Shunya's Notes

LGBT Pride Parade 2008, SF

This year the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Celebration & Parade in San Francisco was particularly exuberant. Just days earlier, the California supreme court had struck down the ban on same-sex marriage (6 of its 7 judges are Republican appointees). Newlyweds marched in wedding attire. Gay men ran up to strangers in the crowd and excitedly screamed, "I'm getting married!" If heterosexuals had done the same, I would likely be fighting the sensation to puke. But in the homosexual context, this was powerfully moving and heartening to behold. Things have indeed come a long way, baby! 

The parade, customarily kicked off by the thundering Dykes on Bikes, lasted three hours. Despite elements of a raucous street party—loud music, dance, floats, drag queens, and sexual exhibitionism—the larger context was, not surprisingly, serious and highly political, with acts of moral courage and personal mutinies frequently evident. There were hundreds of contingents: advocates for sexual and civic rights and responsibilities; interest groups and non-profits; employers, families and friends of LGBT's; offices of local and state government; celebrities and businesses promoting themselves, etc. The most memorable funny banner I saw read: "Erection 2008 — Know the hard facts, then fill in the holes."

A particularly notable presence was from progressive Christian groups in the Bay Area. LGBTs from several ethnic/cultural groups marched too: SE Asians, Asian Pacific Islanders, Muslims, Latin Americans, and a very attractive float from Trikone, representing LGBT South Asians (swinging to the beat from Dhoom). Watching the parade I thought: if anything ought to make me take pride in the Bay Area (where I've lived for 13 of the last 17 years), this event has to be it.

Below is some footage (~26 mins) I gathered at the event (overlaid with music—majority of it by LGBTs—from my Anglo-American jukebox). Be sure to also check out the highly colorful photos I took there.

This LGBT Pride Parade took place on Sun, 29 June, 2008.

The Maha Kumbh Mela, 2001

The greatest of the Hindu pilgrimage festivals, the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad is a riverside religious fair held every 12 years at the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna (Sangam). Bathing in these rivers during the Kumbh Mela is considered a meritorious act that cleanses body and soul. The Maha Kumbh Mela is even rarer, held every 144 years. A Puranic legend has it that when gods and demons fought over a pot (kumbha) of amrit—the elixir that arose from their joint churning of the milky ocean—drops of it fell on four earthly sites, the four sites of the mela (festival), among which is Allahabad.

The festival has been held continuously for well over a millennium. In 7th century CE, the Chinese Buddhist traveler Hsüan-tsang attended the fair with emperor Harsha. In the 8th century the philosopher Shankara exhorted the sadhus (holy men) to meet at the Kumbh Mela for an exchange of views. The informal assembly of ascetics and yogis that took place here served as a kind of "parliament of Hinduism" for the discussion of religious doctrine and possible reform and has remained a major attraction for the pilgrim. Sadhus who stay naked all year, ascetics who practice severe physical disciplines, hermits who leave their isolation only for these pilgrimages, teachers who use modern technology to address the crowds, frauds, and true saints—of all sects and from all parts of India—gather in camps along the riverbank and are visited by the pilgrims. *

In 2001, an estimated 60 million—1% of all humans on the planet—came to the festival over six weeks. I went at the start and left a day before the big crowds arrived for a particularly auspicious bathing day. It was bitterly cold that second week of January, with lows near freezing. Fortunately, the Indian government had worked to ensure the basics: functional toilets, garbage pickup, free blankets and firewood, crowd control, security, transportation, pontoon bridges, etc.

The fair abounds in devotional chanting, singing, and dancing, processions and floats, free food for the poor, and smoking of ganja and hashish (illegal but tolerated, especially for "religious use"). Amid the din, anarchy, and unholy superstitions on display are scenes of joy, charity, tolerance, and cooperation. Young and old, rich and poor, healthy and sick, godly and atheist, pandit and chamar, fakir and mystic, brown and white, all come together in this giant human spectacle, an intense, absurd, spontaneous commedia dell'arte that offers to anyone who cares a great mind-expanding experience.

Below is some footage I shot there (~20 minutes), with music from my Indian jukebox woven in.

* Text adapted from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1998

Kenya Sings India

A Kenyan choir sings the Indian national anthem. (Click the photo.)

Scroll down the anthem page to see other groups singing other countries' anthems. This video is from the Pangea Day event, which took place on May 10, 2008.

Lohmann on Carbon Trading

Larry Lohmann, author and founding member of the Durban Group for Climate Justice, explains how carbon trading works, why it is an ill-conceived response to Climate Change, and why Bush and Gore are not as far apart in their policy prescriptions as some of us believe.

Further reading:

• Al Gore's climate solution - David Morris, Alternet
• 'Obscenity' of Carbon Trading - Kevin Smith, BBC News
• The Carbon Folly - Emily Flynn Vencat, Newsweek
• Smoke Alarm: EU Shows Carbon Trading is Not Cutting Emissions, Guardian
• Carbon Trade Watch Website - various articles
• Emissions Trading - Wikipedia article, with additional links at the bottom

Over 1,000,000 Iraqis Killed by US-Lead Invasion?

Here's something you're unlikely to see in the US press:

Further survey work undertaken by ORB, in association with its research partner IIACSS, confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003.

This is the conclusion of Opinion Research Business (ORB), an establishmentarian, British polling firm that conducted a study in Iraq in 2007. You can see their results on their website here, with an update here. But apparently, this information isn't newsworthy enough even to warrant discussion in the media.

Meanwhile, the US president is focused on his "legacy." He's aided in the effort by a new Fox documentary eulogizing him and claiming that he's been credited with "some of the most eloquent and visionary speeches ever delivered by an American president." And as the show goes on, with President Bush comparing himself to President Lincoln, it sounds increasingly like a joke. Was this program produced by satirist Stephen Colbert? Unfortunately not. Here's a taste (approx. 10 minutes):

Watch the full documentary here.

