What this strange robotic like behaviour will lead to is unknown. On elevators, in office building hallways, on the street, on public transportation, while driving and in some cases standing at a urinal, people stare into the enticing little device with the diminutive screen.
One scientist said it is breaking down social interaction and people’s skills to communicate face to face. It also creates trivial communication where what is being sent back and forth has no valuable or intrinsic meaning. Communication digresses to nothing more than insignificant banter.
Constant and instant communication where the content only leads to a form of instant gratification, and this communication goes on every free spare moment the participant has. No more time for self-reflection, contemplation or an analysis of one`s surroundings. It has become all about the device.
There are nonconformists out there that do not become servile to the coercive technology.
Are beer firms to blame for Native American drink woe?
By Pia Gadkari BBC News, White Clay, Nebraska
After years of failed efforts to address chronic alcoholism, can a $500m (£308m) dollar lawsuit against the beer supply-chain put an end to one tribe’s deadly struggle with alcohol?
For generations, the dream of a sober society has eluded the largest tribe of Native Americans in the US.
Members of the Oglala Sioux tribe, living in South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, have long tried to shut down the beer stores just across the state line in White Clay, Nebraska.
The four beer shops in the tiny town of White Clay (population: a dozen) operate just steps from the reservation. Between them they sell more beer per head than almost anywhere else in the US – a total of about 13,000 12oz (350ml) servings each day.
“I’m 52 years old and I come up here because I’m an alcoholic,” says one Pine Ridge resident, Bald Eagle. He is one of several people who spends his days on the street that runs through White Clay, drinking.
“And I love my alcohol,” Bald Eagle says. “For me, it’s my life-blood.”
“I wake up with a hangover every morning. But you know what? I’m smart. I drink a gallon of water every morning. Sometimes I get lucky and I find a beer on the street. That’s just the way it is.”
‘How people drink’
The White Clay beer stores are the most accessible source of alcohol for members of the tribe, who live on a reservation where the sale or possession of alcohol is forbidden. It has also been the scene of a few horrific crimes.
The tribe has led protests and marches to shame the store owners. It has asked for tougher laws that would make it harder to sell and consume alcohol in the area. It has lobbied for stricter enforcement of Nebraska’s existing liquor laws.
Nothing has worked, and Pine Ridge leaders have decided to take a new approach. They have filed a lawsuit seeking $500m (£309m) in damages from not just the beer stores, but distributors and breweries as well.
The core of the Oglala Sioux lawsuit is an allegation that the big breweries and distributors supplying beer to White Clay knew it would eventually be consumed or sold on the reservation illegally.
“What little money our people get, it goes to White Clay. And the distributors are aware of what poor people we are but they don’t care,” Tom Poor Bear, the tribe’s vice-president, says. “They’ll take our last dime.”
Tom White, the lawyer representing the tribe, says a combination of factors make it virtually impossible for tribal members to drink their alcohol legally.
White Clay and Pine Ridge are extremely geographically isolated. The nearest towns that sell alcohol are more than 20 miles (32km) away and Pine Ridge is the biggest town in the area.
In Nebraska it is forbidden to drink in public or a car, and reselling alcohol is illegal. But White Clay has no bars that could serve alcohol legally and only about three private homes where drinking would be permitted.
Possessing and drinking alcohol has been totally banned in Pine Ridge reservation for more than 100 years, except for a short period in the 1970s. Nevertheless, bootlegging on the reservation is said to be rampant.
The quantities of alcohol being sold in White Clay are so vast, there is no reasonable way it could all be consumed legally, the complaint says.
The lawsuit also argues that the drinking, fuelled by alcohol sales in White Clay, has caused devastating harm to the tribe, causing lawlessness and violence, poor public health and anaemic economic development.
At the peak of the violence, in the 1990s, a series of grisly, unsolved killings of Oglala Sioux tribe members in White Clay spurred the tribe into pushing for change.
Despite their efforts, the situation did not improve.
Over the years, scores of people have been killed in drunken brawls and drink-driving accidents. Local authorities say as much as 90% of crime on the reservation is linked in some way to excessive drinking.
