Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

In the fallout from the violent rally in Charlottesville last weekend, a renewed sense of urgency to remove Confederate monuments has taken hold in towns and municipalities across the country.

Under the cover of darkness, workers in Baltimore removed four statues memorialising Confederate figures, after the city council voted unanimously to make moves immediately. Statues in Lexington, Kentucky, are set to be taken down as well, pending approval from a state historical board. A woman in Durham, North Carolina was recently arrested for allegedly tearing down a statue there.

We cannot continue to glorify a war against the United States of America fought in the defence of slavery, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper later wrote in a post on Medium in what was a light condemnation of the events in Durham, and a call for official action. These monuments should come down.

The movement to take down the statues which some argue represent a violent and racist history, while others say are simply a tribute to Southern heritage echoes the zeitgeist seen in 2015, after nine black churchgoers were murdered in cold blood by a white supremacist hoping to start a race war. Photographs of the killer showed him posing with the Confederate flag, sparking outrage that led to efforts across the South to remove that flag from public grounds. The recent rally in support of keeping a Confederate monument also drew blood, and now the rush to remove the monuments is the topic of discussion in manycommunities with similar statues or plaques.

The debate over Confederate monuments isnt exactly new, however. Public displays honouring Confederate figures and ideas can be seen all across the United States, and many localities have been considering removal for a long time.

There were some victories for the anti-Confederate monument camp in the absence of national tragedy, too: New Orleans removed four statues earlier this year, for example. Activists in Hollywood, Florida, tell The Independent that their years-long effort to rename streets honouring Confederate figures is on the verge of succeeding.

But, the very fact that this is being debated after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville ostensibly to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee turned terribly wrong, shows how polarising the issue can be. Tensions were so high in Charlottesville that the planned rally needed to be disbursed almost immediately after its scheduled starting time, but clashes continued between demonstrators and counter protesters. That violence culminated in the death of a woman after a white supremacist allegedly drove his car through a crowd.

There are more than 1,500 Confederate monuments or symbols on public grounds around the country, according to the Southern Poverty Law Centre. That includes more than 700 monuments, and more than 100 public schools named after Confederate generals.

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US cities rush to take down Confederate monuments after Charlottesville - The Independent

"Drain the swamp! the U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump shouted at campaign rallies last year. The crowds roared; he won. Our political system is corrupt! the Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders thundered at his own rallies. His approval rating now stands at around 60 percent, dwarfing that of any other national-level elected official. Although many aspects of U.S. politics may be confusing, Americans are clearly more agitated about corruption than they have been in nearly a century, in ways that much of the political mainstream does not quite grasp. The topic has never been central to either major partys platform, and top officials tend to conflate what is legal with what is uncorrupt, speaking a completely different language from that of their constituents.

Although the political establishment, including the justices of the Supreme Court, may cling to a legal notion of corruption, ordinary Americans more visceral understanding is in line with an anticorruption Zeitgeist that has swept the world in the past decade. In Brazil, huge, ongoing street protests over the course of two years have bolstered the federal police force and a crusading jurist, Srgio Moro, as they have investigated and brought to justice high-ranking perpetrators in a web of corruption scandals. Their work has already led to the impeachment of one president, Dilma Rousseff, and her successor, Michel Temer, is also in the cross hairs. A similar movement has shaken Guatemala, where a UN-backed commission has helped prosecutors bring charges against dozens of officials, including Otto Prez Molinawho was the countrys president until 2015, when he resigned and was arrested on corruption charges. Earlier this year, South Korean President Park Guen-hye met the same fate.

In countries as varied as Bulgaria, Honduras, Iraq, Lebanon, Malaysia, Moldova, Romania, and South Africa, where governments havent been toppled, citizens have nonetheless shown remarkable collective energy in protesting corruption. Taken together, these disparate movements add up to a low-grade worldwide insurrection. Elsewhere, taking the pulse of their

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Kleptocracy in America - Foreign Affairs

Fleur Pierets and Julian P. Boom

A queer couple are planning to visit every country where its legal for same-sex couples to get married and hold a wedding in each one.

The plan will seeFleur Pierets and Julian P. Boom travel the world over the next year and a half in order to tie the knot in all the legally-permitted countries.

