[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com.]

Talk about fake news: before our very eyes, the Main Stream Media is attempting to disappear Swedens Muslim rape crisis after President Trump alluded to it in his Florida rally on Friday e.g. From an Anchors Lips to Trumps Ears to Swedens Disbelief . [By Peter Baker And Sewell Chan, NYT, February 20, 2017]

Trump did not actually say what the MSM heardthat Sweden had suffered a terrorist attackbut that the Swedes, having taken in large numbers, were having problems like they never thought possible. [Trump Trance? Media Sure It Heard Sweden Comment Trump Never Said, By Charlie Martin, PJMedia, February 20, 2017]

And now immigrants are rioting in Sweden to prove him right. The New York Times is still in denial.

Like disproportionate black crime in the U.S., this phenomenon is a Hate Fact so thoroughly repressed by the MSM that its denizens are genuinely astonished when the subject surfacesalthough its old news to readers of samizdat publications like VDARE.com.

And, of course, ordinary Europeans know, and are drawing conclusions. Listen to this sound clip. Its a caller to a British radio show hosted by Nigel Farage, the Trumpish former leader of Britains national-conservative UKIP party. If the callers accent sounds vaguely familiar, its because hes from Liverpool, so he talks like a Beatle. Thats B-e-a Beatle: B-double-e beetles dont talk:

Well, I went to a mosque in Liverpool. People have been talking about trying to understand Islam, to try and get a grasp of what Islams all about. And the Imam, who was standing in front of the congregation, he said: Allah has given us this country, and every knee will bow at the name of Allah.

Islam is a takeover movement. It wants All it believes, that Allah has given them this country. Theyre just taking over. Well have one choice: Either convert or go. We will be pushed aside.

Now, why are we allowing this to happen? This is colonization. This is takeover. Why have our elite allowed this over the generations?

The Muslim population is exploding in this country. In 1971 there was just 70,000 Muslims. Nobody knows how many there are now. There may be as many as seven million. We know there are 2,000 mosques in Britain now. When the Queen came on the throne there was only one.

Islam is exploding in this country. Its democracy [siche means demography] is increasing dramatically, and were under serious threat. People have got to wake up to this problem. Weve got to do something about it.

Do we let Islam simply take over? No, we have to stop immigration, yes, but their birthrate is exploding as welltheyre filling up the maternity hospitals.

Were going to reach the point where were going to have to say to the Muslims: Its time to go home. Go back to the Dar al-Islam. You dont belong in the West. Youve nothing to contribute here. Those who have integrated can stay; but if you want to remain in your way of life, which is anathema to the West and is totally against our culture, you must go.

Thats where we [second voice, inaudible] should stand.

Islam is taking over Farage stunned as caller tells him fears for Britain

By Darren Hunt, February 14, 2017

Nigel Farage was left somewhat aghast at that. Thats strong stuff, he mumbled.

OK, Im not going to go all Brit-centric on you. Thats not my country any more, and I watch what is happening over there with a calm, detached despair.

I am going to say, though, that this little exchange captures the zeitgeist in the modern West rather neatly, and the direction the zeitgeist is headed. To put it bluntly, its headed from Nigel Farages position to the callers.

Farage is a decent sort, and hes done real service to his country, and to the West at large, by putting a cheerful, likeable, moderate face on national conservatism. That hasnt stopped the CultMarx screamers telling us that hes Literally Hitler, of course. But the bar for being Literally Hitler is now so low that if you like your country, and would prefer it not be swamped with foreigners, then you too are Literally Hitler.

The zeitgeist is, though, moving in a certain direction, and I believe it will leave Farage behind. Earlier in that radio program hed told listeners he couldnt agree with President Trumps executive order suspending entry to the U.S.A. for citizens of seven exceptionally disorderly Muslim nations.

The public in Europe is headed away from that mild, tolerant position to something closer to the callers. Farage, and European politicians of similar views, and possibly our own President, are transitional figuresplace-holders, until someone more frankly and unapologetically nationalist comes along.

A very respectable British think tank, the Royal Institute for International Affairs, carried out a big survey between mid-December and mid-January, covering ten European countries, with at least one thousand respondents in each country, total more than ten thousand.

To the statement, All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped, overall 55 percent of Europeans said they agreed.

In Nigel Farages Britain the figure was 47 percent.

Given that some unknown proportion of the surveys respondents must themselves have been Muslims, it would be interesting to see the survey re-done with respondents drawn only from the legacy populations. Im betting youd get over half of legacy British peopleI mean, white non-Muslimsagreeing.

And Ill further bet that ten years from now, that half will be three-quarters.

And note that the statement they were responding to in that survey doesnt restrict itself to seriously dysfunctional places like Somalia and Iraq. It covers all mainly Muslim countries, of which there are at least 48.

The survey reveals the usual differences between groups of respondents: city-country, young-old, more or less educated. Younger, more educated, more urban people show less agreement.

There are some suggestive counter-currents moving there, too, though. Heres a poll out of France, taken at the end of January, on support for the candidates in the upcoming presidential election there. It shows support for national-conservative candidate Marine Le Pen at its strongest in the 18-24 age group: 35 percent in that group, falling to just 16 percent in the 65-and-overs.

If Ms. Le Pen comes first in the April vote, it wont be geezers who put her there, itll be millennials.

I said the zeitgeist is moving in the nationalist direction, but it has a way to go yet. If Le Pen does place first in April, shell likely get swamped in the run-off vote in May, when voters for the other four candidates consolidate against her.

Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders is also looking strong for the election in his country next month; but not as strong as Ms. Le Pen in hers, and like her he faces opposition parties that will unite to keep him out of power. [Netherlands Wilders not riding Trumps coattails, By Nick Ottens Leiden, EuOpinon, February 17, 2017]

So there is major support over there for demographic stability and national conservatism, but not likely major enough to be decisive this year, for all Mr. Wilders happy talk about a patriotic spring. The wheel probably needs to turn a while longer before we see major electoral victories.

Its turning, though. Five years ago Le Pen, Wilders, and Farage were written off as extremist fringe candidates. The Brexit vote last June and Donald Trumps victory in November showed how much things have changed.

And just as here, public discussion about the National Question is all constrained in the narrow, dishonest vocabulary of hate, racism, and the rest. We have to work at changing that.

A person who opposes mass Muslim immigration may indeed hate Islam. I think Geert Wilders does. A great many other people, thoughincluding this onedont mind Islam at all, and wish nothing but long life and happiness to Muslims in Muslim countries everywhere. Theyre entitled to live under their own laws and practice their own religion just as much as we are.

As we say here on the nationalist right: Thats what separate countries are for.

Muslims have forty-odd countries of their own to be Muslims in. Thats surely enough. And there is surely nothing hateful in saying so.

[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com.]

See the original post here:

Forget PoliticiansThe People Of The West Have Decided Against Muslim Immigration - VDARE.com

Kyrie Irving (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

This past weekend during the National Basketball Associations All-Star festivities, Cleveland Cavaliers basketball star Kyrie Irving appeared on the NBA podcast Road Tripping With RJ & Channing and said, The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. ... Its right in front of our faces. Im telling you, its right in front of our faces. They lie to us.

Asked about his comment the next day on ESPN, Irving refused to backtrack, and offered the following:

Hopefully theyll either back my belief or theyll throw it in the water. But I think its interesting for people to find out on their own. ... Ive seen a lot of things that my education system has said that was real that turned out to be completely fake. I dont mind going against the grain in terms of my thoughts.

News outlets, blogs and social media immediately blew up, branding him an insane, anti-science conspiracy theorist. How could someone who attended one of the countrys most prestigious universities long enough to play 11 whole games believe something so asinine? Is Kyrie going crazy? Is he a victim of gross misinformation? Maybe one of the NBAs most eloquent black players is simply stupid.

Or maybe he is just like America.

For a moment, lets set aside the fact that the flat-Earth theory is a growing, global movement that fascinates many ill-informed people (including rapper B.o.B.who feuded with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about this subject last year). Irving is a 24-year-old millennial who lives in a world where facts no longer matter. Media, politicians and the entire Cabinet of our pea-brained, petty president have repeatedly shown that truth, logic and science are all debatable in this new era where data exists in shades of gray.

Make no mistake, the Earth is round. Astronomy proved it millennia ago. Every third-grade teacher can explain it in 11 minutes. There is no need to debate it.

How crazy is it to believe the Earth is flat?

It is as crazy as the debate that police brutality is not a black problem. Last week the Journal of Criminology and Public Policy analyzed 990 police shootings in 2015. It found that black Americans are more than twice as likely to be unarmed when they are shot by police. Even when the journal adjusted the data to account for the people who attacked police or other victims, the results were clear: If your skin is black, your chances of getting killed by police while unarmed are double.

Yet police unions, Blue Lives Matter advocates and anyone appearing on Fox News refuse to admit that police brutality is a black problem. Every study shows it, but when faced with facts, they act just like Irving. When the journal released its findings, every black person reading it had the same reaction they would have if you told them the Earth was round:

Well, duh.

Yes, youd have to be an idiot to believe the world is flat, but there are also people who believe that voter-ID laws arent racist despite the evidence to the contrary. The Washington Post published its own extensive research last week after studying data from elections from 2006 through 2016 that shows voter-ID laws suppress the minority vote and benefit Republicans. But state legislatures continue to institute these laws and pretend to act befuddled when people accuse them of racism. Even after courts across the land say they are prejudiced. Even after the facts show that voter-ID laws make the electorate more conservative. Even after Republican consultant Carter Wrenn said, Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was.

But none of these statistics matter. If you learned that the fucktard-in-chief had placed a longtime opponent of the Voting Rights Act in charge of the Department of Justice, youd think that was as stupid as someone telling you that you might fall off the edge of the world.

Water is wet, the planet is actually a sphere and black people have an economic disadvantage in America.

All three of those statements seem clear to anyone with a double-digit IQ, yet only two of them are accepted by the conservative Zeitgeist (pronounced why-pee-pull). Keeping in the theme of studies released last week, the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University joined with the think tank Demos to release a study entitled The Asset Value of Whiteness (pdf). The paper shows that there is an inherent value of being white in America that translates to an economic advantage. It proves that the racial wealth gap in America has nothing to do with education level, income or spending habits.

They will tell you the American dream is achievable through hard work alone. They would have you believe that education is the key, and that success has nothing to do with race, being born into privilege or the generational inheritance of whiteness. If you believe that, you might as well believe the planet is shaped like a dinner plate.

No, the Earth is not flat, but Irving is as crazy as the people who believe that a Muslim ban can save us from terrorismeven though most terrorists are white males. He is as misguided as the people who see the floods, tornados, blizzards and droughts but refuse to believe that global warming is real. Thinking that you are affixed to a Frisbee flying through space is as ludicrous as guns dont kill people, people kill people. The flat-Earth theory is as stupid as All Lives Matter.

The fact that Irving believes that scientists, astronauts, physicists and everyone in the world who owns a telescope are complicit in a global conspiracy to hide an inconsequential fact is absolutely preposterous. But he puts a ball into a hole for a living, so his paranoid delusion about planetary physics doesnt hurt a soul (until he tries to help his kids with their science homework).

Conversely, the people in power who deny the obvious by-products of racism in America to maintain their white-knuckle grip on power and control arent being silly or ill-informed. Their intentional disregard for repeatedly proven fact at the expense of people of color is evil and deranged, and it is our duty to keep punching them in the face until we finally knock out the 400-year-old hate monster.

They would have you believe that math, data, science and truth are now irrelevant and meaningless, but if we allow opinion and lies to replace evidence and accuracy, then we all get to live in our selective, delusional reality. Im sure that in some of those universes, racism doesnt exist, Donald Trump is a great president and, yes ...

Maybe the Earth is flat.

View original post here:

Maybe the Earth Is Flat - The Root

When Kevin Naik wanted to do a PhD at the interface of robotics and Internet of Things, it wasnt Ahmedabad University (AU) that first came to mind. Like many his age, he first wrote to professors at three IITs Delhi, Mumbai and Gandhinagar. The IIT faculty had clear research goals for themselves and their groups and Naiks plans didnt quite fit in. Thats when he looked to AU, where he found a willing professor along with freedom to develop his own interests in a PhD. Robotics and IoT are an unusual combination, says Naik. So only a small faculty is working in this area.

In contrast to the IIT legacy, AU is relatively new just eight years old with little reputation outside Gujarat. It makes up by providing flexibility in choice of research. AU enjoys another distinctive edge: a large endowment that provides plenty of leeway to students and faculty.

AU was set up in 2009 by the Ahmedabad Education Society, with a mandate to become a comprehensive university driven primarily by research. It was an unusual start. All private universities in India began as teaching institutions and then developed research as they grew. Almost all private universities were dominated by engineering or medicine. There was no private university at the time that mixed humanities, arts, the sciences and engineering in equal measure.

AU grew slowly initially, laying the foundation in the first five years. Institution-building picked up pace in 2014 when chairman Sanjay Lalbhai brought in Pankaj Chandra as vicechancellor. Chandra was till then director of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), where he was instrumental in reconstituting the board and instituting new standards for faculty tenure, among other things. He had a few novel ideas about how a university should function and they were a departure from what universities do now. Two principles guide his vision for the fledgling university. We want to do impactful research, says Chandra. We also want to bring the visual into the classroom.

The foundation raised about Rs 670 crore from sale of land and Chandra set to work. The university had a few unusual characteristics from the beginning. One being that the vice-chancellor reports to a management board and not a family, a governance structure not common among Indias private educational institutions. Delhi-based Ashoka University is an exception to this. We have a governing board that is not easy to hijack, says Ahmedabad University chairman Sanjay Lalbhai. The university also works with a large endowment and is not so dependent on fees. Not many of Indias private universities have a large endowment, the notable exception being Azim Premji University. When the government sanctioned new IITs, each one was given only Rs 500 crore, some yet to get the full money.

