Marisa (Rissa) Snider is a Hunkpapa | Sicangu & Oglala Lakota Computer Scientist who lives on both the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Indian Reservations.
She advocates for Youth Organizing, Native Women Who Code, and Native Technologists.
She is currently in the process of creating language software for the Lakota Immersion Childcare and getting computational education into elementary schools on the reservation.
Robb Johnson is now widely recognised as one of the finest songwriters working in the UK today. His songs feature in the repertoires of a wide variety of musicians, from folk legend Roy Bailey to acclaimed cabaret diva Barb Jungr, & he enjoys a similarly diverse spectrum of critical acclaim – “a modern-day Dostoyevsky” said the US’s Dirty Linen, Mojomade the double CD Gentle Men Folk Album Of The Month, while The Daily Telegraphmade it their Folk Album Of 1998, & Tony Benn says Johnson’s “Winter Turns To Spring” is his favourite song.
He has played pubs, clubs, pavements, pickets & benefits, arts centres & festivals, local radio, BBC Radio 3 & 4, Belgian Radio 1, Nicaraguan TV & Channel 4, the Albert Hole in Bristol &, as part of Roy Bailey’s 1998 concert, the Albert Hall in London. In February 2006 Robb appeared at the Barbican as part of the prestigious BBC “Folk Britannia” series, where “for the encore, Robb Johnson leads all the artists (and the audience) in the World War I song (‘Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire’)” (BBC Folk Britannia website) in a concert that was screened later that month on BBC4. Earlier this year Robb was the featured guest on Andy Kershaw’s Radio 3 programme. Robb also plays extensively in Belgium, Holland & Germany, & he has toured Britain supporting Chumbawamba, & the US with David Rovics.
Robb has worked with a variety of bands, with friend & fellow songwriter Leon Rosselson, as well as solo. In 1997 Robb wrote the song suite Gentle Men, an ambitious family history of the first world war for the Passendael Peace Concert, where the musicians were a jazz combo led by Belgian jazz legend Koen De Cauter, & he subsequently toured it successfully in Britain too. Robb’s album Metro (released in September 2005) featured piano accompaniment by the late Russel Churney, who had previously worked with Julian Clary, Barb Jungr & Fascinating Aida). Again, the album received widespread praise in both music & national press: “unquestionably classy… excellent songs (that) show again what a fine, if provocative writer Johnson is” (The Daily Telegraph).
His label Irregular Records has also facilitated releases by a variety of song-orientated artists, including an album celebrating the work of Jacques Brel that has done much to focus a renewed interest in the chanson genre. He has translated several of Brel’s songs & performed concerts celebrating Brel’s life & work. Robb has also co-written Woman, a biography of Yoko Ono, published by Chrome Dreams.
You can find out more about Robb Johnson on his website.
A 30 year old Scottish man, Jagtar Singh Johan from West Dunbartonshire, has been arrested and denied legal representation while holidaying in Jalandha, Punjab, India.
Jagtar- Jaggi to his friends – was in the area for his wedding, and was shopping with his new wife when he had a sack thrown over his head and was bundled into a van by men in plain clothes, who the family found out later were policemen.
The Indian authorities have so far refused to give any information regarding Jagtar’s welfare or whereabouts to any UK MPs, or the British High Commission, although police have suggested in Indian media reports that his crime is that he had been “running a magazine” in the UK that outlines the atrocities of the 1984 Sikh genocide, and “influencing the youth through social media.”
As far as we are aware, running a magazine is not a crime in the UK, and it’s hard to see how India has jurisdiction to arrest a UK citizen for activity carried out in the UK even if it were. But since Jagtar has had no legal representation, is being held without charge, and has had no trial, he can’t even make his case.
His family has been in touch with several UK MPS, including his local MP Martin Docherty-Hughes, who has expressed concern for his constituent and offered full support to his family during this distressing time. He has also contacted The High Commission of India in London and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on their behalf. The UK foreign office is yet to comment.
Fears are growing that Jagtar is being mistreated. Bhai Amrik Singh, Chair of the Sikh Federation (UK) said:
“We are deeply concerned for the mental and physical wellbeing of this young man who got married on 18th October and was spending time with his wife before returning to the UK.”
He went on to add that he was;
“disturbed by the lack of urgency and action taken by the British High Commission in both Delhi, the mission in Chandigarh, and the Foreign office in London. They have failed to make contact with senior police officers to ensure the safety and wellbeing of this young British man.”
