[E.O.M.S.]

Wednesday, 20 January 2010

It is my job, as this copyranter character, to try my hardest to type caustic hatred about every ad ever produced by anybody. Usually, it’s easy. Occasionally, I have to fake it. But sometimes, rarely, I can’t muster much real or synthetic bile. Like with this new French AIDS awareness video
The spot, via TBWA in Paris, is for France’s AIDES Foundation. It’s irresponsible because: 1.) it’s promoting random underground Metro bathroom sex; 2.) the silly animation belittles the sacred act of fucking; and, 3.) the penis does it with all those orifices while wearing the same condom. There. That’s the best I can do. Actually, it’s a fun video that effectively delivers a simple message. You really want to see some terrible AIDS awareness ads, here you go. Btw, TBWA Paris also produced one of the best AIDS print campaigns I’ve seen. |Video: Creativity|

Copyranter@'Animal NY'

Haiti - 6 days later

PHOTOGRAPHS

US magazine claims Guantánamo inmates were killed during questioning

Human rights campaigners protest against Guantanamo Bay in front of the White House

Human rights campaigners protest against Guantánamo Bay in front of the White House. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

US government officials may have conspired to conceal evidence that three Guantánamo Bay inmates could have been murdered during interrogations, according to a six-month investigation by American journalists.

All three may have been suffocated during questioning on the same evening and their deaths passed off as suicides by hanging, the joint investigation for Harper's Magazine and NBC News has concluded.

The magazine also suggests the cover-up may explain why the US government is reluctant to allow the release of Shaker Aamer, the last former British resident held at Guantánamo, as he is said to have alleged that he was part-suffocated while being tortured on the same evening.

"The cover-up is amazing in its audacity, and it is continuing into the Obama administration," said Scott Horton, the contributing editor for Harper's who conducted the investigation.

When the three men – Salah Ahmed al-Salami, 37, a Yemeni, and two Saudis, Talal al-Zahrani, 22, and Mani Shaman al-Utaybi, 30 – died in June 2006, the camp's commander declared that they had committed suicide and that this had been "an act of asymmetrical warfare", rather than one of desperation.

According to an official inquiry by the US navy, whose report was heavily censored before release, each man was found in his cell, hanging from bedsheets, with their hands bound and rags stuffed down their throats.

However, Horton spoke to four camp guards who alleged that when the bodies were taken to the camp's medical clinic they had definitely not come from their cell block, which they were guarding, and appeared to have been transfered from a "black site", known as Camp No, within Guantánamo, operated by either the CIA or a Pentagon intelligence agency.

The men said that the following day, a senior officer assembled the guards and told them that the three men had committed suicide by stuffing rags down their throats, that the media would report that they had hanged themselves, and ordered that they must not seek to contradict those reports.

Harper's says that when the bodies of the three men were repatriated, pathologists who conducted postmortem examinations found that each man's larynx, hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage – which could have helped determine cause of death – had been removed and retained by US authorities.

The men's bodes did show signs of mistreatment, however, including bruising and needle marks. Al-Salami's jaw was broken and several teeth missing, injuries that an earlier US pathologist's report attributed to an attempted resuscitation.

Aamer's account of his mistreatment on the same evening as the three deaths appears in papers lodged with a district federal court in Washington. His lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, wrote in an affidavit that Aamer had been beaten for two and a half hours by seven naval military police after he refused to provide a retina scan and fingerprints.

"He reported to me that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. The MPs inflicted so much pain, Mr Aamer said he thought he was going to die."

The MPs are also alleged to have pressed on pressure points and held Aamer's eyes open while shining a torch into them. "When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out," Katznelson wrote.

Aamer, 41, whose British wife and four children live in London, has been held at Guantánamo for almost eight years. Next Friday marks the first anniversary of President Obama's order that the camp be closed within a year, but around 214 other men are also still detained there.

In the days that followed the deaths of the three men, US navy investigators seized every piece of paperwork possessed by other inmates. Harper's reports that when the US justice department subsequently went to court to defend the seizure of correspondence between inmates and their lawyers, the judge commented on one aspect of the department's case: that its "citations supporting the fact of the suicides" were all drawn from media accounts.

Harper's also reports that two of the three men had been due for release when they died, and that family members doubt they would have taken their own lives.

One of Horton's sources, a former staff sergeant in his mid-40s called Joseph Hickman, approached the department of justice via his lawyer in February last year to report his concerns, but Harper's says a subsequent investigation appears to have been shelved, raising concerns that the department had been compromised by its own role in the use of torture in the "war on terror".

"Under George W Bush, the CIA created an archipelago of secret detention centres that spanned the globe, and authorities at these sites deployed an array of justice department–sanctioned torture techniques – including waterboarding, which often entails inserting cloth into the subject's mouth – on prisoners they deemed to be involved in terrorism," Horton says.

