UPDATE #4, THURS, 11:20 pm PST (scroll to bottom to see previous updates):

Still no word or follow-up from Kiana Firouz, or anyone in the Cul de Sac camp. I’m worried by lack of communication or verification from them, and since this post has gone viral, I’ve had mounting concerns. Please stand by.

UPDATE #5, FRIDAY, 4:41am PST:

Okay, I’ve received confirmation of the basic facts of this case from a reputable source: Stefano Bucaioni, who sits on the executive board of international affairs at Arcigay. Stefano informed me that he’s in direct contact with Kiana and the emails she’s sent to him do confirm the full story. He’ll be meeting Kiana in person in London next Thursday. He’s said that she is currently overwhelmed with requests from journalists. Arcigay will be posting an official press document concerning Kiana Firouz’s case either later today or early tomorrow. When they do, I’ll post that link in an update. Grazie, Stefano. Good luck, Kiana.

UPDATE #6, Tuesday, 3:30pm PST:

Arcigay posted their press release for Kiana Firouz today. It’s in Italian, but scroll down more information in English.

Kiana Firouz in a still from Cul de Sac.

Kiana Firouz, 27 years old, is an outspoken Iranian LGBT rights activist, filmmaker, and actress. When clips of her video documentary work featuring the struggle and persecution of gays and lesbians in her country were acquired by Iranian intelligence, agents began to follow Firouz around Tehran, harassing and intimidating her. She fled for England where she could safely continue her work and studies.

She plays a starring role in Cul de Sac, a documentary film produced in the UK about the condition of lesbians in Iran, and based heavily on Firouz’s own life story. Directed by Ramin Goudarzi-Nejad and Mahshad Torkan, the movie will premiere in London in a few days. Since the trailer was posted on YouTube in December 2009, Cul de Sac has attracted global media attention, with thousands of views. Apparently, some of those views included members of Ahmadinejad’s puppet media in Iran. They know who Firouz is and what she stands for. They may want her to come back to the country she was born in to answer for it.

Still from Cul de Sac.

Firouz, understandably, has requested asylum from the British government. Much to everyone’s shock and dismay, the British Home Office has rejected her application for refugee status. Yes, they know she’s gay. Yes, they know she could be deported back to Iran at any time, and that if this happens, Firouz will most likely be sentenced to torture and death after being found guilty of the “unspeakable sin of homosexuality” because she has participated in explicit lesbian sex scenes in the movie, and been a fierce proponent for human rights in her country.

In Iran, the punishment for lesbianism involving mature consenting women consists of 100 lashes. This punishment can be applied up to three times. After a fourth violation of Iranian law, a woman convicted of “unrepentant homosexuality” is finally executed by hanging, often publicly, in front of a howling mob.

From EveryOne Group:

Kiana filed for a court appeal following the Home Office’s decision to reject her application for asylum, but the judge overruled her appeal. According to Kiana’s lawyer, the last remaining chance is to appeal the judge’s decision, but the risk of deportation is imminent.

The EveryOne Group, an international human rights organization, which was involved in the asylum cases of the lesbian Pegah Emambakhsh, who risked being deported from London to Tehran in 2007, and of the Iranian gay, Mehdi Kazemi, appeals to the British government and the democratic forces of the European Union, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, that Kiana Firouz be immediately guaranteed adequate humanitarian protection and that the order for her deportation be repealed, given that on return to Iran she will face a death sentence not only because a lesbian but because of her civil rights activism.

The EveryOne activists invite concerned readers to send protest e-mail messages to the British Home Office (public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk) requesting that Kiana receive refugee status as soon as possible, for she is a symbol of the international fight against homophobia and repression of gays and lesbians in Islamic countries.

I’ve spent a fair amount of my day researching, fact-checking and [edit for clarification: attempting to] verify this story, and I can’t figure it out: why is this news not EVERYWHERE right now? Why is this petition for Firouz so anemic? There should be hundreds of thousands of names on that list.

All images by Jonas Lara.

Jonas Lara is a celebrated artist and photographer who “has made a career tilting his camera toward the unconventional terrain of urban landscapes. He first developed his unique visual approach capturing high school friends’ nighttime antics in skateboarding and graffiti. Lara strongly believes he shares a visual language with architects, engineers, painters and other artists who challenge the conventionality of gravity and space.”

