As police in the USA intensify anti-protest action in Ferguson tweeters start sending advice and sympathy from Gaza, especially on how to withstand armed forces’ terror tactics…
Do not expect Obama to travel to #Ferguson, unless it is to show solidarity with the police.
Wow…A man picks up burning tear gas can and throws it back at police pic.twitter.com/qiLwujczqrwujYourAnonNews @YourAnonNews<Not just a man…a dread! Jah RASTAfari!!!!
Presenting a Storified tweetshot of reactions from those of us in the Global South as our representatives at the World Cup in Brazil surged ahead on the day that the Black Stars (Ghana) and the Super Eagles (NIG) made their presence felt–race, religion, colour, ethnicity, nationality–all came in for comment. For example, the following tweet from Jean Lowrie-Chin in Jamaica: @chinhubert saw a tweet during #GHAvsUSA: “Not sure who to back – Ancestors from Ghana but remittances from USA” ☺ #Brasil2014. Check it out…
The ethnic makeups of the 32 squads at the World Cup reflect the sedimentary layers of global migration over the last 500 years. The European colonial destruction of indigenous Americans gives us the almost wholly European squads of Chile, Argentina and Mexico; Australia can be considered an Oceanic version of this.
Terry McMillan announced this morning that she’d be taking a one-month break from Twitter to write her next novel. In a series of tweets she explained her predicament before making her exit:
Terry McMillan @MsTerryMcMillan
After much deliberation, I have decided to take a one month leave from Twitter in my quest to complete a rough draft of my novel.
Terry McMillan @MsTerryMcMillan
Please know how much I look forward to hanging out with you all on an almost daily basis, but I’ve lost my focus and want to get it back.
Terry McMillan @MsTerryMcMillan
I’ve never written a novel under the influence of Twitter (!) and it is difficult to do with so much going on in the world that disturbs me.
Terry McMillan @MsTerryMcMillan
However, in order to concentrate, sometimes you have to eliminate distractions. It’s lonely, but ultimately, gratifying.
Terry McMillan @MsTerryMcMillan
I am accustomed to writing without thinking. Twitter allows me to think in 140 characters. Sometimes, I don’t want to think. I want to feel.
Terry McMillan @MsTerryMcMillan
So, off I go. I call it surrendering. Where you give your all to what you’re doing. Or don’t do it at all. I chose to do the damn thang.
Terry McMillan @MsTerryMcMillan
I hope all of you pray that I write with conviction & I will pray that you feel as much joy, strength, love & courage as possible.
Terry McMillan @MsTerryMcMillan
And we rock on.
Terry McMillan @MsTerryMcMillan
Grateful.
Meanwhile Columbia journalism professor and social media guru Sree Sreenivasan went on an all day Twitter and Facebook fast to raise scholarship funds. The following tweets are self-explanatory and following that I excerpt something from the Columbia School of Journalism page giving the fuller context:
Sree Sreenivasan @sree
#SilenceSree starts midmorning. How many of you give determines how long I stay off FB & Twitter: http://bit.ly/silencesree #cuj12
Sree Sreenivasan @sree
It’s #SilenceSree Day! Enough of you gave $5 to keep me off Twitter till 9 pm ET. Prolong my misery by donating today: http://bit.ly/sreesilence
Silence Sree Fundraiser
Can @Sree go a day without Twitter and Facebook? Maybe for charity! Donate to silence Sree!
Silence Sree
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Columbia’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is raising donations for a scholarship fund that will be awarded to one or several students enrolled in the incoming class. We hope this new tradition will continue long after the Class of 2012 graduates.
Boring.
The real cause? Getting Sree to stop Tweeting (and Facebooking, Posterousing, Pininteresting, and FourSquaring) for a day. Here’s how last year’s class raised money and kept Sree silent.
The goal is 200 people. The percentage of 200 that donates will correspond to the amount of time Sree will be silenced. (Maximum one day. Communication is kind of his job!) If 200 people give, then Sree is off for a day. If only 20 people reach in their pockets, then he isn’t staying off that long, about 2.5 hours.
1 dollar in person contributes to silencing Sree. There is a 5 dollar minimum if you donate online.
