In recent history governments have nationalized banks when the pressures of internationalized financial markets and international competition have made it difficult for them to control and stabilize their finances and currency. During the last couple of decades, countries as different as Mexico, France, Sweden and Japan carried out partial or more or less complete bank nationalizations to regain control of the financial situation.
Japan's experience more than a decade ago was much like that of the United States in many ways. After a period of great productivity and prosperity in the 1980s, in the early 1990s, Japan's housing bubble burst, leaving Japanese banks holding sheaves of bad loans. The Japanese housing boom collapsed just as China began to become an export competitor.[1] After neglecting the problem for some time the Japanese government intervened, spending $440 billion dollars of its taxpayers' money to nationalize the weakest banks, infuse capital into the stronger banks, and to protect depositors.[2] Japanese banks were required to create a Business Revitalization Plan, at the center of which was a capital / asset ratio. Some economists and journalists have suggested that Japan's solution -- partial nationalization and partial financial support for private banks -- could provide a model for the United States in the current crisis.
Bank nationalization had a different character in an earlier era. During the 1930s a far more radical left than that of the 1980s had raised the slogan "Nationalize the Banks!" as part of a revolutionary, transitional or radical reformist program aiming at the establishment of socialism in a not too distant future. Socialist parties around the world had since the nineteenth century called for the nationalization of the banks, transportation and communication, industry and mining. The idea was that nationalization formed an integral part of socialization, of banks and industries which would be guided by a national economic plan elaborated democratically either by a kind of parliament or by national representatives of workers councils. For some the Soviet Union's experience -- a nationalized economy which brought about rapid industrialization and victory in World War II -- represented a confirmation of their notions of the value of centralized planning. Only later would the problems of Stalinism or bureaucratic Communism, that is, undemocratic centralized planning managed by a totalitarian dictatorship and forced labor, become clear to all.
In France, liberated at the end of World War II by a combination of Allied invasion and national resistance movement of the Maquis' guerrilla bands, there was a great revulsion against the Third Republic, the Vichy government, the French elite, and capitalism more generally. Socialist and Communist Party influence was great, and it was in this atmosphere and under this pressure that the French government nationalized the largest banks on December 2, 1945. This was a far more popular and democratic nationalization than those of the 1980s and 1990s, but it did not fundamentally change the character of French capitalism. Socialist, Communists and Christian Democrats then joined together in the Three-Party Alliance, and established the Fourth Republic.
During this first bank nationalization, the new French government established a Bank Control Commission with the power to oversee the running of both the nationalized banks and the remaining smaller, private banks. But there was also a National Credit Council appointed by the government played a key role in determining the policy of the banks. It was made up of seven members chosen for their expert financial knowledge (from the nationalized and private banks, from the foreign trade banks and from the stock exchange), seven representatives of the country's labor unions, including the bank workers, and ten representatives of various economic interests (agriculture, cooperatives, foreign trade, shipping, chambers of commerce, and craft organizations). A cabinet minister presided over the council and the governor of the Bank of France served as vice-president.[1]
France's nationalized banks worked with the government and private industry to fulfill the 470 billion franc Monnet plan for reconstruction and development. The nationalized banks were used in particular to finance other nationalized firms, such as the gas and electric company. Often the nationalized firms were less sound and less profitable than the private corporations, so the nationalized banks became a kind of government subsidy to state industry. Whatever the left parties had envisioned when they supported nationalizing the banks at the end of the war, and some no doubt saw nationalization as a step toward socialism, it became part of the process of reconstructing European capitalism. European social democracy gave up the struggle for socialism and undertook instead the management of capitalism along Keynesian lines. While the social democratic welfare state provided reforms, it could not ultimately escape the vicissitudes of capitalism, and like the American liberal welfare states, had to bend before neoliberal reforms in the 1980s.