The project was titled 22 after the 22 countries with equal marriage, but rather unhelpfully for the couple Germany and Malta have both recently legalised same-sex marriage.

The female art duo have now extended their trip to accommodate the two extra countries, taking the tally to 24. It could rise even further, if Australia votes in favour of equality this year.

Their first wedding for the project will take place in New York next month, with their final wedding planned more than a year later in New Zealand, in October 2017.

The trip will take them across the diverse range of countries around the world with marriage equality from Colombia to Canada, and South Africa to Sweden.

The pair, who first married in Belgium in 2012, explained: 22 is an art project that speaks of evolution and optimism. A time capsule that instantly refers to the possibility of change.

That captures the zeitgeist of a world in the midst of change when it comes to gender equality and human rights.

22 celebrates the places that legalised gay marriage, and highlights the work that still needs to be done in the 170 countries that dont.

At the current rate we will reach global recognition of same-sex marriage in the year 2142. Thats 125 years from now so lets see if they can get it to go a bit faster.

Of the abruptly out-of-date name, they added: Naming our project 22 shows that the world is in constant movement.

Were building a time capsule that instantly refers to the possibility of change and we ourselves dont know to how many countries we will have to go, or have to add over the 18 month course of this project.

We hope many, because this goes beyond being merely a work of art.

22 can raise levels of awareness that may lead to changing laws and giving people the equal opportunities they deserve.

The pair added:Fascinated by gender, identity and community, our research-based practice functions as a mirror in which viewers can confront themselves with ideologies or beliefs.

We are working towards cultural awareness when it comes to gender equality and gay imagery in mainstream art history.

At the end of the performance, an art/video installation will be exhibited.

As a performance piece, we are getting married in: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States & Uruguay.

You can follow their journey online.

The rest is here:

This couple are going to get married in every country where it's legal - PinkNews

Powerful movement imagery Skin. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

There was a thrill and a buzz around 201 Dance Company when they brought their last production, Smother, to Edinburgh. In telling the stories of two gay men and their community of friends, 201 were staking out significant new ground for hip-hop, proving that the language of street dance was supple and expressive enough to deal with complex character and emotion.

With Skin, choreographer Andrea Walker tackles even more demanding material, charting the story of one childs journey towards gender transition. This is a theme thats currently blowing through the theatrical zeitgeist, but the challenge of navigating its psychological and political intricacies is a particularly tricky one for pure dance.

Smartly, Walker opts for images of graphic simplicity to establish the premise of his story. Two figures stand facing each other, identically dressed in jeans and a knitted cap. Theyre the child and adult versions of Michael, Walkers protagonist; as they pull off their caps and shake out their hair, as they reluctantly revert to wearing dresses, its made unambiguously clear that Michael was born female.

Walker finds powerful movement imagery to show how alienated Michael feels within his body. Michaela Cisarikova as the adult Michael distills a harrowing level of tension into her angled, robotic moves, tugging at her dress as if it was burning her skin. Flashing back to childhood, little Michael (Candy Dickinson) is groomed by her mother (Lara Rose McCabe) to look and move like a girl. But she cant make sense of her mothers brittle manikin posing, her high heels and tight dress. Her body eases into confident joy when Michael finds an adult male to follow and can mimic his sturdy slouch, or attempt her own, giggling version of his gregarious B-boy moves.

The social pressures on Michael as s/he gets older are neatly encapsulated by a group dance in which s/hes caught between sexually aggressive men, and women who want to trade makeup and clothes. Yet as cleverly as Walker sketches the narrative basics, as fine and committed as his dancers are, Skin doesnt develop into a fully felt or fully imagined drama. The characters surrounding Michael especially his mother are limitingly schematic, and the choreography for everyone, except Cisarikova, looks underworked. When Michael finally commits to being a man, it all feels too tidy a diagrammatic conclusion rather than the outcome of a lived experience.

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Skin review brave attempt to dance gender transition - The Guardian

The Zeitgeist Movement isaglobalgrass-roots organizationfocused on achieving a paradigm shifttoward a sustainable futurefor our planetin which all needs are metand human potential can be realized.

