Click to enlarge.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Click to enlarge.
1. Richard Wright won this year's Turner prize. Works made with gold leaf.
from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8399111.stm
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
1. I hadn't heard that the US uses mercenaries until recently. The biggest contractor is Xe, or Blackwater.
In 2006, Blackwater won the remunerative contract to protect diplomats for the U.S. embassy in Iraq, the largest American embassy in the world. It is estimated by the Pentagon and company representatives that there are 20,000 to 30,000 armed security contractors working in Iraq, and some estimates are as high as 100,000, though no official figures exist. Of the State Department's dependence on private contractors like Blackwater for security purposes, U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker told the U.S. Senate: "There is simply no way at all that the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel to staff the security function in Iraq. There is no alternative except through contracts."
They seem to be quite brutal and perhaps linked with the Christian right.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Mercenaries
In 2006, Blackwater won the remunerative contract to protect diplomats for the U.S. embassy in Iraq, the largest American embassy in the world. It is estimated by the Pentagon and company representatives that there are 20,000 to 30,000 armed security contractors working in Iraq, and some estimates are as high as 100,000, though no official figures exist. Of the State Department's dependence on private contractors like Blackwater for security purposes, U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker told the U.S. Senate: "There is simply no way at all that the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel to staff the security function in Iraq. There is no alternative except through contracts."
They seem to be quite brutal and perhaps linked with the Christian right.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Mercenaries
Monday, November 2, 2009
1. It's been a while since I've updated. With the Olympic torch relay beginning, I did a little research.
The Olympic Flame from the ancient games was reintroduced during the 1928 Games. [...] The modern convention of moving the Olympic Flame via a relay system from Olympia to the Olympic venue began with the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. The relay, captured in Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia, was part of the Nazi propaganda machine’s attempt to add myth and mystique to Adolf Hitler’s regime. Hitler saw the link with the ancient Games as the perfect way to illustrate his belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_torch
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
2. Closely related, regarding the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany (some of the comments sound strangely contemporary):
Those who voiced their opinions on the debate included Americans Ernest Lee Jahncke, Judge Jeremiah Mahoney, and future IOC President Avery Brundage. The United States considered boycotting the Games, as to participate in the festivity might be considered a sign of support for the Nazi regime and its anti-Semitic policies. However, others argued that the Olympic Games should not reflect political views, but rather be strictly a contest of the greatest athletes.
Avery Brundage of the United States Olympic Committee opposed the boycott, stating that Jewish athletes were being treated fairly and that the Games should continue. Brundage believed that politics played no role in sports, and that they should never be entwined. He stated, “The very foundation of the modern Olympic revival will be undermined if individual countries are allowed to restrict participation by reason of class, creed, or race.”
[...] Avery Brundage became a main supporter of the Games being held in Germany, arguing that "politics has no place in sport", despite having initial doubts.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Summer_Olympics#Boycott_debate_in_the_United_States_of_America
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
3. On a lighter and funny note, also regarding the 1936 Olympics:
Basketball was added to the Olympic program. In the final game, the United States beat Canada 19-8. The contest was played outdoors on a dirt court in driving rain. Because of the quagmire, the teams could not dribble, thus the score was held to a minimum. Joe Fortenbury was the high scorer for the U.S. with 7 points. Spectators did not have seats, and the people (approximately 1000) in attendance had to stand in the rain.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Summer_Olympics#Sporting_innovations
The Olympic Flame from the ancient games was reintroduced during the 1928 Games. [...] The modern convention of moving the Olympic Flame via a relay system from Olympia to the Olympic venue began with the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. The relay, captured in Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia, was part of the Nazi propaganda machine’s attempt to add myth and mystique to Adolf Hitler’s regime. Hitler saw the link with the ancient Games as the perfect way to illustrate his belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_torch
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
2. Closely related, regarding the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany (some of the comments sound strangely contemporary):
Those who voiced their opinions on the debate included Americans Ernest Lee Jahncke, Judge Jeremiah Mahoney, and future IOC President Avery Brundage. The United States considered boycotting the Games, as to participate in the festivity might be considered a sign of support for the Nazi regime and its anti-Semitic policies. However, others argued that the Olympic Games should not reflect political views, but rather be strictly a contest of the greatest athletes.
Avery Brundage of the United States Olympic Committee opposed the boycott, stating that Jewish athletes were being treated fairly and that the Games should continue. Brundage believed that politics played no role in sports, and that they should never be entwined. He stated, “The very foundation of the modern Olympic revival will be undermined if individual countries are allowed to restrict participation by reason of class, creed, or race.”