Finally, completely unrelated, but how many of you realized that today was the anniversary of Claude McKay’s death? I wouldn’t have known were it not for the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh whose twitter feed i follow:
Scottish Poetry Lib @ByLeavesWeLive
Claude McKay, the Jamaican-born poet, died in Chicago on this day in 1948…
Scottish Poetry Lib @ByLeavesWeLive
“There is joy in the woods just now/The leaves are whispers of song/& the birds make mirth on the bough/& music the whole day long” C McKay
Scottish Poetry Lib @ByLeavesWeLive
“For one brief golden moment rare like wine,/The gracious city swept across the line/Oblivious of the color of my skin.” Claude McKay
Scottish Poetry Lib @ByLeavesWeLive ”I must not see upon your face/Love’s softly glowing spark;/For there’s the barrier of race,/You’re fair and I am dark.” Claude McKay
A selection of tweets that appeared under the hashtag #bookswithalettermissing and how it spilled over onto Facebook…
A baby Dik-dik--a tiny East African antelope (via @biscuitzombie)
On August 3, 2011, someone on Twitter started a hashtag that unleashed a veritable firestorm of creativity from people around the world trying to think of whacky new entries for book titles with a letter missing. All these tweets were consolidated under the hashtag #bookswithalettermissing. I present a selection for your pleasure…
Brilliant! RT @bartandlife Franz Fanon’s – White Ski Black Mask
The Enigma of a Rival #Bookswithalettermissing<Paul Theroux’s lost book…
But it was after I posted the preceding title on Facebook that the Trinis took over the competition, betraying Bolt-like capacities. There was no keeping up with them so I retired from the fray and left them to dream up the following list of priceless titles:
Judy Raymond Came up with a couple: the book that sums up Salman Rushdie’s entire oeuvre: Same
Jonathan Ali On the Naipaul theme: A Hose for Mr Biswas (gardening)
Judy Raymond The gothic novel about Heathcliff’s rowing ambitions: Wuthering Eights
Judy Raymond A novel about typographers: And then We Came to the En
Judy Raymond A culinary memoir by Margaret Atwood: The Year of the Food·
Jonathan Ali A French woman’s struggle with infertility: Madame Ovary
Judy Raymond Nick Hornby’s novel about a deadly new plague…Fever Itch
Judy Raymond Michael Holding’s memoir, War and Pace
Judy Raymond Lottery winner mysteriously disappears in Gone with the Win
Georgia Popplewell Argh – just as I was about to retire for the night. There’s also Nabokov’s Madison Avenue screed – Ad. ·
Georgia Popplewell And Faulkner’s scathing indictment of the mink industry – The Sound and the Fur.
Judy Raymond That classic of little creatures on the riverbank, Harry Otter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Jonathan Ali What about Joyce’s novel about a teenage writer who has a baby? Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ma
Georgia Popplewell If you let me remove two letters, I’d recommend Graham Greene’s paean to Chinese fast food – The Pow and the Glory. (But I know that’s cheating).
Judy Raymond New World archaeological text: Ur Man in Havana
Jonathan Ali Bet you never read Greene’s novel about his mother’s trip to Cuba—Our Ma in Havana
Judy Raymond Or the one about the female Hannibal Lecter-style mass murderer, The Ma in the Iron Mask
A selection of tweets i favourited in the 24 hours leading up 11.2.11 Egypt’s day of reckoning….
Data visualization of Egypt's Tweets:
So the Egyptians got their Friday of Departure after all–congratulations to them! This is a heady moment for all of us, Egyptian or not–
What a rollercoaster of a few days! 11.2.11 has proved to be unforgettable for all Egyptians except one: ex-President Hosni Mobarak who probably wants to erase all memories of Jan 25 and its ineluctable aftermath.
I found Pioneer editor Kanchan Gupta’s analysis of the tumultuous events in the Middle East to be comprehensive and useful (though i don’t share his fear of a Muslim alliance):
…As Egypt burst into celebrations, a bitter realisation began to sink in: If the US could abandon Mubarak, it could also say goodbye to others without allowing friendships of the past to weigh too heavily on its conscience.
