After the shooting of an unarmed man by London’s Metropolitan Police force, in Tottenham, the community organized a peaceful protest, which through a series of events that remains difficult to trace, turned into clashes between police and youths. A rash of riots have now spread across greater London, with arson attacks, looting, and violent clashes between masked youth and armored police.

Prime Minister David Cameron has, after three nights of the worst violence in London since World War II, returned from his family vacation in Tuscany to deal with the crisis. The prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the chancellor of the Exchequer and the Home secretary, were all out of the country, as the violence erupted. Cameron has now called Parliament into special session for hearings on the violence.

More than 500 people have been arrested, and buildings across London have been burned, including furniture company run by the same family for five generations, and a warehouse holding major inventory for independent record labels. Several independent labels may have seen their entire UK inventory destroyed in the fire.

The violence has now spread not only across London, but to other major cities across England, including Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol. In some areas, curfews have been imposed, and cities are mobilizing large numbers of police to secure the streets. Fires have been set, buildings burned to the ground, and there are videos splashed across the Internet showing rioters attacking police lines.

In London, the effort to clean up the damage, after three nights of looting and arson, have brought people together. The hashtags #prayforlondon and #riotcleanup have been top trends on Twitter today, and residents are posting photos that show the solidarity of citizens joining together to counter the violence and erase the scars of the rioting.

Police are now being deployed en masse, with Prime Minister Cameron promising massive numbers of arrests. As many as 16,000 police will be deployed to “flood” the streets of London, in order to prevent a fourth night of arson and looting. On Monday night, police in London used armored vehicles and anti-riot squads to disrupt the violence and clear the streets.

According to the Guardian:

Senior officers say the violence and looting on Monday night was the worst in living memory; eclipsing the 1980s inner city riots in Toxteth, Brixton and Tottenham at the height of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.

Armoured vehicles – known as Jankels – were brought in during the early hours of Tuesday morning in Clapham Junction where much of the worst looting and arson took place. The vehicles were driven on to Lavender Hill to push back a crowd of 150 looters who had smashed up Debenhams and other stores and businesses in the area. Jankels were also out in Hackney.

That the riots are occurring now, under the most extreme austerity measures imposed on public services since the Thatcher premiership, has raised criticisms of the Cameron government, suggesting that his policies have been socially unfair, politically biased and economically ill-conceived. Critics are now expressing concern that the UK is undergoing the beginning phases of the “austerity riots” that are threatening to bring down the Greek economy and government.

In Athens, the rioting has been only one element of the response to austerity measures. The protest movement of the “indignants”—similar to the encampments in cities across Spain—is staging massive, persistent, peaceful demonstrations, and urging the ouster of the government, in favor of a new administration focused on healing economic inequities and fostering generalized prosperity.

According to the Montreal Gazette:

Politicians, including Lammy, have been quick to blame the riots and looting on Saturday night and “copycat” outbreaks of violence elsewhere in London on Sunday and Monday on small groups of criminals.

But locals and commentators warn that high levels of long-term and youth unemployment and cuts in services like youth centres in places like Haringey – the borough where Tottenham sits – are creating a tinder box for unrest.

There are concerns that the dysfunctional and obsessive focus of the American political system on austerity may lead to street violence there as well, and some say recent violent assaults by large “flash mobs” in central Philadelphia are the early example. A report from the credit rating agency Moody’s warns that austerity measures in the US could undermine “social cohesion” and lead to outbreaks of violence. The Telegraph reports:

IndependentsOfPrinciple.com :: Spain’s May 15th movement is often called the revolution of the indignados, indignant at the failure of elective government to solve the problems that increasingly define the lives of ordinary people. The complaint, succinctly, is that the powers that be are collaborating in a systemic failure to live up to the rigors of a healthy, legitimate social contract.

Working people, young adults with university degrees but next to zero job prospects, families pushed from their homes by a real estate boom now shown to be a speculator’s wild west show, congregate, organize assemblies, vote on matters of policy, and demand meaningful political change. They argue together, though often in clashing voices, that the political system is rigged against the majority of ordinary citizens.

The demand has been centered on an opposition to all forms of violence, and a call for civic cooperation, for citizenship and for a recommitment to enforcing and expanding basic rights. It is a movement that draws inspiration from Tunis, from Cairo, from Madison, which positing a new world in which the people, and not the powerful, decide.

Yesterday, in Barcelona, the pressures of the moment briefly turned to violence, and it has to be said the May 15th movement, decentralized as it may be, denounced the violence of some protesters and called for an end to all forms of violence.

The clashes between demonstrators and police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, seem to have begun when the police tried to disperse throngs of thousands who sought to block access to the Parc de la Ciutadela, where Catalunya’s Parlament does business. The estimated 2,000 demonstrators wanted to stop action on a budget they say will harm ordinary Catalans.

The police reportedly moved into the crowd, trying to open safe passage for members of the Parlament, around 6:30, but as the protesters would not move, the action turned to physical force. Many were injured in the clashes, and the action radicalized the demonstration.

Several members of the Parlament were intimidated or assaulted, being sprayed or having paint thrown at them. Police used batons against people in the crowd, with photos showing what appear to be assaults on non-violent bystanders and people trying to flee. The melee was the latest in a series of security missteps, but the movement insists violence is not an option and can never be part of their protest actions.

The last violent clash in Barcelona came in late May, when the Mossos d’Esquadra tried to clear the Plaça Catalunya by force, in order to make room for a soccer celebration. Over 120 people were injured, and the movement became more entrenched.

There seems to be a bias among agents of the political system toward the idea that they are the legitimate representatives of a functioning social contract. But democracy demands recognition of the fragility of that shared obligation to abide by rules of civility and deliberative government.

It is often the presumption of one’s own superiority that leads to the breakdown of the social contract, and a descent into violence. Movements like the May 15th indignados and the Egyptian uprising test the boundaries of political power, calling into question the devotion of those who wield power to the principle that even they, or they especially, are subject to the law’s constraints.

Non-violent protest aims to show the moral inferiority of those who wield power unjustly, thus to pressure them to shift position and return some power to the people. It is a way for people who do not hold political power to enforce the terms of the social contract.

Spain enjoys a functioning representative democracy, but many of the Spanish people feel the system ignores their needs and tramples on their rights. Yesterday in the Plaça Sant Jaume, one of the chants heard with coordinated vocal force was “No Más Crisis”, essentially “no more crashes”. It was a demand that banks not be rewarded for causing economic chaos and that social infrastructure not be degraded by austerity and rescue packages.

The conservatives now in charge in Catalunya are seen as being too close to the banks, and too distant from the people. But the movement of the indignados is not just opposition to the political right; the complaint has gathered force because the popular view is that in Spain, all parties are collaborating in a wave of fiscal actions that seem likely to prolong the crisis and further diminish the political influence of ordinary people.

There does not seem, for instance, to be a recovery plan, as was implemented by the Obama administration in the United States. Spaniards have now lived three to four years with the agony of economic collapse, and there is a sense of vertigo, that the IMF and EU might be moving in with imposed austerity measures most people believe will make matters far worse.

45% of young adults are unemployed across Spain, and yesterday, the defiance of political leaders who refuse to hear the popular complaint about misguided priorities was accompanied by a police action seen by some as an attempt to violently suppress the people’s voice. When the social contract is in such crisis, tensions flare.

The attacks on members of Catalunya’s Parlament were unjust and undemocratic, but there can be no room for police using force against unarmed civilian demonstrators. Far from showing the illegitimacy of Spain’s new citizen assembly movement, the Catalan situation is showing how desperately fragile is the standing social contract for many in this economically besieged society.

The appropriate response to rhetorical and ideological disharmony is conversation. It is in the debate of ideas that a legitimate democratic government finds its footing. Politicians in Spain need to be clear: it is a legitimate democratic social contract we seek to uphold and expand, not an established order of haves and have-nots.

Today, the Spanish press are reporting that one in three Spaniards is now eating worse than before the crisis. Lower quality food, less nutritional value, smaller portions, more health problems. And many believe the one-in-three figure is understated—people will complain of hardship, but are averse to report personal weakness or a failure to be responsible about their health, whatever the cause.

One of the most important differences between what is taking place among the movement of the indignados and what is perceived to be the case, I’m the press, is the manner in which the protest movement has committed itself not only to civility, but to civics and to social action.

While conservative politicians who favor dismantling corporate regulation focus on an incident in Barcelona, the cause of which remains unclear, the indignados across Spain have joined with vulnerable neighbors who are on the verge of being evicted due to what are widely perceived as predatory lending practices.

Antisocial lending practices, which have ruined the finances of individuals, families, towns and cities, and may lead to the nationalization of four bank chains by the end of the year, have motivated a backlash among people of every age and socio-economic class who firmly believe lives should not be ruined by that way in a democratic society.

There are obligations unique to those in positions of leadership or public service, and powerful interests that benefit from the organizational health and cooperative efficiency of a free society have similar responsibilities. Spain’s movement to redefine democracy by involving citizens more directly is a sign of how the lessons of Tunis and Cairo are enriching the landscape of modern democracy, and it should be an example to those who serve.

Tens of thousands of youth protesters are occupying la Puerta del Sol, the central square in Madrid, the capital of Spain. They have been occupying the square for a week, and last night camped overnight, despite a new government ban. The protesters are calling themselves “los Indignados”, the indignant.

They are demanding new employment opportunity, “better living standards, a fairer system of democracy and changes to the Socialist government’s austerity plans,” according to the BBC. The complained to the press that the government wants them to leave the Puerta del Sol without access to public health (a guaranteed right, in Spain), without universal public education (due to massive budget cuts), with nearly half of the nation’s young people unemployed.

Natividad García complained that on top of all of these hardships the protesters link to the government’s “austerity measures”, they have also increased the age for retirement benefits. There is widespread concern that Spain’s modern welfare state may be failing, and that this generation of youth will live in a less equitable, less free democratic society.

According to the BBC:

Spain’s electoral commission had ordered them to leave ahead of local elections on Sunday.

But as the ban came into effect at midnight, the crowds started cheering and police did not move in.

The protest began six days ago in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol as a spontaneous sit-in by young Spaniards frustrated at 45% youth unemployment.

With police holding back, the protests are expected to spread. Spain has a history of major protest: in 2002 and 2003, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, there were massive street demonstrations, with 94% of the public opposing the Aznar government’s support for the invasion, but the government ignored public sentiment and sent troops into Iraq.

For decades, there have been massive anti-terrorism protests across Spain, demanding an end to separatist violence and a commitment to civics and the rule of law. In 2004, when the Aznar government lied publicly about the evidence for who had carried out the Madrid train bombings, hundreds of thousands flooded the streets to demand the truth be told, rushing Zapatero into government in the election just three days after the attacks.

Spain has long-running, endemic economic problems that have not been resolved by either the Zapatero government or the Aznar government before it. Labor laws are not as well enforced as they should be, leading to widespread exploitation of young or marginal workers, and incentives to start new businesses are not as bold as they could be, keeping pressure on small business owners, holding back employment.

Some have said that enrolling in “el paro” —unemployment— is a rite of passage for young adults, and many expect to go through this rite of passage after receiving a university degree.

There are now large protests growing in cities across Spain, with thousands gathered in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Sevilla, and elsewhere.

The BBC radio today described the Madrid protest as “a large open-air democracy camp”, where protesters have begun forming small civic debates in locations across the square. Sarah Rainsford has reported:

The protesters’ demands, pasted up all over Puerta del Sol, are impossible to ignore.

A statue of King Carlos III on horseback has been decorated with declarations. The metro entrance is now a vast citizens’ noticeboard. “We are not slaves,” one sign says; another instructs: “No alcohol: today the priority is revolution!”

The camp has become more organised by the day, with bright blue tarpaulins strung from statues and lamp posts and tents pitched on the cobblestones. There are sofas, mattresses and – since Wednesday – four chemical toilets, provided by the firm for free.

The protests will, as across the Arabic-speaking world, be fed by the widespread unemployment, which allows the demonstrators to attend and to swell the numbers of the vanguard who seek to occupy the square around the clock. Today’s debate activities and new media attention may be leading toward something of a coordinated list of demands.

In the past, such large demonstrations in Spain have been linked to labor activity, and have included threats of general strike or of attempts to shut down the national economy. In 2008, there was an effort by truckers to literally close down the capital by blocking all access roads. There will be mounting pressure for the Spanish government to alter course, repeal its austerity measures and move toward an investment-oriented recovery plan.

I am not a runner. And I don’t (have not yet) run marathons. But I feel a need to comment on the New York City Marathon, a true celebration of human potential and of the can-do spirit. In a time of economic malaise, when media and politicians alike are trying desperately to reduce expectations and perpetuate the myth that some things are just too hard, even when they are morally right, the New York City Marathon clearly demonstrates how much force and commitment there is behind the idea that “Yes, we can!”

It is always the province of the powerful to urge people to relinquish their power. Rarely is there a leader who asks an entire population to actively engage, to commit to being involved politically, and to elevate their own voices above the din of history. When we hear that economic recovery is not to be accomplished by magical leadership, but by “the active participation of an awakened electorate”, this is not a cop-out or a turning away from the can-do spirit; it is, rather, an honest explanation of the anatomy of a healthy democratic society.

People rely on each other, and on the wisdom of their elected leaders, but they also need to have the will to go on, to fight through discomfort in the face of difficulty. Malaise is not an excuse for abandoning a program of hard work on a hard-won opportunity. The Marathon shows how clearly this is so. Each person can make a new world, rooted in their own drive and resonating out through the relationships that bind them to others; the fabric of an entire corner of the world can be remade, by devotion to the hard task and the long run.

I did not run the New York City Marathon of 2010, but a close friend did, and in many ways, she’s a hero to those of us who had the chance to see her. Running in graceful form, after 21 miles, joyous and still on her feet after finishing the 26+ miles and walking the two further miles of warm-down, she was a celebration of her own abilities and a life of commitment to a sport that requires a unique inner strength; she manifest the solitude of the long-distance runner with elegance and aplomb, and I think we were all inspired by her achievement and by her good form.

