Guevara Convention Sound Out

Dave Watts from Fun^Da^Mental had a great idea a few months ago that is now seriously taking shape. It links up with stuff I am into re Che, but takes it to another level, as they say. Dave has a blogspot site now at Earconditioning - which you will agree is another in a long line of great FDM semantic reworkings (remember the phrase 'Global Sweatbox'?). Dave writes:

"...The past week also brought communication with John Hutnyk. He´s [not - jh] a professor at Goldsmith´s University, and participated in one of the talks at the Clandestino Festival in Gothenborg where Aki (yes, the notorious terrorist-apologist Aki Nawaz) and I dropped a Fun´da´Mental DJ set a few years ago. John has twice invited me to talk with his students about the politics and presentation of Fun-da-mental videos. Coming back to last week, John and I were discussing this idea of a compilation that has been sitting in my brain for the last couple years. This year is the 40th anniversary of the death of Ernesto ´Che´ Guevara, and I wanted to compile an album of contemporary artists who have felt touched by revolutionary spirit, thought, actions, etc. The idea is not for all the music to focus on ´Che´ himself, but for expression of whatever the contributing artists feel regarding being subject to living on their knees for the sake of ´The Man´or ´System´. John has came up with a phrase which I immediately responded, “That should be the title!” So, we are going with “The Guevara Convention”.

Emails have been sent out to collegues, friends, associates etc. and so far the response has been good…we have Dj/Rupture, Filestine, Coldcut, Fermin Murguza, Fun-da-mental, Las Ratas, DJ Klandestino, Dr. Das, Shaheen (former Prophets of da City producer and vocalist) and IR, saying ´yeah´ musically. Cecilia Parsberg http://this.is/parsberg/ put me in touch with a woman from Uruguay who was 14 years old when Che was killed. She became active in the Marxist Tupac Amaru group in Uruguay. She has said she´ll provide some words for the text, really looking forward to reading what she has to say.

fyi: The following link is for the animation that Cecilia and co-conspiritors put together about the Israeli occupation and for which they asked me to provide a soundtrack.http://this.is/TheWall/

Javi Jiminez, a teacher and music writer here in Tenerife has also come on board, so we are moving. All we need now, are a few more artists and a label, distributor. The potential for this is huge. Oh, I must say, inspiration for this album also came about through an album that Fun-da-Mental soundman Bernard Maiquez lent me several years ago, El Che Vive!, (Last Call Records) which was released to coincide with the 30th anniversary of ´Che´´s death. I ended my first DJ stint in Tenerife (an AntiWar night at the original Cafeoteca de Arte in Puerto de la Cruz/2003) with the classic ´Hasta Siempre´ by Carlos Puebla y sus Tradicionales, from the aforementioned album, and the place erupted….everybody sang along! My girlfiend´s mum knows the song, kids know the song….so a chord was struck! If you got something for this project, please bring it. More as it happens...."

So I would say without doubt this is the best form the Guevara Convention could take. As discussed here, there is a lot at stake in these days to the terror-spectacle. Hope it comes together - look out for it in September.

Marcuse

LENIN'S TOMB has posted a Danish documentary about Marcuse, his support for the radical movements of the 1960s, and his clash with Governor Ronald Reagan. It includes commentary by people like his student Angela Davison (on his involvement helping kick down doors in occupations of the university senate at UCSD etc) , and he himself talks about branding, planned obsolescence and 'vulgar psychological misinterpretations of the student movement'. Fred Jameson is also in it, and there is an amusing section of attempts by conservatives to buy out Marcuse's job contract. Its an hour long - but worth a Look. Ahh, he paid anonymously for the door he smashed. Strange. But the bit with the Marine Recruiter is funny - and very topical still - and the guff about 'poisoning young minds'. Very dangerous. Ha Ha Ha. See also here.

War Mongering Minds - Hearts & Wallets.

Ben moved his site yet again, so catch up on his latest here.

