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#Post#: 3872--------------------------------------------------
Is Counterculture Still Alive?
By: guest5 Date: January 31, 2021, 3:20 pm
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Is Counterculture Still Alive?
[quote]We talk to Jordi Costa and Germán Labrador about the
historical roots of counterculture and its current
situation.[/quote]
HTML http://lab.cccb.org/wp-content/uploads/contracultura_lab.jpg
[quote]It is curious how it adapts in very creative and
different ways in each country. Jordi, in your book you provide
examples of symbiosis, encounters and coincidences that are very
bizarre for people unfamiliar with the subject. Did the
underground penetrate in Spain in a special way?[/quote]
[quote]Let’s talk about the present. Do you think, Germán, that
forms of underground, of counterculture, exist around
us?[/quote]
[quote]G: Yes of course. There is graffiti, music, association
networks, cooperatives, all of them typically countercultural.
The 15M wave was countercultural and had a global dimension. The
movements of 2011 can also be thought of as cultural
revolutions. Radical solidarity networks, clandestine dining
rooms, hacktivists, movements such as 15MpaRato, the green and
white tides. In the global boom of feminism today we also see
tensions typical of a counterculture that is becoming hegemonic.
Vegans, animal rights defenders, degrowthers, extinctionists,
Fridays for Future, etc. Also, those that are concerned with
global diasporas. Today they are, and are going to be, the
countercultural revolution that is pending.[/quote]
[quote]G: Trap and other similar sounds do not originate from
this activist universe. But they do come from a nearby
territory. This is the music of the children of the crisis of
2012. Of that 20% of children at risk of social exclusion. They
were invisible and they made themselves visible with their
music. Neighbourhood kids, condemned to contemporary forms of
poverty, in a precarised and rarefied environment. But they are
coming armed, they have immense cultural riches. They are the
children of immigration, of multiculturalism, of access to
Internet and to do-it-yourself. Self-taught, they learned to be
disk jockeys, to rap, to compose, to promote themselves, to
organise their own concerts, their own brands…
J: Trap is one of those territories that the view of some
children of counterculture underestimates due to purely
generational prejudices. Music critics who disqualify trap for
its technical execution and excellence follow Social-democratic
Taste. I think it is important to underline that it’s not
strictly necessary to come from activism in order to have
countercultural potential: it’s sufficient to formulate the
discourse from the elements, from the life force… In the Spain
of the 1970s, counterculture and political resistance walked
together under the Franco regime: once democracy arrived,
counterculture turned into that chaotic dirtiness that the left
needed to either tame or hide under the carpet. The case of
Rosalía is different: she is an artiste who seems to have
understood to perfection the mechanics of the market in order to
infiltrate them and manage to articulate her own discourse,
which is perfectly legitimate but not necessarily
countercultural. Moreover, without any desire to share out
countercultural membership cards, a writer such as Cristina
Morales, with a fierce discourse against the hegemonic and made
of countercultural mettle, is taking advantage of the cash award
of the National Literature Prize in order to continue creating
in freedom.[/quote]
HTML http://lab.cccb.org/en/is-counterculture-still-alive/
#Post#: 4150--------------------------------------------------
The inferiority of Kpop
By: 90sRetroFan Date: February 12, 2021, 2:47 am
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(You knew I was going to get back round to this topic
eventually.....)
In a recent casual conversation, an observation emerged that
Kpop (a post-Counterculture phenomenon) is invariably performed
by gender-segregated groups, either all-female (inferiority
warning!):
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBnGBb1wg98
or all-male (inferiority warning!):
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0iPB_JyS5g
to the extent that young people today unfamiliar with
Counterculture-era music videos seem to take gender-segregated
performance for granted, and are even unaware that
non-gender-segregated performances used to be considered normal
(crushing superiority alert!):
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHA3mOYPyEg
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXPgrCd1qUA
Additionally, back then sexual dimorphism was not emphasized
whether by the performers themselves or by the director/editor.
Once again, this shows how much less gender-obsessed people used
to be back in the old days. (The absence of plastic surgery also
helps.) This is to say nothing of the superiority of the songs
themselves.....
#Post#: 4757--------------------------------------------------
Re: Is Counterculture Still Alive?
By: guest5 Date: March 12, 2021, 8:24 pm
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[quote]Getting creative with some flute loops, raps, turntablism
and some fancy war dancing.