The Question of State Capitalism
Nationalization of the banks has usually represented a recurring stage in the experience of modern capitalism, which is to say state capitalism. At its birth, capitalism shared the cradle with the modern state. The two grew up together, two brothers testing their strength against each other, and drawing strength from the tests. As they matured, they transformed capitalism into imperialism, and used their strength to extract wealth from the societies of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Rudolf Hilferding, the Austrian-German economist wrote in his book Finance Capital published in 1910:
"Finance capital does not want freedom, but domination; it has no regard for the independence of the individual capitalist, but demands his allegiance. It detests the anarchy of competition and wants organization, though of course only in order to resume competition on a still higher level. But in order to achieve, and to maintain and enhance its predominant position, it needs the state which can guarantee its domestic market through a protective tariff policy and facilitate the conquest of foreign markets. It needs a politically powerful state which does not have to take account of the conflicting interests of other states in its commercial policy. It needs also a strong state which will ensure respect for the interests of capital abroad, and use its political power to extort advantageous supply contracts and trade agreements from smaller states; a state which can intervene in every corner of the globe and transform the whole world into a sphere of investment for its own finance capital."[2]
The Russian Bolshevik political leader and intellectual Nicolai I. Bukharin, following Hilferding, would argue in his book Economics of the Transformation Period published in 1920 that out of imperialism and war had arisen "a new model of state power, the classical model of the imperialist state, which relies on state capitalist relations of production."[9]
While many things have changed since 1910, the tendency of financial institutions to seek the protection of the state in a world of intense foreign competition remains. While Hilferding and Bukharin seem to have envisioned something like the literal fusion of the state and finance, what we have seen instead throughout the modern period is an oscillation of periods of quasi-fusion through nationalizations and of quasi-independence during periods of privatization. Whatever the exigencies of the moment, in the face of international competition, diplomatic rivalry, and foreign wars, financial institutions and the state will tend to seek out relationships of mutual benefit to the dominant bloc of finance capital. Nationalization of the banks tended to be a moment in this oscillating relationship, the moment of the salvation of the banks by the state.
The Role of Nationalization in the Program of the Left
Yet the socialist argument that banks controlled by a government of the people could be a step toward socialism does have merit. Left social movements and political parties should raise the idea of nationalization of industries and the banks propagandistically and educationally, but this notion only has socialist implications when linked with the idea of working class control of the state. The slogan "Nationalize the Banks!" as an agitational point makes sense only when there is a mass movement and a working class ascendant which has the power to use nationalization even under capitalism as a tool to weaken private capital. The left has usually called for the expropriation of the banks without compensation, though perhaps in some situations it might be possible to buy them and permanently retire the bankers. The slogan of nationalization becomes most meaningful as part of the program of the left when we make it clear that we mean the socialization of industry under democratic control and when combined with the notion of workers' control of production itself. The goal in the end is the most democratic control of the government and the economy.
The problem for the left today, however, is to organize to build labor and social movements, and to build a political party of the left which could put such a demand as "Nationalize the Banks!" on the agenda. Today the problem is to keep the government from simply using the taxpayers' money to save the banks and sending them back on their merry way. We have to be part of the struggle to make sure that that doesn't happen.
1. Margaret G. Myers, "The Nationalization of Banks in France," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 64, No. 2 (June, 1949), pp. 189-210.
2. Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 234.
Welcome to Post Capitalism. We thought it could never happen. Our powerful and flexible global economic system was supposed to transcend irrational human greed and constitute the objective and the organically practical solution to the sensitivities and needs of both the society and the individual. Capitalism, we had came to believe, was able to organize both our labour and our leisure, giving us all we need materially and spiritually, making us who we are. Capitalism was the negative space and we were the agents of a cyclical failed attempt of its overcoming.
People who have theorized the idea of post capitalism often agree that 'if capitalism is to die, it could do so because its property rights prove to be inefficient.' Of course no one yet has proclaimed that the transformational moment has arrived, and they have suggested the end of capitalism, with the passage of property rights from from "the firms" to other forms of private ownership, like collectives or cooperatives. It's as if somehow people will find the cash or the borrowing power to purchase their jobs from the capitalists and turn them into something more functional and fun like a capitalist commune, socialism inside capitalism outside. Here I like to agree with the first half of their claim and not the second. What we are experiencing right now with the economy is the passage of property rights from one group to another. but this group of people are high level bankers who privately own the Federal Reserve. We are going from a limited open capitalism to a very closely tight network of elites who would own everything behind the shadows of an extremely powerful government bureaucracy.
For those who claimed that the twentieth century capitalism was an exceptional state, and we have quite a few of those theorists, this basically is the end of the exception and Capitalism is finally settling in its proper form. And in doing so, America and the West are behind quite a longer list of countries with a similar state. China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, to name a few. Except these societies, due to their cultural flexibilities to the proper form of post capitalist rule have a competitive advantage to their rivals from the West.
