Position:author - Seenthis

ADL : Alice Walker conveys 'fervently anti-Jewish ideas' in new book - Diplomacy & Defense - Israel…

2013-06-18T21:23:10Z

ADL: Alice Walker conveys 'fervently anti-Jewish ideas' in new book - Diplomacy & Defense - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/adl-alice-walker-conveys-fervently-anti-jewish-ideas-in-new-book.premium-1.

The Anti-Defamation League on Tuesday lambasted U.S. author Alice Walker over “fervently anti-Jewish ideas” the group said she expressed in her new book.
According to the U.S.-based Jewish organization, Walker's new book, “The Cushion in the Road,” devotes some 80 pages to essays on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a section “replete with fervently anti-Jewish ideas and peppered with explicit comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany.” In her writing, Walker further suggests that Israel should cease to exist as a Jewish state and seeks to justify terrorism against Israeli civilians, the ADL said.
“Alice Walker has sunk to new lows with essays that remove the gloss of her anti-Israel activism to reveal someone who is unabashedly infected with anti-Semitism,” Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said in a statement. “She has taken her extreme and hostile views to a shocking new level, revealing the depth of her hatred of Jews and Israel to a degree that we have not witnessed before.
“Her descriptions of the conflict are so grossly inaccurate and biased that it seems Walker wants the uninformed reader to come away sharing her hate-filled conclusions that Israel is committing the greatest atrocity in the history of the world,” he added.
Alice Walker, the author of the Pulitzer-winning work “The Color Purple,” has long held a position very critical of Israel. In protest against the country's policies toward the Palestinians walker last year refused to authorize a new Hebrew translation of her most famous work.
More recently, Walker – a proponent of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel – urged singer Alicia Keys to cancel her scheduled July concert in Tel Aviv. In an open letter to Keys, she said that “It would grieve me to know you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by performing in an apartheid country that is being boycotted by many global conscious artists.”
In its statement, the ADL blasted Walker for describing Israel's actions toward the Palestinians as “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “crimes against humanity,” and “cruelty and diabolical torture.”

Facebook and Google insist they did not know of Prism surveillance program

2013-06-08T07:07:31Z

Facebook and Google insist they did not know of Prism surveillance program
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/google-facebook-prism-surveillance-program

Some speculated that the wording of the document was incorrect or that the author had over-hyped the scheme.
Security experts and civil liberty figures were less convinced. “I was assuming that these tech companies were just lying,” said security guru Bruce Schneier. “That's the most obvious explanation.”
“Could it possibly be that there's a department within these companies that hides this from the executives? Maybe,” he said. “I don't know, we don't know. This points to the problem here. There's so much freaking secrecy that we don't know enough to even know what is going on.”

Trickle-Down Distress : How America's Broken Meritocracy Drives Our National Anxiety Epidemic -…

2013-06-01T22:48:22Z

Trickle-Down Distress: How America's Broken Meritocracy Drives Our National Anxiety Epidemic - Atlantic Mobile
http://m.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/trickle-down-distress-how-americas-broken-meritocracy-drives-our-national-anxiety-epidemic/259383

“According to the 2002 World Mental Health Survey, people in developing-world countries such as Nigeria are up to five times less likely to show clinically significant anxiety levels than Americans, despite having more basic life-necessities to worry about,” writes Taylor Clark, author of Nerve: Poise Under Pressure, Serenity Under Stress, and the Brave New Science of Fear and Cool. "What's more, when these less-anxious developing-world citizens emigrate to the United States, they tend to get just as anxious as Americans.

Adieu Chasch, Wankh, Dirdir et Pnume : Jack Vance, 1916 - 2013

2013-05-29T20:40:39Z

Adieu Chasch, Wankh, Dirdir et Pnume : Jack Vance, 1916 - 2013

http://www.noosfere.org/jackvance/art/jv_cat&dog.jpg

Jack Vance passed away at home on the evening of Sunday May 26, 2013, ending a long, rich and productive life. Recognized most widely as an author, family and friends also knew a generous, large-hearted, rugged, congenial, hard-working, optimistic and unpretentious individual whose curiosity, sense of wonder and sheer love of life were an inspiration in themselves. Author, friend, father and grandfather – there will never be another like Jack Vance.

http://www.jackvance.com

Je dois dire que suis vraiment sniff. Avec Barjavel, Pierre Boulle, Pierre Pelot, pour les francophones et Philip José Farmer et Daniel Keyes, pour les anglophones, Jack Vance et son cycle de Tschaï sont parmis les premiers livres de SF que j'ai lu et qui m'ont donné le goût du genre. Ouin.

We've lost another one of the greats : R.I.P. Jack Vance, 1916-2013
http://io9.com/weve-lost-another-grand-master-r-i-p-jack-vance-191-510346926

#jack_vance #s.f. #science-fiction #littérature #polar

Forays into Fantasy : The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
http://blog.worldswithoutend.com/2012/07/forays-into-fantasy-the-dying-earth-by-jack-vance

The Cult of Design_Dictatorship - Alex Cabal

2013-05-27T07:24:33Z

The Cult of #Design_Dictatorship - Alex Cabal
►https://alexcabal.com/the-cult-of-design-dictatorship

What struck me about the post is that the main complaint the author seems to have is about a problem that I've been thinking about for some time now. It's a problem that doesn't just apply to #Gnome 3—though Gnome 3 certainly suffers from it. It's the problem of the Cult of #Design Dictatorship.
This cult is insidious. Its two main tenents are:
The designer is always right.
If you don't like what the designer is doing, you're wrong, and you should go somewhere else.

Why I release things into the public domain - Alex Cabal

2013-05-26T06:17:26Z

Why I release things into the public domain - Alex Cabal
https://alexcabal.com/why-i-release-things-into-the-public-domain

Recently I read a really interesting article by the author of Zen Habits, Leo Babauta, about something he calls Uncopyright. It's his term for releasing something into the public domain.
Leo's rationale for releasing his work into the public domain really resonated with me. It resonated with me so much that I'm releasing my own writing in this blog, along with the content of a few other projects of mine, into the public domain as well.
For those of you who're interested, I'm going to lay out my reasoning for this decision. But Leo's article, I think, does a much better job of explaining things than I can. You should read his take on it first.

#droits_d'auteur #propriété_intellectuelle #copyright #domaine_public #communs

Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions | SFWA

2013-05-25T10:35:35Z

Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions | SFWA
http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-worldbuilding-questions

The following list of questions is meant to aid authors of fantasy fiction who are seeking to create believable imaginary settings for their stories. While many of these questions may be helpful or crucial to certain stories, they will not all apply to every story. It is not necessary for an author to answer all, or even any, of the questions in order to start writing, (or to finish writing, either). The idea is simply to provoke people into thinking about the ways their settings and backgrounds hang together … or don't. If it's useful, use it. If not, don't.

#écrire #world_building

Thomas Bey William Bailey : _Micro Bionic : Radical Electronic Music & Sound Art in the 21st…

2013-05-21T09:30:41Z

Thomas Bey William Bailey : Micro Bionic : Radical Electronic Music & Sound Art in the 21st Century, 2nd ed (2009/2012)
http://monoskop.org/log/?p=8155

Starting with the guerrilla media tactics of Industrial music in the late 1970s, the author charts an ongoing trend in electronic music: an increasing amount of sonic quality, recorded output and international contact, accomplished with a decreasing amount of tools, personnel, and capital investment. From the use of laptop computers to create massive avalanches of noise, to the establishment of micro-nations populated largely by sound artists, 21st century sound culture is expanding in its scope and popularity even as it shrinks in other respects. Numerous exclusive interviews with leading lights of the field were also conducted for this book: William Bennett (Whitehouse), Peter Christopherson (Throbbing_Gristle / Coil), Peter Rehberg (Mego), John Duncan, #Francisco_López, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Bob Ostertag and many others weigh in with a diversity of thoughts and opinions that underscores the incredible diversity to be found within new electronic music itself.

Moui, je ne dièze que Francisco López, parce que c'est pour lui que je vais lire ce #livre d'#art_sonore et de #musique_électronique.

http://www.tbwb.net/MicroBionic_digital_version_2012.pdf [#pdf]

#création_sonore

Arabic language is losing ground - The National

2013-05-16T19:06:23Z

Arabic language is losing ground - The National
http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/arabic-language-is-losing-ground

Un sujet qui mérite plus ample développement.

Headmasters and Arabic teachers in UAE private schools confirmed to a local newspaper last week that parents keep filing requests that their children be spared from Arabic-language lessons. They say that their children will be going on to English-language universities that do not require Arabic.
...
While educators, students and parents have a shared responsibility, the problem is much bigger, he said.
“In fact, the issue is closely linked to the moral value of the language, a value that is derived from the political, scientific, economic, industrial, intellectual, artistic, cultural and social reality of its speakers,” the writer observed.
...
Swayed by this perceived sense of “belonging”, many Arab youth work hard to nurture their non-Arabic culture, by reading English-language books, watching English-language movies and listening to English music, according to the writer.
“It makes them happy to see their interlocutor confused, unable to tell where they are from - the Arab region or elsewhere? It makes them even happier when the interlocutor concludes that they are foreigners.”
Families also play a role in this, with relatives of a new graduate showing great pride in his or her perfect English accent, the author went on.
Also, educators and the media have not done enough to generate positive attitudes about Arabic among students and other young people.
“This generation did not come in touch with the beauty of Arabic. Educators and curriculum developers have not been able to present the language in catchy wrappings, nor did the local or pan-Arab media manage to highlight the graces of this language,” Al Suweihi noted.
This issue is not just “a matter of letters, words and phrases”; the issue is about “a historical and decisive stance” that all Arabs must take to pump life back into Arabic, before it is too late, the author concluded.

Do we need to change the way we are thinking about mental illness ? | Science | The Observer

2013-05-13T17:28:20Z

Do we need to change the way we are thinking about mental illness? | Science | The Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/12/dsm-5-conspiracy-laughable

....
YES Oliver James, author and clinical psychologist
....
Britons and Americans have exactly twice the amount of mental illness of mainland western Europeans (23% versus 11.5%). Thirty years of Thatcher and “Blatcher” turned us into a nation of “affluenza”-stricken, shop-till-you-drop, “it could be you”, credit-fuelled consumer junkies. Personal debt – a major stressor for adults – rose from £200bn in 1980 to £1,400bn in 2006. After 1979, the amount of mental illness mushroomed.
Forget about genes. We would halve the amount of emotional distress in this country if we had the more equal, relatively cohesive, less debt-ridden political economics of our European neighbours.

Coverflip : Maureen Johnson Calls For An End To Gendered Book Covers With An Amazing Challenge…

2013-05-09T08:44:38Z

Coverflip: Maureen Johnson Calls For An End To Gendered Book Covers With An Amazing Challenge (IMAGES)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/coverflip-maureen-johnson_n_3231935.html

You are informed about a book's perceived quality through a number of ways. Probably the biggest is the cover.
And the simple fact of the matter is, if you are a female author, you are much more likely to get the package that suggests the book is of a lower perceived quality. Because it's “girly,” which is somehow inherently different and easier on the palate. A man and a woman can write books about the same subject matter, at the same level of quality, and that woman is simple more likely to get the soft-sell cover with the warm glow and the feeling of smooth jazz blowing off of it.
This idea that there are “girl books” and “boy books” and “chick lit” and “whatever is the guy equivalent of chick lit”* gives credit to absolutely no one, especially not the boys who will happily read stories by women, about women. As a lover of books and someone who supports readers and writers of both sexes, I would love a world in which books are freed from some of these constraints. Click here to read more about the perceived differences between 'girl' and 'boy' books.
Which is why yesterday, I proposed a little experiment on Twitter. I asked people to take a well-known book, then to imagine the author of that book was of the opposite gender, or was genderqueer, and imagine what that cover might look like.
There were hundreds of replies within 24 hours. Here are just a few of them.

http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/296089/slide_296089_2421903_free.jpg?1367954553333

#livres #sexisme #marketing

7 injured as settlers attack Palestinian school buses | Maan News Agency

2013-04-30T12:01:12Z

7 injured as settlers attack Palestinian school buses | Maan News Agency
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=580826

NABLUS (Ma'an) — Settlers threw rocks at a two Palestinian school busese south of Nablus on Sunday, injuring seven children, a Palestinian Authority official said.
Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank, said settlers smashed the windshield of two buses returning from a school trip.
Seven children were injured and taken to the Rafedia Hospital in Nablus, Daghlas said.

https://twitter.com/Tweet_Palestine/status/329201080263131139/photo/1

Kuwait author wins Arabic book prize for tale of foreign workers

2013-04-24T10:59:01Z

Kuwait author wins Arabic book prize for tale of foreign workers

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/69997.aspx

The Marvel of Maps : Art, Cartography, and Politics in Renaissance Italy [Hardcover] Francesca…

2013-04-14T22:17:55Z

The Marvel of Maps: Art, Cartography, and Politics in Renaissance Italy [Hardcover]

Francesca Fiorani (Author)

#bibliographie #livre #cartographie #manipulation #Propagande #histoire #renaissance

Thematic Cartography and Geographic Visualization (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall Series in Geographic…

2013-04-14T22:08:42Z

Thematic Cartography and Geographic Visualization (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall Series in Geographic Information Science) [Hardcover]
Terry A. Slocum (Author), Robert B McMaster (Author), Fritz C. Kessler (Author), Hugh H. Howard (Author)

Statistics Explained: A Guide for Social Science Students, 2nd Edition [Paperback]
Perry Hinton (Author)

You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination [Paperback]
Katharine Harmon (Author, Editor)
http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Here-Geographies-Imagination/dp/1568984308

New Approaches in Thematic Cartography. Thematic Cartography Volume 3 (Geographical Information Systems Series)
Auteurs : CAUVIN Colette, ESCOBAR Francisco, SERRADJ Aziz
Couverture de l'ouvrage New Approaches in Thematic Cartography. Thematic Cartography Volume 3 (Geographical Information Systems Series) Date de parution : 05-2010 Langue : Anglais

The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography Katharine Harmon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1568987625?tag=braipick-20&camp=213381&creative=390973&linkCode=as4&creative HTMLDirect

Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic Design [Hardcover]
R. Klanten (Author), N. Bourquinhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3899552172?ie=UTF8&tag=informationae-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=3909 (Author), S. Ehmann (Author), F. van Heerden (Author)

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions [Paperback] Toby Segaran
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596157118?ie=UTF8&tag=informationae-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=3909 HTMLDirect

The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World's Most Consequential Trivia [Paperback] David McCandless
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061748366?ie=UTF8&tag=informationae-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=3909 HTMLDirect

Information is Beautiful (Hardcover)
by David McCandless (Author)

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics: The Dos and Don'ts of Presenting Data, Facts, and Figures (Hardcover) ~ Dona M. Wong
http://www.amazon.com/Street-Journal-Guide-Information-Graphics/dp/0393072959

Causes And Consequences Of Map Generalization (Paperback) de Elsa Joao (Author) “Generalisation is an inherent characteristic of all geographical data ...”

