Category Archives: politics

Read: Morrissey Gives It to Carnivores Loud and Clear in New Essay

Today at the Morrissey fan site True To You the former frontman for The Smiths has posted an intense essay attacking carnivores.

Here’s some of it:

The world won’t listen
18 November 2013

The world won’t listen

I am not ashamed to admit that newspaper photographs in recent days of American TV presenter Melissa Bachman laughing as she stands over a majestic lion that had been stalked and shot dead by Bachman herself left me tearful. Although I have previously felt enraged by the asininity of U.S. congressman Paul Ryan, and political fluffhead Sarah Palin – both of whom also kill beings for fun, there is something especially lamentable about the Bachman smile of pride as the lion – a symbol of strength, heraldry and natural beauty, lies lifeless in answer to Bachman’s need for temporary amusement. The world struggles to protect the rhino and the elephant – both being shot out of existence, yet Bachman joins the murderous insanity of destruction without any fear of arrest. This comes in the same week that Princess Anne condones horsemeat consumption – since she is evidently not content with eating pigs, sheep, cows, birds and fish. Although her slackwitted view is reported with mild surprise by the British media, there is no outrage since the crassness and international duncery of the British so-called ‘royal family’ remains the great unsaid in British print. It is spoken of, of course, but it is not allowed to go further than that. Why does Anne approve of slaughter of any kind? Has she ever been inside an abattoir? Does she actually know what she’s talking about? Similarly, on October 5, the Daily Mail newspaper gave us all an “amusing” report of thickwit Pippa Middleton laughing as she stood over 50 birds shot dead by her friends and herself after a “busy day’s shooting”. We are reminded by the Daily Mail that Middleton is a ‘socialite’, which tells us that she is privileged and can more-or-less kill whatever she likes – and, therefore she does. The sick face of modern Britain, Pippa Middleton will kill deer, boar, birds – any animal struggling to live, or that gets in her socialite way. This is because her sister is, of course, Kate, who herself became ‘royal’ simply by answering the telephone at the right time, and this association allows Pippa’s kill, kill, kill mentality to be smilingly endorsed by the British print media, to which only the mentally deficient could join in with the laughter. The right to kill animals is endorsed by Prime Minister David Cameron who shoots stag whenever he feels a bit bored. In the Queen’s Honors List, awards have been bestowed upon musicians Bryan Ferry and PJ Harvey – both of whom allegedly support fox-hunting. There is not one single instance when an animal protectionist has found themselves knighted or applauded by the Queen. That animals are an essential part of our planet (that they are, in fact, the planet) and must be protected, is a shatterbrained concept to the British ‘royals’. Historically, we all remember Prince William proudly killing the baby deer, Prince Harry bravely giving the thumbs-up as he pointlessly ended the life of a water-buffalo, the Queen loading her shotgun in readiness to shoot birds out of the sky. How terribly regal.

To read more, head to True To You.

Thanks Consequence of Sound!

Watch: Pearl Jam, St. Vincent’s Annie Clark & Carrie Brownstein Cover Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World”

Anthemic version of the already anthemic “Rockin’ in the Free World” performed last night in Dallas during Pearl Jam’s concert. Unfortunately the song cuts off after two and a half minutes. Damn.

Here’s a version from Toronto in 2011 with Neil Young joining Pearl Jam about four minutes into the song.

And Pearl Jam and Sleater-Kinney rockin’ it from Mexico City, Mexico, Palacio de los Deportes, July 19, 2003.

Rockers & Animal Rights Dept.: Iggy & Joan Jett Take a Stand, Jack White Blows It

Iggy wants the wolves to live.

Joan Jett has been booted off South Dakota’s float for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade after ranchers complained that the rock ‘n’ roller is a vegetarian, and supports People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

“I’ve decided to switch from South Dakota to another float because people’s political agendas were getting in the way of what should be a purely entertainment driven event,” Jett said in a statement released Friday. “I will remain focused on entertaining the millions of people watching, who will be celebrating a great American tradition.”

South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association President Cory Eich told Associated Press on Friday that it was a mistake to select Jett.

“Coming from such a rural state where livestock is such a part of our life, we didn’t think it was appropriate,” Eich told AP.

