for those of you who relished Bartor, the Transit Dragon of Doom, (my friends’ clever map of the BART system of the SF Bay Area), get a load of this!
I present, Scandinavia, FTW!
This map is a fun, internal critique of the sometimes puzzling geography of Scandinavia, cuz, people- Denmark (the little blue guy) really is considered part of Scandinavia. And yet that being so… isn’t it really somewhat of a geo-political FAIL…?
not to mention that Greenland is part of Denmark… sheesh.
Still, you gotta love this map! Its pretty cute for a FAIL!
given how prisons, borders, geeks and geography have been frequent themes on the blog, I had to make sure y’all caught wind of (at least) the following two stories.
this gem, from Le New York Times:
Prisons can restrict the rights of inmates to nerd out, a federal appeals court has found.
In an opinion issued on Monday , a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the claims in a lawsuit challenging a ban on the game Dungeons & Dragons by the Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin.
The suit was brought by a prisoner, Kevin T. Singer, who argued that his First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights were violated by the prison’s decision to ban the game and confiscate his books and other materials, including a 96-page handwritten manuscript he had created for the game.
Mr. Singer, “a D&D enthusiast since childhood,” according to the court’s opinion, was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for bludgeoning and stabbing his sister’s boyfriend to death.
Prison officials said they had banned the game at the recommendation of the prison’s specialist on gangs, who said it could lead to gang behavior and fantasies about escape.
Dungeons & Dragons could “foster an inmate’s obsession with escaping from the real-life correctional environment, fostering hostility, violence and escape behavior,” prison officials said in court. That could make it more difficult to rehabilitate prisoners and could endanger public safety, they said.
The court, which is based in Chicago, acknowledged that there was no evidence of marauding gangs spurred to their acts of destruction by swinging imaginary mauls, but it ruled nonetheless that the prison’s decision was “rationally related” to legitimate goals of prison administration.
Well, and then since we’re all just losing our damn minds, Governor Schwarzenegger figured he’d get in on the crazy
Speaking before the Sacramento Press Club on Monday, the governor suggested that the state’s economic emergency might be offset by shipping prisoners off to Mexico.
Schwarzenegger, who recently announced his intention to privatize California’s dangerously bloated prison system, evidently sees shipping prisoners south of the border as a win-win when it comes to his immigration headaches. Citing the sizable population of undocumented immigrants behind bars in California, the governor briefly described his idea:
“We pay them to build the prisons down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in a prison. … And all this, it would be half the cost to build the prisons and half the cost to run the prisons,” Schwarzenegger said, predicting it would save the state $1 billion that could be spent on higher education.
The remarks were met with confusion by state officials, not only because they were, well, confusing, but because it seemed to be the first time anyone had heard about the idea. Apparently, his own spokesman did not know where exactly Schwarzenegger came up with it
Come up with whatever wack-ass schemes need be, but it should be known that, right there with the ex-felons, the geeks shall inherit the earth.
Up Up and Away,
Sunshine Superboy
oh, and PS, any band that says “rise through the pain let the sun rise again” and “for today! the everlasting eternal sun!” and has nothing to do with jesus christ, totally rules. share a posi moment with me please:
(that high note in the last 5 seconds in like the most ridiculous and triumphant moment since destroying the One ring at Mount Doom!)
The projection used for the world map in question, also known as the “Dymaxion Map,” was created by Buckminster Fuller, distinguished mathematician, inventor and 20th century visionary. The map began as a sketch, “The One-Town World” in 1927. “By 1954, after working on the map for several decades,” Fuller finally had a “satisfactory deck plan of the six and one half sextillion tons Spaceship Earth.”
The Dymaxion Map is the only flat map of the entire surface of the earth that reveals our planet as it really is an island in one ocean without any visible distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the land areas, and without splitting any continents.
Traditional world maps reinforce the elements that separate humanity and fail to highlight the patterns and relationships emerging from the ever evolving and accelerating process of globalization. Instead of serving as “a precise means for seeing the world from the dynamic, cosmic and comprehensive viewpoint,” the maps we use still cause humanity to “appear inherently disassociated, remote, self-interestedly preoccupied with the political concept of its got to be you or me; there is not enough for both.”
