Stephen King has written an essay, Guns, in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. As master of the horror genre, King has special insight into our deepest psychological fears and the lethal ways they can combust especially in adolescence. The piece deals in part with his early novel Rage, which he had pulled after it was implicated in several shootings,
My book did not break or turn them into killers; they found something in my book that spoke to them because they were already broken. Yet I did see Rage as a possible accelerant, which is why I pulled it from sale. You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it.
King asks gun-owners to similarly accept responsibility and work for sensible gun restrictions. A provocative read for those who want to wrestle with First and Second Amendment dilemmas! Download the essay here.You can also learn more about the essay from Brain Pickings.
I'm a bit disappointed that the film version of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist(releasing next spring) hasn't been getting better buzz, but it I suspect it will be must-see for our Loyal Readers regardless. But something I am really excited about is his new book, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia also coming out next year. Read this great short story, “The Third-Born”, taken from the novel in The New Yorker. Then follow up with their Q. & A.
I can’t shake the idea that a novel is like a dance, with two people dancing, writer and reader, and it’s a bit strange to pretend I’m doing it by myself. This time around, after a couple of failed drafts, I gave in to the second person completely, and I found it pretty liberating as a form: you can move from a hyper-intimate first-person-like perspective to a cosmically removed third-person-like one very easily. It seems to invite that kind of riffing.
As reported in the New York Daily News, Hamid spoke recently with author Jay McInerney about writing the book,
Hamid described how he had felt he needed to exorcise a self-censorship in the writing of the upcoming “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia,” — which takes the form of a self-help book and charts a boy’s rise from rural urchin to corporate tycoon — due to a fear of angering Pakistani authorities. McInerney asked: “Do you ever have a tiny Salman Rushdie on your shoulder telling you ‘be careful’?”
“In a way it’s the American writers who are atypical,” said Hamid, “in most of the world, there’s a whole bunch of stuff you have to be careful about, and so yeah, there are many constraints on speech in Pakistan. The flipside of that is if someone will kill you for saying something, it means what you’re saying matters...even slightly pushing the boundary feels worthwhile...I have not received any kind of threat” he added “but I’m careful.”
In other Mohsin Hamid news, Moth Smoke(which we also enjoyed) is being set to film as well. And, add him to the list of our favorite authors who love the hobbits-- see evidence here and in this reflection on Hamid's childhood journey from culture to culture and how it fed his interest in language and imaginary lands.
Although we never read Ray Bradbury in our group, I thought his passing deserved some acknowledgement here. His most famous book, Fahrenheit 451 captures so perfectly our commitment to the right to freedom of expression and concern for censorship and banned authors. Plus, Bradbury's passion for books and libraries is a great lead-in to next month's book, Running the Books the memoir of "accidental" prison librarian, Avi Steinberg. The dramatic video above is from a recent "flash theater" reading of Fahrenheit 451 that was produced at the West Hollywood library in conjunction with the National Enowment for the Arts The Big Read. NEA has produced the video below to enhance discussions of the book and allow us all to learn from Ray's passion for books and libraries (and admire his large, fluffy cat!). Love a library today for Ray.
And Bradbury's stories translate so well across cultures. At least one of our authors, Junot Diaz, was a great admirer of Bradbury and wrote this appreciation for the New Yorker,
When I was young, Bradbury was my man. I followed him to Mars, to the
veldt, to the future, to the past, to the heart of America, I rode out
with him on the Pequod, and on rockets.
I also highly recommend Tanjil Rashid's consideration of Bradbury's Middle Eastern inspirations and his on-going relevance to the cultural life of that region,
When writing Fahrenheit 451, he was in fact thinking of the Middle East all along:
“I wasn’t thinking about McCarthy so much as I was thinking of the
library of Alexandria 5,000 years [sic] before.” In the Egypt I inhabit
“5,000 years” later, voters are currently faced with a choice between
Islamist repression or repression of Islamism, two authoritarian
candidates with little appreciation of freedom of expression. No one has
advocated book-burnings, but book-bannings — a less gruesome cousin —
remain the order of the day, many politicians even calling for the
infliction of that fate on Egypt’s own greatest novelist, Naguib Mahfouz. No wonder that a few years ago a cultural exchange promoted by the National Endowment for the Arts picked Fahrenheit 451as the focus of reading groups in Cairo and, unmissably, Alexandria.