“People get stabbed, people get enraged,” says Pine Ridge resident Ben Mesteth, who has been sober for about four years. “That’s just part of how people drink down here.”
According to the complaint, average life expectancy on the reservation is between 45 and 52 years, significantly below the average US life expectancy of over 77 years.
As many as 50% of adults over the age of 40 have diabetes, and the incidence of tuberculosis is 800% higher than it is across the rest of the country, the tribe’s filing says.
Meanwhile, it adds, teenage suicide is 150% and infant mortality is 300% higher than the US as a whole.
Finally, the complaint alleges that the drinking deters private investment and economic development in the area, whereas unemployment is estimated to be at least 80%.
For many residents, alcohol is “the only thing that makes everything go away,” says Megan White Pike, as she points out her own mother among a group of people sitting in the shade on the streets of White Clay.
She waves across the street to a cousin who she says is also here for beer.
The complaint asks for an injunction to restrict alcohol sales in White Clay to what could be legally consumed, and for an estimated $500m in compensation for damages and social harm caused by the alcohol.
‘Not illegal’
The beer companies have until Friday 27 April to respond to the lawsuit, and are expected to ask the court to dismiss the case. They declined to comment for this story. After the deadline a judge has between 30 and 60 days to decide whether to hear the case in a federal court.
As the lines get longer outside the White Clay beer stores in the late afternoon, defenders say tribe members need to be responsible for their own choices.
“It’s not illegal to buy alcohol at a place that sells it legally,” says Vic Clark, one of the few actual residents of White Clay. He runs a general store there that does not sell beer – but he defends the right of the beer shop owners to do so.
“We may know that it’s going to be an illegal thing, but on the other hand so does the guy in Rushville, so does the guy in Rapid City.”
For Tom Poor Bear, however, saying that “everybody does it” is no longer a good enough excuse.
“We’ve always been on the defence,” says Mr Poor Bear. “Personally, I’m tired of being on the defence. The best offence that we could come up with was this lawsuit.”
Before the police dragged them off, the members of Pussy Riot, the Russian day-glo balaclava-clad punk rock protesters, sang their anthem “Revolt in Russia” (“Revolt in Russia – the charisma of protest / Revolt in Russia, Putin’s got scared!”) near the Kremlin. Their inspiration for a style of resistance never before seen in Russia, was the riot grrrl punk movement, including groups like Kathleen Hanna’s Bikini Kill, and flash mobs. The young women of the collective, average age 25, have revealed only the smallest details about their lives. None will divulge their day jobs. They only use first-names.
In the two weeks since their mid-January action, the all-female group has become a potent symbol of anger at the status quo in Russian society and their videos have gone viral all over the world. Like many young people in Russia, the members of the Pussy Riot collective are furious at Vladamir Putin’s plans to seek the presidency again and his return was the impetus behind the formation of the group (as well as their song “Putin Has Pissed Himself”). From The Guardian:
“We understood that to achieve change, including in the sphere of women’s rights, it’s not enough to go to Putin and ask for it,” said Garadzha. “This is a rotten, broken system.”
Her bandmate Tyurya said: “The culture of protest needs to develop. We have one form, but we need many different kinds.”
The band began writing songs with lyrics such as: “Egyptian air is good for the lungs / Do Tahrir on Red Square!” and performing on trams and in the metro. Videos of the flash gigs began spreading across the internet. When the protest leader Alexey Navalny was jailed for 15 days after his arrest during Russia’s first post-election protest on 5 December, three members of Pussy Riot took to the roof of the jail where he was being held, setting off red flares as they sang “Death to prison / Freedom to protest!”
The fear of arrest long ago left the band members, steeped in the tradition of illegal protest. “We have experience with it, we’ve been detained at protests before,” said Tyurya. “It’s not scary – you’re surrounded by good, normal people, those who protest against Putin.”
All eight women were detained during the Kremlin performance, questioned and released. Most got off with administrative fines rather than the 15-day jail sentences often doled out to those who stage illegal protests.
“The revolution should be done by women,” said Garazhda. “For now, they don’t beat or jail us as much.”
