Friday, June 30, 2006

Escinsel, Biseksüel, Travesti ve Transseksüeller Vardir...

DAYANIŞMA PARTİSİ

30 Haziran 2006 Cuma

(Bu Gece)

22:00-24:00 arası DJ CaN.

01:00-03:00 arası DJ k.a.n

Mekan: Klub Karaoke - ZOO salonu*

Adres: Zambak sok. No:15
Beyoglu (eski Godet, İstiklal'e girince ilk sağ)
http://www.klub-karaoke.com

-------------------------------------------------

Arkadaslar !!!

Haydi, Onur Yuruyusune

Beraber Haykiralim…

“Escinsel, Biseksüel, Travesti ve Transseksüeller Vardir...”

1 Temmuz Cumartesi Günü, yani YARIN

Toplanma: Taksim Meydani’nda, 15.00’de

Hormonlu Domates Ödüllerinin Dagitilmasi: Galatasaray Postanesi Önü, 15.30’da

www.lambdaistanbul.org

lambda@lambdaistanbul.org

tel: 0212 245 70 68

Monday, June 26, 2006

I feel like a racehorse with a broken leg today…

“What is the difference really?” I asked myself after crying over the murder of a beloved one. One of the most beautiful creatures I had the chance to wonder around the forests of Istanbul, on sunny and rainy days of the spring and fall for the last two years. I do remember seeing him for the first time. I do remember riding him and the way we guided each other through the forest, and in a short while how fast he started to track the directions much better than myself. I remember a rainy day in which he fancied a gallop and forcing me to stick to him and another day in which he rejected coming with me although I asked him to, and also that he later apologised. I remember much more but will not bore you with all that. Those of you who know the wonders of a world with horses already know what I mean anyway...

But I feel so angry that I have to write these...

First things first: I am no animal rights (or animal liberation) activist. I have quitted vegetarianism almost 4 years ago (after 8 years of a veggie diet) and I think I have a rather good idea regarding where I stand on this matter. I am no animal rights activist.

Still I find it utterly cruel to race horses.

Whoever thinks it is a sport must be sick in the head, as an athlete being forced to run through whipping is simply viciousness. And this beloved one was whipped to run to the point that he broke a leg (and horses don’t break their legs easily, they don’t even break your bones easily).

I understand that it is almost impossible to heal a broken equine leg. I understand the requirement of euthanasia. I don’t and can’t understand, however, why they should be raced!

And this is the point where I asked the question above: “What is the difference really?” Is it not the same thing that our (?post-?)modern societies do to us: whip us till we run fast enough to make the wheel turn. Until we break a leg (or lose our hopes for a different way of being, life, society, etc.), of course, and then we should be put to sleep (or in front of the TV for that matter). Are we not subject to similar kind of cruelty?

On second thought, being a subject to a lot of cruelty is shared among animals and humans… I feel that whenever I find tiny (literally 3pts) “genetically modified” labels on my food, whenever a doctor prescribes me the “newest” medicine or suggests birth control pills, whenever I am offered cosmetics that will make me “look better”. Don’t you love the way the industry pollutes the language like this?

In one of his shows George Carlin said:

Government wants to tell you that you can’t say something because it is against the law, or the regulation, or “here is something you can’t say because it is a secret: you can’t tell him that because he is not clear to know that.” Government wants to control information and control language because that’s the way you control thought. And basically that’s the game they’re in.

Same with religion: Religion is nothing but mind control. Religion just tries to control your mind, so they’re gonna tell you somethings you shouldn’t say because they are SINS, and beside all those things you shouldn’t say, religion is going to suggest to you certain things you ought to be saying:

“Here is something you ought to say first thing you wake up in the morning.”

“Here is something you ought to say just before you go to sleep at night.”

“Here is something we always say on the third Wednesday on April after the first full moon when it is 4 o’clock after the bells ring.”

Despite the joke, I have to suggest the same with regards to industry. Industrialisation, mechanisation, atomisation, speed and more speed and light speed... Who needs variety, slowness, uniqueness, or diversity anyway? Running is all we are trained for and that's what we do... Therefore, I suggest the same with regards to all fully- or semi-industrialised societies that "train" or "educate" us. See even the word education comes from educere: to lead forth. They forgot about the whip part...

And today I feel much like a racehorse with a broken leg, waiting to be shot in the head. Some days are better, in which I notice that I have still not broken a leg... Still running in maddening speed although I want to slow down, I worry about when THAT will happen… Regardless of how good the day is, when I look at the lives of people around me and my own I can’t stop asking “what is the difference really?”