Meanwhile Iggy Pop who has endorsed the “Keep Michigan Wolves Protected” campaign to stop the trophy hunting of wolves and restore the right of Michigan voters to have a say over wildlife policy, according to The Humane Society of the United States. Michigan’s first wolf hunt in decades began yesterday.

In a letter to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, dated Nov. 12, 2013, Pop write: “As a Michigan native and someone who has cared about animals, both wild and domestic, for as long as I can remember, I was dismayed…that a bill you signed last May (S.B. 288/P.A. 21) gave Michigan’s Natural Resources Commission the authority to decide which animals can be hunted…which resulted in the first authorized wolf hunt since wolves underwent state protection in 1965.”

“To further compound the issue Mlive.com just unveiled several investigative reports that reveal the state used ‘half-truths’ and ‘falsehoods’ to support authorizing a hunting season on wolves in Michigan. The reports make clear that the decision to approve wolf hunting was based on fraudulent information and not sound science,” the letter continued.

“I am asking all of my fans in Michigan to sign up and help gather signatures to reverse this decision and protect the wolf from future hunts. The senseless killing of these majestic animals for sport is a disappointment to the people of Michigan and a stain on its Government.”

Iggy called on Gov. Snyder to “do the right thing by staying the hunt and allowing the people’s voice to be heard” on the issue.

And then there’s Jack White. The White Stripes frontman thinks he’s doing poor folks a favor by launching “The Great Third Man Turkey Drive” this month.

He’s not.

Rather than promote the murder of turkey’s and the feeding of dead flesh to poor people, White could offer delicious plant-based whole food meals that are healthy, life-affirming and don’t contribute to climate change, as the raising of animals for foods does.

Remarkable Letters Between Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Slavoj Žižek. Photos via The Guardian.

Today The Guardian published a fascinating exchange of letters that took place from January 2013 to mid-July 2013 between imprisoned Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek.

Žižek begins the exchange:

Dear Nadezhda,

I hope you have been able to organise your life in prison around small rituals that make it tolerable, and that you have time to read. Here are my thoughts on your predicament.

John Jay Chapman, an American political essayist, wrote this about radicals in 1900: “They are really always saying the same thing. They don’t change; everybody else changes. They are accused of the most incompatible crimes, of egoism and a mania for power, indifference to the fate of their cause, fanaticism, triviality, lack of humour, buffoonery and irreverence. But they sound a certain note. Hence the great practical power of persistent radicals. To all appearance, nobody follows them, yet everyone believes them. They hold a tuning-fork and sound A, and everybody knows it really is A, though the time-honoured pitch is G flat.” Isn’t this a good description of the effect of Pussy Riot performances? In spite of all accusations, you sound a certain note. It may appear that people do not follow you, but secretly, they believe you, they know you are telling the truth, or, even more, you are standing for truth.

In her response Tolokonnikova writes:

We are the rebels asking for the storm, and believing that truth is only to be found in an endless search. If the “World Spirit” touches you, do not expect that it will be painless.

Laurie Anderson sang: “Only an expert can deal with the problem.” It would have been nice if Laurie and I could cut these experts down to size and take care of our own problems. Because expert status by no means grants access to the kingdom of absolute truth.

Two years of prison for Pussy Riot is our tribute to a destiny that gave us sharp ears, allowing us to sound the note A when everyone else is used to hearing G flat.

At the right moment, there will always come a miracle in the lives of those who childishly believe in the triumph of truth over lies, of mutual assistance, of those who live according to the economics of the gift.

Nadia

Read all of the letters at The Guardian.

Bob Dylan Awarded France’s Legion d’honneur

Dylan and French culture minister Aurélie Filippetti. Photo via The Guardian.

On Wednesday France’s culture minister Aurélie Filippetti gave Bob Dylan France’s highest honor, awarding him the Legion d’honneur. According to the New York Times: “Mr. Dylan, 72, spoke briefly after the presentation, saying that he was ‘proud and grateful’ to have received it.

Dylan has quite a collection of awards. According to the New York Times: Dylan was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in May, and has “a long list of honors that includes the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2012), the National Medal of Arts (2009), a Pulitzer Prize special citation (2008), the Prince of Asturias Award from Spain (2007) and so on, back to the Tom Paine Award in 1963. He has been honored by France before: in 1990, he was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.”

