Dear friends,

Staggering new estimates suggest that 100,000 people may have died in Burma’s terrible cyclone. Incredibly, the corrupt and brutal Burmese government has stopped most international aid at the borders and is impeding the relief effort.

In under 24 hours, Avaaz members have donated over 690,000 Euros (over US$1 million – more than many governments!) to help Burma’s monks provide the emergency relief, through their own networks and monasteries, that the government will not. Scroll down to see the email sent yesterday with all the details of how we can help, or click below to help us get over 1 million Euros (US$1.54m) today:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/15.php
_____________________________________________________

Dear friends,

In the wake of a massive cyclone, a shocking 100,000 Burmese may be dead. More are missing. A million are homeless.

But what’s happening in Burma is not just a natural disaster—it’s also a catastrophe of bad leadership.

Burma’s brutal and corrupt military junta failed to warn the people, failed to evacuate any areas, and suppressed freedom of communication so that Burmese people didn’t know the storm was coming when the rest of the world did. Now the government is failing to respond to the disaster and obstructing international aid organizations.

Humanitarian relief is urgently needed, but Burma’s government could easily delay, divert or misuse any aid. Yesterday the International Burmese Monks Organization, including many leaders of the democracy protests last fall, launched a new effort to provide relief through Burma’s powerful grass roots network of monasteries—the most trusted institutions in the country and currently the only source of housing and support in many devastated communities. Click below to help the Burmese people with a donation and see a video appeal to Avaaz from a leader of the monks:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/15.php

Giving to the monks is a smart, fast way to get aid directly to Burma’s people. Governments and international aid organizations are important, but face challenges—they may not be allowed into Burma, or they may be forced to provide aid according to the junta’s rules. And most will have to spend large amounts of money just setting up operations in the country. The monks are already on the front lines of the aid effort—housing, feeding, and supporting the victims of the cyclone since the day it struck. The International Burmese Monks Organization will send money directly to each monastery through their own networks, bypassing regime controls.

Last year, more than 800,000 of us around the world stood with the Burmese people as they rose up against the military dictatorship. The government lost no time then in dispatching its armies to ruthlessly crush the non-violent democracy movement—but now, as tens of thousands die, the junta’s response is slow and threatens to divert precious aid into the corrupt regime’s pockets.

The monks are unlikely to receive aid from governments or large humanitarian organizations, but they have a stronger presence and trust among the Burmese people than both. If we all chip in a little bit, we can help them to make a big difference. Click here to donate:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/15.php

With hope,

Ricken, Ben, Graziela, Paul, Iain, Veronique, Pascal, Galit and the whole Avaaz team


[more…]

Cunnilingus in North Korea

(Out of the Internet and) Into the Night

The Olympic Torch in Seoul.

Congressional Testimony on North Korea.
LiNK

List of North Korean Refugees and Humanitarian Workers

[The following list is a few years old, but China’s policy of repatriating North Korean defectors has not changed. Once handed back over the border, N. Korean defectors face prison camps, torture, and in some cases, death by execution. (taken from: reference link) ]

The following represents a list that the Defense Forum Foundation (DFF) began compiling in 2002 of the names of North Korean refugees and humanitarian workers who are known to have been seized by the Chinese authorities as a result of the People’s Republic of China’s refusal to abide by the international agreements it has signed. There are, of course, thousands and thousands of others who have been seized and forcibly repatriated to North Korea for which the date and location is not known to us.

This list was compiled in cooperation with seven NGOs working with DFF to rescue North Korean refugees and was compiled by Suzanne Scholte of the Defense Forum Foundation and reviewed for accuracy by the Seoul-based Citizens Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees, the Japan-based Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, Abraham H. Lee of Refugee Phan, and several others who need to remain anonymous. The list has been periodically submitted to the People’s Republic of China along with letters requesting release of the individuals still in their custody and information about the whereabouts of those who have disappeared. It has been read aloud at many protest rallies around the world including several held at the PRC embassy in Washington, D.C., the PRC embassy in Prague, the Czech Republic and the PRC embassy in Warsaw, Poland. It has been submitted as part of testimony given by DFF to the U.S. House International Relations Committee, the U.S. Congressional Executive Commission on China and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The purposes of this list are (1) to keep pressure on the government of China, because it is responsible for the fate of everyone listed on these pages; (2) to keep the names before us always so that we will not forget their imprisonment and their suffering; and (3) to allow this list to be used by human rights organizations to help them join us in advocating for the release of all these individuals whether they are currently in Chinese or North Korean political prison camps.

The age that is listed for the refugees is their age at the time of their capture, unless otherwise noted. Consistent with the Korean naming scheme, the surname is followed by the given name.

Seized in early November 2004 from a hospital in Dandung, China

Lee Ju-im (female, 73) – Mrs. Lee is a South Korean citizen who was abducted to North Korea during the Korea War; she had escaped North Korea and was recuperating in a hospital when she was seized by North Korea security agents.

