Wednesday, January 30, 2013
So, Guess Who´s Lying...
Israel launches airstrikes on Syria
Israel Strikes Syrian Trucks Heading for Lebanon
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
A Boon for Cuban-American Entrepreneurs
The Economics of the Cuban Embargo
The time has come and almost gone for Washington to repair its broken relations with Cuba. For 53 years the White House has maintained a punishing embargo on trade with Cuba. Its proponents, with the goal of removing Cuba’s revolutionary government, still plead: “give it time.”
In 2001 President George W. Bush allowed for an exception permitting US companies to sell agricultural products to Cuba for immediate payment, although imports from Cuba remained off limits. Other economic sectors received no benefits.
Cuban Americans particularly from south Florida now export goods and remittances to relatives and friends while importing profits from sales made to fellow Cubans in Cuba, giving them an advantage denied to the rest of the country.
Washington pundits attribute superhuman strength to the anti-Castro lobby; thus no President would attempt to lift the trade and travel embargoes on the island. Yet, Cuban Americans trade with and travel to Cuba freely on a daily basis. The “embargo” applies to everyone except Cuban Americans.
This growing international trade, disguised as sending goods to needy family members in Cuba, now includes filling the hulls on 10 or more daily charter flights from US cities to Cuba. Cuban Americans send goods, often with “mules,” to provide family members in Cuba, needing supplies for their businesses. The “mules” return with cash, derived from sales of these goods. Some of the new Cuban stores and restaurants supplied by Miami-based Cubans make substantial profits, some of which get spent in Cuba, and ends up in Cuba’s central bank.
Miami, the United States’ poorest large city, derives income because it provides jobs involved in buying and selling the goods sent to Cuba. Jobs also arise from routine tasks created around the daily charter flights to and from Cuba, and the fees collected from take offs and landings. Add to this, the work for accountants, book-keepers and others.
Some unemployed Cuban Americans get jobs as mules transporting the goods and money from one country to the other. Miami banks also benefit.
In Cuba, this trade also creates jobs and wealth. Mercedes runs a paladar [private restaurant]in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood, “because we draw tourists who like good food, which I serve at my paladar.”
Some paladar customers flew to Havana from Miami. These Cuban Americans come to visit relatives and maybe check on their new investments in Havana family-run businesses. “Relatives in Florida supply me with food I can’t get easily in Cuba,” Mercedes said, “like some spices, and packaged goods. I send them money for these products. They make a profit, and so do I. The government makes money from taxes I pay, and jobs grow in Cuba’s tourist industry.”
US-based charter flights have full hulls, even those with few passengers. One charter flight company manager told us: “Passengers don’t matter that much. The hull is totally full.”
Much of the Cuba trade flows through the Miami International Airport, meaning capital moves from the US to Cuba; most of the luggage contents, however, remain in Cuba. The boon to Miami airport services means jobs, fees and taxes, which remain as capital in south Florida. The goods purchased in south Florida by Cubans (relatives, mules, etc) benefit local businesses.
This trade multiplies jobs throughout the area — as well as it does for Cuba: In Miami sales emanate from stores and lead to jobs in transportation, parking, hotel facilities, restaurants, and luggage-handling. Count the businesses providing services to the people traveling to Cuba and sending goods there. Don’t omit the expanded police force, and extra officials required in immigration, and customs; nor fail to consider jobs servicing air planes, and their jetways, and additional personnel needed for landings and take offs, and extra jobs in airport administration and maintenance created by expanded travel. Think of Miami’s increased tax revenues.
South Florida represents a Cuban settler state within the United States. It counters its interests against those of the dominant society, with the society’s ignorant acquiescence. The Miami-based Cuban Americans and their Cuba-based families have used US-Cuba policy, the embargo representing the power of the nation for their own self-interest, and in order to attain a comparative advantage vis a vis the rest of the American population.
Since 1960, commitment to overthrow of the Cuban government has functioned as US foreign policy on Cuba, a policy now controlled informally by south Florida Cuban-Americans. The Cuban American ethnic enclave assumed the political power needed to turn south Florida into an autonomous Cuban settler state inside US boundaries, so that the embargo does not get applied to the Cuban American enclave. The enclave barons use the embargo to secure, for themselves, a protection of the Cuba trade monopoly. This challenges stated US national interests.
Camouflaged by ubiquitous anti-Castro rhetoric, the Cuban American entrepreneurs have manufactured a lucrative business with the island, regulated by the very government they pretend to hate. The rightwing congressional representatives pretend to fight for every law to punish the “Castro regime” while in practice turn a dead eye to the growing trade that helps Florida’s and Cuba’s economy. Preserve the embargo, but make an exception for Cuban Americans.
By recognizing the facts about this trade, the White House might become inspired to lift the embargo – a move to benefit all Americans. US government revenue would grow from opening trade and travel with Cuba. In the process we might also regain a missing piece of US sovereignty!
Saul Landau, Professor Emeritus, California State University, Pomona, produced FIDEL and WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP, available on dvd.
Nelson P. Valdes is Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
The Mind-Warping Animated GIF Art of Paolo Čerić
Digital artist Paolo Čerić is currently studying information processing at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Croatia where his experiments with processing and digital art have resulted in a steady stream of fascinating animations which he publishes on his blog Patakk. Čerić tells me that he began about two years ago knowing very little about digital art or animation, but was fascinated watching other coders create art with code. For a while he simply tried to mimic other animations he’d seen, but lately has truly developed his own personal style that varies from pulsating geometric patterns to glitch art and everything in between.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Diario español El País hace el ridículo en su afiebrado antichavismo
Diario español El País hace el ridículo en su afiebrado antichavismo.
