Juan R Posadas
This article first appeared in Fortean Times of August 2003
Juan R Posadas was no ordinary Trotskyite; socialists from outer space, the benefits of nuclear war and communication with dolphins were all part of his revolutionary programme. Matt Salusbury tells the story of one of the World’s strangest political thinkers... Read this article on archive.org, which saved a copy of the now taken-down article from the Fortean Times website.
This links to "Posadism for Beginners", an overview of the ideology that mixed socialism and ufology in equal measures.
Weird Weekend 2007
Matt Salusbury reports on the Centre for Fortean Zoology’s annual cryptozoological gathering... Read this article on the Fortean Times website
This page will be updated shortly, and I will add the complete "Trots in Space" with never-before-seen photos, links and updates.
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
My articles from New Statesman
Caught on camera
This article first appeared in New Statesman of 15 September 2003
"I am a peaceful protester. I have no criminal record. Yet the police have been photographing me on a regular basis for the past four years". By Matt Salusbury
''What, you mean the police can take your picture in the street, just like that?" That's the usual reaction when I show friends the photo accompanying this article. It was taken by the Metropolitan Police's Public Order Intelligence Unit in January 2002. Although the police have been photographing me on average once every two months since 1999... Read this article on the New Statesman website
Photo not yet available, still clearing this with its copyright owners, the Metropolitan Police!
Give and thou shalt create havoc
This article first appeared in New Statesman Christmas issue, 13 December 2004
A man hands out gold coins, another throws around yen bills. Giving things away has become the ultimate act of subversion, argues Matt Salusbury
Fundraisers used to rattle a tin; today, we are more likely to encounter organised gangs of "charity muggers" intent on signing us up for tax-deductible direct debit giving. Old-style, spur-of-the-moment donations are no longer considered effective enough, and in August the Economist reported that Westminster Council denounces charities that "support chaotic lifestyles" by giving away soup to the homeless.
Yet giving, far from becoming better organised, may be taking even more instinctive and bizarre forms. Reports continue of strangers handing out money in the street randomly to passers-by. Read this article on the New Statesman website
Unsocial seating arrangements
This article first appeared in New Statesman of 1 March 2004, and broke the story of the European Social Forum coming to London's Alexandrea Palace
The European Social Forum is coming to London - all being well. This "meeting of movements" - the local version of the World Social Forum - brings together conventional campaigners such as trade unionists and the sexier "new social movements", such as anti-globalisers and feminists. Last November's forum in Paris pulled in 50,000.
London's bid, supported by the mayor, Ken Livingstone, is likely to be approved when the forum's European assembly meets on 7 March. The probable date is October and the main venue, with its plenary events and international activist stars, is likely to be Alexandra Palace. But there will also be 300-odd informal networking events on the periphery.
Some Londoners see it as a small-scale rehearsal for the 2012 Olympics, showing that the capital can cope with a big event and a sizeable influx of visitors.
But the left being the left, the bid to host the forum could yet come unstuck in the face of internecine squabbles... Read this article on the New Statesman website
This article first appeared in New Statesman of 15 September 2003
"I am a peaceful protester. I have no criminal record. Yet the police have been photographing me on a regular basis for the past four years". By Matt Salusbury
''What, you mean the police can take your picture in the street, just like that?" That's the usual reaction when I show friends the photo accompanying this article. It was taken by the Metropolitan Police's Public Order Intelligence Unit in January 2002. Although the police have been photographing me on average once every two months since 1999... Read this article on the New Statesman website
Photo not yet available, still clearing this with its copyright owners, the Metropolitan Police!
Give and thou shalt create havoc
This article first appeared in New Statesman Christmas issue, 13 December 2004
A man hands out gold coins, another throws around yen bills. Giving things away has become the ultimate act of subversion, argues Matt Salusbury
Fundraisers used to rattle a tin; today, we are more likely to encounter organised gangs of "charity muggers" intent on signing us up for tax-deductible direct debit giving. Old-style, spur-of-the-moment donations are no longer considered effective enough, and in August the Economist reported that Westminster Council denounces charities that "support chaotic lifestyles" by giving away soup to the homeless.