Welcome to The Zeitgeist Movement India Chapter

Even as youre reading this, something incredible is happening all over the world. People are waking up to a new reality, where mindless jobs, conflict, stress, inflation, poverty, hunger, debt, climate change and all other perils of the current world simply do not exist.

By your interest in the movement, youve expressed your inclination to help shape our wonderful future! We encourage you to go through each and every tab and link on this website thoroughly.

In order to understand the movement in detail, we encourage you to go through at least the following links in the order theyre mentioned below. There are quite a few, so you might want to stagger them over a few days (or weeks, based on your schedule). Do add them to your Favorites/Bookmarks, so you can revisit them later.

Once you have gone through the material below, and you find that your thinking and views resonate with those of the movement, if you havent subscribed to us already, please consider doing so at the Registration link provided in this page. Youll discover a growing number of like-minded people who want to make this world a better place.

Register and get updates on events related to The Zeitgeist Movement in India.

Read the global mission statement.

Get to know how this movement works.

Access to the various (free) resources required to understand the aims, goals and direction of the movement.

If any links on this site do not work, please do let us know atinfo [at] tzmindia [dot] comso that we can correct them.

We wish you a wonderful journey in the movement.

In solidarity,

The Zeitgeist Movement India Chapter

Original post:

The Zeitgeist Movement (India)

by Shane de Lange (@shanenilfunct) Lets delve into great media design from South Africa and around the world:

Find a cover we should know about? Tweet us at @Marklives and @shanenilfunct. Want to view all the covers at a glance? See our Pinterest board!

As an establishment in the South African surfing community, one would think that the recent redesign of Zig Zags masthead could have gone pear-shaped. But it didnt. The updated logo, accompanied by a major layout refresh, has made the magazine look a great deal more contemporary. The rustically rendered lettering, superimposed over an energetic action shot, compliments the theme of the issue: Made in Africa. Imbuing a sense of rawness and angst reminiscent of the doodles that teenagers carve into their classroom desks in school, the textured, almost juvenile use of typography is effective, simultaneously suggesting the vibrating pulse of the continent and the ocean, and the free-spirited veneer of surf culture.

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Wired has never been shy to experiment with the left-inclined side of its editorial design sensibility. The latest issue is an example of its culture and its sophisticated design palate, proving that formalism can be contemporary and speak experimentalism. With its orthodox use of typography and colour blocking, contrasted with glitch-inspired abstract forms indicative of the digital age, this cover reminds one of the classic album by British electronic music producers, Autechre, titled Tri Repitae. Aside from the music production that set the bar for the time, the 1995 album is famous for its cover designed by Designers Republic, which uses a similar marriage of High-Modernism and Post-Modernism set forth in this months issue of Wired.

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Aptly referencing George Lois infamous Mohammed Ali cover for Esquire in 1968, the cover for the 31st issue of independent/niche iJusi magazine is a witty commentary on the current sociopolitical state of South Africa and the man at the helm of it all. From a graphic-design perspective, iJusi is undoubtedly an institution in SA; its documented an important visual record of what it means to be African over the past two decades since independence.

Note: Shane de Lange worked on this issue of iJusi.

Australian Fashion magazine, Frankie, is noted for its tasteful, well art-directed covers. Issue #78 is a testament to the refined curatorial sensibility of the editors eye, displaying an illustration that is simultaneously child-like and sophisticated. A more-innocent and nave version of the avant-garde aesthetic propagated by the Fauves in Europe during the early 20th century, this cover illustration is supported by the simple and uncluttered layout, with a masthead that is unobtrusive, effectively framing the vibrancy of colour, gestural mark-making and expressive ability of the artist. Most importantly, it stays true to Frankies tone of voice.

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Dada-data is an online publication celebrating the centenary of the historically influential Dada movement. Embracing the interactivity that the internet brings to the field of editorial design, this publication is a living document, remaining loyal to the conceptual mechanisms and anti-art tactics that were used by the original Dadaists.

The site allows one to participate in Dada-hacktions (staying true to the notion of automatism and the happenings that Dada arguably helped to invent), and to visit Dada-depots to learn about the history of the movement. The bold use of typography, subdued greyscale visuals, and parallax motion of the landing page all play into the zeitgeist of the inter-war, avant-garde period during the early 20th century in Europe.