For more including some controversy:

Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is in Siberian Hospital, Not Penal Colony

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is at a hospital in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk, her husband told Rolling Stone today.

After more than three weeks of no contact, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova finally spoke to his wife who is in Krasnoyarsk’s Tuberculosis Hospital No. 1. Tolokonnikova does not have tuberculosis.

“She was in good condition. She said her conditions were OK,” Verzilov told Rolling Stone. “She’s not sick right now, she’s just having procedures and tests related to the hunger strike.”

Tolokonnikova told her husband that during the past three-plus weeks that she’s been out of sight, she wasn kept from having contact with the outside world.

“She said conditions and treatment were OK,” Verzilov said, “but that the one thing was she was in very strict isolation.”

Russian authorities have not revealed where Tolokonnikova will serve the remainder of her sentence, although Verzilov told Rolling Stone he had been told that she might remain at the hospital.

Head to Rolling Stone for more.

Beautiful Tribute to Lou Reed In the New York Times

Photo by Jean Baptiste Mondino.
Photo by Jean Baptiste Mondino.

In today’s New York Times, book critic Michiko Kakutani offers a beautiful tribute to Lou Reed. It is fitting that Lou Reed, the New York outsider who documented the outsiders of New York, should now be celebrated in the ultimate New York establishment media, the New York Times.

About the New York that Reed wrote and sang about in song for close to 50 years, Kakutani writes, it was “as distinctive as Chandler’s Los Angeles or Baudelaire’s Paris.”

Kakutani continues:

Mr. Reed was a pioneer on rock’s frontier with the avant-garde, translating lessons he learned at Andy Warhol’s Factory, and the disruptive innovations of the Beat writers — Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Hubert Selby Jr. (“Last Exit to Brooklyn”) — to the realm of popular music. He not only embraced their adversarial stance toward society and transgressive subject matter (in songs like “Street Hassle” and “Heroin”) but also developed his own version of their raw, vernacular language, while adding a physical third dimension with guitars and drums. His early songs for the Velvet Underground — delivered in his intimate, conversational sing-speak — still sound so astonishingly inventive and new that it’s hard to remember they were written nearly half a century ago.

If Mr. Reed provided a literary bridge to the Beats (and through them, back to the Modernists, and the French “decadents” Rimbaud and Verlaine, and even Poe, the subject of his 2003 project “The Raven”), he also created a bridge forward to punk and to glam, indie, new wave and noise rock. He would become a formative influence on musicians like Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Roxy Music, R.E.M., the Sex Pistols, Sonic Youth, the Strokes, Pixies, and Antony and the Johnsons. As his friend the artist Clifford Ross observed, “Lou was the great transmitter” — of ideas, language and innovation.

Read the whole essay at the New York Times.

Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova Moved To Siberian Prison

pussy-riot

Russian officials have revealed the location of imprisoned Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in a statement released Tuesday by Russia’s human rights ombudsmen Vladimir Lukin.

The statement said Tolokonnikova will be transferred to a prison colony in the Siberian province of Krasnoyarsk. She is already there.

“Tolokonnikova has arrived in the Krasnoyarsk region, where she will be serving a part of her term,” the Interfax news agency quoted Lukin as saying. “I have been told that, according to her wishes, she has been placed [in the penal colony’s] medical ward.”

As previously reported, Tolokonnikova’s husband Peter Verzilov told Rolling Stone on November 6 that he believed his wife was headed for Penal Colony 50, near the town of Nizhny Ingash, which is 190 miles from the city of Krasnoyarsk. This prison is in a much more remote location than Penal Colony No 14 in Mordovia, where Tolokonnikova was previously held. It is about 2600 miles from Moscow. Prison management havem thus far, not confirmed that Tolokonnikova is in Penal Colony No. 50.

Lukin said that Tolokonnikova has ended her prison strike, and that new prisoners are placed in quarantine for 10 days on arrival and she will be able to see her husband and lawyers within the week.

It has been more than three weeks since Tolokonnikova’s family or lawyers have been in contact with her.