Gao Zhisheng, the Chinese dissident whose book, A China More Just, we will be reading in July has won the 2011 Bindmans Law and Campaigning Award, one of several Freedom of Expression Awards made by the Index on Censorship (all of the nominees and awardees look impressive). Gao will not be able to accept this award in person, because, after a brief reemergence from government detention a year ago this month, he has "disappeared" and is most likely back in Chinese police custody. Of course, we here are Rights Readers are very pleased for any recognition that keeps Gao in the news and reminds the Chinese government that he is far from forgotten. Visit this page to take action on his case. Here is a taped segment of Gao's wife accepting the award on his behalf:
This month we read The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson. Wilkinson writes regularly for the New Yorker and you can check out some of his other pieces, including his most recent about rhythm and blues singer Bettye LaVette, here. If you'd like to learn a little about his background, you can listen to this interview.
As for Pete Seeger, here's a vintage (1984) Fresh Airinterview. And then just last August, NPR's Talk of the Nation had Pete on to discuss his latest Grammy-nominated album, Tomorrow's Children made with children from his home near Beacon, New York and featuring new songs on environmental themes. After a bit of a slow start the interview really kicks in when Pete can't resist breaking into song and gives a nod to Rights Readers favorite Wangari Maathai ("There should be a song about her.") The Huffington Post also has an interview,
MR: And might you have any advice to new artists? PS: Sing in front of as many different kinds of people as you can. Old folks, middle age folks, kids, infants, and sing for people you disagree with too. Learning how to communicate with people we disagree with is something the whole world has to learn.
"In 1910," he said, "John Phillip Sousa wrote, 'What will happen to the American voice, now that the phonograph has been invented?' And it's true—parents don't sing lullabies to their children anymore, they'll put them in front of the TV to fall asleep. Men used to sing together in bars all around the country—now there's a TV or loud music there instead."
We've previously mentioned the PBS documentary The Power of Song (view the trailer here) and the Smithsonian-Folkways podcasts. Take note also that the PBS site has bonus interviews and a handy timeline, while the Folkways Seeger profile also comes with a slideshow and video and audio features. And please do check out the Beacon Sloop Club and the Clearwater. Have you found yourself humming along while reading? Ready to burst into song? Look to Sing Out! for inspiration.
The episode concerning the censorship of Pete's appearance on the Smothers Brothers is described in fascinating detail by David Bianculli in Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour". He also tells the story in this Fresh Air interview (transcript). Here is the performance of the American War Songs Medley from the show and the censored clip of "Waist Deep In The Big Muddy". I like this clip of "Wimoweh" and "Where have all the Flowers Gone?" better though, because no Pete Seeger performance is complete without the audience reaction (and who doesn't love Tommy Smothers?).
The episode of Rainbow Quest featuring Roscoe Holcomb mentioned in the book is excerpted here. There are just too many good Seeger YouTube clips to share in one post so we promise to think of more excuses to post them in the future. By popular request though, here is Pete and Friends performance of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" at the Obama inauguration concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Check out this video from the kids at Clearwater who have added some new verses to "This Land is Your Land."
This month we are reading The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson. We will have more Seeger resources to explore in an upcoming post, but among other themes, the book explores Seeger's experiences as a blacklisted musician in the 1950s and with censorship of his performance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the 1960s. Freemuse, the independent international organization which advocates freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide, awarded Seeger their Freemuse Award in 2009 for his commitment to musicians' freedom of expression. You can hear his grandson's acceptance speech here. This year, Freemuse has an album out (for the music lover on your holiday gift list?) called Listen to the Banned, a collection of songs from artists around the world who have faced censorship or had their music banned. Artists from Afghanistan to Zimbawe are featured and you can learn more about their music and struggles to be heard at the website for the project. Here's a glimpse of one of them, Mahsa Vahdat of Iran, the Freemuse Award Winner for 2010. Women in Iran can practice various musical forms but cannot sing in public for mixed audiences. They can participate in women-only concerts, but Mahsa Vahdat refuses to perform for women only. Here she is explaining her commitment to freedom of musical expression:
In the wake of the sentencing of two American journalists to hard labor in North Korea, the NYT discusses sources of information regarding life in North Korea which of course includes Kang Chol-hwan's (The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag). Also noted is this video of the camp where Kang lived. Take action for Laura Ling and Euna Lee here.