Ironically, it is this perceived callous indifference of the US towards a beleaguered Mubarak in his last days in office that has left many flummoxed in Arabia. Egypt under the Mubarak dispensation, backed by the Army, was the best bet for peace in the region, especially in regard to Israel. It was also the best defence against the rise of radical Islamism whose practitioners see themselves as the alternative to incumbent Arab regimes. With Mubarak gone, the Muslim Brotherhood is preparing to make a dramatic appearance either through collaboration or alone in Egyptian politics; through Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamists have seized power in Gaza; in Lebanon, the Hizbullah, which has toppled the Hariri Government and put into place a regime controlled by Islamists, increasingly and frighteningly calls the shots; in Tunisia, dormant Islamism has come alive after the long-exiled leader of the till recently outlawed Islamist party Ennahdha, Rachid Ghanouchi, made a triumphant return home; in Jordan, the Friday street protests are being led by Islamists sustained by the Ikhwan’s ideology; in Yemen, Islamists are waiting for the palace to fall under their assault; in Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, a deep undercurrent of radical Islamism is waiting to burst forth.
A gleeful Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has described the Egyptian uprising as the unleashing of an “Islamic wave”. His protégé and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described the Egyptian uprising and the collapse of the Mubarak regime exactly 32 years to the day of the fall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi on February 11, 1979, as the “emergence of a new Middle East that will doom Israel and break free of American interference”.
On the subject of social media’s role in the recent ‘revolutions’ I found Global Voices Online co-founder Ethan Zuckerman’s comments thought-provoking:
– While there’s been extensive debate about whether social media helped organize or promote the protests in Egypt, I think the interesting story to watch will be whether social media can help Egypt in the transition to democracy. Power now rests with a council of military leaders, and there have been suggestions that this group could be complemented by a council of civilian “wise men”, giving a seat at the table to figures like Mohamed El-Baradei.
In lieu of having anything compelling to say myself I’ve decided to put up tweets I ‘favourited’ it in the last 24 hours or so (Twitter’s ‘favourite’ feature is a phenomenal tool which i use with abandon). Some of them reference Egyptian events and some don’t, but for what they’re worth here they are…with the most recent ones from this morning leading…
Robbery at Juici Patties in Kingston, Jamaica, hostage situation defused, how it was discussed on Twitter
Juici sent patties to Haiti after the earthquake
What an irony that the very day after Playboy magazine asked me to expand on my statement “In Jamaica farce, intrigue and tragedy remain inextricably intertwined” (Don’t worry–re Playboy–ALL will be revealed in due course) another farcical scenario played itself out in downtown Kingston when armed men took over the Juici Patty outlet on West Street.
@pd_rickards was tickled. lol who would rob a patty shop?<Pattybandits he tweeted. When I was a kid they used to call me Patty Bandit..and seet deh now it come to pass. 8:48 PM Sep 4th. they would bring box of patty home and bam..3 gone..ppl seh..’Is peter dean dweet uno..him is the patty bandit.‘ 9:03 PM Sep 4th.
Meanwhile @JustSherman joined in the commentary: Hostage situation at A Patty Shop, Sounds like something written by @PD_Rickards but sadly true, Lord deliver us.
Details are still sketchy; it was only last night that what rapidly became known as “the hostage situation” developed like a hurriedly-formed hurricane which huffed and puffed but ultimately kept from blowing the house down. I was up in Stony Hill listening to Kate Bush sing Wuthering Heights over and over when i saw the first tweet about hostages being released in downtown Kingston.
I blinked. Had i fallen asleep and woken up in a Bollywood film? Or was this a nightmare in which life was trying to invade the reality show we’ve become? In response to my query as to whether this might be a b-grade Bollywood flick @ drewonline said: that would involve a dance routine on king street ma’am so no it’s not a Bollywood movie it’s a Jamaican farce–:-(
Turn on the TV, turn on the TV, everyone yelled when i announced that my Twitter feed was indicating that people were being held hostage at Juici Patty on West Street. Of course once again real life was quick to intrude. We were in Kingston, Jamaica, not some place with real television stations that report what’s occurring AS it’s occurring around us. Both major local stations were replaying American TV series and there was no live coverage of the potentially deadly drama. As @ArnoldKer said in disbelief: #nowwatching Gossip Girl on TVJ while hostages are being held downtown. How awesome is this!
The inevitable reference to the erstwhile reign of Dudus was made: Likkle bwoy cyan manage bigman work. Now dem know how Presi work did hard and Dem waan do Don work and cyan manage it. They should have tried to co-op the System into regular governance and then use an diffuse it. The latter makes eminent sense for as the same tweeter pointed out: Tivoli was the only “ghetto” with Moneygram, Claro, Digicel, Lime and numerous small and large businesses that were profitable and safe.