Cinematography - Samuel Jerome Jay[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuoynYcUMvw
[quote]Lyrics:
Peace to all my people around the world, across the block/
(Apsáalooke language) "My name is "Good Fortune on Mother Earth"
reporting live from the universe/ it's the First Nations emcee/
you could do the search/who's been through the worse/surviving
genocide/fighting for a better life/they try to set aside/the
true history/and keep us mystical/ they say they founded this
country on biblical principals?/ It's so cynical/but I'm an
analyst/ it's murderous/they refer to us as merciless/ indian
savages/ now that's written in the declaration of independence,
that's no kidding/hey/open up your heart and let love lead the
way/light your path with the words that I speak today/let the
lessons flow/arrive and bless ya soul/systematic racism/alive,
intentional/ know better do better is the motto/ it's that good
medicine, a hard pill to swallow[/quote]
#Post#: 4773--------------------------------------------------
Re: Is Counterculture Still Alive?
By: 90sRetroFan Date: March 12, 2021, 10:42 pm
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The feathers are unacceptable.
#Post#: 4776--------------------------------------------------
Re: Is Counterculture Still Alive?
By: guest5 Date: March 12, 2021, 11:00 pm
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[quote author=90sRetroFan link=topic=456.msg4773#msg4773
date=1615610574]
The feathers are unacceptable.
[/quote]
Even if he picked them up off the ground? I noticed his Western
wedding band on his "ring finger" too....
#Post#: 4780--------------------------------------------------
Re: Is Counterculture Still Alive?
By: 90sRetroFan Date: March 12, 2021, 11:23 pm
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Even if these particular feathers involved no initiated
violence, wearing them could send a signal that feathers are
acceptable, and then the next guy may initiate violence to
obtain feathers.
#Post#: 5361--------------------------------------------------
Re: Right-left (Judeo-)Christian divergence
By: guest5 Date: April 6, 2021, 1:01 am
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Why Satanic Panic never really ended
[quote]The collective fears that consumed the US in the 1980s
and ’90s are still alive and well — all the way through QAnon
and beyond.[/quote]
HTML https://www.vox.com/culture/22358153/satanic-panic-ritual-abuse-history-conspiracy-theories-explained?utm_source=pocket-newtab
HTML https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KyHTELhzxu-tEHTIUrYnDlm9JHg=/0x0:1197x786/920x613/filters:focal(739x59:929x249):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69055832/Screen_Shot_2016-10-26_at_8.33.04_AM.0.png
#Post#: 5403--------------------------------------------------
Re: Is Counterculture Still Alive?
By: guest5 Date: April 7, 2021, 11:10 pm
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Bonus:
R.A. The Rugged Man - Montero (Lil Nas X Remix)
[quote]R.A. The Rugged Man is back with another surprise remix.
After reworking tracks from the likes of Miley Cyrus, Taylor
Swift, and Cardi B, the underground hip-hop icon now wreaks
havoc on Lil Nas X's controversial hit single "Montero".[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=5eUM_A1Dcqo
HTML https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/355/405/31069016242f9c016cd899317027e79e84-25-Lil-Nas-X.2x.rsocial.w600.jpg
#Post#: 5512--------------------------------------------------
Re: Is Counterculture Still Alive?
By: guest5 Date: April 11, 2021, 10:04 pm
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The Pirate Radio Broadcaster Who Occupied Alcatraz and Terrified
the FBI
[quote]Over fifty years ago, John Trudell overcame tragedy to
become the national voice for Native Americans—and a model for a
new generation of activists.[/quote]
[quote]a smiling man speaking into a microphone
Trudell had one thing the FBI could not stop: his voice. Image
by Michelle Vignes/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty Images
He sat at the same table each evening, sometimes with lighting
and sometimes without, a cigarette often in hand, a guest always
by his side. In the background, the sound of waves rolling
against the rocks and the stuttering of a backup generator were
constants. Then, with a crackly yet true radio connection,
streaming through the wires from an unthinkable place — Alcatraz
Island — he began speaking in a calm, determined voice. The
nation was listening.
In the Pacifica Radio Archives, located in a modest brick
building in North Hollywood, you can hear what hundreds of
thousands of Americans heard on those evenings.File through the
cassettes and you will find more than a dozen tapes labeled with
a single word: Alcatraz. Each is followed by a date, anywhere
from December 1969 to August 1970.
But these were not simply programs about Alcatraz, that island
in the notoriously frigid San Francisco Bay that was home to a
federal prison until it closed in 1963. Rather, they were
broadcast from the former prison building itself, from a small
cell without heat and only a lone generator for power rumbling
in the background.
