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Preview PDF of Issue One including Mike Doughty Adam Freeland Mary Roach and Audrey Marrs http://fb.me/XUoNDuNG
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
Turkey VS WSB
Photo: Dimitri Kasterine (William S. Burroughs Texas 1983)
Half a century after a U.S. obscenity trial, the work of Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs is heading back to court, this time in Turkey.An Istanbul-based publisher and his translator face obscenity charges for publishing Burroughs' novel, "The Soft Machine," and the same arguments about morality, literature and social value that shaped the American debate in the early 1960s are unfolding today.
"The book lacks narrative unity, while it is written in an arbitrary fashion that is devoid of cohesion in meaning," a Turkish government board said in a March ruling. "The way the book deals with the coarse, sleazy, vulgar and weak aspects of humans will develop an attitude that allows the justification of criminal activities in the readers' minds."
Decades ago, a court in Boston banned Burroughs' most prominent work, "Naked Lunch," after concluding it was obscene. A higher court reversed the ruling a few years later after testimony in the book's defense by poet Allen Ginsberg and writer Norman Mailer.
Burroughs' raw depictions of heroin addiction and homosexuality are hard to digest for some in Turkey, whose mostly Muslim population of 74 million is steeped in old traditions.
The case is part of a debate about free expression under a government that has successfully battled over Turkey's secular political system with the military and other hostile state institutions. The ruling party, led by devout Muslims who call themselves "conservative democrats," leads in the polls ahead of June elections, but opponents say its vows to pursue democratic reform mask an autocratic streak.
On Sunday, protesters in Turkish cities demonstrated against government plans to implement Internet content filters, saying the new system amounted to more censorship in an already heavy-handed effort to control information. Thousands of websites are banned under regulations aimed at curbing child pornography, illegal gambling and other cybercrimes.
Publisher Irfan Sanci printed 2,500 copies of Burroughs' novel, meaning a tiny fraction of Turks would see a hard copy. An advisory panel, the Prime Ministerial Board for the Protection of Children from Harmful Publications, said the book was not literature and was obscene because of its graphic descriptions of sex.
Article 226 of the penal code says its provisions "shall not apply to scientific, artistic and literary works" in some cases.
"There is a conflict between society, and the laws and the government," Sanci, 55, said in an interview with The Associated Press at his publishing house, Sel Yayincilik. He speculated that he was hit by a double dose of old state authoritarianism and a growing emphasis on "moral codes" by the government.
Sanci said two policemen from the Istanbul prosecutors' office informed him that the case will go to trial; he has testified before prosecutors and is awaiting a court date. The penalty for an obscenity conviction can be years in jail, though Sanci said the sentence is usually a fine.
He was cleared last year of obscenity charges for publishing a translation of "The Exploits of a Young Don Juan," published in 1911 by Guillaume Apollinaire, and the Geneva-based International Publishers Association commended Sanci.
The publisher was once a member of an illegal leftist organization and spent several years in jail after a military coup in 1980.
"The Soft Machine" is the first book in a trilogy by Burroughs, who died in 1997. Sanci has released the second and his team is working on the third.
"You can't judge the moral code of the Beat Generation," said Bilge Sanci, the publisher's daughter and his executive editor. She said the official panel, whose 10 members are chosen by government ministries and agencies, is not versed in "literature or aesthetics."
The board is led by Ruhi Ozbilgic, a deputy secretary in the office of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has worked in customs, agriculture and state planning. Nurettin Yuksel, an official linked to the board, said its conclusions were not binding and that it was up to prosecutors to decide on the next step.
Burroughs is a scandalous figure in the American literary pantheon who, along with Ginsberg, novelist Jack Kerouac and others in the 1950s and 1960s, became known as the Beat Generation of writers that railed against the mainstream.
In "The Soft Machine," the protagonist confronts Mayan priests who manipulate the minds of slave laborers, and Burroughs uses the so-called "cut-up" splicing method to jumble the text and disrupt the narrative order.
Burroughs sought to "pull the rug out" from under readers and alter their perceptions by awakening them to pre-existing notions, said Richard Doyle, a professor of English who teaches a Burroughs class at Pennsylvania State University in the United States.
"Without understanding the goal of these techniques, then you're going to be puzzled that this is a work of art and you're only going to see the graphic language and so forth," Doyle said.
The first lines of "The Soft Machine" get right into petty theft and drug use, referring to the New York City subway — "the hole" — where the main character and "the sailor," a junkie who also appears in "Naked Lunch," roll drunks for pocket change:
"I was working the hole with the sailor and we did not do bad. Fifteen cents on an average night boosting the afternoons and short-timing the dawn we made out from the land of the free. But I was running out of veins."
Suha Sertabiboglu, a Turkish dentist who translated "The Soft Machine," said he worked on it eight hours a day for a month and that it was the most difficult of 38 book translations he had done. He said he sometimes sought meaning in a passage, only to realize there was no conventional meaning.
"It is anti-literature," he said.
@'A.P.'