Hopefully the international media won’t get hold of this, someone said. I thought events in Barbados where six people were killed in the process of a robbery in Bridgetown were likely to distract attention away from Kingston, where nobody has been killed after all. The farce continued to unfurl; after a tense standoff police orchestrated an invasion of the building only to find the armed men long gone by the time they broke in. Said @DLee876: Welcome to #Jamaica, where police surround a building and yet ALL the criminals inside escape. hahahahah #sadbutfunny.
So the gunmen freed themselves under the guise of being hostages? asked @cucumberjuice.
That was when @drewonline memorably declared: Sometimes i believe we are all hostages inna patty shop (that has a beach, a soundtrack and people who run really fast) #ironymuch
Interestingly it was only a few days ago that there was a situationat another patty shop, Sugar & Spice, in Liguanea. I don’t think it even made the local news because i never did hear the details of it tho’ my twitter feed showed photos of police cars blocking one of the Liguanea plazas and there were rumours of bullets being fired. It is said that a woman who had gone to the bank next door before deciding on a patty for lunch was robbed of J$800,000. But honestly who knows for sure? In the information age crucial information is frequently withheld in Jamaica; its like wading through a perpetual smog.
The hashtag in front of words means that the tweet in question will be filed under those terms in the global twitter feed. For example #nowwatching is usually appended to tweets announcing what movie, TV show or video the person is watching at the time. #sadbutfunny had one quite poignant tweet: hard enough being the slow kid but needing a reminder for drivers not to run you over is just #sadbutfunnyhttp://twitpic.com/2lf035. Another example, this one from Sept 1 @rpugh Discovery Channel gunman James Jay Lee called 4 TV shows promoting war be removed. Holding hostages at gunpoint. #ironymuch
Alas it’s true, we’re all hostages in a patty shop. There’s no escaping it. Jamaica 2010. #ironymuch
A look at campaigns of different sorts from political, to personal, to religious to hate…also a focused look at @Arundhati_Roy’s late, great Twitter account which has been suspended for reasons unknown.
I like the way the author of this virtual poster has co-opted former US President Bush into such a neatly executed visual sabotage rescue mission. The USA’s political shenanigans. Will Obama survive the concerted effort to derail him? Waiting and watching…
Meanwhile the following terse message arrived by email this morning:
i am Mrs. Bintu Mahmud. Please contact my lawyer Ramli Sariman (barr_ramli_sariman09@gala.net) for a very important thing ALLAH wants you to do for Him. May ALLAH be with you always.
Surely no practising Muslim would be foolish enough to circulate such a message in today’s climate. Is it part of some anti-Islam campaign? All i know is that Yahoo has been really good about catching all such Spam messages with its filters, i wonder how this one escaped?
And by snail mail i received a tiny envelope, the kind the postman leaves for you before Christmas, postmarked Trinidad and Tobago. Inside: two business card-sized cards. You are not who we thought you were, says one, and We are not who you had in mind proclaims the other in 14-point serif type. On the back of each card is a green star in the upper left corner and –Les Argotieres, in the bottom right corner. My address is written in ink on the envelope in chiselled letters by a calligraphic hand. Is this a new company? an advertising campaign of some sort? What? Who? One awaits full revelations at the earliest.
Finally @Arundhati_Roy whom many believed to be the author of The God of Small Things has had her Twitter account suspended. I had written about the purported Roy account in its early days. More recently Roy’s Twitter avatar has been proclaimed a fake, something i find hard to believe, the tweets were so typical of Roy’s taut, tart x-ray observations on life in the late capitalist lane. What we do know is that before the account was suspended @Arundhati_Roy came under attack for views the activist had expressed on Pakistan and India’s Maoists among other things. Below are her/his last few tweets and some tweets from Roy’s critics. For convenience I have prefixed @Arundhati_Roy’s tweets with the label ARoy:
ARoy: As long as your heart beats, make sure it’s with good intentions… RT @vjlive: @Arundhati_Roy Should a good heart need contours to beat…
Wed 18 Aug. 12.46
ARoy: “Businesses resist ‘conflict minerals’ law.” First the Congo, then where? Who will mine the bauxite? http://bit.ly/dA9bAB
Wed 18 Aug. 2.31
ARoy: Glad you have that philosophy. Suiting you well? RT @krishnakacker: Unfortunately, the way to hell is also paved with good intentions!