The show was called Radio Free Alcatraz , and it was hosted by
John Trudell, a Santee Sioux Native American activist and
broadcaster.
By the winter of 1969, Trudell could be found in that austere
cell, speaking over the rush of waves in a composed Midwestern
accent. And by 1973, he had become one of the FBI’s most feared
activists, with a file that would eventually run longer than
1,000 pages.
Why would the FBI compose its longest dossier about a
broadcaster speaking from a rocky island a mile offshore? What
was Trudell saying that frightened them so much?
Trudell was advocating for Native American self-determination,
explaining its moral and political importance to all Americans.
On air, he often revealed the innumerable ways the government
was violating Native American rights: obstructing fishing access
in Washington State, setting unfair prices on tribal lands,
removing Native American children from local schools. But he
didn’t just reveal the cruel contradictions at the heart of
American society. He imagined a future in which equality —
between different American cultures, and between all people and
the earth itself — would become a reality
And for the first time, non–Native American communities were
listening. More than 100,000 people tuned in to Pacifica
stations in California, Texas and New York to hear his weekly
broadcast.
At just 23 years old, with long brown hair and hanging earrings,
Trudell had one thing the FBI could not stop: his voice.
Trudell’s story begins in the autumn of 1969, when a group of
Native American activists, known as the Indians of All Tribes
(IOAT), began contesting centuries of injustice by seeking to
reclaim unoccupied lands. The organization pointed to the 1868
Treaty of Fort Laramie, which provided that all surplus federal
land be returned to native tribes. IOAT set its eyes on
Alcatraz, a symbolic beacon just past the Golden Gate Bridge. It
had been unoccupied since President Kennedy closed the federal
prison in 1963.
By inhabiting the 12 acres of Alcatraz, IOAT hoped to set a
precedent for the reclamation of hundreds of thousands of
unclaimed acres across the United States. But there was an
obstacle: a hawkish government. Each time IOAT tried to reach
Alcatraz — even making attempts to swim — the Coast Guard
blocked their passage.
That all changed on the night of November 20. Under the cover of
darkness and a dense blanket of fog, 79 activists from more than
20 tribes sailed from Sausalito across the frigid bay and
settled on the island. Over Coast Guard radio, the sole
caretaker of Alcatraz could be heard shouting, “Mayday, Mayday.
The Indians have landed!” Despite his calls, the government’s
response was delayed; the activists, many with their families
and children, were safe. A gathering was held that night at 2
a.m., the old prison barracks were set up as homes, and food was
lifted in fishing nets. Governing teams were also established.
Onshore allies knew the landing had succeeded when they saw a
bright yellow Morse code message blinking through the mist: “Go
Indians!” Back on Alcatraz, the children of the activists
shrieked with excitement and clambered around the precipices of
their new home.
John Trudell was not on those initial voyages. At the time, he
had just returned from deployment in Vietnam, enrolled in San
Bernardino Valley College, and moved in with his girlfriend,
Fenicia Lou Ordonez. When he learned of the landing on Alcatraz,
he suggested they join in.
“I get cold feet,” Fenicia protested, according to a scene in
director Heather Rae’s 2005 documentary Trudell.
“Well, you’ll have to find socks,” said Trudell.
Expecting to join for only a few weeks, they packed sleeping
bags, headed six hours north, and hitched a ride across the
emerald bay on one of the IOAT-operated vessels, many of which
were typically used for fishing and shipping.
What was once a treacherous journey with fierce Coast Guard
resistance was now readily accessible, but not because the
government had become any more benevolent. Rather, the
activists’ tactic of establishing a critical mass on the island,
and showing the nation why it was deservedly theirs, had
succeeded. Fearing a public backlash, federal authorities called
off the Coast Guard from intervening in these voyages.
Soon after docking on the island, Trudell attended the daily
island meeting of IOAT leaders and tribal heads. He pointed out
that if they truly wanted to make a case for the Native American
right to reclaim unused land, they urgently needed to reshape
the narrative. On his drive to the Bay Area, Trudell had seen
national papers like The New York Times and San Francisco
Chronicle running stories portraying the occupation as a Native
American theft — rather than a reclamation of what was stolen
from them.
Trudell had spent the previous university semester studying
radio and television production, and he felt that it was time,
as he said in a 1969 interview, “to put into practice a little
of what I had picked up at school.” He returned to San
Bernardino for provisions, then returned to live on the island.
