This seems to be a very cool project. I look forward to its completion and as widespread distribution as possible.

On October 10th, 2010, thousands of people from every nation around the world will film their perspective and contribute their voice to the largest participatory media event in history. The event will result in a feature documentary and dynamic video archive. Through an open forum of diverse perspectives, our community will reveal the basic human struggles and triumphs that unite us. We anticipate that this new understanding of the shared human condition will foster a greater sense of global empathy and interconnectedness, and ultimately, action towards a more sustainable and equitable planet.

Find out more at One Day On Earth. If you have any material you may want to submit yourself, email Gina Nemirofsky.

If British Petroleum’s (BP) history of involvement in the 1953 coup in Iran overthrowing a democratically elected because it nationalized ownership of its oil resources isn’t enough to swear one off of ever purchasing their gasoline again, investigative journalist Greg Palast gives you yet more reasons here…

I’ve seen this movie before. In 1989, I was a fraud investigator hired to dig into the cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Despite Exxon’s name on that boat, I found the party most to blame for the destruction was … British Petroleum (BP).

That’s important to know, because the way BP caused devastation in Alaska is exactly the way BP is now sliming the entire Gulf Coast.

Tankers run aground, wells blow out, pipes burst. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. And when it does, the name of the game is containment. Both in Alaska, when the Exxon Valdez grounded, and in the Gulf last week, when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew, it was British Petroleum that was charged with carrying out the Oil Spill Response Plans (OSRP), which the company itself drafted and filed with the government.

What’s so insane, when I look over that sickening slick moving toward the Delta, is that containing spilled oil is really quite simple and easy. And from my investigation, BP has figured out a very low-cost way to prepare for this task: BP lies. BP prevaricates, BP fabricates and BP obfuscates.

That’s because responding to a spill may be easy and simple, but not at all cheap. And BP is cheap. Deadly cheap.

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Before the Exxon Valdez grounding, BP’s Alyeska group claimed it had these full-time, oil spill response crews. Alyeska had hired Alaskan natives, trained them to drop from helicopters into the freezing water and set booms in case of emergency. Alyeska also certified in writing that a containment barge with equipment was within five hours sailing of any point in the Prince William Sound. Alyeska also told the state and federal government it had plenty of boom and equipment cached on Bligh Island.

But it was all a lie. On that March night in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in the Prince William Sound, the BP group had, in fact, not a lick of boom there. And Alyeska had fired the natives who had manned the full-time response teams, replacing them with phantom crews, lists of untrained employees with no idea how to control a spill. And that containment barge at the ready was, in fact, laid up in a drydock in Cordova, locked under ice, 12 hours away.

As a result, the oil from the Exxon Valdez, which could have and should have been contained around the ship, spread out in a sludge tide that wrecked 1,200 miles of shoreline.

And here we go again. Valdez goes Cajun.

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In the end, this is bigger than BP and its policy of cheaping out and skiving the rules. This is about the anti-regulatory mania, which has infected the American body politic. While the tea baggers are simply its extreme expression, US politicians of all stripes love to attack “the little bureaucrat with the fat rule book.” It began with Ronald Reagan and was promoted, most vociferously, by Bill Clinton and the head of Clinton’s deregulation committee, one Al Gore.

Americans want government off our backs … that is, until a folding crib crushes the skull of our baby, Toyota accelerators speed us to our death, banks blow our savings on gambling sprees and crude oil smothers the Mississippi.

Then, suddenly, it’s, “Where was hell was the government? Why didn’t the government do something to stop it?”

The answer is because government took you at your word they should get out of the way of business, that business could be trusted to police itself. It was only last month that BP, lobbying for new deepwater drilling, testified to Congress that additional equipment and inspection wasn’t needed.