Chandra has an endowment that can grow up to Rs 1,500 crore if necessary (through sale of land), and a 180-acre campus that could be designed almost from scratch. He has as much academic freedom as is possible for a private university. He also has the support of the trust and the board that share a common vision. Money, a common vision and a professional board have all brought in flexibility to the university functioning. You cannot build a world class university without top-class talent, says RA Mashelkar, former CSIR director general and member of Ahmedabad University governing board. And you cannot have top-class talent without flexibility.

All the best universities in the world have flexibility to hire the best. Mashelkars prime exhibit is Ahmed Zewail, the Egypt-born chemist who was made full professor at the age of 28. Zewail went on to do pioneering work at Caltech and win a Nobel Prize. Peter Danckwerts, one of last centurys finest chemical engineers and former professor at Cambridge University, didnt have a PhD. Indian scientific institutions and universities once had that flexibility. MM Sharma, one of Indias best-known engineers, was made professor at the University Department of Chemical Technology at the age of 27. India has lost that flexibility now.

But Chandra has flexibility and used it by getting some of the best architects in the country to design AU. Desai Architecture in Ahmedabad was campus architect. Rahul Mehrotra, founder of RMA Architects and professor of urban design and planning at Harvard University, designed the arts and sciences building. Swiss architect Mario Botta designed the library. French architect Stephen Paumier will design the student centre. Although situated in the city, the campus is being built with a central forest, being overseen by ecologists. Pankaj Chandra has a specific vision of pedagogy and culture, says Bobby Desai of Desai Architecture. The campus is built for cross faculty interaction and debate.

In the private sector, OP Jindal Global Universitys main building was designed by Paumier as a vast classical garden. AU architects, who had to work with some old buildings as well, are designing campus buildings for frequent interactions. It is being built for walking in peak summer, when temperatures are in the high 40s.

The concept of universities without departments is not new in the world. University of California at Merced was the first to try it in the 1990s. In India, IIT Gandhinagar has tried the concept with some success. Chandra has organised AU around schools and centres, not departments. Schools are formed in well-established disciplines. Centres are in subjects not well established, and are aimed at developing expertise as the subject grows in depth and relevance. The biggest future inventions are going to be multidisciplinary, says Lalbhai.

The schools are organised around four related areas. Data, materials, biology and behaviour; energy, transport, education and food; air, water, land and forest; individual and community, civilisation and constitution. The three centres are for heritage management, for learning futures and the venture studio.

The centre for heritage management is an unusual experiment, based on the premise that India has a lot of heritage but few professionals to manage it. Ahmedabad itself has many heritage sites. The university centre, however, does not study just tangible heritage like museums, art galleries and buildings. It will also study intangible heritage like language and music, not just by scholars of the discipline. The centre has a partnership with the University of Vallalodid, a 700-year-old university in Spain, through a 0.5 million grant from the European Union.

Partnerships are key to some of the programmes of Ahmedabad University. The deepest of these partnerships is with the Olin College of Engineering near Boston, a twenty-first century institution with a global reputation for innovative pedagogy. Olin College, which has no other partner in Asia, does not have classroom lectures like other universities. Students learn by doing projects.

Over the last two years, four AU faculty have spent a few months each in Olin College and imbibed its methods. The class is no longer like a podium, says Ratnik Gandhi, assistant professor at the school of engineering and applied science. It is like a studio. Undergraduate students are exposed to research methods from the beginning. In the life sciences division, among the most developed disciplines at the university, undergraduates have the luxury of a well-equipped laboratory usually accessible only to masters and PhD scholars in most places. All equipment is handled by our undergraduates, says Ajay Karakoti, nanobiologist and associate professor at the university. It is one way of immersion in the subject.

All students are required to take courses in science, data and mathematics. Engineering students have to learn biology and commerce students must learn maths. Arts subjects are also compulsory. Mayank Jobanputra, an undergraduate in information, communication and technology, had to take courses in critical thinking and argumentation, ethics, communication skills, English literature, and so on.

AU is part of the zeitgeist, part of a movement when rich philanthropists are setting up good educational institutions. The government will never be able to build a disruptive educational system, says Ramaswamy Subramaniam, professor at the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in Bengaluru. Hardcore scientists may not easily go to Ahmedabad, as Gujarat is not seen as an academic destination. It took four decades before IIM Ahmedabad got its current reputation. It will take equally long for a private university as well.

Go here to see the original:

How Sanjay Lalbhai & Pankaj Chandra are trying to build a unique university in Ahmedabad - Economic Times

Campaigners for a second referendum on European Union membership could do worse than look for inspiration in the work of the men and women who fought for Brexit.

Just over a decade ago David Cameron described Ukip as fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists, mostly.

But next month Theresa May is due to trigger the process for leaving the EU. This will start a two-year countdown during which the UK Government will scramble to strike a deal with the remaining 27 member states.

People who desperately hope that Britains departure can be averted have a very narrow window of time in which to generate intense public opposition to leaving the EU. Tony Blair last week said it was his mission to persuade the country to rise up against Brexit.

The three-times election-winner declared: This is not the time for retreat, indifference or despair; but the time to rise up in defence of what we believe.

He spoke of the need to build a movement which stretches across party lines.

The hitch for the former Labour PM is that there was just such a movement in favour of remaining in the EU and it was spectacularly defeated in Junes referendum.

A majority of voters rejected the plea to stay in the EU put forward by the UKs major political parties and leading figures in business and beyond. The establishment may have regarded many eurosceptics as fruitcakes but Leave campaigners won the trust of a majority of those who went to the polls.

The best pro-EU campaigners can hope for is that they can kindle a burning desire among voters to take control and have the final say on the Brexit deal in a referendum. They have to convince swathes of the electorate that it is their democratic right to approve or reject the terms the PM and her ministers will negotiate.

Eurosceptic academics could have mailed policy papers to the House of Commons Library every day for a decade and not shifted any of the major parties to a pro-Brexit position. The genius of those who longed to cut the link with Brussels was to foment popular demand for a referendum and Ukip became enough of an electoral threat for Mr Cameron to promise such a public vote in the 2015 manifesto.

A key moment occurred back in the mid-1990s, just as Mr Blair was leading New Labour towards its first landslide. Then, Sir James Goldsmith put his cash behind the Referendum Party a proud rabble army which stood candidates in 547 constituencies.

He hardly captured the zeitgeist. The party won just 2.6% of the vote.

But the idea that the people of the UK should be asked whether the country should continue to be part of the EU had been planted.

Whats more, he demonstrated that major parties could be nudged in a eurosceptic direction.

Labour went into the 1997 election with a promise that before the UK joined the single currency, first, the Cabinet would have to agree; then Parliament; and finally the people would have to say Yes in a referendum.

The Conservatives had a similar pledge that no such decision would be implemented unless the British people gave their express approval in a referendum.

Former Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, Sir James son, argues that keeping Britain out of the euro calamity is his fathers legacy.

Sir James passed away in July 1997 so could not lead the next chapter of the fight to take Britain out of the EU but Ukip embraced the challenge. The party may only have won one MP at the last election but it won incalculable publicity for the Brexit case.

It is remarkable that determined opponents of EU membership were able to orchestrate such a sea-change in attitudes in less than two decades.

But the challenge for pro-EU campaigners is that once Article 50 is triggered there is just two years before the UK is due to leave the EU.

With the exception of Ken Clarke, Conservative MPs have not sought to deny Theresa May the authorisation she needs to start the clock ticking.

Labours Jeremy Corbyn has said the referendum result should be respected, stating that the UK is going to be outside the European Union.

As yet, there is no prospect of a general election in the interim in which a pro-EU Referendum Party could field candidates.

What remains of the Remain team cannot replicate all of the tactics of the eurosceptics but they can preach the same core message, that a decision of such fundamental importance should not be left up to the UKs Government or even its parliament but deserves to be put to the people.

Mr Blair has not committed to supporting a second referendum but argues that if there is real change of mind, however you measure it there should be the opportunity to reconsider this decision.

There is no guarantee that another referendum would go better for Remainers than the last one. For it to be meaningful, the EU would have to agree that a No vote would not result in the UK crashing out of the union without a trade deal but would lead to a continuation of the status quo or a fresh round of negotiations.

There is also the real chance that pro-Brexit groups would successfully portray a second referendum as an attempt by an europhile elite to overturn the will of the people. The Out team might win again with an increased majority.

But if it becomes clear as the talks progress that the UK is not going to be granted a cake-eating option to have the best of every possible world then anxiety may sweep through the country. If the SNP pushes for a second independence vote and there is the genuine prospect of the UK breaking up, Whitehall may be forced to consider radical options.

Not that long ago it seemed fanciful to think that we would have a vote on EU membership. The public now has a taste for direct democracy and millions of people may well demand the decisive say on what comes next.

Continued here:

Campaigners to keep Britain in the EU could learn from Team Brexit - WalesOnline

The four main candidates.

The 2017 presidential election wont be the first time the French have looked out across the political landscape and seen a fractured field. In 2002, there were no fewer than 16 candidates standing in the first round of the presidential election. Back then, the field was so fractured that the Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin was eliminated from the contest. Voters were then left with a choice between the sitting, right-wing president, Jacques Chirac, and Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far right Front National (FN).

Of course, Chirac proceeded to crush Le Pen, 82% to 18%, in the run-off. In the process, he forced the three competing parties of the right and centre right into an electoral alliance, then a single party, the UMP, which later became the Republicans.

The 2002 election is regarded as a turning point in the political history of the Fifth Republic (the regime created by Charles de Gaulle in 1958). Not only was the outcome unexpected, but it was the first in which the president was elected for a new five-year term (reduced from seven) shortly before elections to the lower house, the National Assembly.

Initially, this was a simple coincidence of the electoral calendar but it now means the French are summoned, barely a month after electing a new president, to provide him or her with a majority in the assembly. One entirely predictable consequence of this has been the relegation of national assembly elections to almost secondary status and high rates of abstention among those who didnt vote for the new head of state.

Its worth knowing this detail, because while the main focus currently is on the 2017 presidential candidates and their programmes, rallies and public utterances, and the who was paying whom and for what, behind the scenes there are also feverish negotiations going on over who will stand in the 577 constituencies in Junes assembly election. In a system where political parties are weak and prone to fragmentation, the value of the support of a potentially victorious presidential candidate is a powerful lever.

By the same token, experience suggests that defeated presidential candidates do not make good rallying points for their parties when the parliamentary vote rolls around. Even Marine Le Pen could only turn her 17% of the vote in the 2012 presidential election into two seats in the assembly neither of them for her. Le Pens success between then and now has come through the intervening local and European elections and these have been as much about rejecting Hollandisme as they are an endorsement of her.

So far, there are five main presidential candidates in the 2017 race. They are, from left to right, Jean-Luc Mlenchon (heading a movement called La France insoumise), Benot Hamon (for the Socialists), Emmanuel Macron (who has established his own movement called En Marche!), Franois Fillon (for the Republicans), and Le Pen (for the Front National/Rassemblement Bleu Marine).

The ecologist Yannick Jadot may or may not run. Last week, his electors authorised him to negotiate a joint platform with Hamon and Mlenchon, which would, in due course, also cover the matter of an alliance for the general election. Hamon is receptive, but Mlenchon is not and, to be honest, never has been. Mlenchon left the Socialists in 2008, objecting to its drift towards social democracy. His singular goal, ever since, has been to destroy the party and recreate a new left under his leadership.

The Socialist party is straining to hold itself together. Party secretary Jean-Christophe Cambadlis has warned that anyone defecting to support Macron in the election will be expelled, and thus forfeit support if they plan to stand in the general election. Those with a strong local power base will see that as a risk they can take in the interests of backing a candidate more likely to win but not all will.

The Socialist position might change, of course, if Macron is elected to the Elyse and Hamon does not get a creditable score (at least 16%) in the first round. Even though he is the party candidate, he is not its leader and if Macron made the right noises, a broad centre and left electoral alliance is not out of the question.

Another possibility would be a simple form of what is known as dsistement rpublicain, whereby the parties of the left (though not Mlenchon) and Macronistes agree to stand down for whichever of them is better placed in a particular constituency. The circle that Macron has to square is that while he might get elected by himself, he cannot govern alone and no-one can predict how his pop-up party will fare amid the rough and tumble of a general election campaign.

To Macrons right, the Republican party has flipped around completely. One of the explanations for Fillons unexpected victory in the primary was that he paid attention to the partys grassroots. While Nicolas Sarkozy controlled the hierarchy, his former PM focused on getting out into the provinces and holding small-scale meetings with the the rank and file. But it is precisely here that unease is strongest now.

While Fillon has announced his determination to fight on, even if the formal investigation into his financial conduct continues, and the partys heavyweights have voiced solidarity, there is real concern in the constituencies that Fillon will not deliver the alternance (a change of majority) they expect and demand. For the Gaullist core of a movement that sees itself as the natural party of government, the prospect of five more years out of power is almost unbearable. If Fillon is eliminated, who will pick up the pieces? The failure to answer that question adequately after Sarkozys defeat in 2012 is just one of the reasons for Le Pens rise and rise.

And yet, while the Front National can make a pretty strong claim to be le premier parti de France, its position is not as strong as it might be. Despite winning 25% of the national vote in the European elections of 2014, the same in departmental elections, and 28% in the regionals in late 2015, the FN remains a leadership without much structure, few candidates and desperately short of funds. The party has more local councillors than ever before, but membership remains low. The FN is being very coy about just how many candidates it thinks it can field.

It is almost impossible to imagine a president elected without a majority in the assembly. Its just as hard to imagine any other party being willing to join the FN in a coalition.

While a Le Pen victory in May might fit the Brexit/Trump zeitgeist, Le Pen might actually be better off losing the 2017 election. She could spend five years building a parliamentary base, which also comes with state funding on a per seat basis, and mount a challenge in 2022. If she makes the run-off and then fails to take 40% of the votes, on the other hand, its perfectly possible that shell be booted out as leader of her party.