#bibliographie #livre #cartographie #statistique #représentations #visualisation

Political Dictionary of the State of Israel : Supplement 1987-1993 Susan Hattis Rolef

2013-04-14T18:26:00Z

Political Dictionary of the State of Israel: Supplement 1987-1993
Susan Hattis Rolef

http://www.amazon.com/Political-Dictionary-State-Israel-Supplement/dp/0028971930

Political Dictionary of the State of Israel: Supplement 1987-1993
Susan Hattis Rolef (Editor)

Political Dictionary of the Arab World: Yaacov Shimoni

http://www.amazon.com/Political-Dictionary-World-Yaacov-Shimoni/dp/0029164222

Political Dictionary of the Arab World [Hardcover]
Yaacov Shimoni (Author)

#bibliographie #livre Israel #monde-arabe

A good anti-bitcoin rant, by the author of PowerDNS

2013-04-10T19:23:59Z

A good anti-bitcoin rant, by the author of PowerDNS

http://bert-hubert.blogspot.nl/2013/04/bitcoins-explained-for-normal-people-or_10.html

#bitcoin

The Slow Death of the American Author - NYTimes.com

2013-04-08T10:29:02Z

The Slow Death of the American Author - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/opinion/the-slow-death-of-the-american-author.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_2

LAST month, the Supreme Court decided to allow the importation and resale of foreign editions of American works, which are often cheaper than domestic editions. Until now, courts have forbidden such activity as a violation of copyright. Not only does this ruling open the gates to a surge in cheap imports, but since they will be sold in a secondary market, authors won't get royalties.

#édition #copyright #internet #droit-auteur

L'émouvante lettre de Philip K. Dick constatant ce que d'autres hommes avaient pu faire de son…

2013-03-29T06:37:52Z

L'émouvante lettre de Philip K. Dick constatant ce que d'autres hommes avaient pu faire de son oeuvre et prédisant l'immense succès de Blade Runner

http://www.blastr.com/2013-3-26/read-philip-k-dicks-1981-letter-predicting-blade-runners-impact

It turns out Blade Runner's biggest fan may have been the author who inspired it (...) Today we spotted a letter from legendary sci-fi author Philip K. Dick praising the film, which was loosely based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

#mashup #copyleft #valuation

Alliance of California Judges on Auditing AOC ; District Attorney of Yolo County Jeff Reisig…

2013-03-28T22:54:45Z

Alliance of California Judges on Auditing AOC; District Attorney of Yolo County Jeff Reisig Informed Re Suspicious Fund-Raising Activities Involving Judicial Council's Dave Rosenberg of Yolo Superior Court, Wife Lea Rosenberg, Yolo County Grand Jury President Barbara Sommer of Progress Ranch, Cache Creek Casino

March 27, 2013

Dear Members and Others,

We attach an editorial penned by Bill Girdner of the Courthouse News. Suffice it to say, our branch leaders have gotten the attention of those in the media who report on court cases and who believe in open government. The author voices a concern that we share — some of the reporting on the “$10 pay for view” proposal has appeared to cast blame on the Governor or his Department of Finance for this assault on the First Amendment and open government. That could not be further from the truth.

A Report to the Judicial Council dated December 14, 2012, lays out the council's legislative priorities for 2013. On page 12 you will find language drafted by AOC staff amending the Government Code to charge the public $10 to view a “name, file, or other information for which a search is requested.” Our branch leaders standing by silently while the Governor and his Department of Finance are unfairly criticized for this gaffe hearkens back to the last time the AOC was caught attempting to gut Government Code sections concerning the management of the local trial courts. Then AOC staff affirmatively blamed the Department of Finance. Now, they seem content to allow a misleading impression to be made regarding the authorship of this misguided proposal.

We encourage you to read this report in its entirety, as it sheds additional light on what our handpicked leaders believe is essential in this year's legislative session. We will point out only one additional item. On pages 7 and 8, the AOC proposes to defer audits for compliance with the Public Contracting Code unless specific funding is provided to the judicial branch to offset the cost for these audits.

As you know, the State Auditor recently released her audit findings of the first six local courts that were chosen to be audited. We learned from this audit that the AOC was up to its old tricks by providing incorrect data and excluding information required by the auditors. The six local courts were found to be substantially in compliance with the code. Ending the audits now would stop the State Auditor from auditing the “AOC and other judicial branch entities” as is required by December 15 of this year. It appears that the six local courts had the funds to pay for audits last year, but this year the central office appears to be broke and unable to afford an audit unless the General Fund provides the resources to do so. How convenient.
The Alliance believes that auditing the AOC is not a luxury that should only occur if extra funding is secured. Rather we believe it is of utmost importance that respected State Auditor Elaine Howle undertake this audit immediately. For those on the Judicial Council who champion and repeatedly claim that a new regime has embraced “greater transparency,” this proposal to kill off an audit speaks to their definition of transparency when it comes to their own operations.

As always, we will continue to keep you informed on matters concerning our branch.

Directors,

Alliance of California Judges

++++++

YoloanR

March 28, 2013

RE: Yolo County Superior Court Judge David Rosenberg and Wife Lea Rosenberg

District Attorney of Yolo County Jeff Reisig informed that a noticeable surge has been detected in the level of enthusiasm (i.e. fund-raising, donations) on the part of Cache Creek Casino and Rosenbergs to benefit “foster youth” and/or “emancipated foster youth” in Yolo County.”

For example, Rosenbergs (at times, with the assistance of Judge Dave Reed, Treasurer Victor Bucher) raised funds to support foster youth by mobilizing Davis Odd Fellows (“Breakfast with Santa”), Soroptimist International of Davis (“Texas Hold ‘Em” ) and Davis Rebekah Lodge (“Crab Feed” ).

Subsequently, those funds were forwarded directly to Progress Ranch and/or Yolo County Department of Employment and Social Services – The Homeless and Foster Youth Services of Yolo County, which in turns forward sums to Progress Ranch pursuant to contractual agreement with Yolo County totaling around $800,000 per annum.

Likewise, Cache Creek Casino's sudden interest in foster youth manifested itself with a $48,500 donation.

Reisig also informed that the inquiry is in its infancy, and stem from the fact that Progress Ranch President Barbara Sommer is also the President of Yolo County Grand Jury, as well as the role of Victor Bucher as treasurer in various judicial elections.

More to come…..

See more @:
http://lesliebrodie.blog.co.uk/2013/03/23/something-is-rotten-in-yolo-county-part-2-deconstructing-shyste

La liberté à l'ombre de la crise du patriarcat : _Practicing Freedom in the Shadow of Patriarchy's…

2013-03-25T09:09:34Z

La liberté à l'ombre de la crise du patriarcat: Practicing Freedom in the Shadow of Patriarchy's Crisis, Zeina Zaatari
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/practicing-freedom-shadow-patriarchy%E2%80%99s-crisis

In a recent article by Turkish feminist Deniz Kandiyoti titled “Fear and Fury: Women and Post-Revolutionary Violence,” the author comes to the conclusion that patriarchy is in crisis.
I felt that the author was speaking for me, as I and many of my feminist colleagues have been trying to explain the continued violence against women in the Arab world, particularly in countries like Egypt and Tunisia that experienced revolutionary upheaval.

'Falluja Babies' and Depleted Uranium — America's Toxic Legacy in Iraq | Alternet

2013-03-21T08:56:38Z

'Falluja Babies' and Depleted Uranium — America's Toxic Legacy in Iraq | Alternet
http://www.alternet.org/world/falluja-babies-and-depleted-uranium-americas-toxic-legacy-iraq?akid=10215.

Dr Mozghan Savabieasfahani is an environmental toxicologist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is the author of more than two dozen peer reviewed articles, most of which deal with the health impact of toxicants and war pollutants. Her research now focuses on war pollution and the rising epidemic of birth defects in Iraqi cities.
“After bombardment, the targeted population will often remain in the ruins of their contaminated homes, or in buildings where metal exposure will continue,” Dr Savabieasfahani told Al Jazeera.
“Our research in Fallujah indicated that the majority of families returned to their bombarded homes and lived there, or otherwise rebuilt on top of the contaminated rubble of their old homes. When possible, they also used building materials that were salvaged from the bombarded sites. Such common practices will contribute to the public's continuous exposure to toxic metals years after the bombardment of their area has ended.”
She pointed out how large quantities of DU bullets, as well as other munitions, were released into the Iraqi environment.

Otto Neurath Isotype Revisited | Modern man in the making

2013-03-21T02:21:04Z

Otto Neurath

Isotype Revisited | Modern man in the making

http://isotyperevisited.org/2009/09/modern-man-in-the-making.html

Modern man in the making
Modern man in the making (1939) is the high point of the Isotype team's core concern with social statistics. It resulted from a generous commission by the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, which gave Otto Neurath great freedom as author of the book. His principal collaborator (and later wife) Marie Reidemeister persuaded him to try something new: a book in what she called 'picture-text' style. A chart inserted into the text constituted a 'paragraph' that had to be 'read' in order to follow the argument. Reidemeister assumed the role of 'transformer', a name coined for the interpreter of statistical data into simplified graphic form - a role that anticipated the modern information designer. She worked closely with Neurath and Gerd Arntz to produce the tight unity of the book. Seven colours in total were used for printing the graphics.

#otto-neurath

Days before Obama visit, NYT publishes pro-Palestinian manifesto Haaretz…

2013-03-17T05:55:48Z

Days before Obama visit, NYT publishes pro-Palestinian manifesto

Haaretz

/Users/alain/Desktop/1340782202.jpg

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/days-before-obama-visit-nyt-publishes-pro-palestinian-manifesto.premium-1.5

Days before U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Israel, the New York Times magazine has published an unusually pro-Palestinian cover story entitled “If There is a Third Intifada, We Want to be the Ones who Started It.”
The 7000 word article, written by author and freelance journalist Ben Ehrenreich, depicts the struggle of the Tamimi family in the West Bank village of Nebi Saleh to regain access to a spring which has been taken over by the nearby settlement of Halamish. Ehrenreich spent three weeks living in the home of Bassem Tamimi, one of the prominent leaders of the weekly protests that have drawn international media attention and which are routinely dispersed by the IDF.

Mark Twain Captured on Film by Thomas Edison in 1909. It's the Only Known Footage of the Author. |…

2013-03-10T20:09:50Z

Mark Twain Captured on Film by Thomas Edison in 1909. It's the Only Known Footage of the Author. | Open Culture
http://www.openculture.com/2010/03/mark_twain_captured_on_film_by_thomas_edison_1909.html

Here's a little nugget for you. The great inventor Thomas Edison visited the home of Mark Twain in 1909, and captured footage of “the father of American literature” (says Faulkner) walking around his estate and playing cards with his daughters, Clara and Jean. The film is silent and deteriorated. But it's apparently the only known footage of the author who gave us Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Twain would die the next year.

Robert Fisk : Alawite history reveals the complexities of Syria that West does not understand The…

2013-03-04T13:53:41Z

Robert Fisk:

Alawite history reveals the complexities of Syria that West does not understand
The Independent

Eloge du Monde diplomatique

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/robert-fisk-alawite-history-reveals-the-complexities-of-syria-that-we

For now Sabrina Mervin, the French author and researcher, has put together a remarkable document in which she traces the history of a people who used to call themselves “Nusayris” – after the founder of their faith, Muhammad Ibn Nusayr – and whose religion was founded “in the bosom of Shiism” in the 9th and 10th centuries. Mervin's work, published now in that splendid French institution Le Monde Diplomatique, should be essential reading for every Syria “ expert”, for it suggests that the Alawites are victims of a long history of religious dissidents, persecution and repression.
As long ago as 1903, the Belgian-born Jesuit and Orientalist, Henri Lammens, was identifying the Alawites as former Christians – until he met a Sheikh who insisted he belonged to Shia Islam. Lammens, a typical imperialist, suggested that the Alawites – who appeared to believe in the transmigration of souls and a trinity (the Prophet Muhammad, his cousin and son-in-law Ali, and Salman, a companion) – might become Christians “which would allow France to interfere in your favour”. Indeed, France did indeed show favour to the Alawites in later years.

Un personnage de Quentin Tarantino dans la réalité des Etats Unis Chris Kyle, Author of ‘American…

2013-02-04T12:05:01Z

Un personnage de Quentin Tarantino dans la réalité des Etats Unis

Chris Kyle, Author of ‘American Sniper' Reported Killed in Texas - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/us/chris-kyle-american-sniper-author-reported-killed.html?_r=0

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/02/04/us/04author_2/04author_2-articleLarge.jpg

... two weeks into his time in Iraq, he found himself staring through his scope into the face of an unconventional enemy. A woman with a child standing close by had pulled a grenade from beneath her clothes as several Marines approached. He hesitated, he wrote, then shot.
“It was my duty to shoot, and I don't regret it,” he wrote. “My shots saved several Americans, whose lives were clearly worth more than that woman's twisted soul.”
Over time, his hesitation diminished and he became proficient at his job, credited with more than 150 kills. In his book, he describes shooting a fighter wielding a rocket launcher 2,100 yards away, a very long distance for a sniper and his farthest ever.