“There’s a deep tradition in Russia of gender and revolution – we’ve had amazing women revolutionaries.”
The band is getting ready for its next performance, something that usually takes a month to pull together. Its members don’t discuss plans on the telephone or give away details, out of fear that the security services will disrupt the project. Is what they do art or politics? “For us it’s one and the same.”
Despite projected temperatures of -20C, tens of thousands of protesters are expected to march on Bolotnaya Square, across from the Kremlin, on Saturday. The Russian presidential election will be held on March 4. Vladimir Putin, is, of course, expected to win handily.
The Occupy Winnipeg social and political activists are braving November weather as they continue to stay in their tent town located in Memorial Park. As I walked by today there were 40-60 tents, with many people mingling in the bright sunshine. I talked to one activist and he said they will stay as long as they feel it is practical. The looming -25 weather is around the corner and the Manitoba legislature has denied the protesters use of its washroom facilities. Using the porta-potty in -15 weather could be very uncomfortable to say the least.
The tent town is sort of divided. There is the main camp, with a second camp nestled among the trees along Osborne St.
Occupy Winnipeg is part of the larger Occupy Canada which is a collective of peaceful protests and demonstrations that are part of the larger Occupy Together movement which first manifested in the financial district of New York City with Occupy Wall Street, and subsequently spread to over 900 cities around the world.
The collective protests are primarily against social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and the corrupting influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government and democracy.
Characterized by leaderless, horizontally organized, participatory democratic action, and nonviolent civil disobedience, the grassroots democratic movement hopes to effect societal change to put the public good over corporate profits.
Societies need social activists that bring attention to important issues that are often buried at the bottom of the mainstream media agenda. What comes of this movement will become more clear in the days to come. But for the Occupy Winnipeg protesters the time of the tent town will be coming to an end as the winter arctic air will start pushing south in the next couple weeks.
It seems that every 10 days or so there is another report of people dying in house fires on Manitoba First Nation reserves. As the latest tragedy on the God’s Lake Narrows First Nation, where a fire Monday morning killed two small children and their grandfather. The circumstances that cause the fires often vary but there are consistencies. Often careless smoking, food left on the stove or bad wiring are behind the tragedies. Wood burning stoves are also a contributing factor.
There is a shortage of housing on Manitoba reserves. On many northern reserves there are up to 10-14 people living in a 1200 square foot 3 bedroom bungalow. Sometimes this can be as high as 18 people in one house! And the houses have very poor maintenance. A pipe breaks or a baseboard electric heater goes and there is no one to make repairs. Or if there is a reserve member that can do the repairs there is no spare parts. The houses become decrepid and the quality of life deteriorates. The plumbing and water systems break down and the people have to use buckets as toilets and haul water from nearby wells or lakes.
It becomes very unpleasant. So many members of the communities seek relief and head south to the big city, namely Winnipeg. But the big city has many challenges awaiting the newcomers from the reserves. It is hard to find work if you are untrained and under-educated. So many Aboriginal people find themselves living on welfare. While many others try to supplement their meager incomes by panhandling. Many of the males from the reserves do not come to Winnipeg to seek employment opportunities but to get money from panhandling downtown. Many aboriginal men can be seen loitering all along Portage Avenue and other nearby streets with their hats and cups held out begging for spare change.
This leads to the never-ending question that the radio talk show hosts and newspaper columnists ask: what is wrong with our downtown? Why can’t it thrive like the downtowns in other major Canadian cities? The answer is so obvious. Yet the climate of political correctness will not address it. You can barely walk a couple blocks in downtown Winnipeg without being approached by an Aboriginal panhandler or see one of the successful panhandlers passed out or staggering along a street. When they get the money they head straight to the vendor or liquor store and get drunk as fast as they can. And it leads to scenes like the picture below.
I work near City Place and hit the street for my cigarette fix a couple of times a day. I walk on Hargrave between City Place and the MTS Centre and often see Aboriginals (and many non-Aboriginals as well) downing the cheap sherry right on the sidewalk. The liquor store is right inside City Place from Graham. Then when they get drunk they become obnoxious and aggressive and the security teams, whether it be the new Police Cadets or Downtown Biz Patrol, have to run to the rescue. Our city is currently in a huge debate regarding which street security team should be funded. A major city in North America that needs street patrols so citizens don’t get harassed by drunks in their own downtown. This has to be almost a one of a kind situation in North America.