Dude’s work on an innovative projection for representations of the Earth’s landmasses was the inspiration for one of my tattoos. Captain Fuller’s map:
however…
A new technique for unpeeling the Earth’s skin and displaying it on a flat surface provides a fresh perspective on geography, making it possible to create maps that string out the continents for easy comparison, or lump together the world’s oceans into one huge mass of water surrounded by coastlines.
“Myriahedral projection” was developed by Jack van Wijk, a computer scientist at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.
“The basic idea is surprisingly simple,” says van Wijk. His algorithms divide the globe’s surface into small polygons that are unfolded into a flat map, just as a cube can be unfolded into six squares.
Cartographers have tried this trick before; van Wijk’s innovation is to up the number of polygons from just a few to thousands. He has coined the word “myriahedral” to describe it, a combination of “myriad” with “polyhedron”, the name for polygonal 3D shapes.
Warping reality
The mathematical impossibility of flattening the surface of a sphere has long troubled mapmakers. “Consider peeling an orange and trying to flatten it out,” says van Wijk. “The surface has to distort or crack.”
Some solutions distort the size of the continents while roughly preserving their shape – the familiar Mercator projection, for instance, makes Europe and North America disproportionately large compared with Africa. Others, like the Peters projection, keep landmasses at the correct relative sizes, at the expense of warping their shapes.
An ideal map would combine the best properties of both, but that is only possible by inserting gaps into the Earth’s surface, resulting in a map with confusing interruptions. Van Wijk’s method makes it possible to direct those cuts in a way that minimises such confusion.
Maps of significance
When generating a map he assigns a “weighting” to each edge on the polyhedron to signal its importance, influencing the placement of the cuts or folds. All the maps are equally accurate, but tweaking the weightings gives dramatically different results.
“Now and then you make an unexpected discovery,” says van Wijk. A map that separates land from sea as far as possible, leaving the continents marooned away from a sinuous watery mass, was one such serendipitous result of playing with the algorithm’s parameters.
Projection means prize
“His approach was fresh and innovative,” says Kenneth Field, editor of the British Cartographic Society’s The Cartographic Journal, which recently gave van Wijk the Henry Johns award, which recognises the best mapmaking research paper each year. “He managed to achieve a projection that reduces angular deformation to an absolute minimum and preserves area – not an easy trick,” adds Field, “it was a unanimous decision to give him the prize.”
Van Wijk attributes his success to being somewhat of an outsider. Cartographers typically seek single formulae that can be used to transform the entire globe, he says, while computer scientists look for algorithms that work in small steps and can be more adaptable.
I’m gonna update this post with a picture of this nonsense I have on my right arm for the rest of my life (ps, its rules!). I’m working with limited technology (on the road in Brazil), but I will deliver on this promise. Aight!
There Are Other Worlds Out There They Never Told You About…
For a few more weeks, you can jam out to the sounds of streaming Pan African Space Station Radio. Check it outs!!!
The Pan African Space Station (PASS) is a 30-day music intervention from September 12 – October 12, on radio and the internet, as well as venues across greater Cape Town. It is an opportunity for Capetonians and visitors to engage up-close with the rich and complex web of creative expression which binds Africans across the globe.
PASS is also an exploration of and an intervention into spatial and cultural ghettos in the city and how to link them physically (through the music venues) and conceptually (on radio and the internet). Now in its second year, PASS continues its cross-cultural and cyber-spatial exploration, bringing together diverse pan-African sounds from ancient grooves to future hip-hop.
SPACE I
PASS radio, a unique freeform radio station, is back with 30 days of cutting edge music streamed live online. The station features themed shows, live performances and readings, debates, sound art, speeches, interviews and much more.
In the build-up to the festival, throughout September, the daily radio programme includes a free, live performance at PASS studios on Long Street. These live sessions run between 7-9pm and are curated by guest musicians, DJs and artists, including world-renowned, Montreal based groove archaeologist DJ Andy Williams.