First Listen: Boris - 'Heavy Rocks'
Digging further, Heavy Rocks — out May 24 — also celebrates that original release by digging, if ever-so-slightly, into the thick, distorted riffage that made Boris' mark at the beginning of the last decade. The guitar tone isn't quite the same, but, through the band's move toward poppier song structures, the attitude is. And, instead of dodging around the glam-teasing of 2008's uneven Smile, Heavy Rocks embraces glam with its own blistering approach to sonic excess. The one-two punch of "Galaxians" and "Jackson Head" is two Jack Daniel's shots away from a Dodge Charger crashing through the living room. And if you need a rager, lead guitarist Wata doot-doot-do's her way through the barn-burning headbanger "Window Shopping."Heavy Rocks isn't just one big riff party, though. There are moments of blissed-out sweetness in "Missing Pieces" and "Aileron." The latter actually appears on Attention Please as a short acoustic interlude with a picked chord progression that begs for a full song. So here it is, in all its 12-minute heavy shoegazing glory, like the sludge-metal weirdos in Harvey Milk having a really bummer day (which is always).
If there's anything to learn from Boris' prolific release schedule, especially in 2011, it's that the band sees no difference in its wide array of sound. This year, it's hard to disagree.
Lars Gotrich @'npr'
Hear 'Heavy Rocks' In Its Entirety
17 May: International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia
To mark this year's International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe) has published its Rainbow Europe Map and Index in which it rates each European country's laws and administrative practices according to 24 categories and ranks them on a scale between 17 (highest score: respect of human rights and full legal equality of LGBT people) and -7 (lowest score: gross violations of human rights and discrimination of LGBT people).While the publication of this kind of research is broadly to be welcomed, and as eye-catching as the rainbow map is, it may be considered problematic in its conflation of LGB and TS/TG issues. As Justus Eisfeld (co-director GATE - Global Action for Trans* Equality) points out:
There are 5 possible positive points to be gained for gender identity issues vs. 13 possible points in the sexual orientation categories (I counted freedom of assembly and freedom of association under sexual orientation because trans groups generally have not had the organizational capacity to even run into issues in this category yet). The negative points are similarly unequally spread: two possible negative points for gender identity (two negative points are mutually exclusive, I therefore counted them as one) and four for sexual orientation. This means that a country that scores well for sexual orientation will automatically be in the 'best' group, no matter what their human rights record is for trans people.
In the light of this, the separate indexes for gender identity and sexual orientation may perhaps be of more use.
Note that intersections of race, class, disability, etc, are not mentioned in the report; nor is it recorded whether subjects are binary or non-binary identified. It should also be remembered that some TS/TG people are also LGB, and vice versa. Last but by no means least, it should be noted that - as is so often the case with research of this nature - the situation of intersex people seems to have been entirely ignored.
By way of a counterpoint, Trans Murder Monitoring has launched an interactive map for IDAHOT 2011. The new interactive map for the first time visualises the 604 reported murders of trans people that the Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) project has documented since January 2008. The interactive TMM map can be accessed on the TvT website here.
In the first four and a half months of 2011, 55 reported murders of trans people have been registered in 19 countries. While the actual circumstances of the killings often remain obscure, due to a lack of investigations and reports, many of the documented cases involve extreme aggression, including torture and mutilation.
Although it may seem that sexual orientation and gender identity is less of an issue it becomes clear that homophobia and transphobia exists, and may be increasing, in many places. If today's International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia serves one purpose, it is to raise awareness regarding the ongoing discrimination and violence committed by states, societies and individuals against lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people on various scales, from homophobic and transphobic legislations and forms of state repression to hate crimes including insults, attacks and murders.
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The ILGA Rainbow Europe Map may be downloaded as two PDF files from here (map) and here (index).
Separate indexes for sexual orientation and gender identity may be downloaded here (gender identity) and here (sexual orientation).
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Thanks to Juris Lavrikovs and Silvan Agius (ILGA-Europe), Justus Eisfeld (co-director GATE - Global Action for Trans* Equality) and Carla LaGata (Research and Coordination, TvT project)
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Via Bird of Paradox
Gmos - Sun Ra Mix
Gmos (ISM/Fatty Fatty) has recorded a promo mix ahead of Amen Brother's Sun Ra Birthday Celebrations on May20th with Mike Huckaby. For more details, check mntothat.com
1 Sun Ra - Sleeping Beauty
2 Sun Ra - Twin Stars Of Hence
3 Sun Ra - I'll Wait For You
4 Sun Ra - Where Pathways Meet
5 Sun Ra - On Jupiter
6 Sun Ra - Space Is The Place
For Yotte!
1 Sun Ra - Sleeping Beauty
2 Sun Ra - Twin Stars Of Hence
3 Sun Ra - I'll Wait For You
4 Sun Ra - Where Pathways Meet
5 Sun Ra - On Jupiter
6 Sun Ra - Space Is The Place
For Yotte!
Warsaw - Pictures In My Mind (Unreleased)
The Warsaw version of the song that has just been released on Peter Hook's new EP
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