A Dada tone is instantly struck by the landing page, a homage to the famous 1922 poster collaboration between Theo van Doesburg and Kurt Schwitters a poster titled Kleine Dada Soire (used during their tour of Holland and their so-called Dada Campaign).

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Dot Zero was a quarterly produced by Unimark International, the firm where iconic Modernist designer, Massimo Vignelli, started out. Five issues were printed between 1966 and 1968, with the second cover arguably being the most experimental for its time.

The magazine dealt with the overall rubric of visual communication, effectively mapping what we now see to be normal forms of communication in the media. Modernist to the nth degree, the highly formal almost Minimalist use of black-on-black is still considered sexy today, exhibited by the cover to the new single by Oneohtrix Point Never, titled Leaving the Park, which clearly uses the same visual language that Vignelli contributed to over 50 years ago.

Shane de Lange (@shanenilfunct) is a designer, writer, and educator currently based in Cape Town, South Africa, working in the fields of communication design and digital media. He works from Gilgamesh, a small design studio, and is a senior lecturer in graphic design at Vega School in Cape Town. Connect on Pinterest and Instagram.

Cover Stories, formerly MagLove, is a regular slot deconstructing media cover design, both past and present.

Sign up now for the MarkLives email newsletter every Monday and Thursday, now including headlines from the Ramify.biz company newsroomservice!

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Cover Stories: Thoughtfulness in design (11 August 2017) - MarkLives.com

JOE BENNETT

Last updated05:00, August 9 2017

GETTY IMAGES

Very suddenly, the electric motor is in vogue.

OPINION: Hallelujah, as Handel put it in his Chorus, hallelujah, we shall be saved. And the name of the saviour is the electric engine. It is blowing its bugle and galloping our way. All we have to do is to hold on for a few years. Then suddenly we shall all be driving electric cars and all manner of things shall be well.

We've had electric vehicles for as long as I've been alive. The milk delivered to our house when I was a kid came on an electric truck. The bread didn't.

The coal didn't. But milk came with an electric whirr and the empties left as quietly.

Golf carts were already electric too and powerful enough to lug the Trumps of yesteryear from tee to green to gin. But somehow the electric engine never migrated into other vehicles. This had something to do with the inefficiency of batteries but rather more to do with the oil industry. Oil was cheap and oil was abundant and oil would go on for ever.

But now, so very suddenly, the electric motor is in vogue.

Government ministers around the world compete to boast of how soon their national fleet will be wholly and greenly electric. By 2050, says one. Ha, says another, we shall be all humming and virtuous by 2040.

Curiously, New Zealand has not joined the chorus.

Even though we have to import our petrol and even though we have vents to the steaming heart of the earth from which to generate electricity, along with wind and sun and water in abundance, the latest projection for New Zealand is that by 2040 the proportion of our cars that are electric will have soared to 8 per cent.

READ MORE: *All electric car trial for business users *Tesla hands over first Model 3 electric cars to early buyers *The challenges and consequences of moving to electric cars *New Zealand's first 3D-printed electric car being built in Otara *The electric car's day has come thanks to battery technology Of course. the boastful ministers of elsewhere aren't really making predictions. They know that they'll be dead or gaga by the time 2040 comes round, so they'll never be held to account. And besides, no one will remember what they said. They're just tossing a date out to gratify the zeitgeist that is desperate for any form of optimism. For we are drenched in gloom.

Mankind dreads the future, as it has not done since the plagues of the Middle Ages. We see nothing ahead but decline. We see mounting pollution, barren seas, animal extinctions, smothering deserts, death by heat, death by drowning, death by storms and death by drought. We see poverty, misery, hunger and war, a Book of Revelations future that our grandchildren will have no choice but to read every morning when they open their curtains. Both rich and poor can see it coming.

The rich are hoping to swap this planet for another one. The poor are merely hoping. And hope has recently come to rest on the shoulders of the electric engine.

Her sister the internal combustion engine represents everything that has gone wrong. Unsustainable, noisy, dirty, destructive and greedy, she is a metaphor for the part of ourselves that got us into this mess.

She has scoured the land and sea for oil and sucked it up and burned it willy nilly. She may have shrunk the world with aeroplanes and given the prosperous few unprecedented freedom of movement, but she has done so at great cost. She has acted like one who burns down her house to warm her hands.