So what making the discussion of post capitalism more important than ever?
As US government quietly nationalizes billions of dollars of (useless) banking assets, a classic case of property expropriation, that we usually identify with communism, is sweeping across America. As Gwynnn Dyer wisely observes, the US media and the government are not using the word nationalization when they mention the bail outs. But that’s exactly what these deals are. In most of them, the shareholders are not compensated, rather, and have to move on with their losses. This includes the Chinese Government, who had invested billions in Freddie and Fanny. The enormity of this massive loss of property and value will change the face of the global economic constitution.
Another sign of the end of Capitalism is approaching: the devaluation of the US dollar and the western monies against international average, the paper object that itself functions as the most commonly used stock-share for the company called the United States of America. The dollar, as the US stock, will be facing a humiliating defeat in the hands of those who were supposed to turn it into a universal world currency. Instead, they are abandoning so it can join the south American and third world currencies.
This is not a catch 22 where the government that feeds you ends up eating you. This is really the moment at which capital and state power cannot afford to have two dofferent interfaces, so for the sake of the internal unity, the two have to merge and become one.
This unity will soon produce for the world not a single resulting entity, but again two dialectically related things called state capitalism and private socialism. Was there a metaphor for these transformations somewhere in the opening and the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics? Because the more we look, the more we notice the similarities of China and The coming post Capitalist state in USA, of the inter-conversion of state power and capital on one hand and the private sector and socialism on the other. Were Chinese secretly celebrating their victory over American Capitalism in Beijing?
What is the nature of the new beast that is being created, out the ashes of the 20th century finance capitalism and centralized government, as we speak? Did you know that the US government is now the biggest insurer in the world? Very soon it could own a very big chunk of the banking industry. If this is not the unpredicted end of Capitalism, what is it?
And if this is the end of capitalism as we knew it, one should ask, why didn’t anyone, including the Marxists in the academia theorize and more importantly organize for this moment? Why is it that Capitalism is dying, but the intellectuals, the youth and the working class are depressed and not excited? Why is it that out of the fear of the unknown, no one even wants to admit that the show is over, or at least another show is about to start?
For those of us who knew all along that 9/11 was the beginning of the end, for those of us who started to turn back from the clouds of cultural studies and discourse into the concrete darkness of the mysterious political economy, this is coming at no surprise. For us, finance Capitalism was already identified as the truest form of Communism. For us, the materiality of the central ownership of property and means of production in the willing hands of the federal Reserve could never mask itself behind the ideological edifice of free market. Here, I am not contrasting the reality of market economy against our collective fantasy called democracy. Instead, I am comparing the true totalitarian nature of the American government against the pretense of free market capitalism.
Whether America was or was not a communist country from the get go is up to debate, what we can now finally agree is that even if there was an assurance about the idea of a fair and free market, it can now be safely put to rest.
Post capitalism borrows from socialism, but it’s not the same thing. We know this, because we have been watching China for more than 20 years. The question is, does the new constellation of economic power and political will, in the hands of state bureaucrats, translate into a new form of fascism or not? I don’t think we need to worry about the return of an obvious fascist state, but the possibility for the society to move closer towards a post modern fascism is always there to poke its head out of the background and disturb our lives.
What interest me in this particular moment is the characteristics of this new economic system. Post Capitalism will transform the face of the planet. It will have far reaching consequences on not just economy, but all other aspects of life including education, culture, art and the legal political systems of power. This is going to be an interesting show, but more interesting, if we follow the Brechtian advice and leave our theatre chairs to join the play on the stage.
ARE MILITARY AND CIA WORKING HARD TO DEFEAT OBAMA?
About a few weeks ago, Bush secretly ordered the invasion of pakistan. US military personnel have made several attacks inside Pakistan on alleged terrorists and civilians. To those who understand the potential for the expansion of war this is a very bad sign.
As Bush eggs on the tribal supporters of Taliban to fight, some Pakistani elements within USA may like to try their hands at a retaliation for the violation of Pakistani sovereignty and the agreements made with the tribal leaders previously. I think this is exactly the kind of reaction CIA and Pentagon are hoping to provoke from Islamists in Pakistan.
