Mahmut AygunPatrick McGoohanKara NeumannChristina SmithCat HockingRewati Shahani&Alex Ressel

are contributing in the second issue 2 of...

0-BITWeek 2 18.47 22.1.9

Patrick McGoohan, the Emmy award-winning actor who created and starred in 1960s TV show

The Prisoner, has died at the age of 80.

The actor’s son-in-law, film producer Cleve Landsberg, said today that McGoohan had died

yesterday in Los Angeles after a short illness.

McGoohan was best known as the title character Number Six in surreal drama The Prisoner, which aired on ITV in the UK. He played a former spy who is held captive in a small village and con-

stantly tries to escape.

He also won two Emmys for detective drama Columbo, playing different characters, with the first coming in 1974 and the other 16 years later.

Number Six unconciously began to think like a prisoner, limiting his options even while still think-ing of himself as a rebel. The Answer to his own screamed question “Who are you? WHO ARE

YOU?” at the end of every episode is “I am Number Six.”

Patrick McGoohan: The Prisoner dies aged 80

“Freedom is a myth, Number Six”

a self imposed hermitagei build myself ever deeperinto a reflex incarcerationwhere communication becomesharder and harder and harder

if i twist my body outsideit gets nipped. my profligacywears itself out, and all i can dois crawl back beaten, ever deeperinto my cave.

as my brain slowly wakes upmy nose recoils at the lack of taste. the air out of my mouthis sweet and poison, the air in

is cold and grating.

my body is swollen and breakingwheezing and weeping

and my mind staggers ona drunk with a purpose but no means

A genius made in lonely moments, In changing rooms and at bus stops,In cold rooms, in bed and on desks.

Alone in company.

I left only a few unformed thoughtsb a r e l y s c r a w l e d d o w n i n t i m e ,

as the smatterings of my talent oozed gentlydown the wall behind my hollow, bleeding head.

17.10 8.1.9

Your love has gone,In the blinding light of a bomb blast.You felt nothing but pain, for a secondForgetting the boy in the crater left behind He’s surrounded. Soon to be overcome, In that crater that’s been the homeOf so many young men.23.12

And every other bastard is colour blind:The fields run green with envyOur souls, pink pits of hope.The sun shines red through gray cloudsand your white flag of surrender is taupe. 23.08

Battles of attrition, usedto bleed you dryAre used, more & more.In this battle,hearts are bled or broken. 21.15

The spring offensive went sourAnd fell dead on hot lead.Just like the winter and summer ones willIn the vain, useless effort of getting a lead.23.23

It’s a war. A cold one.Of eventually assured destruction.It may not be me that kills you,but it sure will be him. 23.26

Reparations are soughtCharges of war crimes broughtand settled in the court of the victor.Meanwhile villages, raped and burnedloose all they hold dear, clutching looselyat their belongings. Crying as,truth, mother, father, childare torn away in a just, true, national way.23.21

THE WAR

You are the GeneralIn this battle of attrition.

Commiting your soldiers,in the knowledge

that none, nowhere can win.

23.04 11.1.9

Everyday each soldier’s bootfits better to his foot.

And he tries harder and harderto be the man that he couldto be the man who he was.

and then to be any man he can23.13

11 January: Palestinians carry the body of the Hamas militant Ahmed Zakot, who was killed during Israel’s offensive, during his funeral in the northern Gaza Strip.

It’s a failing of imagination& I blame the books.

Where are they now I’ve shut the spine?I can’t see any dysfunctional dystopias

no lions, witches or dictators.I’m abandoned in a vast grey petri-dish

full of mundane idiot’s social experimentations.Where are the single-minded heroes,

or the big hearted lunatics with nothing to loose?where is my struggle or my heroine?

They’re stuck between those two damned covers.

18.50 11.1.9

i t ’ s t h e p a r t - r e f l e c t i o n o f i t in the glass, that destroys me.

nothing could replicate it.But the resemblance

frightens me silly. 1.04 9.1.9

Mahmut Aygun

THE KEBAB KINGDied in Berlin of cancer.

Known as the “kebab king” he was born in Turkey and moved to Germa-ny at the age of 16 to open a snack stall. He invented the doner kebab

nearly 40 years ago.

Kebab meat, consisiting of roast lamb and spices, had tradition-

ally been served with rice but in a moment of inspiration Mr Aygun saw

that the future lay in putting the meat inside a pitta bread.

That allowed customers who had been drinking to wander off into the

night with their food and eat it as they stumbled home.

Mr Aygun said: “I thought how much easier it would be if they could take

their food with them.”

The first of the new snacks was served on March 2, 1971, at Hasir,

his restaurant in Berlin.

It was called a doner kebab after the Turkish word “dondurmek” which

means a rotating roast.

Mr Aygun went on to invent the yoghurt sauce often served with a

doner kebab.

The subsequent popularisiation of the doner kebab in the UK led to

many traditional fish and chip shops going bust.