This should be the happiest time of newly wed Jagtar “Jaggi” Singh Johan’s life. Instead, it has turned into a nightmare.
How to help
You can follow the story and help raise awareness by using the hashtag #FreeJaggiNow and copying in the UK Foreign Office, @foreignoffice.
Contact your MP or MSP (find them here) and put pressure on them to bring this Scottish man home. If you need it, the Sikh Federation (UK) has a template letter you can adapt.
You can also contact to the foreign office:
King Charles Street
London
SW1A 2AH
Email fcocorrespondence@fco.gov.uk
General enquiries switchboard 020 7008 1500
We watch events unfolding in Catalonia with grave sadness. For democratically elected leaders to be jailed on charges of sedition and rebellion, in 2017, is unconscionable. Such charges have no place in a free, fair and democratic society.
The world has watched in horror as a peaceful, calm and nonviolent symbolic vote was met with shocking levels of brutality from those who are entrusted with public safety and security. We stand with you now, political differences aside, to lend our voices to the outrage at the indiscriminate use of draconian, fascistic tactics to subvert democracy.
Freedom is fragile, and democracy delicate. It is the duty of all who value peace, liberty and rule by consensus to guard it against totalitarian regimes who would seek to silence any dissent.
Our thoughts are with you in your incarceration, and with Catalonia as a whole during this turbulent time.
In Solidarity,
The Ungagged Team, our friends, and supporters
Messages of support from our friends and followers on social media:
The Ungagged Team:
Feel free to add your name/message of support in the comments below.
Flavia Tudoreanu – Co-organiser of Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
After Tom Perez’s “Night of the Long Knives” purge of progressives and entrenchment of centrists at the Democratic National Committee, no self-respecting leftist can hold anything for the Democratic Party but contempt. A thoroughly corrupt organization cannot be reformed, period. Capitalism cannot be reformed. Neoliberal bodies such as the EU or the UK of GB and NI, and the US of A for that matter, cannot be reformed. The U.S. Democratic Party cannot be reformed. With the direction of the Democratic Party now locked in with a jammed autopilot headed for the same neoliberal destination to which it was been turned since the late 1970s, it’s time for any true leftist remaining in the party under delusions of changing its nature to say “No!”, or rather, “No more!” to the Scorpion and to abandon ship. In the second decade of the 21st century, a vote for a Democrat is a vote for Trump just as much as a vote for a Republican. Resistance is not futile, but hoping for change from an establishment whose foundation is the status quo is.
Speaking of the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, which has been a topic of much discussion this year, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that in the 20th century there was just not one major workers’ revolution on the planet but two. The revolutions in China, Cuba, Viet Nam, Nicaragua, etc., were anti-colonial more than proletarian and tainted by the fact they followed the post-Revolution Comintern doctrine, which is why I don’t include them. The other revolution I’m talking about is the Iranian Revolution, the one which eventually overthrew the Shah and actually began in the summer of 1977.
In June 1977, after a long train of abuses and usurpations inflicted by the imperial government returned to power by the mullahs in 1953, the police were sent into South Tehran to clear the slums for Pahlavi-style gentrification. Thousands fought back and continued to do so throughout the summer. On 27 August that summer, the Shah’s police finally gave up and left. During this time, other forces began to stir. Mosaddegh’s National Front woke up, the Bazaar Association of small businesses reorganized, and the Writers Guild began to call for radical change.
Later in the fall, the student movement for democracy was born and the Khomeinist mullahs organized into the Combatant Clergy Association. On this latter, it’s important to recognize that in Iran at the time, there were two strains of Islamism, the Black Islamism of Khomeini which was fundmentalist, reactionary, and clericalist, and the red Islamism of Ali Shariati, which was more of a Muslim form of Christian Liberation Theology and progressive, popularist, and democratic. One was for the benefit of the few, the other was for the benefit of the many.
By December 1977, the National Front and the Freedom Movement, an organization which represented a point between its secular partner and the Red Islamists, announced the the Iranian Committee for the Defense of Freedom and Human Rights, brainchild of Red Islamist Ayatollah Abolfazl Zanjani and Fatollah Banisadr, brother of the later president Abolhassan Banisadr.
Though students, bazaaris, and clergy led and participated in many of the demonstrations that began in January 1978, it was the repeated massive local and national strikes by workers throughout the country which brought down the government. Though such actions began in 1977, they did not begin in earnest until a year later in the fall of 1978. Strikes shut down the country, particularly after oil industry workers joined the struggle and began to issue political as well as industrial demands. Strikes of workers were invariably supported by sympathy strikes by bazaaris and students. The economy of the country all but froze solid. Workers took over factories and plants and refineries and ran them through shoras, which translated into Russian is soviets. Community governance and order was maintained through komitehs, or committees, mostly controlled by workers, peasants, or other people’s groups, at least at first.