I was in Halifax back in October and I didn’t see one aggressive panhandler or intoxicated person during 4 days of walking all over the downtown area. And there was absolutely no security street patrollers. It was so comfortable to walk around downtown Halifax that I thought I had been transported to another, more benign, dimension.
I do see the odd person handing over money to the Aboriginal panhandlers. This is negative in two ways. First the recipient is going to use the money to get drunk. Second it only gives the panhandler more incentive to keep coming downtown to get more booze money. So in effect it hurts the panhandler, and it hurts the quality of our downtown area. So if anybody is reading this that frequents downtown. Please do not contribute to the problem by handing over that loonie or toonie to the panhandler. No matter how charitable you might be, handing over that money is only making a bad situation worse.
So getting back to the original premise of this rant. There must be incentive for Aboriginal people to stay on reserve. More and better quality housing. The maintaining of the infrastructure, sewage and water especially. We live in a very affluent society. Many non-Aboriginals live in 2,200 square foot houses, with 2-3 cars in the garage, all the gadgets and a trip to Mexico every winter. Can we not take some of the capital that allows this lavish lifestyle and direct it towards making life better on First Nation reserves?
Better homes, better recreational facilities to keep people occupied and maybe safe houses. So if there are disputes a person doesn’t have to jump the bus to the city for his own protection. And tradespeople making the rounds on a regular basis to maintain the plumbing, water, heating and appliances. Make it so the people are satisfied with their life on reserve. So they don’t head to the big city where they have to discard any pride they ever had, and beg for money. Then get drunk to forget their ugly existence.
There is a company in Ontario that makes steel panel homes that are fire resistant. They use steel studs and have woodless windows. The windows are big and can be opened easily for quick escape from a fire. These homes are also eco-friendly and structurally sound. The federal and provincial governments should start immediate substantial funding to build hundreds of these houses on Manitoba reserves. People will stay on the reserves and fire fatalities would be greatly reduced.
The Rent Is Too Damn High Party is a local New York City political party that has presented mayoral candidates in 2005 and 2009. Both times, Jimmy McMillan was the mayoral candidate. In 2005, he received more than 4000 votes. The party has three registered members in the state. McMillan himself is registered as a Democrat for the purposes of running in that party’s primary elections.
The main position of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party is that rent in the city of New York is too high for the residents and should be lowered to relieve financial stress, and to increase employment for the residents of New York.
For the 2009 campaign, the word “damn” was removed from the official ballot on account of the name being 17 letters, two more than legally permissible under state board of elections guidelines. In 2009, Salim Ejaz ran for the party for the position of City Comptroller, without an endorsement from McMillan.
The word “damn” was restored to the party’s ballot line in 2010 by shortening “too” to “2″; McMillan is running for governor on the line, while Joseph Huff is running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Kirsten Gillibrand.
I have taken my cigarette breaks for some time now around Cityplace. I have noticed some of the Vagrants buying Triple X Sherry from the liquor store and downing the horrible mixture right outside the Cityplace doors. They form a huddle in trying to hide the drinking and proceed to funnel the sherry into their steel stomachs. No sipping here, it is an all out guzzle.
The plight of the vagrants is sad. Nowhere to live, no money, poor health and the constant threat of violence. So I guess the instant relief provided by the booze allows for their angst to subside for a while.
To climb out of the holes they have dug themselves into would be a huge endeavour. I have noticed that a lot of the derelicts and vagrants in downtown Winnipeg are in their 40′s and 50′s. They have likely given up trying to sober up and working the odd day job. To put it bluntly many of these people are incapable of working. Half of them limp and their complexions are a mixture of odd colours, bumps and bruises.
They then become permanent street people who rely exclusively on hand outs and the odd sherry induced blissful rush. The last picture is on Ellice across from the University of Winnipeg where the little green space with benches has been dubbed bum park.
