATRE, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Theatre Emory, Out of Hand Theatre, and South Coast Repertory Theatre. Ken is a Core Writer at the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis, and a former board member of The New Harmony Project. Ken received his MFA from University of California, San Diego and has taught at UCSD, Emory University, Indiana University (head of MFA in Playwriting) and, currently, at Stony Brook University.

Artist Meet, Greet, & Ice Cream Social at 9:30 p.m.

Victory Gardens Theater Lobby

Hang out with the playwrights and artists while cooling off with boozy ice cream floats at this post-show artist meet & greet.

Sunday, August 6, 2017 at 12:00 p.m.

Tell Them I'm Still Young by Julia Doolittle

Allen and Kay are approaching sixty-five when their only daughter is killed in a car crash. Now parents without children, the two struggle to renegotiate their identities and their marriage, as the entrance of two young people revives a painful longing for what's been lost: their family and their futures.

About Julia Doolittle

Julia Doolittle is a Brooklyn-based playwright and screenwriter whose work has been developed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Rattlestick Playwright's Theatre, The Tank, Tiny Rhino, The Women's Project, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Urban Stages, and Rogue Machine Theatre. She is a 2016 recipient of the Elizabeth George Commission from South Coast Rep. Upcoming, the Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Play Festival.

Sunday, August 6, 2017 at 3:00 p.m.

Wolf Play by Hansol Jung

An American father un-adopts a Korean boy but just before he leaves the new house, the ex-father finds out that the new couple to whom he has "re-homed" his ex-son, is lesbian. This doesn't sit well with ex-father at all. The boy is actually not a real boy. He is a puppet. And his puppeteer is the Emcee of the evening, and spinner of the night's tale: a lone wolf.

About Hansol Jung

Hansol Jung is a playwright and director from South Korea. Productions include Cardboard Piano (Humana Festival at Actors Theater of Louisville), Among the Dead (Ma-Yi Theatre Company), and No More Sad Things (co-world premiere at Sideshow Theatre, and Boise Contemporary Theatre). Commissions from Playwrights Horizons, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Artists Repertory Theater, the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation grant with Ma-Yi Theatre and a translation of Romeo and Juliet for Play On! at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her work has been developed at The Public Theater, Royal Court, New York Theatre Workshop, Berkeley Repertory's Ground Floor, Sundance Theatre Lab, O'Neill Theater Center's New Play Conference, Lark Play Development Center, Salt Lake Acting Company, Boston Court Theatre, Bushwick Starr, Ma-Yi Theater Company, Asia Society New York, and Seven Devils Playwright Conference. She is the recipient of the Page 73 Playwright Fellowship, Rita Goldberg Playwrights' Workshop Fellowship at the Lark, 2050 Fellowship at New York Theater Workshop, MacDowell Colony Artist Residency, and International Playwrights Residency at Royal Court. She has translated over thirty English musicals into Korean, including Evita, Dracula, Spamalot, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, while working on several award winning musical theatre productions as director, lyricist and translator in Seoul, South Korea. Hansol holds a Playwriting MFA from Yale School of Drama, and is a member of the Ma-Yi Theatre Writers Lab.

The Race Race at 5:00 p.m.

Panel Conversation

Richard Christiansen Theater

In a country so divided and polarized by topics of race, how are these conflicts reflected in the dramatic arts? What role does theater play in conversations around race and how can it begin the process of healing and understanding? Join IGNITION and Chicago-based playwrights as we begin to uncover the role race plays in creating new work.

Sunday, August 6, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.

Suspension by Kristiana Rae Coln

On the 100th day of 45's first term, two Black teen girls stage a coup of the authoritarian regime of Climb & Succeed Charter Academy, a not-so-dystopian high school where campus security patrols the halls in riot gear and a new disciplinary code takes in-school suspension to a haunting extreme. Voltaire & Yansa, guided by a mystic teaching artist, learn to wield their ancestral magic and blackgirl badassery to combat the harrowing militarization of public education.

About Kristiana Rae Coln

Kristiana Rae Coln is a poet, playwright, actor, educator, Cave Canem Fellow, creator of #BlackSexMatters and co-director of the #LetUsBreathe Collective. She was awarded 2017 Best Black Playwright by The Black Mall. In 2016, her play Good Friday had its world premiere at Oracle Productions, Octagon its American premiere at Jackalope Theater in Chicago, and but i cd only whisper had its American premiere at The Flea in New York. Octagon was the winner of Arizona Theater Company's 2014 National Latino Playwriting Award and Polarity Ensemble Theater's Dionysos Festival of New Work, and had its 2015 world premiere at the Arcola Theater in London. In 2013, she toured the UK for two months with her collection of poems Promised Instruments, winner of the inaugural Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize and published by Northwestern University Press. Kristiana is an alum of the Goodman Theater's Playwrights Unit where she developed florissant & canfield, an epic reimagining of the Ferguson protests, which was featured in the 2016 Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival. She is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and one half of the brother/sister hip-hop duo April Fools. She appeared on the fifth season of HBO's Def Poetry Jam. Kristiana's writing, producing, and organizing work to radically reimagine power structures, our complicity in them, and visions for liberation.

The IGNITION Festival of New Plays receives major support from The Joyce Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Southwest Airlines-Victory Garden Theater's official travel sponsor, and Suite Home Chicago-Victory Gardens Theater's Housing Sponsor for the 2017 IGNITION Festival.

Performances are at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue, in the heart of Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. Admission to all festival readings and events is free, though an RSVP is required. For more information or to RSVP, visit http://www.victorygardens.org/ignition or call the Victory Gardens Box Office at 773.871.3000.

Under the leadership of Artistic Director Chay Yew and Managing Director Erica Daniels, Victory Gardens is dedicated to artistic excellence while creating a vital, contemporary American Theater that is accessible and relevant to all people through productions of challenging new plays and musicals. Victory Gardens Theater is committed to the development, production and support of new plays that has been the mission of the theater since its founding, set forth by Dennis Za?ek, Marcelle McVay, and the original founders of Victory Gardens Theater.

Victory Gardens Theater is a leader in developing and producing new theater work and cultivating an inclusive Chicago theater community. Victory Gardens' core strengths are nurturing and producing dynamic and inspiring new plays, reflecting the diversity of our city's and nation's culture through engaging diverse communities, and in partnership with Chicago Public Schools, bringing art and culture to our city's active student population.

Since its founding in 1974, the company has produced more world premieres than any other Chicago theater, a commitment recognized nationally when Victory Gardens received the 2001 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Located in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, Victory Gardens Biograph Theater includes the Za?ek-McVay Theater, a state-of-the-art 259-seat mainstage and the 109-seat studio theater on the second floor, named the Richard Christiansen Theater.

Victory Gardens Ensemble Playwrights include Luis Alfaro, Philip Dawkins, Marcus Gardley, Ike Holter, Samuel D. Hunter, Naomi Iizuka, Tanya Saracho and Laura Schellhardt. Each playwright has a seven-year residency at Victory Gardens Theater.

For more information about Victory Gardens, visit http://www.victorygardens.org. Follow us on Facebook at Facebook.com/victorygardens, Twitter @VictoryGardens and Instagram at instagram.com/victorygardenstheater.

Here is the original post:

Works by Nwandu, Jung, Colon and More Set for IGNITION Festival 2017 at Victory Gardens - Broadway World

Will who designed a watch become more important than who made it? It seems a ridiculous idea, when the most sought-after watches are still those made by individual watchmakers, whether working under their own names or for larger brands the more complicated watches from the top maisons are almost always made by a single watchmaker.

However, two forces at play are changing the picture. The first is that, for most watches, more of the actual watchmaking than ever before is done by machine, a direction of travel that improving technology and a tougher business environment is propelling more surely than ever. The result is that the difference between one watch and another is owed more to the engineering design than the skill of the watchmakers doing the assembly its who designed the system that made the watch rather than who made it.

The second is that the watch industrys traditional approach to design is simply out of date. In a design-literate world in which we know who designed everything from our chairs to our shirts, to accept that our watches simply come from this brand or that maison no longer makes sense. The watch industry takes its own good time to adjust, but design is now part of the conversation in ways that would have been unthinkable in earlier decades.

Ceramica by Rado, 1,705. rado.com

The watchmaking world was actually relatively quick to adopt the idea of brands in the modern sense Longines, in 1889, was one of the first to register a trademark and the winged hourglass is the oldest extant registration at WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organisation). At a time when precision and quality were much more variable than today, brands focused their marketing on those qualities almost to the exclusion of everything else. For most of the 20th century, only a few brands had a consistent look across their collections and the design of a watch might owe as much to external suppliers (of cases, dials and hands) as to any directed aesthetic. Instead, the priorities were functional both in terms of the retail product offered and the manufacturing process. Jack Heuer, himself an acknowledged devotee of mid-century architects such as Oscar Niemayer, revealed that the 1963 Carrera owed its most identifiable feature (an angled inner flange on which the tachymetre scale was printed) to a new method for fixing the crystal in place. From almost the same period came what is generally accepted as the finest watch design of all, the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, for which there seems to be no evidence at all as to who designed it.

There were exceptions of course: Louis Cartier, whose Tank is a century old this year, clearly had a strong vision for the watches he designed. Similarly, Hans Wilsdorf of Rolex and Henri Stern of Patek Philippe were detail obsessives that allowed nothing to pass without their approval. Nevertheless, the actual business of producing final designs was left to draughtsmen working to order and, as Jaeger-LeCoultres Reverso or even early Panerais demonstrate, having anonymous designers didnt mean poor design.

Edge by Movado, 800. movado.com

Nevertheless, the post-war rise of the designer was inevitably going to reach the watch world. That it did so first in the United States probably shouldnt be a surprise. Movados Museum Watch, with its dial being defined by a solitary dot at 12 to symbolise the sun at high noon, was designed in 1947 by the Bauhaus-influenced artist Nathan George Horwitt. (NB: it was first made by Vacheron & Constantin-LeCoultre Watches Inc, and only later produced by Movado.) The Museum Watch might have been an anomaly, or at least a rarity (Warhol also designed a watch for Movado) had Hamilton not followed suit a decade later.

The company had been experimenting with a new electronic movement since 1946 and wanted the watch to have a suitably futuristic design when it was finally ready in 1957 it turned to Richard Arbib, an industrial designer with a reputation for ideas that captured the space-age zeitgeist. The result was the Ventura, a watch unlike anything before, though its fame owes as much to Elvis Presley wearing one as its futuristic lines.

TYPE 3 B in titanium/black matt pvd by Ressence, 33,500. ressencewatches.com

Matthew Beedle

If the next decades most famous watches were, effectively, unsigned, it was a jobbing watch designer, Grald Genta, that would change the terms of engagement with a string of highly recognisable and still sought-after designs for Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe and others. And while it was only once collectors began to value his work that his name escaped the industry and he achieved recognition in his own right, it was his reputation in the industry that allowed him the creative freedom to make sure it was his ideas that saw the light of day.

Gentas path was followed in relatively quick succession by Jorg Hysek who designed the 222 for Vacheron Constantin (from which the contemporary Overseas is derived) and went on to produce key designs for Breguet, Seiko, TAG Heuer and Tiffany & Co. By 2005, when Dior planned the launch of a new mens collection it was unthinkable that the watch would be designed without the houses then artistic director, Hedi Slimane, being closelyinvolved.

Octo 41 mm by Bulgari, 5,800. bulgari.com

Matthew Beedle

Now its simply a matter of strategic choice, there are brands that emphasise design and brands with other stories to tell. For Patek Philippe, the maisons identity must come first, second and third, but no one at Patek pretends that design is irrelevant (you might even hear a whisper to the effect that Mme Christine Stern likes to keep a watchful eye on proceedings). Similarly, the house styles of both Panerai and A. Lange & Shne are so central to their brand identities that it is, effectively, the brand that signs the watches. Rado, meanwhile, has long made design a priority, regularly working with outside designers such as Konstantin Grcic.

Smaller independents are naturally somewhat freer to produce designs that challenge and with several having come into existence from the wider design world rather than watchmaking, its been no surprise to see some fairly radical takes on the basic form of a wristwatch. Of the more successful, Benot Mintiens Ressence project and Martin Frei, the co-founder of Urwerk stand out for having introduced designs that have come to be seen as almost natural. Pushing hardest at the envelope of the past 20 years has been Maximilian Bsser. Firstly through the Opus series that he created for Harry Winston and then through his MB&F project, Bsser has encouraged designers, watchmakers and, crucially, collectors to embrace a much more liberal approach to design. Theres a fine line between the intriguing and the ridiculous though, which is why Bsser (a) is clear about his intentions and (b) works so closely with Eric Giroud, the industrys go-to designer.

HM8 CAN-AM in wg by MB&F, 78,000. mbandf.com

Matthew Beedle

Even for maisons where it is the brand that takes centre stage, theres been a much greater acknowledgement of design as part of a brands identity. Jaeger-LeCoultre is a serious watchmaking Grande Maison first and foremost, but have long given equal billing to Janek Deleskiewicz, the brands artistic director for the past three decades. More recently, Bulgari has elevated the director of its Watches Design Centre, Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, to a starring role in the development of its products. Meanwhile, Deleskiewiczs former boss was Jrme Lambert, has moved to Montblanc where hes appointed Davide Cerrato to give life to the vision that Lambert has for the brand. The critical and commercial success that Montblanc has achieved owes much to the partnership Lamberts created, pointing to the critical role that the CEO plays.

