#IranElection & The Day MJ Died & Dr. Tiller

Rest in peace, Michael Jackson.

See "Michael Jackson, Pop Icon, is Dead at 50," at the New York Times.

I actually own The Wiz. Michael Jackson singing "You Can't Win":

"You Can't Win," by Charlie Smalls

You can't win, You can't break even
And you can't get out of the game.
People keep saying, Things are gonna change
But they look just like
You're staying the same

You get in way over your head
And you only got yourself to blame
[Chorus:] You can't win Chile
You can't break even
And you can't get out of the game.

You can't win, The world keeps moving
And you're standing far behind
People keep saying, Things'll get better
(Just to ease your state of mind)
(So you lean back, and you smoke that smoke)
(And you drink your glass of wine)
[Chorus]

You can't win, you can't win no way
If your story stays the same
(You ain't winning) No, no
(But it's nice to see you. I'm awfully glad you came)
(Better cool it 'cause, It ain't about losing)
And the world has got no shame
[Chorus]

You can't win, You can't break even
Ain't the way it's supposed to be
(You'll be spending), No, no, (Your little bit of money)
While someone else rides for free
(Learn your lesson), ooh,
(Refuel your mind, Before some turkey blows out your flame)
[Chorus]

I freaking love this song: "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough"

I remember sitting in the back of the car with my little sister & cousin, singing along to MJ on the radio. He's a tragic figure in many ways, but there's no doubt he was an incredibly talented artist, and he left a profound mark on our culture.

Questlove (of the Roots) has posted some of my favorite tweets so far, he makes really good points. Check out his Twitter page here @questlove
Excerpts below (to read them in order, start at the bottom):

aint never heard a peep about elvis as a 24 yr old dating a 14 yr old priscilla, or his drug problems or anything but him being a treasure. about 1 hour ago from web

im emotional now but i dont want the only american news source i watch talking about the controversial period. about 1 hour ago from web

elvis got revisionist media treatment. i expect the friggin same for my hero. lemme find out yall gonna paint this mofo as a freak cnn. about 1 hour ago from web

but i think its time we let him rest in peace and learn to separate the ART and the ARTIST. --that is the MJ i will forever remember. about 2 hours ago from web

that he will get due justice in all the press memorials and whatnot. i know he was mired in controversy the last decade of his life about 2 hours ago from web

not overwork myself to the point in which i can't even enjoy life anymore. im am devastated over this but we all have memories. i just hope about 3 hours ago from web

I don't think I really believe in the benefit of revisionist memory, at least not in a total historical way. *On a personal level, I think maybe sometimes we all need to do it, in large & small ways, just to get by. But I do believe in the power of empathy & forgiveness, whatever the truth is. (See "Worldview" segments at sidebar, especially Dr. King.) And I do believe that sometimes the art is not the artist. I think? I don't know. It's just sad. Maybe it's just that none of us are simple, and that includes the giants among us.

*

And another thing. I know it's inexcusable that I'm posting about MJ, but I haven't posted about what's going on in Iran yet. So I hope you'll forgive me. I've been sucked into the twittersphere, on that front. (See #IranElection.) The US media was hardly covering it at first, it seems. Twitter pushed the story. (See #CNNFail.)

Rest in peace, Neda Agha-Soltan. She was 26, just a tiny bit older than me, and she died just for standing up for her right to have her vote counted. She went to a protest, and she was shot to death. I've gone to lots of social & political gatherings, but I've always had this luxury, which Neda didn't have: I've never had to fear for my life. Whether it was a marriage equality rally, an Obama phone bank, a pro-choice meeting, or just voting, I never had to go knowing that it was not only possible, but likely that I'd be hurt. Neda Agha-Soltan knew the danger, her friends & family warned her, but she went anyway. Now her face has become the face of the struggle in Iran. Let's all remember her, and all the others around the world who have died and are dying in the name of justice.

Photo from the LA Times article "Family, friends mourn Neda, Iranian woman who died on video"

May truth & justice prevail in Iran, may peaceful protest win out. We're all connected, and I don't mean that just in some vague spiritual way. I mean that injustice anywhere echoes, and when people realize that & come together, amazing things can happen. See "Social Networks Spread Defiance Online," an article at the New York Times. (Also see "Worldview" segments at sidebar, especially ubuntu.)

*

And that reminds me: Rest in peace, Dr. George Tiller.
See "Dr. Tiller's Important Job," opinion piece at the New York Times.

Photo from http://iamdrtiller.com/

I just want to say that I did want to post about Dr. Tiller earlier. But honestly, I felt kind of scared. I guess I feel guilty for letting that stop me.

Where Is the Justice for Troy Davis?

From Amnesty International:

Troy Davis was convicted of murdering a Georgia police officer in 1991. Nearly two decades later, Davis remains on death row – even though the case against him has fallen apart. Davis’ conviction was not based on any physical evidence, and the murder weapon was never found. Since his trial, seven of the nine eyewitnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony, and one of the remaining witnesses has been implicated by nine others as the actual murderer.

BREAKING NEWS: On April 16, by a 2-1 vote, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Troy Davis' petition.

The Court extended Davis' stay of execution for 30 days to give him a chance to file a habeas corpus petition with the US Supreme Court.

Please, help demand clemency for Troy Davis.

I know it's been kind of a bummer around here lately---but sometimes it's just overwhelming, all the sadness out there. We can help, and at the very least, we can care.

Bus Ride

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inefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswineflu
swinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswine
fluswinefluswinefluswinefluswinefluswineflu---Oh god, is she coughing?

"You Are Being Lied to About Pirates," by Johann Hari

WTF---NUCLEAR WASTE?!

How did I not know about this? Why aren't more people talking about this?

I'm really glad to see there are people out there taking a multi-angled view of this pirate mess. There's so much human suffering involved, and there's more than one place to lay the blame.

(I know, I know---this place is completely scattered. But please just go read this article over at the Huffington Post.)

"You Are Being Lied to About Pirates," by Johann Hari

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates

Johann Hari, Columnist, London Independent

Posted April 13, 2009 | 10:05 AM (EST)

[...] The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia's criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?

It's just so shocking (and depressing) that an issue of this magnitude could fly under the radar for so long. I can't believe I'm just hearing about this now, especially since I'm subscribed to an email news search on keyword "Somalia."

Did I mention I'm half Somali? My father is Somali, (born and raised in Mogadishu), and my mother is Armenian American.

I mean, it's pretty devastating. I know that the mainstream US media is significantly less than dependable, especially regarding world and minority issues, but wow...

Apparently they're planning to try the surviving pirate as an adult, even though he may be as young as fifteen? See blog post by Kalash at kabobfest.com.

Sigh.

At least South Park is paying attention, see the episode "Fatbeard":