"The experience of Sergeant Hickman and other Guantánamo guards compels us to ask whether the three prisoners who died on 9 June were being interrogated by the CIA, and whether their deaths resulted from the gruelling techniques the justice department had approved for the agency's use – or from other tortures lacking that sanction."

@'The Guardian'

Slade - Gudbuy T'Jane (Live TV/Disco/Germany)

Slayed in slade an etymological indulgence

Art funding or arts funding by David Byrne

Instead of funding multi-million-dollar operas and museum programmes, even if they feature long-dead masters, the state should fund music and art in schools. Funding future creativity is a real investment - there’s a chance these kids will build, write, draw or play something that will fill theaters, clubs, stadiums, web pages… As singer-songwriter and former Talking Head David Bryne says, the dead guys won’t write more symphonies.

The LA Opry production of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” is budgeted at US$32 million. 32 million! Jeez, Broadway shows don’t cost that much; U2’s concert tour might, but then that’s a stadium show… and in those latter two instances the people who wrote them are still living! (And presumably get paid, which is part of the cost.)

Wagner has been dead for a long time last I heard, so one assumes it’s not the composer or the librettist whose agent is charging the moon. Granted, it is a four-part epic so that budget might be divided in four. A recent article reported that they are worried about being able to cover $20 million right now. I shouldn’t wonder they’re worried, especially in LA, not known for its arts funding.

Here’s a production picture. Who knew that Wagner anticipated the light saber?

Or that he was into profound silliness:

A $14 million bailout for the opera is coming from the county, as the LA city government is called. The Opry folks need that $20 million this week… so, reach into your pockets, opera fans. What makes this situation notable is not the amount of money - movies often cost a lot more than $32 million to produce - but the fact that the audience will be so small, and that the state is footing part of the bill.

Simultaneously, a number of museums around the world have scuttled their plans for new buildings or expansions, some of them designed by starchitects. Part of these austerity measures are of course due to the economic downturn, but my guess is that most of these projects were underway well before the crash, and were going to result in a mess anyway - as these institutions simply thought that, like Bilbao, if they built a wildly impressive new museum in, for example, Milwaukee (Calatrava did the new entranceway and the car garage - the car garage!) or in Indianapolis, that folks from all over the world would come to visit.

Take that money, that US$14 million from the city, for example, let some of those palaces, ring cycles and temples close - forgo some of those $32M operas - and fund music and art in our schools. Support ongoing creativity in the arts, and not the ongoing glorification and rehashing of the work of those dead guys.

I was in Indianapolis recently, and would have gone to the art museum, but as we only had one afternoon, we went to the Indy 500 museum instead. Never was there ever any mention of what amazing and innovative shows would go into these future spaces, which were regularly featured in magazine articles with lovely renderings attached - that didn’t seem to be a priority.

Granted, Bilbao did work, in the sense that it gave tourists a reason to visit a place that many US citizens had never heard of before. It was truly amazing to behold how one building could change a whole town. The show that’s up there now is a Frank Lloyd Wright survey (previously exhibited in NY’s Guggenheim), and a permanent collection hodgepodge - not exactly reasons to make a special trip.

One can imagine how tempting it must have been for city councils and museum board members to hope that the Bilbao Effect could be replicated in their own town. LA’s Disney Hall looks almost exactly like the Bilbao Guggenheim. Everybody wanted one.

However this mess ends up, my thoughts are that maybe it’s time to rethink all this museum, opera and symphony funding - and I refer mainly to state funding. A bunch of LA museums just got a bailout from LA real estate king Eli Broad, and that’s great, but I suspect there will be county money involved there somewhere too.

I think maybe it’s time to stop, or more reasonably, curtail somewhat, state investment in the past - in a bunch of dead guys (and they are mostly guys, and mostly dead, when we look at opera halls) - and invest in our future. Take that money, that $14 million from the city, for example, let some of those palaces, ring cycles and temples close - forgo some of those $32M operas - and fund music and art in our schools.

Support ongoing creativity in the arts, and not the ongoing glorification and rehashing of the work of those dead guys. Not that works of the past aren’t inspirational, important and relevant to future creativity - plenty of dead people’s work is endlessly inspiring - but funding for arts in schools has been cut to zero in many places. Maybe the balance and perspective has to be redressed and restored just a little. Plus, there are plenty of CDs and DVDs of the dead guys out there already, should one be curious.

Funding future creativity is a real investment - there’s a chance these kids will build, write, draw or play something that will fill theaters, clubs, stadiums, web pages, whatever. The dead guys won’t write more symphonies.