However it turns out, the election to the fourth five-year presidential term risks pushing France ever deeper into an institutional turmoil than its instigators could never have imagined when they stood on the cusp of the Fifth-and-a-half Republic back in 2002. It was all supposed to be so simple.

Continue reading here:

Why winning the French presidential election could be a poisoned chalice - The Conversation UK

Between shows like Empire, Star and The Get Down, its pretty safe to say hip-hops been enjoying a television renaissance for a while now. And with Mondays (Feb. 20) series premiere of The Breaks onVH1, we have a feeling were only at the beginning of an untapped world of story possibilities.

The series starring Wood Harris, Mack Wilds, Afton Williamson and David Call continues where the film left off: Not only diving further into hip-hops business beginnings, but exploring the bond between Nikki (Williamson), DeeVee(Wilds) and David (Call) as they pursue their music dreams.

While there will seemingly be drama aplenty, the series will continue adhering to Dan Charnas highly acclaimed book, The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop, which is a detailed documentation of the movement, and its evolution.

To get a further understanding of how the VH1 series will tackle the subject matter and where The Breaks will fit in todays television landscape, Screener sat down with executive producersSeith Mann (The Wire, The Walking Dead) and John J. Strauss during Januarys TCA Winter Tour.

RELATED: Hip-Hop Evolution is a nice companion piece to Netflixs The Get Down

John J. Strauss: To me, good entertainment is about characters and engaging an audience. If you look at any given time in the history of television, there have been multiple law shows on the air, multiple medical shows on the air, multiple procedurals on the air So, I dont really see it like were competing for space in the world of hip-hop, as much as we have a very particular set of characters and a very particular point of view. I think the world that were presenting is really grounded, gritty, realistic and dramatic. It has people who you are going to be invested in. I think thats really what its about.

Seith Mann: Inspired by, but not necessarily based on real people. They are inspired by the types of characters that you found in the hip-hop community and culture in the late 80s and early 90s. In terms of why now Im not sure I know exactly why now. I know that I was very interested in telling a story that would get into the history of how this music how this nascent subculture became this dominant world power. At the same time, as Im interested in that and doing research on my own across the country, Dan Charnas is finishing his book that covers that exact subject matter! So, I feel like there is a certain zeitgeist that is happening or has happened that were a part of, you know?

Seith: I wouldnt call it our bible because we take a lot of dramatic license. We are telling a fictitious story, but we are attempting to tell a story about characters that didnt necessarily exist. But they couldve existed you know what I mean? So, the book

John: It keeps us straight especially with the history of the era. He writes all the way from the 70s to the present, but its so comprehensive. Hes been great, too hes an executive producer on the show and hes been sort of our policeman saying stuff like, This never happened. This did happen. This cant happen. This should happen.

Seith: Hes our banker. He always talks about and we all agree, its one of the things that is very important for us in the room we are telling a fictitious story about characters that didnt exist and companies that didnt necessarily exist but we want to believe that they did exist. We want these characters to represent the kind of people that transformed the world. What Dan started talking about, that we all leaned into, was the notion of an authenticity bank. We can only make so many withdrawals from the authenticity bank before our show becomes bullsh**t, so were very rigorous about making sure we dont take too many withdrawals. You know, thats a delicate dance when youre telling dramatic fictitious stories.

John: We have a tremendous responsibility. We really do.

Seith: One of the things that was so gratifying in shooting this was people saying things like,Oh yeah, you got them Fila warmups! You know what I mean? Hip-hop has always been tied to fashion people are paying attention to that! Theyre paying attention to the music, the language were very rigorous that we dont let some slang that didnt come around till 1993 slip into our 1990 story.

Seith: A-F-R-O is in the show. He comes back!

Seith: For me, it was pretty amazing. You know, I come from a film school background, and Ive worked mostly with actors. I believe a lot of musicians and musical talents can act but its not a given that just because you have a presence on stage, that its going to translate in front of a lens.

Sowhen A-F-R-O was introduced to us by DJ Premier who was our executive music producer on the movie/pilot/whatever you want to call it, and now executive producer of the show he said,You guys really need to take a look at this guy!We looked at him and saw the same thing everybody else saw and was like,We gotta bring him in!

It really was like a family affair, because when we shot The Breaks he was 17 or 18 itwas all very new, and everybody just took care of him. Wood [Harris] worked very closely with him his first day on set, and then when he came back for the series, he was just like an old pro. He just got it, like fish to water!

John: Eight.

Seith: And see, this is what I love about John. When John came into this, he always raised the game. My number was seven. But Im going with Johns number.

John: I just feel that theres that much to do! Dont forget, we did eight episodes were not doing 22.

Seith: Yeah, its an eight-episode season.

John: And there are a lot of characters, man. Theres a lot of history!

Seith: Its like, with the movie we just scratched the surface of the world. With the first season, we dig deeper but theres just so much breadth, and so many interesting characters. How the music expanded, how the business expanded at the end of the day, its still about how the business grew and affected the culture around it.

The Breaks Season 1 premieres Monday, Feb. 20, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on VH1.

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These are 'The Breaks': Inside VH1's 'grounded' new hip-hop series ... - Screener

Toujours, the Museum as Witness A selection of works from CAPC Contemporary Art Museum Bordeaux February 18May 22, 2017

Museo Amparo 2 Sur 708 Centro Histrico 72000 Puebla, Pue. Mxico Hours: WednesdayMonday 10am6pm, Saturday 10am9pm

T +52 222 229 3850 difusion@museoamparo.com

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Museo Amparo presents a selection of some of the most important works from the Collection of the CAPC Contemporary Art Museum Bordeaux, representative of different moments in its history. The show includes pieces from the early years after the Museums foundation as well as from the 1980s, when it became more established; it also highlights its role in presenting new generations of artists and curators that represent the zeitgeist of different periods.Toujoursreveals a collection in constant movement, aware of cultural constructs and the spirit and ideas of its time.

The exhibition titleToujours always in Frenchis taken from the sculpture by Jack Pierson that welcomes the visitors to the show. This word evokes the idea of the continuity of an institution, of a collection and of the works created by the artists that have shaped the history of the CAPC. With its different definitions, the idea of continuity also refers to the time that has passed since the Museums foundation, its activities, the consistency of its programs and the commitment of the teams that have worked there.

How does a piece of art transcend? The wordtoujoursalso alludes to the museums role as witness to history and to its main mission: acquiring, conserving, studying, and exhibiting its collection. This is why the show focuses on a selection of pieces that establish a dialogue between them. Conceptual pieces by artists such as Daniel Buren and Sol LeWitt, closely related to the Museums first program of exhibitions or presented in later shows organized by Harald Szeeman and Marie-Laure Bernadac, coexist with emblematic interventions by artists such as Annette Messager and pieces by more recent creators such as Leonor Antunes, Wolfgang Tillmans and Lili Reynaud-Dewar.

This selection of works seeks to underline the museums role and its historic responsibility in the construction of a collection. Each piece is a witness, an idea, an opinion and it forms part of the history of the period in which it was made. It can thus be said that the pieces acquire a new meaning, because a collection reflects the different ways in which artists are witnesses as well as active participants of their time.

Toujoursproposes an interpretation related to the current socio-political context and the continuity of certain historical phenomena. It also analyzes possible relationships between language, movement, and space. Each piece has its own cultural reference and when juxtaposed with others in a new context, a dialogue is established in which a new analysis can ariseanother point of view about the history of a place (which could be the museum) or about our common history.

Among the works included in the exhibition areWall Drawing no. 2, 196890 by Sol LeWitt that establishes a link between Minimalism and Conceptual Art.Encadrant-Encadr, 3 rythmes pour 4 murs, 1991, created specifically by Daniel Buren for his solo show at CAPC muse that year, occupies an important place in the CAPC collection.Inventaire photographique des objets ayant appartenu au jeune home dOxford, 1973, by Christian Boltanski, a representative piece of his ongoing research on memory, and the most recent acquisition, Somnium, 2011, by Rosa Barba, a film inspired on the novel of astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered the first science fiction novel. The images present an uncertain landscape, inhabited between fiction and reality.

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Museo Amparo - E-Flux

Its been a full two years since From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France 1840- 1980 by Michel Fabre has lived on my bookshelf. Its really scandalous as to how I acquired such gold, signed by the author himself as it was protruding from a friends bookshelf at an ungodly hour of the night, I helped myself to literature ecstasy. Its a textbook that talks about the Harlem renaissance movement in detail, beyond Langston Hughes, that goes as far back as the New Orleans influence in black culture and travel in France and the beloved Sally Hemings, Thomas Jeffersons (beautiful) slave, who was known to be the first black person ever to travel to France during slavery. As Black History month slowly comes to an end, it would be pity if this book and Harlem was not compared to the recent happenings of New York Fashion Weeks Fall 2017 events and collections. After all, all roads lead to Harlems creative mecca, as told by Alexander Wang, Stella McCartney, and ASAP Mobs faithful push to rebrand Harlem as Manhattans truest fashion zeitgeist.

For one, rising streetwear brand VLONE debuted its highly sought after Nike collaboration in Harlem earlier this month. Creative Director ASAP Bari along with members of the ASAP Mob, including ASAP Rocky (rumored to be dating Kendall Jenner at the moment), and dozens of fans visited the Harlem basketball court inspired pop up shop situated on the west side of 116th street. In a basketball court -like room, VLONEs signature orange decorated custom Spalding basketballs, as Nikes Air Force 1s with Harlem World graffiti and spray painted on sneakers and tees. The brands tagline was also written in old script font Every Living Creative Dies Alone on the walls of the dimly lit very chic retail space. Sneakers went for hundreds of dollars; I suppose the line to get into this streetwear arcade was never ending. The VLONE popup shop was much more refined with a strong brand message to welcome in the heavy collaboration with the billion dollar athletic company. VLONEs value and popularity over the past year has tripled with proof from its products currently being auctioned off for thousands of dollars on eBay. With the brands having repped Harlem from the very beginning, theres a lot to connect to how much Harlem continues to breed people who are not only for the evolution of Black American culture setting the bar, but also how much influence it has with an international audience. As a writer currently residing in Harlem, I wasnt invited to attend the After-Party or given a press recap which was covered by mainstream outlets like Vogue, VLONE has literally floated to the top of whats cool and hip and has simultaneously put Harlem back on the map, once again, as a place that is very much rooted in carrying on tradition, and not just another Manhattan neighborhood undergoing gentrification.

Harlems burgeoning coolness within the fashion industry is again, flattering but not necessarily needed, as it has always been a place of beauty especially during the Harlem renaissance. In the early 20th century, the architecture, the music, the food had all became to be what is known as today. But yet again, high fashion always seems to exude this Christopher Columbus attitude when it comes to exposing something new to the mainstream. What I mean is, it appropriates certain things in cultures that have always been known to the individuals in which the cultures belongs to, but not necessarily identifiable to the greater majority. When Alexander Wang decided to debut his fall 2017 collections in a abandoned theater in Harlem, he forced the fashion crowd to trek their way uptown for a chic adventure. An invited fashion editor (perhaps sarcastically) tweeted about his lack of knowledge of the train routes that far uptown. Did Alexander Wangs team care to invite some of the movers and shakers of Harlem or the greater community? Probably not. If this is too much, then perhaps compare this same concept to when Riccardo Tisci hosted the Givenchy Summer 2015 runway collections in New York and actually came to Harlem to invite random people on 125th street to his show because thats how much he was inspired by the culture for that particular collection. Were Alexander Wangs clothes inspired by Harlem? What exactly compelled him to host his show in Harlem is a question left unanswered at this point. It may seem like a small act of whatever, but the fact of a matter is Harlem is still a community full of black people desperately trying to hold on to their homes and culture, in the light of gentrification and appropriation running rampant in pop culture. Overall, VLONEs ability to reclaim the streets and build credibility with hoodwear, thus making it appealing to mainstream that is reaches the pages of Vogue is a huge accomplishment when it comes to owning the true black identity todays complex but still very elitist fashion world.

Here are 3 Black American Writers Who Have Travelled to Paris:

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The Harlem Renaissance, Alexander Wang and the VLONE Pop Up Shop - Huffington Post

Keiko Hirosue hopes to see a change in how shoes are made in the US. Photograph: Maria Spann for the Guardian

It turns out that there are a lot of heels in the shoe business. You would be surprised how much [shoe design] in the corporate world is just copied! I was a little nobody and I wanted to say this isnt right to the director of Topshop, Elizabeth Dunn, a bespoke shoemaker and London transplant, tells me, her voice rising with emotion.

At Brooklyn Shoe Space, a professional shoemaker co-working space and collective that also offers classes for the public on how to make everything from simple moccasins to stitched oxfords and high heels, former employees of Big Shoe are hoping they can change the industry, one step at a time.

As Keiko Hirosue, the founder, talks, three other shoemakers in the collective have made their way to the childrens table where we are sitting, sharing their stories of leaving the corporate design world to strike out for themselves.

The toddler-height table was added at the shoe collective when one of the members, Ritika Wahal, a designer of childrens shoes, asked Hirosue if she could bring her son, then only 18 months old, to the workshop with her. Hirosue responded by getting small furniture and toys to keep the boy occupied while his mother worked on her shoe line at the wooden worktable two feet away. These days, Wahals son continues to visit the shoe collective, where his mother makes him shoes in everything from fine crocodile skin to novelty leather which he picks out himself.

Brooklyn Shoe Space taps into so many aspects of the current zeitgeist its a shared working space, part of the maker movement and marks a return to locally made, bespoke products while serving as a place for womens empowerment and support that it seems remarkable that independent shoe collectives are not popping up wherever young urbanites congregate. Yet.

All the women at the collective left corporate jobs in fashion design because they missed being close to the product, finding their own design inspiration and working with their hands, which they are eager to show me are calloused and abused from hours spent stretching leather over shoe lasts and hammering nails.