It’s emboldening to feel that one is close to people with big dreams and big abilities. And it’s even more inspiring to think seriously about how much incredible difficulty some of the other runners had to overcome. There were blind runners, and an entire wheelchair division for both men and women, there were senior citizens with the stamina to fight through the wall and to finish, and there was a man who spent 69 days buried thousands of feet underground, who took up running as a way “to actively participate in my own rescue”.

There was a man we had the privilege of seeing more than once on the day who was running on two prosthetic legs. Despite having lost his lower legs, he committed to running a marathon, and did so, and he was in great form and was one of the faster in the crowd. Huge cheers erupted when he ran past, though most people had no idea they were waiting to cheer him. Against all odds, with great cause for dismay and surrender, he rose above what most would only dream and ran a marathon… with no legs. Literally.

This is what differentiates the runner of the long run with the haste of the impatient. The long run allows for amazing accomplishments, but it requires a commitment to achieve, to overcome setbacks and to be responsible for oneself and for one’s environment. It requires a thoughtfulness about character and commitment and a discipline to work toward the ideal, not to give up because it seems so distant or because someone else might be faster or more famous or privileged.

As a nation, we could use the lesson of this day, we could benefit from being reminded that giving in to cynicism or disappointment does not allow us to achieve great things, but keeping in mind the long view will allow us to run the long run, when all the cynics and dissuaders have given up and gone home, fallen by the wayside and collapsed under the weight of their own inviable arguments. To run the long run, you must keep the long view and run for the ideal, with patience and commitment. The great fabric of human passion was on display in New York City yesterday, and we who were there are all stronger for it.

On the second morning of the 54th Commission on the Status of Women, Gender Links and the African Woman and Child Feature Service —through the Gender and Media Diversity Centre— hosted a roundtable dialogue involving Marren Akatsa-Bukachi of the Eastern African Sub-regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI), Francisco Cos-Montiel of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Revai Makanje of Hivos, Norah Matovu-Winyi of the African Women’s Development and Communication Network, and Jennifer Lewis of Gender Links as facilitator, with Mwendabai Yeta Mkhize and myself providing event support and reporting.

The discussion opened with comments on statistical analysis of proress toward the goal of achieving 50/50 parity. With a 7% improvement since Beijing, the discussion moved quickly toward the question of how to accelerate the rise of women in decision-making and leadership roles.

With not enough parliamentary-level attention focused on women’s issues or the specific virtues of achieving parity in representation, local government emerged as a potential area of strategic focus, in relation to promoting women’s access to positions of leadership and decision-making. Quotas were raised as a potential policy lever by which to promote parity. Revai Mekanje suggested working to adopt a “more catalystic” approach to fostering support networks and the cultural underpinnings for women to take leadership positions and influence policy.

Leadership, as such, was the next topic: women need access to leadership positions, and women too often do not see themselves as right for leadership positions. These cultural and psychological barriers to accumulating political capital need to be addressed. Francisco Cos-Montiel noted that in studies of Indian political participation, it was clear that women who were able to achieve leadership or decision-making roles, in politics or in the private sector, were almost uniformly from a societal and cultural elite. Similar trends were seen across South America, highlighting the need to build the political capital of women from marginalized communities.

Norah Matovu-Winyi viewed this as the challenge of “decolonization of the mind”, which was then framed by the group as a project of “depatriarchalization”. Matovu-Winyi explained that this problem relates to a psychological colonization, because it involves the ceding of authority to a traditionally or systemically more powerful other who, it is supposed, “knows more than we do”. Personal or community agency is excluded by the prejudice that leadership entails a special inborn quality or elevated worth. In order to counter this surrender of selfhood to disinterested traditional elites, Matovu-Winyi proposed a deliberate effort to “demystify leadership”.

Marren Akatsa-Bukachi suggested this project must also apply to positions of influence in the private sector. Enterprise and community leadership roles, outside of elective political office, can wield significant influence that determines numerous factors of the quality of life for women, girls and whole communities. Without access to leadership roles in the private sector, women are less able to influence policy locally or decide how resources and opportunity are distributed in relation to their communities.

Akatsa-Bukachi also noted the pervasive custom of how even food is distributed among men and women, and linked this to the problem of the colonization of the mind by a systemic prejudice that favors patriarchy. Women are often left only the toes of the chicken, for example, while men enjoy the thigh and breast-meat. This inequity is not only a household custom or a commentary on private relationship dynamics, but is in many ways politically relevant. It illustrates the distance at which women are kept from positions of leadership and decision-making, even in such intimate details of daily life.

Jennifer Lewis, the event’s discussion facilitator, noted this male-female relationship dynamic shows the need to “make the political personal”. Matovu-Winyi noted it’s vital to promote “democracy as a way of life” — without genuine equality in everyday relationship dynamics, the political landscape cannot be authentically democratic.

Lewis also moved the discussion toward the specific question of how to get beyond the numbers. There was consensus among all participants that outreach and support-building efforts need to be “more deliberate”. Cos-Montiel said there needs to be more focus on “strategic” thinking about how to both relay the message that will best build toward parity, but also about how to help women build the cultural capital that will allow them to access the political arena or move into decision-making roles.

Akatsa-Bukachi suggested women need to move away from “staccato involvements”, occasional interactions with the systems, networks and privileges that allow women to take on leadership roles. Women cannot just come to the table “at the last minute”, when a viable female candidate for office gains traction, or a specific issue of controversy comes to prominence, because that temporary support-base will dissolve as soon as the trend shifts.

There is a measurable need for women to build sustained, comprehensive networks of involvement in matters of policy, writing opinion articles, talking about and promoting real change for women, including the rise of strong candidates who will be able to capitalize on this more sustained support.

The “loneliness of leadership” experienced by women was raised as a significant factor contributing to the difficulty of building an sustained base of positions in political and private leadership. Actual efforts to measure such deficits and to explore ways to foster such sustained support communities could help to advance the cause of parity in leadership and to provide young women with a culturally more favorable environment in which their abilities and ambitions will be more directly sought and expected.

Social media may be integral to building the necessary sustained support networks. Examples of how social media and community media can come together to empower women and combat injustice have peppered the discussions of these first days of the CSW. Gender Links is using the UN gathering to cultivate a global debate about what role media play in fostering understanding and progress with respect to the treatment of women.

Lewis asked the discussion participants to propose their main priorities in relation to expanding the role of women in governance. Quotas and the need to transform political parties from within were the first two priorities suggested. Akatsa-Bukachi said the 50/50 goal is a “solemn declaration” that needs to be repeated until it saturates the conversation. She also noted the need to reach out to men, to involve them and make them aware of the real need to improve society by achieving parity. An extension of this priority, she said, is the need to overcome the problem of “feminist faces with patriarchal minds”, while keeping in mind the goal of building a broader long-term alliance for equality that includes both men and women.

Matovu-Winyi said existing systems need to be employed and improved, to make as much headway as possible in the elections —local and national, across Africa and beyond— of the first three years of this decade. She also noted that “no politician just appears on the scene” and called for the creation of substantive institutional supports for women to get involved in public life. She called for “more research” across the spectrum of issues related to why women are or are not empowered to access decision-making roles.

Cos-Montiel called for the inclusion of “women from the margins”, a strategic approach to building cultural and political capital for women, and close scrutiny of what role religious institutions play in sustaining the dominance of a patriarchal narrative or mindset. He noted the combination of hierarchy and patriarchy in the structure of the Catholic church, observing that such institutional structures effect extreme symbolic and socio-psychological influence, which can limit women’s readiness or willingness to push for greater access to decision-making roles in the community, at work or in the political sphere.

The dialogue closed after 44 minutes of lively and engaged discussion, with Norah Matovu-Winyi remarking that political supports for women will be “more authentic” when the narrative driving those social mechanisms is not focused only on the concept of rights for women as inherently virtuous, but deliberately integrates that foundational idea into a more dynamic discourse that gets closer to the daily needs and interests of non-activist women and the communities in which they live.

The UN General Assembly, which brings together every head of government in the world, to offer their country’s position on issues, their country’s demands regarding trade and conflict negotiations, their country’s hopes for a more harmonious world, this year truly grapples with issues of global consensus. Economic recovery, for many parts of the world, will require an unprecedented expansion of women’s rights and sustained attention to responsible environmental stewardship.

Climate change, or global climate destabilization, has come to the fore as the most severe and pervasive security threat of the 21st century. The G20 summit in Pittsburgh later this month will work in part as a prelude to the Copenhagen climate conference to be held in December. The goal is to achieve worldwide consensus on a comprehensive, binding strategy to reduce carbon emissions and to protect against the unwinding of climate patterns that have remained consistent throughout all of recorded human history.

Women’s rights is now being viewed by more nations and by more major international organizations as key to the economic and political stability of fragile nations. The Obama administration, under the leadership of Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, has made women’s rights a priority and has laid out goals for helping to promote women’s rights through economic development, modernization of educational systems, and democratization of the political processes in nations around the world.

A consistent theme of Sec. Clinton’s travels around Africa this summer was the need to end the out of control violence against women that plagues many African nations, and bring women into the fold of the political process and economic structures. She visited the eastern Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where one of the world’s most desperate and protracted civil wars continues to put women in jeopardy of random attacks on a daily basis and where mass rape has been used as a weapon of war.

Her message was clear: the United States does not intend to continue directing aid to regimes that do not combat the extreme conditions of violence and repression in which millions of women find themselves, but aid will be directed toward those policies that are designed to empower and protect women. There will be efforts to persuade China, which strongly backs some of the worst offending nations, like Sudan, to demand better treatment for women.

Pres. Obama has called for a global initiative to move toward the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons, which he admits may not occur during his lifetime. He and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev have already begun the process to establish a new comprehensive strategic arms reduction treaty (StART). Iran, under intense pressure from the international community to cease uranium enrichment, has also proposed a framework for eliminating all nuclear weapons worldwide.

The nuclear question looms large, and will consume a lot of words in open and back-room negotiations. The UN Security Council can be expected to receive new pressure from western powers to threaten sanctions against Iran if it does not halt uranium enrichment. And the recent announcement of the Obama administration’s plans to scrap Bush-era plans for stationing missiles in Poland is thought to be in part a call on Russia to support sanctions against Iran.

In a recent CNN interview, with Fareed Zakaria, Pres. Medvedev sounded tougher on the Iran question than at any time previous: he said Russia would only ever provide Iran with “defensive” weapons equipment and would neither help Iran develop long-range ICBM nor come to Iran’s defense if it were attacked. He called on the international community to come together to secure peace and prevent conflict in the middle east.

Medvedev also confirmed that he had met in secret with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. He said the meeting was kept secret at the Israelis request and that he had “honored the wishes of our partners”. He revealed that in that meeting Netanyahu, who has been under intense pressure from the west to tone down bellicose rhetoric, said Israel had no plans to attack Iran or destroy any of its research facilities, adding that he trusted Israel and hoped new partnerships could be created to prevent further conflict in the region.

Pres. Obama has invited PM Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to meet with him to discuss the path to lasting peace, during the UN General Assembly in New York. The two have accepted, setting the stage for what might be breakthrough negotiations on concessions from both sides that could lead to a two-state solution.

As the Wall Street Journal reports:

In a break from the Bush administration, Mr. Obama pressed early in his administration for new, U.S.-brokered talks between the two sides. In another departure, Mr. Obama has ratcheted up pressure on Israel, publicly calling for a total freeze in Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.

That issue has blocked progress in restarting talks so far. Palestinian negotiators have demanded a total freeze before agreeing to any substantive negotiations. Mr. Netanyahu has refused.

The US and NATO nations may refrain from openly pressing Russia on its interventions in the volatile Caucasus region, but the problem of Georgia and the former Soviet Republics along its borders must be dealt with. Abkhazia has declared independence with Russian diplomatic backing, and Georgia has sought to blockade Abkhazia as a protest against that declaration of independence. There are fears the blockade could lead to another bloody Russian intervention against a state that seeks to join NATO.

There is, however, an opportunity for a new era of cooperation between the Russian Federation and NATO. European leaders have proposed that with the US putting aside missile defense basing plans for Poland, the opportunity may exist to come together and create a unified missile defense system covering all of NATO and the Russian Federation.

But economic empowerment and global financial regulation may turn out to be dominant themes of the General Assembly meetings. The 2008-2009 global economic crisis has shown the vulnerability of poor nations to the unraveling of sometimes delicate international trade pacts and resource flows. The threat from intercontinental climate destabilization could result in the collapse of food supplies to half the world’s population and the migration of hundreds of millions of people, if one year’s monsoon doesn’t materialize.

The empowerment of poorer nations to be capable of competing for internationally trade resources, including food and water, is vital to preventing mass climate migration and the resulting destabilization of nation states in coming years and decades. The beginnings of these negotiations, to prevent protectionist measures and expand the internationally accessible resource base, will be taking place as world leaders meet in New York.

Rights and democracy as such will also be highlighted. The election of 12 June 2009 in Iran has stirred a global firestorm of opinion over what measures might be taken to guarantee transparency and prevent massive fraud engineered by leaders of government. More than 100 nations whose leaders will be in attendance have significant voting rights issues that must be addressed in order to legitimate their electoral processes and improve transparency.

The US will seek to lead on this question, even as dozens of its own states struggle to clarify election process and balloting laws, to ensure manipulation is not possible and guarantee the transparency of upcoming elections. New Jersey might be held up by some foreign states as an example of a state that still won’t guarantee its voters paper proof of their votes, while Venezuela may claim legitimacy on this point, a contrast that is sure to make for contentious negotiations on standards for international voting rights and ballot-counting transparency.

Instead of going on a cruise this year or flying off to dream-like destinations, more people are choosing to tour locally. No matter what constitutes ‘local’, there are likely enough interesting and stimulating activities to last a few hours or a few days’ worth of leisurely investigation. Finding a new restaurant, park or museum will not only help boost the local economy, but it might also help to boost your spirits while saving some money.