[...] Avery Brundage became a main supporter of the Games being held in Germany, arguing that "politics has no place in sport", despite having initial doubts.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Summer_Olympics#Boycott_debate_in_the_United_States_of_America
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
3. On a lighter and funny note, also regarding the 1936 Olympics:
Basketball was added to the Olympic program. In the final game, the United States beat Canada 19-8. The contest was played outdoors on a dirt court in driving rain. Because of the quagmire, the teams could not dribble, thus the score was held to a minimum. Joe Fortenbury was the high scorer for the U.S. with 7 points. Spectators did not have seats, and the people (approximately 1000) in attendance had to stand in the rain.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Summer_Olympics#Sporting_innovations
Monday, October 12, 2009
1. A long paragraph from a book I am currently working through by Jacques Rancière:
The legitimacy of state power is thereby reinforced by the very affirmation of its impotence, of its lack of choice faced with the world-wide necessity it is dominated by. The theme of the common will is replaced by that of the lack of personal will, of capacity for autonomous action that is anything more than just management of necessity. From an allegedly defunct Marxism, the supposedly reigning liberalism borrows the theme of objective necessity. Marx's once-scandalous thesis that governments are simple business agents for international capital is today obvious fact on which "liberals" and "socialists" agree. The absolute identification of politics with the management of capital is no longer the shameful secret hidden behind the "forms" of democracy; it is the openly declared truth by which our governments acquire legitimacy. In this process of legitimization, any demonstration of capability needs to be based on a demonstration of powerlessness. The dreams of politically astute housewives at the stove or of simple laborers rising up against fate are opposed by the theme of a reverse Marxism: optimizing the pleasures of the individuals is only possible on the basis of their acknowledged inability to manage the conditions of this optimization. The state then establishes its authority based on its ability to internalize common powerlessness, to determine the thin ground, the "almost nothing" of a possible on which everyone's prosperity as well as the maintenance of the community bond depends. On the one hand, this almost nothing is posited as so little it is not worth the trouble of fighting over with the managers of the state machine. But, on the other hand, it is posited as the decisive minute difference that separates the prosperity to come from the misery hanging over us, the social bond from looming chaos, a minute difference too decisive and too sustained not to be left to the experts, to those who know how, by placing 0.5 percent of the Gross National Product on one side rather than on the other, we pass over to the good or the bad side of the line, from prosperity to the brink of ruin, from social peace to a general coming apart at the seams. Management of abundance thus becomes identical with crisis management. It is management of the sole possible necessity that must be incessantly anticipated, followed, planned, put off, day in, day out. The management of this "almost nothing" is also an uninterrupted demonstration of the identity between the legitimate state and the expert state, of the identity between the power of this state and its powerlessness, a power that internalizes the identity of the great power of enterprising and contracting individuals and groups with the powerlessness of the demos as a political force.
- from Jacques Rancière, Dis-agreement, p113-114 (emphases added)
The legitimacy of state power is thereby reinforced by the very affirmation of its impotence, of its lack of choice faced with the world-wide necessity it is dominated by. The theme of the common will is replaced by that of the lack of personal will, of capacity for autonomous action that is anything more than just management of necessity. From an allegedly defunct Marxism, the supposedly reigning liberalism borrows the theme of objective necessity. Marx's once-scandalous thesis that governments are simple business agents for international capital is today obvious fact on which "liberals" and "socialists" agree. The absolute identification of politics with the management of capital is no longer the shameful secret hidden behind the "forms" of democracy; it is the openly declared truth by which our governments acquire legitimacy. In this process of legitimization, any demonstration of capability needs to be based on a demonstration of powerlessness. The dreams of politically astute housewives at the stove or of simple laborers rising up against fate are opposed by the theme of a reverse Marxism: optimizing the pleasures of the individuals is only possible on the basis of their acknowledged inability to manage the conditions of this optimization. The state then establishes its authority based on its ability to internalize common powerlessness, to determine the thin ground, the "almost nothing" of a possible on which everyone's prosperity as well as the maintenance of the community bond depends. On the one hand, this almost nothing is posited as so little it is not worth the trouble of fighting over with the managers of the state machine. But, on the other hand, it is posited as the decisive minute difference that separates the prosperity to come from the misery hanging over us, the social bond from looming chaos, a minute difference too decisive and too sustained not to be left to the experts, to those who know how, by placing 0.5 percent of the Gross National Product on one side rather than on the other, we pass over to the good or the bad side of the line, from prosperity to the brink of ruin, from social peace to a general coming apart at the seams. Management of abundance thus becomes identical with crisis management. It is management of the sole possible necessity that must be incessantly anticipated, followed, planned, put off, day in, day out. The management of this "almost nothing" is also an uninterrupted demonstration of the identity between the legitimate state and the expert state, of the identity between the power of this state and its powerlessness, a power that internalizes the identity of the great power of enterprising and contracting individuals and groups with the powerlessness of the demos as a political force.
- from Jacques Rancière, Dis-agreement, p113-114 (emphases added)
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