La edición impresa y la web del periódico español El País publicó en su edición del 24 de enero (hora de España) una foto en la que identifican a Hugo Chávez entubado tras su operación en Cuba. Con el título de “La salud del presidente de Venezuela”, la publicación sostiene que fue tomada hace unos días.
Sin embargo, la imagen pertenece a un video publicado en YouTube en 2008. A través del video titulado “Intubación de Acromegalia AMVAD” publicado en la página de videos desde hace 5 años por el usuario “deqcomMX”. En el video observa a un hombre similar a Chávez, entubado, pero evidentemente la figura no pertenece al mandatario venezolano.
El País anunció la foto como exclusiva mundial y le colocó marca de agua, la cual describieron como “El presidente Chávez, durante el tratamiento médico recibido en Cuba”, donde incluso colocan “Prohibida su reproducción”.
“La enfermedad del presidente venezolano Hugo Chávez ha estado envuelta en la opacidad desde que viajó a La Habana el pasado 10 de diciembre y ha generado una polémica política en su país. EL PAÍS ofrece una imagen inédita y exclusiva, tomada hace unos días, que muestra un momento de su tratamiento médico en Cuba, según las fuentes consultadas por este diario”, se leía en la página web del diario.
El video de “Intubación de Acromegalia AMVAD” lleva más de 88 mil reproducciones y justo al minuto 2:33 se observa la misma imagen que publicó el diario ibérico como exclusiva.
La imagen fue retirada 20 minutos después de su portal y fue distribuida por diversos medios a nivel mundial y la agencia EFE.
También El País abre su edicion impresa de este jueves con la foto falsa como gran exclusiva, pero al ver la reacción tras ponerla en su web procedieron a retirarla de su sitio en internet.
Al parecer esa supuesta fotografía del presidente Hugo Chávez recibiendo tratamiento médico en Cuba había sido enviada a distintos medios para tratar de venderla, no obstante hay quienes sí se han olido de antemano lo sospechoso del asunto.
Pedro J. Ramírez, director del diario El Mundo indicó esta tarde en su cuenta en Twitter que al periódico quisieron venderle una gráfica, pero que la rechazó.
“Ah, por cierto, ayer nos quisieron vender una foto de Chavez entubado. Dijimos no. Cuando la veaís en otro medio ya diréis si acertamos”, escribió Ramírez.
La portada de El País con la falsa foto del Presidente Chávez
Grotesca y Falsa
El gobierno de Venezuela calificó de grotesca y falsa la imagen del diario El País.El ministro de Información venezolano, Ernesto Villegas, publicó en su cuenta de Twitter el siguiente mensaje: “Tan grotesca como falsa la foto de ‘Chávez entubado’ que hoy publica en primera página el venerable diario El País de España”.
Mea Culpa de El País
En la primera hora de esta madrugada El País ha publicado un mea culpa en su página digital con el siguiente texto:
EL PAÍS retiró esta madrugada de su página web una foto que mostraba a un hombre entubado en una cama de hospital y que una agencia informativa había suministrado al periódico afirmando que se trataba de Hugo Chávez, presidente de Venezuela. Chávez se encuentra hospitalizado en Cuba tras ser operado de un cáncer cuyas características el Gobierno venezolano no ha querido precisar. La foto permaneció en la página web del periódico aproximadamente una media hora.
En el texto que acompañaba la foto se afirmaba que EL PAÍS no había logrado verificar de forma independiente las circunstancias, el lugar o la fecha en la que se había realizado la fotografía. Tras constatar que la imagen ofrecida no correspondía a Chávez, EL PAÍS paralizó asimismo la distribución de su edición impresa y procedió a enviar una nueva edición a los puntos de venta. El incidente puede ocasionar que la edición impresa del periódico con fecha de hoy jueves 24 de enero no esté disponible en algunos kioscos, tanto en España como en el extranjero.
La furibunda y enfermiza obsesión antichavista de Juan Luis Cebrián y el Grupo Prisa le ha jugado una mala pasada al diario El País y ha puesto en evidencia una vez más la crisis de valores de un periodismo afianzado en la manipulación, la mentira y el engaño.
(Con información de Agencias, La Jornada, Noticias 24 y Cubadebate)
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
New Papercraft Stop-Motion Music Video for Shugo Tokumaru by Animation Masters Kijek / Adamski
Beautiful music video. This article, taken from Colossal...
Sit back, turn up the volume and set this video to full-screen. Behold the lastest stop motion music video from animation duo Katarzyna Kijek and Przemysław Adamski (previouslyhere and here) for Japanese singer-songwriter Shugo Tokumaru. The video was launched just this morning courtesy of Pitchfork and features a brilliant, continuous parade of what must be thousands of cut paper and foam core silhouettes set to Tokumaru’s quirky trackKatachi.
Sit back, turn up the volume and set this video to full-screen. Behold the lastest stop motion music video from animation duo Katarzyna Kijek and Przemysław Adamski (previouslyhere and here) for Japanese singer-songwriter Shugo Tokumaru. The video was launched just this morning courtesy of Pitchfork and features a brilliant, continuous parade of what must be thousands of cut paper and foam core silhouettes set to Tokumaru’s quirky trackKatachi.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Proof: Armed Citizens Make Good Government
The Founding Fathers agree: an armed population makes good government. Numerous quotes from the revolutionary era make their intent extremely clear — that individuals were meant to keep and bear arms for the protection of the country and the defense of its Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The Preamble to the Bill of Rights explicitly states that these amendments to the Constitution were put in place to restrain the federal government and discourage abuse. Ratified Dec. 15, 1791, it reads: "THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution. "
Meanwhile, history has shown that disarmed populations and dictators always go hand in hand, with abusers and seekers of power preferring a people unable to stand up for their rights and easy to trample and dominate.