I recently had guests in town from overseas, and I had to make an itinerary that would show off our natural, local treasures. Now, I am always excited to travel- packing a bag, making a list of necessary items and researching the destination gives me enough adrenaline to sail through potentially exhaustive days of endless walking, picture-taking and over-eating. But creating a schedule that would be in many ways a reflection of my own life, of my own surroundings was a bigger challenge. I had to ask myself what were the most precious and memorable elements in my daily life? What will my friends cherish to make their journey worthwhile?

It was at that moment, seated pen in hand, that I realized how little I thought about local tourism, and about the environmental impact it could have. I realized that by changing not only my perspective in physical space, but also my ideas about what constitutes an interesting new experience, local travel would mean less negative environmental impact. As it turns out, I found many more activities to plan than were feasible to fit into their schedule, all within a reasonable distance.

Researching online, I was able to make an itinerary that combined highlighted tourist attractions with local ones. For instance, I live a few hours’ drive from architectural masterpieces that I’ve only seen in books. I’m going to take that drive this summer and support local industries…

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The new multi-reassorted strain of flu, Influenza A H1N1, also called “swine flu”, has been officially declared a global pandemic, with over 28,000 confirmed cases of infection across 74 nations. The classification is a geographical judgment, referring to the flu strain’s spread on multiple continents, but does not related to severity. Officials said the pandemic appears to be of moderate severity. 

140 people have been confirmed to have died worldwide, as a result of infection with the H1N1 virus, despite the 28,000 infections. The virus has continued to spread in the United States, Europe and Australia, making it an infection with persistent contagion on three continents. Africa, Asia and South America, also have confirmed cases, meaning the virus has now reached the human population in every region of the world. 

The US is the single country most affected by the virus, with 13,217 confirmed cases of infection. Canada has 2,978 and Mexico 5,717, clearly making North America the epicenter of the global pandemic. But Chile, Australia and the European Union also have over 1,000 cases each, demonstrating the virus’ global spread. 

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The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Phase 6 Epidemic Alert level, classed as pandemic underway, is the highest alert level and means “A global flu pandemic has begun, including community-level outbreaks in at least two world regions”, according to the AP. The declaration is aimed at coordinating international efforts at treatment and prevention to limit the further spread of the virus and guard against the outbreak of a 2nd strain of H1N1. 

According to Bloomberg News: 

Officials in Australia, Chile, Japan, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S. were asked for information on cases and measures taken to mitigate the disease, known as H1N1, before the WHO moves to the top of its six-stage pandemic warning scale, Chile’s Health Minister Alvaro Erazo said in a statement yesterday.

Hong Kong has suspended classes at all schools for 14 days, beginning tomorrow, in order to prevent the further spread of H1N1 infection among students. Hong Kong’s aggressive prevention efforts stem from the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic, the last officially declared flu pandemic, which killed over 1 million people worldwide over two years. Hong Kong has not been significantly impacted so far by the A/H1N1 outbreak. 

The worst flu pandemic on record is the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, which killed an unknown number of people between 20 million and 50 million, around the world, over 2 to 3 years. The 1957 Asian flu was first isolated in China, and killed over 2 million people in 2 waves of infection, the first heavily affecting children, the second the elderly. 

The number of cases in Chile has quadrupled since the government began including cases reported from private health clinics in its official national reports. It is the one country outside North America with the most infections. 

Scotland, though, has recently discovered its rate of hospitalization from the virus was on par with the US rate. The new figures prompted health officials to urge doctors to diagnose infection, to avoid lag-time for results from remote testing. The Guardian reports:

The Scottish health secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, said public health tactics had changed after it emerged the virus was spreading uncontrolled.

Sturgeon told the Scottish parliament this morning that hospitalisation rates were similar to those in the US. She indicated that attempts to contain the virus had failed and the strategy would be to limit its spread. Doctors in the most-affected areas – Glasgow, Dunoon and Paisley –would be allowed to make a swine flu diagnosis in their surgeries rather than wait for specialist or laboratory tests.

The UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon has said the world “must be watchful” and that the alert is of vital importance to public health, but not grave cause for concern. The fatality of the virus has been less than expected, but officials want to be on guard to ensure that future outbreaks are not more aggressive or widespread than the pandemic seen to date.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln faced the challenge of proving himself worthy of national leadership, with only 2 years experience in the House of Representatives, 11 years prior to his candidacy. He arranged to deliver a major policy address in New York City. The topic was daunting: he would make the argument in favor of federal control of slavery in the territories which might become new states. Southern states where slavery was not only legal but was the structural basis for their economic culture, were opposed to such a policy, believing it would lead to the powerful and populous northern states forcing Congress to ban slavery throughout the US.

Lincoln had become a national figure two years earlier when he engaged in a series of arduous (3-hour-long) debates on Constitutional law and the abolition of slavery, with Sen. Stephen Douglas. The debates were rapidly transcribed and in subsequent days published in full in newspapers throughout the country. The debates raised Lincoln’s standing from one of midwestern lawyer and founder of a radical party to that of leading political intellectual and prospective leader of a major national party.

Lincoln undertook an exhaustive research of the policies and political philosophies of the 39 individuals who signed the United States Constitution. He found that 21 favored allowing Congress to control the question of slavery in the territories, which were, after all, under federal authority and without functioning state governments. A successful address would elevate the cause of gradual legislative abolition to mainstream legitimacy and the Republican cause to national prominence.

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An eyewitness reportedly commented on Lincoln’s famously “ungainly” appearance, then added that when he spoke “his face lighted up as with an inward fire; the whole man was transfigured. I forgot his clothes, his personal appearance, and his individual peculiarities. Presently, forgetting myself, I was on my feet like the rest, yelling like a wild Indian, cheering this wonderful man.” Excerpts from the speech, like the great final intonation that “Right makes might” were sent by telegraph across the nation, with his full speech to follow.

Tom Wheeler, speaking about his book, Mr. Lincoln’s T-mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War, told a New York Audience in 2007 that Lincoln’s visit to New York in 1860 was designed to help him capitalize on the major technological innovations that had expanded the influence of the publishing industry. He was photographed by Mathew Brady and his portrait was distributed along with his Cooper Union address across the US, standing in for the candidate and allowing him to forgo much of the vigorous campaigning that might otherwise be needed.

What follows is a transcript of that speech:

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Mr. President and fellow citizens of New York:

The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation.

In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in “The New-York Times,” Senator Douglas said:

“Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.”

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: “What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?”

What is the frame of government under which we live?

The answer must be: “The Constitution of the United States.” That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787, (and under which the present government first went into operation,) and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of which were framed in 1789.

Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I suppose the “thirty-nine” who signed the original instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present Government. It is almost exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true to say they fairly represented the opinion and sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to quite all, need not now be repeated.

I take these “thirty-nine,” for the present, as being “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.”

What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers understood “just as well, and even better than we do now?”

It is this: Does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?

Upon this, Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Republicans the negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue; and this issue – this question – is precisely what the text declares our fathers understood “better than we.”

Let us now inquire whether the “thirty-nine,” or any of them, ever acted upon this question; and if they did, how they acted upon it – how they expressed that better understanding?

In 1784, three years before the Constitution – the United States then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other, the Congress of the Confederation had before them the question of prohibiting slavery in that Territory; and four of the “thirty-nine” who afterward framed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory. The other of the four – James M’Henry – voted against the prohibition, showing that, for some cause, he thought it improper to vote for it.

In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the Convention was in session framing it, and while the Northwestern Territory still was the only territory owned by the United States, the same question of prohibiting slavery in the territory again came before the Congress of the Confederation; and two more of the “thirty-nine” who afterward signed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on the question. They were William Blount and William Few; and they both voted for the prohibition – thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibition became a law, being part of what is now well known as the Ordinance of ’87.

The question of federal control of slavery in the territories, seems not to have been directly before the Convention which framed the original Constitution; and hence it is not recorded that the “thirty-nine,” or any of them, while engaged on that instrument, expressed any opinion on that precise question.

In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the Ordinance of ’87, including the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was reported by one of the “thirty-nine,” Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages without a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches without yeas and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, Nicholas Gilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer, Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, James Madison.

This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the federal territory; else both their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to oppose the prohibition.

Again, George Washington, another of the “thirty-nine,” was then President of the United States, and, as such approved and signed the bill; thus completing its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government, to control as to slavery in federal territory.

No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country now constituting the State of Tennessee; and a few years later Georgia ceded that which now constitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a condition by the ceding States that the Federal Government should not prohibit slavery in the ceded territory. Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under these circumstances, Congress, on taking charge of these countries, did not absolutely prohibit slavery within them. But they did interfere with it – take control of it – even there, to a certain extent. In 1798, Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi. In the act of organization, they prohibited the bringing of slaves into the Territory, from any place without the United States, by fine, and giving freedom to slaves so bought. This act passed both branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that Congress were three of the “thirty-nine” who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, George Read and Abraham Baldwin. They all, probably, voted for it. Certainly they would have placed their opposition to it upon record, if, in their understanding, any line dividing local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory.

In 1803, the Federal Government purchased the Louisiana country. Our former territorial acquisitions came from certain of our own States; but this Louisiana country was acquired from a foreign nation. In 1804, Congress gave a territorial organization to that part of it which now constitutes the State of Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that part, was an old and comparatively large city. There were other considerable towns and settlements, and slavery was extensively and thoroughly intermingled with the people. Congress did not, in the Territorial Act, prohibit slavery; but they did interfere with it – take control of it – in a more marked and extensive way than they did in the case of Mississippi. The substance of the provision therein made, in relation to slaves, was:

First. That no slave should be imported into the territory from foreign parts.

Second. That no slave should be carried into it who had been imported into the United States since the first day of May, 1798.

Third. That no slave should be carried into it, except by the owner, and for his own use as a settler; the penalty in all the cases being a fine upon the violator of the law, and freedom to the slave.

This act also was passed without yeas and nays. In the Congress which passed it, there were two of the “thirty-nine.” They were Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton. As stated in the case of Mississippi, it is probable they both voted for it. They would not have allowed it to pass without recording their opposition to it, if, in their understanding, it violated either the line properly dividing local from federal authority, or any provision of the Constitution.

In 1819-20, came and passed the Missouri question. Many votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches of Congress, upon the various phases of the general question. Two of the “thirty-nine” – Rufus King and Charles Pinckney – were members of that Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery prohibition and against all compromises, while Mr. Pinckney as steadily voted against slavery prohibition and against all compromises. By this, Mr. King showed that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery in federal territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes, showed that, in his understanding, there was some sufficient reason for opposing such prohibition in that case.

The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the “thirty-nine,” or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have been able to discover.

To enumerate the persons who thus acted, as being four in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 1804, and two in 1819-20 – there would be thirty of them. But this would be counting John Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, and George Read each twice, and Abraham Baldwin, three times. The true number of those of the “thirty-nine” whom I have shown to have acted upon the question, which, by the text, they understood better than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any way.

Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine fathers “who framed the government under which we live,” who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they “understood just as well, and even better than we do now;” and twenty-one of them – a clear majority of the whole “thirty-nine” – so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and willful perjury, if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. Thus the twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions, under such responsibility, speak still louder.

Two of the twenty-three voted against Congressional prohibition of slavery in the federal territories, in the instances in which they acted upon the question. But for what reasons they so voted is not known. They may have done so because they thought a proper division of local from federal authority, or some provision or principle of the Constitution, stood in the way; or they may, without any such question, have voted against the prohibition, on what appeared to them to be sufficient grounds of expediency. No one who has sworn to support the Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he understands to be an unconstitutional measure, however expedient he may think it; but one may and ought to vote against a measure which he deems constitutional, if, at the same time, he deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would be unsafe to set down even the two who voted against the prohibition, as having done so because, in their understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory.

The remaining sixteen of the “thirty-nine,” so far as I have discovered, have left no record of their understanding upon the direct question of federal control of slavery in the federal territories. But there is much reason to believe that their understanding upon that question would not have appeared different from that of their twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at all.

For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have purposely omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any person, however distinguished, other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have also omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any of the “thirty-nine” even, on any other phase of the general question of slavery. If we should look into their acts and declarations on those other phases, as the foreign slave trade, and the morality and policy of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct question of federal control of slavery in federal territories, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those times – as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris – while there was not one now known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina.

The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one – a clear majority of the whole – certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories; while all the rest probably had the same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the original Constitution; and the text affirms that they understood the question “better than we.”

But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I have already stated, the present frame of “the Government under which we live” consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that federal control of slavery in federal territories violates the Constitution, point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus violates; and, as I understand, that all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides that no person shall be deprived of “life, liberty or property without due process of law;” while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution” “are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution – the identical Congress which passed the act already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. Not only was it the same Congress, but they were the identical, same individual men who, at the same session, and at the same time within the session, had under consideration, and in progress toward maturity, these Constitutional amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then owned. The Constitutional amendments were introduced before, and passed after the act enforcing the Ordinance of ’87; so that, during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the Ordinance, the Constitutional amendments were also pending.

The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of the framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, were pre- eminently our fathers who framed that part of “the Government under which we live,” which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories.

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other? And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled with the other affirmation from the same mouth, that those who did the two things, alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they really were inconsistent better than we – better than he who affirms that they are inconsistent?

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” And so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century, (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century,) declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. To those who now so declare, I give, not only “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live,” but with them all other living men within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them.

Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience – to reject all progress – all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.

If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live” were of the same opinion – thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this day sincerely believes “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live,” used and applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have led them to understand that a proper division of local from federal authority or some part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so. But he should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their principles better than they did themselves; and especially should he not shirk that responsibility by asserting that they “understood the question just as well, and even better, than we do now.”

But enough! Let all who believe that “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now,” speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask – all Republicans desire – in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guarantees those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.

And now, if they would listen – as I suppose they will not – I would address a few words to the Southern people.