Morrison, looking regal and speaking in a warm, languid voice, talked about how she had proudly framed and hung in a bathroom a letter that said that “Song of Solomon” could not be distributed among Texas inmates because “it might stir inmates to riot.” She let that sink in for a few seconds. “I thought, ‘what a powerful book.’ ”
Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) has sanctioned a reworking of some of her material to promote Iranian democracy. The Guardianquotes the creators of the mash-up,
"Her cartoon are about her life but to my generation of Iranians (at least in the West) they have become more than that, they have become iconic. The fact that images from 30 years ago can tell a story about what is happening now makes them all the more powerful.
"Unlike her original work, Persepolis 2.0 is filled with flaws and inaccuracies, but the bottom line is that it has helped spark hundreds of conversations and that's more than we could have expected."
Californians! Read Sister Helen Prejean's (Dead Man Walking) no-holds-barred letter to the Department of Corrections regarding revisions to California's lethal injection protoccol.
Were you aware of Amnesty International's contributions to the history of comedy? Fun interview with Monty Python vets from WNYC here.
Lately I've accumulated a backlog of links which I should have blogged in a timely fashion so that you would have learned that Michael Ignatieff (Rights Readers selection Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond) is now the leader of Canada's Liberal Party -- and just now has taken the opportunity of his meeting with President Obama to discuss the case of Guantanamo juvenile detainee Omar Khadr.
Fortunately, this American Scholararticle about Chinese censorship by Ha Jin (Ocean of Words Army Stories and The Crazed) is the sort of thing that doesn't date that fast and a little item in my local paper-- "Last month a bipartisan group of six members of Congress nominated Greg Mortenson [Three Cups of Tea] for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize"-- might still make a you-heard-it-here-first list.
Phew! That felt good! Perhaps we'll do that again sometime, sooner rather than later.
I've recently discovered that the Amnesty - UK website has a feature encouraging activists to blog about their human rights campaigning activities. Sample posts include a description of the recent conference on internet censorship, some reportage on the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica, much interest in the plight of Russian journalists, an account of a mission to Chad, and the occasional reference to things literary. It's fun and inspiring to peek into what other AI groups are up to. Get the overview here. And yeah, I was momentarily thrilled to see the words "Amnesty Reading Group" - thinking that perhaps Rights Readers had a British counterpart before I realized this referred to the location, not the activity.
More fuel for my iPod. Yesterday Amnesty-UK sponsored a webcast of a conference on the Irrepressible.info campaign on internet censorship and one can now view the archived version online. Interviews relating to the campaign can also be subscribed to as podcasts via iTunes (and perhaps the webcast will show up there soon as well). Here's a written account of the conference. Of special note as regards our ongoing concern for journalist and Amnesty prisoner of conscience Shi Tao, attorneys representing Shi Tao's wife discuss her lawsuit against Yahoo! for disclosing her husband's identity, leading to a ten year prison sentence. On a related note, check out these maps of internet filtering from the Open Net Initiative.
March 3 has been designated "Music Freedom Day" by Freemuse the independent international organization advocating freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide. Take a few minutes to explore their site. Or browse a selection of articles, interviews and videos on the subject at Mondomix. CBC radio has also produced a series of programs under the heading Censor This! Exploring issues around Censorship including an hour-long program tonight (which I hope will be accessibly archived on their site soon:
This hour long program takes a sonic tour around the world from the street bazaars of Istanbul to the townships of South Africa. From the conflict zones of Beirut and Rwanda to the North American popular music of the 20th century. Using the strength of the music and powerful narratives the documentary exploes the duality which allows music to be at once frightening and seductive to those in power positions.