My fiance says I have the hands of a 60-year-old, Rebecca Heykes, a young shoemaker in a mod dress and boots of her own design tells me with a laugh. All around the workspace are in-process shoes, with hundreds of thin nails holding the leather in place, a testament to the hand-destroying work.

While all the shoemakers can talk endlessly about the joy of designing and painstakingly creating a prototype, none of them want to spend weeks making 30 identical pairs. So recently Heykes and Hirosue banded together with several investors to open their own manufacturing facility, renting space near their collective in the increasingly upscale neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In keeping with the spirit of their collective, they hired their two factory employees through a program that pairs recent immigrant women with meaningful work.

The two factory employees, who had no background in shoemaking, were taught the craft and now make about 50 pairs of handmade shoes a month for independent shoe lines.

There is no room for fast fashion at the collective, where weeks can sometimes be spent on creating a custom shoe for an individual client. Hirosue and the other women are big proponents of American-made shoes, on a small enough scale to ensure quality and careful attention to every detail.

They talk in hushed tones of Prince Charles John Lobb shoes, which they tell me are rumored in shoe circles to be the same pair he had made specifically for him more than 30 years ago. He gets them resoled over and over, Wahal tells me, leaning in closer.

Ultimately, Hirosue wants to see a change in how the US manufactures shoes, with prototypes made locally at collectives like hers instead of being packaged off to China or other countries that supply overseas low-wage labor to the fashion market.

But handmade shoes dont come cheap. The shoemakers sell their shoes at prices comparable to those at high-end designer shops, with stitched oxfords selling for around $400, simple sandals for $200 and one-off totally bespoke pairs of shoes selling for around $2,000.

While they continue making inroads with fashion brands across the river in Manhattan and hustling to find new boutiques to carry their individual lines, all of the shoemakers regularly teach classes at the workshop to help ends meet during slow times. Shoemaking students come from across the US, Europe, Asia and Australia, with a split of 40% men and 60% women.

Students typically spend five days learning the bare basics of shoemaking, walking away with an original pair. Hirosue herself started out as a hobby student, taking a quick class on fetish shoemaking when she first dipped her toe in the cordwainer waters 13 years ago. Once you start making, it is so addicting, she tells me.

The students who take classes at Brooklyn Shoe Space are a mix of those who simply want to make a special pair of shoes for fun and those looking for a little more technical knowledge before designing their own lines. Everybody wants to be unique and wants custom everything, Heykes explains, which has helped the shoe collective get about 10 inquiries a day from prospective students as well as designers. Being able to Instagram a pair of custom shoes and show off to friends also doesnt hurt when it comes to bringing in prospective students, Wahal adds with a smile.

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Cobbling together: the Brooklynites who gather to make handcrafted shoes - The Guardian

Is it any surprise that fashion designers have become politically-motivated in the current political climate? It shouldn't. At its core, theirs is a world about identity and self-expression, and so there's no time like the present for designers and models and editors to speak out about the ideals and progressive causes they have always embraced and defended.

The topic of politics was unmissable during this past New York Fashion Week. It was on the runway in the form of the obviouspolitical slogans adorning clothing in the collections of Public School, Prabal Gurung, Jonathan Simkhai, Christian Siriano, and the CFDA's Planned Parenthood campaign, among othersor the slightly more nuancedthe political considerations in the clothes shown at Calvin Klein, Gypsy Sport and even Jeremy Scott.

It was in the street style and in the front row (Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and Tiffany Trump both made multiple appearances; Clinton herself turned up on the last day at a stamp dedication for Oscar de la Renta). It was the talk of even the most raucous after parties. It was in the video W released yesterday of 81 different figures from the fashion world repeating the simple phrase I am an Immigrant.

While there may be an impulse by some to dismiss all these statements as the silly worrying of urban elites who should simply shut up and make pretty dresses, theres something else going on. This isnt a simple matter of left vs. right politics as we knew them in America for decades. All the unease in these corners hasnt sprung up over the idea of tax cuts, a smaller government or how best to deal with the future of Social Security. This isn't even sour grapes over the fashion industry's preferred candidate's loss. This runs much deeper.

It is because the goals and rhetoric of the Donald J. Trump administration, and the formerly fringe movements propping up his mandate, are at direct odds with the vulnerable people and values that have historically found refuge and protection within the fashion industry.

Behind the Scenes of Ws I Am an Immigrant Shoot with Adriana Lima, Anja Rubik, Maria Borges, and More

Fashion is, at its most powerful, about defining yourself through the way you dress and present yourself to the world. Whether it's someone codifying their social status through the predictablesay an affluent New Englander adorning themselves in the preppy chic of cable knit sweaters and polo shirts, or in turn, working-class Brooklynites appropriating those codes to re-invent themselvesor the proverbial story of the small-town aspiring fashionista who moves to the big city and redefines herself in thrift-store finds and Hood by Air sample sales, the power of clothes is here for both.

The dream of fashion is that identity is not something that is necessarily rigid and fixed from birth and class, but that identity is something that can be self-realized. This has been true especially in recent years as evidenced by the blurring of the masculine and the feminine on the runways, in the mixing of the high and the low in editorials, and in the ever increasing (though with long ways to go) celebration of diversity of all kinds, from race and religion to age and body shape (see Ashley Graham at Michael Kors this season, or the real women at Creatures of the Wind). The fashion world hopes that the clothes it produces lead to expression of one's chosen self-identity, whether it happens to be something someone adopts for a lifetime or changes every day.

This emerging movement on the right, however, sees identity as something absolute and fixed. They seem aghast at recent social progress and they somehow feel attacked when others speak up. In this emerging conservative mindset, Muslims shouldn't be offended by the phrase "radical Islamist," transgender people shouldn't complain about not having access to bathrooms, and concerns about voting rights are dismissed. The argument behind Trump's immigration ban seems to be that if you're a citizen from one of seven Muslim-majority countries, you have to jump through hoops and pass extreme vetting until it's 100 percent absolutely certain you arent one of the bad ones, or that if you're from Mexico, you're not one of the "bad hombres," in Trump's inarticulate phrasing. It's the racially-tinged equivalent of "guilty until proven innocent." They have defined their enemies at home in strict terms as well. All feminists, in the words of two worryingly prominent trolls whose names need not reprinting, will wake up one day and find themselves depressed, lonely cat ladies. Or, they're "nasty women," to quote Trump again. And anyone who has ever been offended by anything is simply a snowflake. These, by the way, are the "nicer" examples of their insults.

We Will Not Be Silenced: Political Statements Hit New York Fashion Week Street Style

This is why fashion has responded the way it has.

Its why Business of Fashion started the #TiedTogether campaign meant to make a clear statement of solidarity, unity, and inclusiveness. The campaigns white bandannas were shown on the runway at Tommy Hilfiger and passed out to guests at Calvin Klein.

Its why Gurung sent models down the runway wearing T-shirts proclaiming love is the resistance and Stronger the fear, and Siriano showed his own People are people shirt. Its why Public School showed hats that read Make American New York because they (wished)[http://www.essence.com/fashion/woke-new-york-fashion-week-moments] "the rest of the states were like New York from an inclusivity standpoint, from a diversity standpoint, from an action standpoint." It's why Raf Simons, after showing his namesake collection in New York, told WWD, "If you want to have a voice, you cant walk around it. If you have a voice, use it.

Fashion is a world where freaks and geeks have always been welcomed, if not outright thrived, where everyone from a young Puerto Rican illustrator like the late Antonio Lopez to the Minnesota-born, underground voguer Shayne Oliver can become the toast of Paris, and where immigrants like Oscar de la Renta and the children of immigrants like Alexander Wang can build empires. It's an industry that has long stood up for charitable causes, like its admirable and early advocacy to raise awareness and funding for HIV/AIDS and breast cancer research.

In other words, what may seem as recent "woke activism" has always been running just under the surface in the fashion community. The underlying message of the recent collections is that despite the niche it occupies in the cultural zeitgeist, for people in fashion, the personal has always been political, and designers are going to use the only platform they have, their runways, to stand up for the causes and individuals they believe in. In the end, there are some values that shouldn't be politicized at all.

'Make America New York' Is the New Motto of the Fashion Elite

I Am an Immigrant: Fashion's Biggest Names Issue a United Statement

See more here:

Why Fashion Has Every Right To Be Political Right Now - W Magazine

Floods, protests, power struggles, a military takeover Krungthep, known to the rest of the world as Bangkok, has endured more than its share of hardships recently. The loss of the countrys beloved King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who remained remarkably popular throughout his 70-year reign, hit particularly hard last year. Thailands populace is nothing if not resilient, though: after a dozen coups dtat in less than a century, they have to be and, in spite of it all, the capital continues to flourish and, in the process, reshape its identity.

For decades, this was a city that imported everything, to which strings of glitzy megamalls attests. But somewhere along the way, Thailand began to foster its own considerable creative pool. Look closely and youll notice that generic luxury brands are ceding shelf space to funkier fashions by Thai designers; local chefs proudly flaunt family recipes on the hottest tables in town; and even north-eastern Thai folk music is in the midst of a revival.

Bangkoks historic heart may rest on temple-studded Rattanakosin Island, but its contemporary pulse is scattered throughout smaller, splintered neighbourhoods in Sukhumvit, Sathorn and Silom and can be harder to pinpoint. Travellers looking to tap into the zeitgeist should venture past the backpacker cocoon of Khao San Road and make their way towards nearby Phra Athit Road, a boho hangout with live music venues and restaurants near the Chao Phraya river, then make a beeline for Chinatown. On Soi Nana, off Charoen Krung Road, minutes from Cantonese holes-in-the-wall and stores selling traditional herbal remedies, shophouses are being refurbished into galleries and unpretentious bars.

Booming, chaotic, at times overwhelming, but never, ever boring, Bangkok is more culturally diverse, complex and compelling than ever.

After stopping by celeb chef Ian Kittichais signature restaurant for updated Thai classics, such as massaman-braised lamb shanks and jasmine-infused panna cotta, youll want to learn how to cook like the maestro. Classes at Issaya Cooking Studio teach some of the chefs best-loved recipes, plus insights into everything from mixology to sous-vide techniques. Courses from 2,000 baht (45), issayastudio.com

Bangkoks art movement has blossomed in recent years. Artha Gallery keeps the emphasis on regional talent from Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam. Over in Sathorn, head to Sathorn 11 Art Space, which features exhibitions on the ground floor and four resident artist studios above, and H Gallery, with edgy works by Asian artists in a converted mansion. Closer to the riverside, be sure to visit Bridge and The Jam Factory, housed in a sprawling multipurpose complex designed by starchitect Duangrit Bunnag.

An industrial space with eclectic collections, Speedy Grandma fills up with creative types at weekends. Treading the line between gallery and bar, Cho Why is one of several revamped shophouses injecting new energy into Chinatown. Events range from a street-art fest to a rooftop paella party. Across the street at 23 Bar and Gallery, the artsy incarnation of one of the citys legendary dives, expect indie tunes and no-nonsense drinks.

With more than 8,000 stalls selling everything from parakeets to pottery, Chatuchak Weekend Market, up by the Mo Chit BTS Skytrain station, remains the one to beat. Go early or late, when the tropical temperatures are more forgiving, as navigating the 27 sections can prove a dizzying experience. Plan for a post-shopping sundowner at Viva 8, a ramshackle bar with excellent mojitos where DJs spin house. Many up-and-coming Thai designers try to make it here first, so keep an eye out for next seasons labels before they hit the big time.

Head to Talad Rod Fai (Sri Nakarin Soi 51) and Talad Rod Fai 2 (Esplanade Complex) for all sorts of vintage bric-a-brac. At the Rot Boran Market (The Walk, Kaset-Nawamin road), known as the Classic Car Market, VW bugs and other old-school autos find new life as pop-ups selling just about everything.

After visiting the requisite temples Wat Saket for the view, Wat Phra Kaew for the glittering, gilded everything, and Wat Pho for a massage and seeing all manner of standing, sitting and reclining Buddhas head to the Thonburi side of the river for this lesser-known cultural gem: a teak house decorated with quirky sculptures. Shadow puppet performances, a traditional art that is becoming increasingly scarce, are worth seeing, but be sure to call ahead, as showtimes are irregular. 315 Wat Tong Salangam, Phet Kasem Road, +66 2 868 5279

If the concrete jungle becomes a bit wearing, consider a cycling trip over to Phra Pradaeng, a mangrove-covered peninsula on the western side of the Chao Phraya. ABC Amazing Bangkok Cyclist offers half-day tours for 29pp, including longtail boat transfers and mountain bike rentals, realasia.net

Salty, sweet and screaming hot, Bangkoks street food is adored by all strata of society. Hygiene is sometimes questionable and MSG rampant, but that shouldnt stop anyone from dining like a king on a shoestring budget. Keep your eyes peeled for rib-sticking jook (rice porridge with pork crackling and raw egg), comforting khao mun gai (chicken and rice) or its rarer, biryani-inspired cousin khao mok gai, crispy hoi tod (eggy mussel or oyster pancakes), fatty khao kha moo (meltingly tender braised pork leg with gravy), Isaan-style jim jum (hot pot), and the ubiquitous trio of gai yaang, som tom and khao niew (grilled chicken with spicy papaya salad and sticky rice). Noodles, including yen ta fo (neon-red glass noodles with tofu), ban mee (thin egg noodles often served with wontons), suki (bean thread noodles, egg, cabbage and seafood or meat) and richly flavoured kuai tiao ruea (boat noodles in a spiced, blood-enriched broth with offal), are served around the clock and can be ordered haeng (dry or stir-fried) or nam (wet with soup broth). For sugar fiends, khao niew mamuang (mango sticky rice) is a dependable go-to, but consider branching out to khanom krok (custardy coconut confections) and the dangerously craveable kluay kaek (deep-fried bananas in a coconut batter).

