Subjects Archives: Media

  • Visualizing Social Movement Cultures: Movement as Producer

      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 […]

  • WikiLeaks and Iran, Take 1: Obama’s Legacy Will Be Change You Can’t Count On

    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 […]

  • WikiLeaks Honduras: State Dept. Busted on Support of Coup

    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 […]

  • New York Times Oversells WikiLeaks/Iranian Missiles Story

    WikiLeaks document dumps are largely what media want to make of them.  There’s one conventional response, which goes something like this: “There’s nothing new here, but WikiLeaks is dangerous!”  But there’s another option: “There’s nothing here, except for the part that confirms a storyline we’ve been pushing.”  In those cases, WikiLeaks is deemed very, very […]

  • EU: “Common Position” against Cuba

      The European Union to the United States: “Yes, my love, I know you like my position, but everyone is saying that you are the only one who has it in common with me.” Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 7 November 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi […]

  • Che Guevara’s Daughter Meets Hezbollah’s Number 2 Leader

    11 October 2010 — The daughter of the celebrated revolutionary Che Guevara, who is currently visiting Lebanon, met on Sunday the number two leader of Hezbollah after visiting southern Lebanon where she received a plaque in homage to her father and the martyr Imad Mughniyeh.

  • Death Squads in Honduras

      Anyone who thinks that social and political instability in Honduras ended with the election of Porfirio Lobo as the president of the republic is mistaken, according to the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH). Human rights violations, political persecution, and selective political murders continue to be the order of […]

  • Dilma Adventure!

      Only a few days left for the second round of the 2010 elections, our mobilization continues.  To energize the activists for Dilma some more, here is a game made for the presidential election, in which we can get Dilma to the Palácio do Planalto. The idea comes from Professor Alex Leal, in the Digital […]

  • Merkel, Muslims, and Multi-Kulti

    It’s those foreigners again!  In June and July, during the World Cup, Germans cheered their soccer team’s every skilled pass, every goal — and seemed proud that so many of its players had immigrant backgrounds, from Tunisia, Nigeria, Brazil, Spain, Yugoslavia, Ghana, Poland, and Turkey.  Hurrah! But now it’s October.  The leaves have changed color […]

  • The Iran That the Western Media Don’t Want You to See

    When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad traveled to Lebanon last week, attracting huge crowds and what seemed like an overwhelmingly positive public response, many Western analysts dismissed the trip as a kind of cheap political trick, meant to distract attention from Ahmadinejad’s allegedly unpopular standing at home.  But, after returning from Lebanon, Ahmadinejad made a trip […]

  • Wallets Full of Blood

      Houses on the Moon Zombie Banker Blues Roscommon Death Trip Eamonn Crudden is an Irish filmmaker.  See, also, “A Curse on the Zombie Establishment: An Interview with Filmmaker Eamonn Crudden” (MediaBite, 23 September 2010). | Print  

  • For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly

      For colored boys I will crucify myself like Christ let my blood purify and sanctify these words create a doctrine and go knocking door to door letting the people know that messiahs are here that we are messengers even though we embody the word queer that we are a reminder of how colonization has […]

  • Media Mine the Miners in Chile

    The Mine The Miners Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  This cartoon was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 15 October 2010.  Cf. “In fact, the 33 miners over whom the media have swarmed paradoxically remain voiceless.  Neither they […]

  • Hot Pants and Niqabs: NiqaBitch Stroll through Paris

      We both are in our early twenties, and while one of us is Muslim, we didn’t feel directly affected by the passing of the anti-burqa (although anti-niqab is the more appropriate word) law. Still, we both wanted to express ourselves regarding this subject.  We’ve always found the law a little fuzzy, and while it’s […]

  • For the Rights of the Mapuche

      For the Rights of the Mapuche “Our struggle continues” Iván Lira is a Venezuelan artist.  This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 8 October 2010.  Cf. “In the face of the government’s failure to withdraw the charges of alleged terrorism against the Mapuche prisoners, as is stipulated in the accord reached last week, members […]

  • The Palestine Question and the U.S. Public Sphere

      The 2010 Edward Said Memorial Lecture, the Palestine Center, Washington, DC, 7 October 2010 Thank you all for coming today, and, to those of you who are watching, thank you for viewing this talk.  Those of you who live in Washington, who are subjected to the American media, will probably be relieved to hear […]

  • Historical Materialism Middle East Special Issue

      Historical Materialism has extended the deadline for proposal submissions to its special issue on the Middle East, conceived broadly to include: the Arab world from the Atlantic to the Gulf, Israel/Palestine, Iran and Turkey.  The new deadline for abstracts is the 10th of November 2010. HM is a Marxist journal, appearing four times a […]

  • From Sugar to Services: An Overview of the Cuban Economy

      Summary: In 1989, services comprised no more than 10 per cent of Cuba’s export revenues, with sugar accounting for over 70 per cent.  In 2007, by contrast, it was sugar that made up 10 per cent of overseas earnings while services accounted for 70 per cent.  The article provides an overview of this drastic […]

  • Brazil: Lula’s Labour Legacy

      When Time magazine awarded Brazil’s President Lula the most influential world leader spot in its 2010 ranking of most influential people, Michael Moore, who wrote the excerpt on Lula, heralded the creation of the Bolsa Familia programme as well as the expansion of public education and health care.  These are important achievements, but one […]

  • Incredible News

    As I was concluding some Reflections on the dismissal of Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba, incredible news began to arrive from Ecuador.  I’ve spent hours listening to it.  Minute by minute, ferment is growing. At 5:12 PM, Cuban time, condemnations of the coup are proliferating.  The most prestigious Latin American leaders, such as Chávez and Evo, […]