caravia

Stalin still raises controversy.

"After complaints to the city Buildings Department, and concern from the Urkainian community in the East Village, Cooper Union removed a giant banner with a reproduction of a Picasso drawing of Joseph Stalin. That decision has outraged Lene Berg, the 43-year-old Norwegian artist who included the banner as part of her one-woman art installation, "Stalin by Picasso, or Portrait of Woman with Mustache," in the school's historic Foundation Building, on East Seventh Street.

"I didn't get any explanation of what happened," Ms. Berg, who is based in Berlin, said in a phone interview this week. She said Cooper Union officials removed the banner last Friday, five days after it went up, without consulting either her or Sara Reisman, associate dean of Cooper Union's School of Art and the curator of the exhibition."

Excellent article about the US mixed character.

"Obama's wry joke about his heritage sparked a new conversation on Americans' muddled notions of race. Patricia J. Williams explains why we're all 'mutts.'

It was surely meant as a wry aside when, speaking about his daughters' search for a puppy, Barack Obama observed that most shelter dogs are "mutts like me." My first thought, however, was: "Ain't I a mutt, too?"

In fact, of course, we're all mutts. As humans, we're all descended from a common African ancestor, and have been mixing it up ever since. And as Americans, we've been mixing it up faster and more thoroughly than anyplace on earth. At the same time, we live in a state of tremendous denial about the rambunctiousness of our recent lineage. The language by which we assign racial category narrows or expands our perception of who is more like whom, tells us who can be considered marriageable or untouchable.

The habit of burying the relentlessly polyglot nature of our American identity renders us blind to how intimately we are tied as kin, as family, and as intimates.

In the United States' vexed history of color-consciousness, anti-miscegenation laws (the last of which were struck down only in 1967) enshrined the notion of hypodescent. Hypodescent is a cultural phenomenon whereby the child of parents who come from differing social classes will be assigned the status of the parent with the lower standing. There are many forms--most parts of the Deep South adhered to it with great rigidity, in what is commonly called the "one drop and you're black" rule. Take for example, New York Times editor Anatole Broyard, who denied any relation to his darker-skinned siblings and "passed" for most of his adult life: There were many who expressed shock when it was uncovered that he was "really" black. Some states, like Louisiana, practiced a more gradated form of hypodescent, indicating hierarchies of status with vocabulary like "mulatto," "quadroon," and "octaroon." And even today, and despite our diasporic, fragmented, postmodern cosmopolitanism, there is a thoughtless or unconscious tendency to preserve these taxonomies, no matter how incoherent. Consider Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the daughter Senator Strom Thurmond had by his family's black maid. She lived her life as a "Negro," then as an "African American," and attended an "all-black" college. But in her 70s, when Thurmond's paternity became publicized, she was suddenly redesignated "biracial." Tiger Woods and Kimora Lee Simmons are alternatively thought of as African-American or "biracial," but rarely as "Asian-American."

Cool idea! It's important to educate the consumers in paying some more dollars but be sure that the money is going back directly to the producers.

Shostakovich was a Russian musician and composer and he lived in Russia when Russia was the Sovjet Union. His relation with Stalin was complicated. Nobody could make Art in the country without chose sides in a struggle between the Art as an independent expression of the freedom of the spirit and the use of the Art as a political tool. In Samizdada, an interesting blog, the discussion is passionated and witty.

Was looking for examples of torture and misstreat and found the lectures of my childhood, the lives and deaths of the martyrs. Horrible stuff!

Spain's network of people demanding social housing and a stop to the real state speculation.

"Super Market brand owners were profiteering in a really high grade in expense of the peoples pockets and the actual resistance and pressure was rather low. Consumer unions, some newspaper articles, calls for lowering the prices, one day boycotts. But what to do?People are dependent from big Super Markets that control most of the food market and wages in Greece are rather low for eu standards (Pensions are worse) and prices were among the higher in EU. Old people, low income and the unemployed were affected most but we can say that almost all working class people and even lower middle class (petit bourgeois) were having a hard time to get around . So the government announces on the 28 of May "41 measures against price stagnation".

True is the politicians did not really cared. "So what are they going to do,anyway?". Opposition parties do nothing but talk, and people rely on the media "apparent" opposition. But it is in these times were nothing seem to happen, when the forces of insurrection that are exorcised to stay away from the fight, make their sudden and unexpected appearance in the scene. And nothing is the same as before..

On Saturday May 31st 2008 a group of comrades, wearing their masks entered a big Super Market in the city center of Athens, re-appropriated products, carried them to a street fruit-market nearby (mostly old and lower-income people go there) and distributed the products to them. Oil, cheese, milk, detergents,shampoos ... The action met great correspondence from the people. Clapping applauses, exclamations, whistles. The products disappeared within seconds. The manifesto of the action said : "The game is set. We don't want to be a part of this fake game, with the governments' communication tricks, the oppositions' abstract talking about some "bad" people making profit and the shit of the media. We put into practice our own measures against price stagnation. Re-appropriation now. Everything is stolen from us, Everything belongs to us... That was it...

The attacks start to spread widely. In June three more actions against Super Markets took place in Athens. One more in July. Then came the summer (movements have holidays?) and on September actions started again. Two happened in Thessaloniki , the second biggest city in Greece. One attack was planned on the day when the Prime Minister traditionally addresses the nation , from the International Expo of Thessaloniki and speaks about the government policy of the year to come. Last week three such actions took place (15,16,18 October). In most of the attacks products are distributed among people in street markets, to people passing-by and on one action the loot was left on a central Athens square where many immigrants live and at the exits of the metro station there.
These actions are really popular among people. It would not be an exaggeration to say that people wish every time they go to a street market for an action like that to take place. Media can't hide the facts , but try to distort them. They like to call us "Robin Hoods". We are not at all "Robin Hoods", it is not about charity. The issue at stake here is the diffusion of such "illegal" practices among the society, so that other social groups adopt such practices to defend social autonomy and interests. To debunk the normality that orders "Work-Buy-Pay-Sleep-Shut Up". To make people collaborators in "illegal" attacks against capitalist order. To promote Mutual Aid.

The Police is really confused. Cashiers have a short work-break. Super Market owners feel anxious about the situation. People have fun.

So what about us Comrades. In Balkans, East and West Europe, States, Latin America, Oceania, everywhere? Can we plan something? What are we waiting?

I love Michael Caine!

"Engineers have been asked to come up with a successful conclusion to the cult 1960's film The Italian Job, in order to explain how Charlie Croker, Michael Caine's character (pictured in the famous scene), and his gang might have unloaded the gold without losing their own lives in the process. As fans will recall, the film ends with the coach see-sawing over a precipitous drop. Caine's gang face a choice of saving themselves or risking all to retrieve their stolen gold. The task has been set by the Royal Society of Chemistry to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the movie next year............. Prince William and Prince Harry will attend the world premiere of the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, which is being held this evening in Leicester Square.............Joaquin Phoenix, the Hollywood actor best known for his role in Gladiator, has announced that he is quitting acting to focus on a career in music. The 34-year-old, who has twice been nominated for an Academy Award, said that his latest film, Two Lovers, would be his last.............Keanu Reeves appeared before a Los Angeles court on Tuesday to answer a charge that he knocked down a photographer to avoid having his picture taken.............Elvis Presley has been ranked the top-earning dead celebrity for the second year in a row by US magazine Forbes. Thirty years after he died aged 42, his estate made $52 million last year. Heath Ledger, who died from an overdose of medication in January before he could collect an estimated $20 million in earnings from the Batman movie The Dark Knight, is placed number three on the list........."