Acknowledging the Armenian Genocide

furtherreading — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 22:47:03 +0000

It was the first genocide of the 20th Century, and today’s assassination of the editor of Turkey’s Armenian weekly is only going to add momentum to the international movement to recognize the Armenian genocide. Still, this excellent New Yorker piece by Elizabeth Kolbert makes clear the obstacles to recognition still to be surmounted in the supposed land of the free and the lengths to which the Turkish government will go to suppress the truth:

On September 14, 2000, Representatives George Radanovich, Republican of California, and David Bonior, Democrat of Michigan, introduced House resolution—later to be known as H.R. 596—on the slaughter of the Armenians. The measure urged the President, in dealing with the matter, t demonstrate “appropriate understanding and sensitivity.” It further instructed him on how to phrase his annual message on the Armenian Day o Remembrance: the President should refer to the atrocities as “genocide.” The bill was sent to the International Relations Committee and immediatel came under attack. State Department officials reminded the committee that it was U.S. policy to “respect the Turkish government’s assertions that although many ethnic Armenians died during World War I, no genocide took place.” Expanding on this theme, Secretary of Defense William Cohen in a letter to Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, wrote that while he in no way wanted to “downplay the Armenian tragedy . . . passing judgmen on this history through legislation could have a negative impact on Turkish-Armenian relations and on our security interests in the region.” Afte committee members voted, on October 3rd, to send H.R. 596 to the floor, Turkish officials warned that negotiations with an American defens contractor, Bell Textron, over four and a half billion dollars’ worth of attack helicopters were in jeopardy. On October 5th, the leaders of all five partie in the Turkish parliament issued a joint statement threatening to deny the U.S. access to an airbase in Incirlik, which it was using to patrol northern Iraq Finally, on October 19th, just a few hours before H.R. 596 was scheduled to be debated in the House, Hastert pulled it from the agenda. He had, h said, been informed by President Clinton that passage of the resolution could “risk the lives of Americans.

Bush and Fascism

furtherreading — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 09:42:48 +0000

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Diane McWhorter draws some uncomfortable parallels between the American we’re becoming and the Germany that enabled Hitler:

The relevance of Third Reich Germany to today’s America is not that Bush equals Hitler or that the United States government is a death machine. It’s that it provides a rather spectacular example of the insidious process by which decent people come to regard the unthinkable as not only thinkable but doable, justifiable. Of the way freethinkers and speakers become compliant and self-censoring. Of the mechanism by which moral or humanistic categories are converted into bureaucratic ones. And finally, of the willingness with which we hand control over to the state and convince ourselves that we are the masters of our destiny.

Read on at Slate.

Material By-Product

furtherreading — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:19:04 +0000

Issue 104 of the JC Report covers Melbourne fashion label Material By-Product. I like this idea of recycling the clothes that don’t sell:

They are questioning the fundamental production process in a playful way, and at the same time bringing to light the less glamorous sides of the construct of “fashion.” For example, they started the project Mark#, which deals with the unpleasant fact that some pieces never find their way to the wardrobe of an illustrious fashion lover. With Mark#, the designers show their worship of these garments by taking them back from shop owners, and transforming them into new designs. [Label co-founder Susan] Dimasi’s theory is that “it’s a shame to throw an expensive and valuable piece away just because you feel too uncomfortable to admit that it didn’t sell well.” This principle of minimizing waste is omnipresent. “We look at each collection like an ecology, the way we use and cut fabrics,” she explains

Material By-Product, s/s ’07

Further Watching: The Films of Guy Bourdin

furtherreading — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:03:04 +0000

The films of Guy Bourdin are now up on youtube. For a more systematic viewing, check out the complete set at showstudio, where they first appeared as part of the 2004 Boudin show at the V&A.

Further listening: The music is by Olivier Alary of Ensemble.

