May 12, 2008
not my voice
After a night's sleep and especially after reading this morning what others who have read my post of yesterday are saying about the subject of artistic censorship and our relationship to the world, I realized that what I wrote just...
Posted by james at 12:13 PM | Full Post
May 11, 2008
Susan Dessel's "OUR BACKYARD" censored by gallery
this too is our backyard In the twenty-first century the entire world really has become our "backyard" and along with its beauty and energy, there is also much unnecessary misery and death everywhere in that yard. Provincial fears and...
Posted by james at 10:00 PM | Full Post
May 1, 2008
May Day!
What gives them the right? I heard the news of our latest murderous bombing strike in Somalia on Public Radio this morning, just after the network had reminded me today was May Day. Almost in the same breath which...
Posted by james at 11:59 AM | Full Post
April 24, 2008
Vincent Gagliostro with Margaret Thatcher at Pulse
Vincent Gagliostro After Louie, an excerpt video [stills, and large details of stills, from installation] Margaret Thatcher showed a video by Vincent Gagliostro at Pulse. I'd like to describe it as an art trailer for a full-length film not...
Posted by james at 11:37 PM | Full Post
April 17, 2008
to hell and back with Ratzinger
Goya Inquisition Scene (1816) oil on panel 18" x 28.75" [three notes: beginning in the Middle Ages the Church had prescribed the conical hat, generally yellow, as a distinguishing mark for Jews; Jewish conversos were the principal concern of...
Posted by james at 1:01 AM | Full Post
April 16, 2008
Al Qaeda has been running Washington
all Washington getting friendly with the boss Ted Rall saw only part of the story when he described the shoddy construction of our bases in Iraq, with its fatal consequences for our military personnel. In a cartoon dated 4/14...
Posted by james at 5:43 PM | Full Post
March 19, 2008
war is not over
five years and, unfortunately, still counting. The caption to this Reuters photograph reads: A protestor takes part in a demonstration marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq, in Washington, March 19, 2008. [image by Jim Young...
Posted by james at 7:42 PM | Full Post
March 16, 2008
capitalists asking for trouble, or "the visible hand"
passing GO We're telling them, "we're not going to regulate you, and we're going to bail you out when you fuck up." I didn't say it. It was Barry. It was just a few minutes ago. He was replying...
Posted by james at 7:23 PM | Full Post
hooker just a cover; Bush and bankers crushed Spitzer
farm foreclosure sale during the Great Depression My obsession* with this story welcomes further ratiocination: Greg Palast makes some connections which Wall Street, the White House and their joint instrument, a discretionary Justice Department, would prefer to to keep...
Posted by james at 11:52 AM | Full Post
March 13, 2008
Spitzer resigns; everyone else stays
"New York Gov. Spitzer resigns but more woes likely" reads the Reuters headline this morning. I'm so glad we were able to run him out of office (and within the space of only a few days!) because we heard...
Posted by james at 10:48 AM | Full Post
March 10, 2008
play in your own yards, and leave Spitzer alone
William Hogarth Enthusiasm Delineated 1761 This is stupid, if not just evil. No, I'm not talking about Eliot Spitzer. Let him deal with his family; it's not our concern. People are screaming at the Governor about his marital infidelity...
Posted by james at 8:46 PM | Full Post
March 6, 2008
the Whitney Biennial 2008
When it comes to something like the Whitney Biennial, or for that matter the siren of any large display of contemporary art, whether a museum survey, an art fair or even a small-budget benefit, I look forward to seeing stuff...
Posted by james at 3:52 PM | Full Post
Times Square bomblet outperforms march of a million
In 2003 nearly a million people marched in the streets of New York against a war (to which the majority of the country was opposed even then) only days before it began and the U.S. press hardly mentioned they...
Posted by james at 10:52 AM | Full Post
March 3, 2008
do we owe it all to Bush?
"Certainly the prestige of the office of president must be seriously compromised if a woman has a serious shot at it." I would add "or a black man" to that conditional clause, but the subject of the article from...
Posted by james at 11:35 AM | Full Post
February 28, 2008
selling off the High Line to developers - no, really!
fourteen floors, most of them condos, to be built on top of our park I admit that I've known about this building for some time. I've been quietly fuming about it (something I don't do often - the quietly...
Posted by james at 12:09 AM | Full Post
February 24, 2008
Nader's candidacy: we should expect nothing less of him
Common Sense, so uncommon today The candidate is a brilliant man of the highest integrity. He is generous, dedicated public servant responsible for world-altering reforms which have saved, literally, countless lives. In the words of one of his published...
Posted by james at 9:59 PM | Full Post
February 13, 2008
"No, no! Sentence first - verdict afterwards"
Alice begins to doubt that justice really will be done. And still they don't get it. I'm having trouble enough sleeping at night, thinking about the horrors routinely executed in our name around the world, but this headline to...
Posted by james at 12:06 PM | Full Post
"They hate our freedoms"
the enemy is us "They hate our freedoms" [from Bush's 2002 State of the Union address] But just yesterday:WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill on Tuesday granting retroactive immunity from lawsuits to telecommunications companies that...
Posted by james at 10:55 AM | Full Post
February 8, 2008
yes, of course we torture
We do torture. The whole world knows it, and even in the land of the brave and the free and the righteous none of us needed to wait for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights or anyone anyone...
Posted by james at 11:07 PM | Full Post
February 7, 2008
Guantanamo: is there no limit to the obscenities?
a view of the camp we've known about for six years, not the secret one Really?!!! We learn tonight that the regime in Washington has been maintaining a separate concentrated concentration camp totally hidden inside the Guantanamo camp we...
Posted by james at 1:44 AM | Full Post
February 4, 2008
a dream of Obama
maybe making a world of difference, and one of correspondence as well If the candidates could not be everywhere on Sunday, their allies could try. Gloria Walsh, center, a retired schoolteacher, paused to campaign for Barack Obama in Harlem, with...
Posted by james at 1:09 PM | Full Post
January 27, 2008
475 Kent: the insanity of New York housing policy
a silent cry from a witness across the street two days ago Whatever the bureaucratic, commercial or political story which lies behind the human tragedy of New York City's dreadful and totally irresponsible eviction of over 200 men, women,...
Posted by james at 7:51 PM | Full Post
January 23, 2008
Israel's civilian blockade war crime creates panic in Gaza
desperate people Israel's blockade of Gaza is a war crime*, but the world will not say so. Desperate Gazans themselves spoke out today when they blew up the wall separating them from Egypt. Tens of thousands have crossed the...
Posted by james at 1:33 PM | Full Post
January 11, 2008
Ingar Krauss at Marvelli
Ingar Krauss Untitled (Beelitz) 2006 gelatin silver print 40"x 33" [installation view] Every year thousands of harvest hands come and go like birds of passage.* Indulge me on this one, as I really wanted to upload this image. No,...
Posted by james at 6:14 PM | Full Post
January 9, 2008
"superdelegates" betray Democrats' claims of democracy
(he's been split up, and works a little more subtly today) I was originally just going to make this a comment on an earlier post of mine, but when I realized that if I did so I'd be directly...
Posted by james at 9:20 PM | Full Post
January 4, 2008
"American Primary System Fails to Impress Europeans"
Duh. Deutsche Welle, the English language on-line news site, reports that intelligent Europeans who study our political system essentially think the way we select candidates for office is, well, nuts.National elections in Europe often last only six weeks and campaigns...
Posted by james at 6:34 PM | Full Post
December 27, 2007
GUANTANAMO DELENDA EST!
Out of sight and out of mind. Our concentration camp in Guantanamo is still off the chart (literally); missing from the Democratic Congressional agenda; "not present" in presidential campaign rhetoric; and, most frighteningly and damningly of all, it still...
Posted by james at 11:47 PM | Full Post
December 25, 2007
the obscenity of organized hate under cover of religion
A girl, who was wounded in a bomb attack, receives treatment in a hospital in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, December 25, 2007. U.S. forces killed two gunmen and detained four others in operation near Baquba,...
Posted by james at 1:18 PM | Full Post
November 17, 2007
Reverend Billy free this time, but the assaults never stop
cover of a 1909 pamphlet created to protect the right of free speech at a time Emma Goldman was being prevented from speaking How often does the NYPD have to be reminded about the First Amendment? Two days ago...
Posted by james at 8:57 PM | Full Post
November 11, 2007
GUANTANAMO DELENDA EST!
This post is part of a series begun on May 21, 2007, which will continue until the U.S. concentration camps at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere around the world have been razed. Two things this time around: First, we haven't...
Posted by james at 12:44 PM | Full Post
October 17, 2007
not so strange: Dalai Lama and Bush very good bedfellows
I'm thinking a blood-red ink would be more appropriate about now Well of course he and Bush get along. Although he was presented the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 "for his consistent resistance to the use of violence," the...