In Berlin his death was greeted with sadness and one headline read

“Thanks, Mahmut!”

“I thought how much easier it would be if they could take their food with them.”

Oh, it’s you.

He paced at the mouth of a slippery tunnelWith a damp cigarettes in his mouthAnd when I eventually arrivedWe watched the nervous Thames go by

Then you looked at me suspiciously Thinking:

“the pigs are my preyperhaps i’ll catch themif they don’t catch me.everyone’s turning into my enemywhat are we to do?”

You smile and shine a torch in my faceI look at you fed-up

I occupy your spaceI am your stalkerI am the double-agentNot they…..

London’s voted a fascisthow could we let this happen?I whisper in your ear“Jaan, this is democracy in action.”

D: You and You alone

A great ordeal awaits you, But what are we to do?

I shall lead you safely there.someone else shall bring you back

D: An example to all men

P: It is for that I go

D: Or you will be carried home

P: O Luxury!

D: Cradled in your mother’s arms

P: You will spoil me

D: I mean to spoil you

P: I go to my reward

P: Then lead me through the very heart of Thebes. Since I, alone of all this city dare to go.

You hold my hand and lead the wayThrough the grey streets of Westminster.You shouting at the concrete giantsThat can never hear ya.No-one can,But for Brian HawAnd even he is unsure.

I watch my love standing alone in the square.Screaming out for help,Hoping to make monsters aware.

He has no audience,But isn’t scared.

I take him to the stationHe buys flowers for his grandma,Then sings a love songDown an public telephone.To no-one, at the other end,Oblivious to my lonely dismay

We take a train to BrightonOn the way he begsA man sitting near“Can I borrow your guitar?There’s something you’ve got to hear.”

the stranger closes his eyesand gently shakes his head.My love looks at me upset,shrugs his shoulders and says

‘Everyone’s a fascist.’

D: Exactly this is your mission, you go to watch. You may surprise them or they you.

D: Isn’t this the very reason foryour vigilant mission?

Perhaps you will catch them unaware - Unless you are caught first

P: Take me through the midst of the the land of Thebes I am the only man among them to bare this deed.

D: You are the only one who bears the burden for this city. And so you face the trial you have deserved Now follow, I will escort you there safely But another will bring you back from there…

P: Yes my mother! Let me play you a song!

D: A sight to strike every eye.

P: You mean to pamper me

D:……….In your mother’s arms

P: You really want to spoil me

D: To spoil you, yes in my own way

P: I go to claim only what I deserve

We meet a friend at the end of the pierI drop my head and speak a happy sigheased at the sight of the falling tide through the planks at my feet.

We skip stones on the seaand I think

“Tit for tat,We can’t live ThroughThis and that.One win one lossA little order in the chaos.One more pebble thrownIn the sea and,The tide rises imperceptibly.

Through friends addicted to sex,Wine, or anaesthetics we,Shot at, and fallingAt each others feet,Solider on, shoulder to shoulder,Breast to breast.Towards an unseen horizon.Waving goodbye to secrets,To innocence, to ideals.To loneliness.

He gently kisses me and says

‘Lets got back to London.’

Will you stay the night with me there?

D: You are formidable.

And formidable are the

sufferings you will find there.

depressed, half-dead and far from home.Ignorant of what was once knowntoo pathetic to cry. but not to hyperbolise.With nothing to look forward to but,a long hot bathand a long slow death. 0.43 9.1.9

The Long Song

I’m stuck in a long songIt’s not looped, but slowed downTo exactly fit the span of my life.

Its sound will gently fade outTo coincide with my last breath.

13.13 13.1.9The song never stops

But seems near sometimesThe refrain of my depressionis recognisable, to everyone.

13.15 13.1.9

The rumbling of tyres over asphaltor a chance lyric from the radio

a howl from someone i can’t helpa hello from someone i don’t know

the babbling of an ex-girlfriendand the songs of music legends

all add up in my mind’s earsto make this long song

this slow cacophonyover a life time.

13.41

This music is no improvisationbut created after long and

meticulous calculationNo masturbation-jamming

and few riffsIt only sounds the important bits

A lonely chorus or a simple melodywill sound out from time to time

in this slow cacophonyover a life line.

13.31 13.1.9

Thank you for reading

O-BIT

January 21, 2009Trials Loom for Parents Who Embraced Faith Over Medicine

WESTON, Wis. - Kara Neumann, 11, had grown so weak that she could not walkor speak. Her parents, who believe that God alone has the ability to healthe sick, prayed for her recovery but did not take her to a doctor.

After an aunt from California called the sheriff’s department here,frantically pleading that the sick child be rescued, an ambulance arrived atthe Neumann’s rural home on the outskirts of Wausau and rushed Kara to thehospital. She was pronounced dead on arrival.

