April 19, 2013
A hater is a person who expresses hatred in public forums, especially those found on the Internet such as YouTube. Haters are distinguished from trolls who seek to attract attention by making provocative comments.
Haters may become organized into groups and the seven stage model of hate crime developed by Schafer and Navarro for the FBI may explain their behavior: 1) the hater finds other with similar views to form a group; 2) the group develops symbols and rituals to identify itself; 3) the group shares its views to bond; 4) the target is taunted; 5) the target is attacked; 6) the target is attacked with weapons; and 7) the target is destroyed.
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April 16, 2013
Signifyin’ (vernacular) is a practice in African-American culture, involving a verbal strategy of indirection that exploits the gap between the denotative and figurative meanings of words. According to African-American literary scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., the practice derived from the Trickster archetype found in much African mythology, folklore, and religion: a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and societal norms. In practice, signifyin’ often takes the form of quoting from subcultural vernacular, while extending the meaning at the same time through a rhetorical figure.
The expression itself derives from the numerous tales about the Signifying Monkey, a folk trickster figure said to have originated during slavery in the United States. In most of these narratives, the Monkey manages to dupe the powerful Lion by signifying. Signifyin(g) directs attention to the connotative, context-bound significance of words, which is accessible only to those who share the unique cultural values of a given speech community.
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April 15, 2013
‘The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism’ is a work of literary criticism and theory by American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. first published in 1988. The book traces the folkloric origins of the African-American cultural practice of ‘signifying” and uses the concept to analyze the interplay between texts of prominent African American writers, specifically Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston and Ishmael Reed.
Signifyin(g) is closely related to double-talk and trickery of the type used by the Monkey of these narratives, but, as Gates himself admits, ‘It is difficult to arrive at a consensus of definitions of signifyin(g).’ Bernard W. Bell defines it as an ‘elaborate, indirect form of goading or insult generally making use of profanity.’ Roger D. Abrahams writes that to signify is ‘to imply, goad, beg, boast by indirect verbal or gestural means.’ Signifyin(g) is a homonym with the concept of signification put forth by Semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure wherein the signifier (sound image) interacts with the signified (concept) to form one whole linguistic sign. Gates plays off this homonym and incorporates the linguistic concept of signifier and signified with the vernacular concept of signifyin(g).
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April 11, 2013
Fortune-telling is the practice of predicting information about a person’s life. The scope of fortune-telling is in principle identical with the practice of divination (‘to foresee, to be inspired by a god’).
The difference is that divination is the term used for predictions considered part of a religious ritual, invoking deities or spirits, while the term fortune-telling implies a less serious or formal setting, even one of popular culture, where belief in occult workings behind the prediction is less prominent than the concept of suggestion, spiritual or practical advisory or affirmation. Historically, fortune-telling grows out of folkloristic reception of Renaissance magic, specifically associated with Gypsies.
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April 8, 2013
The Shouting Hill is a hill in the Israeli controlled portion of the Golan Heights. During the Six Day War, Israel captured the majority of the heights. The Shouting Hill is located close to the ceasefire line that separates Syrian controlled territory and the territory occupied by Israel. The hill is situated near the Druze village of Majdal Shams; community members were separated after the war.
Very few visits were allowed between the families from both sides of the ceasefire line. Israel and Syria are still in an official state of war. There is also no telecommunications or mail allowed between the sides. As a result families come to the hill from both sides of the border to see and talk (actually shout into megaphones) to their relatives on the other side. However, with the advent of mobile phones, people don’t do this as often, except on special occasions like weddings or when they want to see each other and they use binoculars.
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April 8, 2013
A black bloc is a tactic for protests and marches where individuals wear black clothing, scarves, sunglasses, ski masks, motorcycle helmets with padding, or other face-concealing and face-protecting items. The clothing is used to conceal marchers’ identities, allow them to appear as one large unified mass, and promote solidarity.