Posted by james at 4:42 PM | Full Post
October 16, 2007
we Americans are 'good Germans'
war is never what we expect it to be: Dresden, stacked bodies after 1945 Allied firebombing We despair. Four and a half years ago Barry and I each decided that we were retiring from both direct and indirect political...
Posted by james at 3:00 AM | Full Post
October 15, 2007
Pro Publica arrives in town: expected to speak to power
In the middle of the Times city room in The Power of the Press (Columbia Pictures, 1928), the city editor (Robert Edison) congratulates cub reporter Clem Rogers (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) for getting his first page-one story as the more...
Posted by james at 12:57 PM | Full Post
October 13, 2007
Clayton Patterson at Kinz, Tillou + Feigen
[four stills from the video installation of the film, "Captured"] How do you write about a chronicler with a soul? How do you write about a bard with a camera? We can't begin to understand the importance of people...
Posted by james at 12:48 AM | Full Post
October 12, 2007
so President Gore it is
the once and future president I'm not arguing he should be nominated and elected this time because he won the Nobel Peace Prize, but because winning the Nobel Peace Prize can make it happen. Why Al Gore, and not...
Posted by james at 11:28 AM | Full Post
Ashley Gilbertson's "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"
The captured fighter claimed to be a student who had gotten stuck in Falluja. A marine responded. "Yeah, right, University of Jihad, motherfucker." What the fuck It's a hot title, only partially-disguised by the military alphabet code. Ashley Gilbertson's...
Posted by james at 12:18 AM | Full Post
October 5, 2007
Dame Ethel Smyth's "The Wreckers"
John Singer Sargent Ethel Smyth 1901 pastel If this hundred-year-old opera had always enjoyed the success it deserves today I'd probably be whining about the endless parade of productions of La Boheme, Aida, La Traviata, Carmen and The Wreckers....
Posted by james at 4:44 PM | Full Post
the "war on terror" has reduced us to slaves
Roy Batty's epiphany Last night I spent far too much time worrying about how to express the depth of my broader frustration and despair before posting the latest version of my regular fulminations over Guantanamo. I should have waited...
Posted by james at 1:44 PM | Full Post
October 4, 2007
GUANTANAMO DELENDA EST!
This post is part of a series begun on May 21, 2007, which will continue until the U.S. concentration camps at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere around the world have been razed. Many of us learned years ago that we...
Posted by james at 8:25 PM | Full Post
October 1, 2007
Michael Cline at Daniel Reich
Michael Cline Picket 2007 oil on linen 62" x 36" [detail] In time, Michael Cline's jaw-dropping show of oils at Daniel Reich, "Folks", may be recorded as a cultural benchmark, both aesthetic and social, for offering us such a...
Posted by james at 1:37 PM | Full Post
September 30, 2007
PWOP 2: last night's second "Parade Without A Permit"
drum corps section the vanguard past the Stonewall site the campaign theme not as bad as it looks the curious gather on the sidewalks We're saying the First Amendment isn't just for the homos. It was a fabulous party....
Posted by james at 9:46 PM | Full Post
September 28, 2007
apparently Sylvia Rivera still scares the cops
Sylvia at New York City Hall, with the community she helped create, in an undated photo "Hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned" [Sylvia Rivera, 1995]. At the Sylvia Rivera Law Project's after-party following its fifth anniversary...
Posted by james at 2:39 PM | Full Post
September 27, 2007
RHA asks Speaker Quinn about 1st Amendment, police rules
the RHA visits Speaker Quinn at the Stonewall Democratic Club open meeting Yesterday the junta in Burma invoked a colonial-era section of the nation's criminal code under which the government can use police or military force against any group...
Posted by james at 8:52 PM | Full Post
September 23, 2007
RHA, allies "Parade Without a Permit" for right of assembly
The Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA] logo incorporates the group's Regulation Pink Gasmask®, which has been donned by members since 2006 while they pursue their perilous mission fighting the American mainstream - an environment which they argue, and few would...
Posted by james at 7:29 PM | Full Post
September 22, 2007
a "7th haven" on international Park(ing) Day
hanging out in a park and free bike repair station on 7th Avenue at Charles yesterday Park(ing) Day, it's about serious greenstreets See Jim Dwyer's column for a word picture of the larger footprint of New York's part in...
Posted by james at 11:32 AM | Full Post
September 13, 2007
Kissinger to be Grand Marshall of Steuben Day Parade
the Realpolitiker's very favorite Tracht UPDATE: For concerned citizens of the world who might find the information useful, I've learned that Kissinger is expected to speak at the Parade Gala Benefit Banquet scheduled for 7 o'clock tonight, Friday, at...
Posted by james at 9:06 PM | Full Post
September 12, 2007
NYTimes still mixing "editorial" with the news
I'm going to end up skimming the features and skipping the "news" pages altogether. Is anybody else noticing this stuff? It's looking like the NYTimes is out of control. This is the way one of the paper's teasers read...
Posted by james at 11:54 PM | Full Post
September 11, 2007
no roll call for our own victims, on 9/11 or any other day
GUANTANAMO DELENDA EST! It's the eleventh of September again. Yes, it happens once a year. But I'm not interested in adding to the revanchisme stoked by every mention of the terrible events which occurred in my city six years...
Posted by james at 1:38 PM | Full Post
September 5, 2007
fuck Mother Teresa!
a very rewarding friendship (Blessed Teresa greeting friend Charles Keating) On this tenth anniversary of the demise of Mother Teresa, the acclaimed world-champion of suffering and death [whose lifer inmates were refused even aspirin, but who died only after...
Posted by james at 12:28 PM | Full Post
September 1, 2007
why was Craig taken down and Vitter not?
(but right, even laudable, if I paid women for quickies) The Republicans have trashed and now unceremoniously sacked one of their very own worthy gentlemen for soliciting consensual, uncompensated sex with another person. Senator Craig was forced to resign...
Posted by james at 9:56 PM | Full Post
the real meaning of Labor Day [redux]
National Guardsmen firing into demonstrators during the 1894 Chicago Pullman strike* [contemporary Harpers Weekly drawing] [Exactly five years ago today (I see now that it was almost to the minute) I did a post, "the real meaning of Labor...
Posted by james at 6:00 PM | Full Post
August 30, 2007
"surge working" - surprise!
Antoine-Jean Gros "Battle of Abukir" 1806 but it never, ever looks like this "Petraeus says Iraq 'surge' working" (headline of lead Reuters story on Yahoo!) Do they think we have a hundred years to work on it? Do they...
Posted by james at 11:38 PM | Full Post
"war on terrorism" is new McCarthyism: Gibran victim
we have a history Except to most of the poor citizen infantry of every description and every station which it has been enlisting for six years, the so-called "war on terror" has always been fundamentally about controlling the powerless...
Posted by james at 2:00 PM | Full Post
August 28, 2007
cop sitting in toilet stall enticed Senator Craig for sex
ruins of public toilet in ancient port of Ostia Okay, even if no one has asked, does anyone want to know my take on the Senator Craig homosex arrest story? Well, it was actually my second thought, the less-than-honorable...
Posted by james at 12:33 AM | Full Post
August 26, 2007
GUANTANAMO DELENDA EST!
our shame and ignominy abstracted as a color which has become familiar to the entire world This post is part of a series begun on May 21, 2007, which will continue until the U.S. concentration camps at Guantanamo Bay...
Posted by james at 3:23 PM | Full Post
August 23, 2007
UPDATE on Deutsche Bank fire
It seems that the tangled story at which I could only hint in my Tuesday post, "Ayn Rand linked to Deutsche Bank skyscraper tragedy?", has caused some serious bustle around the city desk at the NYTimes. The lead story...
Posted by james at 12:01 PM | Full Post
August 21, 2007
"Purple Hearts" at Jen Bekman
Spc. Sam Ross 21 years old, 82nd Airborne, was wounded May 18, 2003 in Baghdad when a bomb blew up during a munitions disposal operation, leaving him blinded and an amputee. After many, surgeries, Ross was sent home to western...
Posted by james at 4:22 PM | Full Post
Ayn Rand linked to Deutsche Bank skyscraper tragedy?
skyscrapers have very complex lives I've just read that the name of the sub-contracting company in charge of the demolition at the Deutsche Bank building is the John Galt Corporation. Who is John Galt? I immediately recognized the intriguing...
Posted by james at 2:02 PM | Full Post
August 17, 2007
TEAR IT DOWN
Guantanamo. Again. But this time I'm encouraged by the appearance of a new site devoted specifically to the subject. Amnesty International has just gone public with a new site, tearitdown.org, dedicated to solely shutting down permanently the most notorious...
Posted by james at 4:52 PM | Full Post
of one-party governments, war crimes and collective guilt
Bloggy explains why he and so many of us have abandoned American electoral politics. My own take on it: A people which liked to describe its system as "democratic" has finally been occupied by what our last real "republican"...