Sunday, June 25, 2006

of kittens and bombs...


























I wanted see this movie for months and last night finally I had the DVD and the time and the exhaustion level that I needed to watch it.

I'm no critic, but if my opinion counts at all, I suggest you watch it, too. To say the least it was "nicely put" as Neil Jordan always does, and of course Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea, Ruth Negga and (surprisingly) Cillian Murphy were just amazing to watch all together.





Won't tell you more about it... But you can check

The Official Website

TRAILER

or better still watch the movie and post your comments here or elsewhere...





















































































Saturday, June 24, 2006

horse riding in Amsterdam Forest


Too happily tired to write today as I was amused and taken care of by a beauty named Roquefort :)


So I will try to use pictures:

1. Amsterdamse Bos (the Forest)

2. The Amsterdamse Manege (and it actually looks much more friendly: see picture5)

3. the Horses (they were very young and extremely beautiful -their size might have added to this perception of course, as they literally are HUGE! and this was what we were up to today, with a bunch of kids that were preparing for a competition and that all rode better than me :P they were really cool!)

4. the Stable (very nice one as you can socialise with your equine friends rather freely... I also liked the fact that everybody takes care of the horse before and after the ride, as I was told and always thought that you cannot be in love with your horse unless you take care of it yourself. It really was not posh at all, especially when compared to the Netherlandse Manege over the Overtoom...)

5. a nicer photo of the entrance. I think this one was taken in autumn. In summer the light is even more beautiful as it falls from among the leaves...

6. this is what I want to do before the
summer ends! a nice gallop out in the forest and a big smile!

Thursday, June 22, 2006

History's not written by the vanquished or the damned...

STEP 1: Open the link in a new window or tab to listen...

STEP 2: Read the lyrics below...

LEAVING BEIRUT

So we left Beirut Willa and I
He headed East to Baghdad and the rest of it

I set out North

I walked the five or six miles to the last of the street lamps

And hunkered in the curb side dusk

Holding out my thumb

In no great hope at the ramshackle procession of home bound traffic

Success!

An ancient Mercedes 'dolmus '

The ubiquitous, Arab, shared taxi drew up

I turned out my pockets and shrugged at the driver

" J'ai pas de l'argent "

" Venez! " A soft voice from the back seat

The driver lent wearily across and pushed open the back door

I stooped to look inside at the two men there

One besuited, bespectacled, moustached, irritated, distant, late

The other, the one who had spoken,

Frail, fifty five-ish, bald, sallow, in a short sleeved pale blue cotton shirt

With one biro in the breast pocket

A clerk maybe, slightly sunken in the seat

"Venez!" He said again, and smiled

"Mais j'ai pas de l'argent"

"Oui, Oui, d'accord, Venez!"


Are these the people that we should bomb

Are we so sure they mean us harm

Is this our pleasure, punishment or crime

Is this a mountain that we really want to climb

The road is hard, hard and long

Put down that two by four

This man would never turn you from his door

Oh George! Oh George!

That Texas education must have fucked you up when you were very small


He beckoned with a small arthritic motion of his hand

Fingers together like a child waving goodbye

The driver put my old Hofner guitar in the boot with my rucksack

And off we went

" Vous etes Francais, monsieur? "

" Non, Anglais "

" Ah! Anglais "

" Est-ce que vous parlais Anglais, Monsieur? "

"Non, je regrette"

And so on

In small talk between strangers, his French alien but correct

Mine halting but eager to please

A lift, after all, is a lift

Late moustache left us brusquely

And some miles later the dolmus slowed at a crossroads lit by a single lightbulb

Swung through a U-turn and stopped in a cloud of dust

I opened the door and got out

But my benefactor made no move to follow

The driver dumped my guitar and rucksack at my feet

And waving away my thanks returned to the boot

Only to reappear with a pair of alloy crutches

Which he leaned against the rear wing of the Mercedes.

He reached into the car and lifted my companion out

Only one leg, the second trouser leg neatly pinned beneath a vacant hip

" Monsieur, si vous voulez, ca sera un honneur pour nous

Si vous venez avec moi a la maison pour manger avec ma femme "
When I was 17 my mother, bless her heart, fulfilled my summer dream
She handed me the keys to the car

We motored down to Paris, fuelled with Dexedrine and booze

Got bust in Antibes by the cops

And fleeced in Naples by the wops

But everyone was kind to us, we were the English dudes

Our dads had helped them win the war

When we all knew what we were fighting for

But now an Englishman abroad is just a US stooge

The bulldog is a poodle snapping round the scoundrel's last refuge
"Ma femme", thank God!  Monopod but not queer
The taxi drove off leaving us in the dim light of the swinging bulb

No building in sight

What the hell

"Merci monsieur"

"Bon, Venez!"