So should you now care more about the designer than the watchmaker or the brand? On occasion yes, but it isnt a binary question. Design matters, even in the most horological of spheres Vacheron Constantins 57260, the most complicated watch ever made, certainly tested the watchmakers and engineers, but Vacheron were right to emphasise the achievement of the maisons design team in making visual sense of such a dense package of indications and dials.

Styling by Grace Gilfeather

This was first published in GQ magazine. Subscribe now to get 6 issues of GQ for only 15, including free access to the interactive iPad and iPhone editions. Alternatively, choose from one of our fantastic digital-only offers, available across all devices.

The GQ watch guide 2017

The best watches under 500

Why are watchmakers taking things to extremes?

Continue reading here:

Does it matter who designed your watch? - GQ.com

JUNE 17, 2017

THE MASSACHUSETTS-BASED writer, teacher, and composer Jan Swafford is famed for his biographies of Beethoven, Brahms, and Charles Ives, as well as his beloved Vintage Guide to Classical Music. Basic Books has just published Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music, a clear and lively book that does exactly what it promises, in a series of chapters built on historical periods and individual composers.

The following interview was conducted over email, shortly after Language of the Spirit was released.

SCOTT TIMBERG: There have been, over the decades, numerous tomes on classical music. What kind of gap does yours fill?

JAN SWAFFORD: My old Vintage Guide was aimed at adult music lovers or potential ones, and also at schools. Language of the Spirit is mainly aimed at schools, secondly at adults. I imagine there have always been books for music classes the old Joseph Machlis book, The Enjoyment of Music, went through several editions and, modified by other hands, is still around. Aaron Copland did his bit with What to Listen for in Music. I wanted to write a similarkind of thing in a more lively, humanistic, and entertaining way. At the same time, the book is written by a practicing musician and composer who looks at the profession from the inside. My basic assumption is that this music is not some grand abstraction, not an adjunct to a lifestyle, but a special and profound kind of communication among people; its main impact is not intellectual but emotional. If the book has a central message, I suppose thats it.

Decades ago, books, courses, and television programs on serious music, visual art, and the like were plentiful Leonard Bernsteins Young Peoples Concerts, Kenneth Clarks Civilisation, and so on. Has that approach dropped out of the mainstream in a world of postmodern niches, the demotion of high culture, and constant digital connection?

Ill reply with a story. My mother was a high school English teacher much involved with poetry and literature. When I was cleaning out the house after she died, I found stacks of articles on major literary figures Eliot, Frost, et al that were mostly torn out of Life and Time magazines, which, at the time, were enormously popular, omnipresent. Every week Time had a classical music piece. People like Hemingway and Eliot were regularly on the cover. Whats on the coverof magazines in print and online these days? Rock stars and movie stars. TV began in the 50s with vastly ambitious ideas about public education featuring people like Bernstein on the networks, before public television. Clark was later, on the BBC and PBS, but PBS doesnt really do things of that scope anymore. The reasons are obvious, all having to do with money.

So yeah, theres been a gigantic dumbing-down of the culture. In the United States, its moving toward the point where pop culture may be the only culture left, with everything else having to suck up to it. I think thats a bad situation, obviously. On the other side of the coin, orchestras still exist, even if they arent exactly thriving (partly because the players are getting paid better). But theyre still there. Mozart still sells out Boston Symphony Hall, there are hundreds of chamber concerts, and millions are listening to classical music on Spotify and YouTube, in unpredictable ways. Classical music is a lousy profession, but it always has been. And it has always needed some kind of subsidy to exist just like railroads.

Can you tell us about a composer who demonstrated not just a long, but a protean, multichaptered career, on the order of a Miles Davis or Bob Dylan? What personal talents and social conditions made that possible?

Somebody who had a long, strongcareer, from beginning to end Certainly Ives was multichaptered and protean, but he was largely felled by illness in his 40s. Saint-Sans was a prodigy who had a gigantic career born in 1835 and died in 1921 and I think he wrote books on science, but he was basically a brilliant second-rater. I guess the best answer is Schoenberg and Stravinsky, who both got started early, were prolific through long lives, and went through significant evolutions within them. And they both wrote first-rate stuff into old age. But maybe the champ was Bach, brilliant from his teens, writing lasting work from his early 20s, and ending with his most profound music the B-minor Mass and Art of Fugue.

By contrast, is there a major composer with a very brief heyday not someone who died young like Schubert, but someone whose genius seemed to come and go quite quickly? What happened to him?

I wonder whether the answer here isnt Mendelssohn, who wrote some of his best music in his teens and, from that point, gradually ran out of inspiration until his death, mostly from overwork, at 38.

From your perch amid the ancient forests and verdant river valleys of New England, how vital does the classical music in Southern California and on the West Coast seem in the 21st century?

Dont know much about the SoCal scene, except that I had a gig with the LA Phil last year and they sounded splendid. I dont actually, as it were, like Disney Hall, or any other Gehry, but the Halls acoustics are fabulous. And there were good crowds for the all-Beethoven series. Besides that, Disney Hall began a massive upscaling of the neighborhood around it, which Im told was a dump but now has museums, schools, restaurants, et cetera.

Your writing is known for the parallels you draw between classical music and other fields, especially art, architecture, and intellectual history. Why do you find these metaphors useful?

Theyre not metaphors to me theyre direct connections. I believe theres such a thing as a zeitgeist, which is a matter of something in the air that affects everybody, and artists in whatever discipline are part of the zeitgeist. Im not particularly mystical about it, but a time has a character. Freud influenced everything, helped create the Austro-German fin-de-sicle zeitgeist, even for the people who never read him. I think Faulkner was influenced by Einsteinian relativity, though he could not have read Einstein, and by Freud, though he never read Freud.

In my early 20s, I imagined a choral piece based on vowels and their connection to the names of gods which came to pass, not in a piece of mine but in Karlheinz Stockhausens Stimmung, which Id never heard. It was an idea in the air. So again, the connections between the arts and intellectual and political and religious history are real, not metaphorical. Art comes from life and returns to life, and music is no exception.

In your teaching and dealing with civilians, does there seem to be a composer or historical period that serves as a gateway drug to the larger world of classical music?

No. I tend to pick out irresistible works from any period and play those everything from Carissimis Jephte to Bachs Sheep May Safely Graze to Mozarts Elvira Madigan slow movement to Mussorgskys Great Gate of Kiev to The Rite of Spring to Ivess Psalm 67.

What writers on music, or on the arts in general, do you admire and suspect may have shaped your style and approach?

When I was first doing music journalism I primed myself with G. B. Shaws music criticism, which is the best inspiration I know. Hes the main reason I cant call myself the best music writer in English. (There are other reasons.) At the moment I cant think of much else. And when Id developed a voice as a writer, I didnt need to read Shaw anymore.

I read a lot of James Agees film criticism, too, which helped: The picture deserves, like four out of five other movies, to walk alone, tinkle a little bell, and cry Unclean, Unclean. Agee showed me the value of a zinger line. Likewise, Anthony Lane. The best zinger I know is from Thoreau: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. That line went through some eight drafts, all of which said the same thing, but only of them said it for the ages.

Is there a composer or piece that, rather than growing stale or familiar over the decades, retains and deepens its fascination?

My first choice is Bachs B-minor Mass, because, for about 50 years, Ive found it incomparable from beginning to end. Meanwhile, as these things do, its changed for me as Ive changed. Also the Beethoven Missa solemnis, which I first got to know in high school (maybe the first score I ever owned), and is enormously complex and multifaceted, hard to take in at first, but sublime when youve managed to get a handle on it. Ivess Fourth Symphony fascinated me from the beginning and has only grown since (while Ive burned out on some other Ives pieces).

Lets start where it all began, with the origins of music: What does it tell us that every human society, past and present, East and West, has some kind of music? (And most, I think, use something resembling the pentatonic scale.) Do you have any hunches as to why this practice, which has no clear evolutionary or territorial benefit, would arise and persist?

As Ive said in print, I think humans are innately musical, and that music evolved with us, alongside language and at first there may have been little difference between music and words and religion. But as I also write, single-celled animals respond to sound, so the idea that sound in itself is meaningful begins at the cellular level, and, from there, goes up to the highest brain functions. And also heart and soul functions. Its built into us.

If Susanne Langer is right, symbolic responses are built into us too, so we innately respond to all sound, including music, as if it were a symbol of something. That means, among other things, that instrumental music, without words, is the most intimate and personal kind of symbol, because what you bring to it is what you, in particular, are. Thats true of all art, but I think more so of abstract music, which we dont perceive as abstract at all.

Scott Timberg is the editor of The Misread City: New Literary Los Angeles and author of Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class.

Read more from the original source:

The Most Intimate Symbol: Jan Swafford on Classical Music - lareviewofbooks

It was a wipeout. Failing to win a single contest in 1,004 local elections in Italy on Sunday (11 June), Beppe Grillos 5 Star Movement was quickly assigned to the list of declining populist parties that began with Geert Wilders defeat in Marchs Dutch poll.

Said to be inspired by the Trump Effect, Italian voters gave their votes to the centre-right and centre-left, going so far as to post a Lega Nord/Forza Italia coalition victory in Grillos hometown, Genoa, a traditionally left-wing city.

The one-time comedian was quick to write off the defeat as a symptom of growing pains.

The M5S was the most present political force in this electoral round. The other parties camouflaged themselves, above all the PD which presented itself in around half the constituencies the M5S did, he told Ansa. The results are a sign of slow but inexorable growth.

Grillo might be right. 5 Star is no ordinary populist party. Indeed, calling it populist is itself something of a stretch, though the M5S leader has done little to dampen the comparison, given his embrace of Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, and, umm, Donald Trump.

More importantly, 5 Star has managed to fill a void in Italian politics that was opened up by the collapse of the countrys left, particularly that created by the fragmentation of the Communist Party in the early 1990s, of which Grillo was once a member.

Adding a healthy dose of environmentalism and anarchism, and a typically American embrace of the democratic possibilities opened up by the Internet, made the 5 Star Movement an especially distinct beast, with little ideologically in common with other populist parties such as Germanys far-right Alternative fr Deutschland.

The tone of the partys politics has always been counter-cultural, albeit hippie-like, sans the labour emphasis of the older Italian left. Given that Grillo and party co-founder Gianroberto Casaleggio were both baby boomers, it made sense.

They were, in fact, ageing hippies, who, in classic 1960s fashion, had held onto most of the contrarian ideologies of their generation.

That cultural mix is what made 5 Star such a potent and appealing, Zeitgeist-like force, particularly in the context of the economic crisis created by the decadence of Silvio Berlusconis disastrous four terms in office, during which the party was born.

5 Star didnt have to offer much in the way of a concrete political programme. It just had to emphasise the anti-establishment values associated with Italys declining left, and the culture of its post-war heyday.

The problem with this, and the one which makes it less than competitive with Italys right, is its anti-immigration stance, one that Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi resurrected this week, calling for a moratorium on migration to the capital.

A former advocate of Romes profound diversity, the scandal-ridden Raggi could not help but sound a bit insincere, smarting, as 5 Star was, from its electoral performance on Sunday.

Hence the significance of the electoral resurgence of the Lega Nord and Berlusconis Forza Italia. Both took an estimated 13% in Sundays vote, in no small part due to the consistency of their historic antipathy towards immigration.

Decidedly nationalist parties, and also avowedly pro-business, the Lega Nord and Forza Italia are also less ideologically contradictory than 5 Star.

Their return to prominence, at 5 Stars expense, helps highlight the ideological inconsistencies of Grillos party, and why immigration is a core weakness.

Hating Roma, for example, is not normally associated with environmentalism. Even in Italy, where fascism always indulged a mix of left and right.

If 5 Star continues to haemorrhage voters to its competitors, it will be impossible to ignore why.

Appoint a queer premier. The Serbian government has come under fire once again after the Nelt Group announced that its facilities in downtown Belgrade had been illegally razed.EURACTV.rs reports.

Democratic deficit. France is mulling the introduction of proportional representation for its next legislative election. It could take inspiration from its European neighbours, all of which bar the United Kingdom use a version of PR.

Hungary is such a drag. Budapests new NGO law is discriminatory and restricts the free movement of capital. This could affect other kinds of economic activity, former Commission official Heather Grabbe toldEURACTIV Germany.

Refugee crisis 1.0. Almost a decade before Lampedusa became a symbol of todays refugee crisis, the Canary Islands another southern European border faced a similar challenge, reports EURACTIV media partner EFE.

Cold War still hot. Ion Iliescu and 13 other officials have been ordered to stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity in connection with the crackdown on a Bucharest protest in 1990, the Romanian prosecutors office said on Tuesday.

No taxes, no peace. The growing trend of distributing vouchers to employees to avoid taxes has raised eyebrows in the Greek government, which has moved to crack down on unprecedented levels of tax evasion in the cash-strapped country.

Refugees matter. The EU launched legal action on Tuesday against Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic for refusing to take in their share of refugees under a controversial solidarity plan.