Posted by james at 4:11 PM | Full Post
August 16, 2007
U.S. stinginess begins at home
Keeping America out of the red (commie/pinko/welfare-state red) may bury us all. I'm not much of a statistics guy, and I don't often trumpet NYTimes editorials, but there's some very simple numbers inside a short item in this morning's...
Posted by james at 12:39 PM | Full Post
August 13, 2007
Chris Quinn can't even get a pothole fixed
she's busy (Quinn sharing with the Police Chief and the Mayor) Over the past several months I've written repeatedly about my frustration and disgust with Chistine Quinn's attack on our First Amendment rights in her role as City Council...
Posted by james at 1:40 PM | Full Post
August 12, 2007
GUANTANAMO DELENDA EST!
GUANTANAMO MUST BE DESTROYED! This post is part of a series begun on May 21, 2007, which will continue until the U.S. concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay has been razed. [image, otherwise unattributed, via salvationinc]...
Posted by james at 10:25 AM | Full Post
August 4, 2007
Mayor's office withdraws proposed NYC photo ban
crowd before an animated Norm Siegel at July 27 First Amendment rally The Mayor's office has backed off from its outrageous set of proposed rules for people using photography anywhere in New York City. It's a great victory for...
Posted by james at 1:04 PM | Full Post
August 2, 2007
GUANTANAMO DELENDA EST!
Cato the Elder didn't have a blog, but he was still able to repeatedly harangue his fellow citizens at every opportunity, even at cocktail parties, with the slogan, CARTHAGO DELENDA EST! [Carthage must be destroyed!] He continued at it...
Posted by james at 10:01 PM | Full Post
July 28, 2007
NY Union Square First Amendment rally July 27, 2007
BICYCLIST DOWNED BY THUG COP, ARRESTED, THEN UN-ARRESTED How much do you have to piss off a New York cop (unknowingly, in fact) before he assaults and arrests you? When Joe Nerolla rode his bike over a large piece of...
Posted by james at 12:55 AM | Full Post
July 26, 2007
Guantanamo still screams at the world - and at all of us
Even if it were shut down today (and that ain't happening), Guantanamo will remain our shame forever. [this post is part of a series of reminders begun on May 21, 2007, which will continue until the concentration camp at...
Posted by james at 3:33 PM | Full Post
tell Kelly, Quinn and Bloomberg we are still a free people
LA police un-permitting a march in MacArthur Park, May 1, 2007, demonstrating that more and more everything which is not permitted by law is forbidden Tomorrow evening, July 27, folks who want to fight for our right to assemble...
Posted by james at 3:01 PM | Full Post
"to squeeze the cars, first primp the public ride"
(of course it's never been easy getting downtown) a view of central Paris some years before the current mayor's congestion campaign, in a print by Nicolas Guérard, "Les Embarras pour la circulation, au Pont Neuf à Paris" (early eighteenth...
Posted by james at 12:08 PM | Full Post
July 10, 2007
Guantanamo languishes
There are no summer breaks inside the cages at Guantanamo, and no AC. [image, otherwise unattributed, via salvationinc]...
Posted by james at 5:46 PM | Full Post
July 1, 2007
arrested in NY for reciting First Amendment to police officer
(too much free speech) An AP story in Newsday reports that Reverend Billy was arrested Friday night while loudly reciting the First Amendment to police. Could anything make it more clear what's going on in this city? It's time...
Posted by james at 12:11 PM | Full Post
June 29, 2007
Chris Quinn asks our civil rights to "take one for the team"
in this case an objective clearly worth a monstrous sacrifice Was the sacrifice of our right to assemble and speak just a matter of "taking one for the team"? And if it was, what will there be left to...
Posted by james at 2:13 PM | Full Post
police to regulate when we can use cameras in NYC
just another day on the street Last time it was the MTA, and now the Mayor of New York City wants to keep us from taking its picture. The Transit Authority eventually gave up on its proposed photography ban,...
Posted by james at 12:38 PM | Full Post
June 28, 2007
Shepard Fairey takes on U.S. rotten moral currency in print
I had almost forgotten that I had this image. It's been on my computer for a week. Once you get past its nightmare-come-alive reference, I think this Shepard Fairey* piece is very beautiful, not least for the color and...
Posted by james at 11:56 AM | Full Post
June 27, 2007
no word yet from the Democratic Party on Guantanamo
Still there, a monstrous abomination where not only its prisoners have been sent to rot, but its jailors as well, meaning every single one of us on the other side of the wire. [image, otherwise unattributed, via salvationinc]...
Posted by james at 11:02 AM | Full Post
June 25, 2007
RHA and Queer Justice League march for assembly rights
We were colorful, loud, beautiful and cute, joyful and fierce, and we never really stopped moving, even when the march did. One of the group described himself today, after eleven hours of sleep, as a survivor of "the anarcho-queer...
Posted by james at 11:39 PM | Full Post
NYPD rough up, arrest civil rights lawyer and wife
Geeeesh. Lawyering while black. Well, maybe that's a bit harsh, since there's no way to demonstrate that the New York police officers who beat a civil rights attorney and his wife yesterday would have behaved any differently had the...
Posted by james at 6:14 PM | Full Post
NYPD secretly granted permits to Dyke Marches for years
Friday night's NYC Dyke March In the middle of everything else he was balancing this weekend Tim Doody of The Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA] forwarded this I-Witness Video item to me on on Saturday, when I only read it...
Posted by james at 12:28 PM | Full Post
Queers slam Quinn during Stonewall anniversary march
scene early today at the support truck bike for an "unpermitted" march RHA/Queer Justice League contingent [more tomorrow]...
Posted by james at 1:45 AM | Full Post
June 23, 2007
NYC: yes to "street fairs", no to homo festival
the view from the parlor today It's not the pedestrian street we had in mind. We awakened this morning to the sweet refrain of amplified hawkers of corporately-manufactured goods, and the stench of greasy food. Yes it's another so-called...
Posted by james at 11:45 AM | Full Post
June 22, 2007
trans march led by police wagon, loads of handcuffs ready
One of our sources tell us that tonight's Trans March was phenomenal! Donald Grove commented on Bloggy's post about the Audre Lord Project's experience trying to secure a permit for a transgender march tonight. This is the text of this...
Posted by james at 11:31 PM | Full Post
panel on radical history of Lower East Side
ACT UP demonstration for access to clean needles, seventeen years ago After yesterday's post, which was totally connected to current political activism, I'm going to turn back and examine what the territory looked like in the 80's and 90's....
Posted by james at 1:55 AM | Full Post
June 21, 2007
Radical Homosexual Agenda zaps Quinn on police authority
outside balcony left balcony center and balcony right Tonight The Radical Homosexual Agenda struck once again, dramatically zapping Chris Quinn deep inside City Hall during her presentation at the the "Celebration of LGBT Pride" hosted annually by the City...
Posted by james at 3:20 AM | Full Post
June 17, 2007
sad ending for Brooklyn College MFA suit
still I was stunned when I first heard about the "settlement" of the Brooklyn College MFA students' cases against the City of New York, the NYC Parks Department and Brooklyn College, cases which had cited First Amendment violations and...
Posted by james at 3:51 PM | Full Post
June 15, 2007
Guantanamo remains
Are any of our grasping, dissembling politicians even thinking about it? [image, otherwise unattributed, via salvationinc]...
Posted by james at 12:04 PM | Full Post
June 7, 2007
Guantanamo and the other stuff
And waiting. [image, otherwise unattributed, via salvationinc]...
Posted by james at 5:21 PM | Full Post
May 31, 2007
Guantanamo, etc.
Still waiting. [image, otherwise unattributed, via salvationinc]...
Posted by james at 7:22 PM | Full Post
May 21, 2007
whither Guantanamo?
Where is the outrage over Guantanamo, seven months after the election? Why hasn't our political "detainment" camp in Cuba, our festering national disgrace, been shut down yet? And while I'm on the subject, where is my right to habeas...
Posted by james at 11:59 AM | Full Post
May 18, 2007
we're back, but it still looks pretty dreadful around here
like a bad penny I cannot hide it any longer: We arrived back from Spain Wednesday afternoon. Our luggage, having decided to extend the holiday for another day, arrived at our door 24 hours later, sadder but a little...
Posted by james at 10:06 AM | Full Post
May 1, 2007
Gore Vidal in New York
Don Bachardy Gore Vidal 1963 pencil and ink wash "From George Washington to George Bush makes a monkey out of Darwin. [pause] I'm now a creationist." And so, punctuating himself with a mischievous smile and a composed chuckle, did...