Other highlights on this year’s broadcast programme include Songs for Biko, a 24-hour praise party for Steve Biko on 12 Sept (Biko Day) and Songs for Bheki, a musical tribute to the late philosopher and musician Bheki Mseleku, which closes the live music component on October 4.
SPACE II
From October 1 – 4 2009, PASS II plays host to genre-busting music outfits from global Africa dedicated to exploring new musical territory. The line-up features Kora maestro Toumani Diabate; Queen of Ndebele music, guitarist Nothembi Mkhwebane; 9-piece, Chicago-based jazz troubadours Hypnotic Brass Ensemble; Cameroonian funk-master Franck Biyong and his Massak Afroletric Orchestra; Zanzibar’s legendary taarab orchestra and social club, the Culture Musical Club; Ras_G & the Afrikan from his El-Ay, Western Sahara space base; and Ghanaian Pidgin rapper Wanlov the Kubulor.
PASS II also features a series of new collaborations between South African musicians: Barry van Zyl’s southern African sound-rhythm stew, Baboti are joined by jazz vocalist and trombone player Siya Makuzeni; and politically engaged, slamming jazz upstarts uDaba perform with spoken-word author Kgafela oa Magogodi. Some of the continent’s most esteemed selectors, including Dar es Salaam’s DJ Yusuf Mahmoud and Cape Town’s own Fong Kong Bantu Soundsystem are also making appearances. In addition, the festival includes a collaborative, experimental chorale work based on the novella War Chorale by pioneering Chilean writer Fernando Alegria, with composition and direction by jazz guitarist Bheki Khoza.
The live music component PASS takes place in a series of different venues across greater Cape Town, engaging diverse together audiences and provoking new forms of creative expression and social mobilization that foreground history and memory as well as agency and difference. Audiences will travel from St Georges Cathedral, the Centre for the Book and the Slave Church in the city centre to Guga S’thebe in Langa and All Nations Club in Salt River.
thanks to my Capetonian peops for passing all this info along! You can stay in the loop from afar thru the Pan African Space Station blog!
Despite the growing numbers of young cosmopolitan white people moving into historically Black, Latino, and Asian neighborhoods in search of cheap rent, good food, and street cred, here’s a guide created by a white man that maps out white New York City.
This map, though intended for white folks, can be used by people of color who live in the unmarked areas because the last stops on these lines should be where white people exit and seats are available for you to sit down. If they don’t get off, maybe you should remind them that they missed their last stop.
In case you can’t see it on yr fancy mini laptop, the main banner says MAP OF ONLINE COMMUNITIES and related points of interest- geographic area represents estimated size of membership. No the survey info that informs this is not exhaustive or complete, but if you’re even thinking that you are totally missing the brilliance of this anyway!
if you clicked above to that blog, the following quote is floating on the original map
I’m waiting for the day when, if you tell someone ‘I’m from the internet’, instead of laughing they just ask ‘oh, what part?‘
kindred spirits me lovelies.
I mean, there is seriously a bay that says here be anthropomorphic dragons!!!
Right up me alley I’d say. (someone changed their facebook language to pirate english recently…)
The internets have been democratized! Live it up!
Sunshine Superboy
today’s bonus? my #1 ‘thank god the internet is in my life’ (instead of tv) moment of the week:
Humbly Submitted, Your Subway Map of Our Shared World: Now is that sexy, or what?! Not your cup of tea? Não e seu praia? Don’t try and tell me I’m the only metrôsexual in the room. Well, at least there’s Mark, if I can presume which kinda maps turn him on.
Mark Ovenden is my co-pilot! Or maybe there’s just a pretty decent statistical probability that we’ve ridden on the same train at the same time. What was that? Oh, who the hell is Mark Ovenden? He wrote this book, a delicious compendium of subway maps the world over, and is credited with creating the map above.