Go West. Macedonias new leaders showed fresh resolve to revive the countrys stalled bid for membership of the EU and NATO on Monday by vowing to mend relations with estranged EU neighbours Greece and Bulgaria and implement long-delayed reforms.

Hippies are better at farming. Italys anti-system 5-Star Movement looked set to suffer a severe setback in local elections on Sunday, failing to make the run-off vote in almost all the main cities up for grabs.

See the rest here:

Trans-Europe Express: 5 Star fails on immigration - EURACTIV

(Random House) US: Jun 2017

For much of the 21st centurylike the decades preceding itidealism has seemed in short supply in America. As the country lurches from dubious democracy to outright oligarchy, and the fledgling achievements of the Civil Rights era are back-pedaled into barely veiled disenfranchisement and targeted violence against black Americans and other minorities, idealism has seemed the scarcest resource in a country where hope itself has inexorably dwindled. Even the countrys dissenters those pundits and politicians who challenge whatever status quo holds sway in the halls of Washington and board rooms of Wall Streetseem more intent on proving the legitimacy of their own voices than proving the legitimacy of any high ideals.

However, suggests Jeremy McCarter, the spirit of radicalism and idealism may be returning to America. As his book went to print in early 2017 he witnessed the march of a nation against the president it found itself saddled with; a president who seemed to embody all of the countrys most terrible qualities.

Perhaps hes right, and something is awakening in the American soul. Perhaps it requires great struggle against the most formidable and despicable of foes to break through the collective cynicism of a country disillusioned with its ideals; to quicken a peoples heart and enable them to believe in the potential for progress once again.

Driven in part by the hope this might be the case, McCarter looks back to a former century for inspiration. Young Radicals might appear on the surface to be a group biography, but its subject is actually the spirit of an age. McCarter explores the progressive-minded radical idealism of the 1910s, an era which produced some of the centurys greatest hopes and greatest horrors. In America: socialism and suffrage. Internationally: world war and the Russian Revolution.

Behind the fury of events and ideas were vibrant, living people, and McCarter weaves his narrative primarily around the stories and struggles of five of them. Walter Lippmann starts off the tale as an employee of the newly elected Socialist mayor of Schenectady, New York; he quickly grows disgusted with the municipal administrations failure to implement serious socialism and embarks on his own career as a writer and journalist, helping to found The New Republic magazine and eventually serving as advisor to presidents.

Alice Paul: the Quaker who learned militant resistance from the suffragettes in Britain and brought it back to America where she fought for womens right to vote, and broader equality, until her death in 1977. John Reed, swashbuckling journalist, poet, and playwright who produced the most famous chronicle of the Russian Revolution, tried to kickstart communism in America, and died as a member of the fledgling Soviet government in 1920, the only American to be honoured with burial at the Kremlin. Max Eastman, editor of the radical journal The Masses. And Randolph Bourne, radical writer and essayist whose refusal to commit himself to any ideological stricture was no doubt aided in part by his tragically early death.

The five core characters, and the many others who came into their orbits, were united by more than just their radical organizations, journals, and Greenwich Village roots. There was a spirit in the air. America was idealistic. People believed they could identify the countrys problems, and by thinking about them, solve them. There was a deep-seated faith that the answers were out there; a faith that coincided with the birth or maturing of doctrines that would go on to play an important role in 20th century history: feminism, socialism, communism, internationalism, transnationalism. There was a concomitant belief in the power of art to change the worldnon-commercial; radical; political artart for and by artists, not for or by corporate profit or state-sponsored regimes.

There was a purity to the struggle and idealism of the era, or at least McCarter helps it to appear that way in hindsight.

Of course, he handles his characters with passion, but also integrity. He knows they werent perfect. Alice Pauls suffrage militancy collaborates with white supremacists. John Reed and Max Eastman both wind up disillusioned after their first-hand experiences as part of the Russian revolutionary regime. Walter Lippmann becomes an apologist for Americas involvement in World War I, lured in by the prospect of influence at the highest levels of power in Washington.

But the gradual evolution of these characters is at least as instructive, and important, as the genesis of their radical idealism.

Biography of an Era

McCarters subjects at first appear to be a disparate, random grouping of intellectuals and activists, waging their own struggles and lives, linked here and there by common causes and employers. But what gradually emergesand McCarter does a consummate job in breathing it slowly into lifeis a common spirit of idealism and radicalism that animates not only this core of characters but also the movements and people around them. From the arts to politics to journalism and more, every field of endeavor seems infused by this sense of grappling with big ideas. No matter where the characters turn their energy, their projects take on a sense of fundamental radical importance.

During a summer break, John Reed, Louise Bryant and several others form what would become the famous Provincetown Players, at first just for a lark but they take it so seriously it develops a life of its own (in the process they accidentally discover and recruit Eugene ONeill, who would go on to become what many consider Americas greatest playwright). The theatre troupes constitution, drafted during an intense 24-hour writing session by Eastman, Reed, and a couple of others, deeply resembles the manifesto for their radical journal The Masses, grappling with issues of democratic and artistic control by the artists themselves, and dedicated to presenting the sorts of things capitalism would not be interested in. The two projectsand countless others during these few yearsare really one and the same.

The same radicals, pursuing the same dreams, facing the same problems: The Masses and the Provincetown Players are, at heart, twin children of the zeitgeist. Both explicitly reject the limiting, falsifying effects of commercial production. Both see a true and honest reckoning with the facts of American life as a step toward liberation. Both proceed not with doggedness, but with a light heart. There is, in both, a lively spirit of play.

The First World War is a constant backdrop to the throbbing beat of this zeitgeist, both tempering and quickening it. America watches in horror as Europeheretofore considered by many the apex of the civilized worlddescends into barbarous, self-destructive bloodshed. President Woodrow Wilson is initially determined to keep America out of the war, and public sentiment (along with the radicals) are on his side. Yet as the war drags on, so do the cries for America to do something, especially when growing numbers of American vessels and passengers wind up as unintended casualties of German U-Boats in the Atlantic.

Yet for the time being America rests atop its moral high ground, preaching peace to both sides, ready and waiting to help the world rebuild whenever the war ends. Wilsons administration sends a moralizing message to both sides: no matter who wins, the war will have been a setback for human civilization, and whatever settlement ends the war must not be grounded in vengeance but in ensuring that new systems are put in place to prevent war from ever erupting again. The government itself seems tinged with the idealism of the era. Peace without victory is the call coming from the White House; it is, perhaps, the last stand of institutionalized American idealism and morality.

When more American casualties pile up, and when the Germans not only refuse to rein in their U-Boats but are caught trying to provoke Mexico into a war with the United States, Wilsons administration finally opts for war (they werent entirely hapless victims: militarists and would-be war profiteers at high levels had been advocating for participation in the war for years). But even then, they attempt to varnish it with a moralistic sheen. Granted, war-making American administrations have always claimed they were fighting for some high ideal, but Wilson gives his vision a bit more substance: not only a war for democracy, but he suddenly injects the new vision of a League of Nations, a super-governing global body with the power to prevent future wars, into the mix. Its a fitting capstone to this radical moment that even the most institutionalized Establishment figure, the president, clings on to a radical idea as well.

In many ways, Young Radicals is an innovative history of the First World War. While it engages a broader range of subject matter than just the war, it also offers an important history of the war from the perspective of how it impacted progressive and radical socio-political movements in America. When America finally enters the war it signals a crack in American utopianism and idealism. From the dubious idealism of President Wilsons administration and its efforts to stay out of the war, to the split in the left caused by Americas eventual entry, the war impacted American progressivism just as powerfully as these young radicals impacted the war. And impact it they did, by challenging its repressive anti-sedition and anti-espionage legislation, which wound up shutting down radical papers like The Masses and eventually deporting hundreds of radicals to Russia after the war. Yet amidst these defeats, the radicals had victories, too, defending themselves from prison and worse in passionately argued court cases. Much of our popular ideals of free speech were shaped in pivotal ways during this period.

One major impact the war had on the radicals was in splitting their ranks, between those (like Lippmann) who bought the governments claim that it was fighting for democracy, peace and other high ideals; and those who saw Americas entry into the war as treachery and imperialism. These latter included not only radical socialists like Eastman and Reed but also Paul and her suffrage movement, which rightly pointed to the hypocrisy of a government that claimed it was going to war for democracy while it denied democracy to tens of millions of women voters at home.

Lippmann himself became an ideologue for the Presidents war-making, narcissistically convinced he would help craft the post-war new world order. When finally faced with the fact of both his exclusion from decision making and the failure of America to achieve the idealistic post-war treaty it sought, he seeks redemption by working to scuttle the fatally flawed treaty. Interestingly, President Wilson himself becomes almost a sixth core character, ostensibly the farthest thing from a radical (as President) yet almost helplessly sharing in the radical and idealistic spirit of the age despite himself.

Young Radicals is a beautiful book; a desperately-needed book for the present era. The prose is passionate and poetic; the narrative is fast-moving, riveting and resonates with the very idealism that its author seeks to explore. McCarter writes with passion and integrity. Its a book that renders hope real again, and reminds us that idealism and progressive radicalism are not terms of insult; they are core American values that America needs desperately to rediscover. Its only ever idealism that has driven America forward, notes McCarter in closing. In a dark era like the present, its more vital than ever to (re)discover and cling to the most audacious ideals, for they are the only bulwark against the destructive power of cynicism.

Whatever happens, we ought to be braced by the example of the young radicals: how they discovered their ideals, made a decision to fight for them, and went on fighting even when the battle turned against them. Their defeats were painful, but not final. Battles for ideals never are. Ruins stop being ruins when you build with them.

Rating:

Go here to read the rest:

Whatever Happened to American Idealism? | PopMatters - PopMatters

If you grew up listening to Tupac Shakur, youre going to be disappointed with the biopic All Eyez On Me. If you merely knew about Tupac but are generally unaware of his songs and what they stand for, youre going to be disappointed with this movie. If youre looking for a hip hop biography in the vein of Straight Outta Compton, youre still going to be disappointed. With no clear target audience that will be entertained, this is a difficult film to recommend.

Tupac is a giant name, and he deserved a film better than this one. Directed by Benny Boom, who is known for music videos for 50 Cent, David Guetta and other such big artists, the film never manages to engage on a level that Tupac did with his songs. In fact the film plays out like a string of music videos, with bits of story sprinkled, to no lasting effect.

A still from All Eyez on Me. Image from Facebook

A biography tends to chronicle familiar beats such as humble beginnings, an opportunity, a rise, the descent into sex, drugs and disillusionment and the eventual fall but a good biography transcends these cinematic clichs with either new ways to explore them, or pure cinematic heft. All Eyez On Me unfortunately tracks those familiar elements like a checklist, not revealing anything that wasnt already known about the legendary hip hop artist.

The biggest focus here is the frenemy relationships between Tupac, Suge Knight and Biggie Smalls but theres a lot of smoke and no fire the conflicts dont exude any power and the drama feels like something out of a bad TV movie than a motion picture. Even worse is the supposedly platonic friendship between Tupac and Jada Pinkett (who would later become a movie star and Will Smiths wife). The film tries to shoehorn a social issue with Tupacs mother being a blacktivist, and the internal conflict that Tupac has with whether to stand up for his community, but that too is weakly executed. The censorship by Mr Nihalani doesnt help matters with swear words muted listening to Tupacs songs feels like eating a burger without the patty.

A still from All Eyez on Me. Image from Facebook

Demetruis Shipp, who plays Tupac looks a lot like the guy hes playing, but falls completely flat during the dramatic moments and fares even worse in the sentimental ones. The few bits of entertainment come from the music montages where you see him belting out his legendary songs, but the film never manages to capture the infectious energy of better films of its genre.

The 90s captured a whole zeitgeist of music and the rivalry between the East and West coast rappers, theres a whole history behind the movement and the film wastes a huge opportunity to tap into a time so crucial to both America and music. Perhaps a Netflix mini series would be a better avenue to explore the chunk of time in greater detail. In fact the hologram of Tupac performing at Coachella a few years ago was farmore interesting than this film you could head over to YouTube to watch an icon digitally come back to life.