You should meet some of these little bureaucrats with the fat rule books. Like Dan Lawn, the inspector from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, who warned and warned and warned, before the Exxon Valdez grounding, that BP and Alyeska were courting disaster in their arrogant disregard of the rule book. In 2006, I printed his latest warnings about BP’s culture of negligence. When the choice is between Lawn’s rule book and a bag of tea, Lawn’s my man.

I know I’ve purchased my last gallon of gasoline from BP, adding them to my ever-expanding boycott list along with such notables as Shell and Exxon.

Read Palast’s full report Here

Sign The Petition from Public Citizen and take the “Beyond BP Pledge” to boycott BP.

Nice write up from Henry Giroux on Howard Zinn who, love him or hate him, was a man who lived up to his principles. He was one of those special people whom, through one’s life and work, helped change the entire frame of how we approach history and how we should best approach it for understanding its true importance. I hope his work as an educator continues to serve as a positive example those engaged in teaching amongst all strata of academia.

There was something about Howard’s fearlessness, his courage, his willingness to risk not just his academic position, but also his life, that marked him as special - untainted by the often corrupting privileges of class entitlement.

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Howard refused to separate what he taught in the university classroom, or any forum for that matter, from the most important problems and issues facing the larger society. But he never demanded that students follow his own actions; he simply provided a model of what a combination of knowledge, teaching and social commitment meant. Central to Howard’s pedagogy was the belief that teaching students how to critically understand a text or any other form of knowledge was not enough. They also had to engage such knowledge as part of a broader engagement with matters of civic agency and social responsibility. How they did that was up to them, but, most importantly, they had to link what they learned to a self-reflective understanding of their own responsibility as engaged individuals and social actors.

He offered students a range of options. He wasn’t interested in molding students in the manner of Pygmalion, but in giving them the widest possible set of choices and knowledge necessary for them to view what they learned as an act of freedom and empowerment. There is a certain poetry in his pedagogical style and scholarship and it is captured in his belief that one can take a position without standing still.

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Howard was one of the few intellectuals I have met who took education seriously. He embraced it as both necessary for creating an informed citizenry and because he rightly felt it was crucial to the very nature of politics and human dignity. He was a deeply committed scholar and intellectual for whom the line between politics and life, teaching and civic commitment collapsed into each other.

Read The Complete Essay

As for how Zinn himself wanted to be remembered, he stated he would like to be thought of for ”introducing a different way of thinking about the world,” and as “somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power that they didn’t have before.” 

The interview with Howard can be viewed Here.

These people have clearly had enough. Amazing footage of protesters surrounding and swallowing up members of the paramilitary Basij militia, who operate under the direction of the Ayatollahs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. It seems Iran is likely descending into full-fledged police state soon. A sure sign that the regime will eventually fall, and possibly in the not-too-distant future, but at what cost, and to whose long-term benefit?

The Yes Men Fix The World, a new documentary film by these political a**kickers extraordinaire.

Visit the official website of The Yes Men

Here in one of their greatest moves, The Yes Men hoax the BBC, claiming justice for India and the victims of Bhopal.

In the previous edition of OffBeat regarding the role of the arts in politics (”The Arts Influencing Politics”), important questions were broached regarding what the actual role artists can or should play in the civic life of society, and is such a role a legitimate one for an artist to serve in?

Art is a universal form of communication, perhaps the most meaningful and resonating way humans can express themselves in the hope of sharing a part of their vision of the world they live in and their experience of it. That experience of connectivity and the primordial need for it is what makes us and fulfills us as human beings, thus by its nature making the very act of communication itself a fundamental human right. True art recognizes that, reflecting on at least some level a shared understanding that its very existence is a fundamental expression of humanity, a fulfillment of basic human need. It is the uniquely distinctive power of art that it is expression through the most individualized of languages while simultaneously being able to be understood in the most universally recognized of ways.