I would say to them: – You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us a reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to “Black Republicans.” In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of “Black Republicanism” as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite – license, so to speak – among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your section – gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. You will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your section, is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started – to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet it as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the principle which “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live” thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment’s consideration.

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the Government upon that subject up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote LaFayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of free States.

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it.

But you say you are conservative – eminently conservative – while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;” while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the “gur-reat pur-rinciple” that “if one man would enslave another, no third man should object,” fantastically called “Popular Sovereignty;” but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.

Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper’s Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,” declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves.

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper’s Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was “got up by Black Republicanism.” In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive slave insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting trains.

Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears, or much hopes for such an event, will be alike disappointed.

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, “It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.”

Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the institution – the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now free from slavery.

John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini’s attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown’s attempt at Harper’s Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two things.

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper’s Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling – that sentiment – by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your Constitutional rights.

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right, plainly written down in the Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing.

When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed Constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer’s distinction between dictum and decision, the Court have decided the question for you in a sort of way. The Court have substantially said, it is your Constitutional right to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided Court, by a bare majority of the Judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact – the statement in the opinion that “the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.”

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not “distinctly and expressly affirmed” in it. Bear in mind, the Judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity that it is “distinctly and expressly” affirmed there – “distinctly,” that is, not mingled with anything else – “expressly,” that is, in words meaning just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other meaning.

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to show that neither the word “slave” nor “slavery” is to be found in the Constitution, nor the word “property” even, in any connection with language alluding to the things slave, or slavery; and that wherever in that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a “person;” – and wherever his master’s legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as “service or labor which may be due,” – as a debt payable in service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contemporaneous history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man.

To show all this, is easy and certain.

When this obvious mistake of the Judges shall be brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?

And then it is to be remembered that “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live” – the men who made the Constitution – decided this same Constitutional question in our favor, long ago – decided it without division among themselves, when making the decision; without division among themselves about the meaning of it after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken statement of facts.

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me – my money – was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, “Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery.” But we do let them alone – have never disturbed them – so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.

I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free-State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis, than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality – its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension – its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored – contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man – such as a policy of “don’t care” on a question about which all true men do care – such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance – such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race.

The Playing for Change producers traveled the world, over the course of several years, from Santa Monica, California, to Barcelona, to Johannesburg, Chennai, New Orleans, Kathmandu, Dharamsala, Tel Aviv and other cities. They stitched together the instrumentation and the voices of performers around the world to create composite folk symphonies, a chorus of voices offering up the idea that the world can come together in good feeling.

Their aim was to “break down boundaries and overcome distances between people”, recognizing that “music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race.” This video brings together musicians from around the world, but also shows many of them playing in the performance-intense streets at the heart of Barcelona’s old city or Casc Antic.

The first of a series of songs mixed together from musicians around the world, for the documentary Playing for Change: Peace Through Music. According to the Playingforchange.com website:

The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race.

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The producers traveled the world, over the course of several years, from Santa Monica, California, to Barcelona, to Johannesburg, Chennai, New Orleans, Kathmandu, Dharamsala, Tel Aviv and other cities. They stitched together the instrumentation and the voices of performers around the world to create composite folk symphonies, a chorus of voices offering up the idea that the world can come together in good feeling.

The World Health Organization has questioned the global tally for confirmed deaths from the H1N1 “swine flu” outbreak, saying only 7 deaths from the virus have been confirmed, not the 149 to 159 previously reported. All 7 deaths took place in Mexico. The WHO, which yesterday raised its pandemic alert level to Phase 5 for the outbreak, says it has confirmed only 40 cases in the Americas, 26 in Mexico, resulting in 7 deaths.

Only 79 cases around the world had been positively identified as infection from the H1N1 flu virus, according to a spokesperson for the UN agency. But the WHO reported also that the majority of cases reported so far were “probable” cases of H1N1 infection. Mexico Tuesday revised down its total confirmed deaths, from 20 to 7, but raised the total number of “probable” deaths to 159.

As of today, Thursday, 30 April 2009, the WHO website’s daily update for the international outbreak of Influenza A (H1N1) reports:

The situation continues to evolve rapidly. As of 17:00 GMT, 30 April 2009, 11 countries have officially reported 257 cases of influenza A (H1N1) infection.

The United States Government has reported 109 laboratory confirmed human cases, including one death. Mexico has reported 97 confirmed human cases of infection, including seven deaths.

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The following countries have reported laboratory confirmed cases with no deaths – Austria (1), Canada (19), Germany (3), Israel (2), Netherlands (1), New Zealand (3), Spain (13), Switzerland (1) and the United Kingdom (8).

Further information on the situation will be available on the WHO website on a regular basis.

WHO advises no restriction of regular travel or closure of borders. It is considered prudent for people who are ill to delay international travel and for people developing symptoms following international travel to seek medical attention, in line with guidance from national authorities.

There is also no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products. Individuals are advised to wash hands thoroughly with soap and water on a regular basis and should seek medical attention if they develop any symptoms of influenza-like illness.

It is possible the earlier figures are accurate, but the WHO stressed it seeks to work from confirmed evidence and to not speculate before it has verified information. The Phase 5 alert status warns governments to take precautionary public health actions designed to prevent the spread of what could become a global pandemic, but the agency’s findings at present do not show a full-blown pandemic as yet.

The United States’ federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in their most recent daily update, this morning, that they had confirmed 109 cases of H1N1 human infection across 11 states. 50 cases have been confirmed in New York, and only one case has resulted in death, in a small child in Texas; the child was reported to have an underlying condition that may have diminished normal immune response.

There is a need in news reporting and in the comments made by public officials to distinguish clearly between the number of suspected or “probable” cases and the number of scientifically verified and “confirmed” cases. The same needs to be done with the number of hospitalizations and deaths linked to the outbreak, both to avoid public panic, and to facilitate accurate analysis of the epidemiology.

• Daily updates from the World Health Organization on the H1N1 flu outbreak
• Daily updates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the H1N1 flu outbreak
• Café Sentido’s ongoing coverage of the H1N1 flu outbreak

Minutes after the pilot of US Airways flight 1549 reported a “double bird strike”, he landed the Airbus A320 passenger jet on the Hudson River, at about 3:30 pm yesterday. Reports suggest the plane hit a flock of Canada geese shortly after takeoff from New York’s La Guardia airport, with both engines being knocked out. All 155 people on board survived the water landing.

Captain Chesley Sullenberger has over 4 decades of flight experience, was a fighter pilot for the US Air Force, and is a certified glider pilot. He also serves as guest university lecturer in catastrophic emergency procedures and a consultant on emergency preparedness, who has worked with NASA and the NTSB.

Numerous experts have come forward to inform the press and the public that no such water ditching has occurred in the history of commercial aviation. Most crash landings occur over land, and though pilots and crew are prepared for how to react in an emergency water landing, no commercial jet has ever successfully ditched in the water with all on board surviving.

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The survival of the passengers and crew was even more unlikely, rescue officials say, because the plane was going under, and with the air temperature at just 20ºF (-7ºC) and the water at a frigid 36ºF (2ºC), hypothermia would set in almost immediately for anyone contacting the water or without warm dry clothes.

New York media are ecstatic with the event, with the New York Post proclaiming it the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ (New York governor David Paterson said “We’ve had a miracle on 34th Street — I believe we now have a miracle on the Hudson”) and the Daily News calling Capt. Sullenberger the ‘Hero of the Hudson’.

In a display of improvisation and community, numerous tourist and commuter ferries sped to the crash site immediately, with smaller boats arriving on the scene, as well as NY emergency rescue personnel and US Coast Guard, getting most of the passengers off the plane before the plane started listing and going under. (The last passengers and crew were rescued after the wings were mostly submerged.)

Capt. Sullenberger has still not yet spoken publicly, as he and the crew are being interviewed by the NTSB to determine what caused the plane to lose engine power and to learn from their testimony what steps precisely they took that enabled all on board to get out safely, even as the plane was going underwater.

The press have also widely reported information, delivered in a press conference by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, suggesting that Capt. Sullenberger himself walked the entire length of the plane twice, after everyone else was off safely, to be certain there were no people left stranded, injured or unconscious.

elindulnék :: Es un paisaje de relevancias inesperadamente centrales e imprescindibles que he descubierto en volver a pisar este territorio almado, sentido, visceral, es una geología de acontecimientos inmersos en el espíritu, confesiones casi imposibles, miradas que lo explican todo tan abierta como cautelosamente, un oleaje de necesidades que por suerte son también gustos y lujos, intermitencias y alas que nos llevan a algo más duradero : me doy cuenta a cada rato en estos días que veo posibles interpretaciones alternativas para mis sentimientos, que por reflejo voy rechazando, para después darme cuenta que no sería auténtico no reconocer que todo se se ve influenciado por el hecho de que me vea así forzado a dejar esta ciudad que tanto amor me ha proporcionado, y en la que tantas dificultades quedan irresueltas : amar y dejar a la vez llega a ser un conflicto que es también paradoja, que es insostenible, que tiene que decantarse en otras decisiones, tiene que ser amar para saber amar, estar para saber estar, y vivir lo que es un reto del momento, de este momento del camino, un proceso de enfrentarse con dificultades cuyo fin será posibilitar que esté más cerca del territorio donde ese amor existe…

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Concretamente : viernes, noche de leve ensueño, de incredulidad, de los absurdismos del ser humano en su habitat natural, cómo cantan los gestos y el estilo el nivel de soltura, convención o pánico profundo de la persona, El Almirall, entre sonrisas fáciles, lágrimas contenidas y crisis no citadas, horizontes, novedades indefinidas, es una noche de palabras de suave incendio, temas del alma, “la esencia de la persona no sabe que se acercan viajes, que hay fechas, simplemente se acerca a lo que le atrae” se declara, y parece de las verdades más precisas sobre estos días; me he encontrado con una tras otra persona que ha podido despertar en mí esa esencia, una suerte será, o una extensión de lo que en lo profundo estoy buscando, me doy cuenta de que siempre he abierto caminos en Barcelona, sin desear que si cerraran, y por eso, voy dejando asuntos pendientes, comportándome como si tuviera todo el tiempo de siempre, como si no me fuera : en estas encrucijadas, se puede aprender muchísimo de una sola persona, de una sola conversación con ansia de buscar, la noche sabe a pausa, a interrupción, a despedida obligatoria, exilio y cortina pesada, pero también sabe a encontrarse, a fluidez, a verse y dejarse ver…

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will have to vacate her seat in the United States Senate when she becomes Secretary of State, and speculation has been rife for weeks about who will fill that seat. Long seen as the top choice, both with the public and among party insiders, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of Pres. John F. Kennedy, will be the likely choice of Gov. Paterson of New York.

Kennedy is often described as “elusive” or “reclusive”, shying away from the public eye, unlike so many in her storied political family, but she has done important work for a number of charitable causes and has consistently involved herself in issues of public interest. She is now being described as a “forceful” candidate, though her contacts with the public over the Senate seat question have been limited.

The AP reported that “Two people close to Gov. David Paterson tell The Associated Press they believe Caroline Kennedy will be his choice, but the governor cautions he’s still looking.” Kennedy is the popular choice with voters, but some question how public a figure she will be if she takes over as senator; her private style is seen as a stark contrast with Clinton’s high profile, ambitious approach to the role of junior senator.

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New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver made headlines with his assertion that Paterson was on the verge of selecting Caroline Kennedy to fill Clinton’s seat once it becomes vacant. But the governor, through a spokesman, refuted the claim; Paterson’s spokesman said the governor is favoring no frontrunner and that he will make the selection after due deliberation.

It has also been reported that the governor will not appoint a “caretaker” senator to hold the seat till the next election in 2010, but would aim to appoint a senator who would serve ably and be a strong voice for New York before and after the 2010 election.

Kennedy’s approach to policy also seems to fit well with the president-elect’s pragmatic centrist style. She served as adviser and VP vetter for Obama, and on the subject of healthcare told the AP in a recent interview that:

We need to fix that system. It’s something we need to fix. It’s too expensive. We don’t invest in prevention. These things are affecting women and children. Also they’re completely tied together in a terrible way. I’d like to work to make sure there’s health and child care.

She is widely praised for her work on education issues, and her big-picture view of the national priority of education also meshes well with the incoming administration: “our country has an education crisis long term and we really need to solve it if we’re going to remain the strongest, most powerful, most admired country on earth”.

In what it says is an effort to defend its civilians against missile attack, Israel has launched a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory it formerly occupied and which is now under the control of the Hamas militant group’s political faction. Hamas seized control of Gaza in an armed coup against the ruling Fatah movement, which retains control of the West Bank. Israel’s ground assault, which includes columns of tanks and air support from helicopter gunships, comes after 8 days of airstrikes that targeted a number of top Hamas figures, and left over 430 Palestinians dead.

The stated purpose of the airstrikes, stopping rocket attacks into Israel, was not only not achieved, but rocket attacks have increased dramatically as Hamas vows revenge. That increase in attacks is thought to be partly the cause of the ground offensive. Israeli military officials have warned the campaign against Hamas could last for “many long days”, and some fear a renewed full-scale occupation of Gaza. Israel and the Palestinan Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, have said an international force should be deployed in Gaza to prevent further violence.

Protest rallies have spread across the region and into Europe and the United States. Hundreds demonstrated in San Francisco for an end to the overwhelming use of military force by Israel. The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that:

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators — including several Jews — protested outside of the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco for the fourth time this week, venting anger over Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

The largely peaceful protest was among many public condemnations of the bombing around the world, in London, Manila and throughout the Middle East.

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One Jewish protester, who says he is a descendent of Holocaust survivors, is reported to have said he believes the people of Israel should be on the side of the defenseless and “identify with the oppressed — not imitate the oppressors”. Other demonstrators carried banners critical of Israel, including some comparing the situation in Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto. Demonstrations have become increasingly heated as images of dead and injured civilians have trickled out of Gaza.