We have clung to her for a century but now we are now turning on her. We want to expel her, like the goat that ancient priests would burden with the people's sins and then drive beyond the city walls to die.

And with her will go the oil barons. Consider them. Putin depends on oil. Maduro too. The loathsome House of Saud is built on it. Trump adores oil. Saddam grew from it. Oil breeds monsters. But not for very much longer.

Soon the world will whirr with electric engines.

The air will start to clean itself.

People will taste the sweetness in their lungs and hear the quiet on the streets and they will see that it is good. And it will be the catalyst for great and lasting change, and people will finally come to their senses, plant trees, ease the climate back from the brink, stop fighting, stop being greedy, stop overpopulating, stop using plastic, stop electing bullies, stop raping the sea and ruining the land, stop believing they are loved by some fictional super-daddy and stop going to war on the pretext of that super-daddy.

United in one common cause all the nations of the earth will hold hands and go skipping through the meadows like the von Trapp children.

So that's that then, we are saved, and all without giving up the cars we love. Hallelujah.

* Comments on this article have been closed.

-The Dominion Post

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Joe Bennett: The great hope for our future | Stuff.co.nz - The Dominion Post

There are eight candidates for the presidency in Kenyas 2017 election. Of these, two are the main contenders; Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and Raila Amolo Odinga. This is a replica of the 2013 polls where the two presidential candidates were the dominant opponents.

The running mate configuration has not changed either, with both retaining their previous partners. William Ruto for Kenyatta and Kalonzo Musyoka for Odinga. The only thing that has changed is their party identities.

Kenyattas 2013 Jubilee coalition is now the Jubilee Party, comprising most of the constituent parties that had been part of the coalition. The 2013 Jubilee formation was an alliance between parties loyal to the president, and his deputy William Ruto.

For its part Odingas camp underwent a coalition overhaul, morphing from the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy to the National Super Alliance. The coalition brings together several parties, both old and new, led by the Orange Democratic Movement, Odingas longtime party.

Latest polls have indicated that the two candidates are neck-and-neck. Both have factors working for and against them.

Uhuru Kenyatta

A few things are in Kenyattas favor. At 55 years of age, he is a young president who represents generational change. Kenyatta also comes from one of the wealthiest families in Kenya. Forbes Magazine ranks him as the 26th richest person in Africa, with an estimated fortune of $500 million. This means that hes been able to contribute financially to a vibrant campaign.

As the incumbent, some would also argue that he has had access to state resources and agencies to facilitate his re-election. Incumbency has also allowed him to drive his campaign on the steam of his development record and flagship projects in infrastructure, the energy sector and public service delivery.

In terms of voting blocs, Kenyatta has the support of Kenyas two most populous ethnic groupings: the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru (GEMA) and the Kalenjin. The registered voters in the GEMA grouping are approximately 5,588,389, in the Kalenjin are 2,324,559.

Combined, thats 7,912,948 votes, which is equivalent to 40 per cent of the electorate. Thats a formidable start when you consider that presidential strongholds have historically recorded a higher voter turnout during elections.

On the other hand, Kenyattas four-year tenure has been riddled with corruption allegations, including the Eurobond and National Youth Service scandals.

His admitted inability to rein in corruption in his government has worked against him. Additionally, his government is also accused of ethnic exclusion.

The Jubilee presidency is seen as a two-man show. This has contributed to the perception that Jubilee is not ethnically representative.

Raila Odinga

Odinga has many things going for him. High up on the list are his charisma and strong political mobilisation skills. Historically, Odinga has always been a formidable opposition politician; not being an incumbent has enabled him to galvanise effectively.

Odinga enjoys wider ethnic support compared to President Kenyatta, comprising among others the Kamba, Luhya, Luo and Maasai tribes. These communities comprise over a third of the voting population. But the disadvantage is their historically lower record of voter turnout.

At 72 years of age, Odinga represents the older generation of Kenyan leaders who joined politics in the 1970s and 80s. And this being his fourth attempt at the presidency, theres lethargy among some of his supporters.