Posted by james at 2:35 PM | Full Post
April 29, 2007
citizens demand impeachment, occupy Senate offices
A.R.T. (Activist Response Team) lowers banners inside the Hart Senate Office Building April 26 I was delighted, one day after my French Revolution post, to come across this story. It needs to be circulated to a much wider audience....
Posted by james at 1:47 PM | Full Post
April 27, 2007
no one will take Bush's head (although he'd never miss it)
I'm reading a history of the French Revolution, while still following the news of today, including headlines like this. Sometimes one could wish that history really does repeat itself. [image from CUNY]...
Posted by james at 6:19 PM | Full Post
April 22, 2007
raw NYPD brutality, spawned by Kelly, Bloomberg and Quinn
stills captured from video on NYCindymedia site On Thursday I wrote about a demonstration in which I had participated (put together by The Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA], Assemble for Rights NYC, and other groups and individuals), which was directed...
Posted by james at 11:59 AM | Full Post
April 19, 2007
police "control" un-permitted parade protesting Quinn
I survived this afternoon's "Parade Without a Permit" more or less unscathed, although I was pushed to the ground while photographing the police exercising their "control" of our right to free speech. At the start of the parade in...
Posted by james at 7:20 PM | Full Post
terrorist gets bail
detail of a temporary memorial to the 72 victims of Cubana de Aviación flight 455, erected outside the courthouse in El Paso in 2005 ADDENDUM: [April 21] "A Terrorist Goes Free" Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, wanted in Cuba and...
Posted by james at 3:33 PM | Full Post
April 18, 2007
Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA] "un-permitted parade"
"keeping control" (wire and flesh, inside a holding pen during the 2004 RNC) No, Chris, in America the police are not supposed to write the laws and "control" demonstrations. Yesterday morning on the Brian Lehrer show NY City Council...
Posted by james at 5:24 PM | Full Post
new cold wars
defense, like charity, used to begin at home We might have enjoyed a golden age, but instead we have been condemned by small, stupid, and evil minds to bear the burden of a new, unspecific [hot and] cold war...
Posted by james at 12:04 PM | Full Post
April 9, 2007
more on U.S. databasing, this time of U.S. visitors
now almost anyone can qualify for this screen test It's not the first story like this we've heard, it's not the most disturbing, and unfortunately it won't be the last, but it's worth a read. It's an account of...
Posted by james at 6:39 PM | Full Post
April 8, 2007
"we'll need your eyes" [a follow-up]
We'll just Need to Scan Your Eyes for Our Files Imad Salman Ichleef, 37, was questioned yesterday by American soldiers about insurgent activity in his neighborhood of Ghazaliya in baghdad. Using a biometric recording device, one of the soldiers...
Posted by james at 4:33 PM | Full Post
April 7, 2007
"we'll need your eyes" - U.S. building database of Iraqi males
FOLLOW-UP: see this post for the missing image, and more I can't find it anywhere on the NYTimes site or through Google News, but our print edition of the paper this morning carries an extremely important photograph on page A6...
Posted by james at 1:12 PM | Full Post
April 4, 2007
Josh Wolf is freed
Flanked by two prison officials, Josh Wolf (center) pushes a cart full of his belongings (mostly books and letters) outside the gates of the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin. Behind him is David Greene, one of his attorneys. Chronicle...
Posted by james at 4:24 PM | Full Post
April 2, 2007
Hunter Reynolds at Artists Space
Hunter Reynolds Patina du Prey's Memorial Dress: 1993 to 2007 [detail of installation] Spinning, spinning, spinning. Hunter Reynolds's elegant installation, "Patina du Prey's Memorial Dress: 1993 to 2007", is currently installed in one of the galleries of Artists Space....
Posted by james at 1:32 PM | Full Post
March 31, 2007
ACT UP party tonight
This t-shirt was designed by the legendary activist artist collective Gran Fury 17 years ago. Today South Africa has national health care. A lot of people still think they can do something to help drag our own country into...
Posted by james at 10:47 AM | Full Post
March 30, 2007
ACT UP renewed, and transformed
across from the Stock Exchange yesterday If yesterday's ACT UP twentieth-anniversary action demonstrated anything, it was the coalition's own renewal, and its transformation from an AIDS activist group once largely made up of young middle-class queer white males into...
Posted by james at 2:21 PM | Full Post
March 28, 2007
ACT UP back to the Wall, this time for single-payer healthcare
going back for more, 20 years later Apparently as a nation we can accept throwing away something like half a trillion dollars (and counting), and very likely some 700,000 lives, on a remote elective war whose only accomplishment was...
Posted by james at 11:24 AM | Full Post
March 23, 2007
House votes on the war: do we say "whoopie"?
Sue Coe Wheel of War 2004 mixed media drawing on board 12.5" x 8.5" WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday defied President George W. Bush, voting to impose a September 1, 2008, deadline for withdrawing...
Posted by james at 2:10 PM | Full Post
March 12, 2007
pink pig Bush
(PIG BUSH, DEMOLISH THE BORDER WALL) reads the message on the side of the big pink pig aloft during the Roger Waters concert in Mexico City on March 6, two days before his Bush visit warm-up performance in Bogota...
Posted by james at 7:26 PM | Full Post
February 6, 2007
blogger journalist Josh Wolf still in prison!
once the man in the street I was wrong, or at least not updated. Josh Wolf is still in prison, and were it not for the remarkable fact that today he becomes the longest-incarcerated journalist in modern American history...
Posted by james at 2:33 PM | Full Post
Barry and I didn't jump up and down after the last election
a jester whose glance is glum looks on Our readership doesn't entirely overlap, so to make sure no one misses a great post Barry did this evening I'm linking to it here. [image from Boise Gilbert and Sullivan archive]...
Posted by james at 1:12 AM | Full Post
February 5, 2007
time to leave: the emperor has been made a god
Reuters headline story:Senate votes not to debate Iraq proposal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan resolution repudiating President George W. Bush's decision to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq failed to advance in the U.S. Senate on Monday, dealing a serious...
Posted by james at 7:17 PM | Full Post
February 4, 2007
NBC Nightly News has puppies!
always good for ratings Sherry Mazzocchi, of Blog Chelsea, writes to us that she sees NBC has apparently taken for a constructive suggestion the example Barry had used to condemn the triviality of what the networks represent as news....
Posted by james at 5:36 PM | Full Post
February 2, 2007
Homeless Museum at home to guests this Sunday
Filip Noterdaeme THE NEWEST™ 2006 model (plexiglass, LED screens, figurines, remote-controlled robotic system) [installation view]* The Homeless Museum (affectionately referred to as HoMu by both adoring fans and its own creators) will be welcoming visitors once again this Sunday....
Posted by james at 1:35 PM | Full Post
February 1, 2007
Boston authorities crazy about LED street art
1/31 changed everything I'm so embarassed for my friends in Boston. No, wait: Maybe our good neighbors are all actually onto something really, really big (I'm not talking about the suits and uniforms - or an impressively stupid Boston...
Posted by james at 5:53 PM | Full Post
"blogger summit": WNBC wants in
MSM news During the station's introductory presentation last night at what was billed as New York's first Blogger Summit, the host, WNBC, reported that its own advance survey revealed that zero percent of their invited blog respondents thought that...
Posted by james at 12:38 PM | Full Post
January 30, 2007
thug cars for a thug America?
Chrysler 300 Hummer H2 Toyota FJ Cruiser Cadillac presidential tank Ford Synus concept* Brinks truck, thugmobile, or armored personnel carrier? The only accessory that seems to be missing from these and the many other examples (real or teaser) of...
Posted by james at 3:22 PM | Full Post
January 26, 2007
censorship, a goddamned slippery slope
Michael Kelly that goddamned george bush 2006 computer drawing Just spotted this tiny item in this morning's Newsday: BLEEPS ON A PLANE. So much for God and country, at least during some in-flight showings of the Oscar-nominated movie "The...
Posted by james at 11:38 AM | Full Post
January 24, 2007
Joe Ovelman at Oliver Kamm 5BE
Joe Ovelman: the first three drawings from the series, “Twelve Drawings” 2007 [installation view] Joe Ovelman Rosa Parks 381 2007 381 polaroids and ink [detail of installation] Joe Ovelman Regi 2005 video [still from video installation] It's a tough...
Posted by james at 5:37 PM | Full Post
January 22, 2007
what we talk about when we talk about . . . war*
spoils of war Michael Rakowitz is a superb artist who just doesn't seem to be able to work without diving into the monumental issues which assault our smug comfort every day. We adore him for it. Bloggy has a...
Posted by james at 5:18 PM | Full Post
January 16, 2007
another look at "You Belong to Me: Death of Nations: Part V"
from Act III, Rory Sheridan (Tiger), Carrie Getman, Harold Kennedy German and Elizabeth Knauer, with Robert Saietta, Beau Allulli and Okwui Okpokwasili (bear) further upstage On Saturday, when I wrote about the PS 122 production of International WOW Comapany's...