In New York’s Times Square, hundreds gathered to demonstrate against the Israeli operation in Gaza, calling it a “massacre” and demanding a ceasefire. The rally was reported to be peaceful, but emotional, with The New York Times reporting that one protester “drove his wife and three children two hours to join the demonstration. His children, ages 10, 8, and 5, were bundled up in down jackets to protect them from the winter chill. Two of them waved small American flags, the other a Palestinian flag.”

According to the Times, the news of Israel’s ground invasion came by various media to Times Square in the midst of the demonstration, which “stretched four blocks and clogged much of central tourist district for several hours”. There was a smaller counterprotest that followed the pro-Palestinian demonstration, without incident. Protesters at that rally called for Hamas to shoulder the blame for the violence in Gaza and for the militant group’s destruction.

After the unrest that spread across France in November 2005 —when Nicolas Sarkozy was interior minister and called for the mass deportation of French-born rioters of Arabic ethnicity—, a ritual of annual arson has sprung up, with hundreds of cars burned each year on 31 December. This year, the numbers soared by 30% over last year, reaching an estimated 1,147 cars fire-bombed or “burnt out”.

Even with 35,000 police deployed to keep the peace and prevent arson, the numbers escalated in what is becoming a worrying New Year’s Eve ritual across France. The areas most affected were the poorer outskirts of major cities; for example, “A total of 422 cars were burned in Paris-area housing projects, compared to 12 in the relatively well-policed Parisian intra muros”.

The “banlieus”, often including ethnic ghettoes heavy in populations of poor immigrant laborers or their French-born descendents, generally poorer and suffering from racial bias that is still deep-seated in French society, have tended to be the areas where the annual arson is most pervasive, in cities such as Paris, Strasbourg, Lille, Toulouse and Nantes.

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It was in the banlieu neighborhoods around Paris that the unrest of November and December 2005 got started, in response to a complex of social ills, but spurred primarily by incidents of police violence against ethnic north African French youths. Accordng to Time magazine:

In a country where car-burning isn’t a common symptom of socioeconomic unrest, news of so many automobiles being torched would be alarming — if not a sign of brewing insurrection. In France, however, word of the destruction that accompanied the evening the French call Saint-Sylvestre was met with a mix of Gaulic shrugs and low-grade peevishness.

The unrest of 2005 spread wildly out of control in part because the authorities were so slow to understand the reasons behind it and the public reacted with attitudes symptomatic (for those affected by persistent racial bias) of the same cultural and political barriers that were causing hardship in the affected neighborhoods. The French people cannot afford to take this explosion of ceremonial vandalism lightly, but authorities need to be careful not to appear to engage in another kind of crackdown like that fomented by Sarkozy in 2005, when he labeled the rioters “scum” and promised to expel them from France.

The Sofia News Agency reports that:

A total of 36 700 cars were burned in France in the first eleven months of 2008. The French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared the vandals setting vehicles on fire should be prevented from holding a driver’s license until they paid for the damages they had incurred.

Those figures are staggering, and seem to represent a serious crisis in France’s social fabric. Such incidents, including the general malaise affecting many youths, tinged with racial resentments and violent attacks, have been linked to France’s struggle to maintain levels of employment, even as economies around France face serious difficulties. Major banks failing or being nationalized, and the 13% unemployment in Spain, are symptoms of the economic ills leading to thousands of lost jobs in wealthy European countries, potentially exacerbating already dire divisions in society.

Superávit (surplus energy) is an exhibit to be organized and hosted in Barcelona, in 2009-2010 to feature painting, photography, books, short film, discussions, regarding ways in which the pace of prevailing lifestyles causes breakdown in our sense of cohesion, morally, economically, and in the visionary sense of one’s own purpose. We are at the focal point of a vast combining and stitching-together of resources and approaches, and the nature of life in the human world is, as a result, now constantly redefined.

There is a basic need to expend or dispose of excess energy, what is left over after the vital processes of the body, the mind, the work of survival, have played out. That energy, which can feed our creative or destructive capabilities —our imagination, our pathologies, our sense of urgency or principle or spiritual pursuit— is a burden which we must all learn to live with, to exploit, to approach without fear or remorse.

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Too often, we fall into the traps and perils related to this interplay of forces, without necessarily keeping balance in mind, without moving to take up the strategy of most prolonged harmony. The show will include ecological analysis, information, discussions related to society’s general approach to dealing with what Georges Bataille called “the accursed share”, and artistic expressions of related subjects, problems, crisis situations, personal dramas and quickenings of the spirit.

The ‘City of Lights’ seeks to innovate, to touch the sky, and to protect the “right to light” of its citizens, in one bold design

A revolutionary skyscraper design by Herzog and de Meuron, commonly known as ‘the Triangle’, aims to break the long-standing Parisian height barrier of 37 meters, while respecting the right of neighbors to the same quantity of sunlight they would have without the new structure. The Guardian has called it a ‘shade-less ziggurat’, reference both to its irregular stepped-pyramid shape and to its playing a central role in the evolution of the spirit of the times, in design terms, in a city whose emblematic architecture is, somehow, also a sacred essence.

The question of the “right to light” is vital to zoning laws in many European cities. In London, for instance, something called the “Ancient Lights” law requires that any window which has enjoyed sunlight exposure for more than 20 years should go one receiving that light. It has been a source of heated polemics in the construction of new high-rise office towers in the historic city center, but for many, the innovation associated with new building designs has helped to offset the community-quality concerns that often militate against the installation of new megastructures.

For the city of Paris, the skyscraper question is a question of community quality, but also of cultural identity. The city has long had a skyscraper ban, a building limit of 37 meters, and an officially sanctioned aim of retaining an historic low-rise or “human-scale” built environment. This was, in part, to privilege historic structures, like the Left Bank’s Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame cathedral on Ile de la Cité, to ensure the resonance of these structures is not overshadowed in figurative terms by block-like modern behemoths.

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Paris is not a skyscraper city, but a city of infamously confusing concentric avenues, medieval layout superimposed with 18th century statesmanesque grandeur, romantic cobblestone tussled streets and sun-dappled sidewalk cafés. It is a city that prides itself on not having fallen for what an architectural convention in Barcelona in the mid-nineties termed “the temptation of America”, to build upward to the sky, disregarding the meaning of the pedestrian trolling around in the shadows below.

It is clear that there is a conscious distinction, in the minds of Parisians, between the nature of a city that lives for its inhabitants and a skyscraper-strewn metropolis, famed for its overwhelming brute mass and anonymity. It is thought that the low-rise atmosphere of Parisian haunts is more transcendent, that a neighborhood is more resilient, more character-driven, more time-tested, when it can be felt to be shaped by the people who walk among its structures.

Inhabitants of London or New York would probably balk at the suggestion, however theoretical, that their cities are somehow not like that, but they might also feel somehow haunted by the need to avoid falling into the “temptation of Dubai”, where it seems artifice and surface are overtaking character or the meaning of the human soul walking at street-level, as governing principles in the evolution of society. But these are perceptions, and in Paris, there are at least 6 new high-rise projects aiming to populate the outskirts of the historic metropolis with a post-modern outcropping of glass and steel, a hint that the city is also a place of renewal and innovation.

Herzog and de Meuron’s glass ziggurat is a test of post-modern and computer assisted design, intended to bridge the gap between need-for-use and the natural fear of human diminishment in the face of massive structures. Can the city reinvent itself as a cozy if weighty centuries’ old “museum city”, courted and elevated by the bold urgings of today’s grandiloquent noise-maker architects? Will the shadowless Triangle be like a dreamcatcher, holding up a subconscious portrait of the city’s will and destiny to the buzz and brimming of the historic center?

Aside from its central design feature, that of casting no shadow, or more precisely, of preserving the daylight-rights of the neighbors, the Paris Triangle will also be optimized for solar-voltaic and wind-power harvesting, making it a potential watershed moment in French green building design. If implemented with not merely current, but 2012-current —the date the building is slated to open for business— state of the art renewable energy technologies, the building could be self-powering and could help to generate clean energy for the Paris energy market, a further reinvention of the role of skyscrapers in a city wary of their social side-effects.

DeZeen design magazine cites the architects’ own report on the Projet Triangle:

On the scale of the Porte de Versailles site, the project will also play a significant role in the reorganisation of flows and perception of urban space. The Parc des Expositions site currently forms a break between the Haussmanian fabric of the15th district of Paris and the communities of Issy-les-Moulineaux and Vanves, emphasised by the visual impact of the peripheral boulevard.

The construction of an ambitious building on the Porte de Versailles site will mark its opening and restore the historical axis formed by the rue de Vaugirard and avenue Ernest Renan.

The square of the Porte de Versailles is a complex space in its current configuration. Its initial semi-circular organisation is difficult to interpret given the many visual impediments and lack of clearly identified public spaces between the Parc des Expositions and the buildings opposite.

The project is designed to open public space, to revitalize the surrounding area, and with its street-level shops, cafés and restaurants, to help invigorate the public use of private space, in Parisian style, with added life and activity: in short, the project is conceived as a model new space that considers human use the principle, and aesthetic ambition an aid to achieving that end.

While admitting the project is ambitious and large in scale, and while declaring it to be conceived on the entire metropolitan reach of Paris as a whole, the architects have designed the ‘sharkfin’ structure to be both bold and noticeable, and also to stay out of the way of people’s needs and tastes. It is intended to complement, not to overshadow, the style of the older structures, and its height is offset by its narrow frame (from two sides), allowing for only a negligible shadow to fall from it, a shadow which will move quickly with the sun.

If properly executed, the structure will open up the public spaces around it, affording locals the same freedom of movement and atmospheric enjoyment they now have, but with the added value of a monument to urban renewal and a vibrant center of commercial activity. In the more abstract sense, the architects also note that:

The Triangle is conceived as a piece of the city that could be pivoted and positioned vertically. It is carved by a network of vertical and horizontal traffic flows of variable capacities and speeds. Like the boulevards, streets and more intimate passages of a city, these traffic flows carve the construction into islets of varying shapes and sizes.

This evocation of the urban fabric of Paris, at once classic and coherent in its entirety and varied and intriguing in its details, is encountered in the façade of the Triangle. Like that of a classical building, this one features two levels of interpretation: an easily recognisable overall form and a fine, crystalline silhouette of its façade which allows it to be perceived variously.

The Triangle is meant to evoke the “role of the reader”: the public can make of it what they will, as it stands up above the landscape as an outgrowth of the pie-piece urban sections that fan out from the ancient city-center. It mimics and mirrors the landscape, with a geometry that merges with surface style to permit a broad range of interpretations, emotional and functional. In this sense, it is very much attuned to the cultural identity that underpins a time-tested Parisian way of interacting with local architecture.

THE LAST YAK, PANGOLIN’S TEATIME, PLEASANCE DOME
****

Pangolin’s Teatime are a young Edinburgh-based puppet theatre company, who in 2007 picked up a clutch of awards at the National Student Drama Festival for their previous work Haozkla. This year they return to the Fringe with a new original production, and have created a thoughtful, mature fairy tale about power, reality and the magic of belief. With lovingly handcrafted masks and puppets, some rod, some glove, and a flair for storytelling, this is a beautifully thought-through work that should appeal to adult and child alike.

As the audience file into the Kingdome studio, the company are backstage and in the wings, surrounding us with the sounds of the jungle – rasping crickets, whooping monkeys, whistling birds and more. A narrator booms out that “in the beginning”, the Tiger gave orders in the jungle, and went on a search for God by climbing the mountain, passing the search to other animals as he climbs higher, until, at the summit, the Yak is discovered. As there is no-one higher, the jungle adopt the Yak as their divinity. This sequence is told as an enchanting piece of shadow-puppetry, before the almost-life-size papier mache models enter. We are treated to the parallel tales of the power struggle within the jungle, as the Bears attempt to usurp the Tiger’s leadership role, and the human story of a brother and sister coming to terms with the loss of their father. Hinging the two stories is the puppet-child Dharla, who inhabits both realities at once. As the play unfolds, the two realities unfurl and ripple into each other, and by the conclusion it seems the frontier has come down altogether.

The jungle community is beautifully realised and performed, with the sardonic Crocodile providing comic relief during the weekly jungle meetings, and the scheming but delightfully charming Bears doing their best to spend every minute of the day eating. There are fantastical creatures here too – the Dzo, and the Mango Ferrets – and the workmanship and handling of the puppets are first rate. The human story, while not as strong, provides a useful dramatic counterpoint to the jungle world, and the performers are committed and engaged with their creation. Puppetry, in all its varied forms, is undergoing a welcome revival, and Pangolin’s Teatime deserve to be at the creative vanguard of the movement. A treat.

15.40, until August 25

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TALKING HEADS PLUS, GEMS OF MAZAL, THE MEADOWS
***

Alan Bennett is much admired and much performed, but his characters are currently being given voice in a more unusual setting than he is probably used to. Stop by the Sainsbury’s Local on the Meadows this Fringe at around 6pm, and you’re likely to be greeted by a group of twentysomethings milling about, a skateboard doing the rounds, chirpily singing songs, before one of them begins narrating an excerpt of what sounds like Roald Dahl in a heightened voice. As he starts his speech, the company sets off down Middle Meadow Walk into the greenery, trailing an audience behind them. This is Talking Heads Plus, combining Bennett’s much-loved pieces with works by other authors, and claiming to bring the monologue form to life as you’ve never seen before.

After a rhyming poem about Matilda, and a speech given from the top of an upturned electrical cable roller, a girl jumps on the skateboard and races down the way, soliloquising as she goes. Her words may get lost as the distance between her and the spectators grows, but we traipse after her in the wind and the chill to catch the end of her segment. We’re then treated to a fine performance of Bennett’s Soldiering On at the side of the path. With local dogs ambling into the action, and curious passers-by joining the growing crowd, actress Ruth Thompson captures the essence of Muriel’s stoical, chin-up tragedy, prompting laughs along the way. After a final monologue by a man in a camouflage jacket, the company break into a rendition of Arlen and Koehler’s Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and skip off into the distance, leaving the audience to melt away.

