Sitting out the 'Star-Spangled Banner'

Ralph DiGia, lifelong war resister, dead at 93

Ralph DiGia, lifelong war resister and pacifist, died Feb. 1 in New York City, days after breaking his hip in a fall. Ralph, 93, was a leading figure in the War Resisters League, one of the United States' oldest anti-war groups, for more than two generations. He joined the organization shortly after the end of World War II and his release from federal prison, where he had served a term for refusing military service as a conscientious objector.

An associate of AJ Muste, Bayard Rustin, Dave Dellinger, Barbara Deming and other anti-war voices of his generation, Ralph held key posts over the years with both WRL and Liberation magazine. A statement on the WRL website says, "While Ralph was not a public speaker or a writer, he played a key a role within the radical pacifist movement, and was central to many of the major antiwar actions of the past six decades."

He is survived by his wife, Karin DiGia, his children, and his two brothers. (WRL statement, Feb. 2)

A profile of Ralph DiGia in the New York Times of March 22, 2003 read:

Mr. DiGia grew up on the Upper West Side, the son of an immigrant barber. In 1927, when Mr. DiGia was 12, his father took him to a rally protesting the imminent execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, whose murder trial centered on their radical political beliefs.

"My first demonstration," Mr. DiGia said, smiling.

In 1941, Mr. DiGia received his draft notice, but reported instead to the United States attorney's office to announce that he was a conscientious objector. After being convicted of failure to report for induction in 1943, he was sent to a federal penitentiary in Danbury, Conn., where he helped lead a successful effort to integrate the prison dining hall.

Mr. DiGia served 28 months in prison and returned to New York, where he got a job with a small accounting firm and started volunteering at the War Resisters League. A decade later, in 1955, the league hired him to keep the books and he has been a part of the organization ever since...

Through the decades, he has participated in hundreds of demonstrations against American wars and policies. He vaguely recalled that the last of his many arrests was at the United Nations, but he vividly remembered the 30-day sentence he got for protesting the country's civil defense drills in the mid-1950's. He can talk about the FBI files ("Stuff like, 'Ralph DiGia drove up in a Chevrolet and started passing out leaflets'"), as well as about the time the office was ransacked.

"It's almost like being selfish," he said finally. "It makes me feel good. It's meaningful to me. Otherwise, what would I be doing? Supporting these terrible things?"

Among the many antiwar stickers adorning the office, there is one for the Mets. Ralph DiGia, pacifist, is also Ralph DiGia, baseball fan, who has learned to combine passions when attending Mets games at Shea Stadium: cheer for the home team, but do not stand for "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"We sit, the others stand, and the game goes on," he said.

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What cut cables can teach

" ... This leaves sabotage or an act of war as the only other option. The fact that there were no immediate American condemnations of this as a terrorist act indicates that it had the tacit approval of the United States, a theory further supported by the fact that Israel and Iraq remained unaffected since their internet traffic is carried via a different route. Without wanting to speculate, however, a number of interesting lessons emerge from these events.

Firstly, the internet has proven surprisingly resilient, managing to compensate for the lost traffic routes without collapsing altogether. It also demonstrated the complicated nature of the worldwide web, with India most heavily affected by a break in communications located in the Middle East, which in turn affected Britain in particular, since most large British companies have outsourced their call centres to India. There is, therefore, no way to disrupt the internet selectively without a knock-on effect elsewhere.

Secondly, the public appears to happily buy any story it is fed by mainstream media. Tell them a ship's anchor cut through the cables and they believe it. They won't ask why after such an "unforeseen" event no measures were put in place to prevent the same thing from happening again, or why suddenly so many lethal ship's anchors are floating around the ocean when previously they never caused a problem. This public lethargy does not bode well for the future.

Thirdly, today's wars are increasingly related to technology and communications. In a report to Congress, US National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell listed amongst his major concerns besides "Al-Qaeda" that Russia, China and oil producing countries were using their wealth to advance political goals (let's guess that the USA could never possibly be accused of such a heinous crime!) and that the threats faced by the US were global, complex and dangerous, including the vulnerability of computer systems.

The truth is, that Iran's nuclear capability has never really worried the White House as they know too well Iran would not be stupid enough to use such destructive technology even if they had it. It is a smoke screen for allowing interference on account of much more conventional capabilities Iran has developed like, for example, the recently announced ability to launch its own rocket and soon send its own satellites into orbit.

In this context, there have been speculations that the cutting of the internet cables was intended to cut off Arab oil producing states from vital communication routes prior to another weapon in Iran's armoury, the long-awaited and heavily speculated about Iranian oil bourse which, by trading in Euro, would send the already free-falling dollar to depths from which it could never recover. ... "

 

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Thousands throng Allahabad for Mahesh Yogi's funeral

" ... This quiet Uttar Pradesh town at the confluence of the holy Ganga, the historic Yamuna and the mythological Saraswati is suddenly hot on the global map as thousands of devotees from across 100 countries have gathered here to see the place from where Maharishi Mahesh Yogi began his journey as a physics student to become a world famous spiritual leader.