Posted by james at 4:23 PM | Full Post
January 13, 2007
U.S. official intimidates, impugns loyalty of pro bono lawyers
[American Civil War pictoral envelope ca. 1860-1865] Don't they teach civics in school any more? A member of Bush's team and a lawyer himself, acting in his official capacity as head of "detainee" affairs, intimidates lawyers defending the most...
Posted by james at 1:09 PM | Full Post
January 12, 2007
the two Times Square demonstrations
hundreds of anti-war demonstrators on the north side two intrepid pro-war demonstrators on the south side New York activists were able to attract a couple of hundred demonstrators to the Times Square military recruiting station on Thursday night, responding...
Posted by james at 11:51 PM | Full Post
the special warrior king
Apparently there were anti-war protests in cities all over the country yesterday, but if you depend on the NYTimes for your news, you wouldn't know it. It seems that everyone in the kingdom had been asked recently what they...
Posted by james at 11:32 PM | Full Post
January 9, 2007
we've just found another war!
is this trip necessary? Does our singular bellicosity stem simply from our addiction to oil, or from our growing cult of christianism? Or is it simply the pathological expression of a frightened, isolated, ignorant, provincial and bored people? My...
Posted by james at 12:29 PM | Full Post
January 8, 2007
Brian Ulrich at Julie Saul
Brian Ulrich Gurnee, IL 2005 chromogenic print mounted on sintra with luster laminate 30" x 40” The sign reads "More Outdoors for Your Money Patriotic Chairs $9.99". The image is just one of the most resonant of the ten...
Posted by james at 1:43 PM | Full Post
January 7, 2007
June in January
I don't mean to unduly upset anyone not already concerned about climate change, and I know that as scientific evidence it's merely anecdotal, but tonight while I was sitting in front of an open window checking my email I...
Posted by james at 1:34 AM | Full Post
December 21, 2006
Mary Mattingly at White Box
Mary Mattingly Fore Cast: An Environmental Disaster Opera 2006 installation and performance [an image from the performance of December 19] Because of the ambience (shadows, respectful movement and low buzz) of dozens of my fellow acolytes at the opening...
Posted by james at 4:32 PM | Full Post
December 7, 2006
Target free speech
who, or what, does have the right to "speak" in public, and how much does free speech cost? Coming home from the opening at the Whitney at Altria last night, I spotted the graffiti comment on the poster shown...
Posted by james at 5:22 PM | Full Post
November 30, 2006
November 27, 2006
Iraq war now as long as WW II, but with no end in sight
American involvement in World War II lasted exactly three years, eight months and one week. As of today, the American war in Iraq has lasted exactly three years, eight months and one week. There is of course no other equivalence....
Posted by james at 4:18 PM | Full Post
November 8, 2006
the continued shame of an entire people
Regardless of whether the Democratic Party gains control of one or two houses in the Congress which convenes next January, the entire nation ought to be deeply ashamed tonight. After what the Republican majority has clearly done in the last...
Posted by james at 1:46 AM | Full Post
November 6, 2006
sentence first - verdict afterwards
"Let the jury consider their verdict," the King said, for about the twentieth time that day. "No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first -- verdict afterwards." "Stuff and nonsense!" said Alice loudly. "The idea of having the sentence first!"...
Posted by james at 11:25 AM | Full Post
October 31, 2006
come Tueday, Republican goblins gonna get us again, maybe
NOTE: After I had completed a political post last night I accidentally deleted it - irretrievably. I didn't think then that I would try to reconstruct it, but the subject keeps knawing on me and it definitely couldn't be much...
Posted by james at 6:24 PM | Full Post
October 25, 2006
if you see something, say something.
about terror far more real than that imagined by hysterical post-9/11 SubTalk warnings [altered poster sighted on the C train this afternoon]...
Posted by james at 5:46 PM | Full Post
October 11, 2006
Kim Jong-il a Republican?
North Korea threatens war against U.S. [AP] Oh great. It seems the Republicans have somehow managed to persuade Kim Jong-il to save their hold on Congress. Get ready to be whipped up over another war just weeks before the...
Posted by james at 9:35 AM | Full Post
October 5, 2006
only in America: of the government by age of consent
I find it absolutely incomprehensible that in the end, after all the horrors of the last twelve years of Republican Congresses, the last six with a totally disastrous Republican administration, we might see the Republican ascendancy overturned because my fellow...
Posted by james at 8:08 PM | Full Post
October 4, 2006
Adam McEwen at Nicole Klagsbrun
Adam McEwen Dresden (Phosphorbrandbombe) 2006 phosphorescent paint and chewing gum on canvas 90" x 70" [installation view] Adam McEwen Dresden 2006 acrylic and chewing gum on canvas 90" x 130" [installation view] [detail of above] I'm not even going...
Posted by james at 5:49 PM | Full Post
September 26, 2006
the American Airlines homo scare: even worse than reported
UPDATE ON THE AMERICAN AIRLINES INCIDENT: the airline's straights-only security rules don't fly I have now heard from our friend David Leisner, who was quoted in the The New Yorker story I wrote about on Thursday evening. David was one...
Posted by james at 12:15 AM | Full Post
September 11, 2006
the antidote to 9/11 24/7
I wasn't going to say anything more today about the fifth installment of our annual orgy of mourning and revenge, the anniversary of September 11. But things just got out of hand once we walked into Pierogi this evening and...
Posted by james at 9:37 PM | Full Post
the terrorists have won, without lobbing another shot
I suggest we haven't had another terrorist attack within our borders in these five years precisely because it hasn't been necessary. Bush has managed to exactly fulfill the objectives of the last one. To begin with, it's now official: He's...
Posted by james at 12:28 AM | Full Post
September 2, 2006
asking why there isn't a protest movement?
some kind of "Silence in the Streets", NYC, March 23, 2003 I saw this "Editorial Observer" piece by Andrew Rosenthal in yesterday's NYTimes and I could hardly believe my eyes. The writer asks, in the words of the piece's...
Posted by james at 5:10 PM | Full Post
UPDATE: Josh Wolf free on bail - after 30 days in prison!
Josh Wolf, the young California video blogger and freelance journalist who was imprisoned August 1 for refusing to turn over videos of a political protest to a federal grand jury, has just been freed on bail by a federal appeals...
Posted by james at 4:21 PM | Full Post
August 2, 2006
feds throw blogger Josh Wolf into prison
Wolf at work "I feel a little bit responsible for this mess he's in right now, because he told me, 'Mom, you taught me to do what's right.'" Liz Wolf-Spada A Federal grand jury investigating the alleged vandalism of...
Posted by james at 11:38 AM | Full Post
July 25, 2006
the most dangerous war
Timothy Buckwalter [title not given] 2006 acrylic ink on paper 8.5" x 11" The destruction and invasion of Lebanon is very likely to spell disaster for New York, and for any other people or place rightly or wrongly perceived...
Posted by james at 1:29 PM | Full Post
July 23, 2006
"terrorist targets" in Beirut
Beirut residents protested the attacks on Lebanon on Saturday [caption and image from theangryarab, although the photograph originally appeared in the NYTimes crediting Bryan Denton]...
Posted by james at 11:51 AM | Full Post
what are the cartoonists and bloggers afraid of?
Isn't it strange that our last remaining guardians of truth, the political cartoonists and the two biggie bloggers, have been virtually silent on the biggest news story in the world today? See Juan Cole if you want enlightenment. [image...
Posted by james at 11:25 AM | Full Post
July 22, 2006
every one of us is in charge of the U.S. gulags
Benamar Benatta, in an undated Federal detention facility photograph This sort of thing will disgrace us all forever.NEW YORK - An Algerian man believed to be the last domestic* detainee still in custody from a national dragnet after Sept....
Posted by james at 11:48 AM | Full Post
July 19, 2006
they've lost the potato chip!*
[an image either Barry or I captured only days after September 11] Oops. The only remaining recognizable relic of the sacred World Trade Center buildings is missing, but I guess we're still more or less on target to spend...
Posted by james at 1:12 PM | Full Post
July 18, 2006
thoughts of Israel somehow always cancel thought
U.N. peacekeepers react at the sight of citizens who were killed when Israeli warplanes targeted their vehicles Saturday (July 15th) AP I've just read two disturbing pieces in today's NYTimes Metro section describing the reaction of New York's "leaders"...
Posted by james at 4:27 PM | Full Post
July 13, 2006
closer to Armageddon
Sue Coe War Street 2000 etching 9.5" x 12.5" Okay, for better or for worse, the U.S. is the only "superpower" (for now) so I don't think it's presumptuous to talk about the size of our footprint: Right now...