Our birthright as Americans is at stake: if we don't stand up to defend the 2nd Amendment, we stand to let all our other precious rights slip away, from freedom of speech on down.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Lupe Fiasco KICKED Off Stage At Obama Inauguration Party Rapper Lupe Fia...
Freedom of speech a la Americana...
Venezuela engrasa su locomotora económica
Venezuela engrasa su locomotora económica
La República Bolivariana de Venezuela despidió el 2012 con un crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) del 5,5 % que clasifica entre los más altos a nivel mundial y se espera que en 2013 alcance cifra similares o superiores con la reciente entrada del país en el Mercado Común del Sur (MERCOSUR).
Contra los pronósticos de las fuerzas opositoras y de los medios de comunicación que anunciaban “desastres económicos” para la nación sudamericana, resultó sumamente satisfactoria los adelantos obtenidos a través del recién concluido año, pese a los embates que representaba la profunda crisis económica que padecen Estados Unidos, Europa y Japón.
Además, el aumento del PIB venezolano va en constante correspondencia con el crecimiento del bienestar de vida de su población debido a los programas sociales que se han puesto en acción desde la llegada al poder en 1999 del presidente Hugo Chávez.
En contraposición, en varios países de la región se incrementa el PIB pero las ganancias son extraídas por las grandes transnacionales o van a parar las arcas de las minoritarias personas ricas, mientras que la población sufre hambre, miseria e insalubridades.
Por nueve trimestres consecutivos la economía de la República Bolivariana se expandió lo cual permitió un incremento significativo de la demanda agregada interna, el consumo y las inversiones, en los sectores público y privado.
Para acallar a los opositores y críticos que señalan como uno de los grandes problemas del gobierno venezolano que solo su poderío se basa en los ricos yacimientos petrolíferos del país, los datos han sido aleccionadores: la actividad económica no petrolera creció 5,7% con una incidencia de 4,4 puntos en el aumento total del PIB. Mientras, el sector petrolero experimentó un aumento de 1,4 %, que según explicó el presidente del Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV), Nelson Merentes, ese desempeño se mantiene dentro de las tendencias históricas de una rama de la economía sujeta a cuotas de producción por parte de la Organización de Países Exportadores de Petróleo (OPEP).
Merentes significó en rueda de prensa que la meta era de 5 % en PIB, y en 2011 fue de 4,2 %. “Los número negativos quedaron atrás, ahora Venezuela entra en una fase de desarrollo y se ubica entre los cinco países con mayor crecimiento en Latinoamérica”, agregó.
El titular del BCV explicó que el aumento económico fue impulsado por los sectores de la construcción (16,8%), comercio (9,2%), actividades no petroleras y privado, y sobre todo de una serie de de proyectos e inversiones dirigidos a la inclusión social de la población.
Este aspecto ha sido fundamental pues al darles mayor participación a los numerosos habitantes (cerca del 70 %) que antes de 1999 vivían en estado de pobreza, el poder adquisitivo de los ciudadanos aumentó y la economía interna se retroalimenta constantemente.
Uno de los índices a destacar ha sido la disminución de la tasa de desocupación que cerró en 2012 con solo 6,4%, debido a las políticas económicas y sociales que se han desarrollo en el país.
El presidente del Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), Elías Eljuri informó recientemente que en agosto el desempleo alcanzó 7,9 % mientras septiembre y octubre fue de 7,3 %. La disminución ha sido progresiva, pues añadió, desde 1999 hasta 2012 se han generado 4 millones de empleos formales en el país.
Datos estadísticos señalan que el empleo formal ha crecido de 48,3 % a 57,5 %, alrededor de 9,2 puntos porcentuales, y la informalidad descendió de 51,7 % a 42,5 %.
Si los dividendos que antes se obtenían por las ventas de petróleo y derivados se extraían del país por las empresas trasnacionales ahora estan destinados al bienestar del pueblo lo que ha permitido que en 2011 la pobreza por hogar se ubicó en alrededor del 21,2 % y la extrema en 6,5 %.
Antes de 1999 la primera se situaba en cerca del 70 % y la segunda en 25 %.
En la mejoría del nivel de vida ha influido la construcción de nuevas viviendas con amplias facilidades que ofrece el gobierno (en ocasiones en forma gratuita) para que los ciudadanos puedan adquirirlas. En Caracas y en las principales ciudades venezolanas comienzan a desaparecer los miles de tugurios levantados por la población de escasos recursos en épocas anteriores.
Entre mediados de 2011 y finales de 2012 se construyeron en el país 346 718 casas lo que posibilitó cumplir el plan trazado al 99 % de la meta establecida para la Gran Misión Vivienda de 350 000 unidades.
En 2012 se erigieron 200 080 inmuebles, 147 642 fabricadas por el sector público (74 %) mientras el sector privado construyó 52 438 (26 %). Este sector creció un 16,8 % el pasado año.
Para la Gran Misión Vivienda se destinaron en los dos últimos años 98 mil millones de bolívares y para 2013 la cifra prevista es de 56 mil millones de bolívares, en un proyecto que estipula 380 000 nuevas unidades.
A la par se han puesto en funcionamiento otras 20 empresas para la fabricación de insumos para la construcción por lo cual se aseguran la mayoría de los materiales destinados a esas obras como cemento, servicios sanitarios, cables eléctricos, sin la necesidad de importarlos a altos costos.
Con la reciente entrada de Venezuela en el MERCOSUR, este país tendrá asegurado otro gran mercado donde colocar sus cada vez más diversificadas producciones lo que augura una mayor estabilidad económica para los próximos años.
Contra los pronósticos de las fuerzas opositoras y de los medios de comunicación que anunciaban “desastres económicos” para la nación sudamericana, resultó sumamente satisfactoria los adelantos obtenidos a través del recién concluido año, pese a los embates que representaba la profunda crisis económica que padecen Estados Unidos, Europa y Japón.