By the end of 1978, the Khomeinists had adopted much of the rhetoric of its Red Islamist counterparts following the tenets of Ali Shariati, which is when they began to talk about raising the fortunes of the Mostazafin, the Dispossessed.
The Iranian Revolution ended with the Ten Days of February, just as the Russian Revolution ended with Ten Days in October.
Almost immediately after the victory on 11 February, Khomeini, whose full name and title at the time was Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Mostafavi Moussavi Khomeini, organized forces to usurp control of the people, the workers, the bazaaris, the peasants, and the poor and place it in the hands of his own close acolytes.
On 12 February, he announced to formation of the Central Revolutionary Komiteh to take control of all the local komitehs.
On 24 February, he established the Central Revolutionary Court, which began executions on 5 March.
On 26 February, he repealed the progressive Family Protection Acts which provided legal protection for the rights of women in marriage.
On 7 March, Khomeini dismissed all female judges and imposed compulsory hijab on women entering government buildings, though was forced to back down temporarily on the latter by the enormous turnout in opposition the next day, International Women’s Day.
At the end of March, the population voted in a referendum in which the two options were the constitution drafted ostensibly by the Provisional Revolutionary Government but actual following explicit dictates of the Council of Islamic Revolution, or a return to constitutional monarchy under the Shah. The additional feature of the ballot not being secret ensured a 98% approval, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed on April Fools Day.
On May Day that year, the march of 1.5 million workers through the streets of Tehran, plus countless others across the nation, signalled the beginning of a general strike against the changes being made against the will of the people. Six days later, Khomeini established the Army of the Guardians of the Revolution, or Revolutionary Guards (known in Farsi as Sepahi), to put down the general strike, rid the komitehs of secular elements, and destroy the proletarian shoras and replace them with Islamist versions. Even these latter were eventually crushed when they began to follow their own interests rather than that of the central cabal.
A year later, Khomeini went after the universities, closing them down for the Iranian Cultural Revolution carried out by the Basij-e Mostazafin, or Basiji, under the auspices of the Cultural Revolution Headquarters led by Ali Khamenei and its subordinate Islamic Holy Councils of Reconstruction. The Sepahi and the Basiji did not originate as instruments of national defense against US-instigated Iraqi aggression but as instruments of oppression.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 bears striking resemblance on many points to the Russian Revolution of 1917: both usurped revolutions from broad-based coalitions of disparate forces led by workers; both had significant 10-day periods, “Ten Days that Shook the World” vs. “Ten Days that Changed Iran”; both imposed constitutions on their respective countries without any debate; both turned on and slaughtered allies that had helped them come to power; both faced invasion and war almost immediately after coming to power; both used those wars as an excuse to eliminate dissidents in mass numbers; both carried out mass purges and executions a decade after their assumption of power; both became one party states – the Communist Party in the USSR and the Party of God in the IRI; and both were led by bitter, vindictive, unscrupulous long-term exiles who lied about their intentions, gave lip service to the goals of the true left, and pursued absolute power in the name of ideology and the establishment of a totalitarian state.
Tune in next time for a short critique of ideological Leninism and brief details of what a truly Cooperative Commonwealth would look like.
Available FREE on iTunes and Podbean
On this episode of Ungagged, introduced by Neil Scott, Chuck Hamilton will be talking us through two revolutions, Russia and Iran, George Collins will be talking about the changing nature of American political humour, Damanvir Kuar will be giving us an update on the hunger striking Baput Surat Singh Khalsa.
Debra Torrance will be talking about the responses to the #MeToo trends, and why the current climate is not at all funny, Derek Stewart Macpherson will be talking Citizenship Games, or how a former hot shot lawyer PM got his arse handed to him in the High Court, and Liz Castro will be joining us from her rooftop in Barcelona for an update from Catalonia.
Flavia Tudoreanu will be talking about the CND, Cllr Graham Campbell will be talking about why the break up of the British State is necessary, and Thomas Morris will be giving us the case for #ThisGuyCan; why our boys deserve a range of male role models to break down toxic expectations boys and young men face.
We will hear from both Teresa Durran and Victoria Pearson on why sexual assault is not a laughing matter. Luckily, with all that doom and gloom, we also have Red Raiph with some things to look forward to!