The tactic was developed in the 1980s in the European autonomist movement’s protests against squatter evictions, nuclear power, and restrictions on abortion among other things. Black blocs gained broader media attention outside Europe during the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, when a black bloc damaged property of GAP, Starbucks, Old Navy, and other multinational retail locations in downtown Seattle.
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April 7, 2013
Leaderless resistance, or phantom cell structure, is a political resistance strategy in which small, independent groups (covert cells), including individuals (solo cells), challenge an established adversary such as a government. Leaderless resistance can encompass anything from non-violent disruption and civil disobedience to bombings, assassinations and other violent agitation. Leaderless cells lack bidirectional, vertical command links and operate without hierarchical command.
Given the simplicity of the strategy, as well as the fact that it is difficult to stamp out, leaderless resistance has been employed by a wide-range of movements, from terrorist and hate groups, advocating on a range of issues like animal-liberation, radical environmentalism, anti-corporatism, anti-abortion activism, and resistance to military invasion or colonialism.
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April 3, 2013
Copwatch is a network of activist organizations that observe and document police activity. They believe that monitoring police activity on the streets is a way to prevent police brutality. The stated goal of at least one Copwatch group is to engage in monitoring and videotaping police activity in the interest of holding the police accountable in the events involving assaults or police misconduct.
Copwatch groups also hold ‘Know Your Rights’ forums to educate the public about their legal and human rights when interacting with the police, and some groups organize events to highlight problems of police abuse in their communities. Copwatch was first started in Berkeley, California in 1990.
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April 2, 2013
The Zabbaleen (Egyptian Arabic: ‘Garbage people’) are teenagers and adults who have served as Cairo’s informal garbage collectors for the past 70 to 80 years. They are also known as ‘Zarraba’ (‘pig-pen operators’).
Spread out among seven different settlements scattered in the Greater Cairo Urban Region, the Zabbaleen population is between 50,000 and 70,000. The largest settlement is Mokattam village, nicknamed ‘Garbage City,’ located at the foot of the Mokattam Mountains, next to Manshiyat Naser, a slum settlement on the outskirts of Cairo. The Zabbaleen community in Mokattam Village has a population of around 20,000 to 30,000, over 90 percent of which are Coptic Christians.
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April 2, 2013
Food Not Bombs is a loose-knit group of independent collectives, serving free vegan and vegetarian food to others. Food Not Bombs’ ideology is that myriad corporate and government priorities are skewed to allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance.
To demonstrate this (and to reduce costs), a large amount of the food served by the group is surplus food from grocery stores, bakeries and markets that would otherwise go to waste. This group exhibits a form of franchise activism. The organization was founded in 1980 in Cambridge, Massachusetts by anti-nuclear activists. One of the co founders was C.T. Lawrence Butler.
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April 1, 2013
American pop singer Lady Gaga wore a dress made of raw beef, which was commonly referred to by the media as the meat dress, to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. Designed by Argentine designer Franc Fernandez and styled by Nicola Formichetti, the dress was condemned by animal rights groups, and named by ‘Time’ as the top fashion statement of 2010. The press speculated on the originality of the meat dress idea, with comparisons made to similar images found in contemporary art and popular culture. Architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, for example, had designed a meat dress in 2006.
As with her other dresses, it was archived, but went on display in 2011 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after being preserved by taxidermists as a type of jerky. Gaga explained following the awards ceremony that the dress was a statement about one’s need to fight for what one believes in, and highlighted her distaste for the US military’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy.
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March 31, 2013
‘Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World’ is a book by political theorist Noam Chomsky, titled after an observation by St. Augustine in ‘City of God,’ proposing that what governments coin as ‘terrorism’ in the small simply reflects what governments utilize as ‘warfare’ in the large. Yet, governments coerce their populations to denounce the former while embracing the latter.
In the ‘City of God,’ St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great, who asked him ‘how dare he molest the sea.’ ‘How dare you molest the whole world’ the pirate replied. ‘Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor.’ The book inspired a humorous short web animation titled ‘Pirates & Emperors (or, Size Does Matter),’ illustrating Chomsky’s thesis.
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