19 Aug 14.14
ARoy: When I feel like I don’t belong, draw the strength from the words when you said, Hey, It’s about you, baby. Look deeper inside you, baby…
19 Aug 14.17
@KanchanGupta @Arundhati_Roy Pakistan wants you. Pakistan needs you. Won’t you rise to the occasion and buy a one-way ticket to the promised land?
19 Aug 14.19
ARoy: @KanchanGupta tickets i find are never one way. I have places to go. This WORLD is my home…Go be antagonistic to someone who cares for it.
19 Aug 14.20
@KanchanGupta @Arundhati_Roy I wouldn’t dare antagonise you, what with your bum-chums with big-big guns.
19 Aug 14.23
@Arundhati_Roy By the way, Maomata recently told me you are a “claash owan frawd” and a “tormooj” — green outside, red inside.
19 Aug 14.28
@Dilir123 @Arundhati_Roy earlier asked you a question. Just saw myself how an indian j0urno hates you! you were very calm. i’m not paki nor indi just
19 Aug 15.21
@Arundhati_Roy just a bangladeshi want to knw what did you do/write that these ppl r so mad about?
19 Aug 15.26
ARoy: @Dilir123 I think that one whom you’re speaking of is just jealous that I have a few more followers than him. Just ignore him… #noisemaker
19 Aug 15.51
ARoy: maybe in US RT @aurosan: Up to 10% of Pakistanis might die due to cholera in water http://bit.ly/9bhAZH Why isn’t anyone talking about this?
19 Aug 14.35
ARoy: Bad dreams in the night, they told me I was going to lose the fight. Leave behind my wuthering heights…
20 Aug 8.39
ARoy: I family on their lot in Pakistan, yes. RT @Libraryben: Pakistan? RT @Arundhati_Roy: http://bit.ly/bV0F1j
20 Aug 13.04
ARoy: If caring for ppl not part of a political agenda makes me one, so be it RT @mahasamant: @Arundhati_Roy PAKISTAN GIVES YOU POPULARITY#TRAITOR
20 Aug 13.04
@Shonatwits @Arundhati_Roy When you can serve people at your door step what will you serve in Pakistan? Stop this hypocrisy u r just losing ur respect!
20 Aug 13.19
ARoy: @Shonatwits Statements have been stated. Press releases have been released…Criticize policy makers, not a voice for the voiceless…
20 Aug 13.22
ARoy: Lost inside adorable illusion, and I cannot hide. I’m the one you’re using, please don’t push me aside…
20 Aug 13.26
@Arundhati_Roy Ms. Roy, you ROCK.
20 Aug 13.57
ARoy: @aseemvadehra what “rocks” is reading the critics disassemble that one…
20 Aug 14.02
ARoy: I am in love with what we are, and not what we “should” be. And I am. I am starstruck with every part of this whole story…
23 Aug 03.07
I echo the question asked by one of the tweeple quoted above: Arundhati Roy what did you do/write that these ppl r so mad about? Because their questions were addressed to the author and activist regardless of who was tweeting in her name…
Report on my appearance on BBC World Have Your Say, the Shirley Sherrod case
Yesterday was a busy day and there was more than one reason i was glad i had the good sense to turn back from Reggae Sumfest and return to Kingston the day before. The following tweet should give you some idea of the first good reason:
Being rained on all night long in a mud lake i can do without.
The other good reason was that i got a good night’s sleep and was able to compile the first report on Reggae Sumfest Dancehall Night by anyone anywhere by 9 am on Friday morning. And the reward for that came in the number of hits i got on this new blog platform I’ve been trying so hard to get people to visit.
Shirley Sherrod
The third good reason was that i was able to accept the BBC World Have Your Say programme’s invitation to participate in their globally aired discussion on internet rights and wrongs emanating from the firing and subsequent re-hiring of American civil servant Shirley Sherrod. Sherrod had allegedly made ‘racist’ remarks in a two minute video clip that later turned out to have been edited in a way that removed the context of her 43 minute speech. Whose responsibility is it to verify the reliability of material such as this? On whom should the burden of proof fall and thereby the penalty for purveying such misinformation? Is information transmitted via social media such as YouTube or Twitter making us ‘jump the gun’ as Obama said when the White House was forced to apologize to Sherrod and offer her another job?
As Obama put it “we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles.” The word for this is ‘blogswarm’.
