Our environment is full of images, most of them commercial images that promote consumerism. What happens when we find a contradiction among these? 

Graffiti allows for a direct communication with a large audience audience- this is what I want to express, you cannot ignore it, think about it as you wish.  It challenges the dominant culture- it's not commercial; this does not need the approval from an art critic; it may be anti-aesthetical, so what? Let yourself think differently, don't let others think for you. It treats everyone as "creative equals"- if I can paint over a wall, you can too! It's also irreverent- I do it because I want and I can.

Maybe this hasn't made it to the corporate media. So, here it goes.

 Yoanis Sánchez, once again, demonstrates her strength in character and her professionalism, leaving popularity aside. What this Cuban blogger does is inform all of the world, literally, of what and how things happen in Cuba.

I’ve been flying a lot lately. Recently I’ve traveled from Malmo to Prague, back to Copenhagen, then from Copenhagen to Greece and back by way of layovers in Budapest. On my flight back from Greece I noticed a promotional video being played about how the airline industry is attempting to create more energy efficient ways of flying. Good, right? Greenwashing campaigns seem to make people feel better about consumption. But in the New York Times I found an article which points to why Cap and Trade is a system which is not viable for reducing greenhouse gases. With some airlines you are able to spend a few extra dollars (between $2 and $40), which go towards carbon offsetting programs. What they’ve found is these programs simply give the flyer peace of mind, while the reality is “it has proved difficult to monitor or quantify the emissions-reducing potential of the thousands of green projects financed by customers’ payments, and there are no industrywide standards,” as Elisabeth Rosenthal points out in her article.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks occurred, a colleague and I found ourselves feeling a need to put together a course that would help students put those attacks in some kind of historical perspective.  The course we constructed and taught twice at St. Lawrence University drew heavily on the history of imperialism and sought to position 9/11 as a key moment in the emerging (and at that time, still relatively unacknowledged) story of U.S. imperial decline.  In recent years this notion of imperial decline has slowly begun to seep into public consciousness.  What are the cultural manifestations of this growing awareness?  One of the most provocative cultural interventions of the last several years is the song "Patriot's Heart," written by perpetually underappreciated singer-songwriter Mark Eitzel (pictured at right) and originally recorded by his band, American Music Club on their 2004 album Love Songs For Patriots.  I wrote an extended review of this remarkable album in 2005, focusing on Eitzel's lyrical exploration of the theme of denial and its corrosive influence on American politics and culture.  Last month I had the pleasure of hearing Eitzel perform "Patriot's Heart" in Madrid as part of a solo tour that has drawn rave reviews.  The song draws a close comparison between pornography and patriotism, portraying the U.S. as only Eitzel could...as an aging gay male stripper.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) understands ‘Academic Freedom' as being "...the essential characteristic of an institution of higher education. It encompasses the right of faculty to full freedom in research and in the publication of results, freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, and the right of faculty to be free from institutional censorship or discipline when they speak or write as citizens." The question of academic freedom in Turkey is often a contentious issue. Protests on November 6^th and 7^th in Ankara by University students against the country's High Education Board (YÖK) on its 28^th anniversary clearly displayed a significant level of discontent against an often-heavy handed involvement of the Turkish government in matters of higher education.

Currently amidst all of the Healthcare Reform debates, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the worries with our economy the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 is being pushed towards the House and Senate to set the stage for our participation in the up and coming COP15. This system, very like the system expected to be created at COP15, is based around Cap and Trade. Cap and Trade means that the government will give and sell “credits” of pollution (namely CO2) which the companies would be allowed to use in a given time, and as time goes on less and less credits will be dispersed as companies become more energy efficient. This seems to me a panacea for companies to present a front being energy efficient and environmentally sustainable while simply pushing other places to bear their environmental burdens.

 "The Government of Seychelles invited us here to fight against piracy and that is its mission. However, these aircraft have a great deal of capabilities and could be used for other missions... that is always a possibility" - Craig White, US Embassy Mauritius deputy chief of mission

Sometimes the best information does not come from the media, but right from the government. This past week in Victoria the capital of the beautiful Seychelles, the AFRICOM website released a recap of a public overview of the unmanned aircraft the MQ-9 (pictured above). The unmanned aircraft carries nor drops any arms and apparently there are "no plans" to do so. Spokesman Vince Crawley did not limit the drones to tracking pirates, but other missions may include "flights over Somalia to track Islamist militants fighting to overthrow a government backed by the US, the United Nations and the African Union".

(Title quote by Silberio Servio Morales, Costa Rican shaman from the Bribri population)

In my previous post , I observed how culture has been commoditized mainly by the structures of power, to sell an idea of "what and who we are" to outsiders.

Why do I consider this to be important? Well, because the arts are an essential element of culture, of how our identity is being expressed in an abstract way, and which both insiders and outsiders interpret subjectively. Unfortunately, the arts are being carefully controlled by higher authorities, which to a great extent determine what is presented to different audiences depending on how good that makes them look.

A week or so back I read a fascinating essay by Andrew Marshall in the Time Magazine issue for the week of November 9^th, 2009 (Cover: “Rare Tuna”). Titled “Identity Crisis: What does it mean to be authentically Swiss?”, it delves into the question of identity in a country that is known for its neutrality and self-proclaimed sense of “exceptionalism”  Switzerland’s affinity for purity is exemplified in the slogan of the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry: “Fake watches are for fake people. Be authentic. Buy real.” But, the author identifies a clear discrepancy.

According to Derebssa Defera Serbessa (Ph.D), In many parts of Ethiopia, an enormous gap persists between the number of students graduating from school and those among them who master a minimum set of cognitive skills.  One of the main reasons for countless Ethiopians graduating high school and college, yet failing to have developed the skills they need to succeed in the workforce is mastering the language of instruction; English. The problem arises as Ethiopian government and public schools teach English as a single course until the seventh grade, at which time all classes, except a single Amharic class, are taught in English! This creates a particularly acute problem for those students with strong math and science skills but an inadequate handle on English, who are at a loss when the language of instruction suddenly shifts from Amharic to English come seventh grade. 

Last night I watched the Pacquiao-Cotto fight with a few friends. During the match we joked on the fighters several times, especially Pacquiao, who is well-known for his eccentricities. One such joke had to do with poverty. 

In the weeks before the fight an HBO special had provided access to the fighter's training routines. Both prepared rigorously for the match, but in different ways. Cotto, for instance, rented a mansion in Tampa, Florida to serve as his training camp home. (See video: Manny Pacquiao v. Miguel Cotto, Episode 1, minute 23:47) Pacquiao, however, packed himself and his staff into condominium at the Palazzo in Los Angeles, California, where his assistant trainer even slept in a converted closet. (See video: Manny Pacquiao v. Miguel Cotto, Episode 3, minute 18:42) "The dudes looked cramped," my friend joked. "Pacquiao's trainer was playing video games in closet-looking comfortable though."

US news in recent days, particularly in the shadow of Veterans Day, has been dominated by a series of urgent questions that have left many people scrambling to cover their rear ends:

• Who had prior knowledge of this man's violent intentions?
• Why did no one sound the alarm?  And if they did, why did no one take them seriously?
  
• Should we have seen it coming? 
  
• How could it have been prevented?
  
• How should we treat someone who is responsible for the deaths of a group of American soldiers?