Gentrification has edged out many of Sukhumvits street eats, which means travelling a bit further to find larger pockets. Victory Monument and the surrounding area has an abundance, as do Silom and the historic areas of the city. Chinatown, especially Yaowarat and Charoen Krung roads, is packed with stalls that have been serving the same dishes for generations.

It might have started out as an artisanal pickle cannery in a hostel, but this eatery is currently whipping up some of the most interesting fare in town. As the name references, 80% of ingredients are local, while the remaining 20% allow for creative wiggle room. Chef Napol Jantraget delights in genre-bending plates like charcoal-grilled squid with fingeroot glaze, black garlic paste, popped rice berries, roasted peanuts and local sour greens that are rooted in Thai traditions, but also draw on his time at a brasserie in Toronto. 1052-1054 Charoen Krung Road, +66 2 639 1135, on Facebook

Duangporn Bo Songvisava and Dylan Jones, a Thai-Australian chef duo who cut their teeth at Londons Nahm, are best-known for their uncompromising Thai fine-dining eatery Bo.lan. The pairs second offering ditches the fancier trappings in favour of gutsy countryside bites, best washed down with a Chang beer or a whisky-soda. Order a couple of rounds and nibble on sai ouwa (coconut-smoked northern sausage, 4) and kor moo yang (grilled pork neck with tamarind sauce, 5), while deciding which mains to share. 394/35 Maharaj Road,+66 2 622 2291, errbkk.com

Rare Khon Kaen and Trat recipes from the owners grandmother help explain this cosy places enduring popularity. Its hard to order wrong, but steer away from the usual pad thai and opt for khai jiew pu (omelette stuffed with crabmeat, 3) or ka lum tod nam pla (stir-fried Chinese cabbage, 2), an umami bomb anointed with pungent fermented fish sauce. 160/11 Soi 55 Sukhumvit road, +66 2 714 7508, supannigaeatingroom.com

Bangkoks sizable Indian diaspora has given rise to some excellent eateries, including this number, which steers clear of cliched curries and peppers in subtler nods to the subcontinent, such as the decorative latticework derived from mosques and cheeky broken-English signs in the bathroom. Order the gently spiced lamb sheekh kebab (9) or the house-made paneer tikka (8), which is as silky as cheesecake and just as rich. After dinner, walk down the street to a darkened alley where, behind a door by an abandoned phone booth, salsa dancers shimmy to live bands at Havana Social, the owners hidden Cuban-inspired speakeasy. 38/8 Soi 11 Sukhumvit Road, Fraser Suites Hotel, +66 89 307 1111, charcoalbkk.com

Ash Sutton, the genius behind bars including Iron Fairies and Maggie Choos, outdid himself with this hideaways stripped-down, brooding aesthetic and succinct Prohibition-era cocktail list. A gleaming copper distillery serves as the centrepiece and produces the places namesake elixir, a south-east Asian spin on gin, fermented with a heady mix of fresh pineapple, coconut, lemongrass, ginger and juniper. Park Lane, Sukhumvit 63, on Facebook

Follow the sounds of soul and funk four nights a week to one of Bangkoks best live music spots. The lack of a cover charge and the rollicking house party vibe help explain why the crowds keep coming, even when the tiny joint is past capacity. Bigger bands often see the party spill out onto the street, which doesnt seem to bother anybody one bit. 945 Charoen Krung road, on Facebook

Slide open an unmarked wooden door in Thonglor and step into this dimly lit drinking den housed in a three-story shophouse. A long marble bar and gleaming, ceiling-high shelves displaying a formidable liquor collection make this one of the sexiest speakeasies in town, while the craft cocktails by legendary local mixologists Suwincha Chacha Singsuwan and Naphat Yod Natchachon mean the narrow space is packed on weekends. 125 Sukhumvit Soi 55, +66 98 969 1335, on Facebook

Drop whatever preconceptions the term lifestyle mall calls to mind, because this industrial complex buried in Thonglor houses some of Bangkoks best bars and eateries. A crawl should start with a craft brew and greasy grub like laab fries at Beer Belly, then go for something stiffer at U.N.C.L.E, a leather-upholstered lounge with tipples such at the Honey Keep It Cool, with cachaa, lemon-infused green tea, Fernet-Branca, honey and Tullamore Dew whiskey. Touch Hombre has the best selection of mezcals and tequilas in the city, not to mention authentic bites like elotes callejeros (grilled corn with cotija cheese, chipotle-spiked mayonnaise and lime). Finish your night with a trip to Beam, a warehouse-style club where techno pounds till late. 72 Soi Sukhumvit 55, on Facebook

A G&T here might well carry a lingering, savoury aroma of peppered pork jerky or Thai tea. Housed in an 80-year-old shophouse, cluttered with vintage Thai furniture, this watering hole has earned a cult following for its gin infusions made from whatever the owners find from neighbouring Chinatown stores. On a weekend, be prepared to queue for one of the coveted 16 seats. 76 Soi Nana, Charoen Krung road, on Facebook

An opium-den fever dream of paper lanterns, Chinese dragons and slinky qipao-clad ladies, Sing Sing Theaters retro-glam, over-the-top vision of 1930s Shanghai packs the dance floor on weekends. Sukhumvit Soi 45, on Facebook

OK, so its expensive, but for a luxe stay, this is the place. Six years in the making, this Bill Bensley-designed passion project of local celebrity, actor and former indie rocker Krissada Sukosol Clapp is chockablock with antiques. The resulting property is remarkably atmospheric, especially on the serene verandah overlooking the Chao Phraya. Guests can learn to fight like a champion with an Olympic Muay Thai trainer or even pick up a sacred sak yant tattoo from Ajarn Boo, a master of this ancient art. Doubles from 295 room only, thesiamhotel.com

A night at this colonial mansion might evoke memories of a stay at an eccentric uncles, if said uncle were the swashbuckling, well-travelled type and a bit of a hoarder. The place is crammed with curios, ranging from the intriguing (retro typewriters) to the downright kooky (cheetah skulls). Its got character to burn, not to mention a rooftop pool, a restaurant serving Isaan and Lao cuisine, and prime location just off of Sukhumvit Road. Doubles from 93 B&B, cabochonhotel.com

Signs of this riverside boutiques previous existence as a coconut sugar factory are everywhere, from the original storage tins in the walls to the oversized wheels of jaggery that serve as tables in the restaurant. Each of the rooms is named and colour-coded to different times of day, starting with 7:00 AM in early-morning hues and ending with the crepuscular-tinted 5:00 PM. If the budget allows, spring for one of the later suites, which feature lovely views of Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn) at sunset. Doubles from 80 room only, innaday.com,

With floor-to-ceiling windows in its 25 rooms and a lively rooftop restaurant with river views, the new Riva Arun makes for a great spot to soak in the scenery. Doubles from 72 room only, snhotels.com

Travellers neednt spend a fortune to sleep comfortably in this town, thanks to a spate of design-forward hostels opening in trendy neighbourhoods. Decked out in warm wood tones and sporting a craft beer bar, co-working space and third-wave coffee shop, ONEDAY (dorms from 9) is as hip as they come. In Ari, a lively residential area with tons of street food, The Yard Hostel (dorms from 13), made of upcycled shipping containers, quickly established itself as a neighbourhood haunt, as well as a social stop for wayfarers. Considerate extras bicycles for rent, two-month luggage storage, barbecue equipment for impromptu grill parties and a friendly staff add to the experience. In Chinatown, Loftell 22 (dorms from 7) offers comfy dorms and private rooms in two previously abandoned historic buildings in Talad Noi.

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Bangkok city guide: what to do plus the best hotels, restaurants and bars - The Guardian

Outside, the world is abuzz aboutDonald Trumps presidency and the latest Kanye controversy. But inside this downtown New York building, the clock has been turned back to the early days of hip-hop.

Cameras are rolling on the set of the new VH1 series The Breaks, as a miffed music manager has burst into the offices of the Village Voice.

Its not the sort of thing you do,the manager, Nikki, fumes to a reporter.

Im not you, Nikki, Im a journalist. The truth is non-negotiable,the music writer fires back.

A moment later, the episodes director pumps her fist.

Cut it, print it, kill it. You got it,says Neema Barnette. Then the directorturns to a reporter to offer some finer context on the divisions inhip-hop at the time.See, Im a Harlem girl. Biggie, thats Brooklyn. Jay Z. Well JayZ is Jay Z.

The Breaksis a time machine of sorts and not just because of the outsized influence of the Village Voice. Chronicling an era when hip-hops role as a spark for both mass protest and mass commerce was just an ember, the eight-part series marks a new entry in scripted televisions growing rap canon.Where Empiredropped a soap opera into the contemporary hip-hop world and The Get Downexamined a birth moment in the late 1970s, The Breakssplits the difference.

Set in New York in 1990, the show lands at the cusp of thegolden age ofhip-hop a genre too new for anyone to know where it wouldgo, but too promising (for some) not to believe that the destination would besomewhere significant.

That period was very violent and very rough, but also very innocent in a lot of ways, especially the music,saysSeith Mann, a veteran director of shows such as The Wireand a co-creatorof The Breaks. And thats what we want to capture in the show how hip-hop grew from that innocence to a dominating business, how people in the arc of a season try to make choices so that they can make art.

Some of them,he addsdryly, wont stay innocent.

Picking up where a 2016 VH1 original movie left off, The Breaksfollows the interlocking lives of a group of people with various roles in the burgeoning sphere. Theres a trio of strivers that includes a wannabe producer, Deevee (Tristan Wilds), the management acolyte Nikki (Afton Williamson) and a rookie radio-station programmer David (David Call). They cross paths withvoluble mini-mogul Barry (Wood Harris), a talented but gang-affiliated MC (Antoine Harris, no relation to Wood) and the thirsty reporter, Damita (Melonie Diaz).

Inspired by Dan Charnasacclaimed nonfiction history The Big Payback(Mannsfellowco-creator),The Breaksincludes among its executive producers John J. Strauss, a writer on Mozart in the Jungle,another show about dogs eating dogs in a musical subculture.

As with that Amazon Prime video series, the multiple plot lines of The Breaks nearly all involve characters desperately seeking to carve out their place in a world Nikki trying to establish herself in Barrys company, Damita looking to be the genres go-to chronicler whose animating principle remains more passion than money (though the latter is not entirely absent).

The Breaksis set a few years before artists such as A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, De La Soul and Wu-Tang Clan began flexing their cultural influence and solidifying hip-hops East Coast movement.

I think theres something really romantic about it; it just seems like a more dreamy era,says Wood Harrisduring a break in shooting. It felt like a time anyone could be a mogul and with a beeper, which if you tell a young person about now, they will laugh,he says, chuckling as he gesturesto a prop on his belt. Or think its something that only exists on YouTube.

There is another kind of wink-y appeal to The Breaks.Much of the show plays on the audiences familiarity with how much rap blew up.In the second episode, when Deevee argues with his hospital-worker father who wants to send Deevee to South Carolina because he doesnt think his son is involved in a real business the audience can nod knowinglyat the younger mans insistence on hip-hops bright future.

Still, the creators say theyre intent on driving home how precarious a moment it was for the genre.

It wasnt inevitable that hip-hop would become as massively popular as it did,Mann says. Hip-hop in those early days was dicey it could have gone the way of disco and go-go.

Nor was it clear who would document its ascent. Though hip-hop journalism at the time had a heavily male component, producers tip their Snapbacks to pioneers like Raquel Cepeda and dream hampton.I think what surprised me is how much women were involved in covering it and bringing the news to the wider world,Diaz says. Its just not something you hear about a lot.

Those looking for a heavy original musical component to the show may be only partly satisfied. While bits of new songs, written by former Little Brother member Phonte Coleman,are heard,the creators chose to focus more on dialogue and character than beats.

Overt references to real-life figures also are somewhat scant, though tracks from Public Enemy, already well-established by 1990, are present, as arefictional portrayals of new jack swing artists like Keith Sweat. (This fictionalization is by design, say Seith and Charnas, giving them freedom to create without becoming caught in a tangle of rights and legal action.)

Charnas says he actually pitched the series to Fox as far back as 2010, long before Empire,and was met with indifference and even confusion. He soon landed at the shows current venue.

Everyone at VH1 got it right away,saysthe author, who often serves a truth-checking role on setthat has ledcolleagues to dub himthe Treasurer of the authenticity bank account.

The Breaksmakesa lot of sense for the network,said Chris McCarthy, president of MTV, VH1 and Logo.VH1 has always been comfortable both with looking back and celebrating the present.So, hip-hop in the 90s is a very natural place to be.

In recent years, the network has developed a programming slate that draws a large female African American audience, including reality franchises such as Love &Hip-Hopand Basketball Wives.But scripted is a more expensive undertaking, and if the appeal for a hip-hop show stretches into broader demographics, the accompanying risk grows too.

Also debatable is whether televisions hip-hop era has reached its saturation point.

After a breakout first season, Empirefell off a cliff both in the ratings and, to many observers, creatively, while The Get-Downmade a comparatively small splash in Netflixs zeitgeist pool. Hip-hop may now be such a cultural given that the idea of how it emergedis only of modest interest.

Creators of The Breakssay anyone taking that view ismaking a mistake.

I dont think Obama is president without hip-hop it brought so much into the mainstream,saysCharnas, who underscored that connection in The Big Payback.

What's interesting about the time and hopefully the show is the unwitting heroes in hip-hop. A lot of people who werent setting out to change the world were the ones who did.

The Breaks

Where: VH1

When: 9 p.m. Monday

Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour

steve.zeitchik@latimes.com

Twitter:@ZeitchikLAT

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With 'The Breaks,' VH1 revisits the '90s hip-hop scene when success wasn't a sure bet - Los Angeles Times

It all began with Monday Night Poetry Readings at the Get Me High lounge in Chicago in 1984. Marc Smith, the father of the slam movement, a construction worker for most of his adult life and a poet, started performing his poetry. Though his initiative to reclaim and re-humanise poetry received a lot of flak from poets in the academia, the interactive and passionate style managed to engage younger audiences in particular.