Yet giving, far from becoming better organised, may be taking even more instinctive and bizarre forms. Reports continue of strangers handing out money in the street randomly to passers-by. Read this article on the New Statesman website
Unsocial seating arrangements
This article first appeared in New Statesman of 1 March 2004, and broke the story of the European Social Forum coming to London's Alexandrea Palace
The European Social Forum is coming to London - all being well. This "meeting of movements" - the local version of the World Social Forum - brings together conventional campaigners such as trade unionists and the sexier "new social movements", such as anti-globalisers and feminists. Last November's forum in Paris pulled in 50,000.
London's bid, supported by the mayor, Ken Livingstone, is likely to be approved when the forum's European assembly meets on 7 March. The probable date is October and the main venue, with its plenary events and international activist stars, is likely to be Alexandra Palace. But there will also be 300-odd informal networking events on the periphery.
Some Londoners see it as a small-scale rehearsal for the 2012 Olympics, showing that the capital can cope with a big event and a sizeable influx of visitors.
But the left being the left, the bid to host the forum could yet come unstuck in the face of internecine squabbles... Read this article on the New Statesman website
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
You can see my regular news articles and features in The Freelance and English Language Gazette. You can sign up to the English Language Gazette digital edition here. It's free, but you have to register.
English for Starbucks
This article first appeared in English Language Gazette, November 2008
PRODUCT PLACEMENT has entered Chinese self-study EFL. This latest wheeze from free online internet-based EFL provider Speak2me uses cartoon ‘virtual tutor’ Lucy to introduce its students to the English language. ‘Conversational advertising’ allows ‘corporate partners’ (advertisers) to construct English lessons through which students learn English within the
context of the client’s product or service. Examples on Speak2me’s short demo video include Lucy, dressed in a Starbucks uniform, kicking off a lesson (set in a Starbucks) with ‘Hello! Welcome to Starbucks.’
Two less frightening fictional Chinese EFL teaching characters from the very different People’s Republic of the early 1990s are making a surprise nostalgia-fuelled comeback. Loveable goody-goody boy and girl companions Li Lei and Meimei featured in the state-approved national High School English Textbook (People’s Education Press in association with Longman Press, 1990) and were familiar faces for over six million students. Now Li Lei and Meimei smile out from a variety of merchandise featuring their images – stickers, badges, T-shirts, school bags, badges and other items that are part of a sudden youth craze sweeping
a 21st-century China that Li Lei and Meimei would scarcely recognise.
PRODUCT PLACEMENT has entered Chinese self-study EFL. This latest wheeze from free online internet-based EFL provider Speak2me uses cartoon ‘virtual tutor’ Lucy to introduce its students to the English language. ‘Conversational advertising’ allows ‘corporate partners’ (advertisers) to construct English lessons through which students learn English within the
context of the client’s product or service. Examples on Speak2me’s short demo video include Lucy, dressed in a Starbucks uniform, kicking off a lesson (set in a Starbucks) with ‘Hello! Welcome to Starbucks.’
Two less frightening fictional Chinese EFL teaching characters from the very different People’s Republic of the early 1990s are making a surprise nostalgia-fuelled comeback. Loveable goody-goody boy and girl companions Li Lei and Meimei featured in the state-approved national High School English Textbook (People’s Education Press in association with Longman Press, 1990) and were familiar faces for over six million students. Now Li Lei and Meimei smile out from a variety of merchandise featuring their images – stickers, badges, T-shirts, school bags, badges and other items that are part of a sudden youth craze sweeping
a 21st-century China that Li Lei and Meimei would scarcely recognise.
English retreats in India
This article first appeared in English Language Gazette, October 2008
English continues to play a controversial role in the regional politics of India. The civic authorities of the city of India’s financial
capital Mumbai (Bombay) have suddenly abandoned the official use of English and Hindi in favour of Marathi, the local language and an official tongue in the surrounding province of Maharashtra. Marathi is now the medium for ‘all official documentation’ in Mumbai, a city of 12 million people. The change from English and Hindi was enacted in August by Mayor Shubha Raul and his Shive Sena party, which holds a majority in the municipal corporation that governs the city. Mumbai’s vast business community were reportedly furious. The official formal version of written Marathi that will be used is unfamiliar to many of the language’s native speakers in Mumbai, who speak a very different vernacular version of Marathi and do most of their reading and writing in English or Hindi.