Hes viewed by some as power hungry and untrustworthy, especially because of his alleged association with Kenyas 1982 coup. His calls for mass action after the contentious 2007 election, during a period that saw the displacement and death of thousands of Kenyans, also contributed to this perception.

Also to his disadvantage is an association with past corruption scandals during his term as prime minister, including the maize and Kazi Kwa Vijana youth programme scandals.

The main political formations

There are two main formations in the 2017 election - the Jubilee Party and the National Super Alliance.

The Jubilee Party, formed in September 2016, followed a merger between the National Alliance and the United Republican Party representing two ethnic communities - the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin. The Jubilee Party also has the support of other political parties including the Kenya African National Union, NARC Kenya, the Labour Party and the Democratic Party amongst others.

The National Super Alliance is a coalition of political parties formed in April 2017. Its leading lights are Odingas Orange Democratic Movement, the Wiper Democratic Movement led by Kalonzo Musyoka, the Amani National Congress led by Musalia Mudavadi, Ford Kenya led by Moses Wetangula and Isaac Rutos Chama Cha Mashinani. The coalition brings together the Luo, Kamba and Luhya ethnic groups, and a section of the Kalenjin community.

In this election cycle, party manifestos have become increasingly important. This explains the Jubilee administrations scramble to complete promises outlined in its 2013 document.

The Jubilee Party has made even more promises in its recently launched manifesto. Three that have caught the public attention include the creation of 1.3 million jobs a year, free public secondary education and the expansion of Kenyas food production capacity.

The National Super Alliances promises are more political. They include a constitutional amendment to provide for a hybrid executive system to foster national cohesion. Two other notable promises are to lower the cost of rent by enforcing the Rent Restriction Act and to implement free secondary education.

Strengths and weaknesses

The strengths of the Jubilee Party lie mainly in its incumbency and its development track record over the last four-and-a-half years. But the party has been weakened by divisions within its ranks. These were amplified during the campaign as disagreements broke out over the leadership of campaign teams. The ruling party is also handicapped to the extent that its not as ethnically diverse as its competitor.

The National Super Alliances main strength lies in its ethnic diversity. Its five principals represent different ethnic communities.

The super alliance also creatively captures the zeitgeist of a section of the electorate, with some of its campaign slogans such as -vindu vichenjanga (things are a-changing in the Luhya dialect) making their way into popular use. It is riding on the euphoric wave that usually accompanies the hope of regime change.

One of its weaknesses, however, includes a perceived predilection to violence because the opposition has previously resorted to mass action. In 2016 for example, it organised a series of protests to mobilise for the removal of key members of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries commission, the body responsible for organising the general election.

Another weakness is its close association with allegedly corrupt financiers.

Key concerns

There is a perception that historically, the presidency has been the preserve of two ethnic groups the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin. This feeling of disenfranchisement has become a key campaign issue.

There are, however, some non-tribal issues that have taken the foreground. These include corruption, economic and social stability, lower cost of living and improved security.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Kenyan elections: Why it is important - WION

There is one great truth that ties all revolutions in common and that is they never burst out in surprise. History, or at least when current events have been aged in the cask long enough to be classified as history, always has shown that there were warning signs, hints, foreshadowing adeptly revealed yet not immediately obvious. It is as though the story of humanity is being written by a truly cunning mystery novelist, thus casting God as the supreme meld of Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie. A failed assassination attempt here, a farmers protest there, like a red sky at morning we sailors should take warning. Except we usually dont. Wed rather ignore what in retrospect seems so obvious. If we notice the approaching thunderheads at all, we prefer to just wish them away, as though the winds respond to wishes. Good luck with that.

Donald J Trump and his ultra-nationalist, white supremacist, anti-democratic crew have been what Bob Dylan once called a slow, slow train comin up around the bend, but we didnt put our ears to the track in time. My personal regret is that I actually did quite literally read the signs but I couldnt figure out the final stage. A story:

As a writer, its been my recreation disguised as work to indulge my passions. Plays, poetry, Human Rights, sports, border collies, I cover the waterfront and those are the docked freighters I unload. My bread and butter has been book reviewing and for a significant (slightly shameful) portion of my career I took contracts writing Sponsored Reviews for various websites. A Sponsored Review is something an indie author buys, essentially an ad thinly disguised as an objective opinion. God knows I never let my name appear as a by-line as the content would have to be approved by the author or else I wouldnt get paid.