Además, el aumento del PIB venezolano va en constante correspondencia con el crecimiento del bienestar de vida de su población debido a los programas sociales que se han puesto en acción desde la llegada al poder en 1999 del presidente Hugo Chávez.
En contraposición, en varios países de la región se incrementa el PIB pero las ganancias son extraídas por las grandes transnacionales o van a parar las arcas de las minoritarias personas ricas, mientras que la población sufre hambre, miseria e insalubridades.
Por nueve trimestres consecutivos la economía de la República Bolivariana se expandió lo cual permitió un incremento significativo de la demanda agregada interna, el consumo y las inversiones, en los sectores público y privado.
Para acallar a los opositores y críticos que señalan como uno de los grandes problemas del gobierno venezolano que solo su poderío se basa en los ricos yacimientos petrolíferos del país, los datos han sido aleccionadores: la actividad económica no petrolera creció 5,7% con una incidencia de 4,4 puntos en el aumento total del PIB. Mientras, el sector petrolero experimentó un aumento de 1,4 %, que según explicó el presidente del Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV), Nelson Merentes, ese desempeño se mantiene dentro de las tendencias históricas de una rama de la economía sujeta a cuotas de producción por parte de la Organización de Países Exportadores de Petróleo (OPEP).
Merentes significó en rueda de prensa que la meta era de 5 % en PIB, y en 2011 fue de 4,2 %. “Los número negativos quedaron atrás, ahora Venezuela entra en una fase de desarrollo y se ubica entre los cinco países con mayor crecimiento en Latinoamérica”, agregó.
El titular del BCV explicó que el aumento económico fue impulsado por los sectores de la construcción (16,8%), comercio (9,2%), actividades no petroleras y privado, y sobre todo de una serie de de proyectos e inversiones dirigidos a la inclusión social de la población.
Este aspecto ha sido fundamental pues al darles mayor participación a los numerosos habitantes (cerca del 70 %) que antes de 1999 vivían en estado de pobreza, el poder adquisitivo de los ciudadanos aumentó y la economía interna se retroalimenta constantemente.
Uno de los índices a destacar ha sido la disminución de la tasa de desocupación que cerró en 2012 con solo 6,4%, debido a las políticas económicas y sociales que se han desarrollo en el país.
El presidente del Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), Elías Eljuri informó recientemente que en agosto el desempleo alcanzó 7,9 % mientras septiembre y octubre fue de 7,3 %. La disminución ha sido progresiva, pues añadió, desde 1999 hasta 2012 se han generado 4 millones de empleos formales en el país.
Datos estadísticos señalan que el empleo formal ha crecido de 48,3 % a 57,5 %, alrededor de 9,2 puntos porcentuales, y la informalidad descendió de 51,7 % a 42,5 %.
Si los dividendos que antes se obtenían por las ventas de petróleo y derivados se extraían del país por las empresas trasnacionales ahora estan destinados al bienestar del pueblo lo que ha permitido que en 2011 la pobreza por hogar se ubicó en alrededor del 21,2 % y la extrema en 6,5 %.
Antes de 1999 la primera se situaba en cerca del 70 % y la segunda en 25 %.
En la mejoría del nivel de vida ha influido la construcción de nuevas viviendas con amplias facilidades que ofrece el gobierno (en ocasiones en forma gratuita) para que los ciudadanos puedan adquirirlas. En Caracas y en las principales ciudades venezolanas comienzan a desaparecer los miles de tugurios levantados por la población de escasos recursos en épocas anteriores.
Entre mediados de 2011 y finales de 2012 se construyeron en el país 346 718 casas lo que posibilitó cumplir el plan trazado al 99 % de la meta establecida para la Gran Misión Vivienda de 350 000 unidades.
En 2012 se erigieron 200 080 inmuebles, 147 642 fabricadas por el sector público (74 %) mientras el sector privado construyó 52 438 (26 %). Este sector creció un 16,8 % el pasado año.
Para la Gran Misión Vivienda se destinaron en los dos últimos años 98 mil millones de bolívares y para 2013 la cifra prevista es de 56 mil millones de bolívares, en un proyecto que estipula 380 000 nuevas unidades.
A la par se han puesto en funcionamiento otras 20 empresas para la fabricación de insumos para la construcción por lo cual se aseguran la mayoría de los materiales destinados a esas obras como cemento, servicios sanitarios, cables eléctricos, sin la necesidad de importarlos a altos costos.
Con la reciente entrada de Venezuela en el MERCOSUR, este país tendrá asegurado otro gran mercado donde colocar sus cada vez más diversificadas producciones lo que augura una mayor estabilidad económica para los próximos años.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Whiteout at the MoMA
The Presleying of Abstract Art
Elvis Presley borrowed so much from James Brown that when James Brown saw him perform he said, “That’s me up there.” Like music critics who give credit to Elvis Presley for the creation of rock ‘n roll, ignoring Ike Turner or Chuck Berry, the same kind of chauvinism happens in the art world, when complete credit is given to white European and American artists for the creation of Modern Art. Are curators and critics deliberately ignoring the full picture, even if they know better? Or do they cling to their version of the facts like Tea Party people denying global warming?
Case in point: New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) recently opened an exhibition of art practices in Eastern and Western Europe and the United States in the early twentieth century titled “Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925.” On view from December 23, 2012 through April 15, 2013, their promotional materials proclaim:
“Abstraction may be modernism’s greatest innovation. Today it is so central to the conception of artmaking that the time when an abstract artwork was unimaginable has become hard to imagine.”
I have yet to visit this show, so am not questioning if the works are worthy of being considered of great importance to the development of modernism. What I am reacting to is the fact that this show’s title and premise deliberately ignores the full picture, refuting mountains of evidence found over centuries of human history.