The greatest works of art are those that don’t ‘tell’ you the truth, they share it with you. Since ‘truth’ is an ever-elusive presence, the role of the artist is to help illuminate that journey towards it. The challenge for the artist in relation to politics is to take on this most primordial and essential form of human relationship, but from a perspective that transcends the ideological and dogmatic which presents the ‘truth’ as a finite and exclusive quantity, and instead uses creative vision to identify the issues and concerns of the day in a deeper, more universal way, illuminating the political path with the eternal truth of our shared humanity. As muralist Mike Alewitz pointed out, “When we make art in the studio, we assert our humanity. When we make art in public, we assert our existence as social beings.”

Here in this social sphere the artist is called to not simply create as a passive reflector of the human experience, but also to serve as an active projector, envisioning experience not as is but as it should be. Whether this active projection crosses over from the realm of art into mere propaganda is determined by whether the creation is animated by a sincere desire to reveal the truth in a way that humbles the artist to sharing the same experience as their audience in relation to the work, as opposed to simply declaring an already certain ‘truth’ designed to move the audience in a premeditated way towards that perspective.

As for art being delegitimized by its participation in the civic sphere, there are few who could address the issue with more authority than Vaclav Havel, Czech playwright turned President, who seemed to allay such concerns on the topic; “There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth.”

It is the timeless role of the artist to reflect the truth, and that includes within the civic sphere as well, cautious of but not deterred by the fear of descending into the didactic, as opposed to reflecting the universal. As the great literary artist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn emphasized, though it is the duty of ordinary citizens to “not participate in the lies”, the artist has greater responsibilities, for “it is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!” Ghandi stated the key to human progress in the civic sphere is dependent on making the injustice visible. It is the artist more than any other figure in society best suited to effectively manifesting that visibility.

- Andy Valeri

(First published in the March 2009 edition of “OffBeat”, a student publication of the University of Dayton)

An article by Michael Kane (”Politics Influencing The Arts”, OffBeat, Jan 2009) which referenced the work of various disparate creators such as the likes of Picasso, Michael Moore, the ‘Speak Out’ exhibition in New Mexico and others, was interesting in that it framed the issue around these artists’ work as examples of how art and artists are influenced by politics.

Perhaps the more relevant question regarding these and numerous other works of a similar vein is not so much one of understanding the influence that politics has upon the arts, but rather one of understanding how the arts serve to influence politics.

Art has been in the service of politics since the days of antiquity, for which examples are numerous, particularly amongst the the great works commissioned by the Church over it’s many centuries of political dominance of Europe. Our modern understanding of art as a form of individual or group expression could be said to have begun with the use of the literary arts, with the rise of the Lutheran Reformation and the use of the printed word to challenge the prevailing sovereign authority of the Church. This was a tradition which extended up through the English Civil War and the Cromwellian revolution, and perhaps most importantly to us as Americans, the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the galvanizing document of the American Revolution. This short pamphlet served to take what was a collection of grievances and define them into a unified cause, and which was by all accounts a literary blockbuster whose reach and influence on the politics of the day has no compare by modern standards. It was a work whose distribution was surpassed globally only by Paine’s later treatise The Rights of Man, the most published work of the 18th century (possibly sans the Bible).

In the visual arts, an artist’s drawing of the British slave ship Brookes was perhaps the single most important act of public expression to turn the tide of Abolitionism in Britain. From the time of the illustration’s first publication in 1789, the cause of the Abolitionists went from being one of a politically marginalized and almost universally neglected movement to being one which succeeded in permanently banning slavery throughout the entire Empire within the span of only a couple of decades.

The plays of Bertolt Brecht, the music of Woody Guthrie and Bob Marley, the literature of Upton Sinclair and George Orwell, the Gilded Age photography of Jacob Riis, the political graffiti of British artist Banksy, the aforementioned films of Michael Moore and countless other documentarians: the ad infinitum through every form of artistic medium, these are creations designed to generate social and political change by, in the terms of Mohandas Gandhi, “making the injustice visible.”