With music from Steve McAuliffe feat. The Mighty Ur, Thee Faction, Mullen, The Merry Janes, Candidates, Petrol Girls, Argonaut, Kes’ Conscience, Attila the Stockbroker, The Wakes, Guttfull, Babel Fish Project, and Mower.
With sound editing by Neil Anderson.
Ungagged is a not for profit co-operative, and we rely on the generosity of our listeners. If you’d like to donate us the cost of a newspaper or a cup of coffee, you can do so through PayPal here.
This guitar-centric rock band arose from many successive weeks of Friday night jams at the “Stone Manor”, former home of Susan and Tom Smith. It was suggested that the group could go out and blow minds as they were: a 3-piece band. Susan’s dependable rock-steady bass proved to be the ideal platform for Tom’s guitar style – described variously as “go-for-the-throat”, “incendiary” and, of course, “too loud”.
Susan and Myron are old-school East Tennesseans, while Tom arrived in Knoxville via Johnson City TN, via Asheville, NC; via Los Angeles, CA; via Cincinnati, OH; via Memphis, TN; via Las Vegas, NV; via Brooklyn, NY. He thus far has neutralized all relocation threats. The Merry Jaynz currently reside in South Knoxville, Tennessee.
What does one hear when The Merry Jaynz is all up in it? A deep, pulsing bass line – as predictable as the tides – which earns and keeps its place in the pit of your stomach, setting up a hypnotic vibe with the drumbeat. Variation and organic song evolution are what keeps the energy at a remarkable high.
Rather than the soloist improvising during a solo on top of a tried-and-true arrangement, one can find the whole band improvising a way-out take on one of their original numbers or taking a cover tune to unexpected places it has never been. Tom uses what could be called a guitar vocabulary to hit a musical space that matches what is going on in the rhythm section. What sounds like a reggae drum beat over a bluegrass bass line might just elicit a surf punk guitar treatment…this time. Next time? Country licks or rock-a-billy bustle. The band plays to the space they are in.
The Merry Jaynz is setting their sights on a larger sphere of influence, more media channels and more exposure to folks who like their rock Jammy, Organic, Face-Melty and Ever-Changing.
Find out more on their website
Formed in MK in the summer of 2017, Indie/Rock ‘n’ Roll bringers Candidates are standing up to deliver ‘punch the air, uplifting’ songs, in a time when there is so much noise – but not enough being said!
The band was created when singer/songwriter Steve Wells (formerly of The Vision, FalloW & Colony) posted a speculative message on the conveyor belt of voyeurism that is Facebook, looking for a lead guitarist and bass player to join him and fellow Newport Pagnell musician Neil Kenton in forming a new project. BLUE CABS’ Jimi Cook (guitar) and Paul Pugh (Bass) responded with interest and a new chapter for everyone had begun.
With a mutual appreciation for hard hitting beats, rumbling bass, soaring guitars and meaningful lyrics sung with passion and a relatable vulnerability, these self-taught individuals quickly became a band with purpose, combining influences including Oasis, The Verve, The Stone Roses, The Stranglers, Starsailor, The Cribs and Skunk Anansie amongst others to mix in to one big creative melting pot.
You can find out more on their Facebook page or follow them on twitter.
Thomas Morris is probably not who he should be; he is a mix of genres and styles.
He is an only child to Middle-Class parents, yet spent his early childhood on the terraced streets of Liverpool. Privately-educated yet never graduated, as even at that age he saw a University education and the lifetime of middle-management that would ensue as ‘boring’; his only learning from Uni was how to juggle with three balls.
Now living in the mining heartland of Nottinghamshire, he has spend 20 years working in a privatised utility industry. For 20 of those years he’s had a firm belief it should be re-nationalised.
An archetypal INTP; easily distracted, prefers solitude, and is almost impossible to be relied upon for anything, yet with the benefit of a real ale pub without WiFi he is capable of writing lengthy streams of consciousness, both fact and fiction.
He is an avid traveller, having been to over 70 countries, some of which do not exist. He therefore tends to view borders between countries as an interesting historical fiction. He is particularly fond of Belgium; a country that does exist but he’s not sure how.
A humanist, Green, socially-liberal, economically-socialist, generally apolitical, kink-aware asexual (but hates the flag), his most ardent political belief is that ‘None of the Above’ should be an option on election forms. And the legalisation of cannabis, obviously.
One of his favourite words is ‘mythered’.
You can follow Thomas on twitter. The numbers in his handle have a meaning.
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