Most of those novels were excrementally awful; badly edited (if edited at all), with paper-thin characters that spoke not in dialogue but in slogans. There was some value in it reading a ton of crap improved my own skills as an Editor and later as a Literary Agent, but I digress. For you see, there was a certain overlay of a common element that I began to find disturbing. Most, and I mean an actual majority, had a dystopian setting. Usually centred on America, traditional government had crumbled, some form of neo-fascism had taken hold, small groups of resistors hid in the hills or woods, struggling for survival. There were variations on the theme, but you get my point.

Generally speaking, none of these lousy novels ever put together a plausible case for how A got to B why did democracy collapse? What was the method? It was all just a matter of, Well here we are and doesnt life suck?

Still, these dozens of books crawled inside my consciousness like a subcutaneous parasite. You see, years earlier when I was studying Film at university I learned about the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. Oh I know, properly one should learn about such things in a course on Philosophy, comparing and contrasting Hegel with Thomas Caryles opposing Great Man theories. Instead I watched His Girl Friday and saw the dawning of the womens movement. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell were much more fun than droning German philosophers. Regardless of the origin point of this academic sidebar I did come to the conclusion that the Zeitgeist is a tremendous predictor of future events. We emotionally or instinctively feel, as a group, what is coming even if our conscious selves choose to think instead of birthday parties and picnics, hot sex and the Premier League. We know theres a slow, slow train coming, but we still dont move in time.

When Trump emerged, I realized that all those terrible dystopian writers had got it right. I still do not know what those writers didnt know either How did we get from A to B? Why did over 60 million American voters go off their nut simultaneously and vote for a bog ignorant, racist, misogynistic blowhard? It wasnt all Russia and stealing Hillary Clintons campaign emails, you know. That may have been the casus belli but there equally or more so an itch in the American mind-set that made it susceptible to that specific manipulation. In any event, Trump Watch is going to be here for awhile, so we can come back to that analysis another day.

On this day though, we have to be good generals and anticipate the enemys next move. There is a sense among those that resist Trump that once the Republicans in Congress get their collective shit together, likely after Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivers his final report with or even without criminal indictments, they will in turn begin Impeachment proceedings, remove Trump (and possibly Vice-President Pence, Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) from Office and then all shall be sweetness and light again.

Not so fast.

Trump throughout his career has been a Vampire, rising again and again, even after five bankruptcies. This is why I wonder what his long game is. The man may be an idiot, but he is not entirely stupid and certainly the moneyed powers that put him in office in the first place will not give up quite so easily.

Thus, my nightmare scenario, one born of noticing how Trump has turned against his own Republican Party, mocking it as weak, indecisive, ignoring the yahoo base that elected him and them. You see, even if Trump is successfully impeached and ordered to pack his belongings including all those hideous gold curtains and get out of the White House immediately, there is nothing to stop him from running again in 2020. Nothing at all.

But wait! What if he is in prison for State crimes? Even a Presidential pardon, such as Gerald Ford granted Richard Nixon, has no effect on State sentences. Well thats true, but I invite you to look at Article Two, Section 1 of the US Constitution, which states the eligibility requirements for serving as President of the United States:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Do you see anything in there about, Must not be a convicted criminal? No, neither do I. A Trump, seen by his followers as a victim, with all the squeezing of the electoral lists (over 500,00 have recently lost the right to vote just in the State of Georgia alone) and intimidation of mild-mannered others could win again. He could run the US from prison like a convicted Mafia don.

Is any of this likely? Perhaps not, but I remind you of something. When Prince Yusopov saw Rasputins body sink into the river he thought the danger to Imperial Russia had been destroyed once and forever. He failed to account for all those nasty peasants foaming at the mouth. History never ends, it just starts a new chapter following from its previous.

Be seeing you.

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Continued here:

Trump Watch: Vampires, Yusopov and The Zeitgeist - The London Economic

On Tuesday, August 8th, the Bourbon Theatre hosts the first Nebraska appearance by Kabaka Pyramid, one of the new generation of Jamaican performers from the Reggae Revival movement. While Bob Marleys contemporaries such as Burning Spear, the Wailing Souls, and Black Uhuru have made Nebraska tour stops for years, the inheritors of the roots reggae legacy havent found their way to this part of the prairie until now.