His faced creased in pleasure, he set off in front of me

Swinging his leg between the crutches with agonising care

Up the dusty side road into the darkness

After half an hour we'd gone maybe half a mile

When on the right I made out the low profile of a building

He called out in Arabic to announce our arrival

And after some scuffling inside a lamp was lit

And the changing angle of light in the wide crack under the door

Signalled the approach of someone within

The door creaked open and there, holding a biblical looking oil lamp

Stood a squat, moustached woman, stooped smiling up at us

She stood aside to let us in and as she turned

I saw the reason for her stoop

She carried on her back a shocking hump

I nodded and smiled back at her in greeting, fighting for control

The gentleness between the one-legged man and his monstrous wife

Almost too much for me


Is gentleness too much for us

Should gentleness be filed along with empathy

We feel for someone else's child

Every time a smart bomb does its sums and gets it wrong

Someone else's child dies and equities in defence rise

America, America, please hear us when we call

You got hip-hop, be-bop, hustle and bustle

You got Atticus Finch

You got Jane Russell

You got freedom of speech

You got great beaches, wildernesses and malls

Don't let the might, the Christian right, fuck it all up

For you and the rest of the world
They talked excitedly
She went to take his crutches in routine of care

He chiding, gestured

We have a guest

She embarrassed by her faux pas

Took my things and laid them gently in the corner

"Du the?"

We sat on meagre cushions in one corner of the single room

The floor was earth packed hard and by one wall a raised platform

Some six foot by four covered by a simple sheet, the bed

The hunchback busied herself with small copper pots over an open hearth

And brought us tea, hot and sweet

And so to dinner

Flat, unleavened bread, + thin

Cooked in an iron skillet over the open hearth

Then folded and dipped into the soft insides of female sea urchins

My hostess did not eat, I ate her dinner

She would hear of nothing else, I was their guest

And then she retired behind a curtain

And left the men to sit drinking thimbles full of Arak

Carefully poured from a small bottle with a faded label

Soon she reappeared, radiant

Carrying in her arms their pride and joy, their child.

I'd never seen a squint like that

So severe that as one eye looked out the other disappeared behind its nose
Not in my name, Tony, you great war leader you
Terror is still terror, whosoever gets to frame the rules

History's not written by the vanquished or the damned

Now we are Genghis Khan, Lucretia Borghia, Son of Sam

In 1961 they took this child into their home

I wonder what became of them

In the cauldron that was Lebanon

If I could find them now, could I make amends?

How does the story end?
And so to bed, me that is, not them
Of course they slept on the floor behind a curtain

Whilst I lay awake all night on their earthen bed

Then came the dawn and then their quiet stirrings

Careful not to wake the guest

I yawned in great pretence

And took the proffered bowl of water heated up and washed

And sipped my coffee in its tiny cup

And then with much "merci-ing" and bowing and shaking of hands

We left the woman to her chores

And we men made our way back to the crossroads

The painful slowness of our progress accentuated by the brilliant morning light

The dolmus duly reappeared

My host gave me one crutch and leaning on the other

Shook my hand and smiled

"Merci, monsieur," I said

" De rien "

" And merci a votre femme, elle est tres gentille "

Giving up his other crutch

He allowed himself to be folded into the back seat again

"Bon voyage, monsieur," he said

And half bowed as the taxi headed south towards the city

I turned North, my guitar over my shoulder

And the first hot gust of wind

Quickly dried the salt tears from my young cheeks.

Roger Waters - 2004

Friday, June 16, 2006

SIPRI: 2.5% of world GDP spent on Arms!

Ch8. Military expenditure

Petter Stålenheim, Damien Fruchart, Wuyi Omitoogun and Catalina Perdomo

World military expenditure in 2005 is estimated to have reached $1001 billion at constant (2003) prices and exchange rates, or $1118 billion in current dollars. This corresponds to 2.5 per cent of world GDP or an average spending of $173 per capita. World military expenditure in 2005 presents a real terms increase of 3.4 per cent since 2004, and of 34 per cent over the 10-year period 1996–2005. The USA, responsible for about 80 per cent of the increase in 2005, is the principal determinant of the current world trend, and its military expenditure now accounts for almost half of the world total.