Maps in the book are categorised loosely depending on the amount of both recent and historic maps available for one city’s system. All the collected maps are discussed against Mark Ovendens ideal map, the London Underground system map. Mark wants map makers to use equal distances between stations and 45 degree lines to call a map good.
A grand effort, and one I had daydreamed about compiling myself before I’d ever heard of Ovenden, yet his analysis in the metrô atlas doesn’t come out quite the way mine would. And thats not just because London is not my ideal underground.
First of all, mine would be much more ethnographic- like situating the history and ridership of the subways, who is on it, how is it used, how do the rails figure into metropolitan everyday life, who designed vs who built it, and of course of course some first person anecdotes about taking these subways.
Like, for example the São Paulo Metrô:
Ahem. A historicized slice from another blogger:
7.2.08 – By C.J. Schexnayder
The motto of the Brazilian city of São Paulo translates as “I am not led, I lead,” but on the streets of the sprawling metropolis it has become increasingly hard to get anywhere at all. The population of greater São Paulo is nearing 20 million residents, making it the seventh-largest metropolitan area in the world. The increasing population and boom in business has overloaded the city’s transportation infrastructure, making relatively short jaunts into nightmares of endurance. More than 6 million vehicles clogged the city’s streets last year, making movement through major routes and popular side streets almost impossible at peak periods.
The scope of the problem is evident on the roof of every major building: Helicopter pads have become common features of the city’s skyline. According to a recent story in the Guardian newspaper, São Paulo’s fleet of 469 helicopters is now the largest of any city in the world.
To address the situation, the government is moving on two massive infrastructure projects: upgrading the city’s public transportation system and construction of an immense highway ring around the metropolitan area.
The Metrô de São Paulo saw its ridership jump almost 9% last year to a record 919 million—an average of 3.23 million people every day. The surge in passengers began in 2005 when state government integrated the CPTM system of subway trains with the city’s bus system. Between 2004 and 2007 the number of riders increased more than 30%.
I might supplement this with my story of four wild horses. This past “summer” (winter in Brazil) I was riding the São Paulo Metrô and had just changed trains on my way to the Consolacão stop under Avenida Paulista, which is like I dunno, New York’s 34th St meets San Francisco’s Market Street. Out of nowhere these sorta frumpy adolescent kids (think mathletes)stepped onto the same train and my eyes fell instantly transfixed by this one kid’s sweater. Seriously, I’m struggling just to recall the frizzy un-kept math-hair and the cute shoe-gazer sneakers he and his friends all donned. There was no irony to the fashion discretion of these fellow riders. But focusing now on this central teen rider- right there emblazoned- nah more like- crocheted on his lusciously deep green sweater were the thick necks, the bold faces, the flowing mane of four white (outlined?) horse heads. Nestled together on his stitched chest.
Just the heads.
Fuck, I’m totally failing to convey how amazing this sweater was, but I was about dez reis shy of cajoling this kid into swapping the sweater for whatever the hell I was wearing (plus a little cash to sweeten the deal) right then and there.
Actually, the essence of the sweater kinda reminds me of the album cover for (one of my new favoritest bands), This Town Needs Guns. Only imagine it in just green and white and like a total zoom in on the heads. Meh, it gives the impression at least.
Anyway, I got stagefright, which is to say that my stop came up before I could work up the nerve to negotiate for the most amazing sweater I’ve ever laid my astigmatized eyes on. But if by chance you find yourself in Sao Paulo (for the love of Deus, don’t lose yourself in Sampa) and happen to spy a gloriousrakeharrasherd of horses embroidered on some emerald pullover, by all means, hassle the wearer and acquire it and I’ll make it worth your while (half my kingdom, as the saying goes…) Believe me, the Consolacão Metrô stop gets me anxious to this very day. ::sigh::
So thats something for qualitative. Quantitatively, which is ostensibly what Ovenden is going for, I prefer the Wanda Wanders metric of Metro Map evaluation:
Anyways, I’ll probably blog more about different subway experiences in the futuro, but I hope you enjoy your time on your local undergrounds, and stop by soon, ya hear?