Assuming youre curious, the word Kabaka comes from the head of the Ugandan kingdom Buganda, and presumably you know about pyramids. Born Keron Salmon, the singer-songwriter and lyricist has a career dating back over 10 years and has been scoring popular reggae and dancehall tracks along the way.

Roughly five years ago, Kabaka Pyramid was among a group of younger Jamaican artists to gather regularly near a beach East of Kingston where singer and actor Billy Wilmot had founded a surfing camp called Jamnesia. This like-minded group of artists, also including Protoje, Chronixx, and Jah9, found common ground in the mission of advancing Afrocentrism through music and the arts, something fewer and fewer Jamaican performers have explicitly embraced in the last three decades. As recording artists, they soon would make guest appearances on each others projects, name-check each other in concert, and generally provide each other the moral support not often found in an otherwise hyper-competitive music culture.

Kabakas take on the whole thing is encapsulated in the lyrics to The Revival from 2013:

This movement, they call it a revival, we all got a part to playIn this movement, none a we nuh rival, the mission is all the sameIn this movement, is more than music, much more than tours and jewelry.

While advancing Afrocentrism through music may sound like nothing new, for at least 30 years, the most popular continuum of artists out of Jamaica have come out of its dancehalls exemplified most recently in the unparalleled success and influence of the genius emcee and criminal mastermind Vybz Kartel. Kartels aesthetic was the perfect reflection of the Jamaican youth zeitgeist of the mid-2000s, which often manifested in wanton materialism. Kartel is currently a few years into a life sentence for murder and will likely remain a folk-hero for generations to come.

The artists of the reggae revival, in contrast, saw a strong position to uphold in a celebration of an Afro-Jamaican identity, Rastafari, and an embrace of reggae and its original one drop rhythms as the music vehicle of choice. At the same time, each of the Reggae Revival artists shows to varying degrees a millennial affection for American hip-hop Kabaka Pyramid and Protoje chief among them. Jamaicas identity as an Afro-Caribbean society has long been informed by its proximity to the United States. While American music has influenced the development of Jamaican music since the days of Louis Jordan and Bill Doggett, one of Jamaicas well documented roles was in providing the seminal ingredients for African-American sound-system music, aka hip-hop. (See the story of Kool Herc if you doubt this for a second, or check the video from Jay-Zs recent trip to Jamaica to collab with Damian Marley on Bam, in which Kabaka Pyramid makes a minor cameo.)

If there is one thing to understand about Kabaka Pyramid, he is not a pure reggae artist in the tradition of Bob Marley or Burning Spear. If thats your flavor, an artist like Samory I will hit closer to the mark. Kabaka Pyramid is more in the line of artists like Sizzla, Capleton, or Damian Marley, Rasta dancehall performers who have a strong interest in hip-hop and whose emphasis on lyrical fusillades outshines instrumental virtuosity.

Kabaka seems to love rapping almost as much as being a dancehall emcee, and its hard to tell which he does with more authority. He embraces this duality most clearly on Kabaka vs. Pyramid, from the 2016 Major Laser/Walshy Fire mixtape.

For more examples of Kabaka Pyramid in action, I recommend the early Reggae Revival combination, Selassie Souljahz, where Kabaka trades verses with Chronixx, Protoje, and Sizzla. Also, give a listen to the lyrical climax on Protojes The Flame from Protojes outstanding Ancient Future LP; or Well Done, a harder reggae dancehall outing, based on R.E.M.s Losing My Religion and first adapted by Wayne Marshall as On The Corner.

Kabaka Pyramid tours with his own band, the Bebble Rockers, seen here at their recent performance at the Summerjam festival. His most recent single is Cant Breathe.

Carter Van Pelt hosts Eastern Standard Time, Fridays from 10 to midnight on KZUM-FM and is the founder and host of Coney Island Reggae On The Boardwalk. Check out his writing on Protoje and Chronixx.

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Kabaka Pyramid comes to Nebraska and surveying Reggae Revival | Concert Preview - Hear Nebraska (registration) (blog)