Seized on 26 October 2004 in the Tong Chow Section of Beijing

65 North Korean refugees hiding in two shelters, including 11 children and a 70 year old man, along with the two South Korean human rights activists. The refugees include:

• Kim Soon-ok (female, 25, from Eundok), who defected to China approximately 7 years ago and who has two children aged 5 and 2 years old.
• Kim Soon-bok (female, 33, from Eundok), who defected to China approximately 7 years ago and who has one child, 3 years old.
• Kim Kyung-ok (27, from Eundok), who defected to China approximately 7 years ago.

It has been reported that 62 of these refugees were repatriated to North Korea on 9 November 2004.

Seized on 25 October 2004

15 North Korean refugees attempting to enter the Korean consulate office in China.

Seized on 27 September 2004

9 North Korean refugee women and children at the Shanghai American School in Shanghai, China; two children were released to South Korean officials but the other 7 women and teenagers are still being held.

Seized on 8 August 2004 in Podung, China

Jin Kyung-sook (born 24 June 1980), a North Korean defector who had established South Korean citizenship in 2002, and was forcibly seized by North Korean agents and repatriated to North Korea.

Seized sometime between 5-10 June 2004 in Nanning, China

Yun Hyang-shim (female, born January 12, 1956), who had defected from North Korea and is now a South Korean citizen. She was caught trying to help her son-in-law escape to Vietnam, and is being held in Nanji Prison in Nanning City.

Seized on 15 February 2004 at Nanning, Guangxi Province

Kang Eun-hee (25), Park Il-man (38) and 5 other North Korean refugees were seized by Chinese authorities and sent to Ansan refugee camp in Tumen, Ji-Lin Provice on 5 March 2004. After going on a hunger strike to try to gain their freedom and safe passage to South Korea, they were repatriated to North Korea on 12 March 2004. They are reported to have been sent to Onsong Political Prison camp.

Seized on 23 December 2003 while trying to travel to Beijing, China

Choi Song-juk (mother of Lyu Myung-ho and Lyu Sung-ho – see 18/19 September 2001 entry).

Seized on 13 December 2003 in Guangxi with Takayuki Noguchi

Choi Yong (male, 60) and Shin Chung-mee (female, 46), who are both Japanese-born North Korean refugees whom Noguchi was trying to bring safely to the country of their birth.

Seized on 5 December 2003 in Nanning City

Chinese authorities seized 36 North Korean refugees hiding in Nanning City, Kwangzi Province.

Seized on 26 September 2003 in Guangdong Province

Kim Seung-whan (male, 54), an American businessman sentenced on 5 April 2004 to 5 years in jail, deportation and a 20,000 RMB fine for helping North Korean refugees; currently held in Tiebi Prison in Changchun, Jilin Province, China. The following refugees that Mr. Kim was trying to help were also seized:

• Kim Keum-chun (male, 19)
• Park Young-chul (male, 19)
• Park Hang-chul (male, 52)
• Chung Song-hee (female, 12)
• Park Kyung-sook (female, 38) (mother of Chung Song-hee)
• Chung Hwa-keum (female, 36)
• Kim Il-hwa (female, 36)
• Song Yeun-hee (female, 40)
• Park Choon-hee (female, 40)
  
  
  [more…]

Take action: Avaaz.org.

Ongoing coverage & reports from Reporters sans frontières.

Coverage of protests: Students for a Free Tibet.

and of course, International Campaign for Tibet.

Report From Amnesty International:

Liu Jingmin, Vice-President of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee, said in 2001 that allowing Beijing to host the Games would “help the development of human rights”. Seven years on, China’s human rights record shows little sign of improvement, according to an Amnesty International report.

It was hoped that the Games would act as a catalyst for reform but much of the current wave of repression against activists and journalists is occurring not in spite of, but actually because of the Olympics, according to the report China: The Olympics countdown – crackdown on activists threatens Olympics legacy.

Positive changes such as a reform of the death penalty system and a greater reporting freedom for foreign journalists have been overshadowed by stalled reform of detention without trial, repression of human rights defenders and internet censorship.

The report also highlights the Chinese authorities’ recent crackdown on protesters in Tibet, which has led to serious human rights violations since 10 March 2008. Chinese authorities have resorted to measures that are reported to have included unnecessary and excessive use of force, including lethal force, arbitrary detentions and intimidation.


[more…]

passings
TRT 9:12 | miniDV | color | sound
music: Music For Airports – 2/1, Brian Eno

part 1: dreams

part 2: prayers

part 3: the wheel

Bang Lime is currently on tour.... look for them in a town near you.
“The Death of Death” also video featured here.

just finished producing the first video for the lovely and talented Bang Lime for their debut album Best Friends In Love. Alternate band version of this video can be viewed here.
Very special thank you’s to everyone who contributed on this project.

click on image to view.

open university | november 06
video: LED Throwie Derive – Street Test | 1:50 min. | no sound

more excellent stufff from the Graffiti Research Lab:

listen to the recently updated episode of This American Life’s Habeas Schmabeas

Apropos to the further unraveling of the Bush Administration...