It’s debatable whether the open-air setting helps or hinders the performers – it’s an ultra-naturalistic, stripped-down approach to presenting theatre, with no special costumes, no setting of scenes, and no programme to enlighten the audience as to what it is we’re watching at any one point. The shock tactic of ending the lengthy Bennett monologue with a segment of The Vagina Monologues gives a nice dramatic shift, as our attention is yanked to another part of the Meadows, but with no defined space in which to work, and the scattergun effect of the quickly-shifting vignettes, the actors are required to work that much harder to create focus for their particular scenes. On the whole, they rise to the challenge, and Talking Heads Plus provides a pleasant, intriguing hour of exploring the boundaries of what makes theatre, and how to present it.

18.00 and 20.00, until August 20

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SCARAMOUCHE JONES, GUY MASTERSON TTI, ASSEMBLY SUPPER ROOM
*****

Justin Butcher is a man of many talents. Not content with penning a sumptuous script, full of wonder, lyricism, evocative imagery and beautifully crafted turns of phrase, as a performer he also keeps the audience wrapped in his spell for an hour and a half, never slackening or flagging. It’s an extraordinary achievement, and Scaramouche Jones is as delightful, funny, moving and thoughtful a Fringe show as could be hoped for.

The ancient titular clown is on the cusp of his hundredth birthday, at the dawn of the 21st century, and tonight is to be the last of his life. For his swansong, he takes the audience with him on a recounting of his magical story, of his origins and his adventures through the twentieth century, from his birth to a gypsy whore in a fishmonger’s in Port of Spain, Trinidad, through Senegalese slave traders, North African snake charmers, Italian nobility and Romany travellers from Eastern Europe. The play takes a darker turn as Scaramouche is captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in a concentration camp in Split, before concluding with his arrival in post-war London to begin his career as a clown. As he says, “half a century to make the clown, half a century to perform the clown.”

Throughout his travels, he is the wide-eyed innocent with the unnaturally white face, recipient of action rather than agent, leaping (and being thrown) from one adventure to the next as Butcher leaps from side to side of the stage, now crouching behind ship ropes to peer at his mother receive her train of nightly customers, now straddling his writing desk as he rides a camel over the sands of Africa. As the show progresses, Butcher sheds his several layers of costume, red nose, wig, jacket, as Scaramouche comes closer to freeing himself of his history. The physicality of the performance combines with his rich delivery of the lines, themselves deliciously thick and heady, like a soup. Scaramouche conjures up for us the smells and sounds of Trinidad, North Africa, Somalia and Nuremburg, as his face becomes ever whiter and his destiny draws closer, against the backdrop of the first half of the twentieth century.

This is a first rate piece of storytelling theatre, brilliantly written and performed, and well-supported by excellent direction, set and lighting design. Made famous by Pete Postlethwaite’s performances in 2001, Justin Butcher here reclaims his own work, and stamps his authority all over it. A must see.

12.20, until August 25

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TITUS ANDRONICUS, ACTION TO THE WORD, C VENUE
***

Fringe productions of Shakespeare are usually best approached with caution. Everyone wants to have a go and show their mettle, and the temptation to add their own mark to the works by offering a “reinterpretation” often begs for disaster – Hamlet in space, perhaps, or The Tempest re-enacted as a Marxist parable of the evils of modern society. Occasionally it’s a spectacular success, as with the Midsummer-Night’s-Dream-in-a-roller-disco of The Donkey Show, a recent Edinburgh Fringe smash hit that went on to a run in London’s West End and from there to New York. The list of equally spectacular failures stretches on into the middle distance. Cambridge University-born company Action to the Word’s version of Titus Andronicus falls squarely between these two stools, passing the test with, if not a distinction, then enough merit to be shared round the sizeable cast, without ever really breaking any new ground.

Their particular “twist” on the piece is to frame it in a gothic urban setting. In modern dress and squeezed into a running time of 75 minutes, this is an accessible, fast-forwarded highlights package of the epic play. Titus Andronicus, Roman hero and general, returns from a successful campaign against the Goths, bringing as prisoners the Goth queen Tamora and her children. His first task is to settle the dispute between two brothers over who should become the next Emperor of Rome. He chooses Saturnine, who then immediately frees Tamora and makes her his Empress. Titus and his family are made to pay a series of increasingly heavy prices for his harsh treatment of the former Goth prisoners, before the play’s sensationally over-the-top finale.

The company of trained performers make good use of the space, and there are no discernible weak links in the acting, although Tamora is occasionally difficult to hear. In an inventive approach to the rape of Titus’s daughter Lavinia, movement and music are used before she is slung over a shoulder and bundled offstage, later to reappear, naked and trembling, in a shopping trolley. The short running time keeps the production from flagging, the pace always lightning fast. There are some questionable aesthetic uses of the “gothic” motif, with some unnecessarily misogynistic sequences of scantily-clad girls gyrating and grinding, for no particular reason, but on the whole Action to the Word treat the play with respect and no small amount of technical skill. Simple but effective lighting, and a soundtrack featuring Placebo, Billy Corgan, and an unexpected use of Madness’s Driving in My Car, help move things along. This is a good, solid take on Titus Andronicus, allowing the text to come to the fore and do its work, and would make an excellent introduction for those who’ve not yet been acquainted with Shakespeare’s bloodiest early tragedy.

23.00, until 25 August

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Barcelona has become a haven for those who take their clowning seriously, and US-born clown Jango Edwards is spreading the message through clown courses and workshops.

By Lucy Ribchester

‘Clown is failure,’ says Chris Mitchem, co-founder of Barcelona-based theatre company Clownfish. ‘What makes a good clown is the ability to accept failure.’ I hope he’s right. My attempt to attend the first day of Clown Theory, a five-day course run by US-born clown Jango Edwards, is a bit of a disaster. The workshop, Jango says, will make you ‘remember everything you forgot’, and is based on re-learning the innocence we are all born with.  Jango, whose past audiences include the Rolling Stones and Salvador Dalí, is convinced anyone can become a clown.  He’s had all sorts from taxi drivers to journalists take the course, and even persuaded an Italian policewoman to give it a go while she was giving him a speeding fine.  She now directs a show with him called 00Clown, ‘where she plays a cop.’

His partner, Cristina, tells me to come to the Poble Espanyol site at 5pm and give my name at the gate. Unfortunately I misunderstand the directions and end up at completely the wrong theatre banging on the door for ten minutes. I have failed to find my first clown lesson. If clown is failure, I’m doing a pretty good job.

Barcelona may be more famous for its architecture and art than red noses and slapstick, but it has a surprisingly vibrant history of clowning. Charlie Rivel, the 20th century circus clown who appeared in Federico Fellini’s film I Clowns, came from Cubelles in the Barcelona province.  In 1993, the organisation Payasos sin Fronteras (Clowns without Borders) was set up in Barcelona, and has since enchanted children living in refugee camps and developing countries from Palestine to Latin America.  Then, in 2001, Barcelona-based clown Pepa Plana set out to showcase female clowning with the International Festival of Female Clowns that takes place in Andorra every two years.

More recently, clowns from overseas have been settling in the city – Jango Edwards is originally from Detroit and Clownfish’s Chris Mitchem comes from Cardiff.  Clownfish manages the production rights to a number of shows, including open-air physical theatre troupe Kamchátka, who are now undertaking a tour of Europe.  Many of the city’s artists are working on raising the profile of adult clowning to show that clowns are not just for children.  It seems to be working.  Pay a visit to the funky Almazen theatre in the Raval neighbourhood, and as well as music and theatre there is a regular post-watershed slot given over to the genre of ‘Clown’.  They are even showcasing clowns at their ALMaritím festival in the city’s Museu Maritím.

 
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Luckily I manage to find the theatre school the next day. I’m not sure what to expect from a four hour Clown workshop, but it definitely doesn’t include ending up with no trousers and a biro taped to my nose whilst running around the room, although as fate would have it that is how we finish the day. 

It actually starts off gently – we play some warm-ups (and by golly it is warm in the Barcelona heat), involving dancing with various body parts stuck together: palms, heads, backs.  By the time we have all worked up a lather, Jango instructs us to lie down on our backs, and then tells us we are spoons in his kitchen drawer. With eyes closed, the seventeen of us, all strangers, are treated to his rendition of The Carpenters’s ‘Close to you’, only he substitutes the lyric ‘they long to be cucharas (spoons) like you’.  It’s surreal, but strangely soothing.  In fact the whole workshop is governed by a sense of play and freedom.  There’s miming to bands, trying to pick up a bottle with closed eyes, and clown birthday parties.  Which is not to say the tone is always light.  Jango Edwards takes clowning seriously, and when it comes to his view on the need for laughter in the world there is no holding back. 

‘We live in a fucked up world,’ he tells us, ‘the more I see humanity the more I worry it’s not going to make it.’  He recounts one of his sketches: a man finds a letter from his wife telling him she is leaving him for his best friend, taking their son, re-mortgaging their house, emptying their bank accounts, and has left him cornflakes in the fridge for his supper  – although he has to buy the milk himself.  He tries to kill himself, but every method fails.  ‘The bullet falls on the floor, the rope hurts…this guy is so pathetic he can’t even kill himself.  The sketch lasts eight minutes and people laugh.  But,’ he says, ‘the fact of the matter is that every 35 seconds in Europe alone, someone tries to kill themselves, and that is not fucking funny.’ 

Clownfish too have a portfolio that indicates there is no subject too dark to be tackled by clowns.  One of their children’s shows, Tira Tira, deals with child exploitation.  A boy who works in a factory is convinced by his talking tools that he should be out playing instead of making tracksuits. Mitchem recalls one performance where ‘a man stood up and said “This is outrageous, you can’t show this to children, because this doesn’t happen.” And our response was, “why don’t you go down to the market on Sunday morning? Because you’ll see an awful lot of children working there”. Which is not quite as extreme as in developing countries, but I think children should know… why deny that truth? There are children that are being exploited constantly all over the world.’

Back in the workshop we do an exercise where we have to smile for 60 seconds.  Afterwards, when asked to give feedback on how it feels, the general consensus is that it hurts.  This depresses Jango.  He wonders if, had we been made to look miserable for 60 seconds, it would hurt so much. ‘The problem with life is that we don’t smile enough.  This [a smile] is free.  That’s where your clown starts.  This is not a weapon of mass destruction.  It’s a weapon of mass construction.’ 

The workshop is conducted bilingually in English and Spanish, although the exercises are mainly movement based.  There’s a fair few actors in the group, and some of the participants already have experience in the world of clown, but there are also a few surprises.  A Catalan doctor is taking the course to help improve his relations with patients.  Then there’s Rino with his tattoos and shaved head, who used to work in the fashion industry but quit two years ago to become a clown.  ‘Clown is a drug,’ he says, ‘everywhere in the world the emphasis is on being perfect, but clown is the opposite of perfect.’ 

One of the big drives amongst Barcelona clowns at the moment is to get more women recognised for their work.  Chris Mitchem says that Clownfish’s main project is female clowns: ‘I think there’s a tenderness to the female clown that a male clown finds difficult to find’.  One of the Clownfish shows is Las Gallegas (the Galicians), a blackly hilarious double act set at a funeral and performed by Lola González and Coral Ros.  Although they’ve recently been enjoying success at the Teatreneu in the city’s chi-chi Gracia district, according to Coral Ros there is still ‘a world to discover’ for female clowns.  ‘It’s an unknown planet.’   

Jango is similarly passionate about giving women the confidence they need to perform.  ‘Women make the best clowns,’ he confidently asserts.  But he believes they have been kept from recognition by fear and lack of confidence in performing.  ‘Men have been using you as a joke.  It’s time to fight back.’

There is something empowering about the liberation that unfolds in the room towards the end of the day. Everyone has been asked to bring something they can use as a false nose – anything except a genuine false nose.  People have brought clothes-pegs and brillo pads, and a striped sock.  I improvise with the inside of a biro and some sticky tape.  We are about to be re-born as clowns, and experience our first birthday under clown rules, which involve fun, play, cooperation and no one being left out.  Other than that, there are no instructions.  By the end of it we should be some way to discovering our inner clown.  It starts off as a slow exploration of bodies, as we writhe around on the floor like newborns, but soon anarchy erupts and everyone starts taking off their trousers.  There is a moment when I hesitate to brandish my milk-white thighs and fuchsia pants to a room full of unknowns, but once the decision is made there is nothing for it but to launch myself into it.  And it’s fun tearing around the room like a toddler.

By the end of the workshop, I feel like I’ve been in a group therapy session, and without a doubt it’s helped me remember some of the chaotic innocence of physical play.  I’m some way to understanding why Jango seems so un-flappably happy as he cavorts around the room, calling us all his children.  He’s been practising this for a long time.  Although I’m not sure I’ve quite found my inner clown yet, I am smiling for the rest of the day, and it doesn’t hurt a bit. 

Jango Edwards’s Clown Theory workshops run on a frequent but ad-hoc basis, and usually cost around €160 for 5 days (depending on the venue).  For information and contact details, visit www.jangoedwards.net

The Almazen theatre in Raval runs a regular programme of Clown events www.almazen.net

For information on Clownfish productions including the Kamchátka tour www.clownfish.es

New York is a place where everything is just a little off kilter, pushed and angled by unwavering momentum, but there is flow and the hope of flow working in the depths of personal metaphysical craft, there is the dewy first light of possibility and the wisdom of the tempest-tossed, if —as Kipling says it— “you can meet triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same”.

The city breathes and compresses, inhabits and yearns, makes patterns and delights in the rupture of unnecessary patterning, it aspires abruptly, consistently, and seeks self-definition, is wounded and implored and billowing with the call for anything more like or less like its oblique time-wary self-fashioning : every woman is a woman and brings all the joys and abilities of woman to the metaphysical calamity of feasting, and every man is a man and brings all the hardships and fantasies of man to the physical incarnation of the feasting dance : no matter what harangues and woodjumbles, what indelicate armors or ill-encumbered sanctities we assign them on first or second sight, or on the last flitting edge of visual contact, the tired judgment, the game of collapse collapsing within and draining away the sound and the sense of things, pushes for an even score, and then beyond into something more complicated, more unabashed.