He has posted on war and research most recently. University warmongering is rife wherever anyone cares to look. I've commented before on such University-Military Complex links - here - in an incident that might entertain as much as it appals. Buckets of money for terror research. Glory glory. Bastards. The program was pulled after criticisms, but I did hear the other day that its resurfaced in more benign looking forms - details when someone digs out the documents. Meanwhile...

There were a couple of good books on Camelot and other war-research by anthros recently. Check out David Price's War and Anthro page here. His 'weaponizing Anthropology' is a pretty sweet title, but sometimes he advocates an 'undamaged' scholarship, and frankly I wonder if that old trick could ever have worked.

Ben Writes:

Given the ever-developing forms of subsumption of universities into capital, militarization cannot really be discussed separate from processes of commodification and commercialization in institutions of education and research. Nor can such militarization be understood divorced from the newer forms of integration of military, policing and intelligence activities, as part of ambitious projects of expansion and reorientation of systems of surveillance and control manifest in the War on Terror and the ‘revolution in military affairs’. The goal centres on massive and high tech expansion of intelligence and surveillance integrated with equally high-tech reorganization of communications, intended to make possible new practices of warfare and social control - reconstituting if not collapsing any distinction between them. Such, at least, is the more-or-less declared intent to which enormous energies and capital are being devoted.

The relation of Australian universities to this set of interrelated projects is not widely understood, and it is this which I intend to document. Theory of the offensive.

Celebrities and heroes

Homesickness is hard to sustain when things seem to lurch still further towards cultural doom. This little photogenic scenario did it for me this morning: - a post by Ange from Melbourne where the state watches a little too closely. Howard's cops having released 28 photographs of people they want to talk to in connection with a recent protest. It makes me feel even more happy that you can see these pics on The Age news site in what looks like a flickr type slideshow format.

"January 18, 2007: In the wake of the protests against the G20 in Melbourne, and as numerous arrests continue to take place, police tonight released a series of photos, each one euphemistically labeled “person of interest.” Police are indeed perfecting their methods of surveillance and control ..." [archive S0metim3s]

That bit of surveillance no doubt has more value as a curious juxtaposition with the scenario everyone is watching too closely in London - the Celebitchy Big Brother race & bullying scam. BB/C4 offer us a screen onto which to project the vicious underside of the war on terror. Amply exposed on Lenin's tomb, from where I nicked the image, but reminding me of things said about other similar distractions from the main game. Despite my previous fascination with BB, this rich Celeb version makes me 'homesick' for the unadorned nastiness of the cop-photo-shoppery above. Below I include some choice excerpts from what is an (almost twice as long) excellent post from L-T:

"The whole point of Endemol's shit-fest on Channel 4 is to force together personalities so incompatible that normal human comity would be impossible, never mind solidarity under the stress of sensory deprivation and constant surveillance. ... I suppose we had better be grateful that the recipient of the abuse was not a Muslim. If she was, we'd be hearing from many quarters that Muslims are far too sensitive about legitimate criticism. "Ah, complaing about being called a 'dog', is she? What do these Muslims have against canines, I wonder?" Had those who burned the effigy in India been Muslim, we would no doubt be hearing about the sinister Islamic threat to free speech. Not that it matters what religion she adheres to inside the 'house', eh? Shilpa Shetty is variously a "dog", a "Paki" (this bit C4 denies, saying the word was "cunt"), someone who - being from India - must be unhygeinic and eat with her hands, thus giving other housemates "the shits", someone who both needs to "go back to the slums" and also visit them for the first time and be "real", someone who is "trying to be white", and someone who should "fuck off home". ... The reactions have been, er, interesting: Channel 4 greasily asserting that there has been no overt racism, titter titter (as if we didn't know that they had assessed their candidates down to the last tic, and fully expected outbursts of racism); New Labour politicians covering their already hideously mired flanks by uttering obsequies about tolerance; David Cameron saying that anyone "who doesn't like this racism, there's a great regulator, its called the 'off' button." The latter is a curious response, surely designed to tickle the fancy of racist Tories and those obsessed with whatever is called 'the nanny state' this week." [L-T]

1 Comments:

John Hutnyk said...

