Archive | Commentary

wo * * * “When he died in 1992, David Wojnarowicz, artist and writer with AIDS, left a body of work about the disease that remains unrivaled for its power and beauty.  On December 1, 2010, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC celebrated World AIDS Day by capitulating to the demands of […]

The corporate media are reliable and consistent.  They consistently focus on the sensational, and they reliably take the position of the US government.  So, it should come as no surprise that the recent release of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks is being covered with much sound and fury, signifying little. On the sensational and gossip-mongering […]

Directed by João Fazenda; Script by Spam Cartoon; Animation by Estrela Lourenço; Sound Design by José Condeixa; Produced by João Paulo Cotrim and André Carrilho.   Cf. Yanis Varoufakis, “The ECB’s Expensive Folly: A New Maginot Line” (1 December 2010); Simon Johnson, “Imminent Eurozone Default: How Likely?” (The Baseline Scenario, 2 December 2010); Tracy Alloway, […]

The establishment survey showed the economy adding just 39,000 jobs in November.  As a result of slow job growth, the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent.  The employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) fell to 58.2 percent, the low hit in December of last year.  The EPOP for white men and white women both dropped below their prior […]

A year after the chaotic Copenhagen summit, the 2010 UNFCCC climate conference begins in Cancun.  Expectations are low this time around, especially compared to the eve of Copenhagen. That’s probably both good and bad.  The conference last year had been so hyped up beforehand, with so much hopes linked to it, that the lack of […]

“Now it’s you who are being block(ad)ed all over the place.” Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 2 December 2010.   Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

  In eyes that hate your hunger It’s like a jungle sometimes It makes you wonder. . . . The Narcicyst, Yassin Alsalman, is an Iraqi rapper (born in Basra, raised in Dubai, and now living in Montreal, Canada).  Shadia Mansour is a British-born Palestinian singer.  Directed and edited by Ridwan Adhami (Ridzdesign).  Written by […]

Seen from the middle-class spectator’s POV Seen from the favela resident’s POV Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. “A year ago I was there to interview a woman who had lost her daughter in a police shootout, a stray bullet having ripped through the tin […]

Trade disputes with China have been heating up lately, but there really is no reason for the hostility.  Essentially the dispute boils down to the fact that China wants to subsidize the consumption of people in the United States and elsewhere, by propping up the value of the dollar. This is raising objections from the […]

The kind of trafficking shown on TV The kind of trafficking not shown on TV Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

The media spin on the latest batch of WikiLeaks revelations gives the impression that, next to Israel, it’s the Arab states that are most energetically pressuring the U.S. to attack Iran.  In terms of the real threat to Iran, that’s definitely putting the cart before the horse. In the first place, the Arab governments mentioned […]

We were struck by a piece published by Reza Marashi — former State Department desk officer for Iran who now works as the National Iranian American Council’s research director.  For us, the most striking passage is the following: It should now be clear that U.S. policy has never been a true engagement policy.  By definition, […]

  Social movements redefine what it means to be an artist. Dara Greenwald is a media artist.  Her collaborative work often takes the form of video, writing, and cultural organizing.  Some of her works may be viewed at <daragreenwald.com>.  Josh MacPhee is an artist, curator, and activist.  He is a member of the art collective […]

  It was cold in the tiny, windowless interview room at the Wood Street Police Station.  I looked across the wooden table at the large-boned woman with a short Afro who was shaking and sobbing. . . .  “Fred never really woke up,” she said.  “He was lying there when they pulled me out of […]

Beautiful and politically invigorating (qualities we could certainly use more of at this particular point in history), just out is Celebrate People’s History: The Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution, by Josh MacPhee of the rabble-rousing arts collective Just Seeds (justseeds.org), with a foreword by Rebecca Solnit (the author of many books including A Paradise […]

An interesting study on Americans’ attitudes regarding inequality and wealth distribution has been making the rounds recently.  It highlights once again the ideology problem that plagues any attempt to reconstruct left/social democratic/socialist/whatever politics in the U.S. The researchers asked survey respondents to choose between three unlabeled pie charts representing the social structures of three different […]

The ruling National Party of Egypt says: “Watch Out for Your Mind.” The dialog box asks: “Do you really want to delete the content of the soul?” (The cursor points to “yes.”) Abdallah Ahmed is an artist based in Cairo, Egypt.  He blogs at .  This cartoon was published in his blog on 26 November […]

The Census Bureau reported last week that the median price for a new home fell from $226,300 in September to $194,900 in October, a one-month decline of 13.9 percent.  While new home sales prices are always erratic and the October data were pushed downward in part by a relative increase in sales in the low-cost […]

By July 24, 2009, the U.S. government was totally clear about the basic facts of what took place in Honduras on June 28, 2009.  The U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa sent a cable to Washington with subject: “Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup,” asserting that “there is no doubt” that the events of […]

November 29, 2010 We will be writing about the WikiLeaks documents and Iran throughout this week.  As we sort through the cables that are available so far, the first major point is that, as even the New York Times‘ quasi-neoconservative David Sanger and his colleagues noted in their first story on the documents, the Obama […]