Turkishness in peril

I had a message from Korova at the Mask of Anarchy asking me to put up the video about David Hicks. I had a hell of a time getting the code to work, and then it stopped altogether, so guess why!

A Turkish court ordered access to YouTube's website blocked Wednesday, after a prosecutor recommended the ban because of videos allegedly insulting the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Thankfully the Mask and 10% came up with a work around.

Visitors to the YouTube site from Turkey were greeted with the message: "Access to this site has been blocked by a court decision!..."

A message in both Turkish and English at the bottom of the page said, "Access to http://www.youtube.com site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/384 dated 06.03.2007 of Istanbul First Criminal Peace Court."

That’s not the message I get. Mine just says, ‘Loading…’, but never loads. Curiously, I did get into the YouTube site this morning and the ‘Thong count’ video played. That was sure worthwhile.

Insulting Ataturk or "Turkishness" is a crime in Turkey punishable by prison.

So don’t ask!

Naima

Last night I was looking at Dissident Voice and learned that tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker had died. There was a link to a performance of Coltrane’s classic ballad, ‘Naima’, over nine minutes of tenor solo on YouTube. After I watched it, it occurred to me to search for Coltrane on YouTube, and came up with this classic 1965 performance, with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. Call me an old fogey, but I confess I still prefer Coltrane’s version. I’m not sure why. Maybe Brecker’s version is too busy for a ballad? It didn’t bring tears to my eyes.

Anyway, if you need a break from reading leftwrites or lenin’s tomb, there’s heaps of great video on YouTube, like this Coltrane Quartet performance of ‘Afro Blue’.

Every time someone tells me that they spent $80 going to a gig, I reckon, yeah, I’d pay $80 if Coltrane came back from the dead. That was a while ago. Eighty bucks is probably a cheap gig these days. Anyway, if you don’t mind the small screen and the lag between the video and the audio, you don’t have to wait for Coltrane to return from the grave, and it’s free!