Feeling a bit Jaded now? It is disappointing me a lot that all over the commentary on the Shilpa Shetty - Jade Goody Big Brother scam people are debating whether its racist or not, class or not, bullying or not [yes, all of the above, of course], but no-one seems keen to see this as a much bigger and more revealing displacement of the unspoken debate and politics we know is right there in front of us but the press and the piggy-pollies refuse to have, or are unable to have. That is the peculiar spin-cycle that makes up the contemporary system-wide racism of the global order. It amazes me that the Prime Minister has to face discussion of BB at question time in parliament, but carries on bombing, killing, destroying Afghanistan, and Iraq, regardless. And with little time for questions of anything that matters, it all gets displaced into television (and The Trial of TB was another example of the same). Even the much beloved Russell Brand suddenly feels the need to preface his comedy routines with seriousness, but does not make the displacement equation. Is it only my dysfunctional take on things that makes me see this as the 'dream-work' of the war on terror? For me this is the consequences of foreign policy as clear as day, but we cannot debate that. The double take is cod-outrage, and the February 15 2003 mobilisation against the war remains unanswered. Ahhh, damn it, f only there were opportunities for Davina McCall to interview Blair after he was voted out of the house...

12:04 AM

Doc Smith

Doc Smith. Congratulations.

Joins a motley crew - Saul, Howard, Nicola and Ji-Yeon. KUDOS-tastic.

Rodney Needham

Rodney Needham was Professor of Anthro at Oxford and died on December 4th, aged 83. He was the person who first invited me to pommie land, claiming Oxford was the place for me. Turned out that part was not true, but I did like much of his work. The obituary in the Guardian explains that when Levi-Strauss repudiated some obscure point about kinship that Needham had defended, the portrait of the great structuralist that hung in Needham's office was turned to face the wall. I love that. May his old curmudgeon bones rest in peace.

Read his book 'Against the Tranquillity of Axioms'.

'television from Harlem' and the 'anti-Hoon laws'

Its not all that often that I get really homesick, but this item twanged a few lumpen-nostalgia chords. The article contains some choice quotes. Councillor Roz Blades in particular seems the most stupid with her 'television from Harlem' quip, and the very idea that there are 'anti-hoon laws' makes me not at all surprised that 'flares were thrown' and 'police were pelted with bottles'. I do want to know how this is related to the Cronulla beach race trouble of a little over a year ago? So, is there a racial element to this? I mean beside Councillor Blades' racist analogy? From afar it seems like normal Dandy friday night entertainment - people brought their sofas out to sit and watch the burn-outs in style. I suppose they trashed the DVD store because it did not have enough rental copies of the video of the hoon event...

This is from Melbourne's newspaper The Age:

Burn-out crowd goes on the rampage

This Blockbuster Video store was trashed and looted by a mob of youths early on Saturday.
Photo: Justin McManus

Chantal Rumble
January 14, 2007

Six men face charges after a crowd turned on police during an illegal burn-out gathering in Melbourne's south-east early yesterday.

More than 1000 people, including women and children, congregated at the corner of the Princes Highway and Elonera Road, Noble Park, on Friday night for a regular illegal burn-out session, but police cordoned off the intersection soon after 1am yesterday and the crowd became violent.

A DVD store was trashed and looted, and police were pelted with bottles.

A pizza shop and an electrical goods store were also damaged, two bus stops were smashed, bins were set alight and road signs destroyed. Witnesses reported seeing flares thrown.

"My reaction is complete and absolute horror," said Roz Blades, councillor and former mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong. "In 30 years in this area, I have never seen anything like it. It looks more like something you'd see on television from Harlem."

Fifty extra police and the dog squad were called in to control the situation. Six men, aged between 18 and 32, were arrested and released but are expected to be charged with traffic and criminal offences.

Police seized five cars, some under new anti-hoon laws.

The busy corner, with a 24-hour McDonald's restaurant on one corner, has been a favourite Friday night hang-out for hoons and their fans for decades.

Cr Alan Gordon, chairman of Dandenong Council's community roads reference group, said the site's popularity had been growing, attracting some 2000 people last weekend, many bringing couches from which to watch the illegal burn-outs.