The process of concentration of military expenditure continued in 2005 with a decreasing number of countries responsible for a growing proportion of spending: the 15 countries with the highest spending now account for 84 per cent of the total. The USA is responsible for 48 per cent of the world total, distantly followed by the UK, France, Japan and China with 4–5 per cent each. The rapid increase in the USA’s military spending is to a large extent attributable to the ongoing costly military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, in 2005 the effects of hurricanes Katrina and Rita also played an important role. Most of the increase in US military spending resulted from supplementary allocations administered outside the regular budget, moving control of funding decisions from the Congress to the President.

A factor that has aided the upward trend in military expenditure is the high and rising world market prices of minerals and fossil fuels. This is reflected especially in Algeria, Azerbaijan, Russia and Saudi Arabia, where increased proceeds from oil and gas exploitation have boosted government revenues and freed up funds for military spending. The boost in the military expenditure of Chile and Peru is directly resource-driven, because their military spending is linked by law to profits from the exploitation of key natural resources.

China and India, the world’s two emerging economic powers, are demonstrating a sustained increase in their military expenditure and contribute to the growth in world military spending. In absolute terms their current spending is only a fraction of the USA’s. Their increases are largely commensurate with their economic growth.

Full Report at SIPRI Website

What YOU can do: (eng/ tr/ fr/ nl/ arb)


Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Saturday, June 10, 2006

The Secretary-General: How We Envy The World Cup

June 2006 (sent by a friend at the UN :P -enjoy..)

You may wonder what a Secretary-General of the United Nations is doing writing about football. But in fact, the World Cup makes us in the UN green with envy. As the pinnacle of the only truly global game, played in every country by every race and religion, it is one of the few phenomena as universal as the United Nations. You could even say it's more universal.

FIFA has 207 members; we have only 191.

But there are far better reasons to be envious.

First, the World Cup is an event in which everybody knows where their team stands, and what it did to get there. They know who scored and how and in what minute of the game; they know who missed the open goal; they know who saved the penalty. I wish we had more of that sort of competition in the family of nations. Countries openly vying for the best standing in the table of respect for human rights, and trying to outdo one another in child survival rates or enrolment in secondary education. States parading their performance for all the world to see. Governments being held accountable for what actions led them to that result.

Second, the World Cup is an event which everybody on the planet loves talking about.

Dissecting what their team did right, and what it could have done differently -- not to mention the other side’s team. People sitting in cafés anywhere from Buenos Aires to Beijing, debating the finer points of games endlessly, revealing an intimate knowledge not only of their own national teams but of many of the others too, and expressing themselves on the subject with as much clarity as passion. Normally tongue-tied teenagers suddenly becoming eloquent, confident, and dazzlingly analytical experts. I wish we had more of that sort of conversation in the world at large. Citizens consumed by the topic of how their country could do better on the Human Development Index, or in reducing the number of carbon emissions or new HIV infections.

Third, the World Cup is an event which takes place on a level playing field, where every country has a chance to participate on equal terms. Only two commodities matter in this game: talent and team work. I wish we had more levellers like that in the global arena. Free and fair exchanges without the interference of subsidies, barriers or tariffs. Every country getting a real chance to field its strengths on the world stage.

Fourth, the World Cup is an event which illustrates the benefits of cross-pollination between peoples and countries. More and more national teams now welcome coaches from other countries, who bring new ways of thinking and playing. The same goes for the increasing number of players who between World Cups represent clubs away from home.

They inject new qualities into their new team, grow from the experience, and are able to contribute even more to their home side when they return. In the process, they often become heroes in their adopted countries -- helping to open hearts and broaden minds. I wish it were equally plain for all to see that human migration in general can create triple wins -- for migrants, for their countries of origin, and for the societies that receive them. That migrants not only build better lives for themselves and their families, but are also agents of development -- economic, social, and cultural -- in the countries they go and work in, and in the homelands they inspire through new-won ideas and know-how when they return.

For any country, playing in the World Cup is a matter of profound national pride. For countries qualifying for the first time, such as my native Ghana, it is a badge of honour. For those who are doing so after years of adversity, such as Angola, it provides a sense of national renewal. And for those who are currently riven by conflict, like Côte d’Ivoire, but whose World Cup team is a unique and powerful symbol of national unity, it inspires nothing less than the hope of national rebirth.

Which brings me to what is perhaps most enviable of all for us in the United Nations: the World Cup is an event in which we actually see goals being reached. I’m not talking only about the goals a country scores; I also mean the most important goal of all -- being there, part of the family of nations and peoples, celebrating our common humanity. I’ll try to remember that when Ghana plays Italy in Hanover on 12 June. Of course, I can’t promise I’ll succeed.