Dans son film Inglorious Basterds Quentin Tarantino décrit un jeune soldat assez sympathique qui devient la vedette des médias sous le contrôle de Goebbels. Vu qu'Inglorious Basterds est une sorte de fable sanguinaire marqué par un sarcasme omniprésent, il me semble permis de comparer ce personnage avec le vétéran américain qui vient de se faire tuer par un camarade.

Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), (is) a German sniper whose exploits are to be celebrated in a Nazi propaganda film, Stolz der Nation (Nation's Pride), starring as himself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglourious_Basterds

Mr. Kyle's autobiography was published in January 2012 and became a nonfiction best seller. It turned Mr. Kyle into a celebrity, appearing on talk shows like “Late Night With Conan O'Brien.”
The sudden success of the book surprised no one more than Mr. Kyle, the son of a church deacon who was initially rejected by the Navy when he tried to join in the mid-1990s, because of pins in his arm from a rodeo injury. His first book signing drew 1,200 people. About 850,000 print and e-book editions were sold.
In an interview with The New York Times in March, Mr. Kyle — who received two Silver Stars and five Bronze medals for valor — said he had hesitated to write about his experiences. But he was persuaded to move forward after hearing that other books about members of the SEALs were in the works.
“I wanted to tell my story as a SEAL,” he said. “This is about all the hardships that everybody has to go through to get the respect and the honor.”

Allez voir le film de Tarantino, vous y découvrirez une forte ressemblance des attitudes affichés par les protagonistes et une déscription de l'explolitation des héros par la machine de propagande nazie digne des médias du pouvoir actuel.

Son assassin présumé ...

... Routh appeared to be one of the nation's numerous unemployed veterans, and Kyle was one of the crop of Navy SEALs to leave the anonymity of military service and enter the public sphere.

http://www.trbimg.com/img-510ee6a5/turbine/la-na-nn-sniper-chris-kyle-investigation-20130-001/580/580x499.jpg

Tarantino s'intéresse indirectement aux conséquences de la violence, il décrit comment ses protagonistes utilisent des symboles afin de pouvoir vivre avec la violence qu'ils excercent. C'est également décrit dans l'autobiographie du tireur d'élite. D'après les reportages connus à cette heure un soldat risque de « déraper » s'il ne sait pas employer cette méthode - les mots et symboles idéologiques sont nécessaire afin de digérer la contradiction entre sa vie personelle humaine et la tâche inhumaine à accomplir.

His autobiography was unapologetically politically incorrect, reflecting the man: During one visit home between deployments, Kyle got a tattoo of a crusader cross on his arm.
“I wanted everyone to know I was a Christian,” Kyle wrote. “I had it put in in red, for blood. I hated the damn savages I'd been fighting. I always will. They've taken so much from me.”
Kyle won adulation and a spotlight and appeared on the NBC reality show “Stars Earn Stripes,” in which “celebrities are challenged to execute complicated missions inspired by real military exercises.”

Le résumé des événement est court : Ce sont toujours le petits gens qui paient avec leur vie pour le profit des grands.

Nicholas Stern : 'I got it wrong on climate change – it's far, far worse'

2013-01-30T20:14:32Z

Nicholas Stern : 'I got it wrong on climate change – it's far, far worse' http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/27/nicholas-stern-climate-change-davos?CMP=twt_fd

Lord Stern, author of the government-commissioned review on climate change that became the reference work for politicians and green campaigners, now says he underestimated the risks, and should have been more “blunt” about the threat posed to the economy by rising temperatures.

Wikipedia sur la critique du rapport Stern de 2006 : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Stern

En fait la critique a été double. Le premier courant cité reprochait « à l'équipe Stern d'avoir manipulé la méthodologie économique à seule fin de parvenir à un tableau catastrophique et de justifier ainsi ses recommandations d'une action forte et immédiate »4. Au contraire, les représentants de « l'économie écologique » lui reprochaient son « orthodoxie conceptuelle »....

Laura Chick - Former City Controller of Los Angeles - Now Part of Inquiry Into CaliforniaALL In the…

2013-01-29T03:04:47Z

Laura Chick - Former City Controller of Los Angeles - Now Part of Inquiry Into CaliforniaALL

In the midst of the growing controversy over the alleged embezzlement of public funds by California Democratic Party operatives associated with OBAMA FOR AMERICA, a former Los Angeles City Controller associated with the California Democratic Party is now embroiled in a controversy dealing with the alleged embezzlement of public funds through and by means of fraud.

Specifically, Laura Chick of Los Angeles County has recently been identified as a potential player in the financial scheme known as CaliforniaALL following the fortuitous discovery of evidence relating to her involvement with OBAMA FOR AMERICA during the time she served as member of the State Bar of California Board of Governors.

As relevant to this matter, in 2007, various members of the State Bar of California Board of Governors with ties to the Democratic Party/OBAMA FOR AMERICA are accused by the author of knowingly agreeing to establish a non-profit entity (known as CaliforniaALL) which was later misused as a vehicle to absorb funds from utility companies, as well as close to $800,000 from the California Bar Foundation (an entity controlled by the State Bar of California Board of Governors).

As matters presently stand, suspicions exist that Morrison & Foerster attorneys James Brosnahan (the self-proclaimed “mastermind” behind the Democratic Party and member of OBAMA FOR AMERICA's California Finance Committee), Tony West (OBAMA FOR AMERICA's Chair of California's Finance Committee), Chris Young (OBAMA FOR AMERICA's Northern California Deputy Finance Director; later of Keker & Van Nest), Annette Carnegie (former director of the California Bar Foundation), Kamala Harris (Co-Chair, OBAMA FOR AMERICA and member of CaliforniaALL), Jeffrey Bleich of Munger Tolles (president of the State Bar of California, director of the California Bar Foundation, and founding member and Chair of OBAMA FOR AMERICA's National Finance Committee), Brad Phillips of Munger Tolles (2007- 2008 Director of the California Bar Foundation which served as a “financial sponsor” to CaliforniaALL on behalf of Verizon Wireless and Southern California Edison, both clients of Munger Tolles & Olson), Mark Parnes of Wilson Sonsini (2007-2008 director and Secretary of the California Bar Foundation), John Roos of Wilson Sonsini (former CEO of Wilson Sonsini and member of OBAMA FOR AMERICA's National Finance Committee), Steven Churchwell of DLA Piper in Sacramento (Treasurer, draft committee of OBAMA FOR AMERICA; firm where CaliforniaALL resided free of charge), Laura Chick (member of the State Bar of California Board of Governors and OBAMA FOR AMERICA), Jeannine English (member of the State Bar of California Board of Governors), Mark Friedman (elector for Barack Obama; a Sacramento real estate developer once accused of defrauding an Indian tribe out of millions of dollars while conspiring with the tribe's attorney Howard Dickstein - spouse of Jeannine English) and Freada Klein Kapor (member of the board of directors of CaliforniaALL; OBAMA FOR AMERICA's phone bank was located at The Kapor Center) all participated in a sophisticated financial scheme to misuse all or part of the “hush-hush” $780,000 originating from the California Bar Foundation to improperly benefit OBAMA FOR AMERICA via a separate foundation created ad hoc by Susan Mac Cormac and Eric Tate of Morrison & Foerster known as CaliforniaALL.

In 2007, Ruthe Catolico Ashley served as member of the State Bar of California Board of Governors alongside Jeffrey Bleich, and came up with the idea to create CaliforniaALL during a meeting with Sarah Redfield and Peter Arth, (the assistant to CPUC President Michael Peevey).

CaliforniaALL was conveniently housed free of charge at the offices of DLA Piper in Sacramento, alongside the draft committee of OBAMA FOR AMERICA, where Steve Churchwell of DLA Piper in Sacramento served as Treasurer of the draft committee of OBAMA FOR AMERICA.

Subsequent to the election of Barack Obama, CaliforniaALL was dissolved.

Other then collecting close to $2 million directly from utility companies (including the “hush-hush” transfer of $774,247, comprised of one installment of $5000 and another contribution of $769,247 from the Foundation which was never mentioned in the Foundation's “newsroom” or by any other of its publications such as the California Bar Journal or by any of the newsletters and alerts published by CaliforniaALL), CaliforniaALL appears to have been be a sham, phantom entity from its inception in 2008 to the day it began to slowly be dissolved in approximately 2009, subsequent to the election of Barack Obama as president of the U.S.

Its only alleged achievement was providing some money for the creation of the Saturday Academy of Law at UC Irvine (“SALUCI”) in approximately 2008-2009. Here too vast and intense suspicious circumstances exist as the funds from CaliforniaALL actually went to the UC Irvine Foundation, where the present executive director of the State Bar of California (Senator Joe Dunn) serves as a member of the audit committee, and it turns out that the SALUCI was actually already created in 2005 and was fully operational before CaliforniaALL arrived on the scene. In addition, some records seem to indicate that Verizon Wireless funneled the money directly to SALUCI , while CaliforniaALL took the credit."

Laura Chick's Wikipedia profile states that she also served as California's Inspector General overseeing the state's spending of $85 billion of Federal Recovery Act funding. Chick was appointed to the newly created position by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in April 2009 and the office was terminated by Governor Jerry Brown in December 2010.

The Garden of Error and Decay

2013-01-24T14:02:38Z

The Garden of Error and Decay
http://www.gardenoferroranddecay.net

The Garden of Error and Decay tells the continuous story of current world disasters. In addition to the author Twitter users and stock exchange information influence the story telling. Every time a disaster related topic is discussed in Twitter it becomes displayed in the form of an animated pictogram. Users have the opportunity to either eliminate or multiply the disaster scenes with a shooting devise. However, it is not the user that has the power to decide what really happens. Like in real life everything is driven by stock exchange dynamics, these dictate whether it goes up or down. In that sense this innovative moving image format is something like a real-time data driven narrative. This project is not a film, not a game, and not a nonlinear interactive story.
The work problematizes the relationship between the individual and global events. Garden of Error and Decay function as an allegory of the impotence of the citizen when confronted with superordinate facts, which have reached such a degree of abstraction that they are not comprehensible or modifiable anymore, although they are real and determine everybody's life.

#installation #art #vidéo un truc étonnant un peu flippant

Thomas McGuane

2013-01-24T13:27:15Z

Thomas McGuane
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_McGuane

Thomas Francis McGuane III (born December 11, 1939) is an American author. His work includes ten novels, short fiction and screenplays, as well as three collections of essays devoted to his life in the outdoors. He is also a self-taught maker of custom knives.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080031

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074906

Book review : Miko Peled sets the record straight on Palestine's dispossession

2012-11-29T20:02:51Z

Book review: Miko Peled sets the record straight on Palestine's dispossession
http://electronicintifada.net/content/book-review-miko-peled-sets-record-straight-palestines-dispossession/11950

My review of The General's Son, by Miko Peled, cannot be separated from what I've come to know about the author. After all, this book is about Peled's own life, and his journey to a new understanding of the conflict that has defined so many of our lives. It is a narrative of the author's transformation from an ardent Zionist, born into a revered military Israeli family, to a human rights activist and advocate of a single binational state.

Broken BRICs

2012-11-26T09:33:47Z

Broken BRICs

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/135439
November/December 2012
Why the Rest Stopped Rising
Ruchir Sharma

RUCHIR SHARMA is head of Emerging Markets and Global Macro at Morgan Stanley Investment Management and the author of Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles.
Over the past several years, the most talked-about trend in the global economy has been the so-called rise of the rest, which saw the economies of many developing countries swiftly converging with those of their more developed peers. The primary engines behind this phenomenon were the four major emerging-market countries, known as the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The world was witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime shift, the argument went, in which the major players in the developing world were catching up to or even surpassing their counterparts in the developed world.
These forecasts typically took the developing world's high growth rates from the middle of the last decade and extended them straight into the future, juxtaposing them against predicted sluggish growth in the United States and other advanced industrial countries. Such exercises supposedly proved that, for example, China was on the verge of overtaking the United States as the world's largest economy-a point that Americans clearly took to heart, as over 50 percent of them, according to a Gallup poll conducted this year, said they think that China is already the world's “leading” economy, even though the U.S. economy is still more than twice as large (and with a per capita income seven times as high).