The police and the lower courts already operate in Marathi, but the higher courts and the state government will have to switch from using Hindi and English documents. The municipal corporation said that local government tenders and university-level training civil service training would stay in English. Citizens – many of them recent arrivals from around India – would be able to write to officials in English or Hindi, and their press conferences would remain trilingual.
The Mumbai-based Bollywood Indian film industry, the world’s biggest, increasingly recruits its movie stars from the Indian
diaspora. These actors often struggle to speak their lines in Hindi, and are given English-language scripts to read through at the casting stage.
Meanwhile, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, the CNN/ IBN network has reported that members of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike party had attacked the office of state assembly member Derrick Fullinfaw after he addressed the assembly in English rather than the local language of Kannada. Assembly member Fullinfaw is an Anglo-Indian (of mixed British-Indian origin) and explained:‘I find it very difficult to speak in Kannada without any disrespect to the language. In fact my wife speaks excellent Kannada. If I knew Kannada I would have become a big leader in the state by now.’
The Karnataka assembly is located in Bangalore, world famous for its English language call centres. But the leader of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike Anajanapa party was unforgiving, and warned: ‘If anyone speaks in any other language besides Kannada in the assembly, they will face the wrath of our group.’
English continues to play a controversial role in the regional politics of India. The civic authorities of the city of India’s financial
capital Mumbai (Bombay) have suddenly abandoned the official use of English and Hindi in favour of Marathi, the local language and an official tongue in the surrounding province of Maharashtra. Marathi is now the medium for ‘all official documentation’ in Mumbai, a city of 12 million people. The change from English and Hindi was enacted in August by Mayor Shubha Raul and his Shive Sena party, which holds a majority in the municipal corporation that governs the city. Mumbai’s vast business community were reportedly furious. The official formal version of written Marathi that will be used is unfamiliar to many of the language’s native speakers in Mumbai, who speak a very different vernacular version of Marathi and do most of their reading and writing in English or Hindi.
The police and the lower courts already operate in Marathi, but the higher courts and the state government will have to switch from using Hindi and English documents. The municipal corporation said that local government tenders and university-level training civil service training would stay in English. Citizens – many of them recent arrivals from around India – would be able to write to officials in English or Hindi, and their press conferences would remain trilingual.
The Mumbai-based Bollywood Indian film industry, the world’s biggest, increasingly recruits its movie stars from the Indian
diaspora. These actors often struggle to speak their lines in Hindi, and are given English-language scripts to read through at the casting stage.
Meanwhile, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, the CNN/ IBN network has reported that members of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike party had attacked the office of state assembly member Derrick Fullinfaw after he addressed the assembly in English rather than the local language of Kannada. Assembly member Fullinfaw is an Anglo-Indian (of mixed British-Indian origin) and explained:‘I find it very difficult to speak in Kannada without any disrespect to the language. In fact my wife speaks excellent Kannada. If I knew Kannada I would have become a big leader in the state by now.’
The Karnataka assembly is located in Bangalore, world famous for its English language call centres. But the leader of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike Anajanapa party was unforgiving, and warned: ‘If anyone speaks in any other language besides Kannada in the assembly, they will face the wrath of our group.’
Emirati salary disparity
This article first appeared in English Language Gazette, October 2008
Matt Salusbury
Reports
FOREIGN ACADEMICS teaching on English-medium degrees at a university in the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) have rejected a pay offer significantly below that being offered to Emirati staff (nationals of the UAE). According to UAE English language newspaper The National, Zayed University offered expatriate staff a 5 per cent pay rise, while Emirati academic staff are to receive a 29 per cent increase. Zayed University, founded in 1998, recently gained accreditation from the US Middle States Commission on Higher Accreditation, making it the first UAE federal higher education institution to be accredited by this body.
The National reports that there have already been resignations at UAE universities by expatriate staff over pay, and that the Federal National Council was warned at the beginning of 2008 of this trend. Minister of education Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak then advised the council that academics were leaving universities as pay rises were failing to keep pace with inflation, now at over 11 per cent.