On another music-related note, I found this post this post from Boing Boing about ethnomusicologists against the use of music for torture to be fascinating.
We here at Rights Readers are most eager to welcome all to the Year of the Pig! Most especially because your Esteemed Reader Leader is a little Porker herself. And here's a tiny bit of good news for the new year: Google founders are having second thoughts about the whole Chinese internet censorship deal. Hey, its a first step. Now take action, guys!
Meanwhile on the grimly serious side, we included an action in this month's newsletter on a group of approximately 70 unarmed Tibetans who were trying to flee China were shot at by the Chinese border control troops. The shooting was witnessed by an international group of mountaineers who videotaped one person, a 17 year old nun Kelsang Namtso, die at the scene and two others fall. At least 25 members of the group, 10 of whom were children, were taken into custody while the rest managed to escape to Nepal. Here's the video:
Amnesty International USA's Western Region has recently adopted Chinese prisoner of conscience Shi Tao as its "Special Focus" case, so its a good time to review with a few links. AI provides an online action and additional background on the writer's ten year sentence for "illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities" when he emailed a US-based website, sharing the details of an internal government directive barring media reports that could fuel unrest during the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen. Yahoo! provided information to the government for his prosecution. Human Rights in China, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Guardian also have profiles of Shi Tao that include links to the poet and journalist's writings. More on Amnesty's campaign against internet censorhip in China here.
For Rights Readers, Banned Books Week has a little twist-- its more like Banned Writers Week. Please check here for profiles and downloadable actions to take on behalf of jailed journalists, bloggers, poets, editors and publishers. As a bonus, the action for Shi Tao (a case we've touched on before) can also be done electronically. For inspiration, read (or watch on video) journalist and former prisoner of conscience Akbar Ganji's discussion of censorship in Iran.
Maureen Freely, Orhan Pamuk's (Snow) translator writes in the New York Times about another Turkish author facing trial,
In [Elif Shafak's] sixth and most recent novel, “The Bastard of Istanbul,” which is already a best seller in Turkey and will be published in the United States by Viking next year, one character declares: “My father is Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, my great-uncle is Dikran Stamboulian, his father is Varvant Istanboluian, my name is Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian, all my family tree has been Something Somethingian, and I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives in the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915, but I myself have been brainwashed to deny the genocide because I was raised by some Turk named Mustapha!” These are strong words in a country whose official historians maintain that the Armenian genocide at the hands of Turks is itself a fiction... In September, she spoke at a conference at Bilgi University in Istanbul — the first Turkish conference ever to challenge the official line on the Ottoman Armenians — and though she went on to state her own position clearly and unequivocally in several newspapers, the censors left her alone. But early last month, Shafak learned that she was to be prosecuted for, among other things, allowing a character of partly Armenian heritage in “The Bastard of Istanbul” to utter the forbidden G-word. Her trial is scheduled for Sept. 21.
Hey that's just in time for Banned Book Week! PEN urges you to take action.
bases her music on the traditional sounds of Eritrea's Kunama ethnic group, and her songs are a reflection of her nation's struggle for independence.
Wow! Great stuff from the first a capella sample to the more syncopated grooves! I want this album!
Now for the soundtrack that isn't... One of our Esteemed Readers recalled a previous Eritrean Prisoner of Conscience case that we had taken action on last year and I went sleuthing around to find the details. The case concerns the Christian singer, Helen Berhane, who has been detained incommunicado since May 13, 2004. She is one of many members of banned evangelical churches who have been detained without charge or trial on account of their religious beliefs. This Guardian article also provides some detail on fellow muscians campaigning on her behalf and this article from Freemuse adds a bit more on the shutting down of two music stores.
By the way, I was please to discover Freemuse, an independent international organization advocating freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide. Check it out!
