Need ... more ... cat ... videos

Here's another good cute cat video to cheer us all up. Not just great puddy footage but some awesome music editing. You may recognise Alien.

WTF Kitty: I want one!

It's no good. Boyfriends just don't cut the moutarde any more. What I really need is one of these.

Crosstown Lightnin' at Abbey Mills Blues Festival: punk jacket

First the important stuff. Last night, I finally gave my ancient punk jacket an outing after an absence of nearly 20 years.

Oh, and by the way, the grand occasion was Crosstown Lightnin's gig at the Colour House Theatre for the Abbey Mills Blues Festival.

Charles Shaar Murray, Buffalo Bill Smith, Marc Jefferies and special guest Dick Jude on drums (the Great Pete Miles is gigging in Poland) entertained us until the witching hour.

Here's Crosstown Lightnin' playing Muddy Waters' Can't Be Satisfied.

How I was reunited with my punk jacket here.

Lost 'n' found punk leather jacket brings joy to these trying times

Ring those bells, break out the cheap fizz, for I have been reunited with my original punk leather jacket which I thought I'd lost in various house-moves.

Clearing out the Vault Of Horror that is the hall cupboard, I finally mustered the courage to trawl through the crud and found a bag containing said item. It weighs a ton. Partially customised by Vivienne Westwood back in the days of Sex when kids could walk in and ask and receive individual styling tips from the Grande Dame of Punk Couture, she looped yards of heavy chain through the epaulettes and made me feel a million dollars, even though we were rejecting that sort of materialism back then. Or so I was told. I was young. I was wet behind the ears. My brain hadn't fully growed.

Emboldened by watching the Master do her thing, I then went to town and finished the job.

Here's a pic of Keith Moon wearing the early version before The Who's gig at Celtic FC. (Note photographer Chalkie Davies in suburban knitwear.)

First outing for the punk jacket since being reunited with it here

First Chinese British punk?

Pix (c) Anna Chen

Never mind Tiger Mom, I want a buffalo minder

A pride of not so proud lions and crocodiles seen off by a herd of horny-headed critters when a baby buffalo finds itself on the menu.

For more cute furry animals being decidedly uncute, try this. Aaargh!

Vincent Chin and Simon San: two murders, same indifference

Vincent Chin and Simon San were born and murdered decades apart on two different continents, but the common factor is the callousness and indifference with which their cases have been dealt with by the investigating police and prosecutors.

Justice is off the menu when it comes to these Chinese deaths. While the police finally admit that an acknowledgment of the racist dimension of Simon's murder by a white mob outside the family-run takeaway in Edinburgh in Scotland would have resulted in stiff sentences, the men have been given 24 months, 26 months and five years for the thug who landed the killer blow that smashed Simon's head against the pavement. As we all know by now, they will walk after serving only a third of that minus remand time. Only one year more than the sentence imposed on the laptop rioters who posted their encouragement of the unrest on Facebook. What is this telling us about values in Britain today?

This insulting sentence echoes the $3,000 fine and three years probation imposed on the white Detroit car-workers, Richard Ebens and Michael Nitz, who beat Vincent Chin to death with a baseball bat in front of witnesses one summer evening in 1982. Out on a bachelor party, Vincent was hunted down before finally being cornered in a McDonalds where he was held by Nitz while Ebens pulped his skull with the bat.

Both killings were preceded by racist epithets. The Wikipedia account says:

Ronald Ebens was arrested and taken into custody at the scene of the murder by two off-duty police officers who had witnessed the beating. Ebens and Nitz were convicted in a county court for manslaughter by Wayne County Circuit Judge Charles Kaufman, after a plea bargain brought the charges down from second-degree murder. They served no jail time, were given three years probation, fined $3,000 and ordered to pay $780 in court costs. In a response letter to protests from American Citizens for Justice, Kaufman said, "These weren't the kind of men you send to jail... You don't make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal."

After an appeal and a retrial, Ebens was cleared of all charges despite witnesses including two off-duty cops. The lenient sentences for Ebens and Nitz led to a galvanisation of US Asian Americans who then formed the pan-ethnic Asian American movement that's given the community some clout since Chin's murder. I wonder if San's case will prompt an equivalent marshalling of Asian community forces in Britain.

On Monday 12th September, Amnesty International is screening a film about the case by Curtis Chin: “Vincent Who?”, a documentary on Asian American political empowerment. He'll be part of a Q&A session afterwards, with Paul Hyu (Chinese Elvis) and Col. Brian Kay OBE TD DL, Chairman of Islington Chinese Association.

Asian Pacific Americans for Progress & Islington Chinese Association presents
"Vincent Who?"
Monday, Sept. 12, 2011
7-9 pm
Amnesty International – The Human Rights Action Centre
17-25 New Inn Yard
London EC2A 3EA
Free Admission
Ticket reservations here

Vincent Chin 

The Leith police dismisseth us, but the Lothian community pay their respects in this tribute.