We al know how a terrorist attack inside USA can do to McCain's rating. Such an attack would galvanize the support for GOP and wreck Obama's dream of presidency.
let's hope Pakistani Islamists would not fall into this trap.
Brian is a friend of ours who lives and works in New York City. He has been making drawings from early 2000 and lately his work has been grabbing the attention of the art world.
His first solo exhibition will open at 5+5 Gallery, Brooklyn on September 14.
Pink Floyd keyboard player and founder member Richard Wright has died aged 65 from cancer. Wright appeared on the group's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, in 1967 alongside lead guitarist Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and Nick Mason...MORE FROM BBC
DAMIEN HIRST CUTS OUT THE MIDDLE MAN AND GOES STRAIGHT TO THE AUCTION HOUSE
In a move that some say has the potential to change the face of art dealing, Mr. Hirst has cut out his dealers — the New York-based Gagosian Gallery and the White Cube in London — and taken his work straight to auction. Last summer thousands of people lined up outside White Cube waiting to glimpse a human skull cast in platinum and covered with 8,601 diamonds. Mr. Hirst claimed to have sold the piece at its $100 million asking price. But the buyer is said to have been a consortium of investors that included Mr. Hirst himself; Jay Jopling, owner of White Cube; and Frank Dunphy, Mr. Hirst’s business manager.
David Foster Wallace in 2006. He was found dead in his home on Friday, after apparently committing suicide.
sed his prodigious gifts as a writer — his manic, exuberant prose, his ferocious powers of observation, his ability to fuse avant-garde techniques with old-fashioned moral seriousness — to create a series of strobe-lit portraits of a millennial America overdosing on the drugs of entertainment and self-gratification, and to capture, in the words of the musician Robert Plant, the myriad “deep and meaningless” facets of contemporary life.....MORE FROM NYTIMES
Street Art Street Life: From the 1950s to Now” opens Sunday September 14, 2008 at the Bronx Museum of the Arts http://bronxmuseum.org
If I say “street life,” and you think noise-lights-action, you may find “Street Art Street Life: From the 1950s to Now” at the Bronx Museum of the Arts a puzzling show. There is noise — a pop song, the clatter of metal across concrete — but not much. Lights and action are confined to videos, several of them bleached, grainy, way predigital. The bulk of the work is photography. Some of the pictures are snazzy: Jamel Shabazz’s color portraits of sidewalk supermodels from the 1980s; photomontages by Fatimah Tuggar that transport New York to Africa and vice versa... MORE FROM NYTIMES
This Transition Will Never End September 13 - October 11, 2008 Opening Reception Saturday September 13, 6-9pm Artist in attendance
Blanket Contemporary Art is pleased to present This Transition Will Never End, an exhibition of new works by Vancouver/Berlin artist Jeremy Shaw. Opening on Saturday September 13th, the exhibition is the artist's first solo show with the gallery. Shaw's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto; Or Galley, Vancouver; Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles; Galeria Dels Angels, Barcelona; and group exhibitions at Lisson Gallery, London; Whit de Witte, Rotterdam; Berlinale 2008, Kunstverein Wolfsburg and Gallerie Ben Kaufmann, Germany; The Seattle Art Musueum, and The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle.
JERRY PETHICK SEPTEMBER12 - OCTOBER 11, 2008 CATRIONA JEFFRIES GALLERY Opening Reception: Friday September12,
Catriona Jeffries Gallery will present a solo exhibition of major works by Jerry Pethick. On the fifth anniversary of his passing, the exhibition will include large scale sculptural works, photographic arrays and numerous wall works representing the broad range of Pethick’s explorations into imaging technologies and epistemological thought. At a moment when a younger generation of artists such as Geoffrey Farmer and Gareth Moore are exploring new approaches to sculpture and material, the innovation of Pethick’s work is pivotal. His practice is strongly rooted in its visceral materiality and is marked by a rigorous inquiry into art history, science and theories of visual perception.
Chile before the coup was the most democratic country in Latin America and one of the most democratic countries in the world. It had a democratically elected President and a democratically elected two house legislature, an independent judiciary, a free and active press, and prestigious universities..MORE FROM COUNTERPUNCH.ORG
911 was a transformational moment in history, we can all agree on that. But seven years later, I wonder whatelse did we lose besides a pair of beautiful minimal modernist buildings in Manhathan?