Facts such as the fossilized engravings found in the South African Blomos Cave, proven to be about 77,000 years old, which provide the earliest known evidence humans were creating abstract images since at least the Middle Stone Age era. This find was first reported in January 2002 in the well respected journals Science and Scientific American. Facts such as the well documented abstract images found in cave paintings, as figurines, and decorative detailing on utilitarian objects made during the Upper Paleolithic era, 40,000 ago, and the huge influence of monuments of archaic cultures such as Stonehenge, and the pictographs over 50 miles of Peruvian desert, thought to have been created between 200 BC and 700 AD by the Nazca Indians, a United Nations World Heritage site since 1994. Closer to home, explorers, adventurers and archeologists have uncovered abstract images in the altered landscapes of earth mounds, scattered throughout the Midwest and Southern United States, some dating as early as 250 BCE, including artifacts such as copper figures, shards of pottery and bits of fabrics, which demonstrate abstraction was a widely popular form of representation long before the twentieth century.
More facta such as, by the second half of the 19th century, European and American interest in accumulating humanity’s “artifacts” was so strong that public moneys were spent on housing ethnographic collections in grand buildings, including an anthropology museum built in Berlin in 1873, and in New York, the Museum of Natural History, which opened in 1877 and began loading rooms full of arts from peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska, Oceania, the Far East, Mesoamerica, South America and elsewhere around the globe, where they still reside. Also, ground shaking expositions and world fairs brought American and European artists in direct contact with ethnographic materials and actual practitioners who demonstrated their traditional art forms, from Asia, African, Pacific and Native American cultures. Crowds numbered in the millions at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exhibition (1876), Paris’ Exposition Universelle (1889 and 1900), the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), Brussels’ Exposition Universelle in 1897, Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition (1901), and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis (1904). Around the turn of the twentieth century, vanguard Paris-based artists are said to have “discovered” African masks and figure sculptures at the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro (now Musée de l’Homme). By then they could easily collect inexpensive curios in flea markets, brought by sailors, missionaries, and other travelers returning from colonized territories, and many gallery dealers offered quality examples of ancient African and Oceanic arts.
This led to the fact that Alfred Stieglitz (one of the artists featured in the current MoMa show) claimed his New York City gallery, commonly known as “291” for its Fifth Avenue address, in 1914 mounted the first U.S. exhibit of Central and West African sculpture where it was called “art” rather than “ethnography.” Much of Stieglitz’s exhibition could easily be described as “abstract.”
The fact that Surrealism’s philosopher André Breton famously displayed a “wall of objects,” behind his desk in his Paris atelier where he lived from 1922 to 1966. This collection easily fulfills standard definitions of abstraction. There were sculptures from the South Pacific islands of Easter Island, New Guinea and New Ireland, besides other artworks including Native American, pre-Hispanic Mexican and Inuit objects, along with paintings and engravings by his friends and associates, including Francis Picabia, Roberto Matta, Wassily Kandinsky and various famous others. Breton’s wall was transferred and installed at the Centre Pompidou’s show, “La Révolution Surréaliste” (2002), and was featured in critic Alan Riding’s article forThe New York Times (December 17, 2002) when everything in Breton’s estate except the wall was being prepared for a 2003 auction. Riding says Breton was especially inspired by Oceanic art, considering it “one of the great lock-keepers of our heart.” Ishmael Reed, after viewing Breton’s collection in Paris commented that “instead of being called a Surrealist, Breton should be called an Africanist.”
In fact New York MoMA’s current exhibit’s claim of “inventing abstraction” is even more audacious because it even refutes documentation available in the museum’s own exhibition history. Since its founding in 1929, MoMA mounted various shows intended to heighten awareness of connections between contemporary arts and non-Western and indigenous traditional arts, largely because many of them employ “abstraction.” The aesthetics of Aztec, Maya, and Inca art were featured in “American Sources of Modern Art (1933).” Major exhibits of African and Oceanic art were assembled in 1935 and 1946. “Indian Art of the United States (1941)” acknowledged the huge revival and popular reinventions of Native American arts by the early twentieth century, such as the prized plates and bowls by the Hopi master potter Nampeyo, and the Kwakiutl blankets, carved masks and boats, and ceremonial songs and dances documented in Edward Curtis’s 1914 film, Land of the Headhunters. Including over one thousand examples of ancient, historic and contemporary arts and crafts made by American Indians living in the present continental United States, Alaska and Canada, Newsweek magazine said this show set Indian art “among American fine arts.” By 1985, when then Director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture William Rubin curated MOMA’s famously controversial show, “‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art,” he placed quotation marks around the title word “Primitivism,” to acknowledge difficulties inherent in using this prevailing term. Mr. Rubin also noted the word’s embodiment of Western Europeans’ ambivalence when considering objects and cultures based in traditional communities of Africa, Oceania, Native America, Mesoamerica, and other non-Western locales in his two-volume publication that accompanied the show. The volumes included many photographs of white European and American artists’ studios and homes, revealing significant collections of abstract “primitive art.” In the exhibit and two volumes, individual works, similar to or the actual traditional objects owned or viewed in museums by various icons of Modernism, were juxtaposed with the modern works they influenced. These European artists, soon to be considered the vanguard of abstraction, included philosopher and poet Guillaume Apollinaire, Georges Braque, Constantin Brancusi, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Max Ernst, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Jean Miró, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso. Many of these artists are included in this current show.
So it is well known, certainly in art world circles, that many modern artists experimenting with new forms have been avaricious collectors of images and objects made for everyday home or ceremonial use in non-European cultures, be they ceramics, basketry, textiles, hide paintings, beading and quillwork, masks and other sculptures made of wood, carved stone, wrought iron, and so forth. So many artists, of all ethnicities, have used these pre-existing objects, ancient or not, to create new works that the art world accepted and defined the practice with terms such as “borrowed,” “appropriated,” and “found.”