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY NOVEMBER 20 « MasterAdrian's Weblog

2012-11-20T13:45:10Z

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY NOVEMBER 20 « MasterAdrian's Weblog
http://masteradrian.com/2012/11/20/this-day-in-gay-history-november-20

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY NOVEMBER 20
November 20, 2012
/ / | \ \ | / / | \ \
GAY WISDOM for Daily Living…
from White Crane a magazine exploring
Gay wisdom & culture ►http://www.Gaywisdom.org
Share this with your friends…
\ \ | / / | \ \ | / /
THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY
NOVEMBER 20
TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE (since 1999) set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice (transphobia). The event is held on November 20, founded by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, to honor Rita Hester, whose murder in 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco, California candlelight vigil in 1999. Since then, the event has grown to encompass memorials in hundreds of cities around the world.
1858 – SELMA LAGERLÖF, Swedish author, Nobel laureate (d. 1940); Swedish author and the first woman writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Known internationally for a story for children, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, in 1909 Selma Lagerlöf won the Nobel ”in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings.” In 1914 she also became a member of the Swedish Academy, the body that awards the Nobel Prize in literature. At the start of World War II, she sent her Nobel Prize medal and her gold medal from the Swedish Academy to the government of Finland to help them raise money to fight the Soviet Union. The Finnish government was so touched that it raised the necessary money by other means and returned her medal to her. Her first novel, The Story of Gösta Berling, was adapted into an internationally acclaimed motion picture starring Greta Garbo.
She lived in Sunne, where two hotels are named after her. Her home, Mårbacka, is now preserved as a museum. She wrote a copious amount of letters to her two partners, Sophie Elkan and Valborg Olander.
1873 – DANIEL GREGORY MASON, American composer, born (d: 1953); Mason came from a long line of notable American musicians, including his father Henry Mason. He studied under John Knowles Paine at Harvard University from 1891 to 1895, continuing his studies with George Chadwick and Goetschius. In 1894 he published his Opus 1, a set of keyboard waltzes, but soon after began writing on music for his primary career. He became a lecturer at Columbia University in 1905, where he would remain until his retirement in 1942, successively being awarded the positions of assistant professor (1910), MacDowell professor (1929) and head of the music department (1929-1940). He was the lover of composer-pianist John Powell.
1910 – The American civil rights advocate, lawyer, poet and teacher and the first ordained African-American woman ordained as a priest PAULI MURRAY was born on this date (d. 1985). The Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline (Pauli) Murray was an American civil rights advocate, feminist, lawyer, writer, poet, teacher, and ordained priest was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1910, to William H. and Agnes Georgiana (Fitzgerald) Murray. When Pauli Murray was three years old, her mother died, and she went to live with her aunt and maternal grandparents, the Fitzgeralds, in Durham, North Carolina. Pauli graduated from Hunter College, and in 1938 was denied admission into the University of North Carolina law school because of her race. She later entered Howard University Law School and graduated in 1944. She sought admission to Harvard University for an advanced law degree but was denied admission because she was a woman. She then studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her Masters of Law degree.
A contemporary and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, she was a professor of American studies at Brandeis University from 1968 to 1973. She was the author of the 1950 book “States' Laws on Race and Color,” which catalogued state statutes discriminating against African Americans, Native Americans, Asians and other groups.
Murray was one of the founders of the Women's Rights Law Reporter, the first legal periodical to focus exclusively on women's rights.
Pauli Murray contributed to the NAACP's litigation strategy in Brown v. Board of Education and in 1961 she was appointed to the President's Commission on the Status of Women. While serving on the commissions and studying at Yale Law School (where she was the first African American to earn a J.S.D.) Murray authored a series of papers outlining a legal strategy for challenging sex discrimination by states. These arguments were first published in an article co-authored with Mary Eastwood after the passage of Title VII entitled “Jane Crow and the Law.” [2]
She testified on discrimination against women before the 91st Congress of the United States.[3] She was the first African-American woman Episcopal priest and a co-founder of NOW, the National Organization for Women.
Pauli Murray died of cancer on July 1, 1985 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her autobiography Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage was published posthumously in 1987. In 1990, the Pauli Murray Human Relations Award was established in her honor to commemorate her life work.
1926 – KAYE BALLARD, American comic actress, born; an actress who has appeared on Broadway and on television. From 1967 to 1969, she co-starred in the NBC sitcom, The-Mothers-in-Law, with Eve Arden. In 2005, she appeared in a road company production of Nunsense, which was written by Dan Goggin. She has never married.
1941 – The man who saved a President's life was born today OLIVER SIPPLE saved President Gerald Ford's life. Sara Jane Moore attempted to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, just seventeen days after Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme had also tried to kill the president. Moore was forty feet away from Ford when she fired a single shot at him. The bullet missed the President because bystander Oliver Sipple grabbed Moore's arm and then pulled her to the ground, using his hand to keep the gun from firing a second time. Sipple said at the time: “I saw [her gun] pointed out there and I grabbed for it. I lunged and grabbed the woman's arm and the gun went off.” The single shot which Moore did manage to fire from her .38-caliber revolver ricocheted off the entrance to the hotel and slightly injured a bystander.
Sipple, a decorated Marine and Vietnam War veteran, was immediately commended by the police and the Secret Service for his action at the scene. The news media portrayed Sipple as a hero but would eventually report on his outing by Harvey Milk and other San-Francisco gay activists. Though he was known to be Gay by various fellow members of the gay community, Sipple had not made this public, and his sexual orientation was a secret from his family. He asked the press to keep his sexuality off the record, making it clear that neither his mother nor his employer had knowledge of his orientation; however, his request was not complied with.
The national spotlight was on him immediately, and Milk responded. While discussing whether the truth about Sipple's sexuality should be disclosed, Milk told a friend: “It's too good an opportunity. For once we can show that Gays do heroic things, not just all that ca-ca about molesting children and hanging out in bathrooms.” Milk contacted the newspaper.
Several days later Herb Caen, a columnist at The San Francisco Chronicle, exposed Sipple as a Gay man and a friend of Milk. Sipple was besieged by reporters, as was his family. His mother, a staunch Baptist in Detroit, refused to speak to him. Although he had been involved with the Gay community for years, even participating in Gay Pride events, Sipple sued the Chronicle for invasion of privacy. President Ford sent Sipple a note of thanks for saving his life. Milk said that Sipple's sexual orientation was the reason he received only a note, rather than an invitation to the White House.
Sipple filed a $15 million invasion of privacy suit against Caen, seven named newspapers, and a number of unnamed publishers, for publishing the disclosures. The Superior Court in San Francisco dismissed the suit, and Sipple continued his legal battle until May 1984, when a state court of appeals held that Sipple had indeed become news, and that his sexual orientation was part of the story.
According to a 2006 article in The Washington Post, Sipple went through a period of estrangement with his parents, but the family later reconciled with his sexual orientation. Sipple's brother, George, told the newspaper, “(Our parents) accepted it. That was all. They didn't like it, but they still accepted. He was welcomed. Only thing was: Don't bring a lot of your friends.”
Sipple's mental and physical health sharply declined over the years. He drank heavily, gained weight to 300 lb (140 kg), was fitted with a pacemaker, became paranoid and suicidal. On February 2, 1989, he was found dead in his bed, at the age of forty-seven. Earlier that day, Sipple had visited a friend and said he had been turned away by the Veterans Administration hospital where he went concerning his difficulty in breathing. His $334 per month apartment near San Francisco's Tenderloin District was found with many newspaper clippings of his actions on the fateful September afternoon in 1975. His most prized possession was the framed letter from the White House.
Sipple held no ill will toward Milk, and remained in contact with him. The incident brought him so much attention that, later in life, while drinking, he would regret grabbing Moore's gun. Sipple, who was wounded in the head in Vietnam, was also diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic according to the coroner's report.
Sipple's funeral was attended by 30 people, and he was buried in Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California. A letter addressed to the friends of Oliver Sipple was on display for a short period after his death at one of his favorite hangouts, the New Belle Saloon:
“Mrs. Ford and I express our deepest sympathy in this time of sorrow involving your friend's passing…” President Gerald Ford, February, 1989
In a 2001 interview with columnist Deb Price, Ford disputed the claim that Sipple was treated differently because of his sexual orientation, saying: “As far as I was concerned, I had done the right thing and the matter was ended. I didn't learn until sometime later — I can't remember when — he was Gay. I don't know where anyone got the crazy idea I was prejudiced and wanted to exclude Gays.”
|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

Current US law extends copyright protection for 70 years after the date of the author's death or 95…

2012-11-19T09:42:50Z

Current US law extends copyright protection for 70 years after the date of the author's death or 95 years after publication in the case of corporate “works-for-hire”. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years. Under pre-1978 laws, what works published in 1955 would have passed into the public domain on January 1st 2012 ? http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2012/pre-1976 - sorry, you'll have to pay Disney for 14 more years.

Indicted Aaron Swartz Hires Keker & Van Nest Aaron Swartz, who faces up to 35 years in prison,…

2012-11-04T20:04:46Z

Indicted Aaron Swartz Hires Keker & Van Nest

Aaron Swartz, who faces up to 35 years in prison, recently hired San Francisco-based Keker & Van Nest to represent him, according to court documents filed with the United States District Court of Massachusetts.

Attorney Matthias Kammber of Keker & Van Nest informed the court that Swartz's local attorney, Martin Weinberg, “will be withdrawing as counsel” and will be replaced by Cody Harris, Daniel Purcell, and top gun Elliot Peters, all of Keker & Van Nest.

Swartz, 25, is a fellow at Harvard University's Safra Centre for Ethics and is charged with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. If convicted on these charges, Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million, according to a press release issued by United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz.

In various declarations submitted to the court, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen Heymann and Scott Garland alleged that Swartz — who is not a student, faculty member, or employee of MIT — gained physical access to MIT's computer network through a laptop computer he installed in a restricted wiring closet in the basement of a research building, and that he intentionally masked his face with a bicycle helmet to avoid identification on a video camera as he entered the closet to remove the laptop; they also alleged that Swartz used fictitious names and manipulated computer identification information to get and maintain access to MIT's computer network, and that he took repeated and affirmative steps to evade efforts by both MIT and JSTOR to lock him out of their computer networks.

In somewhat related news, Swartz and Larry Lessig, also of Harvard University's Safra Centre for Ethics, are presently also being scrutinized as part of an ongoing non-criminal inquiry conducted by the author stemming from myriad suspicious financial transactions in connection with circumstances surrounding Chris Young (presently an attorney with Keker & Van Nest), defunct non-profit entity CaliforniaALL, Mitchell and Freada Kapor (a director of CaliforniaALL) of The Kapor Center, Bettina Neuefeind (wife of Larry Lessig), and two non-profit entities bearing the same name of “Democracy Fund,Inc.” — EIN 27-2439840 and EIN 26-3088283 — with connections to Lessig and Swartz.

Although other potential explanations certainly exist, as matters presently stand, it appears that in 2007-2008, Democratic party agents may have participated in what appears to be unexplained financial machinations relating to the California Bar Foundation and newly created non-profit entity CaliforniaALL with respect to funds originating from major utility companies and the California Bar Foundation, in order to promote the election of Barack Obama in general, and on behalf of those seeking to promote green energy in particular.

Specifically:

MORRISON & FOERSTER attorneys James Brosnahan (self-proclaimed “mastermind” behind the Democratic Party), Tony West (Barack Obama's Chair of the California Finance Committee), Chris Young (“Obama for America” Northern California Deputy Finance Director), Annette Carnegie (2007-2008 director with the California Bar Foundation); Kamala Harris (co-chair, Obama for America and member of CaliforniaALL);

MUNGER TOLLES & OLSON attorneys Jeffrey Bleich (president of the State Bar of California, director of the California Bar Foundation, founding member and Chair of OBAMA FOR AMERICA's National Finance Committee who pushed for the creation of CaliforniaALL, as well as for the appointment of director Freada Klein Kapor), Brad Phillips (2007- 2008 Director of the California Bar Foundation which served as a “financial sponsor” to CaliforniaALL on behalf of Verizon Wireless and Southern California Edison, both clients of Munger Tolles & Olson) (examination of the IRS 990 Verizon Wireless submitted to the IRS shows absolutely no payments to either CaliforniaALL or the California Bar Foundation);

WILSON SONSINI attorneys Mark Parnes (2007-2008 director and Secretary of the California Bar Foundation), John Roos (former CEO of Wilson Sonsini in Palo Alto; a personal friend of both President Obama and Jeffrey Bleich, currently serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan; similar to Ambassador Bleich, Ambassador Roos acted as a “bundler” and raised over $500,000 for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign);

DLA PIPER attorney Steven Churchwell in Sacramento (Treasurer, draft committee of OBAMA FOR AMERICA); firm where CaliforniaALL resided free of charge;

KAMALA HARRIS (co-chair, OBAMA FOR AMERICA ; member of CaliforniaALL); Harris is the sister of Maya Harris, who is married to Tony West, the chair of Barack Obama's California Finance Committee who now serves as third in command within the United States Department of Justice below Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer;

CaliforniaALL Director OPHELIA BASGAL of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”): In around 2007-2008, Ms. Basgal was Vice President of Civic Partnership and Community Initiatives at PG&E, where she managed the company's $18 million charitable contribution program, and oversaw its community engagement programs and partnerships with community-based organizations. Separately, around that time she also served as treasurer of the “California Supreme Court Historical Society.” In that role, she presumably had contact with many judges, including those who were handling matters dealing with PG&E, such as Justice (Ret.) Joseph Grodin who acted as the mediator in a case Attorney General Bill Lockyer advanced against PG&E, which Jerry Brown (cousin of Geoffrey Brown) later dismissed in his capacity as the new Attorney General for California;

LARRY LESSIG, FREADA KLEIN KAPOR, MITCHELL KAPOR, BETTINA NEUEFEIND, AARON SWARTZ: Around 2007-2008, Jeffrey Bleich caused the appointment of Freada Klein Kapor as Director of then newly-established CaliforniaALL. In a press release, the public was misled to believe that Freada Kapor is a diversity expert who operates an entity known as the Level Playing Field Institute. There was no mention that Freada Kapor is the owner of The Kapor Center, located at 543 Howard St., 5th. Floor, in San Francisco, which was used as telephone bank by volunteers of OBAMA FOR AMERICA, and received frequent visits from Bettina Neuefeind — wife of Larry Lessig — who served as the Office Manager of OBAMA FOR AMERICA in San Francisco.

Similarly, there was no mention, that tech-guru Mitchell Kapor — founder of Lotus 1-2-3 and the spouse of Freada Kapor, is part of OBAMA FOR AMERICA's technical team.

Also located at The Kapor Center at 543 Howard St., 5th. Floor, in San Francisco were two newly created non-profit entities launched by Larry Lessig, Aaron Swartz, Joe Trippi, and Monica Walsh (a friend of Bettina) known as “Change Congress” and “Change V2 Foundation.”

Following the 2008 election of President Obama, Larry Lessig and his wife departed California. In 2010, Larry Lessig, Monica Walsh, and others launched a whole new Section 501(C) non-profit entity known as “Democracy Fund, Inc.”, EIN 27-2439840. On June 6, 2011, Larry Lessig, Monica Walsh, and others caused Change V2 Foundation (which was launched in 2008) to also operate under the name “Democracy Fund, Inc.” (EIN 26-3088283).