Posted by james at 12:12 PM | Full Post
July 8, 2006
Chris Moukarbel at Wallspace
Chris Moukarbel Untitled 2006 DVD projection [still from installation] Who owns 9/11? Even the question is scary, but most of us would answer in disgust, "George Bush". Nevertheless we would have to admit that this quick response ignores the...
Posted by james at 1:33 PM | Full Post
June 28, 2006
Eric Rofes, pleasure even in the manner of his departure
Eric Rofes Eric Rofes died on Monday. This remarkable and very gentle activist was one of the most important voices to ever represent the "sexual outsider" - meaning effectively just about everyone who's ever done the thing, or even...
Posted by james at 5:31 PM | Full Post
June 24, 2006
Oppenheimer would not be surprised
In the last hours these two stories have appeared in the NYTimes: "Cheney Assails Press on Report on Bank Data" and: "Court Bars Info Request on NSA Wiretapping" So, the engineer behind the systematic destruction of our liberties is...
Posted by james at 11:54 AM | Full Post
June 19, 2006
Bush absolutely did not visit Iraq or Baghdad last Tuesday
no hanging garden, this [a section of the Green Zone perimeter] I'm tired of the media's [continuing] misleading descriptions of last week's flight by Bush to Baghdad International Airport and the Green Zone. If I thought it was just...
Posted by james at 7:58 PM | Full Post
June 11, 2006
Guantanamo suicides a 'PR move'* [to draw attention]
no, unfortunately this image is very real, and not Trompe l'oeil [the Yahoo! News caption for the picture begins: Leg irons and hand cuffs hang on a board at Camp Delta at Guantanamo Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba, in...
Posted by james at 7:05 PM | Full Post
June 9, 2006
Abu Musab ab-Zarqawi, dead or dead
Now we're finding out he wasn't killed by the 500 lb bombs we dropped. He had to be dispatched afterwards, more or less manually. We sure wouldn't have wanted him to be able to talk. Somebody might actually have learned...
Posted by james at 11:22 AM | Full Post
June 8, 2006
nativist terror in Belgium is reflected everywhere
only the lyrics change I'm going to start by pointing out that here in the U.S, in the best of all possible worlds, we managed to put racism and nativism behind us long ago and we are today totally...
Posted by james at 1:50 AM | Full Post
June 6, 2006
Brooklyn College MFA works resurrected, with scars
I wrote a little while back that I would show some of the damage the school had done to work created by Brooklyn College Masters degree students. While this small post can't show the full extent of the physical and...
Posted by james at 1:51 PM | Full Post
June 2, 2006
Bush needs federal help to protect his marriage
Somebody must currently be leaning very hard on George, perhaps some homo brute has a gun at his back and is forcing him to walk out on Laura and pad down the aisle once again. Why else would our Commander-in-Chief...
Posted by james at 9:43 PM | Full Post
May 25, 2006
the penis art which threatens New York families
Augusto Marin's notorious provocation This is just one of five sculptures by Augusto Marin which is included in the Brooklyn College MFA thesis show shut down three weeks ago by the Brooklyn Parks Commissioner. This self-appointed guardian of New...
Posted by james at 8:55 PM | Full Post
May 23, 2006
Brooklyn College MFA "Plan B Prevails"
WHEN DOES A PHALLUS DESERVE RESPECT?* Robert Mapplethorpe Louise Bourgeois 1982 [image of Bourgeois holding her "Fillette"] Now it's official. Er, maybe I should write "anti-official": The Brooklyn College 2006 MFA thesis show is re-opening, mostly. It was shut down...
Posted by james at 12:57 PM | Full Post
May 19, 2006
postponed: Brooklyn College MFA students press conference
I've just gotten word that the Brooklyn College MFA Press Conference originally scheduled for 1 pm today has been POSTPONED. Details to follow. I'm not going to speculate here, but I find this last-minute change very interesting. On a related...
Posted by james at 12:08 PM | Full Post
May 18, 2006
Douglas Kelly as proper political pundit
and I also have a bridge you can buy Gee willikers, Uncle Sam! It's as if up to now we've only had to worry about the civil rights of our native Al Qaedans! Why is it we don't hardly...
Posted by james at 8:51 PM | Full Post
Brooklyn College MFA students announce press conference
UPDATE: [noon, Friday, May 19] The Brooklyn College MFA Press Conference originally scheduled for 1 pm today has been POSTPONED. Details to follow. FIGHTING THE CENSOR'S (ST)INK Brooklyn College MFA students, members of the faculty and attorneys Norman Siegel and...
Posted by james at 6:09 PM | Full Post
May 16, 2006
our own wall of shame, and an army to guard it
United States Border Patrol agents make use of All Terrain vehicles as they patrol along the U.S. border with Mexico in this undated photograph provided by the Border Patrol. [Reuters caption] The Great Wall of China, Hadrian's wall, the...
Posted by james at 11:41 PM | Full Post
Jenny Holzer at Cheim & Read and Yvon Lambert
Jenny Holzer WHITE 2006 Nichia white LED's mounted on PCB with aluminum housing 192.25" x 216.5" x 5.25" [capture from moving light of installation] Jenny Holzer HAND yellow white 2006 oil on linen in eight panels 33" x 25.5"...
Posted by james at 2:25 PM | Full Post
May 13, 2006
MFA show shut down for reference to Cheney sex?
Lèse Majesté? Was sex the beard for political censorship? From a story in the Fine Arts section of the NYTimes on Friday:In addition to the hand-and-penis sculpture, works in the show included a video with sexual overtones in which...
Posted by james at 11:12 AM | Full Post
May 11, 2006
on the Brooklyn College massacre, Riverdale Press rocks!
[this editorial is too good to stay in the Bronx; Barry reformatted it from a PDF so I could upload it here] THE RIVERDALE PRESS Thursday, May 11, 2006 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The return of the censors In 1988, Chicago police arrested...
Posted by james at 1:23 PM | Full Post
May 2, 2006
media censors Colbert's witness against the emperor
is he even capable of understanding what Colbert said? Clearly, the only news worthy of reporting about Saturday's White House Corresponents' Association banquet was Stephen Colbert's amazing performance zap, but the NYTimes story doesn't even mention it. The only...
Posted by james at 5:32 PM | Full Post
April 6, 2006
headline of DeLay
torn from this morning's NYTimes But the rest of us know exactly what to do with a stinking privy....
Posted by james at 5:24 PM | Full Post
March 26, 2006
the people of Belarus vote with their bodies
citizens resisting an illegitimate regime in a haze of tear gas in Minsk's October Square In some nations a noble and aroused people will determine to do something when it becomes clear that their "democrcacy" is a fraud. Here...
Posted by james at 1:30 PM | Full Post
March 21, 2006
swimming in Iraq
swimming on our aircraft carrier in the desert Not many people will get to read my post or the original The Nation article available only in the print edition, but maybe a color image and the accompanying story from...
Posted by james at 1:34 PM | Full Post
March 18, 2006
'Permanent Bases' and Rachel Corrie, both in The Nation
There are few issues more important to our own survival and that of the entire world than the state of Israel and the war in Iraq. In two consecutive issues this month The Nation's contributors offer enlightenment in these areas...
Posted by james at 11:13 AM | Full Post
March 17, 2006
"Sophie Scholl-The Final Days"
Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who...
Posted by james at 5:12 PM | Full Post
February 22, 2006
nobody in charge
I think I can speak for a lot of people on the Left if I say that for a long time we've been in a state of despair because of our belief that the radical Right was pretty much...
Posted by james at 5:38 PM | Full Post
February 15, 2006
shooting 'em up before they really get into the air
birds fly, buddies stay on the ground I have no first-hand experience with the hunting of tiny birds, but I assume any "sportsman" engaged in its pursuit is supposed to wait until the intended target is in the air...
Posted by james at 1:43 PM | Full Post
February 10, 2006
Plamegate updated and illustrated
Juan Cole cuts through all the mendacity this morning: He describes, in the clearest possible fashion [and richly illustrated] the crimes of Bush, Cheney, Libby and Rove as they relate to the Valerie Plame story. Cole's good, but it's really...
Posted by james at 11:59 AM | Full Post
February 8, 2006
the cartoon war, and Thomas Hirschhorn at Gladstone
Thomas Hirschhorn Superficial Engagement 2006 [detail of installation] Thomas Hirschhorn Superficial Engagement 2006 [detail of installation] Most of the commercial media has decided that Americans shouldn't be shown the drawings which seem to have made the world go crazy...
Posted by james at 9:38 PM | Full Post
"Mahomet débordé par les intégristes"
This cartoon appeared today in Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly associated with the radical Left. The in-house drawing portrays the prophet of Islam next to a headline, "Mahomet overwhelmed by the fundamentalists." The distraught man cries, "It's hard...
Posted by james at 1:18 PM | Full Post
February 3, 2006
wacky Christians green with envy?