More:

All Eyez on Me movie review: This 2pac biopic is a compilation of videos with very little story - Firstpost

Chokwe Antar Lumumba, a human-rights lawyer, won the mayoralty of Jackson, Mississippi, in June with 93 percent of the vote. (Illustration by Louisa Bertman)

With a clenched fist held high and the promise of amovement of the people, Chokwe Antar Lumumba asked the voters of Jackson, Mississippi, to elect him as their mayor in a race he pledged would lead to the transformation of a Deep South city in a deep-red state. Victory for his civil-rights-inspired, labor-backed campaign for economic and social justice would send shock waves around the world, said the 34-year-old human-rights lawyer as he vowed to make Jackson the most progressive city in the country.1

Too radical? Too bold? Not at all. Backed by a coalition that included veteran activists who fought segregation, along with newcomers who got their first taste of politics in Bernie Sanderss 2016 presidential campaign, Lumumba won 55 percent of the vote in a May Democratic primary that saw him oust the centrist incumbent mayor and sweep past several other senior political figures in Mississippis largest city. A month later, he secured a stunning 93 percent of the vote in a general election that drew one of the highest turnouts the city has seen in years.2

That victory renewed a radical experiment in community-guided governance and cooperative economics that his father, the veteran radical activist Chokwe Lumumba Sr., began during a brief mayoral term that ended with the senior Lumumbas untimely death just eight months after his own 2013 election as mayor. Governing magazine speculates that the younger Lumumbas tenure may offer striking evidence of a nationwide trend: strongly progressive policies being pushed in big cities, even in deep red states. Thats true. Unfortunately, Lumumbas June 6 win didnt get anything close to the media attention accorded a handful of special elections for US House seats in districts that are so solidly Republican that Donald Trump was comfortable plucking congressmen from them to fill out his cabinet.3

This is the frustrating part of Lumumbas shock waves around the world calculus: His election should have sent a shock wave. The same holds true for the election of progressives in local races from Cincinnati to St. Louis to South Fulton, Georgia, in a season of resistance that began with the Womens March on Washington and mass protests against President Trumps Muslim ban but has quickly moved to polling places across the country.4

The list of victories thus far on this years long calendar of contestsmayoral, City Council, state legislative, and even statewideis striking. Many of them are unprecedented, and most are linked by a growing recognition on the part of national progressive groups and local activists that the greatest resistance not just to Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan but to right-wing governors could well come from the cities and states where the day-to-day work of governing is done. Municipal resistance is crucial because these Republican governors often do the bidding of the Koch brothers and the corporate-sponsored American Legislative Exchange Council.5

Our nation will only change from the grassroots up. Dan Cantor, national director of the Working Families Party

Inspired not merely by their opposition to Trump but in many cases by the experience of the Sanders campaign, these next-generation progressive candidatesoften running with the backing of Our Revolution, the national group developed by Sanders backersshare a belief that effective opposition begins with saying no but never ends there. They recognize that an alternative vision can be proposed and put into practice in communities where taxes are levied, services are delivered, commitments to fight climate change are made, resolutions to establish sanctuary cities are adopted, and questions about poverty, privatization, and policing are addressed. Our nation will only change from the grassroots up, says Dan Cantor, national director of the Working Families Party, which backed Lumumba as well as the progressive winners of a hotly contested primary for Philadelphia district attorney, a statewide race for the top education post in Wisconsin, and a New York election that saw a Trump-backing GOP district pick a resistance-preaching union activist for an open legislative seat.6

Cantor is right to suggest that these victories make a powerful case that a new resistance-and-renewal politics is sending a signal to conservative Republicans and cautious Democrats alike about the ability of bold progressive populists to win in every part of the country. Thats why it is so worrisome that these electoral shock waves have been crashing against the wall of ignorance and indifference that surrounds a Trump-obsessed Washington media.7

Even before the 2016 elections, the national media were far too focused on Beltway intrigues. When the Trump-centric punditocracy hang on the 45th presidents every tweet, election results that cannot be tied directly to whats happening in Washington barely exist in their eyes. This is a damaging phenomenon: Even in an era of rapidly evolving social media, the validation that comes from traditional media coverage should not be underestimated. In the none-too-distant past, things changed because down-ballot races were closely monitored for evidence of the zeitgeist; the tangible signs of electoral progress for civil-rights campaigners in the late 1960s came initially in the form of election results for the mayoralties in places like Gary, Indiana, and Cleveland, and they inspired the next wave of campaigns in cities like Atlanta and New Orleans. City Council elections in Berkeley, Madison, and Ann Arbor in the early 1970s revealed the political potency of radical movements and lowered voting ages, just as Harvey Milks 1977 election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors told us that LGBTQ Americans were transforming urban politics. And a remarkable series of election results in 1983, beginning with Harold Washingtons election as mayor of Chicago, signaled the rise of a rainbow coalition that would inspire not just the Reverend Jesse Jackson but a young community organizer named Barack Obama.8

Lumumbas big win in Jackson and similar breakthrough victories across the country are powerful indications of todays emerging resistance. His overwhelming primary victory occurred on the same day that progressive Cincinnati Councilwoman Yvette Simpson shocked even herself when her power of we campaign finished first (ahead of a conservative incumbent) in that citys mayoral primary. Annie Weinberg, electoral director of Democracy for America, which has waded into dozens of down-ballot contests, said the message is clear: In 2017, voters are ready to make cities everywhere into bastions of resistance to the Trump regime by electing bold progressive leaders who run on, and are committed to fighting for, racial and economic justice.9

Weinbergs point was confirmed on May 16, when Philadelphia Democrats nominated veteran civil-rights lawyer Lawrence Krasner for district attorney. Krasner, who had defended Occupy Philadelphia and Black Lives Matter protesters, beat a crowded field of contenders with a campaign that promised to make the City of Brotherly Love a model for criminal-justice reform. Along with victories last year by Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx in Chicago and Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala in Orlando, Florida, Krasners win reflects the political appeal of new approaches to policingones first voiced by protesters on the streets of American cities, and that the Trump administration and too many politicians in both parties continue to callously dismiss. The headline of a Philadelphia Daily News column by Will Bunch announced: This wasnt just a primary victory. This was a revolution. The columnist saw in Krasners victory nothing less than the stirrings of a whole different kind of revolution from the city that gave America the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rightsa revolution aimed at finally undoing a draconian justice regime that had turned the Cradle of Liberty into a death-penalty capital and the poster child for mass incarceration.10

Many recent progressive victors were Bernie Sanders supporters or Sanders DNC delegates last year.

A similarly revolutionary result came in St. Louis on April 4, when Natalie Vowell won a citywide school-board seat with an intersectional campaign that focused not just on education policy but addressed the housing, employment, and criminal-justice issues that often determine whether students succeed. A Sanders delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Vowell promised to empower parents across the economic spectrum and stop equating poverty with apathy.11

Developing detailed platforms that recognize the links between local, state, and national issues has characterized these recent victories. Winning candidates have made opposing Trump a local issue, with commitments to defend immigrants and fill the void created by federal budget cuts; but they have also rejected the austerity, deregulation, privatization, and intolerance of statehouse Republicans. For example, Dylan Parker is a 28-year-old diesel mechanic and member of the Quad Cities chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. In 2016, Parker was a Sanders delegate; in early April of this year, he was elected to the City Council of Rock Island, Illinois, with a campaign that updated the sewer socialist municipal politics of the 1930s by focusing on providing universal high-speed Internet access and expanding Rock Islands publicly owned hydroelectric power plant. Two weeks later, another DSA member, khalid kamau (who lowercases his name in the Yoruba tradition that emphasizes community over the individual), was elected to the City Council of South Fulton, Georgia. A Black Lives Matter and Fight for $15 organizer and also a Sanders delegate, kamau campaigned on a bold economic and social-justice vision that seeks to make the newly incorporated community of South Fulton the largest progressive city in the South.12

In Scott Walkers Wisconsin, April voting saw Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers win a statewide nonpartisan race after being targeted by conservative backers of the school choice schemes favored by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. While his challenger embraced DeVos and called her selection a positive development for education, Evers challenged the Trump appointees promotion of taxpayer-subsidized parochial or private schools that are part of the choice program and said DeVos should be paying attention to public-school students. We need her to be an advocate for those kids, explained the teachers union ally, who calls for the increased funding of public education, especially for schools serving African-American, Latino, and rural students. Evers won 70 percent of the vote in a state that narrowly backed Trump last fall.13

While DC pundits have kept a reasonably close watch on congressional special elections in the districts won by Trumpand have seen signs of political movement some of the clearest signals are coming from special elections for seats in the state legislative chambers that will redraw congressional district lines after the 2020 Census. Progressive Democrats running in historically Republican districts in New Hampshire and New York won breakthrough victories in May. Republicans should absolutely be concerned: Two Republican canaries died in the coal mine yesterday, GOP political consultant William OReilly said after the results were announced. He explained that Trump voters and other Republicans simply didnt show up, and voters from the left did.14

THE STAKES ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER. GET THE NATION IN YOUR INBOX.

The New York special-election winner, elementary-school teacher and union activist Christine Pellegrino, described her victory as a thunderbolt of resistance. But it was also something else: Pellegrino, another 2016 Sanders delegate, wasnt the first choice of Democratic strategists and local party leaders. She gained the nomination with the help of the group Long Island Activists, which was born out of the Bernie Sanders movement, and she ran an edgy anticorruption campaign that recognized the mood among voters frustrated with both major parties. As observers hailed her victory in a district that gave Trump a 23-point edge last November, Pellegrino explained that her winning strategy wasnt all that complicated: A strong progressive agenda is the way forward.15

Pellegrino proved her point by taking 58 percent of the vote in one of the 710 legislative districts nationwide that have been identified by Ballotpedia as including all or part of the so-called Pivot Countiesthose that voted for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and then voted for Republican Donald Trump in 2016. As the website explains: 477 state house districts and 233 state senate districts intersected with these Pivot Counties. These [districts comprise] approximately 10 percent of all state legislative districts in the country.16

For progressives, figuring out where to win and how to winnot merely to resist, but to set the agendais about more than positioning. This is the essential first step in breaking the grip of a politics that imagines large parts of the country will always be red, and that says the only real fights are over an elusive middle ground where campaigns are fought with lots of money but little substance. The resistance-and-renewal politics thats now gathering momentum rejects such empty politics and embraces what Chokwe Antar Lumumba identifies as the struggle [that] does not cease: to give people the jobs and freedom they need to shape their own destinies. That makes every election in every community matter, because the point isnt merely to resist one bad president; as Lumumba reminds us, it is to change the order of the world.17

Excerpt from:

A Progressive Electoral Wave Is Sweeping the Country | The Nation - The Nation.

Lewis Goodall, Political Correspondent

One of Jeremy Corbyn's biggest acolytes, Matt Zarb Cousin, wrote convincingly in the Guardian on Wednesday that one of the keys to the success of his former boss in last week's General Election was people recognising that he was a "different kind of politician, that he genuinely wanted to take on the establishment".

He's not wrong. I've clocked up over a thousand miles over the course of the election but not once did I meet a voter who thought that Mr Corbyn was a traditional politician. Along with the occasional salty remark, whatever most voters thought of his views, they were largely united in seeing him as different, a firebrand, a renegade even - a break with the past.

But for my money, the great secret of the Corbyn leadership is just how much of a traditional Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn has become, at least in the domestic policy arena.

Through the development of his own political antenna and the Labour Party's structures slowly taming him, the man we think of as the most radical leader in the party's recent past has in deed if not in diction become reliably middle-of-the-road and represents continuity with the recent past.

Gone is the doctrinaire campaigner of old, to be replaced by a man who, yes, has principle, but chooses his battles.

He accepts policies he doesn't much care for because he knows what is politic and what isn't. He might occasionally say something he doesn't believe for party unity or to serve his wider political aims. He has become, in other words, a politician and a successful one at that.

The proof of this particular political pudding is in Labour's manifesto - the first since 1983 written with the Left broadly in control of the party's levers.

But few on any side of the party, even the Blairite right, had any complaint when it was published. Yes, the nationalisations might not have been every candidate's cup of tea but their implementation was so staggered and piecemeal that few bothered to care.

The policy on austerity, despite the fanfare, was much the same as Ed Miliband's, as were many other policies. Even tuition fees, perhaps the most striking inclusion, finished a journey which Mr Miliband had begun.

Most astoundingly, the Labour leadership quietly accepted the Government's changes to welfare benefits. The Labour manifesto didn't even mention the Government's welfare benefits freeze up to 2020 and the party seemed unclear as to whether to change it.

Much of the document was redolent of microwaved Millibandism or good old-fashioned bread and butter New Labourism: policies on school meals, 10,000 new police officers, more homes, childcare - put them on a pledgecard and any self-respecting New Labour apparatchik would have happily brandished it. The word "socialism" didn't appear once.

And whatever his reservations, this former vice chair of CND stood on a manifesto with a commitment to renew Trident at its centre. He may have squirmed when asked about the promise but the Labour Party hierarchy made sure it was there and, should another election come, it would be there again.

But something has changed. Because, unlike 2015, Labour is gaining seats. Uncomfortably for a man who values substance over style, I suspect it's more the latter which boosted Labour last Thursday.

After all, for the mansion tax alone, I think the 2015 manifesto has some claim to be at least as radical than its 2017 successor. But I don't think it would have made any difference to Ed Miliband if he had stood on every word of it two years ago.

It was actually Mr Corbyn's mix of meat and potato, moderate Labour policies with his personal brand of radicalism and rhetorical style which created an electoral sweet spot for Labour. It married traditional Labour voters with a burgeoning cultural, youth-led movement which taps into the zeitgeist.

You could walk down the streets of east London or hop on the tube and see people wear Jeremy Corbyn t-shirts or badges. In saying you're part of his tribe, you're saying something about yourself - an instant cultural signifier.

You couldn't say that of Ed Miliband.

Mr Corbyn is a vinyl politician who reeks of authenticity, even if the end result isn't pitch perfect. Redolent of a different age, a slither of an imagined more authentically Labour past. He is therefore perfectly placed for a generation who crave "authenticity" above all else.

And here's the rub: neither part of this Labour 2017 jigsaw would have worked without the other.

Mr Corbyn unbound and unrestrained would have been anathema to the electorate and a traditional stack of Labour bread and butter middle-of-the-road policies presented by a traditional middle-of-the-road Labour politician like Owen Smith wouldn't have worked either without Mr Corbyn's personal zeal.