Dry Drunk Emperor was made shortly after the tragedy in NOLA & in concurrence with the ongoing war in Iraq.
[Thanks, boys.]

Here’s looking at you, Alberto, scapegoat of the month [click to watch]:


“Be alert and direct and honest with this committee. Give it your best shot.” – Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama

[photo from NY Times]

I’ve been at a loss for words recently concerning Virginia, so I’ll let Margaret Cho speak on this for now. Prayers go out to all those who are suffering.

Our Humanity

Whenever anything really bad happens around Korean people, that is when I would like to hide, go to Hawaii and eat spam sushi until it blows over. I don’t want to comment on it because I don’t want to escalate the situation and I don’t want to implicate myself in it. I don’t want to ‘come out’ as Asian because therein lies a tremendous responsibility that I never volunteered for, that I don’t have any real control over, and that is as mysterious to me as it is to someone who isn’t Asian.

So here is the whole terrible mess of the shootings at Virginia Tech. I look at the shooter’s expressionless face on the news and he looks so familiar, like he could be in my family. Just another one of us. But how can he be us when what he has done is so terrible? Here is where I can really envy white people because when white people do something that is inexplicably awful, so brutally and horribly wrong, nobody says – “do you think it is because he is white?” There are no headlines calling him the “White shooter.” There is no mention of race because there is no thought in anyone’s mind that his race had anything to do with his crime.

So much attention is focused on the Asian-ness of the shooter, how the Korean community is reacting to it, South Korea’s careful condolences and cautiously expressed fear that it will somehow impact the South Korean population at large.

What is lost here is the grief. What is lost is the great, looming sadness that we should all feel over this. We lose our humanity to racism, time and time again.

I extend my deepest sympathies to all those who lost their loved ones, their children, their friends and family, in this unimaginable tragedy. I send them all the love I have in me, and I encourage everyone to do the same.

I would like my Aljazeera, please.

Al-Jazeera big, but not in U.S.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Al-Jazeera’s English language television has in its six-month existence gained strong viewership across Europe, in parts of Asia, Australia — and even
Israel, according to executives and local companies that carry it.

But no major cable or satellite provider in the U.S. is carrying the channel, a decision the network blames on political pressure. U.S. carriers, however, say there is simply no market.

Nearly 100 million households worldwide receive Al-Jazeera’s English service, almost half as many as CNN, station executives say. Since January, it has been broadcasting news to 550,000 Israeli homes on Yes TV, the country’s largest cable provider.

“It’s extraordinary that while the rest of the world is happy to watch us … the U.S. stands in splendid isolation,” said Al-Jazeera English managing director Nigel Parsons at the station’s headquarters in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.

[more…]

“everyone’s pinking about us” (?) (emphasis added):

“Whitemen,” the toothpaste:

anyone in california know about this?

(this one is unrelated to the ‘pinking’ signage, as far as i could tell. just another way to use pink. i think.)

from ny times: Justice Department Says F.B.I. Misused Patriot Act

from now, pbs:
Going Undercover/Criminalizing Dissent?

Letter Seven
Rome
May 14, 1904

My dear Mr. Kappus,

Much time has passed since I received your last letter. Please don’t hold that against me; first it was work, then a number of interruptions, and finally poor health that again and again kept me from answering, because I wanted my answer to come to you out of peaceful and happy days. Now I feel somewhat better again (the beginning of spring with its moody, bad-tempered transitions was hard to bear here too) and once again, dear Mr. Kappus, I can greet you and talk to you (which I do with real pleasure) about this and that in response to your letter, as well as I can.

You see: I have copied out your sonnet, because I found that it is lovely and simple born in the shape that it moves in with such quiet decorum. It is the best poem of yours that you have let me read. And now I am giving you this copy because I know that it is important and full of new experience to rediscover a work of one’s own in someone else’s handwriting. Read the poem as if you had never seen it before, and you will feel in your innermost being how very much it is your own.

It was a pleasure for me to read this sonnet and your letter, often; I thank you for both.

And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it. This very wish, if you use it calmly and prudently and like a tool, will help you spread out your solitude over a great distance. Most people have (with the help of conventions) turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.

It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time ahead and far on into life, is – ; solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent – ?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves (“to hearken and to hammer day and night”), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.

[more…]

the earth is the heart of a whale | 3:20 min | mini dv | color

for adrian.

Video used to present conceptual base for recent open university meanderings.
text from walking as an aesthetic practice

for those in the east bay, the third installment of open university is scheduled for the 18th of nov.
inspired by walkscapes: walking as an aesthetic practice, the situationists, and throwies..... see you there!