A Gazette source in the UAE said that annual salaries for native English-speaking staff at some universities had doubled in less than two years, following a major walk-out by Canadian staff.
However, salaries for Emiratis have risen even more over that period.
In addition to the 5 per cent on offer, expats will receive a separate 400 Dirhams (£60) a month pay award to offset ‘the impact of inflation’, backdated to June 2008.
The Gazette’s sources in the UAE pointed out that expat staff have their
accommodation, airfares and school fees for their children paid by their employers under a separate arrangement, which does somewhat reduce the pay differential with Emiratis, who do not enjoy these perks. But the same source reported that there’s a policy of ‘Emiratisation’ of the universities, and claimed that non-Emiratis are passed over for promotion in favour of locals with insufficient qualifications and experience.
While the Gazette couldn’t find any specific reference to ethnicity in its
guidelines for accreditation, the Middle States Commission’s recent conference included talks on best practice in ‘changing demographics… issues of retention… enrolment
of men and women of colour, the need to adjust the curriculum in the face of an
increasingly global society’, ‘successful efforts to develop a diverse campus environment
’ and ‘a framework for encouraging diversity’.
Expat academics who talked to The National described the 5 per cent pay award as ‘a slap in the face’ and ‘absolutely ridiculous’.
Sheikh Nayhan, president of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi, said he was looking into problems around pay awards for academic staff, and said: ‘Hopefully there will be a solution to this issue soon.’
Matt Salusbury
Reports
FOREIGN ACADEMICS teaching on English-medium degrees at a university in the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) have rejected a pay offer significantly below that being offered to Emirati staff (nationals of the UAE). According to UAE English language newspaper The National, Zayed University offered expatriate staff a 5 per cent pay rise, while Emirati academic staff are to receive a 29 per cent increase. Zayed University, founded in 1998, recently gained accreditation from the US Middle States Commission on Higher Accreditation, making it the first UAE federal higher education institution to be accredited by this body.
The National reports that there have already been resignations at UAE universities by expatriate staff over pay, and that the Federal National Council was warned at the beginning of 2008 of this trend. Minister of education Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak then advised the council that academics were leaving universities as pay rises were failing to keep pace with inflation, now at over 11 per cent.
A Gazette source in the UAE said that annual salaries for native English-speaking staff at some universities had doubled in less than two years, following a major walk-out by Canadian staff.
However, salaries for Emiratis have risen even more over that period.
In addition to the 5 per cent on offer, expats will receive a separate 400 Dirhams (£60) a month pay award to offset ‘the impact of inflation’, backdated to June 2008.
The Gazette’s sources in the UAE pointed out that expat staff have their
accommodation, airfares and school fees for their children paid by their employers under a separate arrangement, which does somewhat reduce the pay differential with Emiratis, who do not enjoy these perks. But the same source reported that there’s a policy of ‘Emiratisation’ of the universities, and claimed that non-Emiratis are passed over for promotion in favour of locals with insufficient qualifications and experience.
While the Gazette couldn’t find any specific reference to ethnicity in its
guidelines for accreditation, the Middle States Commission’s recent conference included talks on best practice in ‘changing demographics… issues of retention… enrolment
of men and women of colour, the need to adjust the curriculum in the face of an
increasingly global society’, ‘successful efforts to develop a diverse campus environment
’ and ‘a framework for encouraging diversity’.
Expat academics who talked to The National described the 5 per cent pay award as ‘a slap in the face’ and ‘absolutely ridiculous’.
Sheikh Nayhan, president of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi, said he was looking into problems around pay awards for academic staff, and said: ‘Hopefully there will be a solution to this issue soon.’
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Pygmy elephants - talk from Weird Weekend 2008
My talk on pygmy elephants - on reports of modern sightings from Congo Brazzaville and Kerala, India, and the evidence from the fossil record - from the Centre for Fortean Zoology's Weird Weekend, August 18-20 2008. You'll need headphones or speakers and 59 minutes to see this CFZ TV film. (They gave me an hour, and I took 59 minutes. How's that for timing?)
See the film of my talk here.
Please don't be alarmed by the introduction in CFZ Richard Freeman's unique style, he does that to all Weird Weekend speakers!
There will be an article on pygmy elephants in Fortean Times before long.