Here is a short list of all other missing items
+ Universal values applicable to all people regardless of race religion and ethnicity Before 911 one could not assume so much stereotypes about anyone particularly Muslims and Arabs. 911 lifted this barrier and allowed commentators, politicians and average people to engage in politically motivated racism. Suddenly it was OK to generalize, to lay blame at other people's culture and to see our problems as someone else's again. Seven years later, this rule has been extended to a lot of other population groups. Slowly, the West has overcome political correctness and has asserted its power in naming and framing anyone and anything.
+ Confidence in Liberal Democracy as an open system Before 911, most people believed that liberal democracy is powerful because it's essentially an open system and it can contain all forms of resistance to itself. It was believed that this strength comes from its openness. This was the second casualty of 911. People started to see liberal democracy as a fragile balance that needs protection, inside and outside. This single shift in attitude allowed the western governments to quickly take on the task of changing the nature of Liberal democracy itself. Both wars outside and increase surveillance and clamp down on individual/civil rights are direct results of this shift. Nowadays it is common sense to assume that "our democratic system needs protection against intruders".
+ Meaningful relationship between economy and world events 911 finally break the link that existed even in ordinary people's mind about the connection between political economy and world events. It used to be commonplace to quote Clinton: "it's economy stupid!" but not anymore. 911 had nothing to do with economy and everything to do with international culture wars.
+ effectiveness of the international organizations in managing the world affairs Whoever physically destroyed the twin towers also demolished the UN metaphorically. the collapse of World Trade buildings was also the collapse of the international cooperation under the banner of the United Nations. 911 ushered the dawnof the new world of dog eat dog competition.
On a lighter note, For those of you who don;t know, Stevie Nicks arrived in New York in the morning of 911 2001 for a concert at Radiocity Music Hall the same evening, a concert that was obviously cancelled later on that day. Confined in her midtown Hotel, the queen of American music instead chose to write a diary. here are what has been known on the internet as Stevie's 911 JOURNAL
Lately, Mccain has closed his gap with Obama in opinion polls and pundits can't stop ranting about Sarah Palin's poll-based popularity. I never trusted or liked polls, because myself I am never honest when asked these sorts of questions. Here is a little bit of theory from the French New wave director Godard on opinion polls.
FROM MASULIN-FEMININ, CHAPTER 14
Do vacuum cleaners sell? Do you like cheese in tubes? Do you read a lot? What's a cadre? Do you like poetry? Winter sports? Short skirts? How do you react to an accident? If your love left you for a black person? would you mind? Do you know about famine in India? Do you know what a Communist is? Do you use birth control pills? or a thing in your vagina? Where do you live? What's your salary? Why are society women more frigid than factory girls? Did you know there is an Iraq-Kurd war on?
Gradually over these three months, I came to realize that these questions did not reflect but deformed the collective mentality. My lack of objectivity, even when unconscious, tended to provoke a predictable lack of sincerity in those I was polling. Unawares, I was deceiving them and being deceived by them. Why? Probably because polls and surveys quickly veer from their true goal, The observation of behavior, and instead insidiously go for vale judgments. I discovered that the questions I would ask any French person expressed an ideology that reflects not present mores but those of the past.
So I had to be on my guard. I used some random notions as guidelines:
"A philosopher posits his conscience against opinion."
"To have a conscience is to be open to the world." "To be faithful is to act as if time didn't exist."