The case against Aaron Swartz is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen P. Heymann and Scott L. Garland of Ortiz's Cybercrime Unit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. AARON SWARTZ Criminal No. 11-10260-NMG . Contact the author yoloanrabbi@gamil.com

Christian preacher blames gays for Hurricane Sandy | Gay Star News

2012-10-29T13:55:11Z

Christian preacher blames gays for Hurricane Sandy | Gay Star News
http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/christian-preacher-blames-gays-hurricane-sandy291012

Christian preacher blames gays for Hurricane Sandy
Chaplain John McTernan has said God's judgment of gays caused the hurricane nearing the east coast of the United States
29 October 2012 | By Joe Morgan
Chaplain John McTernan is blaming Hurricane Sandy on gay people, as well as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney's 'support' of gay issues.
An anti-gay Christian preacher is already blaming Hurricane Sandy on gays.
As the east coast of the United States prepares for the storm, which has already killed 60 people in the Caribbean, author and chaplain John McTernan has decided who is at fault.
On his website Defend Proclaim The Faith, the preacher says the gathering storm must be God's judgment on gays, and punishing the president Barack Obama for coming out in support of marriage equality.
He believes ever since George Bush Sr signed the Madrid Peace Process to divide the land of Israel in 1991, ‘America has been under God's judgment since this event.'
McTernan said: ‘Obama is 100% behind the Muslim Brotherhood which has vowed to destroy Israel and take Jerusalem.
‘Both candidates are pro-homosexual and are behind the homosexual agenda. America is under political judgment and the church does not know it!'
His reasoning for this is that it has been 21 years since the ‘perfect storm' of October 1991.
'21 years breaks down to 7 x 3, which is a significant number with God. Three is perfection as the Godhead is three in one while seven is perfection,' he said.
McTernan had planned to host a prayer meeting tonight (29 October), which would be streamed online on his website.
However as the storm is scheduled to go right over his house, the preacher has warned the sermons may be stopped if the power goes out.
The online minister also blamed Hurricane Isaac, which later became a tropical storm, on homosexuals. He said gay festival Southern Decadence was to blame, as God was ‘putting an end to this city and its wickedness.'
Thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people enjoyed Southern Decadence, and nine preachers were arrested for an aggressive anti-gay demonstration.
Tris Reid-Smith, director and editor of Gay Star News, who is in Baltimore, Maryland for LGBT workplace conference Out and Equal, said: 'So far it looks like any cancellations to events over the next few days are just going to give us more time for partying.
'If God is trying to punish the gays, he sure doesn't know how to do it.'
Sandy, dubbed a ‘Frankenstorm', could affect up to 60 million people as several states have declared emergencies, schools have closed and transport services suspended.

This Weekend In Gay History FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26 « MasterAdrian's Weblog

2012-10-26T10:42:16Z

This Weekend In Gay History FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26 « MasterAdrian's Weblog
http://masteradrian.com/2012/10/26/this-weekend-in-gay-history-friday-october-26

This Weekend In Gay History FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26
October 26, 2012
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living…
from White Crane Institute
Exploring Gay Wisdom
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This Weekend In Gay History
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012
1900 - on this date the Swedish writer, translator and poet, KARIN BOYE was born in Gothenburg. She studied at Uppsala University from 1921 to 1926 and debuted in 1922 with a collection of poems, “Clouds” (Sw. “Moln“). During her time in Uppsala and until 1930, Boye was a member of the socialist group Clarto. Boye is perhaps most famous for her poems, of which the most well-known ought to be “Yes, of course it hurts” and “In Motion” from her collections of poems “The Hearths“, 1927, and “For the Sake of the Tree“, 1935. She was also a member of the Swedish literary institution Samfundet De Nio (“Chair Number 6″) from 1931 until her death in 1941.

In 1931 Boye, together with Erik Mesterton and Josef Riwkin, founded the poetry magazine Spektrum, introducing T. S. Eliot and the Surrealists to Swedish readers. Together with the critic Erik Mesterton, she translated Eliot's “The Waste Land”. She was largely responsible for translating the work of T. S. Eliot into Swedish.
Between 1929 and 1932 Boye was married to Leif Bjrck. The marriage was apparently a friendship union. In 1932, after separating from her husband, she had a Lesbian relationship with Gunnel Bergstram, who left her husband, poet Gunnar EkelÃ¶f, for Boye. During a stay in Berlin 1932-1933 she met Margot Hanel, whom she lived with for the rest of her life, and referred to as “her wife.”

Boye was given two very different epitaphs. The best-known is the poem “Dead Amazon” by the poet Hjalmar Gullberg, in which she is depicted as “Very dark and with large eyes”. Another poem was written by her close friend Ebbe Linde and is entitled “Dead Friend”. Here, she is depicted not as a heroic amazon but as an ordinary human, small and grey in death, released from battles and pain.
In 2004, one of the branches of the Uppsala University Library was named the Karin Boye Library (Karin Boye-biblioteket) in her honor. The literary association Karin Boye-sÃ¤llskapet (the Karin Boye Society) was founded in 1983 and is dedicated to contributing to keeping Karin Boye's work alive spreading it among new readers.
1946 - today's the birthday of Puerto-Rican Transgender actress and former Warhol superstar HOLLY WOODLAWN. Born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl in San Juan, Puerto Rico, she appeared in Warhol's movies Trash(1970) and Women in Revolt (1972). Her transformation was summarized by Lou Reed in his iconic song “Walk on the Wild Side”:
“Holly came from Miami FLA, / hitch-hiked her way across the USA, / plucked her eyebrows on the way, / shaved her legs, and then he was a she…”

Woodlawn adopted the name Holly as an homage to the heroine of Breakfast at Tiffany's and in 1969 added the surname from a sign she saw on an episode of I Love Lucy. After changing her name she began to tell people she was the Heiress to the Woodlawn Cemetery. After Warhol's death, she was a frequently requested commentator on his life and influence. She currently resides in West Hollywood. Woodlawn began performing in cabaret shows in sold-out New York and Los Angeles performances in the early 2000s. She continues to travel with her cabaret show, most recently appearing in Krakow and London in 2008.
1953 - today's the birthday of B-52′s multi-instrumentalist and songwriter KEITH STRICKLAND. Born in Athens, Georgia he was one of the founding members of the The B-52′s. He was originally the band's drummer, but moved to guitar after the death of guitarist Ricky Wilson in 1985. Strickland also plays keyboards on many of The B-52′s recordings, and has occasionally provided backing vocals.
1971 - today's the birthday of American actor, writer and singer ANTHONY RAPP. Born in Joliet, Illinois, as Anthony Dean Rapp, his brother is the playwright Adam Rapp. He's best known for originating the role of Mark Cohen in the Broadway production of Rent in 1996 and later for reprising the role in the film version and The Broadway Tour of Rent in 2009. He also performed the role of Charlie Brown in the 1999 Broadway revival of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown. Rapp is currently touring the U.S.A. with Rent and will also be in Japan and South Korea.
Rapp, a self-identified “queer,” is an advocate in show business for LGBT rights, having first come out as Bisexual at the age of 18 to his mother over the phone. In 2006, Rapp released a memoir about his days in RENT, as well as his mother's struggle with cancer and his experiences growing up, entitled Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent. The memoir was made into a stage production

2001 - on this date the American writer, cartoonist and illustrator, KRIS KOVICK died of breast cancer. Her books include What I Love about Lesbian Politics is Arguing with People I Agree With, How Would You Feel if Your Dad was Gay?, and Glibquips: Funny Words by funny Women.
Kovick was born in Fresno, California and attended California State University in the early 1970s, moved to Seattle for five years, and then settled in San Francisco in 1980. In San Francisco, she lived in the Bernal Heights neighborhood, where she became known as “The Mayor of Norwich Street”, a take-off on assassinated San Francisco gay activist Harvey Milk's nickname “The Mayor of Castro Street.” She was the first woman to become a member of the printing trade union in the Pacific Northwest.
Kovick was well known as a cartoonist in Lesbian and feminist publications. Her book of essays and cartoons, “What I Love About Lesbian Politics Is Arguing With People I Agree With“, was published in 1991 by Alyson Books. Her writings and cartoons were also published in such anthologies as “Glibquips: Funny Words by Funny Women,” and in LGBT publications such as theSan Francisco Bay Times and Gay Comics. Kovick was friends with other writers and cartoonists such as sex columnist Susie Bright, and cartoonist Alison Bechdel, the artist behind the popular “Dykes to Watch Out For” series who memorialized Kovick in cartoon form in 2008.
Kovick was also known as a writer and performer. She is credited with launching the Lesbian spoken-word scene in San Francisco. She toured nationally with Sister Spit, a group of women writers that also included such well-regarded authors as Michelle Tea, Eileen Myles, and Lynn Breedlove. In 2000, she founded a reading series at the Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts, called “San Francisco in Exile.” Selected performances from the San Francisco in Exile series are archived on the internet.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2012
1848 - the English author and poetÂ KATHERINE HARRIS BRADFORD, (and the other half of Edith Emma Cooper) was born on this date. Bradford wrote poetry and plays under the joint pseudonym “Michael Field.” Katharine called Edith “Henry” and Edith called Katherine “Michael” and for the rest of their lives they were known to each other and to their friends by these names. Where the name “Field” came from is anybody's guess. Among their closest friends were Royal Academy painter, Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, who lived together near them in a relationship comparable to their own. The poems of “Michael Field” are rich in love lyrics to women, and they were well received until it was discovered that the “male” poet was in fact two women. From that time on their work was treated by ever-increasing coldness by the literary world.

Of course, many people knew the identity of “Michael Field” from the beginning, including Robert Browning, who was a friend. But even Browning asked for an explanation when Long Ago, based on fragments from Sappho, appeared in 1889. Their friendship with Browning is telling. The Brownings wrote their poetry separately. The two women, on the other hand, wrote theirs jointly, believing themselves to be “two bodies joined as one.” The contrast was not lost on “Michael Field.: “These two poets, man and wife, wrote alone; each wrote, but did not bless and quicken one another at their work; we are closer married.”

1903 - on this date in an article in the German publication Die Zeit, Sigmund Freud was quoted as saying homosexuals are not sick and should not be treated as sick.

1911 - on this date the photographer MARCEY JACOBSON was born (d. 2009). She spent decades in the southern Mexican highlands documenting the lives of the indigenous Indian peoples. Ms. Jacobson was eking out a living in New York City doing mechanical drafting when she first visited San Cristobal in 1956, intending only a short stay. Instead she found a place she called “the solution to everything,” and, with her companion, Janet Marren, a painter, settled there for the rest of her life.

She took up photography with a borrowed Rolleiflex camera. Patiently exploring the colorful city, the central marketplace for the Mayan-speaking Indian villages of the region, she won the trust of the often camera-shy locals and taught herself the craft of making black-and-white pictures from what she saw in its cobblestone streets and muddy byways, in its dramatic landscapes and weather events, and perhaps most of all, in the faces of the inhabitants. Her portraits were haunting. The results, about 14,000 negatives produced mostly from the 1960s to the 1980s, describe the local daily life, its mercantile, religious and familial rites, in sensitive detail. The images are housed in the Na Bolom Museum in San Cristobal.

Most of Ms. Jacobson's work preceded the Zapatista revolution of 1994, when San Cristobal was one of the cities briefly seized by leftist forces demanding better treatment for Mexico's indigenous people. But what the photos frequently reveal are the tensions inherent in an ingrained caste system and the changes in a city and a society undergoing modernization.

In 2001, when she was 90, her work was at last widely recognized; 75 of her photos were collected in a book, “The Burden of Time”/”El Cargo del Tiempo,” printed in a bilingual edition by Stanford University Press.

“I love being locked up all alone in a darkroom, where nobody can get at me,” Ms. Jacobson said in a 1990 interview published in 2006 in Bridges, a Jewish feminist journal. “You take a negative, you put it in the enlarger, you expose a piece of lined paper, you put it in the developer. It's absolutely blank. But then it develops, and you watch it, the image floats up to you. And then â€” you re-experience what you experienced when you took the photograph.”

In 2009 she died in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, in the state of Chiapas. She was 97.
1950 - today's the birthday of American author and humorist FRAN LEBOWITZ. Born Frances Ann Lebowitz in Morristown, New Jersey, Lebowitz is best known for her sardonic social commentary on American life as filtered through her New York sensibilities. Some reviewers have called her a modern day Dorothy Parker.

After being expelled from high school and receiving a GED, Lebowitz worked many odd jobs before being hired by Andy Warhol as a columnist for Interview. This was followed by a stint at Mademoiselle. Her first book was a collection of essays titled Metropolitan Life, released in 1978, followed by Social Studies in 1981, both of which are collected (with a new introductory essay) in The Fran Lebowitz Reader.

For more than twenty years she has been famous in part for not writing Exterior Signs of Wealth, a long-overdue novel purportedly about rich people who want to be artists, and artists who want to be rich. She also made several appearances on Late Night With David Letterman during the early part of its run. Â Lebowitz also made recurring appearances as “Judge Janice Goldberg” on the television drama Law & Order.

In September 2007, Lebowitz was named one of the year's most stylish women in Vanity Fair‘s 68th Annual International Best-Dressed List, and is known to sport tailored suits by the Savile Row tailor Anderson & Sheppard. On November 17, 2010 Fran made a return appearance on Late Night With David Letterman after a 16-year absence. She discussed her years-long writer's block, which she jokingly referred to as “writer's blockade.” On November 22, 2010, HBO debuted a documentary about her entitled Public Speaking, directed by Martin Scorsese, that consisted of interviews and clips from speaking engagements. Â You should look for it — it's a hilarious documentary about a very witty intellect.
1951 - on this date the French postal service issued postage stamps with Gay lovers Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud.

1970 - on this date forty members of the Gay Activist Alliance invaded the New York offices of Harper‘s magazine to protest an article which presented homosexuality as a mental illness. GAA president Arthur Evans verbally attacked editor Midge Decter for publishing an article which would add to the suffering of homosexuals. The protest led to a three part television news series on Gay liberation.

1971 - on this date the film “Some of My Best Friends Are…” was released with the description: “It's Christmas Eve 1971 in Manhattan's Greenwich Village and the regulars of the local gay bar “The Blue Jay” are celebrating. Not much has changed since Stonewall and its not all “Peace on Earth. Good Will to Men” but the times are a changin.” Â An American International production, the film was written and directed by Mervyn Nelson and starred Fannie Flagg, future Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, and Candy Darling in a rare dramatic role. Â Gary Sandy (of later “WKRP in Cincinnati” fame) portrays a drugged out, self-loathing closet case who attacks Darling's character and is kicked out of the club by the angered patrons. Â The film is now regularly shown at Gay film festivals as “the film you love to hate” but at the time it was thought of us a rare portrayal of life in gay bars of the era. Â You can watch a few clips of it on youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PLB9EB785E9BDCCCC7

1977 - on this date in a meeting between the Quebec Human Rights Commission and representatives of Gay group ADGQ resulted in public recommendation that government amend Human Rights Charter to include sexual orientation.