Then there is question of which twentieth century artists’ work was chosen included in this MoMA show, whose ambition is to survey a “broad range of mediums—including paintings, drawings, prints, books, sculptures, films, photographs, recordings, and dance pieces—that represent a radical moment when the rules of art making were fundamentally transformed.” Jerry Saltz, writing “MoMA’s Inventing Abstraction is Illuminating—Although It Shines That Light Mighty Selectively,” on the website www. vulture.com, confirms that the selections focus on white practicioners of Abstraction: “There’s an empty gallery devoted to music by Stravinsky, Debussy and others: Fine. But there’s no Scott Joplin! No Dixieland, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong or Jelly Roll Morton. All are as original and as ‘abstract’ as these Europeans.”
Buried in the second paragraph of MoMA’s “Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925” press release is the far more accurate term, “reinvented,” which could easily have been chosen for use in the show’s title and point of view. So why pretend only white European and American artists practiced abstract art in the early 20th century and are the first in history to do so?
Journalist Ron Suskind reported a George W. Bush administration insider told him: “We are an empire now and when we act we create our own reality.” Can it be that in areas of art and culture, museums also believe they are entitled to create their own “facts”?
Carla Blank is currently writing Storming the Old Boys Citadel—Pioneer Women Architects of 19th Century North America. Also a director and choreographer, she collaborated with Robert Wilson on KOOL-Dancing in My Mind, which premiered at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2009.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Powers of Ten™ (1977)
Powers of Ten takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of the universe. Every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only a s a speck of light among many others. Returning to Earth with breathtaking speed, we move inward- into the hand of the sleeping picnicker- with ten times more magnification every ten seconds. Our journey ends inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell. POWERS OF TEN © 1977 EAMES OFFICE LLC (Available at www.eamesoffice.com)
Assassination Attack on Politician Caught on Tape
The only thing missing on L´ Imaginaire Collectif...
The Bulgarian politician Ahmed Dogan was unhurt after an as-yet-unnamed assailant rushed the stage and attempted to shoot him with a small handgun.
Dogan is the leader of Bulgaria's opposition movement for Rights and Freedoms. As he addressed that group's congress on Saturday, an attacker attempted to shoot him but the gun reportedly "misfired," according to the Sofia, Bulgaria news agency.
The agency said Bulgaria's Socialist party (one of several parties in opposition to the Movement for Rights and Freedoms in Bulgaria) issued a statement condemning the assassination attempt. "What happened cannot be downplayed. This is an assault on democracy in Bulgaria and against everyone in Bulgaria," said the Socialists. They added, "We are deeply alarmed at the processes going on in society and at the possible destabilization of the country.
Métropolis por Strook
Semejante al vitral de una iglesia.
El artista urbano de origen Belga Strook, nos ofrece su nueva creación, un diseño impresionante para una sala de conciertos en Bruges, titulado nada más y nada menos que Metropolis. Si, el diseño es inspirado en la película de ciencia ficción de 1927 del mismo nombre, realizada por el cineasta alemán Fritz Lang.
El diseño ha sido enteramente realizado con un marcador blanco en el interior de la sala de concierto sobre una de las ventanas.
El producto final es sencillamente magistral.
sacado de: Journal du Design
Friday, January 18, 2013
Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff
Rachmaninoff performs his solo piano works in a spectacular recording made on a Bosendorfer 290SE piano, using the music rolls made in his time. This remarkable listening experience brings Rachmaninoff's phenomenal pianistic talent to life in today's world. By using unprecedented new techniques of transfer and reproduction, the mechanical aspects of music roll performances have been eliminated. More astonishingly, these advances reveal the subtleties and fine details of Rachmaninoff's playing with startling clarity, showing us why he was regarded as perhaps the greatest pianist of his time.
- Prelude in C Sharp Minor, op.3 no.2 (recorded: 17 March 1919)
- Lilacs, op.21 no.5 (recorded: 6 April 1922)
- The flight of the Bumblebee (recorded: 1 February 1929)
Velvet Underground & Nico - Unripened: The Norman Dolph Acetate - 05 - H...
From The Velvet Underground's 1st studio session, recorded over 4 days in April 1966. This acetate copy of the final mixes originally belonged to
studio owner Norman Dolph, and was famously found at a yard sale for 75 cents and then sold for over $25,000. Several different versions have appeared in various dark corners of the internet over the past few years; this one, from the bootleg CD "Unripened", sounds best IMO. Perhaps "least awful" is a more accurate description of the recording's sound quality, but this is still an amazing artifact. Ladies and gentlemen, The Velvet Underground and Nico.
Here are the liner notes:
"
What you're holding in your hand is what the first Velvet Underground album would have sounded like had it not been rejected by the powers that be. Andy Warhol's intention was to capitalize on the buzz surrounding the band's debut gigs under the guise of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows. A music-art-freak out-happening. Andy, wanting to keep the band's abrasive sound and seedy subject matter, arranged for a session at a run down New York studio called Scepter Studios, under the watchful eye of a Mr. Norman Dolph. Payment for the four day recording session in April 1966 was one of Andy's paintings. Which in time would prove very financially rewarding for Mr. Dolph.
The recordings cut onto acetate were listened to by Columbia Records and rejected. As was all the great era defining music, check out The Beatles and The Rolling Stones for similar tales of woe. The group would later that year be dispatched to Los Angeles to re-record the bulk of these tunes, "Heroin", "Venus In Furs" and "I'm Waiting For The Man" with another producer Tom Wilson at a studio called TTG. the other tunes would be remixed and a
recording of "sunday Morning" cut in New York would be added alongside "There She Goes Again". The track listing changed around to give a more
user friendly feel to the album.