A Sunday in São Paulo

I often think of Brazil as the most diverse, complex, and beautiful country in the Americas, and I am fortunate to have traveled through many parts of it. Its wild nature is famous enough and its society is an intricate patchwork of global and indigenous cultures. In June 2001, I spent a Sunday walking the streets of São Paulo, a city that strongly reminds me of Bombay. It is the most energetic and cosmopolitan metropolis of Brazil, its financial and entertainment hub, and a city of great opportunity and strife. Of Brazil, I wrote in an essay:

Futebol, sun, sand, sex, hard bodies, music, dance, tropical fruits, and drinks—picture-postcard Brazil. But there is plenty to ruffle this youth-worshiping light-heartedness and hedonistic living in the present: extreme wealth disparity, urban violence, corruption, unemployment, illiteracy, high birth rate, cast off children, the horror of growing old. Children are ubiquitous in Brazil—half the population is under twenty. Evangelists strive for their souls in small towns and big cities ... Yet, Brazil has also made important strides. Communication, roads, transportation, housing projects, drinking water, and sanitation have come a long way. Multiple races and traditions coexist reasonably well. Villages and large cities rarely betray the kind of crushing poverty one finds in many other developing countries.

Here is some footage from my Sunday in São Paulo, with ordinary people, downtown, Liberdade (Japan town), evangelical Christians, soccer fever, street musicians/performers, sleaze district, prostitutes, the homeless, etc. The most hilarious part is that of a Japanese-Brazilian man in a public square, bursting spontaneously into dance—which later morphs into martial art moves—all to atrocious Christian pop!

(Music soundtrack by Adriana Calcanhotto, Cesaria Evora, Jerry Mulligan, Jane Duboc, Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, and Gilberto Gil.)

Lights, Camera, Action

I am pleased to announce a brand new channel on Shunya — Videos!

Videos should complement the other two channels: Articles and Photos. We will produce original videos besides linking to others on the web. Initially, the original videos will come from the 75+ hours of footage I've taken around the world, most during 2000-05—I've already posted the first five. When appropriate, I'll also showcase some of my favorite music from each region, as I did in the White Desert video. Text captions will be minimal, just enough for context. It's too bad my day job is not as much fun and no one has yet offered to turn my hobbies into a vocation. So a labor of love this remains.

This is also the 200th post on Shunya's Notes in sixteen months. Stay tuned for many more!

Slaughter in America

A recent Humane Society sting operation at a California slaughterhouse brought to light some very cruel treatment of farm animals (see the investigator's video; viewer discretion advised). The media attention caused a minor outrage and the largest beef recall in the history of the nation. Many wondered if cruelty is all that rare in the American meat business. Donations to animal rights groups followed (not unlike the spike in donations to charities following ads of emaciated children in god forsaken countries). Guilt assuaged, let's do pork chops for dinner.

Curiously enough, what bothered people most was the cruelty itself, and the nutritional safety of meat from downer cattle. In other words, if all USDA rules were followed, in letter and spirit, the complaints would dissolve and people would go back to maintaining their equanimity about the industrial-scale raising, killing, and processing of animals for food and things. Notably, the USDA—US department of agriculture—regulates this industry. This is on par with agriculture? What does this reveal about the American society's relationship with animals? How many little Eichmanns now thrive among us, within us?

Nearly ten billion mammals and birds are slaughtered each year in the US alone (a million per hour). How are they processed? The time-lapse footage below from the visually resplendent film, Baraka, has some details for chickens, mixed-in with scenes from modern life (a more disturbing one here. Also check out cartoonist Mark Fiore's, Doreen the Downer.)

White Desert, Egypt

The Western Desert, a vast expanse that starts at the western bank of the Nile and continues well into Libya, is the desert of deserts. Covering a total of 2.8 million sq km and bordered by Libya in the west, Sudan in the south and the Mediterranean in the north, it is a world of desolation and beauty -- and one of the few places in Egypt where you can go for days at a time without seeing a soul. Five isolated but thriving oases dot this otherwise uninhabited expanse: Kharga, Dakhla, Farafra, Bahariyya, and to the north-west of these, Siwa.  (—LP, Egypt).

In Jan 2003, Usha and I traveled through four of the five Oases in Egypt's Western Desert (or Eastern Sahara), including a special excursion to the hauntingly beautiful White Desert, known for its otherworldly white chalk rock formations. In Farafra, we hired a 4x4, camping gear, a driver who doubled as a cook, and drove about 50 km over shifting sands.

Usha, with her keen eye for detail, spotted seashells in the sand, a thrilling discovery for us. It is one thing to know that the Sahara was once below the sea, another to see proof of it. Also visible are remains of ancient lava flows—bits of lava rock rolled around for millions of years, eventually turning into lots of black spheroids, inch-wide in diameter. Our "tent" had two right-angled walls (to act as windbreakers) and no roof. We saw a gazillion stars and the white rocks looked beautiful in the moonlight. But even four blankets didn't feel enough when the temperature dropped to near freezing that night. Here are some scenes from the trip, set to some music I like from north Africa.

A funny aside: The book Sahara, describes "four major ethnic groups of the Sahara, including the [Muslim] Tuareg, whose men rather than the women wear veils ... Tuareg women tell the men that 'a child can sleep in the womb for years, or even forever.'"

This [provides a cheating] wife a welcome and convenient pretext for representing to her husband in a respectable light any increase in the family that may have taken place in his absence.

Ghost Town in the Levant

Scenes from my visit to Quneitra, Syria, 2001. (Wikipedia on Quneitra.)