The World is Yours, (for about $2-$3 flat fee these days), Sunshine Superboy
ps- if you haven’t heard about the nonsenseobnoxious MTA fare hikes coming May 31st, you should (click on that orange bit) read up on the situation and enjoy the already unreasonable but relatively cheaper $2 rate while you can!
Also, as a bonus, here is a music clip from this math rock band, This Town Needs Guns of their song, 26 is Dancier than 4. I get that most of you won’t be that into it, I just felt like I should share what I’m geeking out about these days
Yesterday was awful. Lets not really talk about it. On a positive note, some of you devoted fans of blackmaps have begun submitting maps, links, and geeky news items for me to share with the blackmap-o-sphere, and that my friends, is totally awesome!
This one is from my good long-distance-friend,Lydia in NOLA, and it partially inspired the theme of today’s post.
keeping in the spirit of sharing and circulating awesome things that are already out there in the blogosphere, I’m reposting this interview badass radical geographer, Prof Ruth Gilmore about prisons.
Interview by Andalusia Knoll
From Sept. 26th to 28th, nearly 3,500 people from across the U.S. gathered in Oakland California for the CR10 Conference and Strategy Session. Organized by the national Grassroots Prison Abolition group Critical Resistance, conference attendees strategized and shared stories of their work to end societies use of prisons and policing as an answer to social problems. At CR10 Andalusia Knoll along with The Thousand Kites Project interviewed conference attendees and attempted to capture the stories of those organizing against the prison industrial complex.
In the following interview Andalusia Knoll speaks with professor, author and founding member of the Critical Resistance collective Ruth Gilmore.
AK: You have spoken about how the concept of Prison Abolition has become more accepted over the past ten years, since the founding of Critical Resistance. Now that more people have an understanding of what you mean when you speak about abolishing Prisons, how do do you think we should move forward?
RG: One thing that has been happening a lot that is really encouraging to me is that people work on all different kinds of issues that are across the landscape of social justice, economic justice and racial justice and gender justice activism are starting to see that every issue connects in really profound ways and one place that they all connect is around and in the prison industrial complex. The abandonment of schools and the growth of prisons go together; enforced gender normality and the growth of prisons go together, white supremacy and the growth of prisons goes together. So now people are persuaded of the connections; practically speaking how do we craft campaigns that will move us forward? I had the good fortune yesterday to facilitate a workshop of people who worked on three different campaigns to stop jail expansion; one in New Orleans, one in Monroe County, Indiana , where the second Klan was born in the 1920’s and the third in the South Bronx. They talked about their strategies, what worked, their campaigns at different levels of development. It was exciting and inspiring to have people share their best strategies, and figure out their failures. Also, it was really obvious that the kinds of people who are drawn to the work are much more diverse in every imaginable way than people who I encountered ten years ago.
That example that you gave is definitely an inspiring one, of people who organize against the construction of new jails. That fits into the prison abolition framework, but what about many people who are more engaged in more reformist activities. In Pennsylvania there is a group called Fight for Lifers; comprised of prisoners serving life without parole and their loved ones who together are fighting for people to be able to be sentenced to life with parole, as opposed to life without parole. What advice do you have for people doing this work that is clearly necessary and how they can incorporate an overarching abolitionist thought into their work?
One of the simple rules of thumb, for me is to ask does the work that I or anybody else is doing in any way extend the scope or the life of the prison industrial complex. If people are fighting on behalf of people who are lifers to get the possibility of parole for them, what they are doing is shortening the life and scope of the prison industrial complex, by trying to figure out how, even if it is one person at a time, they can get them out. That is what abolition work is, even if it doesn’t feel like abolition work and that’s what abolition work its that kind of detail, painstaking, troubling work and that’s different than saying: That’s different from saying “We are against the death penalty. Let’s have life without parole.” That’s not abolition work even though abolishing the death penalty is a good thing.