So does the internet make us too quick to judge? Or is there wisdom in the blogswarm? asked BBC WHYS and the discussion that followed was a rich one that i was glad to be a part of. Also participating were former journalist Nigel Morgan of Morgan PR from Redding,UK, UK Guardian columnist, American Mike Tomasky, who is also editor of Democracy journal. Other participants included Andrew Keene, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How the Democratization of the Digital World is Assaulting Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values, blogger Lola Adesioye from the US and Owais Ehsan, student of mass media and a blogger at Pro-Pakistan, in Islamabad.
The discussion was a lively one and was further enlivened by a caller from Jamaica, Omar, who made the point that it’s not only national media or internet bloggers that are guilty of posting misinformation but also international corporations; in Jamaica’s 2007 general elections, he claimed the BBC attributed something on their website to then Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller without verifying the accuracy of their source.
It’s true that the rapidly proliferating use of social media frequently lends itself to distortions and misrepresentations. For instance in my blogpost on Reggae Sumfest yesterday in which i was relying on tweets from the location for information i think i misinterpreted a tweet about Bounty’s ‘state of urgency utterance, and presented it in a particular way because of that. I thought he was castigating the government for the prolonged State of Emergency and recommending that they have a state of urgency instead about other crucial unmet needs when it turns out that he supported the SOE and was urging the government to go further by declaring a ‘state of urgency’ “towards correcting the ills that had been meted out to the people of Jamaica by successive governments” to quote Gleaner writer Janet Silvera in her article Bounty preaches change.
Rodney ‘Bounty Killer’ Pryce displays his award at the Sumfest show at Catherine Hall in Montego Bay on Thursday, which was designated Dancehall Night. The organisers of the event gave Pryce the award for his contribution to Reggae Sumfest. – Photo by adrian frater
The point i want to make is that while social media may sometimes tend to be less than reliable, it also allows faulty information to be corrected before serious damage is done provided the source is above board, has no ulterior motive and is willing to make the necessary changes. This surely would be the case with most bloggers, tweeters and others whose popularity depends on the quality of what they put out.
For the others, that is those who deliberately put out misinformation for propaganda purposes, and have no intention of retrieving the situation–in this case, Andrew Breitbart— a blacklist or some other form of aggressive disincentive should be developed.
First account of Dancehall Night Reggae Sumfest 2010. Vybz Kartel appears in prison suit and handcuffs. Bounty Killer calls for State of Urgency from government, as opposed to State of Emergency and vuvuzelas abounded…
DESERT CLARKS, EVRY CREP A GET FLING WEH!! Photo: @SugaTwitts
Right about now people are waking up and wondering how Sumfest 2010 went last night. Were there any brawls? Did Vybz destroy it? Was Bounty Killer cross, angry and miserable enough? Well folks i wasn’t there but i can give you the scoop on all this and more…
Actually i was supposed to be there. I even got as far as Falmouth with my par Hubert but the relentless rain got on our nerves and we decided to beat it back to Kingston. Luckily various attempts to buy tickets in advance had failed so it wasn’t an expensive decision (what’s with York Pharmacy insisting on cash only and then not having VIP tickets?? And why use Acropolis as a ticket outlet when it doesn’t open before lunchtime?)
Badd Girl Cecile at Sumfest. Photo: Marcia Forbes
Anyway i hit my comfortable bed in Kingston around 11 pm last night after seeing a tweet or two about Cecile’s performance. @marciaforbes reported that there was also a “Sumfest Lighter Tribute to O’Neil of Voicemail. About a dozen young men in white sing for O’Neil–Very touching!!” Woke up this morning and tuned in to find out that Miss Fluffy Kitty and Spice had had a “fluffy versus slim gal wining contest” with some help from Pamputtae. According to @marciaforbes “Spice [was] led on stage by Tivoli Demonstration ‘caz ppl are deading’ ‘Bruce me just want to ask u if Tivoli duppy dem don’t haunt u’.
Remaining two members of Voicemail, Craig Jackson, Kevin Blaire Photo: @itscraigyoCraig Jackson @itscraigyo!!: @SugaTwitts
One of the highlights of the show was Kartel’s appearance dressed as a prisoner complete with handcuffs which had to be unlocked before he could perform, a literal reference to his arrest and two-week detention by security forces who claimed he was a ‘person of interest’ during the State of Emergency that ended at midnight last night. All i want to say on the SOE is that it’s remarkable that it’s always a DJ or some hapless individual from downtown that’s arrested as a person of interest, apparently the Jamaican middle classes and elites are composed exclusively of saints and angels.