Kane’s piece also referenced Picasso’s classic anti-war portrait of an atrocity, Guernica, as an example of art being influenced by political events. Certainly it was, but the power of this work to influence politics was well-understood by the Bush administration and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell who, when giving his press conference at the UN after presenting his pseudo facts to the world regarding the supposed threat of Iraqi WMD’s February of 2003, had the painting (which hangs on the second floor of the UN building where the press conference was held) completely covered in blue drapery. This was very consciously done by political operatives who understood the power of the visual image and the effect it would likely have in providing a stark and revealing counterpoint to their own desired agenda of initiating military operations against another society.

The works of the Russian artists Komar & Melamid were some of the most provocatively humorous exhibitions of artistic response to the oppressive nature of the Soviet regime, eventually leading to a violent government crackdown of their publicly displayed work. This incident was then cleverly promoted around the world as the “Bulldozer Exhibition” (because bulldozers were used to destroy the outdoor displays) resulting in severe international embarrassment for the Soviet regime, and eventually liberalizing changes in official state policies towards artistic freedom.

But if art is utilized in order to influence political events, then what distinguishes such work as actually being ‘art’ as opposed to simply being considered propaganda, or even merely a form of public relations? (’Public relations’, or ‘PR’, being our market society’s more palatable euphemism for PRopaganda).

And what exactly is propaganda? It is certainly one of the more elusive concepts to concretely define, akin to Supreme Court Justice Stewart’s famous attempt to describe obscenity by declaring that he ‘knows it when I see it”. So should propaganda legitimately be considered art, or is it some diminished or prostituted form of it not worthy of the status and recognition that other, more universally recognized mediums of artistic expression receive?

In order to better understand this, there would first seem to be a need for some shared baseline consensus on defining what exactly art is. There are of course a wide multitude of perspectives and opinions on the topic, but one characteristic that I would propose needs to be inherent in any work to be legitimately defined as art is that it expresses truth. It may be an individual truth, a perception or an interpretation of a truth, the documentation of one’s honest search for it, but it is truth and nothing less than, as the artist understands and/or experiences it.

Whether a work of art is created in an effort to share a truth, or is rather a conscience attempt to direct the audience towards an already pre-determined conception of what that truth is, may very well be the line which defines whether a work of art is a form of propaganda. This is important to understanding the influence of the arts on politics because does this then inherently imply that all forms of artistic expression geared to directly addressing political concerns are then by definition a form of propaganda?

What did George Orwell mean when he stated that “all propaganda is a lie, even when it is telling the truth”? Could it be that any communication that is designed to elicit a certain specific response by it’s audience, which is in essence what propaganda is, is inherently deceitful to both the audience and the artist? And what is the role and responsibility of an artist when addressing issues of social and civic importance, both to their own artistic integrity as well as to their place in the society that they live in?

These are questions which will be addressed in the next edition of OffBeat as we continue this discussion on the role and effects of the arts in politics.

- Andy Valeri

(First published in the February 2009 edition of “OffBeat”, a student publication of the University of Dayton)

Great article from Sarah van Gelder and Doug Pibel as part of their ‘Liberate Your Space’ series, published in YES! Magazine.

This is pretty much right on the money, not just on what can be done, but why it should be done, with resonating relevance to some of the actions and initiatives taking place here in my own locality of Dayton, Ohio.

This issue asks what happens when we throw off the invisible chains that keep us from realizing the world we want—when we, as they say in the global south, decolonize our minds.

Suppose that, instead of waiting for the whole world to change so we can live as we would like, we remake spaces where we can live that way now.

Think of the game of Go. Unlike chess, where you confront and defeat an enemy, in Go you win by taking over spaces. You simply surround territory and make it yours.

Instead of asking someone in power for policy changes or the right job, why not take over streets for bikes and parks, build our own cooperatives, create cultural events that nurture our souls and community spirit, build our own homes? Why not live the lives we want, along with others, without waiting for permission from the authorities?

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If we believe there is nothing more urgent than building a just and sustainable world, maybe we simply need to start building it, beginning wherever we are.