I am pleased that my wish for greater coordination between Amnesty International - UK's "Irrepressible Info" campaign and Amnesty - USA's work on corporate responsibility and censorship in China has come true! AIUSA has details on this page as well as AIUSA's latest report on the issue, Undermining Freedom of Expression in China. I just wanted to point to an additional resource: Human Rights in China's latest issue of China Rights Forum is dedicated to the issue of technology and human rights.
Here is Amnesty International's official response to the the Guantanamo suicides and while most of my Loyal Readers signed the petition to close Guantanamo ages ago, this is the kind of action that bears repeating. For more AI perspective, Eric Sears, Director of Amnesty International USA's Denounce Torture Initiative, discussed Guantanamo on KPCC's Airtalk yesterday.
This seems as good a time as any to point out that as part of Torture Awareness Month, Amnesty is partnering with the creators of the film The Road to Guantanamo opening later this month:
The Road to Guantanamo is the terrifying first-hand account of three British citizens who were held for more than two years without charges in the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Known as the “Tipton Three,” in reference to their home town near Birmingham, the three were eventually returned to Britain and released—still having had no formal charges ever made against them at any time during their ordeal. The film has already engendered significant controversy due to its critical stance toward the American and British governments. Additional controversy was generated because of the cast members' detainment by British immigration authorities upon their return from the film's premiere at the Berlin film festival.
Part documentary, part dramatization, the film chronicles the sequence of events that led from the trio setting out from Tipton in the British Midlands for a wedding in Pakistan, to their crossing the Afghanistan border just as the U.S. began its bombing campaign, to their eventual capture by the Northern Alliance and their imprisonment in Camp X-Ray and later at Camp Delta in Guantanamo.
One of the "Tipton Three" was interviewed this week on NPR for his reaction to the suicides, and don't miss the article on the film's website about the censoring of the movie poster (uncensored version above) by the Motion Picture Association of America,
Thus, the MPAA's decision puts it at odds with the U.S. government, which has repeatedly defended techniques, including hooding prisoners, as not legally torture, and not inconsistent with the basic American values the MPAA tries to uphold. In a 2003 Department of Defense report, hooding was given a green light, as not inconsistent with the United States' obligations under international conventions or U.S. law. The report also approve prolonged standing, though stipulated that it "should never make the detainee exhausted to the point of weakness or collapse." And that it not be "enforced by physical restraints."
Which means that the MPAA required a change in the image that removed something not deemed torture (hooding) and focused the image on the bound hands and extended arms that clearly depicts someone forced to stand (or worse, hang) under restraint to the point of collapse, which might well be torture.
Kirby Dick, director of "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," a new film devoted to the MPAA and its ratings system, said that's not the only irony in the MPAA's decision. He compares the MPAA's secrecy to the secrecy that has governed so much of what has happened at the prison in Guantanamo and other U.S. facilities where suspects in the war on terror have been held.
"It's also interesting that the image is of someone whose vision is being blocked -- and that's the image that they're blocking," Dick said. "When you get into censorship, the irony never stops."
Just got back from voting in today's primary election and thought my friendly pollworkers were lonely. Too lonely. This post is coming a bit late in the day to boost the turnout, but as I walked back home I thought maybe I should get back to blogging about people who want to vote but can't.
Or how about: want to read the internet and can't. I've added a new feature to the sidebar from Irrespressible.info, a project of Amnesty International - UK which highlights text from web pages that are banned somewhere in the world. Click on the feature to find out more about the excerpt and other action opportunities. These excerpts come from a database of material compiled by the OpenNet Initiative. Check out their cool interactive map on the state of internet censorship worldwide. Too bad the site isn't more explicitly linked to Amnesty-USA's campaign to pressure Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to be responsible corporate citizens regarding censorship in China via shareholder activism and other actions. (So I'm just filling that gap by making the connection for you!)
Stephen King has written an essay, Guns, in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. As master of the horror genre, King has special insight into our deepest psychological fears and the lethal ways they can combust especially in adolescence. The piece deals in part with his early novel Rage, which he had pulled after it was implicated in several shootings,
Gao Zhisheng
, we will be reading in July 
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