He asked himself: “How would the tribes communicate best, and
make their message known?”
His answer would take the occupiers’ message across the country
and change the way Americans thought about the injustices
perpetrated against native peoples.
If you lived in Northern California and tuned into KPFA-FM at
7:15 p.m. on December 22, 1969, or if you lived in New York City
and tuned to WBAI-FM at 10:15 p.m., you would not get standard
national news or updates about the moon landing.
Rather, you’d hear twangy guitar chords ushering in the voice of
Buffy Sainte-Marie, who crooned a nostalgic ballad for Native
American ways: “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone.”
The song was followed by an announcement.
“Good evening, and welcome to Radio Free Alcatraz . This is John
Trudell, welcoming you on behalf of the Indians of All Tribes,
from Indian Land Alcatraz Island.”
For the next 30 minutes, Trudell led conversations with Native
American activists, spiritualists and students — many of whom
were living on the island, visiting as volunteers, or ferrying
supplies. It was called Radio Free Alcatraz , and Trudell
typically began episodes by describing challenges on the island.
There were many: Alcatraz had shaky electricity, a dearth of
clean water, and it was frequently hit by strong offshore
storms.
“It’s been a hassle lately with our electricity,” Trudell said
one night at the beginning of a Radio Free Alcatraz show. “We
had a power failure on Friday. … We didn’t have any power at
all. And Saturday, we were stranded on the island because of bad
weather.”
Despite these immediate challenges, Trudell — often clad in a
wide-collared button-down underneath an emblazoned leather
jacket — spoke both with the equanimity of a captain reporting
to headquarters and the kindness of a good friend.
In an interview with KPFA hostAl Silbowitzin December 1969,
Trudell sketched a portrait of life on the island and outlined
the purpose of the occupation. While many watching from the
shore had been amazed by the movement’s courage and ability to
survive on the rocky island, Trudell wanted the non–Native
American audience to know: This struggle was not unique to this
moment. It was experienced daily by native tribes everywhere.
But what was unique, and urgent for all people to recognize, was
that the activists’ intention with Alcatraz was to reshape the
narrative and the oppressive course of history. As Trudell says
in the interview, “Alcatraz is more than just a rock to us. It’s
a stepping-stone to a better future. We have a chance to unite
the American Indian people as they never had the opportunity to
do.”
More often than not, however, Trudell’s primary role was not
that of orator but rather of generous mediator, determined to
animate Native American voices and convey a sense of hope born
from their struggle. The heart of the program was his intimate
voice — masterful at revealing the aspirational humanity that
defined the movement, while outlining the enduring goal of
activists to construct a university and Native American cultural
center.
Trudell was not just a broadcaster: He was one of the unsung
American forefathers of what we now call socially impactful
publicity, or strategic communications. He already knew that for
activists to succeed, it was not enough to campaign. They had to
shape national consciousness.
On the night of December 28, his guest was Jonny BearCub, a
member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes. Trudell
opened with a question: “How are things on your reservation?
Would you explain — what tribe are you with, and where is it
at?”
Jonny raised concerns about the unjust allocation of federal
funds to her reservation and revealed the low wages factory
workers were receiving at a firearm production plant there.
“It happened in Palm Springs too,” said Trudell, drawing a
connection, as he so often did, between a local complaint and a
national one. “At one point, the Natives there were each worth
$329,000 dollars a person. Then the BIA, or Bureau of Indian
Affairs, stepped in and determined many of them incompetent to
handle their affairs, so they put this money in trust with white
people, who got fantastically wealthy.”
As an activist, Trudell’s role was often that of raconteur. He
didn’t just tell about injustice. He relayed stories that showed
it, and he had faith that Americans everywhere, having heard
these stories, would do the right thing.
On January 5, 1970, just six weeks into the occupation, the
13-year-old daughter of Richard Oakes, one of the movement’s
founders, fell to her death from a third-story window. Oakes, in
immense grief, left the island. The child’s death, and his
departure, were a blow to a community that was becoming
increasingly disorderly and plagued by internal strife, as
rumors mounted that the U.S. Marshals might raid the island at
any time. But Trudell did not falter.
His was a voice of constancy, offering a lighthouse for a
movement troubled at sea. “This is John Trudell from Radio Free
Alcatraz , wishing you all a pleasant evening.”
Tragedy was not new to Trudell. It was a foundational part of
his family history.