"Wisdom would be to see life, truly see it. That would be wisdom"
Travis McCoy — 6-foot-5, covered in tattoos, plugs in his ears, barbell through his septum — strolled up to the CBS Broadcast Center on the West Side of Manhattan last Wednesday to tape an appearance on BET’s “Rap City.” For the few young people waiting in line outside the building to be in the audience at another show’s taping, it was a curious sighting — Mr. McCoy is a rapper, but he fronts a gold-record-selling rock band — and they approached him tentatively, taking time to warm up to him...MORE ON NYTIMES
Ann Hamilton, a visual artist known for her eye-popping installations including paper-sucking machines and a weeping wall, is among the winners of the Heinz Family Foundation's Human Achievement Awards, reports Patrick Cole in Bloomberg. Hamilton, a professor of sculpture at Ohio State University in Columbus, won the $250,000 cash award for installations that often use items culled from flea markets and warehouses, Kim O'Dell, director of the Heinz Awards, said in a phone interview. “Her art engages you in a way that walking past traditional works of art wouldn't do,” O'Dell said. “Everyone we spoke to talked about how inspiring it is to work with her.” She'll receive the award on October 21 at a ceremony in Pittsburgh, where the Heinz Foundation is based. Hamilton specializes in site-specific works, relying on found objects, videos, photographs, textiles, and other materials. In “Corpus,” her 2004 show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, she installed forty machines onto a gallery ceiling and had them descend to the floor, suck up sheets of translucent, onion-skin paper, and later release them. In another installation, Welle, more commonly called “The Weeping Wall,” drops of water were pumped through tiny holes in a flat white wall. The Heinz Award is the latest major prize Hamilton has won. She received a $500,000 “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1993. She has also won fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Despite the inventive staging and all-out efforts of an admirable cast — especially the courageous performance of the Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch as Seth Brundle, the obsessed scientist who morphs into the hideous creature he calls Brundlefly — “The Fly” is a ponderous and enervating opera, and the problem is Mr. Shore’s music....MORE FROM NYTIMES
THE WORDS MIKE WALLACE DID NOT WANT TO HEAR FROM THE IRANIAN PRESIDENT
I was having a conversation with a Canadian intellectual during the SWARM 2008 festivities when the question of Iran and Israel came up.
When I tried to explain the official policy of Iran towards Israel he interrupted me and said, but Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map.
For him and all those who still believe in this modern myth, I am posting the same accusation uttered from 60 Minute's Mike Wallace in his famous conversation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year.
If you are wondering why this interview did not settle the question of Iran's attitude towards Israel, it is important to mantion that Ahmadinejad's answer was simply edited out of the interview and millions of viewers of CBS did not get to hear what the man himself had to say about this accusation.
Below you will find the related portion of the interview. The text in red was edited out of the 60 Minutes broadcast:
MR. WALLACE: You are very good at filibustering. You still have not answered the question. You still have not answered the question. Israel must be wiped off the map. Why?
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Well, don't be hasty, sir. I'm going to get to that.
MR. WALLACE: I'm not hasty.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: I think that the Israeli government is a fabricated government and I have talked about the solution. The solution is democracy. We have said allow Palestinian people to participate in a free and fair referendum to express their views. What we are saying only serves the cause of durable peace. We want durable peace in that part of the world. A durable peace will only come about with once the views of the people are met.
So we said that allow the people of Palestine to participate in a referendum to choose their desired government, and of course, for the war to come an end as well. Why are they refusing to allow this to go ahead? Even the Palestinian administration and government which has been elected by the people is being attacked on a daily basis, and its high-ranking officials are assassinated and arrested. Yesterday, the speaker of the Palestinian parliament was arrested, elected by the people, mind you. So how long can this go on?
We believe that this problem has to be dealt with fundamentally. I believe that the American government is blindly supporting this government of occupation. It should lift its support, allow the people to participate in free and fair elections. Whatever happens let it be. We will accept and go along. The result will be as you said earlier, sir.
MR. WALLACE: Look, I mean no disrespect. Let's make a deal. I will listen to your complete answers if you'll stay for all of my questions. My concern is that we might run out of time.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Well, you're free to ask me any questions you please, and I am hoping that I'm free to be able to say whatever is on my mind. You are free to put any question you want to me, and of course, please give me the right to respond fully to your questions to say what is on my mind.
Do you perhaps want me to say what you want me to say? Am I to understand --
MR. WALLACE: No.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: So if that is the case, then I ask you to please be patient.
MR. WALLACE: I said I'll be very patient.
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Maybe these are words that you don't like to hear, Mr. Wallace.
Can we now assume that Mahmoud was right about his last point?
FARIMANI is a new publication-book. It's first ever issue features a new essay about torture and pleasure by Zizek. The first issue also includes a short but intense essay by OLAFUR ELIASSON on the role of what the museum, the university, and the studio can do about the negotiation of art, architecture and reality:
"For quite some time, I have been developing plans with the Universitat der Kunste in Berlin for a school that would benefit from its proximity to my studio."