This is the leadership we need today. Not the lone heroic leader, who is so easy to corrupt or shoot down, but the leadership of ordinary people who are both the creators and the beneficiaries of free spaces, and who use those spaces to claim more freedom for everyone.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world,” and less famously, “I believe it to be perfectly possible for an individual to adopt the way of life of the future …without having to wait for others to do so.”

Read The Full Article Here

This looks like an extremely insightful and important work…

A bit like Malcom X, author Minqi Li used prison time to read widely. The latter studied radical political economy for two years when Chinese leaders locked him up for a critical public speech after the Tiananmen upsurge in 1989. That was then. He is an author and assistant professor of economics at the University of Utah now. Li’s ‘The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy’ is a must-read for all concerned with the future of the earth and its people.”

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Li’s critique of “sustainable capitalism” is devastating in its breadth and depth. He argues, persuasively, against that notion with proof that requires no more than high school math. His clear prose lays out the costs and benefits for the planet and people under the current social system with respect to nonrenewable and renewable energy, minerals, water, food and climate change. Li reveals, layer by layer, the “laws of motion” of an extractive system of producing and exchanging commodities that is fast careening towards an unsafe future.

To be clear, this book is much more than a compendium of dire analysis, data and statistics. Li analyzes the current crises as the outcomes of history that women and men make under conditions they do not choose. Thus, he offers no hard and fast blueprint for a post-capitalist tomorrow. Li does favor labor internationalism and a shorter working day. Both developments, in his view, are basic to a more rational way of organizing people to sustain themselves and the natural world.

Read The Full Review by Seth Sandronsky

This article is getting to the point about the dangers of CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) towards the environment and public health. The million-head hog farm in Vera Cruz in Mexico where the swine flu may have originated from is run by Smithfield, a corporation which is not a stranger to these kinds of situations.

In the U.S., as in much of the world, there is little regulation of occupational conditions or worker exposures in most high-density animal houses. The conditions of work … provide many opportunities for both worker infection and transfer to others in the community. With the exception of concerns about disposal of dead chickens during an outbreak, there has been minimal attention to animal-human interactions associated with the operation and management of broiler poultry houses. Many workers are provided little or no protective clothing or pportunities for personal hygiene or decontamination on-site. Our studies of poultry house workers in Maryland indicate that workers take their clothes home for washing. Thus, it is not surprising that increased risks of pathogen exposure and infections, both bacterial and viral, have been reported among farmers, their families, and farm workers at poultry and swine operations. [again, my emphasis]

Vera Cruz authorities are suddenly scrambling to deny any link between the Granjas Carroll confinements and the outbreak. Instead, they claim, the flu came from Asia. Say they’re right and the outbreak near the Granjas Carroll confinements is traced directly to an Asian source. Even under that scenario, as the Graham/Silbergeld paper shows, the globe’s rapidly growing meat industry is creating conditions for virulent pathogens, both viral and microbrial, to thrive. As they write:

Industrial-scale poultry production is expanding rapidly in Asia, Africa, Latin America, North Africa, and the Near East. Concerns have been raised over the relatively weak veterinary and public health infrastructure in some of these countries. Swine production is also increasing; for example, in China, pork production increased from 42 million tons to 51 million tons from 2001 to 2006. This increase is largely related to the expansion of the integrated or industrial model of production led by both national and multinational corporations for expanding markets of increasingly urban consumer populations within these countries as well as exports.

The results of this trend, in Chinese pork production, at least, driven in large part by Smithfield, threaten to be dire.

These new methods of food animal production generate many routes of pathogen transfer among wild and domesticated species and from animals to humans through occupational, peri-occupational, and environmental pathways. At the animal-human interface in these operations, there is inadequate protection of workers and their communities, and, more generally, there is incomplete biocontainment to prevent transfers from the animal house to the general environment.

So would all of this be an example of what economists mean by ‘externalities’?

Read The Complete Article