In a way, it was an attempt to go back to the times when poetry was sung or performed for an audience. Many poets were very critical of the movement but it continued to grow because of its cathartic nature.

Slam poets choose from a wide variety of themes for their work addressing racial, gender, ethnic and economic injustices as well as contemporary world events. The work in itself is judged on not just the content and style of expression but also the enthusiasm and passion with which it is performed.

In February last year, a Delhi-based slam poet, Shivani Guptas moving performance titled, Dear Girl from Pakistan exploring India and Pakistans turbulent relationship and the desire to connect on a human level made its way into everyones hearts. It even got a heart-warming response in the form of a slam poem from a Pakistani girl, Fatima Khan, expressing the same wish to establish bonds beyond political borders. And that certainly did not mark the end of it; there was a deluge of responses from both sides of the border a wide array of poems and prose by ordinary people reiterating the same yearnings growing out of a feeling of a shared history and ethos.

Read also:Much-needed outlet

Slam poetry is being used today as a means to vent out since it allows greater fluidity and does not have the same structural constraints as traditional poetry. Because of the theatricality of this form of spoken word poetry, it is simultaneously exciting and therapeutic and a more alive strand of the oral tradition.

Owing to its easy relatablity, it is powerful as well as resonant. This explains the interest in the rising phenomenon with not just more educational institutions holding slam poetry contests across Pakistan but cafs alsohosting slam poetry nights to provide entertainment.

Slam poetry is being used today as a means to vent out since it allows greater fluidity and does not have the same structural constraints as traditional poetry.

Nevertheless, there is the concern that whether slam poetry even qualifies as an art-form to begin with. Given that more people today can write if they choose to and the novelty of writing is dead, it is debated whether art on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy often a pivotal argument in the case against slam poetry.

It may be true that given the more inclusive nature of art today, quality and meaningful work may be harder to come by. But then, art-forms evolve to reflect the zeitgeist, get influenced by pop culture, and some become redundant with time. Inevitably, new means of expressing ones passion will always emerge to fill up the spaces. For traditionalists though, the nascent slam movement, as envisioned by Marc Smith is still a shock.

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Slam a poem - The News on Sunday

Emily Watson in Apple Tree Yard: One of the most fascinating things . . . is her preoccupation with being witnessed. You made me feel important, she tells her lover, and her unimportance seems a persistent fear.

Sting has a tale. The man who wrote Every Breath You Take, the stalker anthem with an appropriately arresting melody, was alarmed to discover that it had become a staple of wedding celebrations.

Written during the acrimonious break-up of his first marriage and recorded by a bitterly fractious band, its lyrics had been directly influenced by Big Brother, the figure who is always watching you in George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four. An eager couple once told The Police man that the song had provided them with their first dance. Well, good luck, Sting muttered.

Maybe they didnt need it. To judge from popular culture, they may have been ahead of the curve. It has taken the best part of two decades, but as the concept of privacy has steadily eroded, from Patriot Acts to social media, the idea of surveillance has shifted from a deep intrusion towards something more like a personal validation. Someones watching you.

It was possible to look at Apple Tree Yard, the BBCs recent adaptation of Louise Doughtys novel, in a number of ways: adulterous thriller, revenge tragedy, finger-wagging morality tale. Still, its most consistent theme is that of a pathologically secretive couple who, underneath it all, were begging to be noticed.

Affairs are cliched devices in television drama, and Apple Tree Yard was aware of heavily trodden paths, as a middle-aged couple a scientist and a security spook found thrills in broom-cupboard trysts, untraceable phones and fumblings in sheltered alleyway. Even as the plot darkened considerably, it remained a parable about privacy and publicity.

The affair begins impulsively (and pointedly) in an underground chapel in the bowels of Westminster, where the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison once hid herself away in a defiant gesture for womens liberation. Davison famously met her demise under the galloping hooves of King George Vs horse, and writer Doughty invites a mocking comparison with her modern inheritor: We can sleep with whomever we like, the books protagonist reflects on Davisons legacy. We are safe, surely. Do they want to be caught?

One of the most fascinating things about Emily Watsons scientist is her preoccupation with being witnessed. You made me feel important, she tells her lover, and her unimportance seems a persistent fear.

Even her decision not to report her brutal rape at the hands of a colleague is partly bound up with it: She was the first scientist to qualify the Wedekind experiment. (Another sly joke: Frank Wedekind, a German playwright, was a scold of the bourgeoisie.) She now worries that she will be known only as a victim, as though her ultimate humiliation will be at the end of a Google search.

The laneway from which the drama takes its title is more significant: another apple tree marking a point of discovery, like the first couple whose eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked. Londons so-called ring of steel is a kind of coiling serpent, and so another couple, wary of being watched but finally worried they will never be witnessed, are caught with their pants down.

There is also some security in being monitored in Enda Walshs play Arlington, which has just transferred to the Abbey Theatre in Landmark and Galway International Arts Festivals production. It is, like most of Walshs work, a depiction of an eternally confined space. This one, a bland, cavernous waiting room overlooked by CCTV cameras, is an oddly sustaining prison.

Isla (Charlie Murphy), the young woman who has been kept here alone since childhood, has grown accustomed to her captor, a good listener. I thought we had got close, she tells the new guy (Hugh OConor), a nervy sudden replacement. The world outside seems apocalyptic, but Isla has a kind of power under surveillance: shes worth watching. She imparts stories down a microphone, or relates her dreams, which are recorded in a cluttered office and sometimes accompanied with music and visuals.

These dreams, Isla has been told, are being made for her beyond the towers. This may be a ruse, but it gives Isla and her audience a more recognisable fantasy: even in this disintegrating, disordered world, she matters.

Last year, the musician Anohni played with a similar idea, making a rapturous fetish out of surveillance culture in the song Watch Me, addressing the NSA, or whomever, with a mock coquettish chant of Daddy!: I know you love me because youre always watching me. True, it is unlikely to feature in many weddings, but it nailed the zeitgeist. If you cant resist surveillance culture, the next best response is an ironic submission.

Just ask someone under 30. To be young today is to be constantly hounded for personal data in exchange for trinkets and services. Its not that they dont know about privacy issues, a lecturer friend told me recently. Its just that they dont care.

To see Nineteen Eighty-Four return to the best-sellers list in these early days of the Trump era might beckon a readjustment of those individual privacy settings. But in the age of Gogglebox, Orwells dark ideas about telescreens, receiving as they transmit, may strike new readers as positively quaint.

There was no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment, goes the dystopian classic, so you just assumed every sound you made was overheard . . . every movement scrutinized.

You dont need to be Edward Snowden to find that prescient. But Orwell didnt anticipate the complicity of such a narcissistic age. Why wouldnt someone want to watch us? What do we have left to hide?

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In the age of surveillance, what do any of us have left to hide? - Irish Times

Before nasty women in pantsuits but after rocker chicks with shoulder pads came dirrty girls with belly-button rings. (Just ask Christina Aguilera.) The zeitgeist of the late 1990s and early 2000s made navel piercings a ubiquitous symbol of sex appeal, but they seem to have disappeared from the navels of both pop stars and girls next door. Whatever happened to the trend that took young, free-spirited women by storm?

The zeitgeist of the late 1990s and early 2000s made navel piercings a ubiquitous symbol of sex appeal, but they seem to have disappeared from the navels of both pop stars and girls next door.

If you ask Sara Czernikowski, who manages a Rochester, New York, piercing shop called Dorje Adornments, nothing ever happened. Although Czernikowski says 1985 to 2005 undoubtedly served as the peak for navel piercings, the number has not dropped dramatically since. In fact, her shop pierces three to five navels each day, and sells another five navel bars to customers daily. While there are no national statistics readily available regarding the perceived rise and fall of navel piercings, Czernikowski says that anecdotal experience among other piercing professionals seem to confirm the longevity of navel piercings popularity.

According to Czernikowski, navel piercings first rose to fame thanks to the 1970s gay leather movement. I could go on [forever] about how we attribute all modern body modification to the gay leather scene in New York City from the early 1970s to now, Czernikowski says. She points to the Gauntlet, a body piercing studio originally run out of founder Jim Ward's West Hollywood home, as a huge influence on the culture. Eventually the Gauntlet opened shops in San Francisco, New York City, and Seattle, helping to set the standards and practices for body piercing nationwide.

Without the leather scene, Czernikowski says, there would have been no Gauntlet. Without the Gauntlet, there would have been no inspiration for Cryin [the 1993 Aerosmith video that popularized the trend with women] and therefore no surge in popularity for navel piercings.

In Aerosmiths infamous video, Alicia Silverstone is seen getting a navel piercing, although she admitted to having a stand-in for the actual piercing [because] she found it disgusting, according to Czernikowski. Once the video for Cryin dropped, Silverstone rose to fame, and so did navel piercings and, thus, the association of belly-button rings with young women was born. Even the phrase belly-button ring is rather infantile, but thats exactly how navel piercings came to be known.

How does piercing a cavern of your body that collects lint and bacteria strike people as sexual?

Missy Wilkerson spent the 1990s as a piercing apprentice who was so passionate about body modification that she had a plethora of piercings herself including one on her labia, which she pierced at home. Wilkerson agrees that the stigma associated with belly-button rings is both the reason it rose to mainstream fame and a frustrating display of misogyny. I think navel piercings are unfairly maligned because of their association with young women and adolescent girls, Wilkerson says. Its pretty gross and sexist.

How does piercing a cavern of your body that collects lint and bacteria strike people as sexual?

The late 90s and early 2000s were the eras when Britney, Janet, Christina, and Shakira were just a few of the pop divas who bared their midriffs and gyrated on stage while showing off fancy navel jewelry. For many, Britneys 2001 Im a Slave 4 U performance at the VMAs forever serves as the epitome of bold sexuality. She rocked a revealing green get-up, a dazzling navel chain, and yes, the infamous snake.

Its this association that made navel piercings so taboo and all the more desirable for teenage girls during the piercings heyday. Danielle Hayden, who is now 28, experienced resistance when she asked her parents for permission to pierce her navel in high school for this very reason. She explained that her dad thought it was a sexual thing and kept saying stuff about me wanting to look sexy.

However, Haydens parents were not the only ones to make assumptions about the very aesthetic she loved so much. There was a guy I was attracted to in college who assumed I was more sexual than I was because I had a navel piercing, Hayden explains. Despite her chaste nature at the time, her piercing was associated with a sexuality she had not yet fully developed.

The inability to allow navel piercings to just be exactly what they are a piercing is a microcosm of our larger inability to separate sexy from sex.

The inability to allow navel piercings to just be exactly what they are a piercing is a microcosm of our larger inability to separate sexy from sex. Sure, a navel piercing can be sexy, even if that wasnt the wearers intended purpose. But by sexualizing a piece of jewelry, we restrict a trends ability to be universally embraced.

This is perhaps most apparent when bringing gender into the picture. Even before the gay leather movement of the 1970s, Czernikowski explains, the very first wearers of navel piercings were men, and the adornment may date back to ancient Egyptian civilization. But because of the pop culture takeover of the late 90s and early 00s, which branded navel rings as youthful and feminine, a piercing that was previously non-gendered became incredibly gender-exclusive.

In Czernikowskis shop, men often get navel piercings, she says. Because of the shops large selection, the navel jewelry offered at Dorje Adornments is as diverse as the clientele. In the spirit of a navel-piercing-for-all movement, Czernikowski says, The men who work for us have navel piercings as examples to clients that there is no gender attached to body modification.

The average navel-piercing client at Dorje Adornments is a 30-year-old woman. Women ages 15 to 19 and women over 40 are tied for the second biggest female client groups, which might strike some as a surprise. No, navel piercings arent just for hormonal teenage girls, and no, they are not obsolete. There are those who think the navel piercing is not only outdated but also childish, but clearly that is not the case.

Although its mainstream popularity has been stymied by both the oversaturation of navel piercings and growing acceptance of body modification in general, it may be time for a comeback. Crop tops, chokers, and velvet are all recently resurrected trends, so perhaps navel piercings will have their moment in the sun again.

Who knows? Maybe well get to see a stud like Liam Hemsworth, Joe Jonas, or Chris Pratt rocking some navel jewelry right alongside babes like Beyonc (who wore a navel ring on the cover of Shape), Demi Lovato, and Vanessa Hudgens. In the meantime, patrons across the country will still flock to their nearest piercing shops, keeping the aesthetic of the late 1990s alive.

In the meantime, patrons across the country will still flock to their nearest piercing shops, keeping the aesthetic of the late 1990s alive.

Missy Wilkerson, the fiery spirit who once spent her days apprenticing in a piercing shop, rocks a single septum piercing these days. When she thinks back to her navel piercing which she had to remove a couple years ago because of rigorous karate training she has fond memories of the aesthetic she can no longer enjoy. I loved the way the navel piercing looked, she said. And I loved my jewelry a curved barbell with a winking red stone that resembled a garnet, my birthstone.

Navel piercings may not be plastered everywhere these days; they have taken a break from the limelight in favor of a more quiet popularity. But sheathed underneath button-downs and pantsuits and shift dresses and jumpsuits, the navel piercing lives on in men and women of all ages.

Perhaps navel piercings are a sign of liberation. Perhaps they are a sign of youthful rebellion. Or perhaps they are just a sign that yes, navel piercings look damn cool.

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Belly-Button Rings: Where Are They Now? - Racked

There's a case building that television more than wealth or family or real estate, certainly more than politics - is what President Donald Trump loves most.

The evidence was there all along. A camera in the room is the only thing that seems to truly animate him, for it brings with it the promise of big (or easily inflatable) ratings. A television show is the only thing that ever offered Trump, briefly, a unanimous and undisputed success. Absent the camera, he is an even bigger fan of watching TV, much like his fellow Americans who harbor a hard addiction to watching cable-news shows morning, noon and night.

