The Breaking Time

The Future Is...

A special edition of Curious Search for New Year's Eve. Live well, everyone. Tomorrow's another year.

I've posted this amazing piece of art from Roland Tiangco before. It's worth repeating.

The Mystery of Princess Hijab

Photo via Tracy Clark-Flory

"My work supports right-wing radicalism like Taxi Driver supports cabbies. I'm using the hijab for myself."

-Princess Hijab

For the past few years, a mysterious street artist, supposedly a 21-year-old Muslim woman, has hit Parisian billboards, shrouding the models gracing the slick advertisements in black hijabs. 

Her work, has at times, seemed a Rorschach test for the culture wars. Critics swore that she was an Islamic fundamentalist, intent on blotting out images of sexuality. Others saw her works as sly feminist subversion, pointing out that she often left model's legs naked and covered male figures as well as female. 

In a lot of ways, what she's doing is not that different from how enterprising fetishists mutated corsets and nun's habits to whole new purposes.

Or is it?

United State of Pop 2009

It's another year, and another brilliant mashup of the year's Billboard Top 25 from DJ Earworm. When I remarked on last year's installment, the thing that struck me most was "a plaintive, shivering yearning for an easier time."

This year, the visuals made more of an impact: bleak scenes of home or work life, broken up by wild, otherworldly parties. The popular mind wants to get the fuck away, dammit, possibly to a bizarre sonic future ruled by will.i.am and Fergie.

I also have a new appreciation for why Illuminati temptress Lady Gaga has caused such a ruckus: in this visual landscape, her quasi-fetish fantasias stand out as comparatively inventive.

I am also predicting that we will see the usual wailing about how interchangeable and plastic music has become. So I'm offering the vaccine early; here's the top songs from 1989. Popular frequently doesn't mean influential. Personally, I remain thankful for our era of audio mutation, when the lowliest drone song can become musical gold.

Racial profiling in Asheville?

Russell Johnson, photo by Jonathan Welch

My article on possible racial profiling in Asheville was the cover story in last week's issue of the Mountain Xpress. It's an attempt to tackle a thorny topic, taking a look at the statistics and the cases of two people with clean criminal records facing run-ins with law enforcement that they believe were partially racially motivated.

There's the numbers:

Between Nov. 1, 2008, and Oct. 31 of this year, the APD reported making 6,264 traffic stops. Of those stopped, 873 (13.9 percent) were African-Americans. According to census data, roughly 17 percent of Asheville residents are African-American. Hispanics, meanwhile, accounted for 215 of those APD stops (3.4 percent); 5 percent of Asheville's population is Hispanic. So, by that measure, the statistics give no hint of racial profiling.

Once stopped, however, African-American men are statistically far more likely to be searched. During that same time period, the APD reported conducting 509 car searches. Of those, 180 — more than a third — involved black males.

Then the case of Navy veteran Russell Johnson:

"We wanted to get away from the Bele Chere weekend crowds," he remembers. "The park rangers were breaking down a DUI checkpoint, and I was taking pictures on the Mills River Bridge. The moon was a sliver: It was red and so beautiful, and I just had to get a picture."

Johnson's car was parked on the other side of the bridge, and he walked over to talk to the rangers before heading back to his vehicle.

"When I walked up to one of the cars — there were four at the entrance — I waved and said, 'I really appreciate what y'all are doing, keeping us safe on the Parkway.' I asked how long it would take to get to Pisgah from here," says Johnson, who wanted to get more photographs before the light faded. "He told me — and this is a park ranger — he didn't know what I was talking about."

On video, Johnson can be clearly seen walking up to the car and waving, though his words aren't audible. Three rangers emerge from surrounding vehicles and direct Johnson to put his hands behind his back.

"I obliged, and they started searching me, going through my little fanny pack, which just had my flashlight, my compass — things you use in the woods," says Johnson. "One of the rangers grabbed my hands and shoved them up between my shoulder blades."

The impact was so hard that Johnson will now require surgery for a damaged disc, hospital documents confirm. "I get dizzy: I'm a disabled veteran with some nerve troubles; this didn't help things," he says.

And finally, local musician Jonathan Scales:

"I came out of The Rocket Club, I saw a friend of mine, happened to be my Realtor (I was buying a house at the time). I went to say 'hey' to him, but he was on the phone and I didn't want to disturb him, so I shook his hand," remembers Scales. "I walked a couple of blocks down and this police officer stops me and asked if I knew the man at the gas station. He told me, 'I saw that handshake; it looked kind of suspicious.'"

