Archive | July, 2010

Artavazd Peleshian, born in 1938, is an Armenian filmmaker.  We was produced by the Yerevan Film Studio and released in 1969 in the USSR.  About the film, Peleshian said: “If I had meant only the Armenian people, I would not have had the guts to call it We.  The Armenian people are a ‘we’ that […]

I recently returned from the quadrennial International Sociology Association’s World Congress held in Gothenburg, Sweden.  It’s kind of like the World Cup of sociology.  There I sat in on a session organized by the Iranian Sociology Association, where a few presenters, including its president Hossein Serajzadeh, discussed the state of social science in Iran.  I […]

No medium of propaganda is as powerful and effective as film.  Think of the classics, the most notorious efforts to sway the public with the electrifying and collective passion of cinema: racial apartheid was justified in the US with Birth of a Nation.  The Soviets glorified their revolution with The Battleship Potemkin.  Then there was […]

I love the prospect of secular stagnation (raised by Bob Reich) primarily because the answers are so easy: Let’s keep our eyes on the ball.  The problem in this picture is that we are capable of producing more goods and services than we want to consume.  It’s a problem of too little money chasing too […]

  A1one is a street artist based in Tehran, Iran.  For more information about A1one, visit <www.kolahstudio.com/a1one>.  For more information about KolahStudio, go to <www.kolahstudio.com>.  See, also, A1one, “Dead Soldierz.” | Print  

  “At all times throughout history the ideology of the ruling class is the ruling ideology.” — Karl Marx Lynne Stewart is a friend.  She used to practice law in New York City.  I still do.  I was in the courtroom with my wife Debby the afternoon of July 19th for her re-sentencing.  Judge John […]

  Excerpt: Between December 2007 — the official first month of the recession — and December 2009, the U.S. economy lost more than eight million jobs.  Even if the economy creates jobs from now on at a pace equal to the fastest four years of the early 2000s expansion, we will not return to the […]

  Sayat Nova Sergei Parajanov (9 January 1924 – 20 July 20 1990) was a Soviet Armenian filmmaker. | Print  

  “I don’t think that a 55-year-old man can cancel an underground metal concert anywhere in the world except Iran.  Gradually, I’m beginning to understand the concept of protest . . . except that this time the neighbors are the ones who are protesting.” Hamid Najafi Rad is a filmmaker based in Tehran, Iran.  This […]

  Day One of the ICAHD Work Camp, July 19, 2010 Rubble covers the tile floor at the site of the demolished home we are beginning to rebuild in the East Jerusalem section of Anata, a Palestinian town divided between occupied “East” Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.  Activists from the United States, Britain, Germany, […]

Business people always want more money.  That is part of being in business.  (Has Goldman Sachs or General Electric ever said they want lower profits?)  This means that their spokespeople can be counted on to complain about taxes, regulations, wages, or anything else that costs them money.  Sometimes what they say is not true. This […]

When is a tax haven not a tax haven?  When Mauritius’ Vice Prime Minister Ramakrishna Sithanen says so.  “We are a not a tax haven,” stated Sithanen, who is also the country’s Minister of Finance.  Ironically, Sithanen would go on to reveal that ring-fenced financial services (FS) — the legal and financial secrecy vehicles facilitating […]

  Executive Summary: This report concludes that military action against Iran should be ruled out as a means of responding to its possible nuclear weapons ambitions.  The consequences of such an attack would lead to a sustained conflict and regional instability that would be unlikely to prevent the eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran […]

Artavazd Peleshian, born in 1938, is an Armenian filmmaker.  The Beginning was released in 1967, for the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution. | Print

It has become an annual ritual each July to commemorate the “Srebrenica massacre,” which dates back to July 11-16, 1995.  The now institutionalized characterization is that “8,000 [Bosnian Muslim] men and boys” were executed by the Serbs at that time, in “the worst mass killing in Europe since the Second World War.”  This memorial is […]

  A1one is a street artist based in Tehran, Iran.  For more information about A1one, visit <www.kolahstudio.com/a1one>. | Print  

“And what is the vuvuzela for?” “So no one can hear the rumble of war.” Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist.   This cartoon was first published in Granma.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

Mohammad Shirvani, born in Tehran in 1973, is a filmmaker.  Iranian Conserve was released in 2004. | Print

Amid spells of heavy monsoon rain and sticky, sweltering heat, Delhi is an anxious city, struggling to meet a deadline.  Preparations are furiously underway for the nineteenth Commonwealth Games, to be held in town in less than three months (from October 3-14).  Delhi residents expect that their upturned streets, recurrent blackouts and impassable traffic jams […]

  Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil.  Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007.  Vii + 208 pp.  Illustrations, notes, and index.  $24.94 U.S. (cl), ISBN 978-0-691-1243-5. On March 15, 2004, the French government passed a law banning the wearing of « conspicuous signs » of religious affiliation within public schools.  The decision […]