There have been reports (usually anonymously sourced) that some of Trump's staff members wish he didn't watch so much, but why would he stop? The long-offered promise of truly interactive TV has arrived for at least one American: him. Cable news hangs on his every word, while he returns the favor by mimicking some of its worst talking points, often within enough minutes to create an unsettling semblance of harmony.

Sad! As HBO's John Oliver showed in a clip Sunday night on the long-awaited return of his satirical politics show, "Last Week Tonight," Trump is so addicted to cable news that the cabin of Air Force One now echoes with the cheapo commercials that accompany his all-day diet of noise, including the Empire flooring jingle ("Eight-hundred, five-eight-eight ...") Our president, Oliver joked, is like the septuagenarian who has collapsed and died alone in a house with the TV blaring; it takes neighbors days to notice anything amiss.

Thus, Oliver concluded, the only way to get a factual argument across to the president is to make a set of catheter ads to air during cable news, featuring a folksy ol' cowboy who subliminally explains such necessary concepts as the nuclear triad. Oliver's ads began airing in the Washington, D.C., market on Monday morning on Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Maybe just maybe Trump noticed.

Meanwhile, a fomenting Trump resistance movement has seen that televised mockery might be effective in creating the sort of tiny cracks that eventually cause meaningful collapse. The mockery required for this job is not the kind of whip-smart, fact-based, ironic criticism inherited from Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" and still practiced with dedicated verve by TBS' Samantha Bee, NBC's Seth Meyers, CBS' Stephen Colbert and Oliver (who spent 24 minutes Sunday night on a segment devoted to the preservation of the concept of "facts.")

Rather it's the plain, old fashioned, over-the-top mockery that shows a White House hopelessly out of control, compromised, flaccid from the get-go and comically inept. This was best displayed by none other than Melissa McCarthy, a comedic film and TV star recruited by her pals at NBC's "Saturday Night Live" to lampoon White House press secretary Sean Spicer on the show's Feb. 4 episode and again a week later.

The sketches were so brutally effective - starting from their obvious top layer of derision for Spicer's bellicose, combative style, all the way down to the more ingeniously subliminal dig of having women portray the innumerable men who surround and advise the president - that they set off a wave of excitement on the left: Can it really be as easy as dishing up the most basic form of insult humor and then broadcasting it far and wide? Does electoral revenge reside in a barrage of unsophisticated, easy-to-write, tiny-hands jokes (or, in a supercut from Oliver's show, the insultingly spot-on "Donald Trump doesn't know how to shake hands"), rather than a clever, humorously but laboriously spun counterpoint of wonky facts?

Perhaps. In anticipation of "SNL's" Feb. 11 episode, hosted for the 17th time by actor Alec Baldwin, who has found some always-needed career rejuvenation as the show's go-to Trump impersonator since last fall's campaign, America's TV addicts and critics (who now include most of the political press corps) rubbed their hands together in anticipatory glee: Would the episode be just mildly devastating or completely annihilating?

That the episode was found a tad wanting is nothing new to lifetime "SNL" watchers. The show is nothing if not a decades-long study in demand-resistance, causing its viewers to always desire more than it actually delivers. Lorne Michaels, who now controls far more of the TV comedy realm than a mere 90 minutes on Saturday nights, wisely avoids taking requests from his audience, because we tend, as a voting bloc, to suggest the easiest and least original premises and jokes.

Yet, sensing the desires of the internet zeitgeist, "SNL" featured a short, melancholy film in which cast member Leslie Jones floated the idea that she, not Baldwin, should step into the role of Trump. Her fellow cast members interrogated her intent as Jones sat in a makeup chair acquiring an orange comb-over, wondering whether there's a workable shtick here: Could having a black woman play Trump be an effective weapon against the watcher-in-chief? The ultimate insult, as it were?

This assumes that Trump still watches "SNL." He may profess not to - but honestly, come on. It's hard to believe that he'd be able to resist looking at anything that's about him, or even, perhaps, taking credit for the show's impressive jump in ratings. "SNL" is now enjoying its highest-rated season in 22 years, according to Variety.

Lest anyone forget, many viewers of "SNL" still hold the show culpable in providing some of the crucial hot air that floated Trump to his many victories, by allowing him to host while he was a serious contender for the presidential race. The time for truly effective mockery came and went while "SNL" and the rest of the comedy world dilly-dallied with Trump.

All presidents have watched more than their share of TV. One thinks of LBJ's custom array of TV sets in the Oval Office to track all three networks in breaking-news situations, or the Reagans enjoying a night in front of the tube with their TV dinner tray tables. Even the Obamas made sure to get on the inside track with HBO, having "Game of Thrones" screeners delivered before they aired.

As we continue to ask ourselves what Trump watches, and how or if it shapes his decisions, it's probably worth noting that there's a lot he doesn't watch - or at least, we've never been told of anything remotely interesting in his DVR queue.

If insider accounts are to be believed, it's all news, all the time - and perhaps still looking in on NBC's "The Celebrity Apprentice," the show that still credits him as an executive producer even though he goes out of his way to pooh-pooh its current iteration. (About this, he's not wrong. The only reason left to watch "Celebrity Apprentice" might be if you're in a Nielsen family and want to irritate the president.)

In other words, he's missing so much - some of the greatest television ever made, much of it rich in instructive, metaphorical storytelling about power and moral consequence.

Even though Trump appears to lack the necessary attention span, I still find myself wishing that he had joined me and the 10 or so other Americans who were transfixed by HBO's "The Young Pope," a befuddlingly beautiful 10-episode series that just concluded. It's about a new pope, Pius XIII (Jude Law), who is determined to drain the swamp that is Vatican City. He is steadfast in his conservative beliefs and unconcerned with alienating the church's liberal side. He loathes the press. He won't travel. He is consumed by a sort of divine narcissism and he can deliver a real scorcher of a sermon to his underlings.

Yet, not only did Pius win over the cardinals with his agenda, he also, finally, convinced the rest of us that his aim was true. In 10 hours, he went from a horrifying firebrand to a persuasive messenger, maybe even a pope for the ages.

In this way, TV always has something to tell us, even when we're the president. And the president might seem more human if he would very publicly pick up a few, well-made scripted shows and tell us what he thought about them. The first step is learning how to change the channel and break some bad viewing habits.

Follow this link:

President Donald Trump is a TV addict - MyDaytonDailyNews

Well-being is becoming nothing short of a global movement, as consumers seek to ensure healthy lives for as long as possibleparticularly as average life-spans continue to rise. The Global Wellness Institute estimates that the worldwide wellness industry grew by 10.6 percent to $3.72 trillion between 2013 and 2015, while the global economy shrank -3.6 percentmaking it one of the worlds fastest-growing markets.

In 2017 the Well Economy shows no signs of slowing. Theres an ever-growing connectivity in the minds of consumers between the various aspects of their lives. Sleep is linked to productivity, beauty, and mental health. Food is linked to aging, healthy guts, cognitive abilities and stress. Fitness is about mental agility, neuroplasticity and experiencenot just firm buttocks. Equinox gyms even offer a mind-body HeadStrong exercise class.

Meanwhile, brands in every category from real estate to hotels are framing themselves in wellness terms.

So whats new?

Hyper-personalized healthcare

The rise of at-home blood testing is bringing entirely new dimensions to the tracking of personal health. Once the preserve of elite athletes, custom blood panels have received a wellness-themed makeover rooted in taking control of ones own health and longevity. This follows the launch of gene-testing services such as 23andMe, offering DNA-based health assessments and machine-learning personal health and insurance programs from Silicon Valley.

InsideTracker, one of todays most popular options, analyzes up to 30 different biomarkers, including vitamin levels and cholesterol, from a vial of blood. The InsideTracker platform offers users specific sleep and diet advice to address any deficiencies. InsideTrackers biggest competitor, WellnessFX, runs a similar service. In November 2016, WellnessFX launched its first at-home testing kit, the $111 Lifelong Vitality package, which monitors key markers of womens health.

Healthtopias

As consumers seek 360-degree wellness, were seeing enterprising new players reposition themselves with a wellness angle. There are wellness holidays, wellness hotels, wellness hotel showers. Next on the list is wellness real estate.

Lake Nona, a development on the edge of Orlando, Florida, has been designed with its residents health and wellness in mind. A cluster of medical and research facilities known as Medical City provides employment to many of the towns 11,000 residents, expected to grow to 25,000 before long. The medical centers will soon be joined by a 63-acre home to the United States Tennis Association, with 100 courts on site. Residents of Lake Nona participate in health studies, have access to free activities including tai chi, bike races and yoga, and can stroll along a network of trails that will eventually total 44 miles.

Fitness festivals

With big-name Instagram fitness trainers selling out rock star-sized arenas around the country, could the next extension of the rock-star model be a fitness Coachella? Already, outdoor mass yoga classes draw big crowds at Burning Man. Nike, one of the biggest names in athletics, is exploring ways to meld the fitness zeitgeist with todays demand for experience culture. In August 2016, the brand held a three-day immersive fitness event in London that was part-music festival, part-endorphin extravaganza, thanks to its exercise classes. Guests could participate in high-intensity workouts from company trainers or guest celebrity fitness gurus, while visual displays were put on and an electronic soundtrack was supplied by electronic duo Hot Chip.

Marijuana for well-being

With this rising holistic view of well-being, were seeing new lifestyle products connecting themselves to wellness. Marijuana is being repositioned for a female audience, not only as aspirational, but also as a form of complementary therapy that can soothe muscle pain, be taken with botanicals as a relaxing bath product, or used as a massage oil ingredient.

Whoopi & Maya, a collaboration between Whoopi Goldberg and Maya Elisabeth, is a line of cannabis-infused edibles designed to treat menstrual cramps. It comes as part of a suite of luxuriously packaged products, which includes Soak, which contains Epsom salts, essential oils and medical marijuana to create the ultimate relaxing bath. Theres also Rub, a medical cannabis body balm with healing herbs and nourishing oils to ease muscle pain.

In fact, marijuana may be on its way to overtaking wine as the hip indulgence of choice. In West Hollywood, White Rabbit High Tea hosts a chic tea party for women, with a focus on vaporizers rather than hot drinks. Gourmet edibles, including Dfonc dark chocolate bars and Angel Haus cannabis ice cream, mean you can also bring the party home. Marijuana accessories are even getting a high-end feminine makeover from brands such as AnnaBs, who designed a chic handbag with concealed pockets for lighters or vapes.

These trends come from J. Walter Thompsons Future 100: Trends and Change to Watch in 2017. The full report, which includes 100 trends, can be found at jwtintelligence.com

Link:

How wellness trends may shape health industry in 2017 - Fox News

Flying the flag Noel Gallagher of Oasis in 1996. Photograph: Patrick Ford/Redferns

This year is the 20th anniversary of Oasiss Be Here Now, an album ripe for sympathetic reappraisal, if only because any record that attracts so much rancour cant be all bad. Along with marking the moment Oasiss creative well ran dry, it turned out to be Britpops endgame, sweeping the whole genre into the dustbin. And thats how many remember Britpop today: a backward-looking bubble of we-are-the-champions triumphalism. But it wasnt always the embarrassing uncle that nobody wants to acknowledge. Before the fatal hubris of the Cool Britannia phase, which generated an NME article proclaiming Noel Gallagher the most influential person in Britain, Britpops bands were clever and observant, or at least interesting. The Auteurs were all three. Leader Luke Haines hated many things, not least the classifying of his arty indie band under the Britpop umbrella. In fairness to him, the Auteurs 1993 debut, New Wave, shared more DNA with groups like the House of Love than Oasis, but unfortunately for Haines the Auteurs simply happened to be in the right (or wrong) place just as Britpop gained momentum. New Waves loveliest track, Starstruck, is shot through with the bittersweet Kinks influence that was a Britpop cornerstone, while its lyric a fictitious memoir of a child star whose career took its first nosedive when he was five is as Brit as it comes.

Saint Etienne were fellow purveyors of small details and fleeting impressions. Toast is burned and the coffees cold / And you leave all the post cos its nothing but bills again are Youre in a Bad Ways opening lines, establishing the quiet despair that counterpoints the songs cascading 60s arrangement. Home from work, put the TV on / Get your kicks watching Bruce on the old Generation Game, it continues you get the idea. Singer Sarah Cracknell, one of Britpops great voices, airily sketches a picture of everyday drabness before the chorus bursts into anthemic life. In Saint Etiennes world, there was nothing that couldnt be sorted out by a visit to the local caff (never caf), and that was probably where the songs protagonist ended up, regaining the will to live over a cup of tea at a Formica table. As with Starstruck, this 1993 single had the retro flavourings that would come to typify Britpop, but existed in a different universe to the genres TFI Friday bullishness.

To appreciate how outre Suede first seemed, watch their performance of Animal Nitrate at the 1993 Brit awards. Six months earlier, before theyd released so much as a single, Suede had featured on a Melody Maker front cover under the headline The best new band in Britain. But that kind of overhyping was standard music-press flummery what got them out of the indie hinterland was their three minutes at the Brits. Who was that? was the reaction of both the TV audience and much of the crowd at the actual event, as well it might even if that nights other acts hadnt been textbook-staid, Suede would still have been a glam hurricane. Introduced with a sardonic: Please welcome the already legendary Suede (at that point, their career consisted of two singles and that Melody Maker cover), they spent their slot burning themselves into the ears and retinas of everyone watching. Bernard Butlers opening riff is one of the most undeniable in pop, and Brett Anderson pirouetting in a lace blouse as he yowled: Like his dad / you know that he had animal nitrate in mind imprinted himself on those viewers hungry for something different. The songs dark dysfunctionality complemented the bands sleazy glamour, and a sensation was born.