FARIMANI - is founded and edited by AMIR MOGHARABI, A graduate of Columbia University.
DADABASE is proud to present NEW BLOOD, an exhibition of new works by Vancouver and New York based artists, David Campion, Ignacio Corral, A.S.Dhillon, Kevin Bright, Mo Salemy and Pirooz Nemati.
Artworks are available for private viewing and sales.
For questions regarding the purchase of art work featured in the exhibition, or to ask about DADABASE collection, please write to idadabase AT gmail DOT com.
Vancouver is kicking off thee fall's art season with the opening of SAWRM 2008 this Thursday. Here are a list of Galleries that will be having openings tonight. For a comprehensive listing Check the link above at their Web site.
Blim Dadabase Online Gallery Grace Gallery Grunt Gallery Malaspina Printmakers Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, UBC New Forms Festival On Main The Dead: The Emergency Room VIVO Media Arts Western Front Gallery 42
Rachel Mason, Kissing President Bush, 2004. Via Creative Time.
Creative Time in association with Park Avenue Armory presents Democracy in America: The National Campaign
ARTISTS INCLUDE: Erick Beltrán, Center for Tactical Magic, Critical Art Ensemble, Annabel Daou, dB Foundation, Hasan Elahi, Feel Tank, Luca Frei, Chitra Ganesh + Mariam Ghani, Group Material, John Hawke, Sharon Hayes, Jenny Holzer, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, InCUBATE, Magdalena Jitrik, Matt Keegan, Jon Kessler, Olga Koumoundouros + Rodney McMillian, Steve Lambert, Ligorano/Reese, Pia Lindman, Rachel Mason, Carlos Motta, Angel Nevarez + Valerie Tevere, Trevor Paglen, Cornelia Parker, Jenny Polak, Steve Powers, Greta Pratt, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Red76, Duke Riley, Martha Rosler, Dread Scott, Allison Smith, Chris Sollars, Chris Stain, Mark Tribe, United Victorian Workers, Chu Yun, and more.
After traveling across the country to glean perspectives from artists and activists on the state of democracy, Creative Time's year-long program Democracy in America: The National Campaign will culminate in the "Convergence Center": a major exhibition in the historic rooms of New York City's landmark Park Avenue Armor with speeches on democracy by artists, political thinkers, community leaders, and activists throughout its run.
CANADIAN SENATE WORRIES ABOUT NATIONAL EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS
And why is that? When was the last time a government institution pointed to its own shortcomings? Why the Canadian Senate risks being asked, "what were you senators doing about the state of preparedness until now?"
As most of you may know our government already has signed a bilateral pact with the US military allowing them to enter Canada to help in certain situations, including national emergencies. This astonishing affront to Canadian sovereignty was signed under Prime Minister Harper six months ago without media even bothering to critically report on it.
Now comes senate's report acknowledging that Canada has failed to prepare for itself. Sounds like Harper was right to cut a set of keys to our borders for our uncle north of the border?
Watching youtube videos of protesters, including journalists from DEMOCRACY NOW getting arrested in St. Paul this past weekend makes me think about the way in which protesting Canadians would be handled if US military ever to assume any responsibility north of the border?
FLEETWOOD MAC'S LOST YEARS IN BETWEEN BLUES AND POP
I started listening to FLEETWOOD MAC back in the late 70's in my early teens. But All I knew of their music was recordings they made after Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham joined the band in 1975. My uncle used to have some of their early 70's records, but they never interested me.
Lately, since 2005, I have been slowly collecting all of the band's work prior to 1975's self titled Fleetwood Mac album. Listeing over and over to these recordings one cannot wonder why they weren't as big earlier on. So much talent, in so much direction all pointing to a future that we all know.
The ever changing line up of the band in this period makes their recordings a pool of fresh ideas and approaches that kept refreshing and refocusing the sound of the band in the later years. here is the name of the people who were responsible for Fleetwood Mac's sound between 1968 to 1975:
Bekka Bramlett Bob Brunning Billy Burnette Mick Fleetwood Peter Green Danny Kirwan Dave Mason John McVie Christine McVie Jeremy Spencer Rick Vito Dave Walker Bob Welch Bob Weston
Their innovative use of their instruments. Together with Mike Fleetwod's consistent drumming binds the recordings of this band like a cool hippie precious rosary. As documented in the collaboration of these musicians, their vision manages to transform both pop and rock music and foreshadow most of what we came to identify as late 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's music
Here, I have selected 35 songs that traces the future sound of the band in the older material. I have included the recording date of each song to contextualize the band's work in the history of rock and pop music.