The problem of course, as far as private funding goes, is that what billionaire wants to fund school education? Where’s the glamour in that? You don’t get your name etched in marble on the outside of a hall for that, or get invited to amazing galas, so what’s the point? That’s why I’m focusing on public and state funding - let the private funders bankroll the opry halls, if that’s where they want to hang out.

I sense that in the long run there is a greater value for humanity in empowering folks to make and create than there is in teaching them the canon, the great works and the masterpieces. In my opinion, it’s more important that someone learn to make music, to draw, photograph, write or create in any form than it is for them to understand and appreciate Picasso, Warhol or Bill Shakespeare - to say nothing of opry.

In the long term it doesn’t matter if students become writers, artists or musicians - though a few might. It’s more important that they are able to understand the process of creation, experimentation and discovery - which can then be applied to anything they do, as those processes, deep down, are all similar. It’s an investment in fluorescence.

So how did things end up like this?

In my opinion, it’s more important that someone learn to make music, to draw, photograph, write or create in any form than it is for them to understand and appreciate Picasso, Warhol or Bill Shakespeare.

Well, there is the aforementioned glory of getting your name on a museum or symphony hall rather than on an elementary school - David Geffen got his start managing popular folk rockers, and now his name is on art museums (and AIDS charities). But I think there are other factors.

Thomas Hoving, the former king of the Met Museum in NYC during the ’60s and ’70s, just passed away. He and his rival, J. Carter Brown, king of the National Gallery in DC, both felt that democratizing art meant getting everyone to like the stuff that they liked. It meant letting everyone know and feel that HERE, in the museum, was the good stuff, the important stuff, the stuff with aura and depth. Here is a promotion the Met did in the ’60s in LIFE magazine:

The idea was that even reduced to postcard size, reproductions of verified masterpieces still had enough power to enlighten the American heathen. It seems almost humorous - as if postcards of certified works of art had some mystical power to educate - or, more accurately, to indoctrinate.

Music is the same. Here’s an ad in today’s NY Times book review section:

This isn’t about learning to play for enjoyment, creation, expression or fun - it’s purely about valuing the classics more than anything you and your pathetic friends can make. It’s a little more expensive than the $1.25 the Met was asking back in the day, but then, times have changed.

Hoving and a couple of others, following this line of thinking, created the blockbuster museum show - which famously brought Tut to the masses, and made the Met and other like-minded museums into temples for all, instead of the dusty halls for academics they had become. Hard to remember, but the Met was once a fussy old place, and now it’s super popular - which is not in itself a bad thing.

Although the idea was loudly espoused that art was for all, and all could benefit from exposure to it (something like a flu shot), this idea was not exactly democratic, not as I would define it - though it was certainly portrayed as democratizing art and culture. What the movement was actually doing was letting more people know that culture was, and is, HERE, and you slobs, you hoi polloi, are over HERE. We want you all to look at it, and listen to it, but don’t even think you could ever make it, or that your feeble efforts are anywhere close to these Himalayan peaks we have on display.

I know it’s not exactly the same, but I would say: show someone three chords on the guitar, show them how to program or play beats, or play a keyboard (something I can’t really do), but don’t expect virtuosity right away. Everyone knows you can make a song with almost nothing, with really limited skills, so be satisfied and enjoy that, and don’t feel inadequate because you’re not Mozart.

I myself wish I’d learned keyboard, but I did find that on guitar, I gravitated to where my interests (and abilities) took me. Over time I learned a lot more chords, began to be able to “hear” harmonies and tonal relationships, and, of course, I learned a lot more grooves over the years - how to feel and enjoy them. But at first I found I could express something, or at least have fun, with my really limited means. When I made something, even something crude, I could momentarily discredit the feeling that if I couldn’t match the classical model, then I was less of a musician.

What the movement was actually doing was letting more people know that culture was, and is, HERE, and you slobs, you hoi polloi, are over HERE. We want you all to look at it, and listen to it, but don’t even think you could ever make it, or that your feeble efforts are anywhere close to these Himalayan peaks we have on display.

There are some classical musical works that I can groove with - but, for example, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven I never could get, and I don’t feel any the worse for it. There’s plenty left to love and enjoy. This whole rant, I guess, derives a little from the fact that I resent the implication, and sometime - feeling, that I’m less of a musician and even a person for not appreciating those works. It’s not true!

Ditto with visual art and literature - some of the classics I love deeply, but like many people, there are many Great Works of Literature that lie unfinished on my shelves, and thank God for that, as I was probably doing something more interesting instead… maybe reading something more inspiring, or even trying to write something myself.

It’s true that sometimes the newest thing on the block is 500 years old - and sometimes the way forward is through the past - but not exclusively! And we don’t have to stay there. It’s more important to encourage creativity than to imply that good work can only be made by professionals - your betters.