Last February, Lara was arrested while documenting graffiti artists painting a mural in Los Angeles. The photographs he took that night were intended to be part of a series Lara’s been developing for years– a “body of work [that] involves documenting artists both in their lives and in the process of their artwork.” This series focuses on a wide range of artists, not only graffiti writers.

Lara was “apprehended” along with the two graffiti artists by the LAPD, and charged with felony vandalism. His camera and equipment (lenses, memory cards, batteries) were all taken as evidence, and have yet to be returned to him, in spite of his dependence on them to make a living. Lara’s charges were later lowered to a misdemeanor, then changed to “aiding and abetting”, which carries the same sentence as the crime of graffiti-painting. Lara says:

“I have gone through the several stages of this case and my next step is the Jury Trial. If I lose my case, I can face up to a year in jail and have my license suspended. I need your help raising money to cover costs to hire a private attorney and related legal expenses…  Part of the artist portrait series was featured in an exhibition put together by the Cultural Affairs Department of Los Angeles.”

According to a PNDPulse article about Lara’s arrest, the artist appealed for help with the case to rights organization like the ACLU, but was told him they do not get involved in criminal cases. “If convicted, the Art Center College of Design graduate and former US Marine would be unable to enter the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts, into which he was recently accepted, in September.”

Does something about this irrational, bullying, trumped up, effed up charge rub you the wrong way? If so, donate to the Jonas Lara defense fund. You know how it goes, comrades. A dollar here, a 5-spot there… it adds up so quickly. Let’s make sure this artist gets a fighting chance.

“If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive movements of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.”

—Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

The news came yesterday that Howard Zinn — historian, veteran, playwright and activist — had died of a heart attack at the age of 87.

Zinn was best known for his magnum opus, A People’s History of the United States, and for relentless activism against war and oppression in every form he saw. He kept up the fight until the end; giving his last interview just days before his death.

Born to poor immigrants in Brooklyn, Zinn’s family constantly moved during his childhood, staying “one step ahead of the landlord.” He later recalled the experience of “living in poor neighborhoods, seeing people evicted from their homes, their furniture put out onto the street—it seemed to have nothing to do with race or ethnicity, just poverty and helplessness.”

His childhood left him experienced in desperation, and he soon found out about war as well. Enthusiastically joining the Army Air Force in World War II, Zinn flew bombing runs over Berlin, Czechoslovakia and Hungary before participating in the first military use of napalm in 1945. The horrors he witnessed drove him to become a life-long opponent of militarism, convinced that “war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.”

Upon his return, Zinn took up the career of an educator, but found his own experiences missing from the official histories of his country. He strove to change that, and, instead of standing back, leapt into the civil rights and anti-war movements, inspiring his pupils (including a young Alice Walker), securing the release of POWs from Hanoi and testifying about America’s role in Vietnam at the Pentagon Papers trial.

Through it all, he laid the groundwork for his masterpiece, a book that revealed an alternate universe of dissident uprisings and almost forgotten struggles, simmering just under the surface of the American Dream.

Portrait by Robert Shetterly

Film courtesy of Syndicate of Human Image Traffickers.

All but her belly buried in the floor;
And the lewd trounce of a final muted beat!
We flee her spasm through a fleshless door…
Then you, the burlesque of our lust — and faith,
Lug us back lifeward — bone by infant bone.
– Hart Crane, “National Winter Garden,” (1930)

“Jo Boobs” Weldon is Headmistress of The New York School of Burlesque, whose home at The Slipper Room is just a few blocks from where Lydia Thompson’s “London Blondes” brought burlesque to America and a stone’s throw from where Minsky’s original National Winter Garden made burlesque part of the American vernacular. Minsky’s notoriously established Gypsy Rose Lee as an icon synonymous with striptease, and launched the careers of Abbott and Costello, Phil Silvers and Robert Alda before being closed in the name of public morality.

Houston Street Burlesque by Mabel Dwight (1928)

Is burlesque – a word which refers to turning things upside down – still able to subvert morals and mores? In a popular culture where the use of sexuality to sell consumer goods is banal, pornography of nearly every stripe is freely and instantly available, and sympathetic gay and lesbian characters are commonplace, is the self-conscious performance of gender merely campy fun or does it still have a liberating capacity? Can sex work, titillation, gender play and masturbation undermine heterosexual monogamy? Whose moralities and identities might they challenge?