The guru of transcendental meditation (TM) passed away at his retreat in the Netherlands on February 5, 2008. His body was brought to Allahabad and kept in an embalmed state at the Maharishi Vidyapeeth, a Vedic school that the seer founded at Arail, a quiet neighbourhood on the outer banks of the Ganga at Prayag, nearly 15 km from Allahabad.

It is perhaps one of the most unlikely funerals that a world leader can have. On Sunday evening, Guru Deva, as the seer was known to his devotees, sat in calm repose on a podium bedecked with heaps of roses, night queens and marigolds as nearly 20,000 devotees filed past him with folded hands.

[ ... ]

The seer had apparently drawn up a map for his foundation for the next 100 years almost a year before his death, when he announced his retirement. He had appointed a 48-member governing council and a five-member governing body led by the Maharajadhiraja (his royal highness, king of kings) Ram aka Tony Nader, a neuroscientist from Lebanon, to steer the TM movement globally and expand the ambit of the organisation's activity.

Nader or the Maharaja, as the Mahesh Yogi had crowned him a year ago, had retreated into silence two years ago.

"That was the way the Maharishi wanted him to oversee the matters of the organisation. He will conduct the affairs in silence, transmitting his thoughts in transcendence to the five-member governing council," said Yugantar Saxena, the publicity head of TM's India chapter and the operational head of the Maharishi Television channel in the country.

The Maharishi had also formed the Brahmanand Swaraswati Trust before his death to fund the movement of the organisation. The seer, who believed in Vedic monarchy of ancient India, had formed a hierarchy of maharaja (the chief kings), 35 country rajas (kings or the nation heads) and global ministers to lead the movement.

He named his transcendent kingdom the Global Country of World Peace. All the 35 kings, attired in their white silk ceremonial robes and golden crowns, assembled at Arail over the weekend and mingled freely with the devotees in a rather "democratic spirit".

India figured high in the Maharishi's scheme of things. Led by the king, Harris Kaplan, in-charge of India operations and the principal donor to the seer's peace and Vedic revival programmes across the country, the Maharishi planned to form a permanent group 7,000 to 8,000 Vedic priests who would be trained in advance meditation techniques.

This group would act as a buffer in times of crisis, mitigate tension and promote communal harmony and global peace through yagnas (ancient rituals) and group meditation sessions.

The project, said a senior member of the movement, was gaining momentum with Kaplan giving it a definite shape. ... "

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John Giorno: Warhol muse and father of Dial-A-Prayer

From John Linnell, They Might Be Giants

...Do you have a weird New York story to share? Flansburgh and I were driving our new van around Manhattan and we came around a corner and almost ran over this guy who not only looked like he was homeless but apparently wouldn’t have minded if we’d run him over, he just had this incredibly nonchalant look to him. And then we realized it was the famous poet John Giorno we had almost killed in our van...


From Fest starts off with a classic Beat

...Spoken word is nothing new. Witness the work of Beat Generation poet John Giorno, 72, who opens the Festival Voix d'Amériques today.
"I wanted to invite him because we tend to talk about performance poetry like it's something new, but it's not," festival director D. Kimm said. "We are part of a long tradition. They were very brave to do it back then."
Giorno was a stockbroker in New York City at the end of the 1950s when he met pop-art icon Andy Warhol. Warhol was so entranced by Giorno he made him the star of the film Sleep - during which Giorno slept for eight hours.
After meeting Warhol, Giorno quit his day job to concentrate on his poetry and spent the 1960s hanging out with a revolutionary gang of artists, including Warhol, Lou Reed, William S. Burroughs, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Robert Mapplethorpe and Jasper Johns.
Giorno's main preoccupation at the time was finding ways to harness technology to disseminate poetry to a broader audience. In 1968, he created Dial-A-Poem. It was an enormous success and is credited with inspiring a wave of consequent Dial-A initiatives, including Dial-A-Joke and Dial-A-Prayer...


From John Giorno: Everyone Gets Lighter

John Giorno, one of the leading lights of the New York beat generation, devised the legendary event at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, during which different poems could be listened to every day on answering machines. The LP produced later entitled The DIAL-A-POEM Poets features the highlights from among 700 poems by 55 poets. The Giorno Poetry System label he founded in 1965 focused on the innovative use of new technologies. The label published over 40 LPs and CDs, videos and films by authors working with music and/or performance, such as Laurie Anderson's You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With [1981]. In his performance Everyone Gets Lighter the founder of performance poetry will use true-to-life neologisms to transform his personal relations with Andy Warhol [Giorno was the 'sleeper' in Warhol’s first film Sleep in 1963], Keith Haring and William Burroughs into a first-rate audio-visual experience.


From Live and reciting

One time stockbroker and Warhol muse, John Giorno has spent the last 40 years changing the face of contemporary poetry and spoken word. In 1965 he founded Giorno Poetry Systems, a record label and artist collective that released the work of some of the most important voices in American poetry, including Allen Ginsberg, Jim Carroll, Laurie Anderson, William S. Burroughs and Patti Smith. Giorno’s performances and recordings have been instrumental in popularizing the form and some of its greatest creators. Giorno spoke with the Mirror from his loft on Bowery Street in New York, where he’s lived since 1962.