Hoving, however, did ride a bike, so he can’t be all bad. In fact, his stint as Parks Commissioner before his Met years was incredibly fruitful - and he was offered the job with no prior experience (so much for letting experts tell us what to do!). He closed Central Park to cars on weekends and established over 100 pocket parks around the city, using vacant lots and weird, unused parcels of real estate.

@David Byrne's 'Journal'

The Taliban's deadly plan

The attack on Kabul's presidential palace was just the first shot in a campaign of violence aimed at disrupting Afghan and U.S. politics. Reihan Salam on the mindset behind the assault.

While American attention has drifted to Haiti, a failing state heart-wrenchingly close to home, Hamid Karzai's ramshackle government in Afghanistan is still very much in the crosshairs of the resurgent Taliban. On Monday, the Taliban demonstrated that even the safest corner of the country, the administrative heart of Kabul that is home to the fortified presidential palace and the central bank, is terrifyingly vulnerable. Though only a handful of Afghans died, dozens were injured in a suicide attack that will not-so-subtly change the calculations not only of Afghans but of the thousands of American and European civilians that the country badly needs to rebuild its battered institutions. Indeed, this attack follows successful attacks against a U.N. compound last fall that rattled the crucially important community of expatriates and that sent hundreds of them back home.

What will it take for Afghanistan to become the central issue for U.S. voters, a logical goal for a Taliban eager to drive U.S. forces out of the country?

The gun battle took place in the aptly named Pashtunistan Square, the name of which is a tribute to the rugged Pashtun borderlands that have seen Afghanistan's heaviest fighting. The great conceit of the war in Afghanistan has been that while terrorism is endemic in contested regions in the south and east of the country, its largest cities are fundamentally secure. Indeed, securing and extending the island of security around the country's biggest cities is a linchpin of General Stanley McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy. Now, as the Taliban continues to learn and evolve in response to intensified military and diplomatic pressure from U.S. forces, the cities are the target of a particularly brutal form of psychological warfare.
In a sense, what we're seeing is the Taliban's answer to the Tet Offensive, when the Viet Cong and North Vietnam launched a coordinated attack on all of South Vietnam's administrative centers during what was supposed to have been a two-day cease fire marking the country's New Year celebrations. Though South Vietnamese and American forces achieved a stunning tactical victory in the counterattack, the communist forces achieved their central goal of weakening the resolve of their opponents and demonstrating that they would not simply melt away. One has to assume that this attack is just the first of many, and that the Taliban's goal is to steadily raise the tempo of violence between now and the midterm elections in the U.S.
Perversely, the attack was prompted by the Afghan government's efforts to reach out to the Taliban, from the rank-and-file members that allied forces have been wooing for years now to Hamid Karzai's somewhat quixotic effort to extend an olive branch to Mullah Omar, an architect of the Taliban's rise and an intimate associate of Osama bin Laden. And what better to say "thanks but no thanks" than to bring the fight within a few yards of where President Karzai sleeps.
The most encouraging news, if you can call it that, from Monday's attack is that Afghan forces managed to contain and repel it without the direct involvement of U.S. forces. Part of the Taliban's strength is the nationalist legitimacy it derives from fighting the occupation, and the painfully slow strengthening of Afghanistan's security forces is crucial to achieving lasting success.
One question that remains unanswered is whether Karzai's outreach effort has struck a nerve. Though very few Taliban militants have switched sides so far, it is at least possible that the leadership is rattled and eager to demonstrate that the Taliban and not the government holds the upper hand. President Obama's surge strategy is underway, and the U.S. effort won't reach full strength for months. Whether or not the U.S. achieves its wider strategic aims, flooding heavily contested provinces with Marines will lead to the deaths of many Taliban fighters and there is a clear logic to indulging in a bravado-enhancing terror campaign before that happens. Senior U.S. officials, led by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is now touring South Asia, has poured cold water on the outreach effort, gently suggesting that Afghan and U.S. forces will have to inflict serious damage on the Taliban before they start negotiating.
The fact that the attacks in Afghanistan failed to dislodge Haiti from the headlines raises an intriguing question: What will it take for Afghanistan to become the central issue for U.S. voters, a logical goal for a Taliban eager to drive U.S. forces out of the country? It could be that a slightly more sedate news cycle will do the trick. But as American attention remains tightly focused on the state of the economy, it is possible that Obama's surge strategy will have the political breathing room it needs to succeed. That, alas, might be the only good sign to come out of Monday's grisly attack.

@'Daily Beast'

For Pedram

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Description:: boring, stupid and lazy. sarcastic, always working on something. tattoo maker, former hand model, artiste, bass player (the gore-gons, deadbolt), international jet setter. had a few drinks. once shook hands with desmond dekker. MySpace; @'Art is Useless'