Kartel Vybz Kartel in bright orange 'prison clothes' complete with handcuff. Photo: Marcia Forbes
According to @marciaforbes “Pure Police n Soldiers surround[ed] the entire backstage during Kartel’s performance ” and pandemonium and vuvuzelas greeted Kartel as he entered the Sumfest stage. She went on to tweet that the backstage security during Kartel’s performance was unprecedented. You have to wonder what exactly they were worried might happen!
Bounty Killer (whose night it undoubtedly was) put it well when he said that the government needed ‘a state of urgency’ rather than a State of Emergency. Reggae Sumfest 2010 is mourning the untimely passing of pioneer Sugar Minott and Oniel Edwards of Voice Mail; Dancehall Night also celebrated the career of the redoubtable Bounty Killer, the paradigmatic Warlord of dancehall, the voice of the soil of Jamaica as he is sometimes called, a veteran who has not only towered over the landscape of dancehall for two decades but also launched the careers of a platoon of younger DJs including Vybz Kartel and Mavado.
Warlord a talk di tings tonight!!! #sumfest tunnnn upppp!!! Photo: @SugaTwittsGULLY GAADDDD!! #mavado #sumfest Photo: @SugaTwittsMavado and Wayne Marshall doing You're Messing with my Heart Photo: @SugaTwittsMovado shellin down di place! Photo: KueSoundReggae Sumfest (Vybz Kartel and Russian) Photo: NotniceRecords
All in all it looks like it was a stellar Dancehall Night. I missed it but i lived it vicariously via Twitter. Special thanks to @SugaTwitts for the best photos, @marciaforbes and @DougiePlatinumfor providing me with fodder for this post. @marciaforbes was womanning the Phase3 production centre below.
Phase 3 console
My Favourite tweet:
anthonyhaley Just put @ladymycherie to bed. She & our son-to-be did Dancehall night all the way through Adi Teacha. Teach them young they say! #sumfest
Readers and publishers engage in new medium for debate
A Twitter page. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
Twitter is not to everyone’s taste – it’s no secret that many readers
of this blog suspect that the Guardian gives the microblogging service
far more attention than it deserves and might agree with Oyl
Miller’s stream of consciousness piece in McSweeney’s this week that
begins: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by brevity,
over-connectedness, emotionally starving for attention.”
A tree is a rare sight at a camp and here, in Tabarre, residents use the shade for community meetings.
When I nearly fainted in the second camp we visited in Tabarre this Monday, some of the women leaders who live there brought me a Tampico juice right quick. It was sweating, ice cold. How do they get ice? And where do they keep it? Then I thought, Great. They’re running to bring me juice while the 250 families that live here get by on 500 gallons of water a day. That’s the same amount of water in a luxe hotel’s fish tank.
On July 7, CNN fired its senior editor of Middle East affairs, Octavia Nasr, after she published a Twitter message saying, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah,” one of the most prominent Lebanese Shiite spiritual leaders who was involved in the founding of the Hezbollah militia. Nasr described him as “one of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”
One year ago, I spent an entire night dreaming that I was a giant fly. When I awoke, I was startled to discover that I was myself. I decided that this was a vision, and asked my Guruji (from Better Living through Conscious Snoring) what I should do with it.
Guruji told me to stop depending on other people to tell me what to do, become an entrepreneur, and document my journey and daily achievements in a journal.
Audience members dance and wave during Ataklan’s performance. Photos: Gillian Moore
The crowd went crazy for Ataklan on July 3, at the T&T launch of The Mix at Casa de Ibiza on Tragarete Road in Woodbrook.
Ataklan has been coming to Jamaica frequently over the last year to record songs for his next album here. Identified as the “Trinidadian friend” in the photo below when it appeared in a Jamaican blogpost, Klan even penned a Dudus song called Kingston Town (“Man, so many of dead bodies, so few recovered guns…Tell me what a gwaan roun here, is there no love for life roun here…“) while here in June. I’m indebted to Corve Dacosta who took the photo for his blogpost on the Jamaica Pegasus tweetup.
L-R (@hubertnealjr @anniepaul and a Trinidadian friend
But the residents have not been “rioting.” It just isn’t true. Protesting: yes. Outraged: yes. Clashing with police: yes. Rioting: No
Active Voice 