Kofi A. Annan

Thursday, June 08, 2006

With loves & hates & passions just like mine, they were born & then they lived & then they died...

Cemetry Gates

A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
While Wilde is on mine

So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
All those people all those lives
Where are they now?
With the loves and hates
And passions just like mine
They were born
And then they lived and then they died
Seems so unfair
And I want to cry

You say: "ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn"
And you claim these words as your own
But I've read well, and I've heard them said
A hundred times, maybe less, maybe more

If you must write prose and poems
The words you use should be your own
Don't plagiarise or take "on loans"
There's always someone, somewhere
With a big nose, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs
When you fall
Who'll trip you up and laugh
When you fall

You say: "ere long done do does did"
Words which could only be your own
And then you then produce the text
From whence was ripped some dizzy whore, 1804

A dreaded sunny day
So let's go where we're happy
And I meet you at the cemetery gates
Oh Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day
So let's go where we're wanted
And I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
But you lose, 'cos weird lover Wilde is on mine..

- The Smiths

------------------------------------
The Grave of Oscar Wilde
Location: Paris, France
-------------------------------------
Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) died in France and was originally buried in the unimpressive Bagneaux Cemetery. In 1909, determined to bury him in a place worthy of his legend, his admirers transferred Wilde's remains to Le Pere Lachaise. Shortly thereafter American sculptor Jacob Epstein undertook the feat of designing the monument for Wilde's grave. It took him approximately three years to complete, and in 1914 when Epstein finally unveiled his masterpiece, featuring an anatomically correct Egyptian-style male figure, the cemetery conservator deemed it indecent. A fig-leaf plaque was promptly fashioned to cover the sculpture's private parts. However, the conservator's decision was apparently "out-voted" by the public-at-large, and in 1922 the plaque was removed "without permission" by unknowns. Unfortunately, these unknowns carried out their mission a little hastily and ended up removing more than just the fig leaf. With a story like this, how could anyone resist a visit?

-------------------------------------

Yeat's Grave

Silenced by death in the grave
W.B. Yeats couldn't save
Why did you stand here
Were you sickened in time
But I know by now
Why did you sit here?
In the GRAVE
W.B. Yeats "Second"
Why should I blame her
That she filled my days
With misery or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men violent ways
Or hurled the little street upon the greant
Had they but courage
Equal to desire
Sad that Maud Gonne couldn't stay
But she had Mac Bride anyway
And you sit here with me
On the isle Inistee
And your writing down everything
But I know by now
Why did you sit here
In a grave ...
Why should I blame her
Had they but courage equal to desire

- The Cranberries
-------------------------------------

After suffering from a variety of illnesses for a number of years, Yeats died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France on 28 January 1939, aged 73. The last poem he wrote was the Arthurian-themed The Black Tower.

Soon afterward, Yeats was first buried at Roquebrune, until, in accordance with his final wish, his body was moved to Drumcliffe, County Sligo in September, 1948, on the corvette Irish Macha. His grave is a famous attraction in Sligo. His epitaph, which is the final line from one of his last poems, Under Ben Bulben is "Cast a cold eye on life, on death; horseman, pass by!" Of this location, Yeats said, "the place that has really influenced my life most is Sligo." The town is also home to a statue and memorial building in Yeats' honor.


-------------------------------------
Adonais: An Elegy On The Death Of John Keats
I weep for Adonais - he is dead!
Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!"

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,
'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamour'd breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies,
With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorn'd and hid the coming bulk of Death.
full text
----------------------------------------

John Keats
'Here lies One Whose Name is writ in Water'

John Keats is buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His grave is in a quiet corner close to the Pyramid. (Shelley is also buried in this cemetery.)
Keats left England in 1820, on the advise of his doctors, and headed for Italy. He was in the final stages of consumption. He arrived at Naples and then proceeded to Rome where he died on the 23 February, 1821. He was 25 years of age.
Keats requested that only the phrase:
"Here lies One Whose Name is writ in Water"
be inscribed on his headstone. (The phrase is thought to be taken from Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster ('all your better deeds/ Shall be in water writ'). However, his two close friends Joseph Severn and Charles Brown, who cared for him during his illness, decided to add the following:

This grave contains all that was mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart, at the Malicious Power of his enemies, desired these words to be Engraven on his Tomb Stone. Brown and Severn felt that Keats had been badly treated by the critics and his family. However, both men later regretted adding their own words to the headstone.


ps. Thanks to Eric and Basak for bringing the issue of immortality and English poetry up.