Here we present the original album taken from the acetate version with its original running order. "European Son" opens the album, which is a completely different take than the released version. It has a blusier structure that builds more gradually and is several minutes longer. "The Black Angel's Death Song" is a different mix to the finished tune. "All Tomorrow's Parties" again is a different mix to the released version. "I'll Be Your Mirror" has a radically different sound that has less echo on Nico's vocals and the backing vocals are lower in the mix. "Heroin" is a completely different version. The guitar line is different, vocal infections are different and contain some different lyrics. The drumming is more primitive and runs parallel with a tambourine.
"Femme Fatale" is also a radically different mix. The percussion is more prominent and the background vocals used in a poppier way. "Venus In Furs" is a completely different version. The vocal accents are different.
Instrumentation more based around john Cale's viola than the guitar, as in the released version. "I'm waiting For The Man" is a completely different version. The guitar line is completely different and some of the lyrics also. No drums, just tambourine and a bluesy guitar solo. "Run Run Run" is a different mix to the released version.
What also changes the feel of the album is the running order. This original version starting with "European son" and with the absence of the lighter cut
"Sunday Morning" that opened the released version, gives the album a darker feel. Which one is better? That is up to you to decide. But now for the first time since 1966 you can hear the dreamscape that the band and Mr. Andy Warhol had in store for us. So sit back, peel slowly and listen to this lost masterpiece in all its unripened glory.
Taken from original acetate version. Every effort has been made to clean up the sound, but also keep the feel.
"
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Que el mundo está convulsionado, ¿a quién le importa?
Declara la ONU hoy Día Internacional de The Beatles
La Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) declaró el 16 de enero como el Día Mundial de The Beatles, luego de que ayer dieran a conocer que dos de sus temas “Love me do” y “P.S.I. love you” forman parte del dominio público en Europa.
De acuerdo con el portal de Radiofórmula, el primero en determinar un día mundial al cuarteto de Liverpool fue la Organización de Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (Unesco) en enero del año pasado; sin
embargo, fue hasta hoy cuando la ONU lo emitió de manera oficial.
embargo, fue hasta hoy cuando la ONU lo emitió de manera oficial.
La fecha elegida corresponde a la inauguración del Club Caverna de Liverpool en 1957, lugar donde hicieron su primera aparición John, Paul, George y Ringo como The Beatles.
Además de dedicarlo como un homenaje a la trayectoria del cuarteto de Liverpool, así como a la influencia que ha dejado a las generaciones posteriores.
Su primer álbum fue “Please, please me” en los 60, que marcó el inicio de una enorme popularidad; sin embargo, 10 años después la banda se separó y cada uno de sus integrantes inició proyectos en solitario.
A pesar del tiempo y de que sólo sobreviven Paul McCartney y Ringo Starr, The Beatles es considerada como la mejor banda del siglo XX.
(Con información de Notimex)
Mali’s Secret Infrastructure
The armed Islamists who fled to Mali after the fall of Qaddafi’s government are significant, but they do not represent a complete rationale for French intervention. The Tuareg rose up in revolt partly due to Islamist influence, but also through nationalist impulse due to the general patterns of land and water grabs that marked what was considered by the North Atlantic countries to be the “stable democracy” of Amadou Toumani Touré.
The government of Touré fell due to the military’s frustration over the wildfire advance of Tuareg militancy, but the coup government’s failure to stem the tide of revolt brought in foreign powers. The tipping point of French intervention came not on Sunday, January 13, but as early as April 5 of last year, as Tuareg forces swept further along the Niger River to Douentza. At that point, the fifteen West African countries began planning a military intervention against the rebels with the logistical aid of France. The plan was OKed by the UN Security Council in December.
On Monday, January 14, the day after the French air strikes commenced, Tuareg rebels took over the town of Diabaly (the site of the summary execution of 16 unarmed preachers by the Malian army in September of last year), advancing the border of territory claimed by the rebels even closer south towards the capital.
As air strikes continued in Mali, President Hollande of France lectured the World Future Energy Summit about investing in renewable energy to avoid ‘catastrophe’. The immediate contradiction between the expenditure of fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses to fuel the global military industrial complex is merely the beginning of a tangled web of modern colonial relationships being established in Africa today.
The Malibya Canal
Mali is not known for being a nation with many natural resources, so Hollande’s insistence that the invasion comes at the insistence of the international community to remove militant Islamists from the country’s north seems to hold up. But tilting lances at Islamists is not quite enough: the de facto leader of Libya today, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, has declared that Shari Law will now define Libya’s juridical order, yet French corporations have paid regular visits to his government. The fight in Mali is not about only about Islam, but about the relationship between Islam and investment, land, and particularly, water.
In 2009, Patrik Lukas, the head of the Africa Division of France’s main body of transnational corporate interests, Medef International, called for help from the French government. Complaining of competition from the Chinese government during a visit to Mali and Senegal, Lukas insisted that “there is a real issue that goes beyond the issue of the private sector… The French government should definitely help the private sector working in Africa”.
At the time, Libya was endeavoring in a full-scale land and water grab in Mali, choosing to work with Chinese contractors instead of French. In the years leading up to his ouster, Qaddafi was seeking to diversify the Libyan economy in keeping with a neoliberal restructuring that included developing domestic agriculture as well as importing agricultural produce from his neighbors to the south. Building up a proxy corporation called Malibya Agriculture with money from Libya-Africa Portfolio Fund for Investment, Qadaffi secretly purchased 100,000 acres (roughly 156 square miles) along the Niger River region of Boky Wéré in 2008 for cultivation of rice and biofuels. To irrigate the massive tract of agricultural land, Malibya endeavored with the help of Chinese contractors to dig a 25-mile canal that holds dire ecological prospects, not just for biodiversity but also for local fisherfolk and farmers.