Catherine MacKinnon argues that sexualized depictions of women in patriarchal societies reinforce misogyny to the point of constituting a form of violence. Do sexualized performances by women lead to their individual and collective debasement? Is stripping a phenomenon where women who appeal most to men are degraded whereas burlesque liberates women who stand outside the norms of beauty as prescribed by male desire? Considering stripping and prostitution, I ask whether everyone sells their bodies at every job? Further, when men pay a high premium to be with a woman or just to look at one, whose body is exploited? More specifically, does it make sense to import 20th century standards of judgment to a 21st century United States whose educational system produces more female post-graduates than male and whose career women earn 94.2% of the income of their male counterparts? Despite shifts in income and status, why do so few straight males study burlesque or work as strippers?

Jo Boobs and I met at the basement headquarters of her school on the coldest evening in recent years to explore questions of gender, activism, and whether she and her ilk are gender traitors or gender busters. She even stripped down to fighting gear for an intimate performance caught by our unblinking digital eyeball. (See above!) In June 2010, Jo will publish The Pocket Book of Burlesque (with a forward by Margaret Cho), a volume whose slender design can slip under the inspector’s prying gaze. The New York School of Burlesque is in sympathetic affiliation with Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque in Seattle and Michelle L’Amour’s Burlesque Finishing School in Chicago as well as programs in Washington, D.C and elsewhere. When will someone open a campus in Tehran?

COILHOUSE: How does burlesque differ from stripping?
JO BOOBS: To understand the difference, look at it from the audience’s point of view. If someone goes to a strip joint, they usually go in whenever they want, they pick the performer they want, they negotiate how they interact with them, they interact one-on-one, and they leave. When they go to a burlesque show, the show starts at a [predetermined] time, they pay a cover (not the performers), they watch the show, there isn’t usually any one-on-one interaction, and they leave when the performance is over.

OH HOLY NIGHT SHIT:

“Merry Christmas, Queens!”

Just in case you missed it, here’s some lively footage shot by the LGBT activists who crashed Hiram Monserrate‘s Christmas party in Queens on Dec 22. Quote du jour: “Hiram believes marriage should be between one man, one woman and a broken bottle.” YOW.

Tensions have been running extremely high in NYC since several Democratic senators shocked gay civil rights supporters by ensuring the rejection of a bill to legalize same sex marriage. The final vote was 38 to 24.

Understandably, proponents of the bill have been feeling an extra bit of ire toward Monserrate. Convicted of misdemeanor assault charges in October for assaulting his girlfriend (allegedly with a piece of broken glass), the Queens lawmaker had initially voiced support for the bill, but later changed his vote to nay. “Meanwhile he wants to marry his girlfriend and he wants Sen. Ruben Diaz, who has been raging against gay people in New York forever, and who is an ordained minister, to marry him.” (via)

Gay activist Jon-Marc McDonald at a rally for marriage equality in New York City on December 3, 2009.

Watch to the end to see the protesters being congenially escorted out of the building (“thank you very much, brother, appreciate it, have a good evening!”), where they questioned Monserrate’s openly gay chief of staff, Wayne Mahlke, who replied that he did not share the senator’s views.

Krautrock: The Rebirth Of Germany. Part 1 of 6. Parts 2-6 posted under the cut.

Produced for BBC Four, this excellent hour-long documentary offers an engaging and comprehensive overview of the 60s/70s experimental music scene in Germany that came to be known as Krautrock. Here’s a fascinating glimpse of what it meant to be part of a generation of radical young musicians, artists and filmmakers struggling to redefine themselves in the rubble of post-war Germany. These kids were drowning in a sea of Schlager pop and classical schmaltz– arguably the music of cultural guilt and denial. Meanwhile, they had the most horrifying historical specters imaginable hanging over their heads. They were isolated, rebellious, and deeply disinterested in “traditional” anthemic western guitar rock. The synthesizer was newly invented, and electronic music as we know it today didn’t really exist yet. They breathed life into its lungs.

Featuring the works of Popol Vuh, Amon Düül, Can, Cluster, Neu!, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Faust and others.

