NO INFRASTRUCTURE, AT ALL

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/egalite-guaranteed/

Google Missing Persons Spreadsheet
http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/

iReport Search By Name
http://www.ireport.com/ir-topic-stories.jspa?topicId=381628

Reuters EIS
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/126373176384.htm
“Emergency Information Service is exclusively operating for and on behalf of earthquake survivors, using local languages, French and Creole. The service is free and global.”

Relief Efforts
http://www.trackernews.net/search/?s=HAITI
http://www.cidi.org/incident/haiti-10a/
http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/earthquake-haiti

Health + Sanitation Guides (Kreyol)
http://www.hesperian.org/publications_download.php
http://www.hesperian.info/assets/Where_There_is_no_Doctor_Creole.pdf
http://www.hesperian.info/assets/hesperian_wwhnd_haitian%20creole_2000.pdf

kreyol

Learn Kreyol
http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/?lang=ht
http://crisiscommons.org/wiki/index.php?title=Creole-French-English_Phrase_Dictionary_Wiki

Technical Volunteer Registry
http://dex.cidi.org/
http://www.ewb-usa.org/haiti.php

Importable Infrastructure : Who’s Where, Doing What
http://haiti-orgs.sahanafoundation.org/prod/or/organisation
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc108?OpenForm&emid=EQ-2010-000009-HTI&rc=2

Conditions
http://wfplogistics.org/haiti-earthquake-2010

Crisis Mapping
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/main
http://sitroom.ushahididev.com/

Crisis Commons [White Hat]
http://haiti.crisiscommons.org/
http://crisiscommons.org/wiki/index.php?title=Haiti/2010_Earthquake

Network Relief Kit (NRK)
http://www.nethope.org/impact/programs/
http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol19/?pg=46&pm=1
“NetHope members who have been active in our relief efforts firmly believe that NGOs on the ground require a lightweight “NetHope ICT Kit” they can carry in their baggage to provide instant communications from Day 1 onward. This kit must have the following features:”

U.S. Stops Deporting Haitians
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0113/Haiti-earthquake-US-stops-deporting-Haitians

Jubilee Act HR 4405 / Drop The Debt
http://www.one.org/us/actnow/drophaitiandebt/index.html
http://www.jubileeusa.org/jubilee-act.html

Inflatable Hospital En Route
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=4165
Doctors Without Borders Cargo Plane Blocked From Landing in Port-au-Prince

No Medicines, Baby Born On Street

PREVIOUSLY ON SPECTRE :

HASTILY FORMED RELIEF NETWORKS
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2006/08/17/strong-angel-iii-hastily-formed-networks/
TXTBANKNG THE UNBANKED
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/sms-banking-in-kenya/
ONE CELLPHONE PER CHILD
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/one-cellphone-per-child
KATRINA 2.0
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/katrina-20/
R U IN JAIL?
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/r-u-in-jail/

'SILENCE COUNTRY' by Conor Stechschulte

Conor Stechschulte graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008 and embarked on a cross-country bicycle trip from the east coast in Virginia to the west coast in Oregon. In each state, he photographed a “woods walk” where he would find a patch of woods usually somewhere close off the side of the road, walk in a straight line (going from east to west), and take a photograph every 3 to 5 steps. Since coming home, he edited the photos down to one walk (consisting of anywhere from 10 to 16 images) per state and has begun to translate them into drawings.

Conor adds, “The drawings are done side by side, two at a time on pieces of 24 x 19″ bristol board. Each drawing is about 9 x 6.5”. There are 134 images to draw for the final Silence Country book, so going at the pace I am right now, it’ll probably be done somewhere around 2018. Haw haw.”

This particular set is from Kentucky, outside of Bardstown. It was photographed right near an anonymous graveyard dating back to the civil war.

Conor underwent a similar walking/photographing/drawing process for a zine he did in 2008 titled “The Spirit World.”

Conor is a member of Closed Caption Comics, he plays in the band Witch Hat, and he lives in and helps run “Open Space” gallery in Baltimore.

(click on images to make them larger)

New-mind jam: Woods Family Creeps — "Party in the Pines"

Stream: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/woodsfamilycreeps.mp3%5D

Download: “Party In The Pines” — Woods Family Creeps (mp3)

WOODS FAMILY CREEPS, which is/are Woods in exploratory, long-form instro-mode mood, play two sets (8p, 1030p) in Brooklyn on January 18 at Monkeytown. ~~Reservations at: http://www.monkeytownhq.com/reservations.html.~~ Ooh, it looks like they’re sold out already. Well, lower the lights a bit, light one up and make do with the above jam. Healing tones for troubling times.

Woods: http://www.myspace.com/woodsfamilyband

Woodsist: http://www.woodsist.com

bloggy: http://rearhouse.blogspot.com/

JAY REATARD, 1980-2010

jayreatard

Above: Jay Reatard, gone far too soon

“Memphis musician Jay Reatard runs ‘out of time’; dies at 29” — news article at Memphis Commercial Appeal

October 2005 interview with Jay from the LARecord:

Jay Reatard was about 15 when he started the Reatards, who were the brightest young scum in the Memphis rock ‘n’ roll scene. After several frightening albums recorded on his famous broken four-track, he purchased some old keyboards and started a new band called the Lost Sounds, but they finally broke up and now Jay is back as a Reatard and playing some of the first songs he ever wrote. He speaks now while recovering from a 33-hour Greyhound ride to the West Coast to start the first tour…. Read on at LARecord

SOME CONTEXT

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/haitians-eating-mud

….long before the earthquake….