Ironically for someone who so eschews free markets, Mr Corbyn has a brand. And this, mixed with a traditional retail, not especially radical Labour offer, made a potent cocktail.

Mr Corbyn called the 2017 manifesto "radical but responsible". Not half. We didn't know it then but it beats "strong and stable" every time.

Previously on Sky Views: Sam Kiley - Cutting immigration may crash economy

Read more from the original source:

Sky Views: Rebel Corbyn has become traditional - Sky News

I'm sharing a booth with best-selling crime novelist Don Winslow at a diner on Manhattans Upper West Side, right before the toniest part of the neighborhood bleeds into Morningside Heights, home to Columbia University and public housing projects. He lived a few blocks from here in the 1970s and 80s, in a ninth-floor apartment with a bathtub he'd hide in when gunfire popped outside.

Back then, there was small-arms fire, says Winslow, whos tan, slight and dapper in a crisp white shirt and navy blazer. That was the nadir of the city. Summer of Sam. Freeze to death in the dark. Go to hell. It was bad, and we were all poor, but I have a certain nostalgia for it.

He speaks just as he writes, in short, sturdy sentences, rife with repetition, that bring you inside a literary world you can easily imagine on the big screen. Winslow is page-turner royalty. Hes written 20 novels that have been published in 28 counties. Two have been made into movies: Oliver Stones Savages and John Herzfelds The Death and Life of Bobby Z. Ridley Scott optioned The Cartel, Winslows international best-seller about the Mexican drug wars that The New York Times and Amazon had named a top book in 2015. (When I ask where in California he lives, he wont say: Because of The Cartel, I now get death threats and all that kind of happy crap.) But he calls his latest novel, The Force, the book Ive wanted to write my whole life.

Culture Emails and Alerts- Get the best of Newsweek Culture delivered to your inbox

American author Don Winslow is page-turner royalty. Hes written 20 novels that have been published in 28 counties. His latest, 'The Force,' is about corrupt New York City cops. Jens Schlueter/Getty

Part The Godfather, part The Wire, The Force is a Molotov cocktail of cops and corruption, where good guys are also bad guys, and police malfeasance isnt just about skimming money off drug bustsits about something far more insidious: the corruption that comes when trying to do the right thing. Denny Malone is the king of Manhattan North, a veteran New York Police Department detective sergeant whos been keeping the streets safe for 18 years. Hes a lapsed Irish Catholic from Staten Island with tattoo sleeves, a Dexedrine addiction, an ex-wife and a girlfriend.

Malone and his elite special unit, Da Force, are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, the best, the baddest. He operates at the edge of the racial tensions and drug wars exploding across New York, and hes driven by a desire to save the cityand, in the process, possibly even to save himself.

Thats because Malone and his crew are dirty. They stole millions in dollars and drugs when Da Force made the biggest heroin bust in New York history. The book opens with an extraordinary predicament: Malone, hero cop, is in federal lockup. Over the next 480 pages, we find out exactly how he got there, how far hell go to be free and what it really means to be a good cop.

Winslow grew up around cops. His godfather was a police officer, and as a young man, Winslow spent years as a private investigator, working murder cases, arsons and wrongful-death suits. But his fascination with copstheir lives, their families, the people they saved, screwed over and killedbegan when he saw The French Connection. He was 13. It seemed like such a different way to tell a story. It was about cops, but their inner lives, and grittier and more real.

To write The Force,Winslow spent five years interviewing scores of police officerscourageous cops, legendary homicide detectives, overt racists. Hed tell them, I dont need the facts. I know the facts. Ive read the court records. I know your cases. I want the feeling, he says. Drug traffickers are much easier to get to know than cops. They are less insular. They are less suspicious. But once a cop [lets you in], he totally trusts you.

Once, a cop in Greenwich Village sat across from him talking about murdered children, tears streaming down his cheeks. For some reason, over two to three months, he caught six child homicides, all unrelated. Bang, bang, bang, bang. I dont think hes ever recovered, Winslow says.

At times, Winslow was frightened. Im not an easy guy to scare. Its not bravado; Im just telling you, Im not, he says. But riding around some of the hoods at 2 a.m., you feel scared because the hostility level is so high. It wasnt this incident or that, it was the overall zeitgeist of absolute hatred coming your way.

Winslow wrote The Force during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, with names like Freddie Gray, Philando Castile and Michael Brown echoing in his ears. The books first few pages reveal another side of this tragic political environment. Winslow writes, During the time that I was writing this novel, the following law enforcement personnel were murdered in the line of duty. This book is dedicated to them. Next comes a gut-wrenching two-and-a-half-page list of names178 fallen officers, one after another, separated only by commas.

You keenly felt it, Winslow says about writing a cop epic in this atmosphere. There would be times when I would pick up a newspaper and know that I had to make a phone call. You know, a sympathy call. He trails off, clears his throat and mutters sorry as he jerks back into the booth. It takes me a moment to realize that his eyes are filling with tears.

He is thinking about a couple of particular cops, he says, taking a sip of water. One thing I wanted to explore is cops killing young African-Americans, and whats that about? And knowing that there are two sides to this. Youre looking at people whove become adversaries and enemies that should be friends and allies. Most cops truly, and at times desperately, want to protect the people.

Winslow is the kind of guy who could riff for hours about the militarization of the police, the catastrophe of the criminal justice system, the benefits of old-school policing (prevention, not reaction) and the importance of Black Lives Matter. It has a pointits unquestionable. And most cops, when theyre being really honest with you, will say the same thing.

The Force is not only a bleak commentary on race in America. It also paints a version of New York City (or any city, really) that none of us would choose to live in if we knew what actually went down in police stations, backrooms and courtrooms. And thats why its deliciousWinslows world is so corrupt, it feels more like fantasy than reality, even though its probably happening all around us.

The Force by Don Winslow, publisher Harper Collins, out now, $28 (19.) Harper Collins

Read the rest here:

Police Corruption Never Ends In Don Winslow's New NYPD Novel, 'The Force' - Newsweek

He wore bright colored capri pants, telling all that capri stands for capricious rather than the Italian isle. He extolled the usefulness of little black dresses to women and was described as a gifted and imaginary actor with jazz hands.

Leonard, the lead character in The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey, also expressed an idiosyncratic fashion sense by gluing layers of rainbow colored flip-flops onto the soles of black Converse athletic shoes, turning them into platform booties.

He was 14 and, given the stuffy Jersey Shore where he lived, a loner.

And, one day he went missing.

The one-act, one-man play Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey, written and performed by James Lecesne, is on the Laguna Playhouse stage through June 25.

The one-act, one-man play written and performed by James Lecesne and in performance this month at Laguna Playhouse is based on his young adult novel Absolute Brightness.

As a one-man performer, Lecesne is brilliant and completely believable, affecting variants of a New Jersey accent while impersonating a cop, a beauty parlor patron or a teen-age girl.

Working against an elegantly spare stage set designed by Jo Winarski, he keeps his audience on edge for roughly 80 minutes with nary a pause for breath. He nimbly pivots between Chuck DeSantis, a Shakespeare quoting, old-school detective; Ellen Hertle, the self-described aunt Leonard lived with; her introverted teen daughter, Phoebe; and the effete British owner of a local drama school.

He also becomes Gloria Salzano, a mobsters widow who finds one of Leonards signature platforms floating on the lake. Adept at fishing, she also distinguishes a variety of knots, a crucial skill, it turns out.

Humor emerges when she lectures DeSantis on the real persona of a mobsters wife, grills him on matters of faith and so gives the audience insight into the rough-edged cop who ultimately becomes as moved by Leonard as the people he queries.

The story begins when Ellen comes to the police station reporting Leonard missing for 24 hours, actually 19 hours and 47 minutes, and wants DeSantis to do something immediately.

Through his investigation, including interviews with the aforementioned characters, we find out who Leonard is or was. The missing youth meanwhile remains wordless, a shadow on a screen or represented by symbols such as a set of fairy wings.

Lecesne lets everyone describe Leonard, sometimes humorously, sometimes baffling, but always with affection and respect.

Its noteworthy that all descriptions of Leonard, save for those by Phoebe, come from adults who marvel at his persona while also cautioning against excessive flamboyance. Tone it down, honey, says Marion, the salon patron, but Leonard counters that if he stopped being himself, the terrorists would win. And, he does not own a cellphone but carries a pocket watch.

Affected by Leonards vibe as well, DeSantis nonetheless dryly describes the video-game addled bullies who lure him into a wooded area and ultimately kill him.

He also has scant words for the lawyers who defend the louts who claim gay panic, meaning that Leonard may have made a pass at one of them.

Disaffected, alienated and bullied teens, some gay, some not, have driven a plethora of story lines, with the latest being Dear Evan Hansen. The musical revolves around a teenager with social anxiety and a schoolmates suicide. Written and composed by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the production premiered in 2015 and received six Tony Awards this past Sunday, June 11. One reviewer called the storys moral ambiguity a sign of the current zeitgeist.

There is no such ambiguity in Brightness. Leonard is a good-natured, gifted kid who only transgressed by being himself. How everyone whose life he touched came to appreciate this and change their own entrenched ways will not be revealed here.

In 1994, Lecesne had created Trevor as part of the award winning show Word of Mouth, which he later adapted into a screenplay for a short film. After winning an Oscar for best live action short film, Trevor grew into a national movement initiated by Lecesne and the films producers Randy Stone and Peggy Rajski.

The project is a lifeline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youths in crises between age 13 and 24. The Trevor Life Line at 1-866-488-7386 is available daily. TrevorSpace connects LGBTQ youths world wide.

Read more from the original source:

One-Man Play Shines Brightly - Laguna Beach Independent Newspaper

There is no fitting tribute to the sacrifices of the youth of 1976 than implementing fully policies aimed at transforming our education system. We have the means, the tools, and significantly, political will backed by a popular mandate.

When chronicling milestones towards the fall of apartheid, an odious system declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations, 16 June 1976 takes pride of place. Not least because this political development changed our history forever by not only universalising our experience in graphic fashion but also because it set in motion the liberatory impulse in the soil of our nation across generations.

The calamity witnessed on this day exceeded what befell people in the Bulhoek massacre, the Bhambatha Rebellion and the Sharpeville Massacre. Not so much in terms of numbers but more for the systematic and vicious nature of violence against unarmed teenagers. June 16 is significant because the apartheid regime actively and knowingly butchered school children with modern weaponry in broad daylight.

Yes, massacres by their nature contain no mercy. In neo-Nazi states like apartheid South Africa, it would be unreasonable to expect mercy, more so because the victims were regarded as sub-human. Yet such brutality as witnessed in the June 76 uprising was enough to convince even the doubting Thomas' that South Africa had a paranoid regime married to fascist ideals of controlling all aspects of Africans lives, with nothing but cheap labour to offer. They were systematically removed from the countrys body politic.

It is a matter of historical record that the 16 June uprising was not a spontaneous act of rebellion by young people against a sudden introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. The root cause goes as far back as 1948 when the National Party won elections (although already immediately after the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 successive efforts were made by the union government to provide inferior education to black people).

As leader of the new racially-based state, Dr DF Malan appointed Dr HF Verwoerd as Minister of Native Affairs whose main purpose was to implement a policy of separate development, or more appropriately, to ensure that Africans stood no chance of development.

In dealing with the native question, Verwoerd crafted the Bantu Education system based on his conviction that there is no place for the native in the European community and that Africans were incapable of rising above the level of certain forms of labour. The native, he continued, has been subjected to a school system which drew him away from his own community and misled him by showing him the green pastures of European society in which he was not allowed to graze.

And so the Bantu Education Act 47 of 1953 was passed to drive Africans from the green pastures of white civilisation. To ensure total onslaught, Verwoerd went as far as starving mission schools of subsidies since they had no obligation to implement Bantu Education. Given miniscule per-capita spend on the education of black children, depriving independent schools of funds squeezed out possible quality learning opportunities for non-Europeans.

But the most important components of Bantu Education was governments takeover of teacher training colleges and the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction for at least half of the school subjects. The two are not mutually exclusive. If every black child had to learn half the subjects in Afrikaans, every teacher had to learn the same and acquire the ability to use it in class. And so the policy was rolled out in 1953 for Coloureds and 1965 for Indians.

It was only in 1974/75 that the 50/50 English/Afrikaans rule was strictly applied to Africans, starting in the Transvaal. Reasons given for this gradualism were that teachers had to master the art of teaching maths and social sciences in Afrikaans and learning material had to be available. And sure teachers did learn the language since the system used its control of colleges to prepare them for the ultimate roll-out of the project.

Whereas some elements of flexibility existed in the policy African schools could choose the main language of instruction in practice, the exemption principle was ignored and administrators of the southern Transvaal education directorate forcibly introduced Afrikaans.

All this happened in a context where a plethora of repressive laws were robustly implemented while draconian measures were employed to stifle any form of resistance to the apartheid system. Pass laws were enforced. The Group Areas Act was in place. The Sharpeville Massacre had taken place along with the Langa Massacre and other atrocities. The Rivonia Trial had ended, sending many in the leadership of the liberation movement to prison. Others were tortured, killed or exiled.