It is astonishing to notice that much of the songs from earlier on sound exactly like their recordings for Tusk (1979) and Mirage (1982).
My highlights include:
+ Motown sounding rendition of Little Willie John's Need Your Love So Bad + magical arrangements of Prove Your Love and Emerald Eyes + Pink Floyd induced Future Games + Brian Eno precursor My Dream + FMc's tribute to Buddy Holy in Buddys Song + Abbey Road inspired Jewel Eyed Judy + Disco inspired Keep On Going (the most amazing song included)
The list goes on... Most of these songs are nowhere available for purchase. You may find these albums for a few dollars in second hand record stores on Vinyl. I doubt one can find many of them on CD.
I tried to give the selection the feel of a good double album like the Beatles' White Album.
As usual as any post 1975 Fleetwood Mac recording, the selection is peppered with beautiful ballads by Christine McVie all the way down to the Truly amazing and Queen sounding Spare Me A Little Of Your Love.
DID US VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE FAKED HER PREGNANCY?
WHICH ONE IS FIVE MONTHS PREGNANT?
UPDATE TUESDAY SEPT 2: So far the mainstream media is breaking the story of Sarah Palin's daughters another pregnancy without fully and directly denying the original rumors about the downsyndrom child. As it appears by double checking the dates, it is possible to have been pregnant twice. I still speculate the original rumors were leaked so the real news of her current pregnancy wont shock and awe both democrats and the hardcore Christian crowd. You've gotta give it to Karl Rove one more time.
According to DAILYKOS.COM Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy to coverup for her daughter, Bristol's "illegitimate" child. It's the newest conspiracy and it has already generated a thousand anecdotes and details, and a lot of circumstantial evidence. Along with his actually might be true.
But since lately, the truth doesn't mean anything anymore, We are going to guess this whole pregnancy story must be all the works of Karl Rove who is giving the poor hockey mom the equivalence of Obama's Muslim rumors. So what's officially acknowledged about Sarah Palin is that :
(CNN) — Top McCain adviser Steve Schmidt said Monday that newly-minted Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin informed John McCain of her daughter's pregnancy in one of their "private conversations" last week. McCain aides insist the Arizona Republican already knew about the pregnancy prior to that conversation, having found out earlier during the lengthy vetting process. "She was very upfront about it," one aide said. Speaking with reporters, Schmidt also said McCain expected the pregnancy would eventually become public, as did Palin. "Obviously people would know because she’s going to have a baby that she was pregnant," Schmidt said. "What we want to see happen is the privacy of Governor Palin’s daughter respected. And that’s what Senator McCain wants."
Obviously, this is the same daughter, but a completely different pregnancy i supposed. I copied the text here since CNN Ticker items disappear rather fast.
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Ann Hamilton, a visual artist known for her eye-popping installations including paper-sucking machines and a weeping wall, is among the winners of the Heinz Family Foundation's Human Achievement Awards, reports Patrick Cole in Bloomberg. Hamilton, a professor of sculpture at Ohio State University in Columbus, won the $250,000 cash award for installations that often use items culled from flea markets and warehouses, Kim O'Dell, director of the Heinz Awards, said in a phone interview. “Her art engages you in a way that walking past traditional works of art wouldn't do,” O'Dell said. “Everyone we spoke to talked about how inspiring it is to work with her.” She'll receive the award on October 21 at a ceremony in Pittsburgh, where the Heinz Foundation is based. Hamilton specializes in site-specific works, relying on found objects, videos, photographs, textiles, and other materials. In “Corpus,” her 2004 show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, she installed forty machines onto a gallery ceiling and had them descend to the floor, suck up sheets of translucent, onion-skin paper, and later release them. In another installation, Welle, more commonly called “The Weeping Wall,” drops of water were pumped through tiny holes in a flat white wall. The Heinz Award is the latest major prize Hamilton has won. She received a $500,000 “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1993. She has also won fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Rachel Mason, Kissing President Bush, 2004. Via Creative Time.