It is an other-world, a mix of cultures, of acute binging instances of culture beginning, a weave of timing and tempo, of taste and absence, a place where solitude bleeds into reflection, concept, the sticky whimsy of a place that is also a form of place, a soughtafter lover for the placeseekers, a continuation of inward lacking and of the rhythms of spheres of memory and indication, halfway between being-here and not-being.

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The historic and landscape canvases of J.M.W. Turner have invaded the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a bath of vibrant color and the artist’s characteristic ability to paint the energy of forces converging in space and time. The exhibit is more than a mere retrospective; it will deliver to many visitors their first real taste of the pioneering British painter’s ambitious experiments with light, scale and texture, and it illustrates how his work informs many of the innovations that would later come in imrpessionist and avant-garde movements.

Turner’s early work looked to history and to dramatic natural scenes. With “Fall of the Reichenbach, in the Valley of the Oberhusli, Switzerland”, we find a powerful examination of the scale of nature and its meaning for the frail hope of humanity amidst its immense power. We see in deft combination the permanent masque of rock, the deep forgiving sky, the haunted intimacy of mist, a fervent beaming light, the impenetrability of nature’s organization at this place, the mystery of such providence, a vital softness that equates all beings facing the combination of forces, in sum, at the falls.

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We read that the artist has sought to convey the following:

philosopher Edmund Burke’s notion of the Sublime as the terror humans experience before the overpowering force of nature. The steep, rocky landscape —dominated by the 2,000-foot waterfall— towers over the shepherd and his flock.

And he has. It was Turner’s unique ability to perform these feats of historic ingenuity, of philosophical reflection, of commentary on the vast uncertainty of the fate of humanity, that made it possible for him to move so ably between depictions of daunting natural landscapes and crucial historic encounters, structures, or of monuments that mark the landscape of history. Turner was a translation, somewhat knowing, somewhat lonesome and unwitting, of the romantic movements, bold and garish, caught up with heroic resonance, into the impressionist, able to see without seeing, to envision the act of encountering light, shape and meaning in once complex interplay of phenomena.

In the painting “Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, Restored”, Turner tempts us to share in a study of plenty, refinement, restoration, beauty. It is a song for the replenishment of the hungry soul, Bacchic festival, a ritual exploration of the romance of Narcissus, the elegance of natural light, architecture in its ancient aspiration and its nowaday claim to continuing. There is a question about the origin and the repetition, which means precisely that dewy elegance of the mind working on the environment, taking stock and shaping new directions, informed by experience.

It would be simple to say the painter could not be thinking these things as he worked to copy from his imagination the qualities of a now ruined ancient structure, but the restoration as presented is a sign of what is lacking and aspired to in a new modern age, a comment on the golden and the greener ages, the “aspirations of memory”, the hope of what a future of dreamscapes might be, if realized. What Turner does so well, thematically, is nest these questions in the visual landscape: what amount of courage is involved in recreating what once was emblematic of excellence? How to do it in a way that speaks today’s language?

“The Battle of Trafalgar”, the artist’s largest canvas, was painted from memory, from sketches, from other works, 14 years after the fact, under George IV. It is, for this reason, both heavily criticized on grounds of inaccuracy and heavily lauded for capturing the spirit of a moment that shocked the British world, jolted it with electric urges, and yet had become more mythology than history just a few years later. [continued below...]

In Turner’s rendition of the maritime battle, we find humanity falling out of the rigging, falling out of the human-built structures of intrigue, nation, contest, combat, value, propriety… humanly falling to the flaming tide… nature threatening to prove it is more vast, more patient, than so much bloodlust and gallantry. The battle is structured as if it were a whipping of plasmic amorphous agglomerations of human pretense and vehemence, a merengue of pale fire and clean light in which the fog of war and the mists of legend combine to tell of gain and loss together.

In this massive canvas and in his depiction of the event from the base of the mizen-mast on Nelson’s ship, we see Trafalgar is a pyrrhic victory: the loss of the heroic leader, the end of something and the edge of chaos, all telling a story about the years to come, at least as much as of the years preceding. There is a conception of what combat means, the failure of the human world to govern itself, to make sense of relations, attitudes, cravings… Turner’s approach to combat is simultaneously moralistic, Spartan and Baroque, insofar as this is possible.

In Turner’s depiction of combat, humanity crashes against itself with the violence of great tides and celestial fire, a storm of natural energy that breaks in a definitive way the everyday order of the human world: victory is loss, death is emergence, the aftermath is the manifestation of a tragic foreboding that ruled the preceding history, the vertigo of a great falls, the roaring isolation of that place of destiny where the falling river cascades into the mist of its own pools, the accretion of uncontainable irreconcilable forces, the explosion of sunlight coming through cloudscape.

Turner’s lyric “The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire” ventures into classical themes, historic-event landscapes, the old model of decorative masterworks, palatable from countless disciplines, and aims to bring to this art, now reshaped by techniques of the romantic movement, strains of perfect light, perfect atmosphere, the yellow glinting of departure, of ongoing, of the meaning of transition, surpassing, cycle and the setting sun. [continued below...]

As with the sun rising pale and hopeful in “Dido Building Carthage” (above), here we savor riches seen, unseen and expended, empire falling away before the brash caresses of sunlight. There are delicate precise lines and turbulent luminous mists, telling equal truths, at odds and in kinship with each other, alternating between the placid and the awesome. Turner’s narrative is housed in a passion for the expressive quality of the visible brush-stroke, the texture of the optical experience, dimension raised to the eye as against the predetermined meaning with which a place would have been invested by ambition, fortune and failure.

“The Tower of London” gives us a glimpse of how, for Turner, watercolor is more the art of seeing than is oil. This is because the colors must work together on a single plane of light and shadow. A color cannot be blended and reworked, kneaded obliquely into the desired hue. It is, or it isn’t, and when it isn’t, it’s already too late. Light is thinness; shade is density.

The piece tells us that landscape, for Turner, is not about what is seen, but about how it might be seen. It is not about perspective as much as it is about the layering of light, the problem of intervening shadows, the glazing and distortions presented by fog and weather. In “Approach to Venice”, the artist offers a palette of unabashed luminous spaces, gaseous parameters of world-making, and the sleek densities of the human hand, each working to reveal the muted auspices of a social urge, coming near to shore, the beginning of a day of trade, or a visit to foreign shores.

“Europa and the Bull” is an unfinished work, which is congruent with the origin myth. Europa is ravaged by the bull in which Apollo has manifest himself. The piece swims with Hindu and Hellenic underpinnings, that make the Christian narrative a weighty comment on the future evolution of Europe as a civilization, steeped in conflict, hoping for something more pure, more liberal, somehow free of the weight of its origins, free of the weight of its dark history, ready to engage the entire world in open dialogue.

Unfinished, the work speaks less plainly than it could of the artist’s intent. It is, in some ways, no more than a teasing of one of the lost origin myths, a study of social pretensions, a wishing in action… but there is room for speaking about the unfinished work as a new representation of Turner’s approach to light, as a comment on light itself: “Sunrise with Sea Monsters” is not only unfinished, its title is apocryphal, and relates only to what the posthumous viewer may think is the subject of the work.

This unfinished canvas opens onto the “role of the reader”, gives us a vision of light, water and life, a snapshot of multidimensional kinetic energy. Caught up in a lemon-ivory wash, a whirl of density at the center of the work was misread by the 20th century fascination with arbitrary harbingers of the unconscious, where life and motion, intent and accident become dark, monstrous hints of an unseen world. So the painting acquired its speculative moniker of “sunrise with sea monsters”.

Leaving the exhibit, I am overstimulated, have seen too much, have seen a ravishing exhibit that was just beginning to be born to this audience of the moment, to this New York phase in the life of the artist. I can safely say, anyone paying attention to what is on show here, will find their perception enriched, focused, and put on course to see deeper into the mythology of our moment and our collective comment on the art of perception. This, I think, was part of what Turner himself was working for all along.

Zimbabwe’s 5-term president Robert Mugabe, who has governed since liberation from the British nearly 3 decades ago, looks poised to serve a 6th term after holding a “presidential runoff election”, in which his opponent was forced to withdraw due to allegations of constant violence and intimidation from ruling-party supporters and paramilitaries. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had asked his supporters to vote for Mugabe if they felt their safety would otherwise be in jeopardy.

In recent days, reports of severe beatings of anyone suspected of supporting the opposition spread around the world. The New York Times published a front-page photo of an infant racked with tears whose legs had allegedly been shattered by pro-Mugabe paramilitaries hunting for his father, accused of not supporting the ruling party. Anecdotal reports of forced “indoctrination camps” near the capital Harare also reached international radio broadcasts.

US pres. George W. Bush has now called Mugabe’s government “illegitimate” and said the one-party election was a “sham”, demanding severe sanctions, an arms embargo, and a travel ban for regime officials. Pres. Bush said he had directed the secretaries of the departments of State and Treasury to develop a program of economic sanctions that would target Mugabe’s entire regime “and those who support it”.

South African pres. Thabo Mbeki, successor to Nelson Mandela as head of the ANC, had lent Mugabe strong support in the diplomatic arena since the economic crisis erupted in Zimbabwe in 2000. Observers view Mbeki’s position as a sign of his feeling that if Mugabe fell, it could mean a domino effect for other liberation movements across Africa, but he is under increasing pressure to abandon the embattled leader of Zanu-PF.

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Nelson Mandela himself attributed the current political crisis in Zimbabwe to a “tragic failure of leadership” on the part of Mugabe. And now Mbeki’s brother, Moeletsi Mbeki, has said he believes Mugabe should resign, that not only is his leadership compromised, but that Tsvangirai in fact won the first round of voting and should take over as president.

According to SW Radio Africa (London):

Legal opinion in South Africa says by not holding the run-off election 21 days after the first round of elections, Mugabe is no longer the legal President of Zimbabwe and Morgan Tsvangirai should be sworn in as head of state, as he had the most vote in the March 29th poll.

While Mbeki has remained silent on Mugabe’s legitimacy, and pushed for talks as a means of brokering a path toward national unity or some sort of negotiated solution, and SADC (the Southern Africa Development Community) looks unlikely to pressure Mugabe to resign, other regional leaders have voiced serious concern. According to The Times, of London:

What has weakened Mbeki and threatened Mugabe the most, however, is the sharply different line being taken by the new ANC president, Jacob Zuma, and his Communist allies, who are livid over Mugabe’s treatment of Tsvangirai, a fellow trade unionist.

Zuma’s ANC last week spoke forthrightly of “compelling evidence of violence, intimidation and outright terror” by Mugabe. The likelihood that Zuma will become South Africa’s president next April is already casting a long shadow.

The Zimbabwe crisis is now spilling over into regional politics and threatens to intensify as calls mount for UN action against Mugabe. Several nations, including Italy have threatened to recall their ambassadors to Zimbabwe, a warning to Mugabe that they now consider his continuation in office illegitimate. But the defiant leader continues to attempt to fashion public opinion inside and outside Zimbabwe, arresting foreign journalists on charges of not carrying the proper accreditation, presumably in an attempt to call into question the nature of reports about the mounting political violence.

An Angolan official, Jose Marcos Barrica, speaking for a team of observers representing SADC, announced on Zimbabwean state television that Pres. Mugabe is now willing to hold talks on Zimbabwe’s future political course, presumably after being sworn in for his 6th term. SADC member states had warned Mugabe to postpone the balloting due to the unsafe climate for voters and the opposition boycott, but Marcos Barrica’s comments suggest SADC now views post-election negotiations as the most responsible way to find a solution.

It is estimated that 86 people were killed in recent attacks and some 200,000 forced to flee their homes for fear of reprisals for their political views. Thokozani Khupe, VP of the opposition MDC, told reproters in Sharm el-Sheikh, “Zimbabwe at the present moment is burning. It is on fire. What the African Union and the African leaders must do is save Zimbabwe before it is burnt beyond recognition”. African Union foreign ministers are gathering there ahead of this week’s AU summit.

Khupe said the MDC is requesting the African Union send a special envoy to assist Thabo Mbeki in his mediation of the Zimbabwe crisis, on behalf of the SADC states. While military intervention is improbable, calls for more aggressive diplomatic action are mounting, and non-African states may put a resolution before the UN Security Council. AU representatives have hinted at the preferred course being a power-sharing deal between Zanu-PF and MDC, leading eventually to a free and fair election for the next term.

CLINTON PROMISED “YOU’LL ALWAYS FIND ME ON THE FRONT LINES OF DEMOCRACY FIGHTING FOR A BETTER FUTURE”, PLEDGED SUPPORT TO OBAMA

Top aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign began telling the press that she intended to officially concede defeat, withdraw from the campaign and endorse Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, as the Democratic party’s nominee, as early as the morning after the final primary votes. She scheduled a farewell gathering for campaign staffers and supporters on Friday, the date pushed back to allow more people to attend. And on Saturday, she followed through and gave a rousing speech to supporters, officially endorsing Obama and calling on her supporters to follow suit.

In her speech, Sen. Clinton noted the great strides made for women by way of her historic campaign. She thanked all the volunteers who helped her to become the first woman who came so close to the presidency, and urged female supporters not to be discouraged by her defeat. She told her supporters to keep in mind that:

You can be so proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the president of the United States.

The big news, however, was her impassioned and unequivocal call for support for her former rival, Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois. The New York senator did not shy from clarity on this point, saying:

The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand, is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States.

Speculation is widespread that there will now be a campaign to gain the 2nd spot on the Democratic ticket, as Obama’s vice-presidential candidate. Obama last week announced a 3-person vice-presidential search and vetting team, and in the interest of deference to and unity with Sen. Clinton, aides to Obama “said they would move slowly in the search, allowing passions from the bruising primary battles to cool.”