GQ link via Tertiary, thanks.

If you read any rant today, make sure it’s “The Bitch Is Back”. (Be warned: should you happen to think Objectivism is nifty, you may not appreciate it quite as much.) Andrew Corsello’s essay for GQ concerning author/philosopher Ayn Rand’s followers and her work’s lingering influence over global economics and politics is a raw, rambunctious, damning piece of work. Here’s a choice excerpt:

In the end, it’s not the books but the smug, evangelical certainty of Ayn Rand Assholes that causes me to loathe Ayn Rand in a personal way. The thing I liked most about college was being around so many young people who were as earnest as they were dauntingly smart. People who didn’t (yet) feel the need to own every room they walked into. People who knew how to ask questions. That was it. All that elevated question-asking, and the pliancy of temperament it entailed.

We were children. Then came Rand, “the Rosa Klebb of letters,” as entertainment journalist Gary Susman calls her, to body-snatch some of the best of them. Rhetorical question: Is there anything more irritating than a 20-year-old incapable of uttering the words “I don’t know”?

Actually, there is: an 82-year-old Alan Greenspan admitting in October 2008—at least ten years too late—that he’d found “a flaw in the model that I perceived as the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.”

WORD. Wish I still had the email address for this kid in my high school econ class who used to carry Rand’s photo around in his wallet and habitually referred to people as “subnormals”, just so I could send him the final, frothing paragraphs of Corsello’s essay.

See also:

• Hilarious Posts From Ayn Rand Dating Site
• Colbert’s “Going Galt” segment
• How to Succeed as an Ayn Rand Character
• “Will everyone please stop freaking out over Ayn Rand?!“
  

[Image courtesy of Reuters]

Can one of you guys please get me this Yulia Tymoshenko doll for my birthday? A $53K porcelain representation of Lady Yu as Robin Hood, complete with a bow and arrow and leather boots fitted with spurs, isn’t too much to ask for this year, is it? Anyone? …guys? Okay, fine. I’ll settle for the homemade Barbie version. (Unless Marina Bychkova decides to take a stab at it.)

The dolly above, along with other figures of prominent Ukrainian politicians, was crafted by artist Yelena Kuznetsova for yesterday’s Ukrainian Doll Parade, an auction aimed towards raising money for the construction of an orphans’ rehabilitation center. Tymoshenko’s doll was by far the most popular; it was auctioned off for ten times the estimated price, according to news source RT.

Top row: L: Yulia shows the babybats how it’s done. R: Yulia and the Prince of Darkness. Bottom row: L: Yulia and her pet tigress, Tigrulya. R: Yulia knows how to accessorize.

The Coilhouse obsession with Tymoshenko (and, more recently, her tribe of Amazonian defenders) dates back to 2007. Since then, she’s been busy – negotiating oil disputes with Russia, campaigning for health reform, and galvanizing global support for leg-o-mutton sleeves and black lace. After falling out with President Yushchenko earlier this year, Tymoshenko announced her bid to run in the January 2010 Presidential Elections. While I’m neutral on Tymoshenko as a politician, I’m a staunch supporter of her hair and its commitment to solving the gas crisis.

Today is Tymoshenko’s birthday, so here’s wishing our Ukranian Dune Priestess the very best on her special day. Your update on Yulia’s gothic agenda, after the jump.

As you may or may not know Lou Dobbs — journalist, Birther, and cranky old man — resigned from CNN last week for the second time, for reasons that have not been made clear though it is speculated that he wanted more time to devote to his hobbies, like hunting illegal immigrants for sport; a hobby which has single-handedly kept this wonderful nation of ours from being overrun by a merciless tide of humanity intent on taking all the jobs that no one like Lou Dobbs wishes to do. Besides his outdoor hobbies, however, there are whispers that Mr. Dobbs may seek some sort of public office, thereby helping him to protect even more of America than he could alone in a tree stand armed with only his trusty rifle.

