1.10.2009
The Daily Show on Gaza
With not a single senator and only five House members voting against resolutions praising Israel's military incursion into Gaza (two Minnesota representatives were among 22 reps to cast protest "present" votes), I guess we've got to leave it to Jon Stewart to cry foul.
1.09.2009
1.08.2009
Vatican: Gaza is like a "concentration camp"
"Defenceless populations are always the ones who pay. Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp."
— Cardinal Renato Martino, the Vatican's justice and peace minister
— Cardinal Renato Martino, the Vatican's justice and peace minister
U.S. arms sales to Israel
Direct sales in 2007 by U.S. manufacturers (doesn't include U.S. government military funding; $2.3 billion):
Photo: From Boston.com's always excellent Big Picture. "An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires a shell towards Gaza from its position outside the central Gaza Strip January 6, 2009."[...]
- Firearms, Close Assault Weapons and Combat Shotguns $6,052,997
- Guns and armament $1,896,864
- Ammunition/ordnance $76,676,737
- Launch Vehicles, Guided Missiles, Ballistic Missiles, $81,530,388
- Rockets, Torpedoes, Bombs and Mines, Explosives and Energetic Materials, Propellants, Incendiary Agents and Their Constituents$15,804,875
- Vessels of War and Special Naval Equipment $33,582,587
- Tanks and Military Vehicles $39,289,393
- Aircraft and Associated Equipment $244,901,028
- Military Training Equipment and Training $2,319,174
- Protective Personnel Equipment and Shelters $6,636,510
- Military Electronics $136,327,215
- Fire Control, Range Finder, Optical and Guidance and Control Equipment $38,438,167
- Auxiliary Military Equipment $66,596,820
- Toxicological Agents, Including Chemical Agents, Biological Agents and Associated Equipment $9,616,317
- Spacecraft Systems and Associated Equipment $39,410,948
- Classified Articles, Technical Data and Defense Services Not Otherwise Enumerated $500
- Directed Energy Weapons $3000
- Miscellaneous Articles $2,890,660
- TOTAL ARTICLES $801,974,180
- Defence Services $1,835,523,029
- OVERALL TOTAL $2,637,497,209
This total 2007 figure of $5.1 billion does not include other forms of military assistance and training.
Senate passes resolution in support of Israel's Gaza strikes
With the Palestinian death toll in Gaza passing 700 and conditions an on-the-ground doctor calls “the closest you come to a massacre,” the United States Senate has passed a non-binding resolution expressing “unwavering” support for Israel and its air and ground strikes on Gaza. With bipartisan sponsors, the resolution, which passed on a voice vote, states Israel has a right to defend itself from Hamas rocket attacks and urges George W. Bush’s administration to pursue a ceasefire with both sides. (The House is expected to pass a similar resolution.)
Co-sponsor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel (R-Kentucky) said the Israelis “are responding exactly the same way we would.”
So far, 11 Israelis have reportedly been killed by rockets fired from Gaza.
Text-messaging a "massacre" in Gaza
“We are swimming in death, blood, and amputated victims. Many children. Pregnant women. I've never experienced anything so awful.”Since Israel banned reporters from Gaza on Dec. 27, SMS messages, like the one above, offer an increasingly rare way for the world to find out what it's like for Palestinians under siege. Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert has been sending such messages on medical needs and conditions in Gaza which he says are "the closest you come to a massacre": 25% of victims of Israeli air and ground atttacks are children; 45% are women and children; and medical workers trying to removed injured residents are getting killed.
Relayed from phone to phone (and eventually to world governments and media), the short communiques offer only the tiniest glimpse into what's emerging as a colossal humanitarian and diplomatic failure:
"Send it [the SMS] along, call it out. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We shouldn't call ourselves decent Europeans if we don't act to stop this.”Above: A young girl killed by an Israeli airstrike, via Cryptome.
Continental tests algae-based jet fuel
Continental Airline is the first American airline to explore biofuels for its planes, successfully completing a two-hour test flight near Houston on Wednesday. The fuel -- half kerosene, half a mix of jatropha (an "African weedy shrub") and algae -- is a promising alternative to entirely petroleum-derived fuels, which the airline industry burns up at a rate of 240 million gallons per day, because its plant-based ingredients don't compete with food crops. The next test, by Japan Airlines on January 30, will try out a biofuel made from camelina; last week Air New Zealand became the world's first carrier to test-drive planes powered by fuels that use jatropha. While an exciting development, it'll take a decade or so before bio-jetfuel makes up a significant percentage of all airline fuels.