In the early 1900s, Trudell’s grandmother had been kidnapped by
Pancho Villa’s men from her tribe in Chihuahua, Mexico, and
brought to the U.S. She eventually settled down in Kansas with
Trudell’s grandfather, a man with a price on his head for his
involvement in the Mexican Revolution. A few years later, the
couple had a daughter, who, after moving to Nebraska, fell in
love with a Santee Sioux native, Clifford Trudell. The couple
married and had John, born in a hospital close to the
reservation in Omaha, on February 15, 1946.
John grew up on and around the Santee reservation in North
Dakota. Life felt wholesome; the reservation offered respite
from the civil commotion and disarray that characterized U.S.
cities, while providing sources of ritual and community. But
those rather innocent early years ended abruptly at the age of
6, when Trudell’s mother died in childbirth.
“We visited her, my father and I, in this hospital,” Trudell
said in an interview recorded in the early 2000s. “I remember
she gave me grapes — green grapes. She hugged me; she kissed me.
And then it was time to go. I didn’t see her anymore.”
He paused, and spoke again, his still-powerful voice as soft and
singsongy as a child’s.
“Green,” he said. “Time to go.”
In the early 1950s, John enrolled in school off the reservation,
where he confronted a Western culture indifferent to his
spiritual understandings and offering few answers to his
enduring questions. He often asked, literally, “Where had my
mother gone?” He learned about the Christian God and heaven from
classmates and teachers. But these concepts never resonated with
him. How could he trust a religion that was upheld by a culture
that was threatening the lives of his tribe and Native American
people everywhere?
“You have potential,” Trudell heard one day in the principal’s
office. “But you have to work harder if you want to be
something.” Trudell didn’t care for the patronizing tone, and he
knew he already was something. He longed to escape a school that
seemed to stifle, not teach.
He soon found a way, enlisting in the Navy during the early days
of the Vietnam War. He spent his deployment far from the jungle
battlefields, bobbing in the waters off of Saigon, watching the
stunning kaleidoscopic sunsets and meditating on the fate of his
people.
In 1971, the occupation was more than a year old, and the
federal government began plotting to end it. In late May, they
shut Ioff electricity and cut off all radio service on the
island, ending Trudell’s broadcasts. The population on the
island plummeted as water became increasingly difficult to
access. Meanwhile, factions and power struggles began emerging
within the occupiers; some wanted to hire an attorney to
represent their claims. Others, including Trudell, believed
self-representation was the only honest way forward.
When government agents raided Alcatraz on June 11, there were
only 15 people remaining on the island. It is unknown whether
Trudell was among them, but one thing was clear: Though the
occupation was officially finished, Trudell was just getting
started. His next fight would be with the FBI.
“He’s extremely eloquent, and therefore extremely dangerous,”
reads a line in Trudell’s FBI dossier. They had no idea that the
even greater danger lay in a deeper kind of power: his power to
reveal inequality and injustice while appealing to natural
liberty.
After the occupation, Trudell became the chairman and national
spokesperson of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and fell in
love with a prominent Native American activist, Tina Manning.
They married in 1972 and often traveled and gave speeches
together. Meanwhile, Trudell galvanized AIM through protests,
most notably the 1973 campaign to reclaim Wounded Knee village
from tribal chairman Richard Wilson, who was notorious for
suppressing political opponents and failing to act in the best
interests of the reservation.
Trudell’s oratory prowess transformed the grassroots movement
into a national effort. But this time, he used it not to
communicate to outsiders, but rather to organize disparate
tribes.
It worked. Thousands of activists gathered at Wounded Knee, the
site of a massacre of Native Americans by U.S. Calvary in 1890,
which now had symbolic power. The FBI and federal marshals soon
moved in. Clashes were deadly.[/quote]
Entire article:
HTML https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-pirate-radio-broadcaster-who-occupied-alcatraz-and-terrified-the-fbi?utm_source=pocket-newtab
[img width=1280
height=517]
HTML https://pocket-image-cache.com/direct?resize=w2000&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnarratively.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F01%2Falcatraz-HEADER_2580.jpg[/img]
#Post#: 6644--------------------------------------------------
Re: Is Counterculture Still Alive?
By: guest5 Date: May 23, 2021, 10:11 pm
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Teen Punk Rockers "Racist Sexist Boy" Goes Viral
[quote]Teen punk rockers, The Linda Lindas, are going viral with
their original song "Racist Sexist Boy." Cenk Uygur, Wosny
Lambre, and Bridget Todd discuss on The Young Turks.[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYBsfqax1SI
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