The 1973 Coronation Strike, a labour uprising in a bricks factory (KwaMagenqe) in Avoca interrupted the post-Sharpeville hiatus. Historical records say the regime tried to end the strike by asking the new King Zwelithini KaBhekuzulu and Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi to intervene. The strike eventually ended but the spirit of resistance was reawakened nationally, building on the agitation of young students like Bantu Biko. In less than 24 months after this strike, government announced that it was ready to implement the Afrikaans medium policy universally. And sure it did.

This signalled total control of Bantu Affairs. Land had been taken; Bantustans created as enclaves along tribal lines; further industrial laws passed to restrict and control movement of African labour; townships and hostels created for urban reserve labour force; every political activity was banned and penalties went as far as capital punishment. Every social and economic space had been colonised, now it was the mind.

Why is all of this important for the public sector mandarins in post-apartheid South Africa?

First, we learn that the Bantu Education policy succeeded because of the confluence of policy and praxis. Apartheid architects made sure that once the policy was in place, all layers of the state machinery (especially public sector managers) were ready to implement it. This applied to national, provincial and Bantustan government officials, teacher training colleges, school inspectors and district officials as well as school administrators. Where necessary, even the police were ready to enforce the implementation of this policy.

This account of history demands of us as bureaucrats in a democratic dispensation to devote ourselves to the efforts of creating a quality education system that empowers young people to fully participate in all aspects of economic, political and social life of South Africa; an education system that remembers Africans for the dismemberment of apartheid colonialism eroded their ontological density, their being, their agency.

We are called to action to actualise the imperative of having learners and teachers in school, on time, teaching. It is us who must ensure that learner support materials are procured and delivered to all schools on time; we must ensure that indigent learners are fed and offered safe transport. Money allocated to upgrade school facilities must be applied for that purpose. Squandering monies aimed at improving the quality of education of a black child is the highest act of dishonour to the service.

There is no fitting tribute to the sacrifices of the youth of 1976 than implementing fully policies aimed at transforming our education system. We have the means, the tools, and significantly, political will backed by a popular mandate.

Second, no society changes without decisive interventions in education. This reminds one of a debate with Prince Mashele who wrongly attributed poor education outcomes to public policy. Employing caricature, he contrasted apples and oranges: Japan and South Africa at different historical epochs between 1868 and 2010.

Betraying his own reminder that the weight of history influences current conditions, he drew inconsequential parallels between education outcomes of the two countries without due consideration of the conditions that influenced such outcomes.

A word of caution I offered to Mashele ought to have been obvious: the corresponding period of the Meiji dynasty of Japan (1868 1912) was a time of colonial wars and internal displacement that produced devastating results for the indigenous people. Boer Republics were starving-off British advance which intensified in pursuit of control of the newly discovered precious metals.

What we now call the South African War (formerly Anglo-Boer War) in recognition of the role played by Africans and other racial groups shaped internal conditions and resulted in public policies that systematically excluded the majority from meaningful participation in the economic and political life of the country. The formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 gave the trusteeship of the country to a minority settler group. The Bantu Education policy of 1953 sealed the fate of Africans, intellectually and culturally.

From this short history we deduce that many of the problems facing our society today emanate from the racially inspired successive laws of the illegitimate minority government. Many historians and educationist have made correct attributions in this regard.

What I affirmed though from Prince Masheles then Sunday Independent treatise was the assertion that often, the weight of history does impose itself on generations far beyond the immediacy of an historic moment.

It goes without saying therefore that by identifying education as priority number one, government aimed to alter the weight of history of colonialism and apartheid that imposed itself on successive generations. Once again, ours in the public service is a basic yet revolutionary task: to ensure that learners and teachers are at school, on time, learning, teaching; to deliver books on time; to enrol teachers in further training programmes; to disburse financial aid to all needy students, especially those in scarce skills professions like education, engineering, science, accounting, etc.

In an accountable, professional and conscientious civil service that we aspire for, we ought to regard these as non-negotiables, and go on to build a peer pressure mechanism to the extent of shaming our colleagues who undermine efforts to intensify the delivery of quality education from early childhood education to higher education.

In short, it is to ensure that the doors of learning and culture are open for all. Ultimately, true to the statement that education is the greatest equaliser, the challenge of youth unemployment will be undermined if we all did what we have to do to actualise this government priority.

Along this important task of delivering quality education, public-service mandarins are expected to accelerate the implementation of other state-led youth development programmes. Moreover, youth development does not happen in a vacuum. It occurs in each and every state intervention implemented by public servants. Young people need water, shelter, economic infrastructure and quality healthcare. They need funds for their businesses. They need access to value chains to supply their products. As the Freedom Charter declares, they need to access affordable and decolonised higher education the doors of education and culture shall be open. Therefore, every state policy implemented by public sector managers is vital for youth development.

Finally, if we all accept that Bantu Education was the most perverted form of colonial education systems globally, it stands to reason therefore that national calls for decolonised education are beyond legitimate, if not overdue. We need to continue searching for innovative ways of making our system responsive, informed by the pedagogy of total liberation (not just liberal democracy) to the extent that through education, black people can reclaim their ontological density, their being, their agency.

So, as we remember those who perished in June 1976, we should also remember the potency of our action in building the democratic developmental state where education policies (and all other social and economic development programmes) seek to unleash the potential of young people to fully participate in all activities of the evolving national democratic society which must ultimately be characterised by non-racialism, non-sexism, democracy and prosperity for all.

Becoming a professional, responsive, prudent and efficient civil service would be a fitting tribute to the youth of 1976, the martyrs of our freedom who sacrificed their future in the service of the greater ideal: liberation. That spirit of sacrifice should be our zeitgeist, an antidote to the now creeping democratic indifference. DM

*Ngcaweni works in The Presidency. Views contained here are private. His books are available on amazon.com

Visit link:

Dear Mandarins in the Public Service, Let's Recall 16 June 1976 - Daily Maverick

The human mind is already pretty open to manipulationjust ask anyone who works in advertising. But neural implant technology could potentially open up a direct digital link to our innermost thoughts that could be exploited by hackers.

In recent months, companies like Elon Musks Neuralink, Kernel, and Facebook have unveiled plans to create devices that will provide a two-way interface between human brains and machines.

While these devices could undoubtedly bring many benefits, they would be networked to computers and therefore essentially part of the Internet of Things. That should immediately set off alarm bells for anyone paying attention to cybersecurity news.

There have been repeated warnings in recent years about the huge number of vulnerabilities in smart devices designed by consumer goods companies with little experience of or consideration for cybersecurity.

One would expect that the added sensitivity of a device set to be integrated into peoples bodies would warrant more caution. But it has already been demonstrated that it is possible tohack medical implants to harm patients,and there seems to be no reason the same wouldn't be true of neural implants.

In a paper in World Neurosurgery last year, Oxford PhD student Laurie Pycroft warned about the possibility of 'brainjacking'hackers exerting unauthorized control of brain implants.

Deep brain stimulation implants are already being used to treat diseases like Parkinsons and chronic pain, but he warned that hackers could gain control of the device and alter stimulation settings to cause pain or inhibit movement.

Even with these comparatively simple devices, a determined and technically competent attacker could carry out more advanced attacks that could alter the victims behavior in crude ways, Pycroft said.

Future neural implants designed from the bottom up to interface with our cognitive processes may make far more nuanced and sophisticated hacks possible. Earlier this month it was shown that aneural headset could be used to guess someone's PIN. How much more intimate would the access be if we were talking about an invasive neural implant like the one Elon Musk has proposed?

While a targeted attack on a neural implant designed to manipulate someones behavior is unlikely to be worth the effort for most hackers,a bigger threat may be dumb malwarethat spreads to thousands of devices. Spyware could be used to access highly sensitive personal information, and a neural implant locked by ransomware is not as easy to replace as a laptop.

Perhaps, though, its not hackers we should be worrying about. Edward Snowdens revelations about the NSAs PRISM surveillance program in 2013 demonstrated wide-ranging collusion between the security services and technology companies to intercept the supposedly secure communications of innocent citizens.

Its hard to imagine the spooks would pass up the opportunity to do the same with neural implants, and once that threshold has been crossed, it would likely be a short leap to taking advantage of the two-way nature of these future devices to subtly influence peoples behavior.

Even if you trust your government not to abuse these capabilities, the leak of a massive cache of hacking tools stockpiled by the NSA suggests they may not be the only ones with access.

And its hard to imagine that the tech companies building these devices dont know where the back doors are. Facebook, one of the companies developing neural technology, has already been caught carrying out questionable psychological experiments that altered users emotions without their permission.

However, this example also highlights that it may not be necessary for us to install neural implants to make our brains susceptible to hacking. The mediabe that newspapers, advertisers or Hollywoodhave long been accused of manipulating the way we think.

With the rise of social media there are now a host of new tools for those looking to influence the zeitgeist:fake news websites, swarms of Twitter bots, and targeted advertising based on psychological profiles drawn from our internet behavior.

One researcher recently showed they couldread neural responses to subliminal images embedded in a game. The information is crude, but they said it could be scaled up to mind-reading level capabilities if combined with other technology, like VR or wearable devices.

So, whether its through neural implants or clever social engineering, it seems technology is already challenging the sanctity of our mental processes. Just last month I reported on calls from neuroethicists to introduce new human rights designed to protect our mental privacy.

While new rights would be welcome, more pressing is the need to ensure that cybersecurity is built into future neural devices from the outset, and from the bottom up.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

See the article here:

Neural Implant Tech Raises the Specter of Brainjacking - Singularity Hub

Seoul has a new horizontal landmark -- "Seoullo 7017," an overpass-turned-park opened last month. While many think a landmark is a high rise, a low-rise horizontal landmark with an easy access to people is getting attention.

Seoullo 7017 seems to have demonstrated the zeitgeist of urban regeneration in that it is not about removal but regeneration, not a street but a pedestrian road, and not vertical but horizontal. It remains doubtful, however, whether it will give an impression other than curiosity to visitors because it has no story with it.

New Yorks High Line Park, which Seoullo 7017 modelled after, has a dramatic story behind it. It was originally a nine-meter high railroad for cargo trains running through Manhattan. The New York City decided to remove the hideous structure, and held a public hearing in 1999. Unexpectedly, some wanted to keep it at the hearing where two young men decided to preserve the facility, objecting to the idea to remove it.

They held many gatherings to increase supporters and raised funds. They filed a lawsuit to nullify the citys decision for removal and garnered support from officials based on the study that making it into a park is more profitable than removing it. They persuaded people who opposed the idea due to their property near the railroad by offering them a right to develop other area. The 9/11 attack in 2001 threw a curve ball to the movement. New Yorkers healed the sense of loss by joining the movement instead. Ten years later, the High Line Park finally opened in June 2009 despite many twists and turns. With a pin reading I saved the High Line, some 1,000 New Yorkers were pleased about the opening, saying, Dreams come true in New York.

If the High Line is made bottom-up, Seoullo 7017 is a top-down development project led by the government. The High Line movement was the result of a series of discussions Is it worth keeping it? If so, how can we use it? How can we cover the expenses and who will operate this? The 60 billion won (53 million dollars) Seoullo project was announced by Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon in September 2014 and completed in less than three years.

Winy Mass, a Dutch architect who designed the overpass park, said to Korean media, (Mayor Park said) he couldnt wait for a long time. He stressed the importance of execution. I was really surprised at the unimaginable speed. He added, It would have taken about a decade in other countries. Many things have been missed out to meet the deadline."

What the Dutch architect felt missing pale comparison to what Seoul citizens missed at the expense of the surprising speed. How many people would feel proud that they saved the overpass, watching Seoullo 7017? People would rather be curious about Mayor Parks plan for presidential election, saying former Seoul Mayor and former President Lee Myung-bak restored Chunggyecheon Stream and (incumbent Seoul Mayor) Park Won-soon Seoullo. Regeneration is more difficult than creating a new thing because it involves more stakeholders. Seoul citizens lost a chance to learn from how to reach an agreement by coordinating different views.

A good-looking landmark structure does not make a city competitive. The process makes the city more attractive when it becomes part of the lives of people and the completion of the landmark gives a sense of accomplishment to people. I would like to deliver a message from the High Line movement to Korean politicians who want to become famous by building a landmark within their term while not caring about taxpayers money. (A public project) can become more successful by giving credit to more people for the success.

Read the original:

A heartfelt and valuable -

Monterey Pop Festival 1967 Movie Part 1

Even more than Woodstock, the Monterey Pop Festival which took place in California almost fifty years ago to the day reflected the themes of freedom, consciousness, and experimentation that defined the Summer of Love in 1967 and the countercultural movement from which it sprung. Moments like Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire while frying on acid, Otis Redding introducing Motown to a captivated, white audience, or The Grateful Dead jamming out for thirty minutes over their set limit in protest, will forever be hallmarks of rock and roll history, even Americana itself. The Monterey Pop Festival is the event that brought together disconnected communities from San Francisco, London, and Los Angeles, and crystallized them into a movement, launched the careers of legends, and captured the cultural zeitgeist.