1990 - on this date the U.S. CONGRESS repealed a law barring homosexuals from being admitted to the United States on grounds of mental illness.

1992 - on this date the Federal Court of Canada ordered the military to lift the ban on Gay and Lesbian service personnel. The Defense Department declined to appeal the decision.
Allen schindler.jpg
1992 - On this date US Navy radioman Allen R. Schindler, Jr. is brutally murdered by shipmates for being Gay, precipitating first military, then national debate about Gays in the military that resulted in the United States “Don't ask, don't tell” military policy. Schindler was from a Navy family in Chicago Heights, Illinois and was serving as a radioman on the amphibious assault ship USS Belleau Wood in Sasebo, Japan. According to friends of his, Schindler had complained repeatedly of anti-Gay harassment to his chain of command in March and April 1992, citing incidents such as the gluing-shut of his locker and frequent comments from shipmates like “There's a faggot on this ship and he should die.”

While on transport from San Diego to Sasebo, Japan, The Belleu Wood made a brief stop in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Afterwards en route to Japan, Schindler made a personal prank announcement “2-Q-T-2-B-S-T-R-8″ on secured lines reaching much of the Pacific Fleet. When he was brought before the disciplinary “captain's mast” for the unauthorized radio message. Schindler requested the hearing be closed. It was open, with two to three hundred people in attendance. Schindler was put on restrictive leave, unable to leave the ship until a few months after arriving to Sasebo and four days before his death.

The captain had been visited by Schindler, who had many times requested to be transferred to another location because he was being threatened by other shipmates for being Gay. The captain denied Schindler's request and kept the man's sexual orientation and his death a secret for months. It was not reported until a special team composed of a psychologist, two lawyers, a counselor, and a corpsman from Yokosuka incidentally met at a bar in Sasebo.

Airman Apprentice Terry M. Helvey who was a member of the Ship's weather department stomped Schindler to death in a toilet in a park in Sasebo, Nagasaki. Schindler had “at least four fatal injuries to the head, chest, and abdomen,” his head was crushed, ribs broken, and his penis cut, and he had “sneaker-tread marks stamped on his forehead and chest” destroying “every organ in his body” leaving behind a “nearly-unrecognizable corpse.” Schindler was left lying on the bathroom floor until the Shore Patrol and the key witness to the incident (Jonathan W.) carried out Schindler's body to the nearby Albuquerque Bridge. Jonathan W. witnessed the murder while using the restroom. He noticed Helvey jumping on Schindler's body while singing, and blood gushing from Schindler's mouth while he attempted to breathe. The key witness was requested to explain in detail to the military court what the crime scene looked like, but would not because Schindler's mother and sister were present in the courtroom.

After the trial, Helvey was convicted of murder and the captain who kept the incident quiet was demoted and transferred to Florida. Helvey is now serving a life sentence in the military prison at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, although by statute, he is granted a clemency hearing every year. Helvey's accomplice, Charles Vins, was allowed to plea bargain as guilty to three lesser offenses, including failure to report a serious crime, and to testify truthfully against Terry Helvey and served a 78-day sentence before receiving a general discharge from the Navy.

1997 - on this date the cable television network BET-TV succumbed to homophobic pressure and withdrew an invitation to Gay African-American activist (and former Clinton administration staffer) KEITH BOYKIN to appear on a show with homophobic fundamentalist gospel singers Angie and Debbie Winans. The Winans objected to his presence on the show, which featured their anti-Gay song “It's Not Natural.” Thus proving their cowardice in refusing to be challenged on their hateful rhetoric.
1999 - on this date in the provincial government in the Canadian province ofÂ OntarioÂ changed 67 statutes to give same-sex couples equal treatment to heterosexual couples.

1999 - also on this date during the primaries, the two Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore and Bill Bradley promised that if elected they would do everything in their power to ensure equal rights for Gay and Lesbian Americans. The promise was an unprecedented declaration by a candidate for a party's nomination. George W. Bush would win the presidential election promising the absolute opposite position on equal rights for Gay and Lesbian Americans and became the first president to publicly call for a constitutional amendment to explicitly take away rights from a class of people. Those people being Gay people. Proving once again that elections do matter.

2007 - on this date two 16 year-old boyfriends in Davis, California were elected Homecoming “Princes” after a successful write-in campaign at Davis Senior High School. With each boasting a white sash declaring his title as “Prince,” the two 16-year-olds rode through the city of Davis in the school's annual homecoming parade.
2009 - on this date the students of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, elected their first ever Transgender homecoming queen. Jessee Vasold, who identified as “genderqueer” took the field at halftime of the school's football game against James Madison.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2012
1903 - British poet and novelist EVELYN WAUGH was born on this date. The English writer is best known for such satirical and darkly humorous novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust and The Loved One, as well as for broader and more personal works, such as Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honor trilogy, that are influenced by his own experiences and his conservative and Catholic viewpoints. Many of Waugh's novels depict British aristocracy and high society, which he satirizes but to which, paradoxically, he was also strongly attracted. In addition, he wrote short stories, three biographies, and the first volume of an unfinished autobiography. His travel writings and his extensive diaries and correspondence have also been published.

In 1944, American literary critic Edmund Wilson pronounced Waugh “the only first-rate comic genius that has appeared in English since Bernard Shaw,” while Time magazine declared that he had “developed a wickedly hilarious yet fundamentally religious assault on a century that, in his opinion, had ripped up the nourishing taproot of tradition and let wither all the dear things of the world.” Waugh's works were very successful with the reading public and he was widely admired by critics as a humorist and prose stylist. In his notes for an unpublished review of Brideshead Revisited, George Orwell declared that Waugh was “about as good a novelist as one can be while holding untenable opinions.” The American conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. found in Waugh “the greatest English novelist of the century,” while his liberal counterpart Gore Vidal called him “our time's first satirist.”

After gallantly protecting T. S. Eliot from “the specious assumption that he was homosexual,” T.S. Matthews in Great Tom, suddenly became viciously ungallant: “It is peppery, glaring little men like Evelyn Waugh who are sexually suspect – as his diaries bear witness.” Aside from the psychologically interesting opposition of “great” Tom and “little” Evelyn, it's perfectly clear that the former editor of Time magazine had no particularly liking for either homosexuality or Evelyn Waugh. The very word “suspect” is suspect. Many people disliked Waugh personally. He could be unkind, ungenerous and ornery. But he was one of the greatest prose stylists of the 20th century, if not the greatest, and the idea of using the word “little” on a giant such as he is at best, odd.

Indeed, his diaries do clearly reveal him as a Gay man. But then so do his novels, particularly Brideshead Revisited, in which the friendship of Charles and Sebastian, despite the limitations of what he was allowed to write in the early 1940s, is magnificently drawn.

1909 - the Anglo-Irish born painter FRANCIS BACON was born on this date (d. 1992). He was a collateral descendant of the Elizabethan philosopher Francis Bacon. His artwork is well known for its bold, austere, and often grotesque or nightmarish imagery. Bacon discovered that he attracted a certain type of rich man, an attraction he was quick to take advantage of, having developed a taste for good food and wine. One of the men was an ex-army friend of his father, another breeder of race-horses, named Harcourt-Smith. Bacon later claimed that his father had asked this friend to take him ‘in-hand' and ‘make a man of him'. Francis had a difficult relationship with his father, once admitting to being sexually attracted to him. Doubtless, Eddy Bacon was aware of his friend's reputation for virility, but not of his penchant for young men.
In the early Spring of 1927 Bacon was taken by Harcourt-Smith to the opulent, decadent, “wide open” Berlin of the Weimar Republic, staying together at the Hotel Adlon. It is likely that Bacon saw Fritz Lang's Metropolis at this time.

His visit to a 1927 exhibition of 106 drawings by Picasso at the Galerie Paul Rosenberg, Paris, aroused his artistic interest, and he often took the train into Paris five or more times a week to see shows and art exhibitions. Bacon saw Abel Gance's epic silent film Napoléon at the Paris Opéra when it premiered in April 1927. From the autumn of 1927, Bacon stayed at the Paris Hôtel Delambre in Montparnasse. In 1929 he met Eric Hall at the Bath Club, Dover Street, London, where Bacon was working at the telephone exchange. Hall (who was general manager of Peter Jones) was to be both patron and lover to Bacon, in an often torturous relationship.

In 1964, Bacon began a relationship with 39-year-old Eastender George Dyer, whom he met, he claimed, while the latter was burgling his apartment. A petty criminal with a history of juvenile detention and prison, Dyer was a somewhat tortured individual, insecure, alcoholic, appearance obsessed and never really fitting in within the bohemian set surrounding Francis. The relationship was stormy and in 1971, on the eve of Bacon's major retrospective at the Paris Grand Palais, Dyer committed suicide in the hotel room they were sharing, overdosing on barbiturates. The event was recorded in Bacon's 1973 masterpiece Triptych, May-June 1973.
In 1974, Bacon met John Edwards, a young, illiterate, handsome Eastender with whom he formed one of his most enduring friendships, eventually bequeathing his £11m fortune to Edwards after his death.

Bacon died of a sudden heart attack on April 28, 1992, in Madrid, Spain. Bacon bequeathed his entire estate (then valued at eleven million pounds) to John Edwards after his death. Edwards, in turn, donated the contents of Francis Bacon's chaotic studio at 7 Reece Mews, South Kensington, to the Hugh Lane gallery in Dublin. Bacon's studio contents were moved and the studio carefully reconstructed in the gallery. Additionally draft materials, perhaps intended for destruction, were according to Canadian Barry Joule bequeathed to Joule who later forwarded most of the materials to create the Barry Joule Archive in Dublin with other parts of the collection given later to the Tate museum.

Bacon's Soho life was portrayed by John Maybury, with Derek Jacobi as Bacon and Daniel Craig as George Dyer (with some lovely frontal nudity on Craig's part) and with Tilda Swinton as Muriel Belcher, in the film Love is the Devil (1998), based on Daniel Farson's 1993 biography The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon. Bacon is also cited in interviews with contemporary British artist Damien Hirst as being one of the latter's principal influences.
1970 - the author KATE MILLET publicly came out on this date. She would later speak at the first Gay and Lesbian March on Washington in 1979.

1987 - the HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN FUND began running ads on this date in response to an amendment introduced in the Senate by the virulent homophobe Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) and passed by the house and senate to restrict funding to AIDS organizations which distributed Gay-related prevention literature.

1987- At the University of Vermont in Burlington nineteen people were arrested in a demonstration protesting the CIA's exclusion of Gays and Lesbians on this date.

1990 - on this date during a campaign speech, US Congressman Jesse Helms [twice in one day? apologies] referred to Gays and Lesbians as “people marching in the streets demanding all sorts of things, including the right to marry each other.” Imagine that?

1990 - on this date PLACIDO DOMINGO and ANDRE WATTS raised $1.5 million at a fundraiser for the Gay Men's Health Crisis.

1992 - on this date Episcopal bishop A. THEODORE EASTMAN issued an order to clergy in Maryland not to bless same-sex unions.

1992 - on this date copies of the Lesbian comic book “HOTHEAD PAISAN #7´´ was seized from the Toronto Women's Bookstore. Officials sited “sexual degradation” as the reason for the seizure, though it contained no sex. The prohibition would be lifted seven months later.

1997 - on this date the NATIONAL BLACK LESBIAN AND GAY LEADERSHIP FORUM condemned homophobic gospel singers Angie and Debbie Winans for their anti-Gay song “It's Not Natural” and BET-TV for providing them with a one-sided forum to promote their homophobic views. Earlier in the year, BET-TV refused to air MeSHELL NDEGEOCELLO's video “Leviticus Faggot,” about a black Gay teenager's struggle to come to terms with his sexuality.

1998 - on this date Welsh secretary RON DAVIES resigned from Tony Blair's Labour Party government after British tabloids reported he was robbed at knife-point in a London park while looking for a male sexual companion. Although he subsequently came out as Bisexual, Davies referred to the incident as his “moment of madness.”

In 1999 Davies was successfully elected on 6 May 1999 as Member of the Welsh Assembly in the Caerphilly Constituency, and chaired the Economic Development Committee after Alun Michael refused to appoint him to his Cabinet. Shortly before the 2003 assembly elections, “The Sun” revealed that Davies had been visiting a well-known cruising spot near a motorway lay-by (rest stop). When challenged as to what Ohe had been doing there, Davies initially denied being there, then told reporters that he had been going for a short walk, adding: “I have actually been there when I have been watching badgers.” Davies was forced to stand down as Labour candidate in the election.
2008 - on this date Gus Van Zant‘s Harvey Milk biopic premiered to a star-studded audience at San Francisco's Castro Theater. MILK would go on to win various Oscars at the 2009 Academy Awards.

2010 - on this date President Barack Obama signed the The Matthew Shepard Act (officially the “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act”) into law. The Act expanded the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. It was finally passed after almost two decades of attempts to pass it through Congress and over stiff opposition by members of the Republican party. During debate in the House of Representatives, Republican Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina called the “hate crime” labeling of Shepard's murder a “hoax.” Proving once again that elections do matter.
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These dates in Gay History AUGUST 11, AUGUST 12, AUGUST 13, and AUGUST 14 « MasterAdrian's Weblog

2012-10-11T09:52:04Z

These dates in Gay History AUGUST 11, AUGUST 12, AUGUST 13, and AUGUST 14 « MasterAdrian's Weblog
http://masteradrian.com/2012/10/11/these-dates-in-gay-history-august-11-august-12-august-13-and-august-14

These dates in Gay History AUGUST 11, AUGUST 12, AUGUST 13, and AUGUST 14
October 11, 2012
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AN ANNOUNCEMENT — Please bear with us today. You'll see that we're including not only today's Gay Wisdom entry but this weekend's too.
This is one of those rare occasions when both of us are completely out of pocket the next few days. Family business calls for both of us this weekend and it's callin' early. So we didn't want to leave you without your Gay Wisdom these next few days. We'll see you on the other side of the weekend. Have a great one!

