Dancing Against Architecture

Organisers of an interfaith meeting in Tunisia among members of the Scouting movement disinvited French Jewish delegates following pressure by promoters of boycotts against Israel.

The two delegates of the International Forum of Jewish Scouts were excluded from the meeting held last week in the resort town of Hammamet for members of the youth movement from around the world. Titled “Interfaith Dialogue Ambassadors,” the event brought together 150 participants from 24 countries.

But the French Jews who travelled there to participate in the event were asked to leave, Francis Kalifat, the president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, wrote in an open letter of complaint to Abdelaziz Rassaa, Tunisia’s ambassador to France.

The treatment of the two Jewish delegates at an event that “purports to bring closer people of various religions,” he wrote, “seriously tarnishes the image of tolerance and openness that Tunisia wishes to transmit.”

The organisers’ decision to bar the Jewish delegates, who are not Israeli citizens, follows protests online by anti-Israel groups.

TACBI, the local branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel published a statement Nov. 6 about it.

“The Tunisian Campaign for Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel has learned that the Tunisian Scouts have invited an international Zionist organisation, ‘The International Forum of Jewish Scouts,’” to the event, they wrote. TACBI “strongly condemns the disguised normalisation operation carried out by the Tunisian Scouts.”

In Whatsapp (the most used messaging app in Brazil), if you receive a contact from a “juridical support group for LGBT+ people who are being harassed” called “REAJA”, DO NOT INTERACT!!!!!!! Apparently, this is not a real support group but it’s a trap that are targeting LGBT+ people to physically harm them. They people behind “REAJA” have very malicious intentions.

Every year, thousands of people in Pennsylvania prisons write directly to nonprofit organizations such as the one I co-chair with a request for reading material, which we then send to them at no cost. This free access to books has dramatically improved the lives of incarcerated individuals, offering immense emotional and mental relief as well as a key source of rehabilitation.

But as of last month, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) has decided to make such rehabilitation much harder. Going forward, books and publications, including legal primers and prison newsletters, cannot be sent directly to incarcerated Pennsylvanians. Instead, if they want access to a book, they must first come up with $147 to purchase a tablet and then pay a private company for electronic versions of their reading material — but only if it’s available among the 8,500 titles offered to them through this new e-book system.

In case you forgot: Incarcerated people are paid less than $1 per hour, and the criminal-justice system disproportionately locks up low-income individuals. Adding insult to injury, most of the e-books available to them for purchase would be available free from Project Gutenberg. And nonpublic domain books in Pennsylvania’s e-book system are more expensive than on other e-book markets.

This policy, part of a larger trend of censorship in state prisons around the country, should alarm everyone. Not only does it erect a huge financial barrier to books and severely restrict content, it also dehumanizes people in prison.

The changes in Pennsylvania follow an unprecedented lockdown in the state’s correctional facilities during last month’s national prison strike. The Pennsylvania DOC argues that these new policies are necessary to prevent contraband drugs, especially synthetic cannabinoids such as K2 from entering prisons after a string of incidents in August involving staff reportedly being exposed to contraband substances.

But this argument doesn’t hold up. Based on the DOC’s incident report, out of the 60 staff members exposed to unknown substances, only six tested positive for drugs. The DOC has also published examples of contraband drugs they have intercepted, none of which came from free book organizations. It is, of course, important to protect staff and inmates from exposure to drugs, but the DOC is purposefully exaggerating the risk to push their draconian policies. The DOC should instead focus on real security risks and addiction treatment, not further collective punishment.

In addition to the financial barriers, this policy also severely damages an incarcerated person’s ability to fully reenter society. Not only do organizations such as mine provide education material such as GED and SAT study books, textbooks, nonfiction books and business and trade books, but many organizations also send individualized workbooks designed for self-improvement or focused on the needs of minority populations such as LGBTQ inmates. The list of available e-books is missing some of the most requested books, including dictionaries, textbooks, graphic novels and books focused on incarceration issues such as “The New Jim Crow” and “Illegal to Legal.”

By using their time in prison to prepare for reentry into society, incarcerated people have a greater chance at living a productive life and their time in prison is enhanced through reading as a form of self-improvement. Books-to-prison organizations also offer inmates connections with the outside world, as people request books over and over again, often sending personal updates, drawings and sharing their stories. These connections cannot be replicated by e-books or ordering a specific book through the DOC.

The ancient Egyptians famously gave us paper and the pyramids, but were also early adopters of the stripy sock.

Scientists at the British Museum have developed pioneering imaging to discover how enterprising Egyptians used dyes on a child’s sock, recovered from a rubbish dump in ancient Antinoupolis in Roman Egypt, and dating from 300AD.

New multispectral imaging can establish which dyes were used – madder (red), woad (blue) and weld (yellow) – but also how people of the late antiquity period used double and sequential dying and weaving, and twisting fibres to create myriad colours from their scarce resources.

Buffy photographed by Arthur Schatz in New York, 1965

“The mouthbow, like the drum, is found in many parts of the world, particularly wherever people use bows and arrows for hunting. I guess that sooner or later the musician in the group figures out how to make music on a weapon… Although simple, it is intriguing because of the ability to play harmonics with it, just by the way you change the shape of your mouth while plucking the string.”

BLACK CREATIVE FOLKS ARE RIDICULOUSLY MORE LIKELY TO HAVE SHORTENED LIVES FROM POVERTY, THREAT-OF AND ACTUAL HOMELESSNESS -JUST LIKE WHAT’S HAPPENING TO HIM^^^^ RN!!

PLEASE!

“ive wrestled wit this thing for a while. cuz i know folks mean well when they call me avante garde-soul or experimental-r&b. but if you do an audit of black music, you’ll see that we’ve always had the latitude. thats why urrrrbody body else stays in our yard !! .

so hit me with the ha. hit me with the hee. please dont hit me with the hyphen !”

Kid: Pirates are good! I wanna be a pirate!

Student: Pirates are actually bad because they steal things and break the law

Expert: Pirates are nuanced because many of them were disaffected sailors and escaped slaves only doing what they had to do to survive in a harsh society