Now, in 2017, the Monterey (International) Pop Festival has been revived. Taking place June 16-18, 2017, on the very fairgrounds where it made history fifty years ago, the fest features new names like Jack Johnson, Father John, Misty, and Jim James, alongside a smattering of holdovers from the original including Eric Burdon & The Animals, Booker T., and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead. The return of Monterey Pop, this time as a branded modern festival enterprise, provides a poignant moment to look back at the human experiences of San Francisco and the Summer of Love, to see what it felt like to be in the midst of such a powerful movement, and ask if that energy can ever be recaptured. After all, its original incarnation harnessed a moment in time so perfectly that it pioneered the "you had to be there" vibe modern music festivals now strive to embody. That's a difficult je ne sais quoi to replicate.

We spoke with four people who were in the thick of Monterey Pop Festival in 1976: Elaine Mayes, a photographer whose pictures of the festival feature in her book It Happened in Monterey , Joel Selvin, who wrote extensively on the movement in his book Monterey Pop , Paul Ryan, a cinematographer who went on to capture footage for the seminal Maysles Brothers' documentary Gimme Shelter, and Marty Pinsker, for whom that weekend was a coming of age. What follows chronicles the legacies of The Summer of Love and the Monterey Pop Festival, in their own words.

San Francisco in the 1960s was very experimental. Not self-consciously so, but the rules of life had been suspended. People felt free to try things they never had before in terms of relationships, where they could go, what was possible. Paul Ryan

1966 was a very different world than 1967. One of the main elements was psychedelic drugs. It had an impact first with the musicians, and then with the audience. January of 1967, they had the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park. Nobody took tickets, so nobody can say how many people were there, but probably between 60,000 and 100,000. The Human Be-In marked the beginning of national media exposure and the whole 'hippie scourge' being broadcast. One hundred thousand people showed up in Golden Gate Park...and they picked up after themselves! Nobody was arrested! Couldn't do that at a football game. It really sent a message. Joel Selvin

As a photographer in that era, the access to the music was extraordinary. Any Sunday in Golden Gate Park, you could walk out to find Jefferson Airplane playing, The Grateful Dead, Steve Miller. You could just walk up to the stage, there were no barriers, no police. It was just like your friends playing in the park. Paul Ryan

We all knew each other. There weren't any cell phones. There was barely even television! We didn't have any encumberments. That made a big difference. I lived in the neighborhood with Janis [Joplin]. We knew her, and we knew she was amazing before she happened outside of San Francisco. Jimi Hendrix was the same thing! Nobody knew who he was! Elaine Mayes

You walked into those concerts at The Fillmore or The Avalon it cost $3 to get in you went up the stairs, and it felt like entering a new realm. You felt that bond walking in the room. You knew how special it was, you knew that everybody else there knew it was that special. And you were all joined in that knowledge. The music was captivating and imaginative. Every week or two, there'd be some new band playing at a club, and you'd go over there on Tuesday night and there'd be 75 people and the band is Creedence Clearwater Revival. The weekend of the Monterey Pop Festival, The Who played The Fillmore the week before. The opening act, a group so new they didn't get their name on the poster...The Santana Blues Band. Even by June of 1967, there is no underground rock establishment. There's one tiny FM station in the country playing new music. The San Francisco bands never really performed outside of the Bay Area, and the bands from London were largely unknown outside of small scale in the U.S. Joel Selvin

The backdrop to Monterey was The Beatles putting out this album, Sgt. Peppers [Lonely Hearts Club Band], that really reeked of San Francisco. Everything was pointing to San Francisco in June of 1967. It was a summit meeting of immense proportions. Joel Selvin

My cousin was in town from L.A. and I traded him a tab of acid for a ride, even though we didnt have tickets. So we go over there in his beat up old Buick, just having the time of our lives. We get there, and its just a sea of people spilling out of the grounds thousands and thousands camping in the parking lot, having their own party. It was chaos, but we were loving it. We knew we had to get in somehow. Marty Pinsker

I was in the press pit taking photos. I had a magazine assignment. I didn't dare leave, even to go to the bathroom, because if you left, it was so crowded that you couldn't get back in! Elaine Mayes

I got a job shooting for Newsweek shooting stills. I was very close to the stage. They had these lights that were around the edge of the stage, bulbs. They were in the way of my photograph, so I unscrewed one. All of the sudden, one of the guys from the Pennebaker film ran over to yell at me about ruining their cues! Paul Ryan

The band everyone wanted to see was Jefferson Airplane. A couple weeks before the festival, they sprung 'Somebody to Love.' It was in the Top 5 the week of the festival. Me and my pal drove down on Saturday night and crashed the festival when people were leaving Jefferson Airplane. It was our intention to see Otis Redding. Joel Selvin

Otis Redding, without a doubt, struck me the most. That was true for everybody. He was just incredible. White people didn't know Motown then, not really. When he hit that stage, they couldn't keep people in their seats. Someone came out and said that if the audience didn't calm down they would have to close the concert down! It was quite a moment! Elaine Mayes

Everybody was impacted by Otis Redding. When he came on, with his bright green suit, and said Well, I guess this is a love crowd, huh? and then opened up with I've Been Loving You Too Long.' I don't think the crowd was prepared for the impact of his performance. And then there was Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar, which has become so iconic. On Sunday afternoon, while Ravi Shankar was playing, I walked out into the crowd and it was amazing to see that many people enjoying Indian music. They were totally transfixed. Paul Ryan

I remember the festival sent Peter Tork of the Monkees out to make a stage announcement in the middle of The Grateful Dead set. The announcement was: We hear rumors that The Beatles are gonna be here tonight. They're not! And Phil Lesh just took one look at that, just disgusted as he could have been, and then invited all the people who didn't have seats and were outside of the arena to come on in. And then they played one song for the rest of their set! Joel Selvin

I lost my cousin after we snuck in. He had found some girl and they were making out in the crowd. Somewhere between The Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix, it think I lost myself, man. I have a fuzzy memory of the whole thing. I just remember looking at peoples faces, looking around, it felt like something very special was happening, like it was an important moment. Eventually I hitched a ride back to the Bay. I didnt see my cousin again until two Christmases later! Marty Pinsker

From the perspective of the mainstream media, it wasn't a big thing. As it turned out, it was a much bigger thing than anybody anticipated. The people at the core of San Francisco started to realize their impact on the world in general. In that sense, there was a big change afterwards. Grace Slick was a friend of mine. We all knew each other and they had a little band, Great Society. Suddenly, there we were at Monterey, and Grace Slick is with Jefferson Airplane! What was just somebody around the corner [turned out to be] a superstar. Things grew from very humble beginnings. Nobody had any anticipation of it being that big. Paul Ryan

Monterey Pop Festival was a watershed moment in the whole rock culture movement. Although it had this outsized historical influence, it really was a small-scale event. The arena sat 8,500 people. There were another 5,000-8,000 people admitted to the festival grounds, and possibly as many as 15,000 hanging out outside the fences. The groups that came into that weekend on topThe Mamas and Papas, Jonny Rivers, The Associationthey were done by the end of the weekend. The ascendance of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, was assured. Joel Selvin

The Fantasy Fair was a watershed. Having a bunch of people smoking pot was a watershed. The Human Be-In was a watershed. All of it added up. And Monterey was probably the last time that it all seemed to work well. The East Coast was not part of this. When 1969 came along and people went to Woodstock, they had learned about it because of what happened in 1967, but by then, it was not the same anymore. Elaine Mayes

We knew [the original festival] was special. There was never anything like it before. But when you're in it, you're in it. You're not thinking about what's gonna happen in 50 years. Who even knew 50 years ago that what we were doing was going to matter later on? Elaine Mayes

Rock is an art form in decline. That's in the nature of art movements. You have an avant-garde that seeps ideas into the mainstream. Then you get this bell curve where people keep repeating ideas until you get diminishing returns. And it's been a long time since there were any important popular new ideas in music. I guess hip-hop was the last one, but even that has become formalized. And when an art form becomes formalized, it will no longer innovate. Joel Selvin

I went to the opening at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. They tried to put Haight-Ashbury and 1967 into a museum. But the idea of putting your experience into a museum is a tough call! As far as the new Monterey Festival: I think it's totally impossible to catch that moment again. It's not the same culture! You can't go back. There's always a thread, but you cant bring back the same moment. When I see things revived, I don't think they're the same. Elaine Mayes

There is no evidence that there's some creative renaissance that's going on in pop music reflected in the stage right now, or a popular groundswell that would take those tickets. The original was a really incredible convergence of history and place and personalities. I don't see that happening next month in Monterey. I have no doubt that it will be a pleasant jaunt, but I don't think any history will be made this time. They couldn't even do a second Monterey the year after the original...And they tried! Joel Selvin

Read more here:

Monterey Pop: The Event That Pioneered the Power of Music Festivals - Everfest

When Ukip's vote tallies were read out at electoral counts up and down the country, the muted applause said it all.

Just weeks after losing all but one of their councillors in the local elections, the party that pushed Britain to Brexit drew less than two per cent of the vote on election night.

Ukip failed to gain a single MP. Even in uber-eurosceptic Boston and Skegness, party leader Paul Nuttall ended up in third place with 7.7 per cent of the vote. Hours later, he resigned.

It's easy to forget that two years ago Ukip were the third-largest party in the country they pulled in almost 13 per cent of the vote in 2015.

In the weeks and months following the Brexit vote, the party has been beset with both internal strife and an existential crisis that no one has been able to solve.

The EU referendum result a year ago was the culmination of a 20-year fight that saw Ukip rise from a fringe group to a game-changing political force.

But before the celebration champagne had gone flat, Ukip had an urgent challenge to solve finding a leader.

Having achieved his Brexit goal, Nigel Farage, the face of the Leave campaign, announced he was stepping down.

With their only household name out of the picture, Ukip needed a new leader who could help the party capitalise on the eurosceptic zeitgeist before it was too late.

First there was Diane James, who won the party's leadership contest on 16 September. Eighteen days later she handed in her notice, saying she did not have the "full support" of the party.

Another leadership campaign then got underway, but the contest was overshadowed by a bizarre incident in which one of the frontrunners was hospitalised after an altercation with a fellow Ukip MEP in the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

The exact circumstances surrounding the clash between Steven Woolfe, who later resigned from the party, and defence spokesman Mike Hookem are still a matter of dispute, but either way it was an excruciating moment for a party desperately trying to display a united front.

In November 2016, the party finally settled on a leader in the shape of Merseyside MEP Paul Nuttall, but his short tenure in the job has been far from smooth.

Among other things, Nuttall has been accused of incorrectly claiming to have a PhD and lying about being present at the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

On 8 June 2017, as the extent of Ukip's dire performance at the polls became clear, Nuttall tendered his resignation, leaving the party leaderless once again.

When the initial elation over the referendum result died down, Ukip were left contemplating a hard truth. The Brexit vote "has turned Ukip into a single-issue party without an issue," says the New Statesman.

Without their anti-EU rallying cry, the party leadership has been searching for another issue which can band the fractured movement together without much success.

Under Nuttall, Ukip has attempted to rebrand as the party that is unafraid to stand up to radical Islam. However, policies like a burka ban and mandatory medical inspections of girls thought to be at risk of FGM have not proven the vote winners Nuttall had hoped. They even sit uneasily with some of the party.

In March, Ukip's only MP, Douglas Carswell resigned from the party after a public feud over its direction. He said Ukip was becoming increasingly anti-immigrant.

Even as the votes were being counted on Thursday night, there was another defection. Tim Matthews, the candidate for Devon Central, said that Ukip had originally been "a libertarian party campaigning for Brexit" but had since "veered into extremism and racism", the BBC reports.

Could there still be a second act in Ukip's political life? Nuttall certainly thinks so. "The new rebranded Ukip must be launched and a new era must begin with a new leader," he said as he announced his own resignation.

Enter Nigel Farage. As it became clear that Britain was heading for a hung parliament, the former leader told the BBC he had "absolutely no choice" but to end his self-imposed exile from Westminster to ensure that Brexit would not be thrown off course.

Farage did not say whether such a comeback would be at the head of a new political movement or a return to his old party, but he acknowledged that "Ukip voters want someone who speaks for them".

Even if Farage were back at the helm, there is the lingering question of who the party now speaks for.

Many analysts predicted that Ukip had acted as a "gateway drug", luring one-time Labour voters to the right, and that the Tories would therefore reap the benefits of Ukip's falling star but it didn't pan out that way on the night, says the Financial Times.

In fact, in many seats, former Ukip voters "seemed to divide fairly evenly between Labour and the Conservatives", suggesting that beyond a shared euroscepticism, their political views were more diverse than the party had hoped.

Read more from the original source:

Is this the death of Ukip? - The Week UK

Ottawa Sun

New collection of Canadian and indigenous art is National Gallery's largest ever Ottawa Sun Mayer acknowledged the significance of the collection amid the movement in Canada for Truth and Reconciliation. ... And the government is responding to the zeitgeist that Canada is moving in a positive direction and we're following along, said Mayer. and more »

Follow this link:

New collection of Canadian and indigenous art is National Gallery's largest ever - Ottawa Sun

In US academic tradition, university administrators choose commencement speakers they believe embody the zeitgeist of their institutions and as such, will be able to inspire graduating students to take that spirit with them into the world outside.

In this context, it makes perfect sense that Ayman El-Mohandes, dean of the Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy at City University of New York (CUNY), invited Linda Sarsour to serve as commencement speaker at his facultys graduation ceremony.