Elephas tilensis, a five-foot fossil elephant from the island of Tilos, Greece, reconstruction in the Museum of Paleontology, University of Athens. Reproduced with their permission, © Museum of Paleontology, University of Athens/George Lyras
Tooth of a stegadon, an extinct branch of the elephant family, which lived in Asia, including dwarf varieties in Indonesia. Photo © Matt Salusbury
Near-complete adult molar tooth from a fossil pygmy elephant from Cyprus in the Natural History Museum's Bate Collection. By comparison, an adult African elephant equivalent would be breeze-block sized. Photo: © Matt Salusbury
Extract from a report on Weird Weekend 2008 for Fortean Times 242 November 2008 (p 42-43) by Gail Nina Anderson
“If any linking theme could possibly be winkled out from the diversity of topics throughtout the weekend, it would perhaps relate to interpretation/classification, providing new ways to approach established subjects or to reassess evidence. This led to some unexpected moments of interdisciplinary content, such as discussing the conventions of Ancient Egyptian tomb painting in relation to pygmy elephants following Matt Salusbury’s presentation on ‘Water Elephants of the Congo.’ The talk opened up a classic type of cryptozoological conundrum. The case for modern pygmy elephants (as distinct from now-extinct dwarf elephants) is reasonable and apparently well attested in both Africa and Asia by local tradition and modern observation. Then you get down to the nature of evidence and the questions start springing up, from the problems of scale in photographs to the bewitching possibility that reported tribes of pygmy elephants may just be gangs of teenagers living outside the herd. That some elephants are noticeably smaller is beyond doubt, but whether this indicates a distinct species, misidentified juveniles or interesting mutations hasn’t been established. There was a lingering touch of regret in Matt’s disclosure that even the pygmy ones wouldn’t be small enough to put on a lead and take on the bus. Any such cryptozoological wistfulness, however, was diffused after the talk by the (mature female) attendee who confided in me that she thought the speaker was a lovely boy ‘without and ounce of fat on him.’”
See the film of my talk here.
Please don't be alarmed by the introduction in CFZ Richard Freeman's unique style, he does that to all Weird Weekend speakers!
There will be an article on pygmy elephants in Fortean Times before long.
Elephas tilensis, a five-foot fossil elephant from the island of Tilos, Greece, reconstruction in the Museum of Paleontology, University of Athens. Reproduced with their permission, © Museum of Paleontology, University of Athens/George Lyras
Tooth of a stegadon, an extinct branch of the elephant family, which lived in Asia, including dwarf varieties in Indonesia. Photo © Matt Salusbury
Near-complete adult molar tooth from a fossil pygmy elephant from Cyprus in the Natural History Museum's Bate Collection. By comparison, an adult African elephant equivalent would be breeze-block sized. Photo: © Matt Salusbury
Extract from a report on Weird Weekend 2008 for Fortean Times 242 November 2008 (p 42-43) by Gail Nina Anderson
“If any linking theme could possibly be winkled out from the diversity of topics throughtout the weekend, it would perhaps relate to interpretation/classification, providing new ways to approach established subjects or to reassess evidence. This led to some unexpected moments of interdisciplinary content, such as discussing the conventions of Ancient Egyptian tomb painting in relation to pygmy elephants following Matt Salusbury’s presentation on ‘Water Elephants of the Congo.’ The talk opened up a classic type of cryptozoological conundrum. The case for modern pygmy elephants (as distinct from now-extinct dwarf elephants) is reasonable and apparently well attested in both Africa and Asia by local tradition and modern observation. Then you get down to the nature of evidence and the questions start springing up, from the problems of scale in photographs to the bewitching possibility that reported tribes of pygmy elephants may just be gangs of teenagers living outside the herd. That some elephants are noticeably smaller is beyond doubt, but whether this indicates a distinct species, misidentified juveniles or interesting mutations hasn’t been established. There was a lingering touch of regret in Matt’s disclosure that even the pygmy ones wouldn’t be small enough to put on a lead and take on the bus. Any such cryptozoological wistfulness, however, was diffused after the talk by the (mature female) attendee who confided in me that she thought the speaker was a lovely boy ‘without and ounce of fat on him.’”
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