Today after I presented a workshop about the Prison Poster Project this woman came up to me and asked “Okay I get it you don’t want people to be in prison.” But what do we want? What are these alternatives? I told her personally that I was opposed to the capitalist system at large, but to me abolition work includes a whole restructuring of society. Do you believe that prison abolition has to include this kind of restructuring and if so and how so?
The two biggest reasons that people are in prison are issues around income and issues around illness. That’s the reason most people in prison are in prison. These are things we can address without putting people in cages and employing other people to watch the people in cages. So yes, we are talking about a wholesale restructuring of society. Now some people say to me, and I’m getting old I’m in my late 50’s, “this will take forever.” That may be true, but anyone who has been paying the least attention to the news in the U.S. in the last week and a half, sees that things that take forever can happen overnight. The U.S. nationalized two major mortgage banks and the biggest insurance company in the world and in some way shape or form put up 700 billion dollars to bail out investment banks and Wall Street. If that can be done overnight, then a lot of things that we are talking about can also happen overnight if we had the political will. It takes clout
Andy Smith, (a founding member of INCITE! Women Of Color Against Violence) during her open plenary said there is some way in which we start to get a little worried that we cant get everything we want, so instead, we say lets make what is just a little bit better: better prisons, cleaner prisons, more spacious prisons, better education in prisons.. That’s not it. Political will is what we need to change things overnight There are more of us than there are them. All this money they have been talking about [with the bailout] is actually us. Abolition is taking control of all that social income for ourselves. Its kind of straightforward, we made it, it’s ours.
I’ve seen CR shirts that say something like “One day there was a world without prisons, that day will come again.” Can you speak to that, I think its become so much a part of the American mindset, that there are prisons and they have always existed.
Well a lot of people think “gosh, there have always been prisons.” But really what they are imagining are dungeons. Prisons and dungeons while they seem similar are not the same thing. Large scale individualized but impersonal cage systems are very modern. They are about the same age as the United States of America, they weren’t invented here but they were launched large scale in the early nineteenth century here and perfected here. They are currently being exported to a lot of the world. Before that, what happened? All kinds of things happened, some good, some not so good, but a lot of the sorts of problems of today that are dealt with conviction, criminalization, punishment and imprisonment are things that once upon a time were not crimes or were dealt with in sort of customary ways. Through making restitution or whatever it would take to make both the person who did the harming and the person who was harmed whole, which is to say able to get on with their lives. The intervention of cages has completely disrupted that, and it gets worse and worse and worse, as prisons become a normal part of everyday life.
Here we are at cr10, how do you envision the next 10 years?
I feel very strongly and have written about this some, what’s important in social movements is to keep the movements going, and sometimes the organizations don’t last. It doesn’t make that much difference, even though organizations are necessary to make movements happen, I imagine [Critical Resistance] will be around for ten years, if not it’s not a bad thing because other things will come into play. What my hope is, is that the kinds of things that we have learned over the past ten years and the connections we have made will make us a whole lot more successful than we were in the past ten years. The fact is that there are a million more people in prison in the U.S. than there were ten years ago, during the first conference. Some people say: “Well then ya’ll failed, didn’t you?” Well maybe, but maybe there would be 2 million more if we hadn’t been doing what we had been doing. Knowing that our small, medium and every so often large successes are I actually think there would be way more people in prison. But there are also way too many people. My hope is we are going to start seeing reduction and see this group more and more, and I hope people [reading] will make the connection between the 700 billion bailout, offered to Wall Street and the U.S. Congress and the fact that 1 out of every 100 adults eligible to go to prison based on age is in prison.
Ruth Gilmoreis an Associate Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Geography at the University of Southern California. She is a member of the founding collective of Critical Resistance and author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California
Andalusia Knollis a Station Organizer with the Prometheus Radio Project in Philadelphia and a reporter for Free Speech Radio News. She is also a member of the Prison Poster Project collective working to create a visual education tool that will challenge current reliance on prisons as a solution to social problems.
This is one of the most provocative maps I think I’ve ever seen. If staring at it for more than four minutes doesn’t fry your synapses, I’d love for you to contribute your interpretations in the comments section. really!