Sarsour embodies Mohandess values.

Mohandess Twitter feed makes his values clear. His Twitter feed is filled with attacks against Israel.

Mohandes indirectly accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of wishing to commit genocide. Netanyahu, he intimated, wishes to throw the Arabs in the sea.

He has repeatedly libeled Israel as a repressive, racist, corrupt state.

Mohandes has effectively justified and legitimized Islamic terrorism and the Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza. The Islamic terrorist assault against Israel, led by Hamas from Gaza, is simply an act of desperation, he insists.

By Mohandess lights, Hamas terrorists are desperate not because they uphold values and beliefs that reject freedom, oppress women and aspire to the genocide of Jewry and the destruction of the West. No, they are desperate because Israel is evil and oppressive.

Who could Mohandes have chosen to serve as his commencement speaker other than Sarsour, given his positions? Sarsour, the rising star of the Democratic Party, not only shares Mohandess values and positions, she has taken those common values and positions and amplified them on the national stage.

Sarsour has taken support for Islamic terrorism and Jew hatred positions that not long ago were considered beyond the pale in the Democratic Party and moved them into the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

In fact, Sarsour has gone far beyond Mohandes. She has left him in the dust with her willingness to shill for radical Islam and its oppression of women and express openly her desire to see Israel destroyed while embracing Islamic terrorists and murderers.

Whereas Mohandes generally has shielded himself from accusations of bigotry, support for Hamas, and misogyny by basing his Twitter posts on statements by non-Muslim opponents of Israel like Kenneth Roth from Human Rights Watch, Sarsour has publicly embraced Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists.

She unapologetically justifies Islamic misogyny, attacks opponents of Islamic misogyny and terrorism and whitewashes Islamic violence against women.

Indeed, Sarsour has mainstreamed all of these things by fusing support for Islamic terrorism, misogyny and antisemitism with black anti-white racism and leftist hatred for police and law enforcement agencies more generally.

So in light of Sarsours trailblazing role in advancing Mohandess apparent values as signaled through his Twitter feed, his decision to have her speak to his graduating class this Thursday is entirely understandable.

The only truly challenging aspect of Mohandess invitation is that he didnt tell the truth about why he chose to honor her. He didnt say he invited her for her pioneering work in mainstreaming antisemitism, anti-Americanism, anti-white bigotry, Islamic misogyny and terrorism in the Democratic Party.

To the contrary, he hid those things.

Mohandes wrote that he invited Sarsour to speak at commencement because her work has emphasized womens health issues in the New York area.

No it hasnt.

At least, not unless you consider calling for women to have their vaginas carved out emphasizing womens health issues.

In 2011, Sarsour used her Twitter feed to call for precisely that in a shocking verbal assault against two female icons Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has dedicated much of her career to protecting Muslim girls from female genital mutilation and was herself victimized by the barbaric practice, and Brigitte Gabriel, who as a Lebanese Christian suffered firsthand the wrath of Islamic supremacism during the Lebanese Civil War.

In Sarsours words, Brigitte Gabriel= Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Shes asking 4 an a$$ whippin. I wish I could take their vaginas away they dont deserve to be women.

Earlier this month, during a speech at Dartmouth College, Sarsour was asked by a student how her professed feminism could be squared with her expressed support for genital mutilation of her ideological opponents.

Sarsours response was telling.

First, she delegitimized the student, insisting that since he is a young white man he had no right to ask her such a question.

Then, she intimated that she never wrote the offensive post.

Then, she insisted that her words are unimportant because she wrote them when she was in her 20s. (She was 31 in 2011).

In her uplifting words, People say stupid sh*t sometimes, right? Finally, Sarsour insisted that what she said is irrelevant.

I will be judged by my impeccable record for standing for black lives and immigrant rights, and womens rights and LGBT rights. You judge me by my record and not by some tweet you think I did or did not tweet 10 years ago or seven years ago, or whenever it was.

But if we judge her by her record, we see the only thing that is impeccable about it is her consistent, unapologetic defense of Islamic misogyny, terrorism and Jew hatred.

Sarsour has been extolled for her championing of womens rights by former president Barack Obama, and New York Senator Kristin Gillibrand. But it is not clear when she has ever done so in her own community.

For instance, as Ian Tuttle reported in National Review, in 2014 Sarsour (who was then leading efforts to fuse the Black Lives Matter movement with anti-Zionism) published an article on CNN.com titled, My hijab is my hoodie.

There Sarsour conflated the death of Trayvon Martin with the 2012 murder of Shaima Alawadi.

Alawadi was a Muslim woman who was beaten to death in her California home.

Sarsour alleged that Alawadi was murdered because of Islamophobia. But this was a lie. And it would be bizarre if Sarsour didnt realize it was a lie when she wrote the article.

If Islam had anything to do with Alawadis murder, it may have served as a justification for her Muslim husbands decision to beat her to death. Her husband was arrested for her murder in 2012. He was convicted and sentenced to 26 years to life in prison in 2014.

That wasnt the only time that Sarsour used false allegations of American anti-Muslim bigotry to whitewash Islamic misogyny.

In 2014 she took to her Twitter feed to defend Saudi Arabias treatment of women while belittling Saudi gender apartheid that among other things, bars women from driving cars.

In her words, 10 weeks of PAID maternity leave in Saudi Arabia. Yes PAID. And ur worrying about women driving. Puts us to shame.

In 2015, she extolled Sharia law, which among other things allows men to marry four women and sanctions wife beating and child brides.

As she did in her defense of Saudi misogyny, Sarsour defended Sharia by ignoring its hatred of women and pretending it is no different from progressive socialism.

Again turning to Twitter, she wrote, Youll know when youre living under Sharia law if suddenly all your loans and credit cards become interest free. Sounds nice, doesnt it? As for LGBT rights, Sarsour pretends to support them. But she is silent about the systematic oppression of homosexuals in Muslim society.

With everything related to Jews and Israel, Sarsour has been outspoken in her bigotry, support for terrorism and anti-Jewish supremacism. Sarsour is a leader of the antisemitic boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that seeks to bar pro-Israel voices from college campuses and wider American society.

Sarsour was one of the organizers of the anti-President Donald Trump womans marches in January. Yet, Sarsour insists Zionist women cannot be feminists.

She recently publicly embraced a Hamas terrorist. She rejects any cooperation with Jewish groups that support Israel. Her relatives have been served time in Israeli prisons for terrorist activities on behalf of Hamas. Hamas of course, calls for the genocide of world Jewry in its charter.

Sarsour supports the Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh who murdered two Israeli students in a bombing in a Jerusalem supermarket in 1970.

The most notable aspect of Sarsours impeccable record is that it is all in the public square. She has hidden nothing.

This tells us the most distressing thing about the Lefts decision to promote her. The Left is empowering Sarsour not despite her views, but because of them.

She is being elevated by CUNY, by the Democratic Party and by major American media outlets because she mainstreams Jew hatred, anti-Zionism and Islamic misogyny, not despite the fact that she does those things.

Sarsour has been rightly condemned by opponents of Islamic misogyny, supremacism and terrorism and by supporters of Israel.

But the truth is shes not the real problem.

The real problem is that Mohandes was right to invite her. Not only does she share his values, she embodies the zeitgeist of the American Left today.

A version of this piece also appeared onThe Jerusalem Post

Link:

Linda Sarsour and the progressive zeitgeist - Accuracy In Media

When he was interviewing politicians on BBC2s Newsnight, it was often said that the presenter Jeremy Paxman lived by the old journalistic motto: Why is this lying bastard lying to me?

That is also the credo adopted by Emma Banville, the central character in Fearless, ITVs absorbing new six-part legal thriller. Played with characteristic panache and passion by the actress Helen McCrory, Emma is a human rights lawyer whose speciality is defending lost causes. Her whole career has been based on questioning the powers that be and refusing to accept the official line.

According to the Fearless series creator Patrick Harbinson (who also worked with McCrorys husband Damian Lewis on Homeland), the character is inspired by the work of lawyers like Gareth Peirce and Helena Kennedy.

In Fearless, which begins on 12 June, Emmas defiant attitude comes to a head when she sets out to clear the name of a man convicted of murder 14 years previously. Convinced that he has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice, the idealistic lawyer takes drastic measures to prove his innocence.

But as she delves into the background of the case, Emma becomes aware of sinister forces within the police and intelligence services that could jeopardise her professional and personal lives.

And yet despite these threats, Emma will not be cowed. She remains a fully paid up member of The Awkward Squad. In McCrorys eyes, such tough, independent-minded people play a vital role in our society.

The Independent is chatting to the actress, who has been acclaimed for her work in everything from Hugo and Penny Dreadful to Peaky Blinders and the final three Harry Potter films, in an ITV boardroom at a gigantic wooden table that would not look out of place on The Apprentice.

Known for her dedication to her work she won the Critics Circle Best Actress Award in 2015 for her blazingly intense performance as Medea McCrory is far more light-hearted in real life.

Looking slim and a decade younger than her 48 years, McCrory is dressed in a brown silk shirt and black trousers. She has a winning sense of humour. For instance, she develops an elaborate and long-running gag during our interview that I may well possess a secret, cross-dressing alter ego who goes by the name of Hallelujah Bangkok.

Helen McCrory as PollyGray in'Peaky Blinders' (BBC)

The actress, who has two young children with Lewis, goes on to joke that the canaps we have been offered during our interview are not nearly sophisticated enough. I want oysters that speak to you in several languages before you eat them, she laughs.

But McCrory also has the knack of providing serious and thoughtful analysis of her work. She is certainly impassioned in her defence of civil-rights campaigners such as Emma. Its absolutely right that you question the Establishment thats the whole point of our democracy.

Britain has always, always applauded that. In no other country do people get OBEs for criticising the Establishment. We celebrate that in Britain because we know that it makes us one of the greatest democracies in the world.

It is that sort of crusading approach which marks Emma out. Her courageous pursuit of the truth is also pertinent in an age where we have to be constantly suspicious of being fed fake news and alternative facts.

Emma risks everything her career and her house in order to find the truth, McCrory continues. She has a fundamental distrust of the party line. Shes always questioning and refusing to take things at face value. If you believe everything that youre told, that can be very dangerous.

Last night, for example, Google had to take down a story that everyone thought was true, but was actually fake news. Emma questions everything, and thats absolutely in tune with the zeitgeist. It chimes with whats going on now right across the world.

She playedCherie Blair in 'The Queen' with Michael Sheen as Tony Blair(Rex Features)

The actress, who has also won awards for her stage work in The Last of the Haussmans and Macbeth, believes that the character of Emma reflects a very laudable, and often underrated side of our society. Of course, there are extraordinary people like the human rights lawyers Gareth Peirce and Michael Mansfield. Many investigative journalists do something similar to counterbalance the Establishment.

But even if were not that extraordinary, I think people do that in their daily lives. People are fearless. They do things for others. They walk into overcrowded inner city classrooms where some children have behavioural problems every morning and just keep going.

McCrory, who played Cherie Blair in both The Queen and The Special Relationship, adds that, There is a positivity about Fearless because its about people who put something back into society. There is this widespread idea that everyone is out for themselves, but thats simply not true. I dont think thats the normal human condition.

We are lied to. We are told were selfish and only interested in money and the way we look, but I think that is wrong. Theyre not the people that surround me or the people I meet in the street.

What the individualistic Emma also represents is a reaction against the homogenisation of our culture. I think theres a huge backlash against that, and Emma is part of it, McCrory observes. Shes a lone wolf.

She doesnt feel she is part of some enormous tribe or great movement. She doesnt want to be like everybody else. Shes trying to make life worth something more than her own petty problems. But that costs her hugely. She has to make immense sacrifices.

McCrory asNarcissaMalfoy in'Harry Potter and the DeathlyHallows' (Courtesy of Warner Bros Pictures)

McCrory and her husband are two of the busiest and most successful actors in the country. So how will they organise their lives and make sure their household runs smoothly? We do everything very badly! laughs the actress.

I dont know how we juggle. There is a lot of unsexy diary time. Were constantly organising things. Thats why I never get to watch anything on TV! Im continually trying to work out what were doing tomorrow and if the kids are now old enough to drive themselves to school!

She carries on that, Every night we just shout, Everyone alive? Yes? Lights out! But thats OK. We have definitely established Im not a perfectionist, but thats the only way to do it. Its chaos, but its happy chaos.

Next up, McCrory is reprising her role as the steely Polly in Peaky Blinders, Steven Knights beautifully made BBC1 drama about the Shelby crime family in 1920s Birmingham. Its really struck a chord, the actress affirms.

It does what the Americans have always done so well and we usually never do: it romanticises the past. We are normally very apologetic about the past. Steven turns the working man into a hero - not just any hero, but a hero filmed by John Ford.

So what is coming up on the horizon for this most charismatic actress? She has already starred as a government minister in one James Bond film, Skyfall. Could McCrory ever envisage moving into the lead role and picking up 007s martini, shaken not stirred? Yes, absolutely! Why not? Why not?

Its time for a female Bond!

Dont bet against her!

'Fearless' starts on ITV at 9pm on Monday 12 June.

View post:

Helen McCrory on Fearless, Peaky Blinders and juggling family life with husband Damien Lewis - The Independent