The county coroner ruled that she had died from diabetic ketoacidosisresulting from undiagnosed and untreated juvenile diabetes. The conditionoccurs when the body fails to produce insulin, which leads to severedehydration and impairment of muscle, lung and heart function.

“Basically everything stops,” said Dr. Louis Philipson, who directs thediabetes center at the University of Chicago Medical Center, explaining whatoccurs in patients who do not know or “are in denial that they havediabetes.”

About a month after Kara’s death last March, the Marathon County stateattorney, Jill Falstad, brought charges of reckless endangerment against herparents, Dale and Leilani Neumann. Despite the Neumanns’ claim that thecharges violated their constitutional right to religious freedom, JudgeVincent Howard of Marathon County Circuit Court ordered Ms. Neumann to standtrial on May 14, and Mr. Neumann on June 23. If convicted, each faces up to25 years in prison.

“The free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects religious belief,”the judge wrote in his ruling, “but not necessarily conduct.”

Wisconsin law, he noted, exempts a parent or guardian who treats a childwith only prayer from being criminally charged with neglecting child welfarelaws, but only “as long as a condition is not life threatening.” Kara’sparents, Judge Howard wrote, “were very well aware of her deterioratingmedical condition.”

About 300 children have died in the United States in the last 25 years aftermedical care was withheld on religious grounds, said Rita Swan, executivedirector of Children’s Health Care Is a Legal Duty, a group based in Iowathat advocates punishment for parents who do not seek medical help whentheir children need it. Criminal codes in 30 states, including Wisconsin,provide some form of protection for practitioners of faith healing in casesof child neglect and other matters, protection that Ms. Swan’s groupopposes.

Shawn Peters, the author of three books on religion and the law, including“When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law” (Oxford, 2007),said the outcome of the Neumann case was likely to set an importantprecedent.

“The laws around the country are pretty unsettled,” said Mr. Peters, whoteaches religion at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and has beenconsulted by prosecutors and defense lawyers in the case.

In the last year, two other sets of parents, both in Oregon, were criminallycharged because they had not sought medical care for their children on theground that to do so would have violated their belief in faith healing. Onecouple were charged with manslaughter in the death of their 15-month-olddaughter, who died of pneumonia last March. The other couple were chargedwith criminally negligent homicide in the death of their 16-year-old son,who died from complications of a urinary tract infection that was severelypainful and easily treatable.

“Many types of abuses of children are motivated by rigid belief systems,”including severe corporal punishment, said Ms. Swan, a former ChristianScientist whose 16-month-old son, Matthew, died after she postponed takinghim to a hospital for treatment of what proved to be meningitis. “We learnedthe hard way.”

All states give social service authorities the right to go into homes andpetition for the removal of children, Ms. Swan said, but cases involvingmedical care often go unnoticed until too late. Parents who believe in faithhealing, she said, may feel threatened by religious authorities who opposemedical treatment. Recalling her own experience, she said, “we knew thatonce we went to the doctor, we’d be cut off from God.”

The crux of the Neumanns’ case, Mr. Peters said, will be whether the parentscould have known the seriousness of their daughter’s condition.

Investigators said the Neumanns last took Kara to a doctor when she was 3.According to a police report, the girl had lost the strength to speak theday before she died. “Kara laid down and was unable to move her mouth,” thereport said, “and merely made moaning noises and moved her eyes back andforth.”

The courts have ordered regular medical checks for the couple’s other threechildren, ages 13 to 16, and Judge Howard ordered all the parties in thecase not to speak to members of the news media. Neither Ms. Falstad nor thedefense lawyers, Gene Linehan and Jay Kronenwetter, would agree to beinterviewed.

The Neumanns, who had operated a coffee shop, Monkey Mo’s, in thismiddle-class suburb in the North Woods, are known locally as followers of anonline faith outreach group called Unleavened Bread Ministries, run by apreacher, David Eells. The site shares stories of faith healing and talksabout the end of the world.

An essay on the site signed Pastor Bob states that the Bible calls forhealing by faith alone. “Jesus never sent anyone to a doctor or a hospital,”the essay says. “Jesus offered healing by one means only! Healing was byfaith.”

A link from the site, helptheneumanns.com, asserts that the couple is beingpersecuted and “charged with the crime of praying.” The site also allowspeople to contribute to a legal fund for the Neumanns.

In the small town of Weston, many people shake their heads with dismay whenKara Neumann is mentioned. Tammy Klemp, 41, who works behind the counter ata convenience store here, said she disagreed with the Neumanns’ passiveresponse to their daughter’s illness but said she was not sure they shouldgo to prison.

“I’ve got mixed feelings,” Ms. Klemp said. “It’s just such a terribly sadcase.”

Chris Goebel, 30, a shipping department worker for a window maker, said manypeople in the area felt strongly that the parents should be punished.

“That little girl wasn’t old enough to make the decision about going to adoctor,” Mr. Goebel said. “And now, because some religious extremists wenttoo far, she’s gone.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company