This Weekend In Gay History
THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012
National Coming Out Day
Today is National Coming Out Day!
If you're not very out, try to come out to one person today that you haven't already.
Already “came out” you say? Well perhaps today could be seen as a day to tell the story.
Try to find someone and share the story of how you came to discover, claim, and or celebrate who you really are. Those stories are important and we need to offer a space for folks to share them. Perhaps see if you can ask a Gay friend to tell you their story. Today's just the day for telling our stories.

This week is also ALLY WEEK.
It's the time to take a moment to thank our straight allies in the struggle for full equality.
1884 - on this date ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, iconic First Lady of the United States, was born (d. 1952).

One of the most influential non-elected American political leaders of the twentieth century who used her influence as an active First Lady from 1933 to 1945 to promote the New Deal policies of her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as well as taking a prominent role as an advocate for civil rights and international cooperation. After FDR's death in 1945, she continued to be an internationally prominent author and speaker for the New Deal coalition. She was a suffragist who worked to enhance the status of working women, although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women. During the 1932 Presidential Campaign, Lorena Hickok of the Associated Press was assigned to cover Mrs. Roosevelt. At first the business relationship was rocky. Hickok didn't believe it was worth the paper's time and money to report on Mrs. Roosevelt, and Mrs. Roosevelt wasn't happy about the intrusion on her privacy. Besides that, Mrs. Roosevelt came from a high class, aristocratic background, and Hickok came from a brash and rustic one. She was at home playing poker with the guys, smoking, and drinking. In time, their friendship became very close and intimate. Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't seem to mind, as he was busy with his own romantic affairs.

Due to the public nature of Mrs. Roosevelt's life, she and Hickok were often separated. Even so, they wrote daily letters to each other. Roosevelt wrote ten to fifteen page letters daily to Hick for a time. In one Hickok writes: “Good night, dear one, I want to put my arms around you, and kiss you at the corner of your mouth. And in a little more than a week – I shall!” and Mrs. Roosevelt writes
“Hick darling, All day I've thought about you & another birthday I will be with you & yet tonight you sounded so far away & formal. Oh! I want to put my arms around you. I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think she does love me, or I wouldn't be wearing it.”
In 1941, Hickok moved into the White House with the Roosevelts when she took a post in Washington. Some of the passion between the two seems to have died by this point. Mrs. Roosevelt was not able to give Hickok as much from their relationship as she wanted, yet Hickok remained because at least they had something. They remained friends until Mrs. Roosevelt's death in 1962. Hickok destroyed many of the letters Mrs. Roosevelt sent to her and edit personal references out of many others. Those that remain still hint at an intimate love between the two women.
1918 - the American choreographer, JEROME ROBBINS, was born on this date (d. 1998). Among the numerous stage productions he worked on were On The Town, High Button Shoes, The King and I, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Gypsy: A Musical Fable and Fiddler on the Roof. For much of his life, Robbins pursued a career in both ballet and Broadway theater. He lived in a world of like-minded collaborators, most of whom were his age, Jewish, New Yorkers, leftist and — among the men Gay.

1926 - today's the birthday of American stage, television, and film actor EARLE HYMAN.
Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina Hyman is best known for his recurring role on The Cosby Show as Cliff's father, Russell Huxtable.
He made his Broadway stage debut as a teenager in 1943 in Run, Little Chillun, and later joined the American Negro Theater. The following year, Hyman began a two year run playing the role of Rudolf on Broadway in Anna Lucasta. He was a member of the American Shakespeare Theatre beginning with its first season in 1955, and played the role of Othello in the 1957 season.
In 1959 he appeared in the West End in the first London production of A Raisin In the Sun alongside Kim Hamilton. The show ran at the Adelphi Theatre and was directed again by Lloyd Richards.
Throughout his career, Hyman has appeared in productions in both the United States and Norway (he is fluent in Norwegian) where he also owns a home on Norway's west coast and an apartment in Oslo. In 1965, won a Theatre World Award and in 1988, he was awarded the St Olav's medal for his work in Norwegian theater.
In addition to his stage work, Hyman has appeared in various television and film roles including adaptions of Macbeth (1968),Julius Caesar (1979), and Coriolanus (1979), and voiced Panthro on the animated television series ThunderCats (1985-1990). One of his most well known roles, that of Russell Huxtable in The Cosby Show, earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 1986 where he played the father of lead character Cliff Huxtable, played by actor Bill Cosby despite only being 11 years senior to Cosby.
1947 - today's the birthday of SHERIFF LUPE VALDEZ. Valdez is an Latino-American law enforcement official and the Sheriff of Dallas County, Texas. She is Texas's only elected female sheriff, as well as being the only openly Lesbian holder of that office. Her election in 2004, combined with the fact that Valdez is female, Hispanic and a lesbian, made national headlines and was even reported overseas. She immediately faced opposition by the “good old boys” in the department who resented her election and her commitments to reforming the department.

In 2008, Valdez was re-elected Sheriff of Dallas County with 388,327 votes to her opponent's 322,808 votes, a margin of roughly 65,500. Valdez received over 99,000 more votes than the “Straight Democratic” option as many described it during the race. She won in precincts across Dallas County, including formerly-Republican areas including Irving and Mesquite. Her opponent won most precincts in far North Dallas, Richardson, Coppell, and the southern part of Irving. She began her second four-year term in 2009.

1963 - on this date the French writer and artists JEAN COCTEAU died (b. 1889). He was many things: poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker. His versatile, unconventional approach and enormous output brought him international acclaim. In his early twenties, Cocteau became associated with Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, and Maurice Barr s. The Russian ballet-master Sergei Diaghilev challenged Cocteau to write for the ballet – “Astonish me,” he urged. This resulted in Parade which was produced by Diaghilev, designed by Pablo Picasso, and composed by Erik Satie in 1917.

Cocteau is best known for Les enfants terrible the 1929 play, Les parent terribles the 1948 film, and the 1946 film, Beauty and the Beast.

Cocteau died of a heart attack at his chateau in Milly-la-Foret, only hours after hearing of the death of his friend, the French singer Edith Piaf. He is buried in the garden of his home in Milly La Foret, Essonne, France. The epitaph reads: “I stay among you.”

1987 - The Second National March on Washington For Lesbian and Gay Rights. More than a half million people (between 500,000 and 650,000, according to organizers) descended on the capital to participate in the second national March on Washington. Many of the marchers were angry over the government's slow and inadequate response to the AIDS crisis, as well as the Supreme Court's 1986 decision to uphold sodomy laws in Bowers v. Hardwick.

With the first display of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, the 1987 march succeeded in bringing national attention to the impact of AIDS on Gay communities. In the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, a tapestry of nearly two thousand fabric panels offered a powerful tribute to the lives of some of those who had been lost in the pandemic. It was the first time the quilts were displayed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It covered a space larger than a football field and included 1,920 panels. Half a million people visited the Quilt that weekend.

The overwhelming response to the Quilt's inaugural display led to a four-month, 20-city, national tour for the Quilt in the spring of 1988. The tour raised nearly $500,000 for hundreds of AIDS service organizations. More than 9,000 volunteers across the country helped the seven-person traveling crew move and display the Quilt. Local panels were added in each city, tripling the Quilt's size to more than 6,000 panels by the end of the tour.

The march also called attention to anti-Gay discrimination, as approximately 800 people were arrested in front of the Supreme Court two days later in the largest civil disobedience action ever held in support of the rights of Lesbians, Gay men, Bisexuals, and Transgender people.

The 1987 March on Washington also sparked the creation of what became known as BiNet U.S.A. and the National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Organization (LLEGO), the first national groups for Bisexuals and GLBTQ Latinas and Latinos, respectively. Prior to the march, Bisexual activists circulated a flyer entitled “Are You Ready for a National Bisexual Network?” that encouraged members of the community to be part of the first Bisexual contingent in a national demonstration. Approximately 75 Bisexuals from across the U. S. participated and began laying the groundwork for an organization that could speak to the needs of bi-identified people and counter the animus against Bisexuals that was commonplace in both Lesbian and Gay communities and the dominant society.

By 1987, Latino GLBTQ activists from Los Angeles, Houston, Austin, and elsewhere had been meeting for two years, discussing ways to work together to further the basic rights and visibility of GLBTQ Latinas and Latinos. But with AIDS having a disproportionate impact on Latino GLBTQ communities throughout the United States, the activists recognized the need for a national organization and met at the March on Washington to form what was then called NLLGA, National Latina/o Lesbian and Gay Activists. Renaming themselves LLEGO the following year, the group has since expanded to address issues of concern to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Latinas and Latinos in other countries.

Along with the formation of new national groups, the most lasting effects of the weekend's events were felt on the local level. Energized and inspired by the march, many activists returned home and established social and political groups in their own communities, providing even greater visibility and strength to the struggle for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender rights. The date of the march, October 11th, has been celebrated internationally ever since as National Coming Out Day to inspire members of the GLBTQ community to continue to show, as one of the common march slogans proclaimed, “we are everywhere.”
Speakers at the rally included former National Organization for Women president Eleanor Smeal, union president and Latino civil rights figure Cesar Chavez, actor and comedian Whoopi Goldberg, and activist Jesse Jackson.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 2012
Today is NATIONAL COMING OUT DAY in the United Kingdom.

Today's also FREETHOUGHT DAY, the annual observance by freethinkers and secularists of the anniversary of the effective end of the Salem Witch Trials. The seminal event connected to Freethought Day is a letter written by then Massachusetts Governor William Phips in which he wrote to the Privy Council of the British monarchs, William and Mary, on this day in 1692. In this correspondence he outlined the quagmire that the trials had degenerated into, in part by a reliance on “evidence” of a non-objective nature and especially “spectral evidence” in which the accusers claimed to see devils and other phantasms consorting with the accused.
1875 – on this date the English occultist and author ALEISTER CROWLEY was born (d. 1947).
Crowley is best known today for his occult writings, especially The Book of The Law, the central sacred text of “Thelema,” an initially fictional philosophy of life first described by Francois Rabelais (16th century) in his famous books, Gargantua andPantagruel. Other interests and accomplishments were wide-ranging — he was a chess player, mountain climber, poet, painter, astrologer, hedonist, drug experimenter, and social critic. Crowley was a highly prolific writer, not only on the topic of Thelema and magick, but on philosophy, politics, and culture. He left behind a countless number of personal letters and daily journal entries. He self-published many of his books, expending the majority of his inheritance to disseminate his views.
Within the subject of occultism Crowley wrote widely, penning commentaries on magick, the Tarot, Yoga, Qabalah, astrology, and numerous other subjects. He also wrote a Thelemic interpolation of the Tao Te Ching, based on earlier English translations since he knew little or no Chinese. Like the Golden Dawn mystics before him, Crowley evidently sought to comprehend the entire human religious and mystical experience in a single philosophy.
Crowley gained wide notoriety during his lifetime, and was infamously dubbed “The Wickedest Man In the World.” There is little wiggle room with Crowley. Either you consider him to be nuts, bonkers, loony, albeit brilliant, fascinating and perhaps a touch of con-man – or you are completely in his thrall. Much depends on how you feel about his central thesis: Do whatever you wish. No wonder he was so popular in the 1960s. Crowley also wrote fiction, including plays and later novels, most of which have not received significant notice outside of occult circles. In his The Book of Lies, the title to chapter 69 is given as “The Way to Succeed – and the Way to Suck Eggs!” a pun, as the chapter concerns the 69 sex position as a mystical act.
Largely despicable, and larger than life, the hashish-smoking, yoga-practicing, occult-preaching, self-described religious prophet probably would do even better today. The man knew how to cause a stir. To say he slept around is to practice understatement that borders on the naive. He was an outspoken racist an anti-Semite and sexist. To give the reader a sense of his contradictory and maddening character, Crowley, according to his biographer, Lawrence Sutin, used racial epithets and brutal verbal attacks to bully his Jewish lover Victor Neuburg. And while he slept with men, women, and virtually anything that moved, his background was distinctly pederastic. His writings reveal this nature with, for example, a poem beginning “I was bumming a boy in the black-out…” Known his whole life for a cutting wit, once, when a woman asked him which American college would be most suitable for her daughter he replied, “Radclyffe Hall.”
1942 - the gay rights advocate and author ARTHUR EVANS was born on this date (d. 2011). Born in York, Pennsylvania, Evans was most well known for his book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture (1978).
When Evans graduated from public high school in 1960, he received a four-year scholarship from the Glatfelter Paper Company in York to study chemistry at Brown University. While at Brown, Evans and several friends founded the Brown Freethinkers Society, describing themselves as ‘militant atheists' seeking to combat the harmful effects of organized religion.
The society picketed the weekly chapel services at Brown, then required of all students, and urged students to stand in silent protest against compulsory prayer. National news services picked up the story, which appeared in a local York newspaper.
As a result, the paper company informed Evans that his scholarship was cancelled. Evans contacted Joseph Lewis, the elderly millionaire who headed the national Freethinkers Society. Lewis threatened the paper company with a highly publicized lawsuit if the scholarship were revoked. The company relented, the scholarship continued, and Evans changed his major from chemistry to political science.
Evans withdrew from Brown and moved to Greenwich Village, which he later described it as the best move he ever made in his life. In 1963, Evans discovered gay life in Greenwich Village, and in 1964 became lovers with Arthur Bell who later became a columnist for The Village Voice. In 1966, Evans was admitted to City College of New York, which accepted all his credits from Brown University.
Evans participated in his first sit-in in 1966, when students occupied the administration building of City College in protest against the college's involvement in Selective Service. A picture of the students, including Evans, appeared on the front page of The New York Times. In 1967, after graduating with a BA degree from City College, Evans was admitted into the doctoral program in philosophy at Columbia University, specializing in ancient Greek philosophy. His doctoral advisor was Paul Oskar Kristeller, one of the world's leading authority on Renaissance humanist philosophy. Kristeller had studied under Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger in Germany but fled to the US after his parents were killed in the Holocaust.
Evans participated in many anti-war protests during these years, including the celebrated upheaval at Columbia in the spring of 1968. He also participated in the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. While at Columbia, Evans joined the Student Homophile League, founded by Nino Romano and Stephen Donaldson, although Evans himself was still closeted. On December 21, 1969, Evans, Marty Robinson, and several others met to found the early gay rights group Gay Activists Alliance.
In November 1970, Robinson and Evans, along with Dick Leitsch of the Mattachine Society, appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, making them among the first openly gay activists to be prominently featured on a national TV program. In 1971, Evans and Bell separated. Bell died from complications of diabetes in 1984.
By the end of 1971, Evans had become alienated from urban life and the academic world. With a second lover, Jacob Schraeter, he left New York in April 1972 to seek a new, countercultural existence in the countryside.
Evans, Schraeter, and a third gay man formed a group called the ‘Weird Sisters Partnership'. They bought a 40-acre spread of land on a mountain in Washington State, which they named New Sodom. Evans and Schraeter lived there in tents during summers. During winter months in Seattle, Evans continued research that he had begun in New York on the underlying historical origins of the counterculture, particularly in regard to sex. In 1973, he began publishing some of his findings in the gay journal Outand later in Fag Rag. He also wrote a column on the political strategy of zapping for The Advocate, the gay newspaper.
In 1974, Evans and Schraeter moved into an apartment at the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets in San Francisco, in which Evans remained until he died. Schraeter returned to New York in 1981 and died from AIDS in 1989.
In the fall of the 1975, Evans formed a new pagan-inspired spiritual group in San Francisco, the Faery Circle. The Circle combined countercultural consciousness, gay sensibility, and ceremonial playfulness. In early 1976, he gave a series of public lectures at 32 Page Street, an early San Francisco gay community center, entitled ‘Faeries', on his research on the historical origins of the gay counterculture. In 1978 he published this material in his ground-breaking book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. It demonstrated that many of the people accused of ‘witchcraft' and ‘heresy' in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were actually persecuted because of their sexuality and ancient pagan practices.
Evans also was active in Bay Area Gay Liberation (BAGL) and the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club, which later became the vehicle through which Harvey Milk rose to political prominence.
In the late 1970s, Evans became upset at the pattern of butch conformity that was then overtaking gay men in the Castro. Adopting the nom de plume ‘The Red Queen', he distributed a series of controversial satirical leaflets on the subject. In a leaflet entitled Afraid You're Not Butch Enough? (1978) he facetiously referred to the new, butch-conforming men of the Castro as clones, initiating use of the now widely used term ‘Castro clones'.
In 1984 Evans directed a production at the Valencia Rose Cabaret in San Francisco of his own new translation, from ancient Greek, of the Euripides play The Bacchae. The hero of Euripides' play is the Greek god Dionysos, the patron of homosexuality. In 1988, this translation, with Evans' commentary on the historical significance of the play, was published by St. Martin's Press in under the name of The God of Ecstasy.
As AIDS began to spread in 1980s, Evans became active in several groups that later became ACT UP/SF. Evans was HIV-negative. With his close friend, the late Hank Wilson, Evans was arrested while demonstrating against pharmaceutical companies making AIDS drugs, accusing the companies of price-gouging.
In 1988, Evans began work on a nine-year project on philosophy. Thanks to a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission, it was published in 1997 as Critique of Patriarchal Reason and included artwork by San Francisco artist Frank Pietronigro. The book was an overview of Western philosophy from ancient times to the present, showing how misogyny and homophobia have influenced the supposedly objective fields of formal logic, higher mathematics, and physical science. Evans' former advisor at Columbia University, Dr. Kristeller, called the work ‘a major contribution to the study of philosophy and its history'.
Diagnosed in October 2010 with an aortic aneurysm, Evans died in his Haight-Ashbury apartment of a massive heart attack on 11 September 2011.