Mirror: Can you tell me about your recent performances?
John Giorno: Well, I perform all the time. I went to Europe nine times this past year, and those are two- and three-week tours. It’s always a collection of countries, France, Italy, Spain.

M: I was wondering if you had any involvement with the slam poetry circuits in the United States?
JG: Very much. That’s an amazing phenomenon for poets and for kids. Mark Smith, who invented the whole thing, and Bob Holman—they’re very good friends of mine. I’m on the Bowery just a block away from Bob and the Bowery Poetry Club. What’s particularly good is when these kids are 14, 15—they get up, they don’t know what they’re doing, and they get a blissful experience or connect to their nature in some way. They’re poets, they’re really young poets. And even though the work could be terrible, they’re connecting to something inside themselves, and what they say is, “Well, I’m gonna do that again, as just a thing that I like to do.”
They’re just like me, that’s happened to me—in a completely different way. When I was 14, at school, this English teacher gave a poetry class. This was 1949 (laughs) or ’47, this teacher says, “Go home and write a poem as homework.” And I did, and I got this really great feeling. When I handed it in two days later, she read mine. It was the third poem that she liked, you know, and I said, “I’m gonna do that again!”

M: Do you remember the first time you performed in front of an audience, and what that was like?
JG: I do, actually. By 1962 I started using found images, and that was the influence of Andy Warhol, Bob Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns. I met all these artists in 1961, ’62—they became the focus of my life. In 1962 they were quite young themselves, and not famous at all. After the first year, I was published in Ted Berrigan’s magazine, called C Magazine. Ted Berrigan, a great New York poet, was organizing poetry readings, and he said, “John, you should read your poem.”

From Giorno Poetry Systems

The following text is an excerpt from "Wisdom is his voice" by John Giorno. This text appears in "The Best of William Burroughs" Box Set. This text is not intended to be a complete history of GPS, but perhaps is intended to relate to you GPS' conception, where it came from and why it shaped modern pop-culture and brought forth the age of telecommunications and information.

"In 1961 I was a young poet who hung out with young artists like Andy Warhol, Bob Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, as well as with members of the Judson Dance Theatre. The use of modern mass media and technologies by these artists made me realize that poetry was 75 years behind painting and sculpture, dance and music. And I thought, if they can do it, why can't I do it for poetry. Why not try to connect with an audience using all the entertainments of ordinary life: television, the telephone, record albums, etc? It was the poet's job to invent new venues and make fresh contact with the audience.

"This inspiration gave rise to Giorno Poetry Systems, a non-profit foundation under which many projects were born. The record label called Giorno Poetry Systems eventually built up a catalog of 40 titles, ushering poetry onto the radio alongside rock, jazz, etc. for the first time. The Dial-A-Poem service, begun, in 1968, was a huge success. Not only did we ourselves get millions of calls, we inspired the creation of dial-for-stock market info and dial for sports-info services, etc. We also foreshadowed by a generation the explosion of 1-900 telephone promotions, not to mention the delivery of the Internet over phone lines. we produced poetry videos, videopaks and films. We formed bands and toured like the rock'n' rollers. We displayed poetry on the surface of ordinary objects, producing silk-screen and lithograph Poem Prints. We established the AIDS Treatment Project in 1984.

"But in 1965, even before founding Giorno Poetry Systems, I began recording my friend William Burroughs, starting with tape experiments at his Centre Street loft and with Brion Gysin at the Hotel Chelsea. Before the year was out, with my earlier inspirations turning into tangible performances, electronic events and sound pieces at a show at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, I began Giorno Poetry Systems.

"We taped the riotous Democratic National Convention in the summer of 1968, and presented the results that September at New York's Central Park Bandshell. Three months later I featured William in the inaugural installation of Dial-A-Poem at the Architectural League of New York.

"In 1975 William moved into The Bunker at 222 Bowery, where I'd lived on the third floor since 1966.

"In 1976 Giorno Poetry Systems released a double-record set, one LP featuring William's live recordings, the other my sound poems.

"In 1978 in New York there was the Nova Convention, a three-day tribute to William that crowned him patriarch of heroin and wisdom, and featured performances by Patti Smith, Frank Zappa and many others, including Laurie Anderson, who was making her debut public performance.

New Delhi vacancies for 'condom testers' announced

New Delhi: If you are above the age of 18, a male and seeking a job that combines work with pleasure, here is an unusual opening that promises a combination of both.

The post of a 'condom tester' is up for grabs as Durex, one of the world's largest condom manufacturer has announced plans to recruit Indian males above the age of 18 to test their products.

The chosen 1,000 men would be given a supply of select condoms, with which they can get to work right away, according to company officials.

As the firm itself says, "After you have done full justice to the job, you have to provide Durex with feedback about product performance."

In 2007, a two-year study by Indian Council of Medical Research had concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.

This led to a call for condoms of varying sizes to be made more widely available in India.

"Durex wants to ensure that its condoms are best meeting the needs of Indians and what better way to know this than to ask Indians first hand," R Srinivasan, Vice President, TTK-LIG Ltd, marketer of Durex brand in India told PTI. ...

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