Church Eats Smog

furtherreading — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:38:25 +0000

The New York Times has an article about titanium dioxide, a white pigment which, when into with building materials, has the effect of ‘eating’ pollution in the surrounding air. The pigment figures in the self-cleaning coating that has been applied to the 2003 Richard Meier church in Rome (more pictures here). I took a quick look at the website of Italcementi, the company that created the coating for the building and did all the cement work. They look massive and they seem to take sustainable development seriously (who knows if they actually do). It’s exciting to think of what could happen if titanium-dioxide caught on. It’s been in research since the 80s, and it seems to lose its potency after a while, but still — what if every house and car paint contained it?

Gore’s Crystal Ball

furtherreading — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 20:17:31 +0000

I made my first contribution to Draft Gore in Spring 2006, but I’ve been on a Re-Elect Gore trip since 2002. I remember when he gave his 2002 speech to the Commonwealth Club. It seemed dead right then. Now we know it was dead right. Thanks to the Huffington Post for this reminder. A highlight:

“I believe we should focus our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and who have thus far gotten away with it. The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized. I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than was predicted. Great nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one unfinished task to another. We should remain focused on the war against terrorism.”

Gore/Obama ’08. Re-elect Gore 2008 paraphernalia here.

The Cars of Berlin

furtherreading — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 20:50:28 +0000

Took a quick spin on the bike through my (current) fave neighborhood in Berlin, Senefelder strasse (between Danziger and Stargarder) and the streets that run off it, especially Göhrener strasse. There were some fine cars out today, including a pair of DSs parked just a few spaces from each other on Göhrener, but it was the Audi Coupé 100 S that really caught my eye. During our year here, I searched the papers for one of these, but they’re surprisingly rare, and I always knew we’d be leaving, so I never went out of my way to find one. But we plan to come back to Berlin one day, and when we do, I intend to create my very own harem of low-key 70s classics.

A bit much, I’d say. And did you see the shoes? Come on.

When I lived here in the late 90s, I had a pea-green 1970 Innocenti Mini. I had to give it up when we left, and I long for it to this day. Finding another Innocenti, in the same or a similarly barfy color, will be a top priority when we return. In the meantime, I’ve got to try to find some pictures of my old one. Such a color it had. I should have saved a paint chip.

This Story Should Be Everywhere

furtherreading — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 11:10:10 +0000

I happened upon this story at Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. It’s far more shocking than anything the Mark Foley story contains.

A Denver-area man filed a lawsuit today against a member of the Secret Service for causing him to be arrested after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek this summer and criticized him for his policies concerning Iraq.
Attorney David Lane said that on June 16, Steve Howards was walking his 7-year-old son to a piano practice, when he saw Cheney surrounded by a group of people in an outdoor mall area, shaking hands and posing for pictures with several people.

According to the lawsuit filed at U.S. District Court in Denver, Howards and his son walked to about two-to-three feet from where Cheney was standing, and said to the vice president, “I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible,” or words to that effect, then walked on.

Ten minutes later, according to Howards’ lawsuit, he and his son were walking back through the same area, when they were approached by Secret Service agent Virgil D. “Gus” Reichle Jr., who asked Howards if he had “assaulted” the vice president. Howards denied doing so, but was nonetheless placed in handcuffs and taken to the Eagle County Jail.

Read on at Rocky Mountain News.

Impeach Bush, No. 1

furtherreading — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 10:56:39 +0000

The NY Times editorial page offers this uplifting overview of the financial mess our fuck-up CEO president has overseen. A highlight:

And that’s not the worst of it. While foreign investors were putting up most of the $1.5 trillion the federal government has borrowed since 2001, they were also snapping up hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector securities, transactions that have been a big source of the easy money that allowed Americans to borrow heavily against their homes.

The result, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week, is that for the first time in at least 90 years, the United States is now paying noticeably more to foreign creditors than it receives from its investments abroad. That is a momentous shift. It means that a growing share of America’s future collective income will flow abroad, leading to a lower standard of living in the United States than would otherwise have been achieved.

Read the full piece here.

further reading