Obama's limo: "Rolling tank with windows"
Wired looks at President-elect Obama's custom-built limousine, which features 5-inch-thick windows, 19.5-inch truck tires and "possibly even a lock safety mechanism that seals off the car like a bank vault in case of an emergency," all built on a Cadillac truck chassis. The Secret Service, naturally, won't reveal details, but:
In an interview with CNN, security expert Ken Lucci says rubber gaskets likely protect the car against chemical weapons and that the body will be made out of a tougher material than before. The most recent limo used by President Bush used some combination of a dual hardness steel, aluminum, titanium and even ceramics to break up possible projectiles. And there are usually steel overlaps that cover any gaps a door might leave.
1.05.2009
Franken v. Coulter
With Al Franken apparently set to be officially declared victor in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race, here's a hilarious clip of Franken getting the upper hand with another rightwing Republican, Ann Coulter. Coulter told attendees at last year's Connecticut Forum that, if she could come back as any person from history, she’d come back as Franklin Delano Roosevelt so she could “not introduce the New Deal.” Franken’s reply:
I would be Hitler… Well, you know, you get to call of the New Deal. I’d like to call off the Holocaust, you know, World War II, the Anschluss… But I’d keep the Volkswagen.
12.28.2008
Artist of the Year: Trevor Paglen
As artist's tools go, Trevor Paglen's are unusual: a camera with a 7000mm telescope lens, FOIA requests, a log of airplane N-numbers. An experimental geographer at UC Berkley, Paglen makes art that is equal parts social science and conceptual art, but geared toward a more political task: capturing fleeting glimpses of the U.S. military's "black world."
Hidden behind razor wire, these secret projects—which account for around $30 billion of the government's annual budget—can be gleaned through the few interfaces between the "black" and "white" worlds, whether it's the fences surrounding sites like the Tonopah Test Range or public filings by CIA front businesses. In Torture Taxi, Paglen's book about CIA "extraordinary rendition" flights, he quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle's first novel. "From a drop of water a logician can infer the possibility of an Atlantic or Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other."
One project, a wall covered with code names for thousands of recent black ops, suggests the size of the body of water Paglen's peering into—not to mention its murkiness. With little to go on, we're left to guess what jobs operations like "Rugged Vortex" or "Rivet Rider" are charged with. A similar series presents framed signatures, like that of Colleen Bornt, a board member of Premier Executive Transport. The handwriting is wildly different each time, which is fitting since she's a ghost, a fictional employee of a CIA front company created to conduct torture flights.
The most compelling glimpse "inside" is through Paglen's collection of black-op uniform patches. To be worn only in classified facilities (but not classified themselves), these 100 emblems are a mash-up of pop culture references, military machismo, and secret-society mumbo-jumbo, bearing references to everything from an Insane Clown Posse album cover to the 1972 porn film Behind the Green Door. The patch for a squadron of planes that ran nighttime deliveries between aerospace contractors and secret sites shows a moon and a question mark, with the embroidered acronym "NOYFB"—None of Your Fucking Business.
The closest Paglen gets to more aesthetic contemporary art is with his photos of military bases. Shot across scalding desert from as far away as 20 miles, the photos become abstractions, part Gerhard Richter painting, part Bigfoot sighting. "The classic iconography of mystery is things that almost make sense," Paglen tells me, "but it's crucial they don't make sense.
"They're blurry. They're indistinct," he says, underscoring the main point in his work: "I can tell you what you're seeing, but you shouldn't trust me, either."
12.22.2008
12.18.2008
Video: Thomas Hirschhorn on "Doing Art Politically"
Find more videos like this on artreview.com
Art Review runs a multipart series of videos of Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn discussing political artmaking at London's Royal Academy Schools. Above, part I. [Via Blog of Lumpen.]
Earlier: Listen to my 2006 audio interview with Hirschhorn as he installed Cavemanman at the Walker Art Center.
Flying Spaghetti Monster gets write-in in Minnesota Senate race
The UpTake, live streaming the Minnesota State Canvassing Board's meeting on the U.S. Senate recount, just featured a ballot cast for the candidate, Flying Spaghetti Monster. Moments earlier, the board reviewed the infamous vote cast for Lizard People. Minnesota's most famous ballot was designated an overvote. Via the Minnesota Independent.
12.17.2008
Eyevertising?
Ugh:
feelunique.com is offering people the chance to earn 10 pence per wink in return for displaying the company's logo on their eyelid space.Via Adrants.
Beau Bergeron's Snow Couple
Wooster Collective posts another example of mailbox snow art, linking to its creator (who I was unable to name here), designer Beau Bergeron.
The UN's stalactite ceiling
Off-Center points out the amazing ceiling installation Spanish painter Miquel Barceló created in the UN's Palace of Nations' "Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations" chamber in Geneva. Unveiled Nov. 18, the multicolored stalactites took 13 months to create, using plaster and 100 tons of paint, which was tinted using pigments from all around the world. At 4,600 square feet, the project's nearly $25 million budget -- and where the funds came from -- has come under scrutiny. Design Boom has more.
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