1946 - today's the birthday of U.S. educator, activist, and award-winning poet, essayist, and theorist MINNIE BRUCE PRATT.

Pratt was born in Selma, Alabama, grew up in Centreville, Alabama and graduated with honors from the University of Alabama and received a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina. She is a Professor of Writing and Women's Studies at Syracuse University where she was invited to help develop the university's first Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Study Program. She emerged out of the women's liberation movement in the 1970s and 1980s and has written extensively about race, class, gender and sexual theory. Pratt, along with Lesbian writers Chrystos and Audre Lorde, received a Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammett award from the Fund for Free Expression, an award given to writers “who have been victimized by political persecution.” Pratt, Chrystos and Lorde were chosen because their experience as “a target of right-wing and fundamentalist forces during the recent attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts.” Her political affiliations include the International Action Center, the National Women's Fightback Network, and the National Writers Union. She is a contributing editor to Workers World newspaper. Pratt's partner is author and activist Leslie Feinberg.
Her latest book, Inside the Money Machine is one of the best new books of poetry to come out this year.

1971 - the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs recommends the repeal of a city law banning homosexuals from working in or going to bars.
1998 - MATTHEW SHEPARD died on this date (b. 1976). Shepard was an openly Gay American student at the University of Wyoming who as we noted last weekend, was attacked near Laramie, on the night of October 6th in what was widely reported by international news media as a savage beating because of his sexuality. Shepard died from severe head injuries at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12, 1998. His murder brought national attention to the issue of hate crime legislation at the state and federal levels. His two assailants were convicted of the crime and imprisoned. One is currently serving two consecutive life sentences and the other is serving the same but without the possibility of parole. After his death, Shepard's parents became full-time advocates for the passage of hate crime legislation that would include sexual orientation.

The Matthew Shepard Act (officially the “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act”), was a bill in the United States Congress that expanded the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. After years of attempting to pass the act, on October 22, 2009, the act was passed by the Senate by a largely party line vote with Republicans opposing the Act and Democrats supporting it. During debate in the House of Representatives, Republican Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina called the “hate crime” labeling of Shepard's murder a “hoax.” Shepard's mother was said to be in the House gallery when the congresswoman made this comment. President Obama signed the measure into law on October 28, 2009. Proving once again that elections do matter.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 2012
1307 - on this date – Friday, October 13, 1307 (a date sometimes linked with the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition) the French king Philip IV ordered all French TEMPLARS to be arrested. The Templars were charged with numerous heresies and tortured to extract false confessions of blasphemy. The trials were based on these confessions, despite having been obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. After more bullying from Philip, Pope Clement then issued the bill Pastoralis Praeeminentiae on November 22, 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.
Brian Lacey, in his wonderful book Terrible Queer Creatures: Homosexuality In Irish History writes about the use of same sex male relations in the purging of the Order of the Knights Templar.

The respect for same-sex male relationships, which Lacey paints as characteristic of the pre-Christian era in Ireland and which carried over well into the Christian epoch, began to wane as the power of the Catholic Church grew. The first known homosexual purge in Ireland concerned the Order of Knights Templar, established in Ireland in the 1170s under the auspices of the English King Henry II.

The purge had its origins in the desire of the impoverished 14th century French King Philip le Bel (the Fair) to get his hands on the Templars' wealth. Philip engineered the election of the bishop of Bordeaux to become Pope Clement V on condition that he put an end to the Templars, and Clement duly set up an inquisition in which allegations of homosexuality against the knights were in the foreground. “They were said to have included homosexual acts in their private rituals and to have insisted on sexual intercourse with new recruits,” Lacey wrote. “It is an indication of the negative feelings against homosexuality in that period that this could be made as one of the principal charges against such a powerful institution.”

The homosexual English King Edward II was ordered by Pope Clement and pressured by the French monarch to seize the Templars' extensive holdings in Ireland, and the Irish Knights Templar were arrested en masse in February 1308. The inquisition opened its trial of the Irish Templars in January 1310 at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. While only a few of the Knights confessed to the charges of sodomy, the order was abolished and much of its property expropriated.

1929 - today's the birthday of distinguished American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator RICHARD HOWARD.

He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and is a graduate of Columbia University, where he now teaches. He lives in New York City. Howard had a brief early career as a lexicographer. He soon turned his attention to poetry and poetic criticism. He has won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the PEN Translation Prize, and the American Book Award. Howard was a long-time poetry editor of The Paris Review and is currently poetry editor of The Western Humanities Review. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, he is Professor of Practice in the writing program at Columbia's School of the Arts.
In 1982, Howard was named a Chevalier of L'Ordre National du Mérite by the government of France
1966 - the American actor, dancer and singer CLIFTON WEBB died on this date (b. 1889). He was best known for his Oscar-nominated roles in such films as Laura, The Razor's Edge, and Sitting Pretty. In the theatrical world he was known for his appearances in the plays of Noël Coward, notably Blithe Spirit.

The never married Webb lived with his mother until her death at age ninety-one in 1960, leading Coward to remark, apropos Webb's grieving, “It must be terrible to be orphaned at 71.”
Actor Robert Wagner, who co-starred with Webb in the movies Stars and Stripes Forever and Titanic and considered the actor one of his mentors, stated in his memoirs, Pieces of My Heart: A Life, that “Clifton Webb was gay, of course, but he never made a pass at me, not that he would have.”
1967 - today's the birthday of ARTURO BRACHETTI, the Italian transformation artist and director, born in Turin. In theGuinness Book of Records 2006 and 2007, he is described as the fastest quick change artist in the world. Quick-change is a performance style in which a performer or magician changes quickly within seconds from one costume into another costume in front of the audience.
You can watch him in action on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4XUvWwaPFI

SUNDAY, AUGUST 14, 2012
1856 – the French Victorian writer VERNON LEE was born on this date. Also known as Violet Paget, she was responsible for introducing the concept of “empathy” (Einfühling) into the English language. Empathy was a key concept in Lee's psychological aesthetics which she developed on the basis of prior work by Theodor Lipps. Her response to aesthetics interpreted art as a mental and corporeal experience. This was a significant contribution to the philosophy of art which has been largely neglected. She fell in love with three women in succession, and fully expected, being the Victorian she was, to live out her life with each of them, falling swooning into her fainting bed each time the friendship ended. She kept a faded portrait of her first love over her bed. Her second love announced her marriage to (horrors!) a Jew, which required liberal application of smelling salts and her third simply drifted away.
1888 – the New Zealand born author KATHERINE MANSFIELD was born on this date.
Considered to be the British Chekhov and her quiet stories are painful commentaries on the inadequacy of human relationships. Although she had many affairs with men and was married to John Middleton Murry, her diaries and letters reveal her to have been a Lesbian, and a troubled one at that, with a “slave” by the name of Ida Baker.
1959 - the swashbuckling acting legend ERROL FLYNN died on this date (b. 1909).
1977 - on this date Minneapolis Gay rights activist THOM HIGGINS threw a banana cream a pie into the face of Anita Bryant during a news conference in Des Moines, Iowa. The former beauty queen (Bryant) was in the middle of a nationwide campaign to criminalize Gay behavior and overturn the few Gay rights ordinances in the country.
1979 - The First Gay Rights March On Washington D.C. was held on this date and called for “an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of Lesbian and Gay people.” Marking the tenth anniversary of the Stonewall riots and coming in the wake of the lenient jail sentence given to Dan White for the assassination of openly Gay San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, the First National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights on October 14, 1979 was an historic event that drew more than 200,000 people from across the United States and ten other countries.
In the wake of the Milk/Moscone assassinations, the Anita Bryant campaign to roll back protections extended to sexual orientation, and years of community building around the nation, the support for a massive demonstration in the nation's capital grew. There were strong reservations on the part of those who worried that anything less than massive numbers would negate the demonstration and undermine political activism. However, by the late summer of 1979 it was clear that the March would be a large media event. Locally, the National Coalition of Black Gays and the DC Coalition of Black Gays supported the March from the beginning.
Both groups were also involved in planning and holding the first Third World Conference, held at Harambee House on Georgia Avenue. The Third World Conference concluded with a march by persons of color down Georgia Avenue to the Mall where they joined the March on Washington. This walk down Georgia Avenue was the first public demonstration by Lesbians and Gays in the heart of the African-American areas of the city.
The plans for the 1979 March were determinedly more inclusive of persons of color and the Transgendered. The souvenir booklet for the March includes an article by Jim Kepner summarizing GLBT activism leading to the March and an article by Brandy Moore detailing the preparations for the March. Speakers included Richard Ashworth and Adele Starr (PFLAG) Marion Berry (then D.C. mayor), S.F. Councilman Harry Britt, Lesbian feminist theorist, Charlotte Bunch, poet Alan Ginsberg, activists Flo Kennedy, Morris Kight, poet and activist Audre Lorde, musicians, Robin Tyler and Tom Robinson, Leonard Matlovich, Arthur McCombs (Gay Atheist League), feminist theorist Kate Millett, Rev. Troy Perry (listed as a “cameo” appearance”!), Juanita Ramos (Comite Homosexual Latinamericano), Betty Santoro (NY Spokeswoman for Lesbian Feminist Liberation), Eleanor Smeal (N.O.W.) and labor activist, Howard Wallace. Recordings of speeches, including Audre Lorde's keynote address to the masses on the Washington Mall, and Alan Ginsberg reading his poetry and warning Congress can be heard here:http://www.rainbowhistory.org/mow79.htm And a wonderful collection of photos from the events can be seen here:http://www.queermusicheritage.us/march79.html
1990 – LEONARD BERNSTEIN, the American composer and conductor, died on this date (b. 1918)
2006 – on this date the Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts GERRY STUDDS died on this date (b. 1937).
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Rachel Corrie's parents accept LennonOno peace grant from Yoko Ono on behalf of their daughter |…

2012-10-09T22:28:04Z

Rachel Corrie's parents accept LennonOno peace grant from Yoko Ono on behalf of their daughter | The Electronic Intifada
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/rachel-corries-parents-accept-lennonono-peace-grant-yoko-ono-beh

http://electronicintifada.net/sites/electronicintifada.net/files/styles/large/public/lennon-ono-rachel-corrie.jpg

Carol Blue Hitchens, US author John Perkins, Yoko Ono, US singer Lady Gaga, Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of peace activist Rachel Corrie pose during the Lennon Ono Grant For Peace awards ceremony in Reykjavik, Iceland on October 9, 2012.
(Thorvaldur Orn Kristmundsson / AFP/GettyImages)

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