Scales told Officer Kelly Radford that the person was his real-estate agent.

"Basically, at that point he accused me, said, 'Well, it looked like a drug deal,'" Scales relates. "I was shocked. I've never done drugs a day in my life. He took my ID; he asked if I minded if he searched me. I told him I did mind, that I hadn't done anything wrong; he would just be wasting his time."

According to Scales, Radford then told him that if he was innocent, he wouldn't object to being searched.

"I didn't know a handshake counted as probable cause, that it was suspect," Scales says with a chuckle. "It was apparent I wasn't getting out of it. I refused it for about five minutes, then I let him search me. I was against the cop car, his hands on top of my hands, I got the whole pat-down treatment."

---

Williams, the APD spokesperson, backed up that assessment, confirming that Radford did, in fact, find Scales' handshake suspicious.

"Jonathan Scales was searched by an APD officer, pursuant to consent, based on actions that appeared to the officer to be a hand-to-hand transaction of some type (and not a mere handshake greeting) on Haywood Road," she wrote Xpress in response to questions about the incident. "No contraband was discovered, and the officer apologized to Mr. Scales for delaying him."

Comments and thoughts welcome.

Iran's Rubicon

An Iranian opposition supporter next to a burning police motorcycle in Tehran. Amir Sadeghi, Getty Images

It is the rebellion that will not die. Yesterday, and today, Iranian opposition supporters clashed with riot police and pro-regime militia, leaving nine dead. One of those was Ali Mousavi, the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, slain in an apparent hit. The regime intensified its response today, arresting seven protest leaders and stealing Mousavi's corpse to prevent a funeral. Funerals for those slain in the protests have become a common rallying point for protests.

Many in the media are throwing around words like "tipping point" or "endgame" to describe the current situation. In a sharp editorial, The Guardian describes things thus:

It is fruitless to speculate whether a tipping point has been achieved by Iran's burgeoning opposition movement. But after the weekend's protest marches in which at least eight people and probably many more died, we do know that the movement is both exceptionally resilient and spreading. What started out as a loose-knit coalition of reformist groups led by defeated opposition candidates protesting rampant fraud in the presidential election is becoming bolder, more focused and angrier by the week. Many protesters on the streets of Tehran on Sunday did not even cover their faces in the videos uploaded to YouTube, as they did in the post-election protests six months ago. The crowds displayed great bravery, refusing to retreat under police baton charges and volleys of warning shots. The other feature of the internet clips was the scenes of policemen either being overwhelmed or giving up and walking away. The protest is also going national. Opposition websites reported clashes in Qom and seven other cities in central, northern and eastern Iran. None of this seems likely to melt away.

To engage for a moment in such speculation, I do think it's likely that the protests have crossed the Rubicon, so to speak, and the evidence of that lies not just in the protesters' courage but in the savagery of the regime's response. Risky steps like confiscating bodies and attacking on a religious holiday imply that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad see this fight as past the point of no return: they are desperate, believing that they must either crush the rebellion or be crushed themselves. 

Reasons for the season

It's a few days past the Solstice. Axial tilt remains. The blood gods have been appeased. The mall deities still hunger, but what else is new?

Wherever you are, whatever name you're celebrating, the best to all your family and friends. It's a tough world, but occasionally just a little warmer and more generous.

Poems for Friday: The Blizzard

Asheville, seen from the courthouse as the snow comes down. Photo by Kay Privett

The entire town's almost buried. We've had over five inches of snow so far and it keeps on coming down. It's the first truly harsh winter weather I've seen since moving here.

Unusual weather is an awesome thing, both beautiful and a stark reminder of how much we remain at the whim of things larger than ourselves.

Phillis Levin has an excellent poem about blizzards, and what they bring. Read now.

Now that the worst is over, they predict

Something messy and difficult, though not

Life-threatening. Clearly we needed

To stock up on water and candles, making

Tureens of soup and things that keep

When electricity fails and phone lines fall.

Igloos rise on air conditioners, gargoyles

Fly and icicles shatter. Frozen runways,

Lines in markets, and paralyzed avenues

Verify every fear. But there is warmth

In this sudden desire to sleep,

To surrender to our common condition

With joy, watching hours of news

Devoted to weather. People finally stop

To talk to each other - the neighbors

We didn't know were always here.