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy insisted on Monday in firm and passionate terms that a comprehensive investigation be launched into the conduct of the Bush administration, saying anything less would prevent the country from moving forward.
Speaking at a forum at Georgetown University, the Vermont Democrat suggested the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission to uncover the “misdeeds” of the past eight years.
The Senator also stated that Attorney General Eric Holder never gave assurances to Republican Senators that he would not prosecute Bush administration officials who may have been involved in illegalities such as authorizing torture or warrantless wiretapping.
Godspeedyoublackattorneygeneral! (And the moustache on which you rode in)
This has been making its way around the internets, and seemed approps for a repost up here. Apologies for my technical insufficiencies that make it nearly impossible to read whats going on. So the green areas are/were Palestine and the white area was/is Israel. The maps march us through time from 1946, to 1947 (the UN partition), to 1949-67 (get yr war ons), to 2000 (redux!).
One of the crucial functions that maps play in my life, is having images like this ingrained in my mind whenever the heavily audio/ rhetorical media & political world tries to parse things this way or that, minimizing or obliterating historicity. For all of my epistemic issues with borders/ frontiers etc, mapping out terrain like this, with dates and places and clear histories of who was presiding over what land and when (as for instance the UK trying to wash its hands of this whole Middle-East situation), is essential to our understandings of what is going on in the world and how that has stemmed from what took place beforehand. They try to rewrite that shit every day (listen to Condoleezza Rice speak on any given region) but you hear all of it differently when you have a clear picture in your head that puts dates, and scales, and geography all in one scope.
This is why it freaks me out that a majority of (North) Americans can’t find the United States on a map, and struggle to name even four countries that begin with the letter “U” (in english).
To even listen, let alone further engage in conversation about Palestine, it is so important for one to see images like the one above over and over and over. Maps need to be part of the conversation. At least thats our ethos at Black Maps. Elsewise we get people like Sarah Palin getting up in front of the entire country saying she can see Russia from her front porch in Alaska- and have people both believe her and vote for her…
I got this today from my friend Micha. Lets consider it some follow up on my earlier post about Blogging Gaza. Buh-here’s what Micha wrote:
Hi folks. My friend, Brian, started up a project called “Alive in Gaza“, following his work on “Alive in Baghdad”. He helps get reporting equipment into war zones and then helps publish reports from people on the ground. Check it out http://www.aliveingaza.org . He’s looking for various help with fundraising, translating, etc. I thought you might be interested in knowing about it.
I did check it out and it really is well done and exciting nah, its fantastic! Both in concept and delivery. It looks pretty spanking new, but so far it features audio dispatches from Gaza (with expressed intent of daily updates!), maps, and on-the-ground news updates of the situation over there.
And because size and scope are important (especially in this age of GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth), here is a non-google zoom in on the Gaza Strip. Again, so you can situate voices from blog dispatches to NPR who are speaking from and about Rafah, Erez, Gaza City, Beit Hanoun and all the rest of it. This one of, if not the most densely populated places in the world. Since Israeli forces pulled out of Gaza a couple years ago it has been penned in and made into what many folks are calling the largest prison in the world.
Scroll back up to that map at the top (the green and white one). With that map in mind, does this prison analogy seem a bit less metaphorical? Kinda makes you think people aren’t just embellishing when they talk about the Palestinian people getting fenced in…
I’m gonna sign off here and leave you with a map I dug up of the West Bank and an excerpt from this awesome democratic media project, Alive in Gaza.
Godspeedyoucartographers!
Esteban Sunshine Superboy
Dispatch from Muhammed: “Non-stop Shelling”
January 13th, 2009
[Original Editor's Note: "The following dispatch is a letter from Muhammed Al Ja'bawi in Gaza to our Regional Bureau Chief Omar Abdullah"]
Salam Alaikum Omar,
The situation is deteriorating each day inside the Gaza Strip. I cannot find the words to describe what is going on now in Gaza. The shelling is non-stop from the north and east of Gaza.