With that in mind, Mr. Dobbs has been making the rounds, getting his fleshy face out there and shaking his jowls gravely for the benefit of the public so that they may become more accustomed to his craggy, experienced folds. No appearance thus far typifies the direction that the Lou Dobbs Express will take than this recent interview on Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor in which the GOP’s favorite amateur pornographer asks the Border Baron — without even the slightest hint of irony — if he thinks that Barack Obama is the devil to which Lou, sounding every bit the glorious statesman he is destined to be, answers that no, Barack Obama is not the devil. He is just a terrible president. And a terrible person. Also, he may eat babies. In fact, he likes the taste of babies so much that he may mandate that every heterosexual couple in America must produce an extra baby which will be harvested by illegal, Mexican laborers for his sole, gastronomic satisfaction.

Or not, I’m just still flabbergasted that this question can be asked in full view of the public with a seriousness usually reserved for matters that are, well, not insane.

Coilhouse is pleased to introduce a new project by Jeff Wengrofsky (Agent Double Oh No). Jeff explains: “The Syndicate of Human Image Traffickers (SHIT) is an independent film production nexus whose mission is to provide exposure to art, artists, movements, events, and organizations that we believe are unusual, timely, and provoking. Our current project is a series of short (10 minute) documentary films that examine the politics and aporias of creativity. “The Gospel According to Reverend Billy” is the first in this series. It is being published on the Coilhouse blog and is very much an extension of my work for you folks. We hope to web publish a little film once a month until the close of 2010.”

“Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains.” - Rousseau

Film courtesy of the Syndicate of Human Image Traffickers.

The prime, often countervailing logics of 21^st century America – capitalism and democracy – seem dangerously out of balance today. Meanwhile, vestigial factors, like Puritanism, sometimes affect public life in surprising ways. Since the Giuliani years, America’s largest city – New York – has seen lower crime, infrastructural investments, an infusion of capital, a proliferation of chain stores, a vast profusion of surveillance devices and, perhaps, the general evisceration of democracy. Just recently, Mayor Michael Bloomberg ignored widespread opposition to the construction of two billion dollar stadiums and the much-maligned Atlantic Yards construction project. More egregiously, he bullied our City Council into overturning a term limits law that had been passed fifteen years earlier by public referendum. Now running for his third term, Bloomberg’s campaign war chest has intimidated all prominent Democratic challengers.

As politics appears as (yet another) massively-financed spectacle of buzzwords, scandals, outsized personas and deep psychology, is it possible to enter the political fray without selling your soul? Can you get the attention of the public eye by taking on an identity at once striking and also familiar to our public culture? Fifteen years ago, William Talen began the process of becoming a New Yorker and re-inventing himself as “Reverend Billy.” Today, armed with this identity, he enters churches of consumption – like the Disney store in Times Square – to project a powerful message opposing corporate retail, a culture of consumerism, and the encroachment of our public spaces.

Reverend Billy’s charisma, energy, and smarts have gathered him a gospel choir, the attention of CNN, a documentary film by Morgan Spurlock, and now the nomination of New York’s Green Party for the 2009 mayoral race. Reverend Billy combines a Nixonian charm with the overly stylized tropes of a preacher, and, perhaps as prime mover, a rich Calvinist heritage. America has a long history of Calvinist preachers – you may know them as “Puritans” – who rail against impure desires, “the moneychangers,” and fret mightily for the souls of their congregants.

All photos by Tina Zimmer.

COILHOUSE: Words like “community” and “neighborhood” have a special resonance for your choir. Are you a New Yorker?
REVEREND BILLY: I grew up in Watertown, South Dakota and Rochester, Minnesota, and I always dreamed of being a New Yorker, the way you can dream of New York on the prairie. When the satellites would go up across the night sky, I used to think they were New York City flying through space. I first moved here in 1974, stayed a couple of years. Moved back again in the early 80s and, for a longer period of time, in the late 80s. I was like a hitchhiker, I would come and crash in the Lower East Side. In March of 1994, I don’t know why exactly, my commitment became permanent.

Do you feel like a New Yorker?
I do now because I perform in so many neighborhoods. I marry, baptize and bury New Yorkers in so many different boroughs. We – me and Savitri and the choir – some of us were born here and many of us are immigrants, we like the idea of a homemade spirituality that does not necessarily come from an organized religion. That idea became a New York idea after 9-11. Many of us gathered in rooms. The Reverend Billy idea of a different God or Goddess every day with another name, staying out of trouble with deities that cause us to kill each other, that kind of fellowship, I needed it, too.

[Interview continues after the jump.]