In an article published by Yale environmental rag, Environment 360 in February 2011, freelance journalist Fred Pearce states the canal “will enhance Libyan food security at the expense of Malian food security by sucking dry the river that feeds the inland delta, diminishing the seasonal floods that support rich biodiversity—and thriving agriculture and fisheries vital to a million of Mali’s poorest citizens—on the edge of the Sahara desert.” Geopolitically, the canal is almost at the point of distinction between the North and South.
Pearce went on to prophetically note, “(w)ith Al Qaeda busy recruiting disaffected people such as the Tuareg nomads around Mali’s borders, any disruption to the traditional way of life could feed its violent agenda.” As the French flew into Mali on January 13, the rebels were advancing to Diabaly, drawing the border of claimed territory over the Malibya canal like a blanket.
The volatile combination of Al Qaeda and the Tuareg is more important to France now than ever. While France holds the primary position in international development assistance to Mali (quite convenient for rebuilding purposes after air strikes), Libya has also become a heavy investor in Malian infrastructure and construction. With the French intervention in Libya, the agricultural situation of that desert nation, which imports ¾ of its grains, shows up on France’s own balance sheet.
In November 2011, an agricultural delegation from France spoke to members of the Libyan government about encouraging the agricultural sector—particularly livestock, which eat rice bran and hulls, among other grains. Thus, projects like the land and water grabs in Mali take on an utmost importance for the Libyans as well as the French. Keeping Mali out of the hands of the Taureg dissidents is imperative to maintaining the “soft imperialism” of North Atlantic hegemony in Africa by increasing the amount of land under control of the West for investment in “renewables”, for instance biofuel cultivation which currently takes up about 60% of all agricultural lands recently purchased in Africa.
Sasha Ross lives in Portland, Oregon where he directs the Cascadia Field Office of the Earth First! Journal, and works at local bio-diversity group, Bark. He is currently editing an anthology about the Global Land Grab.
This article is also being published at the Earth First! Newswire.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
France’s Tragic Path in Mali
Paris.
With hundreds of French troops in Mali, and hundreds more headed that way, the U.S. among other countries, has also pledged some limited support: intelligence, communication, logistics, unarmed drones. But Washington obviously would like to keep a low profile. Washington, in fact, had been militating against just such a move, fearing that another Western intervention in an Arab land would provide another ideal recruiting target for erstwhile jihadis across the Muslim world, not to mention to provoking a spate of terrorist attacks in Europe.
In fact, though, it turns out that the U.S. has already played a major role in the crisis. It’s a devastating lesson of plans gone awry, another dreary footnote to the law of unintended consequences.
According to an excellent New York Times account, for the past several years, the United States has spent more than half a billion dollars in West Africa to counter the threat of radical Islam, America’s “most ambitious counterterrorism program ever across these vast, turbulent stretches of the Sahara.”
The aim of the program was that, rather than rely on the U.S. and its allies to combat Islamic terrorism in the region, the United States would train African troops to deal with the threat themselves.
To that end, for five years U.S. Special Forces trained Malian troops in a host of vital combat and counterterrorism skills. The outcome was considered by the Pentagon to be exemplary
But all that collapsed as the result of another unintended consequence– of the French-led intervention in Libya. After the fall of Khadhaffi, droves of battle-hardened, well-armed Islamic fighters and Tuareg tribesmen, who had been fighting in Libya, swarmed into Northern Mali.
Joined by other more radical Islamist forces, some linked to Al Qaeda, they had no trouble defeating the Malian army.
Why? Because of the defection to the rebels of several key Malian officers, who had been trained by the Americans. Turns out that those officers, who were supposed to battle the rebels, were ethnic Tuaregs, the same nomads who were part of the rebellion.
According to the Times, The Tuareg commanders of three of the four Malian units in the north, at the height of the battle, decided to join the insurrection, taking weapons, valuable equipment and their American training with them. They were followed by about 1600 additional army defectors, demolishing the government’s hope of resisting the rebel attack.
In other words, it’s very likely that the French and their allies-to-come in Mali will be battling rebel troops trained by the U.S. Special Forces.
Caught totally by surprise by the whole ghastly mess, the American officials involved with the training program were reportedly flabbergasted.
There are obvious questions: How was it possible for the Special Forces and their Pentagon bosses and the CIA to have had such a total lack of understanding of the Malian officers they’d trained and the country they’d been operating in for over five years? But you could ask that same question about U.S. military actions in any number of countries over the past few decades, from Lebanon to Iraq to Afghanistan, where the most apt comparison might be to releasing elephants into a porcelain shop.
Which leads to a more fundamental question: how is the U.S. to avoid similar catastrophic mistakes down the road? The Pentagon has recently announced that some 3,000 troops, no longer needed in Afghanistan, have been reassigned to work with the local military in 35 countries across Africa–to deal with the threat of Al Qaeda-linked terrorism.
Sounds just like what was going on in Mali.
But does anyone really think the U.S. and its military will have a better understanding of the myriad forces, tribes, religions, governments, legal and illicit financial interests struggling for power and influence in those countries than it did in Mali?
Or in Iraq, Or Afghanistan or Iran or Somalia or Lebanon, or Vietnam or Cambodia.
And has France now embarked down the same tragic path?
Barry M. Lando, a graduate of Harvard and Columbia University, spent 25 years as an award-winning investigative producer with 60 Minutes. His latest book is “Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush.” Lando is currently completing a novel, “The Watchman’s File”, concerning Israel’s most closely guarded secret (it’s not the bomb.) He can be reached through his blog.
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