The U.S. and British governments criticized publication of the caricatures as offensive to Muslims, raising questions about whether the line between free speech and incitement had been crossed. [Associated Press] One more short thought on the subject of cartoons (although...
Posted by james at 6:44 PM | Full Post
February 2, 2006
we are all Danes today
This whole Mohammed image thing is almost perfectly ridiculous, but there is one perfect solution to the problem. Denmark simply must not be left hanging in the wind. There is a popular, although apparently apocryphal story concerning the Danish...
Posted by james at 11:20 PM | Full Post
February 1, 2006
more on Cindy Sheehan's dress code incident
I don't know what to make of all of this, but in the end I have to say I'm not losing interest in this story. See yesterday's post for the background. Thanks to Towleroad for alerting me to the latest...
Posted by james at 10:26 PM | Full Post
January 31, 2006
disorderly conduct before the emperor
House arrest If she just had the common decency to wear Old Navy or GAP, it would only have been American business as usual and there wouldn't have been any fuss. Even MSNBC can't make Cindy Sheehan look like...
Posted by james at 11:20 PM | Full Post
January 17, 2006
Gore calls it tyranny, and suggests impeachment
see, if you're a Democrat they can make your oh-so-patriotic scads of flags quite invisible Al Gore has disappointed me over and over again in the past, but what is that saying about a drowning man grasping at straws?...
Posted by james at 4:49 PM | Full Post
January 13, 2006
finally it's right here: a secret police with matching state*
Jane and Louise Wilson Stasi City 1997 video [still from installation] All this blithering about to execute or not to execute, for the death penalty or against - all rot, comrades. Execute! And, when necessary, without a court judgment."...
Posted by james at 5:57 PM | Full Post
December 25, 2005
score another one for Christ, or?
"Quiet tsunami prayers mark Christmas in Thailand" read the headline on the lead story on YAHOO! NEWS when I first looked this afternoon. The story begins:KHAO LAK, Thailand (Reuters) - Simple Buddhist ceremonies marked Christmas Day in Thailand's tsunami zone...
Posted by james at 4:07 PM | Full Post
December 16, 2005
how bankrupt is the journalism of the New York Times?
more and more just a punch line? I suppose that since I'm just a blogger I'm not expected to know much about a journalist's responsibilities, but I do think I can improve on what New York Times executive editor...
Posted by james at 9:30 PM | Full Post
December 8, 2005
Pinter reminds us that political truth still requires a poet
Sir Harold Nobel laureate Harold Pinter addressed the Swedish Academy yesterday. He began with a beautiful description of his own creative process, but very soon stepped up to the broader political pulpit which the prize so generously provides its...
Posted by james at 12:45 PM | Full Post
November 28, 2005
Supreme Court disintegrating
OH, THE AUGURY! Part of the main front of the Supreme Court Building collapsed, only a few minutes ago. CNN reports that Washingtonians themselves aren't too worried.A group of students from Columbus, Ohio, pocketed some of the fragments as souvenirs,...
Posted by james at 10:36 AM | Full Post
November 27, 2005
progressives are wrong if they're thinking Hillary Clinton
Steve Greenfield, upon his release from arrest during the 2004 Republican National Convention It's time more people realized who she really is, and rejected the impressive, carefully-managed hype which disguises the reality. You don't even have to consider yourself...
Posted by james at 3:50 PM | Full Post
November 16, 2005
delicious: Watergate's Woodward may help bring down Bush
- this time apparently in spite of himself, since this shooting star reporter certainly hasn't been doing much investigating lately. Reuters reports that Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, has disclosed to the special prosecutor that the White House had told...
Posted by james at 5:34 PM | Full Post
November 14, 2005
Bush the Leader wraps himself in khaki again
I mean, what are they going to say? Has anybody not noticed that the man frequently described as the President of the United States addresses his constituents only inside military bases or, if anywhere else, only in the company...
Posted by james at 9:08 PM | Full Post
the Target is women - the weapon, "religious freedom"
you can no longer expect more from Target. Barry just sent me an email with a link to this story reporting essentially that the Target corporation will refuse to fill certain prescriptions because to do so would be both immoral...
Posted by james at 3:44 PM | Full Post
November 3, 2005
gotta love a boy with a little bicycle and a red scarf
especially if he's part of a "Drive Out the Bush Regime" demo marching up 8th Avenue this afternoon led by some of the youngest revolutionaries I've ever seen the youth in question looking particularly endearing stopped by a flat...
Posted by james at 12:05 AM | Full Post
October 30, 2005
Bertrand Russell* in Williamsburg
Further to the right on this North 10th Street wall is the exposition,FORGET PATRIOTISM SUPPORT HUMANISM * Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970) Note: the colors in this image have absolutely not been manipulated....
Posted by james at 7:56 PM | Full Post
September 30, 2005
FREEDOM NIXED FOR SACRED SPACE - WAL-MART IN TALKS
and eventually, when interest in them flags, we can use the two big footprints for parking So, after watching four years of people fighting over the big hole, we're now to have nothing more than some dreary architecture sheltering...
Posted by james at 12:51 PM | Full Post
September 27, 2005
“Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated"
what do you think? The Times-Picayune headline and story appears only after almost a full month of reports that the New Orleans victims of hurricane Katrina had acted like murderers and animals.As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane...
Posted by james at 1:29 PM | Full Post
September 26, 2005
White House arrests Cindy Sheehan
dangerous woman Cindy Sheehan has been arrested for not moving from the sidewalk in front of the executive mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue. White House press secretary Scott McClellan:"it's the right of the American people to peacefully express their views....
Posted by james at 5:37 PM | Full Post
September 24, 2005
Bush has made beatings and torture very American
An Iraqi detainee at a jail in the outskirts of Baghdad, 2004. Troops from the army's elite 82nd Airborne Division routinely beat and mistreated Iraqi prisoners at a base near Fallujah in central Iraq with the approval of their...
Posted by james at 10:41 AM | Full Post
September 22, 2005
don't expect freedom of speech or assembly in New York
bedlam immediately followed the arrest of the organizer of Cindy Sheehan's appearance in Union Square [the guy in the yellow shirt is a plainclothes punk "kid" who tried to start trouble before the rally began, according to a witness,...
Posted by james at 5:13 PM | Full Post
September 21, 2005
after the flood, waiting for the new owners?
where Dumaine crosses North Roman, central Treme after the flood, sometime late last week The title of Jordan Flaherty's latest letter is "Shelter and Safety", but the context is racism, a racism exacerbated by the horrors of Hurricane Katrina,...
Posted by james at 2:17 PM | Full Post
September 19, 2005
getting into New Orleans, with some paper and some attitude
back at Duke, Sonny Byrd, David Hankla and Hans Buder "It made no sense whatsoever that reporters were getting in and out of New Orleans, but the National Guard couldn't remove those people from the convention center," said Mr....
Posted by james at 11:35 AM | Full Post
September 15, 2005
anyone care what the owners of those houses think?
not everything's in the French Quarter I obviously haven't seen everything being written about the reconstruction (or, gasp, "urban renewal") of New Orleans, but I know I haven't read a single word about who actually owns all those unique,...
Posted by james at 4:04 PM | Full Post
September 14, 2005
was "mission accomplished" even in Afghanistan?
in Afghanistan the Taliban remain an enduring threat, freedom only clings to life, especially for women, and more Americans are dying than ever before Sixty-nine American service members have been killed in Afghanistan this year, the NYTimes reported today...
Posted by james at 12:55 PM | Full Post
September 13, 2005
brilliant move on the part of the White House
brilliant? Maybe we've just been watching the latest sally in the radical conservatives' continuing campaign to dismantle the government. The results of a Newsweek poll released a few days ago suggest that it's working.But Katrina’s most costly impact could...
Posted by james at 12:56 PM | Full Post
September 12, 2005
Madison Square Garden eyes another architectural treasure
Farley Post Office Building [at the top of the front steps] BAD HABIT Years ago they tore down the magnificent old Pennsylvania Station and replaced it with the current monstrous obscenity which became the latest incarnation of the peripatetic...
Posted by james at 12:10 PM | Full Post
September 11, 2005
a broken trumpet in a red velvet-lined box
Barry and I were a part of this afternoon's New Orleans Jazz Funeral March in Washington Square Park, where I managed to weave through an extraordinarily-diverse crowd to get a few decent images, even while encumbered by half of...
Posted by james at 5:57 PM | Full Post
September 10, 2005
"Five Days with Katrina"
the day before UPDATE: "Five Days with Katrina" had moved and, thanks to Silvia Morales who told me where it went, the link below now works once again I haven't seen anything like this site before now. This album,...
Posted by james at 1:57 PM | Full Post
September 9, 2005
suburban police blocked those trying to escape while black
None of this surprises me any more, although there was a time, less than two weeks ago, when I could still go about the day without these images of the horrors of our racism haunting me all day long and...
