The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Hong Kong’s Giordano joins Aussie wool campaign Posted: 31 Oct 2011 03:40 AM PDT  Shoppers walk past the front of a Giordano clothing store in Hong Kong. The chain has joined a campaign against wool production that is cruel to sheep. – AFP pic Animal rights groups have campaigned against "mulesing", the practice of cutting a slice of flesh from lambs' rear ends to prevent the animal dying of flystrike – the infestation of flesh-eating maggots. "We will urge our vendors to stop using wool grown from mulesed sheep so long as commercial alternatives are easily available," said the retailer, which has more than 2,400 outlets in Asia, Australia and the Middle East. US-based group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which has spearheaded the campaign against mulesing, which it describes as "barbaric", said Giordano set a "worthy example" and urged other retailers to follow suit. "Consumers in China and across Asia are shocked to learn about Australia's dirty little secret, mulesing," said PETA Asia vice-president Jason Baker. PETA's efforts have seen major fashion companies such as Hugo Boss, Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch and Adidas shun Australian wool. Farmers in Australia, one of the world's major wool producers, however insist that the practice is necessary to prevent many slow and painful deaths. – AFP Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| UK vigil part of struggle for prostitute memorial Posted: 30 Oct 2011 10:09 PM PDT LONDON, Oct 31 — It may seem somewhat grisly, but for author John Constable, paying tribute to the "outcast dead" buried at Crossbones Graveyard in London's Borough of Southwark, has been part of life for almost 15 years. At 7pm on the 23rd of each month, up to 50 people take part in an open-air ceremony led by Constable's shamanic alter-ego John Crow at the iron gates of a plot of land that, from medieval to Victorian times, was an unconsecrated graveyard used for prostitutes and paupers. Vigil participants — who include office workers, prostitutes and witches, Constable says — sing songs and attach offerings of ribbons, handicrafts and other baubles to the gates amid the pungent scent of wafting incense. "People walk past and see us and it's easy for them to think we're a bunch of nutters, but actually I find anybody who spends five minutes or so with us tends to get quite drawn in — what we're doing isn't that weird actually," said Constable, who wants at least part of the Crossbones site to be transformed into a memorial park designated as a world heritage site. The Crossbones land on Redcross Way is slated for redevelopment by owner Transport for London (TFL) as part of a controversial modernisation scheme in Southwark, which is changing the character of London's Bankside, Borough and London Bridge areas. "Crossbones burial ground is part of a much larger site owned by TFL," a TFL spokesman said. "TFL is seeking a comprehensive redevelopment of the whole site and has been working with stakeholders, including John Constable, to see how the burial ground can be sensitively incorporated." In the Middle Ages, prostitutes known as "Winchester Geese" were free to ply their trade around these parts in the Liberty of the Clink under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester. The Liberty of the Clink was in an area on the same south bank of the Thames river as modern-day Southwark across from and, in medieval times, outside the laws of the old City of London. Historically, the area featured brothels, bear-pits, prisons and pubs, providing creative fodder for some of England's most important writers, including Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. The South Bank was also home to the Globe and the Rose theatres where some of England's earliest plays were performed. The prostitutes of the Liberty of the Clink were buried in unhallowed land, despite working under licence from the Church. The Crossbones burial ground served the poor of the parish of St Saviour's, Southwark, but the ground is thought to have been used at least as early as the 17th century, as a single women's or prostitute's cemetery, according to the Museum of London Archaeology Service. By 1769, it was a paupers' cemetery until the graveyard was closed in 1853. In the 1990s, archaeologists removed 148 skeletons from Crossbones when the extension of the London Underground Jubilee tube line opened up a section of the site. The bodies, buried between 1800 and 1853, represent only a sample portion of an unknown number of bodies on the site. The cemetery was associated with paupers and prostitutes, but it was meant to serve the poor of the parish, said Jelena Bekvalac, curator of human osteology at Museum of London. It is impossible to link current skeleton research findings to determine whether the Winchester Geese were buried on the site. "The land belonged to the Bishop of Winchester, it was unconsecrated and they had the name associated with him as Winchester Geese," she said. "That could be one of the great unknowns." On the night of November 23, 1996, Constable says he was immersed as his Crow alter-ego, writing in his Georgian attic room in Southwark when he received a visitation from the "spirit of a medieval whore" — or "the goose, as she called herself" — which led to a prolific bout of automatic writing. "Effectively, in a single night I wrote a very long poem or a very long poem was written in or through me by the goose," he said. "It was the story of a medieval prostitute, or really a woman, who travels through many ages of this area." Subsequently, in 1999, he published "The Southwark Mysteries", an epic drama, which was performed at Shakespeare's Globe theatre in 2000 and at Southwark Cathedral in 2000 and 2010. "I realised I was trying to heal a spirit by remembering her," Constable said. — Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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