Though Blur ambitiously viewed the Parklife LP as a loosely linked concept album, they probably hadnt anticipated the cultural significance its title track would have. This was the song around which Britpop coalesced, giving form to what had been vague ideas about UK popular culture and turning it into the zeitgeist. It didnt hurt that the track had a magnetism that made it fit in everywhere, from the Radio 1 breakfast show to the Evening Session to Spanish dancefloors. Phil Daniels key narrator role had originally been written for Damon Albarn, who found it impossible to get into character and suggested Daniels for the part. Daniels acerbic Cockney patter, coupled with the unshakeable chorus, instantly created a new archetype: the resurgent working-class young Londoner with money in his pocket. Pressing the point home further, the video offers the sight of Alex James pushing Graham Coxon in a supermarket trolley, and a recreation of the Abbey Road cover, but with the zebra crossing relocated to East London.

When a band launch their career with their best song, the only way should be down, and thus it proved, eventually. Though Oasis had a decent run of memorable early singles, none quite equalled Supersonic hearing it now, its uncluttered perfection still startles. As a calling card, the song was incredibly effective raw, unapologetic and burning with confidence. Though it was about Oasiss yearning for fame, Liam Gallagher swaggered as if success were a done deal, and from that point it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fortuitously, it came out the same month April 1994 as the Parklife album, and rumblings of a north/south rivalry began almost immediately, to the advantage of both bands.

Britpop could be surprisingly malleable, as shown by this 1995 single. The Boo Radleys had the wrong hair and clothes, and had done time as shoegazers but a change of direction, and bang! they were adopted by Britpop overlord Chris Evans, and lauded as the next shiny thing. For a tune about fundamental incompatibility in a relationship, Wake Up Boo! is insanely peppy; at the time it embodied better than any other song the thread of optimism running through the mid-90s. The bands performance on the quintessential 90s youth show The Word pushes every giddy neon button.

Pulps breakthrough came when they stepped in as last-minute substitutes for the Stone Roses at Glastonbury in 1995. Common People was the last song of their set, and by the time it finished, the group had palpably crossed the line to bona-fide stardom. Though synonymous with Britpop, Common People has the qualities that make a song timeless: theres Cockers fabulously louche delivery and the massive uplift into the chorus, obviously, but also the lyric. Addressed to a long-ago acquaintance who wanted Cocker to show her the world of common people in the hope that their supposed credibility would rub off, it resonates to this day.

The fourth and least remembered single from Pulps Different Class, Something Changed is rarely mentioned in the same breath as the game-changing first three, Common People, Sorted for Es and Wizz and Disco 2000. As a lesson in what Pulp were about, however, its unsurpassable. While the first three singles set out their stall as observers of social and class mores, Something Changed is a love song, but one defined by Pulps intrinsic pathos and vulnerability. Cockers lyric considers the role that chance plays in relationships: what if hed gone to see a film that day instead? What if shed visited friends? When they woke that morning, they didnt know they were about to meet: Life could have been very different then / but something changed. Cockers partiality to hammy vocal flourishes is absent; this is his most unadorned performance, and by a long way Pulps most moving song.

From their 1995 debut, Elasticas finest hour starts with the sound of energetic vomiting an aural tribute, perhaps, to the Good Mixer pub in Camden Town, where thousands of Britpop hangovers were created. It resolves into a tirade against a groupie called Drivelhead, who hangs around the Camden gig scene in the hope of bedding some lunk whose band has just been third on the bill at the Dublin Castle. Drivelhead wears her glad-rags / Shes got her keys, money and fags / I know her minds made up / To get rocked, sings leader Justine Frischmann, though by the third verse, shes dropped the subtlety: Drivelhead knows all the stars / Loves to suck their shining guitars / Theyve all been right up her stairs / Do you care? Line Up isnt just three surging minutes, its also a screen-grab of a moment in time, when Camden was the epicentre of a movement that felt like something big. Its rare for a woman to sing about groupies Delaney & Bonnies Groupie (Superstar) is the only other song that comes to mind - but Frischmann, who was dating Damon Albarn at the time, had presumably seen her share of Drivelheads and wanted to vent.

Mansun happened to be playing catchy guitar music at a time when every such group was labelled Britpop, but in their case it was a misnomer. Leader Paul Draper was a fan of Prince and John Barry rather than the Beatles, and his bands 1997 debut album, Attack of the Grey Lantern, was a theatrical concept affair leagues removed from the breezy simplicity of contemporaries such as Cast and Dodgy. Along with a musical vision, Draper had a strong grasp of melody, yielding an album engaging enough to hit No 1. Wide Open Space was one of its singles, and compelling and hugely anthemic as close to Britpop as the band ever got. One got the impression that Draper had written it just to prove he could the paranoia at its centre (Im in a wide open space / its freezing) marked it as an outlier.

View post:

Britpop songs 10 of the best - The Guardian (blog)

Theres a case building that television more than wealth or family or real estate, certainly more than politics is what President Trump loves most. The evidence was there all along. A camera in the room is the only thing that seems to truly animate him, for it brings with it the promise of big (or easily inflatable) ratings. A television show is the only thing that ever offered Trump, briefly, a unanimous and undisputed success. Absent the camera, he is an even bigger fan of watching TV, much like his fellow Americans who harbor a hard addiction to watching cable-news shows morning, noon and night.

There have been reports (usually anonymously sourced) that some of Trumps staff members wish he didnt watch so much, but why would he stop? The long-offered promise of truly interactive TV has arrived for at least one American: him. Cable news hangs on his every word, while he returns the favor by mimicking some of its worst talking points, often within enough minutes to create an unsettling semblance of harmony.

Sad! As HBOs John Oliver showed in a clip Sunday night on the long-awaited return of his satirical politics show, Last Week Tonight, Trump is so addicted to cable news that the cabin of Air Force One now echoes with the cheapo commercials that accompany his all-day diet of noise, including the Empire flooring jingle (Eight-hundred, five-eight-eight ...) Our president, Oliver joked, is like the septuagenarian who has collapsed and died alone in a house with the TV blaring; it takes neighbors days to notice anything amiss.

Thus, Oliver concluded, the only way to get a factual argument across to the president is to make a set of catheter ads to air during cable news, featuring a folksy ol cowboy who subliminally explains such necessary concepts as the nuclear triad. Olivers ads began airing in the Washington market on Monday morning on Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Maybe just maybe Trump noticed.

Meanwhile, a fomenting Trump resistance movement has seen that televised mockery might be effective in creating the sort of tiny cracks that eventually cause meaningful collapse. The mockery required for this job is not the kind of whip-smart, fact-based, ironic criticism inherited from Jon Stewarts Daily Show and still practiced with dedicated verve by TBSs Samantha Bee, NBCs Seth Meyers, CBSs Stephen Colbert and Oliver (who spent 24 minutes Sunday night on a segment devoted to the preservation of the concept of facts.)

Rather its the plain, old-fashioned, over-the-top mockery that shows a White House hopelessly out of control, compromised, flaccid from the get-go and comically inept. This was best displayed by none other than Melissa McCarthy, a comedic film and TV star recruited by her pals at NBCs Saturday Night Live to lampoon White House press secretary Sean Spicer on the shows Feb. 4 episode and again a week later.

The sketches were so brutally effective starting from their obvious top layer of derision for Spicers bellicose, combative style, all the way down to the more ingeniously subliminal dig of having women portray the innumerable men who surround and advise the president that they set off a wave of excitement on the left: Can it really be as easy as dishing up the most basic form of insult humor and then broadcasting it far and wide? Does electoral revenge reside in a barrage of unsophisticated, easy-to-write tiny-hands jokes (or, in a supercut from Olivers show, the insultingly spot-on Donald Trump doesnt know how to shake hands), rather than a clever, humorously but laboriously spun counterpoint of wonky facts?

Perhaps. In anticipation of SNLs Feb. 11 episode hosted for the 17th time by actor Alec Baldwin, who has found some always-needed career rejuvenation as the shows go-to Trump impersonator since last falls campaign Americas TV addicts and critics (who now include most of the political press corps) rubbed their hands together in anticipatory glee: Would the episode be just mildly devastating or completely annihilating?

That the episode was found a tad wanting is nothing new to lifetime SNL watchers. The show is nothing if not a decades-long study in demand-resistance, causing its viewers to always desire more than it actually delivers. Lorne Michaels, who now controls far more of the TV comedy realm than a mere 90 minutes on Saturday nights, wisely avoids taking requests from his audience, because we tend, as a voting bloc, to suggest the easiest and least original premises and jokes.

Yet, sensing the desires of the Internet zeitgeist, SNL featured a short, melancholy film in which cast member Leslie Jones floated the idea that she, not Baldwin, should step into the role of Trump. Her fellow cast members interrogated her intent as Jones sat in a makeup chair acquiring an orange comb-over, wondering whether theres a workable shtick here: Could having a black woman play Trump be an effective weapon against the watcher-in-chief? The ultimate insult, as it were?

This assumes that Trump still watches SNL. He may profess not to but honestly, come on. Its hard to believe that hed be able to resist looking at anything thats about him, or even, perhaps, taking credit for the shows impressive jump in ratings. SNL is now enjoying its highest-rated season in 22 years, according to Variety.

Lest anyone forget, many viewers of SNL still hold the show culpable in providing some of the crucial hot air that floated Trump to his many victories, by allowing him to host while he was a serious contender for the presidential race. The time for truly effective mockery came and went while SNL and the rest of the comedy world dilly-dallied with Trump.

All presidents have watched more than their share of TV. One thinks of LBJs custom array of TV sets in the Oval Office to track all three networks in breaking-news situations, or the Reagans enjoying a night in front of the tube with their TV dinner tray tables. Even the Obamas made sure to get on the inside track with HBO, having Game of Thrones screeners delivered before they aired.

As we continue to ask ourselves what Trump watches, and how or whether it shapes his decisions, its probably worth noting that theres a lot he doesnt watch or at least, weve never been told of anything remotely interesting in his DVR queue.

If insider accounts are to be believed, its all news, all the time and perhaps still looking in on NBCs Celebrity Apprentice, the show that still credits him as an executive producer even though he goes out of his way to pooh-pooh its current iteration. (About this, hes not wrong. The only reason left to watch Celebrity Apprentice might be if youre in a Nielsen family and want to irritate the president.)

In other words, hes missing so much some of the greatest television ever made, much of it rich in instructive, metaphorical storytelling about power and moral consequence.

Even though Trump appears to lack the necessary attention span, I still find myself wishing that he had joined me and the 10 or so other Americans who were transfixed by HBOs The Young Pope, a befuddlingly beautiful 10-episode series that just concluded. Its about a new pope, Pius XIII (Jude Law), who is determined to drain the swamp that is Vatican City. He is steadfast in his conservative beliefs and unconcerned with alienating the churchs liberal side. He loathes the press. He wont travel. He is consumed by a sort of divine narcissism and he can deliver a real scorcher of a sermon to his underlings.

Yet, not only did Pius win over the cardinals with his agenda, he also, finally, convinced the rest of us that his aim was true. In 10 hours, he went from a horrifying firebrand to a persuasive messenger, maybe even a pope for the ages.

In this way, TV always has something to tell us, even when were the president. And the president might seem more human if he would very publicly pick up a few, well-made scripted shows and tell us what he thought about them. The first step is learning how to change the channel and break some bad viewing habits.

See the rest here:

Our president is a TV addict. It's going to get the best of him, but he'll never get the best of it. - Washington Post

William Eichler 14 February 2017

Amber Rudd announced last week the Government would end its commitment to take in thousands of unaccompanied child refugees from Europe after only 350 had been brought to Britain from camps in France, Greece and Italy.

Former prime minister David Cameron reluctantly agreed the UK would take in an unspecified number of asylum-seeking children last May. While no precise figures were offered, it was understood what came to be known as the Dubs amendment to the Immigration Bill - named after its author Lord Dubs - would see 3,000 lone children rescued.

This is a paltry number - as is the 4,000 we have taken in under other programmes - when compared to the scale of the crisis. According to EU figures, there are an estimated 90,000 minors currently on their own at risk of starvation, disease, sexual exploitation and a whole raft of other abuses.

Defending the decision, Ms Rudd insisted Downing Street was doing the refugees a favour. The Government has always been clear that we do not want to incentivise perilous journeys to Europe, she told Parliament, particularly by the most vulnerable children.

This explanation is unconvincing for many of the experts working in the field. The charity Help Refugees immediately announced its intention to challenge the decision in court. They argued the Government had failed to lawfully calculate the number of available places councils could offer unaccompanied children.

Rosa Curling, the human rights solicitor representing the charity said: The consultation process by which the Home Office has calculated this low number was fundamentally flawed. There was no real consultation with many local authorities.

The author of the original amendment Alf Dubs - himself a child refugee from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia - was also not convinced by Ms Rudds excuses. Today Theresa May put Britain on the wrong side of history, he said. To our country's shame, she has decided to shut down the Dubs Scheme, which promised child refugees a safe future in the UK.

Regardless of the courts final decision, one thing is clear: Downing Streets U-turn follows a longer-running campaign to close Britains borders, which has been promoted by a rightwing populist movement bent on blaming immigrants for all the countrys problems.

So, as I said, the decision that we cannot possibly find room for 2,650 children is hardly a surprise. The intolerant currents swirling around at the moment militate against any act of kindness to strangers.

Perhaps I am being unfair. Perhaps Ms Rudds announcement was simply a pragmatic decision based on sound economic calculations. After all local authorities, who will have to shoulder the very real burden of caring for the unaccompanied minors, are strapped for cash and can barely afford to care for their own residents.

However, councils have repeatedly called on Whitehall to put in place long-term funding arrangements to help care for refugees. Kent County Council, an authority that has taken in many unaccompanied children, has also called on the Government to make it mandatory for all authorities to take their fair share of asylum-seekers.

But all this has fallen on deaf ears. Downing Street would rather abandon the few thousand children they had promised to care for than go against the grain of our current reactionary zeitgeist.

More here:

Whitehall's war on unaccompanied minors - LocalGov