The trend attracted extensive talkback radio coverage last week, which witnesses said added to the hype and the push towards violence, similar to the build-up to the Cronulla riots in December 2005.

"They are just Aussie kids going out for a Friday night," Cr Gordon said.

"It just amazes me that they are so organised: the radio, SMS, their website. They are just so well equipped. I would never have thought we'd have this sort of thing in Melbourne, but now we do. It's a bit of a shame."

He said the police and council had worked closely last week to prevent violence at the burn-out events, but to no avail. "A lot of the residents around here have been here for many, many years and I don't think they are going to take things into their own hands, but I think they expect both the council and police to work together to fix the problem," Cr Gordon said.

"Police and the council have been working together this week and look what we've got to show for it." He described the police response of about 50 officers and a dog squad as inadequate. "I would have thought you would have had more police. Fifty or 70 cops, compared to over 1000 youths, isn't enough."

Victoria Police acting Assistant Commissioner Gavin Barry said although extra traffic units were in the area on Friday night, "we had no way of knowing that the gathering would become so hostile and threatening towards police".

Police Association secretary Paul Mullett said officers were "hopelessly outnumbered" and called on Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon to urgently audit police resources."

Kufiya-spotting

This great post and meme by Ted Swedenburg deserves your attention. I used to play this game but never thought to collect - this is trinketization as well after all. One of my favourites was the news reporter on Japanese television when I worked in Nagoya, who presented all his Baghdad reports during 2003 wearing a Kufiya. Some people have mistaken Jade Goody's pirate scarf on Big Brother as one as well, but I think we can let that pass - great as Jade is, her support for Pirates will do. Aki Nawaz of course is a prominent UK wearer, among millions in the UK, but though my own is now a bit tatty as its one of my oldest items of clothing, it does come out often. I got it from Palestine Solidarity in Melbourne in 1986 - we ran ads for their campaign group in the journal I edited, Criticism, Heresy and Interpretation. Anyway, this is Ted's latest addition, gently mocking 'Urban Outfitters', but it’s worth pursuing the other posts as this one is number 12 in his series.

"Kufiyaspotting #12: Urban Outfitters Markets Kufiya as "Anti-War Woven Scarf"

Urban Outfitters' "early spring" catalogue is now online, and the featured item in Men's Accessories is the (Palestinian) kufiya, marketed as an "anti-war woven scarf" (thanks, Hisham).

If you click on the photo of the male model, you will find the kufiya (only $20), in the classic mode, checkered black-and-white, but also available in red, turqoise (my fave), and brown.

It's remarkable that "anti-war" is now so mainstream that Urban Outfitters feels comfortable using it as a marketing tool. By contrast, back in the late '80s, the Banana Republic catalogue carried an item called the "Israeli Paratroopers Bag." It's also remarkable that despite even though the Palestinians, since the onset of the al-Aqsa Intifada, have been indelibly re-associated with terrorism and suicide bombings, the Palestinian kufiya remains so deeply rooted in hipster clothing style and the outfits of oppositional movements that it remains hip/commercial/"resistive" symbol. Something on the order of Che Guevara t-shirts, full of contradictions, capable of making money, yet still giving off the whiff of danger. Probably it's the hint of danger and the exoticism that, combined, (still) makes the kufiya marketable.

I'd hate, of course, to see wearing the "anti-war scarf" as accessory substitute for actual activism against the war/occupation. (And my friend Joel Gordon reminds me: the kufiya "originally" symbolizes resistance, and in fact, armed resistance (the Palestinian revolt of 1936-39, the fedayeen of the sixties and seventies), not "anti-war."

No doubt this is also related to the "hipness" of things Islamic today; an article by Jill Hamburg Caplan will soon appear in New York magazine, and I'll comment on it when it comes out.

I wrote an article on the kufiya as style back in 1992, in an article in Michigan Quarterly Revies, and I discuss its uses, in Palestine and the US, in my book, Memories of Revolt. I've also been attempting to document various "sitings" of the kufiya in this blog".



Great stuff as ever Ted - hence reposted in full (of awe).