Posted by james at 2:04 PM | Full Post
gun control as an act of god
So when is the right to have a gun a sacrament of the radical Right, if it's not during an emergency, when there is no civil order, and when life and private property must be defended? Sean Bonner asked the...
Posted by james at 12:34 PM | Full Post
the terrorists have won - again
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that U.S. President George W. Bush has the power to detain Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who has been held for more than three years as a suspected enemy...
Posted by james at 10:57 AM | Full Post
September 7, 2005
but what about their right of return . . . .
Joseph Williams attempts to leave New Orleans on Interstate 10. He has two flat tires on his trailer that is carrying half of everything he owns. [caption from Newsday dated September 5] If tons of money end up going...
Posted by james at 3:44 PM | Full Post
"DEAD WHITE RICH GUY . . . LAID TO REST IN DC!"
The entire headline, taken from another blogger's post, reads: STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES! A DEAD WHITE RICH GUY WHO WORE A BLACK ROBE FOR A LIVING IS LAID TO REST IN DC! Some people are very mad. Very, very mad....
Posted by james at 12:43 PM | Full Post
September 6, 2005
the "can't-do" folks, and lessons lost - or never learned
Winslow Homer Hurricane, Bahamas 1898-99 watercolor 14.5" x 21" I have two more stories which should be read more widely than they are likely to be. Like the tip on the previous post, both were sent to me by...
Posted by james at 4:04 PM | Full Post
the criminal politics of disaster, seen from inside New Orleans
Algiers, Louisiana, 1993 This is a letter from a dry Algiers. No, not the sandy one. It's the New Orleans neighborhood just across the river from the watery parts. This piece is copied in its entirety from ZNet. [Note:...
Posted by james at 3:33 PM | Full Post
water, water everywhere . . . .
Two woman sitting in front of their home in New Orleans. They are not looking for another place to live even, though they have nothing to eat or drink. [caption from Newsday dated September 5] As if the news...
Posted by james at 12:02 PM | Full Post
September 4, 2005
preserving the people of New Orleans as a community
Lee Friedlander Sweet Emma Barrett, New Orleans 1958 A BROKEN NEW ORLEANS ROUSES ITSELF I have no way of knowing how central this particular appeal may become, but it came to me through a friend and I share its...
Posted by james at 1:59 PM | Full Post
September 3, 2005
these people are being treated like vermin
A body floats outside the Superdome in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. [Los Angeles Times caption dated Friday] How rich and white do you have to be to get the attention of your government? These people...
Posted by james at 11:23 PM | Full Post
September 2, 2005
a letter from one who escaped a New Orleans refugee camp
Hundreds of people wait for evacuation buses on the side of Interstate 10 in New Orleans. Many of them were suffering from dehydration after hours of waiting in the heat. [Los Angeles Times caption, image dated August 31] Gretna...
Posted by james at 11:28 PM | Full Post
the picture of the U.S. hidden in the attic until now
outside the New Orleans convention center today While still lying abed this morning I listened to the BBC World Service coverage of the New Orleans disaster. Unfortunately I did not get the name of the (American?) woman being interviewed...
Posted by james at 2:03 PM | Full Post
September 1, 2005
we're totally fucked
A blanket covers the body of a woman who died in a wheelchair, and another body is wrapped in a sheet Thursday at the convention center in New Orleans. [CNN caption] If we actually were to be the victim...
Posted by james at 11:08 PM | Full Post
August 31, 2005
Marcos is gay
Subcommander Marcos Well, maybe not, but he sounds really good, and he still looks wonderful. His words, especially since they're from the mid-90's, won't be news to many out there, but I tripped over this powerful quote from Subcommander...
Posted by james at 2:03 PM | Full Post
bring the National Guard and the money home now
I cry for New Orleans. And I don't want to see another photo with a caption screaming about folks "looting," when they are in the midst of an unprecedented disaster where there is no food, no water and no...
Posted by james at 11:18 AM | Full Post
August 23, 2005
Barenboim continues Said's dream
playing for peace In a project begun with the dream of his late friend Edward Said, Daniel Barenboim finally made it to Ramallah with his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra last night. Members of the orchestra, founded in 1998, come from...
Posted by james at 4:08 PM | Full Post
August 20, 2005
papal Carnival in Cologne
demonstrators dressed as a priest and a nun kiss in front of a large model dinosaur during an anti-religion demonstration in Cologne August 19, 2005 [as der Ratzinger arrived in Cologne] Sometimes it's best to let the thing speak...
Posted by james at 12:06 AM | Full Post
August 17, 2005
Chelsea's vigil for Cindy Sheehan, and the end of a war
It's finally beginning to look like we might be able to move on. These are images of the silent vigil held on 8th Avenue near 17th Street in Chelsea this evening, an echo of similar observances held all over...
Posted by james at 9:07 PM | Full Post
de Menezes in light jacket, walked casually, used transit card
British newspapers front pages, August 17, 2005 carry pictures of the body of Jean Charles... Jean Charles de Menezes walked at a normal pace into the subway station on July 22, used his card to pass through the turnstile,...
Posted by james at 12:16 PM | Full Post
August 14, 2005
Heathrow mess: what's the real story, the clients or the serfs?
are they invisible? Is the story about lost or missed flights and the attendant inconvenience for thousands of travellers, or is it about humiliating and discarding hundreds of low-paid Asian workers struggling in a racist society? There have been...
Posted by james at 1:43 PM | Full Post
August 9, 2005
one for the revolution
This revolutionary [paint on panel] was spotted attached to the same wall as the arrow and the penis. The paving stone she's hurling in anger would have made a better weapon than the large granite blocks of Wooster Street...
Posted by james at 8:08 PM | Full Post
August 2, 2005
reign of terror
[North 4th Street, Williamsburg, on Sunday]...
Posted by james at 12:19 AM | Full Post
August 1, 2005
so, what was the difference this time?
the signs on Fifth Avenue read "Witness To Israeli War Crimes," and that seems to have stuck in more than one important craw Steve Quester and his remaining four co-defendents in the trial of the M26 arrestees were sentenced...
Posted by james at 8:21 PM | Full Post
July 26, 2005
what to do if stopped for a subway search
not so simple now, even for white guys, but maybe it never was UPDATE: I received a very constructive comment on my last post, "bag the entrance searches, we need exits!", from Matt of the "Flex your Rights Foundation,"...
Posted by james at 3:32 PM | Full Post
July 25, 2005
bag the entrance searches, we need exits!
the wrong kind of crowd control It's a good thing it was Penn Station, because virtually none of New York's Transit system stations could be evacuated for either a real or a false alarm. Chief Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg's...
Posted by james at 1:40 PM | Full Post
July 21, 2005
darkness settles over the land, this time maybe permanently
the Madtown Liberty Players portray the Fourth Amendment under attack (two years ago) The House voted today to make the "Patriot Act" permanent. In what may be the least patriotic vote ever recorded in that chamber, our representatives effectively...
Posted by james at 11:44 PM | Full Post
July 20, 2005
more on Smolkatown
for picking weeds It probably won't be news to anyone in the new music scene, but this account of vicious New York city police thuggery may be a surprise to many of my readers, even those who have seen...
Posted by james at 3:26 PM | Full Post
July 19, 2005
just about as brutal and effective as our campaign in Iraq
a Palestinian man walks next to a section of a wall eight-meters high built by the Israeli government, arbitrarily separating Jerusalem (and some additional annexed lands) from the Palestinian suburb of Abu Dis We will not prevent terrorist acts...
Posted by james at 12:38 PM | Full Post
July 16, 2005
difficult music for difficult times: an appreciation
[of a kind of harmony] and I'm also very fond of red, when it's used well [scene from "Shadowtime"] Brian Ferneyhough Time and Motion Study III 1974 16 mixed voices, percussion, live electronics [detail of the score] I had intended...
Posted by james at 3:35 PM | Full Post
July 11, 2005
MTA: stadium treated as emergency, but security gets yawn
leaving it up to the riders Barry has just about covered the issue, with the help of Newsday's estimable Ray Sanchez, but a letter to the editor published in the NYTimes helps to illustrate the scale of the criminal...
Posted by james at 7:22 PM | Full Post
July 5, 2005
first they came for the pornographers . . .
. . . but I wasn't a pornographer* safe enough for him? Patrick Moore has an OPINION piece in today's Newsday, "Bush team uses 'skin game' to attack porn," which sounds an alarm on behalf of principles much greater than...
Posted by james at 11:44 AM | Full Post
July 4, 2005
liberty and justice for all
reaction in the public gallery of the Cortes on June 30, as the Spanish parliament extended full rights of marriage to all citizens Some day a people crazy about waving its own flag at home and around the world...
Posted by james at 1:51 PM | Full Post