Today they are ready for business,

Armed with a new vocabulary,

Casting their saga in phrases as severe

As last night's snow: damage assessment,

Evacuation, emergency management.

The shift of the wind matters again,

And we are so simple, so happy to hear

The scrape of a shovel next door. 

The Great Healthcare Freakout

Will everyone please calm the fuck down?

Yes, I mean you, Glenn Greenwald, and I very definitely mean you, Avedon Carol. I should probably throw Howard Dean, whose column today threw gasoline on an already simmering fire, into the pile too.

With the largest healthcare legislation in decades close to passage, a great swirling brawl has emerged and oddly, many bloggers and activists who have pushed for the legislation now want it dead because of the lack of a public option. 

538 has the only remotely reasonable debate so far between the "it's a start" faction and the "it's not good enough, kill it now" side. 

Personally, I'd like everyone to take a deep breath. Since discussion about this legislation started, the entire process has been plagued by hyperbole, first by right-wing rantings that health care legislation would usher in a communist dystopia and now by the crying of some progressives that this constitutes a grand betrayal. My, but the body politic does love its drama.

Everyone reading this blog has a brain, so I'm not going to tell you to love the American attempt at universal health care or hate it. That's up to you. What I will do, while you're taking that deep breath, is try to offer a few extremely important points that have been lost in the screaming.

There is no They: Men in hijabs

Iranian students donning the hijab in solidarity with imprisoned protester Majid Tavakoli

The Iranian regime locked up student protester Majid Tavakoli and, in an attempt to humiliate him, released photos of the young man dressed as a woman.

It backfired. Above is one of the hundreds of pictures sent in by Iranian men, wearing the traditionally female hijab, declaring their pride in Tavakoli and calling for gender equality. 

It's the sort of moment that brings a smile to even the most cynical of lips. "We'll humiliate you by dressing one of your friends up as a woman!" "Oh yeah? Well now we're all dressed like women. And anyway, what's so bad about women?" All this in the face of a regime that still hangs gay people.

Much of the internet fervor behind the Green Revolution has faded, but in Iran it's quite clear there's still a lot of activity and simmering unrest. It's good to see that in the fact of repression unimaginable to many over here, the Green Revolution's people haven't lost their defiance or sense of humor. It's also heartening to see that what began as a simple call for reform has widened to an attack on societal repression.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the next time some politician blithely talks about bombing the middle east flat to get rid of "fanatics," remember this is the reality, and that is the lie. 

So here's men in hijabs. Here's a lot of them. It ain't over.

Cecil Bothwell, atheism and internet "controversy"

Cecil Bothwell affirming his oath of office, Dec. 8. Photo by Jason Sandford, all rights reserved

Our argumentative online culture, religious conflict and Asheville have all collided nicely this week. From my Mountain Xpress write-up of the "controversy" over new Asheville City Council member Cecil Bothwell:

It seems the only place people aren’t shouting about this week’s swearing in of new Asheville City Council member Cecil Bothwell is Asheville. Blogs, including that of the Washington Post, have lit up about the “controversy” over Bothwell, a “post-theist” who earlier identified as an atheist, taking his seat.

The controversy began with Asheville Citizen-Times stories on Monday and Tuesday. The latter was titled, “Critics of Cecil Bothwell Cite N.C. Bar to Atheists.” It quoted only one opponent, H.K. Edgerton, a former president of the Asheville NAACP best known locally for walking around town brandishing a Confederate flag, as saying that the state constitution would keep Bothwell, a builder, author and former Xpress writer and editor, from holding office.

While article 6, section 8 of the North Carolina Constitution does deny office to “any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God,” such state bans have been routinely trumped by Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly prohibits any religious tests for public office. A similar ban in Maryland was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court back in 1961.

Since the articles came out, the proverbial Internet flood gates have opened, with national blogs from across the political spectrum weighing in, including such varied groups and viewpoints as Americans United For Separation of Church and State, Hot Air, Thought Crimes, Atheist News and Views, One Good Move, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religous Liberty and the interestingly named House of Zot. USAtheists even declared that Bothwell was denied his seat, which he wasn’t.

For all the hubbub elsewhere, Bothwell, who came in third in the November election, took his seat in City Hall on Tuesday without event, choosing to affirm his oath of office instead of swear on a copy of the Bible. No one shouted, no one tried to seriously challenge his right to do so, and he got an enthusiastic round of applause.