The Israeli troops are slowly approaching the northern side of Gaza, where the Hamas resistance is still on.
Today I contacted my cousin Ahmad, who lives close to northern Gaza in (….) Quarter. He said the Israeli troops suffered grave loss, whereas Hamas emplaced a great deal of improvised explosive devices targeting the Israeli forces as they were advancing.
As for me, I had to evacuate my house after we heard loud sound of shooting and missiles. We are now staying in an UNRWA-run school. Thank Goodness there is not any Hamas operatives or other resistance members among us in this school, but we do not know what tomorrow is holding for us. This is our first day in school. We have enough food and some supplies that will see us through for a number of days.
I will try to contact you again today, or tomorrow morning, God willing. I will most likely get hold of a new battery for my mobile phone. You can call me tomorrow morning at 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. Gaza local Time.
God bless brother Omar,
Muhammed Al Ja’bawi
[Ed: "The letter in its original arabic"]
السلام عليكم اخ عمر
ان الوضع يتأزم يوم بعد الاخر داخل القطاع,
لاتوجد كلمات توصف الحدث
القائم في غزة الان, القصف مستمر من الجهة
الشمالية و الجهة الشرقة من
القطاع, القوات الاسرائلية تتقدم ببطئ من
الناحية الشمالية لقطاع غزة و
المقاومة من قبل حماس مستمرة , اتصلت اليوم
بأبن عمي احمد و هو يسكن
بالقرب من المنطقة الشمالية للقطاع في حي () و
قد اعلمني ان القوات
الاسرائيلية قد تكبدت عدد من الخسائر في حين
ان حماس اقمت بنصب عدد من
العبوات الناسفة لاستهداف القوات
الاسرائلية عن تقدمها
اما بالنسبة لي فقد اضطررت الى اخلاء منزلي
بعد سماعنا اطلاق نار كثيف و
دوي عدد من القذائف, نحن الان نسكن في مدرسة
تابعة الى الانوروا , و
الحمد لله لا يوجد اي من اعضاء حماس و اي من
جهات المقاومة الاخرى معنا
في هذه المدرسة , و لكن لانعرف ماهو مصيرنا
غدا , اليوم هو يومنا الاول
في المدرسة , يوجد لدينا ما يكفي من الطعام و و
بعض المعدات لعدة ايام
ساحاول ان اعاود الاتصال بك مجددا اليوم او
غدا صباحا ان شاء الله , و
على الاغلب ساحصل على بطارية جديدة لهاتفي
النقال , يمكنك ان تتصل بي غدا
صباحا بي الساعة التاسعة و العاشرة صباحا
بتوقيت غزة
في امان اللله اخي عمر
محمد الجبعاوي
[For more independent citizen journalism, please support Alive in Gaza]
Black Maps is the web version of a zine of the same name. Though maps and mapping are the main thrust of the blog, it is also an exploration of science, politics, social movements, co-ops, food, comic books, travel and independent music as experienced by Esteban Sunshine Superboy.
For a few more weeks, you can jam out to the sounds of streaming Pan African Space Station 
Now is that sexy, or what?! Not your cup of tea? Não e seu praia? Don’t try and tell me I’m the only metrôsexual in the room. Well, at least there’s Mark, if I can presume which kinda maps turn him on.
Meh, it gives the impression at least.
The abandonment of schools and the growth of prisons go together; enforced gender normality and the growth of prisons go together, white supremacy and the growth of prisons goes together. So now people are persuaded of the connections; practically speaking how do we craft campaigns that will move us forward? I had the good fortune yesterday to facilitate a workshop of people who worked on three different campaigns to stop jail expansion; one in New Orleans, one in Monroe County, Indiana , where the second Klan was born in the 1920’s and the third in the South Bronx. They talked about their strategies, what worked, their campaigns at different levels of development. It was exciting and inspiring to have people share their best strategies, and figure out their failures. Also, it was really obvious that the kinds of people who are drawn to the work are much more diverse in every imaginable way than people who I encountered ten years ago.