Haitians Eating Mud (cont.)

Buying Cooking-Dirt On Credit [Video]
http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/02/19/dirt-poor-haitians-eat-cookies-made-of-mud/4120/

Geophagy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica_(disorder)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_eating
“Geophagy is the practice of eating earthy or soil-like substances such as clay, and chalk, in order to obtain essential nutrients such as sulfur and phosphorus from the soil. It is closely related to pica, a classified eating disorder in the DSM-IV characterized by abnormal cravings for nonfood items. The many possible health benefits of geophagy remain under study and are much debated. Many scientists believe that it is only harmful, while others argue that there may be adaptive benefits to the practice, since humans and animals alike have engaged in it for thousands of years.”

Butter-Flavored
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=b7ed2a4ccb7fdae5294a5dbad78a45306d828d99
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/world/americas/18food.html
‘In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute. “It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt,” said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. “It makes your stomach quiet down.”’

More from Lanier: " There are only a tiny handful of writers or musicians who actually make a living in the new utopia"

From “World Wide Mush” by Jaron Lanier in the Wall Street Journal:

…The “open” paradigm rests on the assumption that the way to get ahead is to give away your brain’s work—your music, writing, computer code and so on—and earn kudos instead of money. You are then supposedly compensated because your occasional dollop of online recognition will help you get some kind of less cerebral work that can earn money. For instance, maybe you can sell custom branded T-shirts.

We’re well over a decade into this utopia of demonetized sharing and almost everyone who does the kind of work that has been collectivized online is getting poorer. There are only a tiny handful of writers or musicians who actually make a living in the new utopia, for instance. Almost everyone else is becoming more like a peasant every day.

And it’s going to get worse. Before too long—in 10 years, I’d guess—cheap home robots will be able to make custom T-shirts from free designs off the Internet. When that day comes, then a T-shirt’s design will be no more valuable than recorded music is today.

…The owners of big computer resources on the Internet, like Google, will be able to make money from the open approach for a long time, of course, by routing advertisements, but middle-class people will be increasingly asked to accept a diet of mere kudos. No one should feel insulated from this trend. Poverty has a way of trickling up. Once everyone is aggregated, what will be left to be advertised?

…I don’t want our young people aggregated, even by a benevolent social-networking site. I want them to develop as fierce individuals, and to earn their living doing exactly that. When they work together, I hope they’ll do so in competitive, genuinely distinct teams so that they can get honest feedback and create big-time innovations that earn royalties, instead of spending all their time on crowd-pleasing gambits to seek kudos. This is not just so that they and their children will thrive, but so that they won’t become a mob, which, as history has shown us again and again, is a vulnerability of human nature.

"FLOODED MCDONALD'S" AND "BURNING CAR" by SUPERFLEX

SUPERFLEX were interviewed in Arthur No. 14 (January 2005).

Buy Arthur No. 14 here.

Read the article here.

REAL-LIFE "AVATAR" 1-3

REAL-LIFE “AVATAR” NO. 1: “The Coconut Revolution,” a 52-minute documentary on a successful uprising by original people (led by Francis Ona, pictured above) versus the combined might of a giant multi-national mining corporation, paid mercenaries and two governments’ militaries…

The first few minutes of “The Coconut Revolution” documentary…

This is an incredible modern-day story of a native people’s victory over Western globalization. Sick of seeing their environment ruined and their people exploited by the Panguna Mine, the Pacific island of Bougainville rose up against the giant mining corporation, Rio Tinto Zinc. The newly formed Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) began fighting with bows and arrows and sticks and stones against a heavily armed adversary. In an attempt to put down the rebellion the Papua New Guinean Army swiftly established a gunboat blockade around the island, backed by Australian Military personnel and equipment. With no shipments allowed in or out of the island, the People of Bougainville learned to become self-dependent and self-sustained.

The full 52-minute documentary is viewable here:
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=9073157933630784238

REAL-LIFE “AVATAR” NO. 2: The Dongria Kondh (India) vs. Vedanta Resources (UK)

“Niyamgiri Mountain is a living god for us,” said the father of four who until now had never left the state of Orissa. “It has provided us with food, water and our livelihoods for generations. Even if we have to die protecting our god we will not hesitate, we will not let it go.” Read more here

REAL-LIFE “AVATAR” NO. 3: “Quilombo Country” (above)

“Quilombo Country” explores Afrobrazilian village life among the forests and rivers of northern Brazil, with rare footage of festivals and ceremonies that blend Catholic, African and native Amazonian rituals and customs, including the use of dance, drumming, tobacco and other sacred plants to facilitate the communication between the spiritual and material worlds.

Ranging from the abandoned sugar plantations in the Northeast to the heart of the Amazon rainforest, “Quilombo Country” is alive with first-person accounts of racial conflict, cultural ferment, political identity, and the struggle for land and human rights.

quilombocountry.com

'DOGS IN COLLEGE' #7 by Michael Deforge

It’s Dogs In College by Michael Deforge. Michael is an awesome illustrator/comics artist/midi composer living in Toronto. He did the cover for the latest issue of Diamond Comics, and have you read his comic LOSE yet? Get it, one of the best books of the year.