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Caroline Kennedy, who is described as having become a close friend and adviser to Barack Obama, since she endorsed him, will be part of the panel helping to select his vice-presidential nominee. The search is expected to be arduous and slow-going, and there may be a good amount of intrigue as to whether Sen. Clinton is part of the ticket or not. A poll last week showed that a majority of Democrats favored a joint Obama-Clinton ticket.

The search may also be highly secretive, as is custom with the VP search and vetting process. On Friday, Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton ducked the press and “disappeared” for several hours, in order to have a private discussion. It was later discovered that their meeting took place at the Spring Valley residence of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). What was discussed was not made public, though a joint statement was issued saying that the meeting was “productive”.

According to the Washington Post’s “The Trail”:

While she could not talk about the details of the Obama-Clinton meeting, Feinstein said she has spoken several times to Clinton this week and understands that she wants to secure certain assurances from Obama that the issues and voters she cares about will have their voices heard, first at the convention in Denver and then in his administration should he win in November.

Clinton’s endorsement, and the mood expressed by all after the meeting, seems to indicate she received the assurances she sought, so she could go to her supporters and confidently urge them to back Obama. The two may have to do some work together to achieve the goal of party unity, which many believe has been damaged by a heated, 17-month primary campaign.

Sen. Clinton’s speech worked up to the refrain: “When we live in an America that [has achieved X], we will live in a stronger America, and that is why we must help elect Barack Obama our president”, which she repeated while covering a number of issues, ranging from renewable energy to universal healthcare to overcoming discrimination or workplace inequality and to serving the health and wellbeing of the troops.

She called the historic primary campaign between the first woman and the first African-American with legitimate chances of winning election to the US presidency “part of our perpetual duty to form a more perfect union”. She added, “There are no acceptable limits and there are no acceptable prejudices in the 21st century, in our country.”

“Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward. Life is too short, time is too precious and the stakes are too high, to dwell on what might have been; we have to work together for what still can be”, promising to “work my heart out to make sure that Barack Obama is our next president.” She thanked her friends and supporters for their work and commitment, finishing her speech by calling the November election an opportunity to “take back our country”.

Recién inaugurada en el Palais de Tokyo, en París, Francia, ‘Superdome’ explora el sufrimiento humano vinculado con situaciones donde el desastre se sigue con transformaciones socio-económicas de escala casi incomprensible. La exposición concentra su atención temática en la situación que encontraron los habitantes de Nueva Orleans, cuando el huracán “Katrina” y su consecuente desintegración cívica los desplazaron hacia un caos tormentoso, su entorno físico devastado, forzados a llevar el peso extraño de ver cómo se borró la geografía económica de su ciudad para ser reemplazada por algo desconocido.

El tema de conversación que se escuchaba con frecuencia en la boca de los invitados en la noche del estreno era si se pudiera averiguar cualquier hilo unificador entre los 5 distintos espacios que formaban parte de la exposición. Un elefante equilibrándose sobre su trompa, un cañón de aire que tira botellas de cerveza a 600 km/hora, una sala llena de los escombros de un desastre, relojes antiguos de péndulo, una exploración del “Lado Oscuro”, un puzzle gris de alfombra que significa o inclusión o exclusión, la familiaridad o la diferencia.

En la elocuente explicación de la literatura acompañante de la exposición, “Paradójica, el Superdome construye un puente entre el mayor entretenimiento y la mayor angustia.” Las 5 exposiciones, de hecho, “vacilan entre el entretenimiento y la desolación, los decibelios y los rezos, la alta tecnología y el caos”, y se consideran expresiones artísticas individuales, unidas sólo en sentido temático, no en contenido ni estilo.

Würsa, el elefante apoyado sobre su trompa “a 18.000 km de altitud”, atrajo admiradores y fascinación. La gente se acercaba y se maravillaba, y el texto acompañante explica que el artista, Daniel Firman, fundó la escultura —la piel la acabó un taxidermista de renombre— sobre la ciencia de la exploración espacial y la física del fenómeno de la “cero-gravedad” que se encuentra a altitudes extremas en órbita alrededor de la Tierra.

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La escultura en sí, ya es un logro de ingeniería, un desafío impactante para cualquiera que no sea el diseñador más paciente, pero su idea básica, más que complejidad o paciencia, parece ser el contraste entre la levedad y el peso. La experiencia desorbitada de enfrentarse con los dos en la naturaleza de un mismo momento: la presión aplastante de enfrentar la fragilidad de lo que valoramos, la inconsecuencia elegante de lo que construimos y que apoya nuestras creencias.

El elefante en el centro de la sala se apoya sobre su trompa, porque increíblemente ha viajado hasta una órbita de 18.000 km sobre la superficie de la Tierra, y en esta circunstancia surrealista e inesperada, encontramos que la levedad y el peso se yuxtaponen, en una desintegración de su equilibrio aceptado. Las fuerzas que intervienen pueden volcar la realidad que conocemos, cambiar las leyes físicas de nuestro entorno dado, socavar la materia de nuestras presunciones metafísicas sobre qué es posible.

Al lado del espacio de Würsa, “Afasia 1″ es una construcción de cilindros de aire comprimido, amontonados y conectados a un cañón de aire, dentro de una jaula de alambre en malla. Una columna vertical de botellas de cerveza vacías, organizadas como si fueran misiles de mortero, esperan para ser disparados a 600 km/hora contra una pared al otro extremo de la jaula, donde se estrellan en un sonido súbito y aterrador. La mitad de la jaula donde se estrellan las botellas tiene una capa interior de plástico protector, para que no corran ningún peligro los visitantes.

La pieza fue diseñada para chocar violentamente a los que estuvieran cerca, con un sonido tremendo, inesperado. Los disparos ocurren a intervalos demasiado espaciados para permitir que se hagan rutinarios. Con cada segundo disparo, de la multitud sale o un suspiro colectivo cortado, el aire saliendo de repente de pulmones asustados, o una manada de gritos y aullidos descontrolados. El efecto queda claro: lo inesperado, en forma de una acción increíblemente violenta y cerradamente apuntada, choca el sistema, el cuerpo queda agredido, el espíritu rehuye.

La sección con la cola más extendida, donde el personal de seguridad sólo permitía que entraran unos cuantos visitantes a la vez, era “Last Manoeuvres in the Dark” —Las últimas maniobras en la oscuridad—, de Fabien Giraud y Raphaël Siboni. La pieza es “un ejército de 300 Darth Vader intentando producir la ‘bomba’ musical insuperable de la oscuridad”. Giraud explicó en su entrevista con PALAIS / Magazine que “Darth Vader es el Mickey Mouse de nuestra generación. Una figura aún más importante que Mickey Mouse.”

Siboni explica que esta importancia no se debe tanto a que sea una representación icónico del Mal, sino al hecho de que el ícono que lleva esa energía es una pista instantánea para las masas, un símbolo universal y reconocible, un “objeto cero” sobre el que se pueden construir mensajes más complejos. Giraud dice que la exposición funciona más “en la lógica de sobrepuja que de denuncia”, intentando enmarcar el asunto de la oscuridad y la malicia de una manera que active “el cerebro reptiliano”, sugiriendo que el contenido de la oscuridad es una experiencia instintiva, mensaje que pueda quitarles el poder a los que la impongan.

A new exhibit at the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, France, examines the human suffering inherent in situations where disaster is followed by economic transformation of nearly incomprehensible proportions. ‘Superdome’ focuses its thematic attention on the situation encountered by citizens of New Orleans, displaced into chaos by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the devastation of their physical environment followed by the strange burden of seeing the economic geography of their city wiped away and replaced by something unknown to them.

The topic of conversation that seemed most present on visitors’ lips upon first seeing the exhibit was whether there was any continuity, any unifying thread to the distinct spaces that formed part of the exhibit. An elephant balanced on its trunk, an air-gun firing empty beer-bottles at a wall at 600 km/hr, a room full of hurricane refuse, antique clocks, an exploration of “the Dark Side”, a grey floor-covering puzzle that can be rearranged to suggest exclusion or inclusion, familiarity or difference.

As the exhibit literature eloquently explains, “Paradoxical, the Superdome builds a bridge between the greatest entertainment and the greatest anguish.” The five exhibits are in fact “balancing between entertainment and desolation, decibels and prayers, high-tech and chaos”, and are considered to be individual artistic expressions, joined only thematically, not in content or style.

Würsa, the elephant balanced on its trunk “at 18,000 km altitude”, was one of the more eye-catching pieces. People gathered and marveled, and the accompanying text explains that the artist, Daniel Firman, based the sculpture (the skin finished by an acclaimed taxidermist) on the science of space exploration and the physics of zero-gravity at extreme altitudes in Earth orbit.

In itself, the sculpture is a feat of engineering, complicated to work out for any but the most patient designer, but the idea conveyed is perhaps not so much patience or complexity, but rather the contrast between lightness and weight. The disorienting experience of engaging both in the nature of one moment: the shoulder-slumping pressures of facing the fragility of what we value, the elegant inconsequence of what we build and believe in.

The elephant in the middle of the room balances on its trunk, because incredibly it has traveled to an orbit at 18,000 km above the surface of the Earth, and in this surreal and unexpected circumstance, we find that levity and weight are thrown out of balance and juxtaposed. Interfering forces can upend reality as we know it, alter the physical laws of our given environment, undermine our metaphysical assumptions about what is possible.

Adjacent to Würsa, in a wire-maille cage, “Afasia 1″ consists of a stack of compressed air cylinders connected to an air-cannon, with a stack of empty beer-bottles, arrayed as if they were mortar shells one atop the other, poised to be fired against a wall at the other end of the cage. The half of the enclosure where the bottles shatter against the wall at 600 km/hr includes a layer of protective plastic, so spectators are not in danger from the projectiles or their fragments.

The piece is designed to shock those near it, as the sound is tremendous, unexpected, and the shots come at intervals too far apart to become routine. With every other round, the crowd will give either a collective gasp, air running out of startled lungs, or a handful of uncontrolled shrieks and howls. The effect is clear: the unexpected, in the form of an incredibly violent yet targeted action, shocks the system, the body is jolted, the spirit recoils.

The section with the longest queue, where security personnel allowed only a few visitors at a time to enter, was “Last Manoeuvres in the Dark”, by Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni, described as “an army of 300 Darth Vaders attempting to produce the out-and-out musical ‘hit’ of darkness”. Giraud told PALAIS / Magazine that “Darth Vader is our generation’s Mickey Mouse. An even more important figure than Mickey Mouse.”

Siboni explains that this importance is not so much the iconic representation of evil, but rather that the icon carrying that energy is an instant cue for the masses, a universal and recognizable symbol, and “object zero” on which more complex messages can be structured. Giraud says the exhibit works “more in terms of outbidding than denouncing”, attempting to reframe the issue of darkness and malice in a way that taps into “the reptilian brain”, explains the content of darkness as an instinctual experience, perhaps robbing those who enforce it of their power.

The piece with the most direct tie to the exhibit’s title is Christoph Büchel’s “Dump”, a massive, sloping, pile of refuse representing the daily activities of the survivors of the Superdome experience in the dark aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The space is a curved room, receding away from the spectators, bending around an interior wall, taking us simultaneously deeper into the (meaning of) chaos and further away from the distant experience of those who lived it.

As the unifying idea is the sense of desperation and upheaval that can so unrepentantly invade the everyday, PALAIS / Magazine featured excerpts from Naomi Klein’s new book, ‘The Shock Doctrine’. The text is especially useful for grappling with the problem of living between chaos and normalcy, seeing one’s reality taken apart not only by tragedy, but by the disturbing manipulations that come in the aftermath.

The shock doctrine refers to an idea of controversial Chicago economist Milton Friedman. Friedman posited that “only a crisis —actual or perceived— produces real change”, suggesting that in the wake of major disasters, when chaos seeps into or replaces the routine of a functioning society, planners must take swift action to impose irreversible change.

Klein speaks of the impact of Friedman’s ideas on Pinochet’s takeover of Chile, in the 1970s, Argentina’s regime of the same period, in which 30,000 people were “disappeared”, and post-Saddam Iraq, which underwent “radical economic shock therapy… mass privatization, complete free trade, a 15 percent flat tax, a dramatically downsized government.” Iraq’s interim trade minister complained that these “experiments” were an unnecessary “shock therapy”.

Klein links the use of military force to the sort of radical economic reconfiguration of a place hit by a major disaster. In her analysis, it is not as surprising as it is to the majority of observers, that post-Katrina New Orleans was so heavily occupied by military forces. She cites mention of “‘clean sheets’ and exciting opportunities” at the time, and alleges some politicians planned to use the “[moment] of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic engineering.”

Klein also takes us to Sri Lanka, after the 2004 Asian tsunami, the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Boris Yeltsin’s 1993 deployment of tanks to the Russian parliament, NATO’s bombing of Belgrade in 1999 and the 1982 Falklands war, where in each case, she notes that the aftermath was an environment permitting massive, rapid privatization, and the dislocation of social and economic standards of the places in question.

The shock doctrine gives us a clue as to how the theme of chaos and darkness as a pressure on the human experience in today’s world, comes to be a unifying theme at Superdome. The last piece is Jonathan Monk’s “Time Between Spaces”, an “exhibit in stereo” shown simultaneously at the Palais de Tokyo and at the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, part of the same complex.

In Superdome, we find “The Inside of Something”, a grey floor-covering jigsaw puzzle with no flat edges, while “The Outside of Something” is found in the half of Monk’s exhibit absent from the Palais de Tokyo. “The Odd Couple” is a pair of pendulum clocks slightly off in their measure of time, meaning that as time progresses their difference is enhanced, though it will eventually meet at some point.

The dual format for Monk’s exhibit is touted as an offering that “outlines the idea that ubiquity would allow us to thwart the linea progression of time”. The exhibit endures, because over the same course of time, it is doubled. Similarly, we find that the human instinct to retrieve what was previously known from the aftermath of a destructive or menacing experience is a basic human effort to reconnect the not always harmonious senses of time and space.