I found three videos on street and community artist Mohammed Ali, better known as Aerosol Aerobatic, including profiles from CNN and the Associated Press. While I may not agree with his religious leanings, I can agree with his politics of peace and his passion to make the world a better place via peaceful means.
Kill War: Street Art in Moseley, Birmingham
Associated Press: A Tribute to Aerosol Aerobatic Street Artist. Aerobatic, “How benefit does it serve mankind? How does it benefit anybody? Its a universal language that everyone can appreciate“
Aerosol Aerobatic in this CNN Report is described as taking, “Art to the streets…in an accessible form….transforming something ugly”
As a recent DC area resident of about two years, it really struck me how the protesters, including some ladies from Code Pink, struck at one of the epicenters of commerce and travel in Washington DC. Union Station certainly symbolizes the collision of the lives of opulence in DC hyper-capitalism v. the lives of the homeless people who are tenament dwellers there and nearby. I think its interesting how it became art and re-mixed previous performance art.Thoughts? Provocations? Or commentary?
It seems borderline insane to me but CNN Reports the Democratic congress buckled like a belt:
The House of Representatives approved another $70 billion in war spending on Wednesday, capping a year of frustration for Democrats who took control of Congress on pledges to end the war in Iraq.
CNN also reports it passed on a ”272-142 vote.” Solid. Gotta hand it to the Democratic Congress for having rock solid principles and backbone. I had such robust hope for the new Democratic Congress last fall. Thats largely evaporated along with their credibility, popularity, and budgetary acumen (Oh democratic Congress, what happened to your promises and your progressive principles? And what happened to your chance for re-election?)
I just hope none of it goes to Blackwater or other war profiteers. Certainly wishful thinking. But $70 billion hardly signals a Congress thats ready to set reasonable deadlines to pull troops out of Iraq.
The Washington Post reports that the problems at Walter Reed are far from over, despite research funding:
The Pentagon has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to conduct research into post-traumatic stress disorder and care for soldiers suffering from it. But outside the Pentagon, the military still largely deals with mental health issues in an ad hoc way, often relying on the judgment of combat-hardened commanders whose understanding of mental illness is vague or misinformed.
The article continues:
But outside the Pentagon, the military still largely deals with mental health issues in an ad hoc way, often relying on the judgment of combat-hardened commanders whose understanding of mental illness is vague or misinformed. The stigma around psychological wounds can still be seen in the smallest of Army policies. While family members of soldiers recovering at Walter Reed from physical injuries are provided free lodging and a per diem to care for their loved ones, families of psychiatric outpatients usually have to pay their own way.
Years later and our treatment of our troops is still deplorable. Its an ethical outrage for a double standard of that sort to allow our mentally wounded troops to slip through the cracks. Whether you support the war or don’t [honestly I'm not a big fan and never have been] this feels like a grave crime against our armed forces and soldiers who have sacrificed their lives in service of our freedom. And its no hyperbole to say that soldiers with mental illness have a pattern of showing up as poverty and homeless statistics. How American is that? How can we abandon them like that? How compassionate is that? How human is that? (h/t to the Washington Post. It requires a free login, which is a bit of a pain) (image credit: Soldiers Media Center )
Fraud in Iraq on Bill Moyers and Crooks and Liars. This suggests we need to have a new priorities and a new politics and a new bottom line to take back democracy from corporate corruption.
Current TV is featuring Chris Jordan’s work in segment entitled “Art of Consumption“ Jordan takes on materialism and mass soceity by examinging handguns, SUVs, plastics, cell phones, prisons, mail order catalogs, and the war in Iraq. Building Blocks (above) “Depicts nine million wooden ABC blocks, equal to the number of American children with no health insurance coverage in 2007.” Chris’s commentary suggests:
This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. My underlying desire is to affirm and sanctify the crucial role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming. My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images.
I just wish we could see how truly expansive these works were. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke to this issue and his words ring true even today. King proclaimed, “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism, are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” Thoughts? What might a Christian response look like? Cans Seurat: “Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.”
What is our guarantee that this won’t happen again? With the recent departure of Karl Rove the recent press attention on Dick Cheney’s 1994 statements about the risk “quagmire” in Iraq are truly icing on the cake. To me this is not a Democrat or Republican issue, but a fundamental issue of trust in government. Now that we have a runaway executive, what can be done to hold it accountable and curb its abuses?
Just a quick link to “A New Vision for America’s Security” a recent Boston Globe article by former head of homeland security Tom Ridge about the role of international engagement in politics. This speaks to the large foreign policy gap between the GOP and the Democrats on foreign policy in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and in other vital areas of national security. Ultimately, this speaks both to the recent post-debate Obama v. Hilary divide over diplomacy as well. Check it out it as well as this Chris Bowers article at Open Left, “The United States: An Empire in Permanent Decline?” Chris Bowers is a democratic consultant, member of the netroots, and formerly of mydd.
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