Kim Paice writes:

"Art, State, Sabotage"

Kim Paice

In recent years, government has tended to see an ever-narrowing line between art and threats to the state.

When, on February 8th, Austrian artist Robert Jelinek — founder of the artists collective Sabotage — flew from Vienna to Cincinnati via Amsterdam and Detroit, he was carrying art and literature for the exhibition "Incorporated: a recent (incomplete) history of infiltrations, actions and propositions utilizing contemporary art" at the Contemporary Arts Center.

Between Detroit and Cincinnati, Homeland Security confiscated 33 passport-works by artist Heimo Zobernig, educational leaflets, and personal items from Jelinek’s belongings. Officials left an incomplete receipt for items in one suitcase.

They later explained seizing the art because it was “produced by an anarchy group called Sabotage which does not believe in international borders.” After a period of what one participant called “civil” negotiation, authorities returned the passports and literature to the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati on March 2. They are on view in Incorporated until May 8th.

CNN and other media outlets quickly compared the seizure to controversy over Robert Mapplethorpe’s exhibition in Cincinnati. Yet, the recent incident has new markings. Seizure of a foreign national’s property amounts to an international incident and fosters cultural isolationism.

While hardly comparable to criminal actions in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, this event also occurs on the world stage. It tells us that 15 years since the Mapplethorpe scandal, federal authorities have yet to learn that crusades against pornological and political art generate an audience and demand for such art.

"Iraq Elections and the Liberal Elites:

A Response to Noam Chomsky"

Ghali Hassan, Countercurrents

In a recent opinion piece, Noam Chomsky writes, "In Iraq, the January elections were successful and praiseworthy. However, the main success is being reported only marginally: The United States was compelled to allow them to take place. That is a real triumph, not of the bomb-throwers, but of non-violent resistance by the people, secular as well as Islamist, for whom Grand Ayatollah Al Sistani is a symbol" (Khaleej Times Online, 4 March 2005). Mr. Chomsky is either completely out of touch with reality in Iraq, or simply ignorant of the legitimate rights of the Iraqi people to self-determination.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Seven Theses on the Anti-War Movement and Student Resistance
Asad Haider

The old SDS dictum, ‘People have to be organized around the issues that really affect their lives,’ is really true… That is to say, that racism and imperialism really are issues that affect people’s lives. And it was these things that people moved on, not dorm rules, or democratizing university governance, or any of that bullshit.” — Mark Rudd, “Columbia — Notes on the Spring Rebellion”

THESIS ONE: The war on Iraq represents, among other things, a crisis in education. It has been proven beyond a doubt that the war was waged on false pretenses, that the consent for the ongoing imperial occupation has been based on the inability of the American public to access real and useful information. Often, when students are exposed to alternative information in progressive classes their reaction is one of frustration. They realize that our education has failed us: we have not been provided with the intellectual resources to understand political questions within the context of history, we have not been trained to practice the public debate and civic engagement that are the necessary precondition of democracy (as argued in Henry Giroux’s writings, http://www.henryagiroux.com). Instead, the academic-military-industrial complex has trained us in the logic of empire, leaving us prey to the invasion of our campuses by the empire’s vultures: military recruiters who promise to make up for the state’s unwillingness to fund our education.

Bernie Roddy writes:

"A History of Thought on the Death Penalty"

Bernie Roddy

Debates about the death penalty can address the fairness of its administration or the moral consequences of the likelihood that innocent people are executed, but the central issue from a theoretical point of view seems to be the sense in which death is an appropriate punishment for the guilty.

We know that what constitutes an appropriate response to the most serious crimes has changed dramatically over time, and that it has not always seemed wrong to make even the family of the guilty suffer the punishment he endures. But while a long torturous death at one time seemed to be the only manner in which certain debts could be paid, a simple termination of life as in active euthanasia now strike many as the minimum penalty for some offences.

We can also reasonably say that the penalty may not be one that is imposed by the victims or the family of the victims, but is imposed by society at large, there being a threat to the social order as much as a loss suffered by the individual. Thus, it would not necessarily be correct to consider the execution a form of restitution. Because the debt is not paid to those who suffered the loss, or not to them alone, the power to grant mercy for the accused, it may be argued, is justly denied the family of the victim.