TimB

After a visit to Tokyo in 2014, self-taught photographer Xavier Portela became frustrated by how static and two-dimensional his images appeared. His photographs didn’t capture the emotions, acute stimulation of senses, or electric feeling one experiences while gliding through the bright lights of a foreign city with jet lag-induced insomnia. To explore this vibrancy and atmosphere Portela began to manipulate the colors in his images, amplifying their saturation to make each reflect what the brain remembered, but the original image couldn’t convey.

“When you are taking photographs on the streets you have way more than just a frame, you have variables like temperature, noise, people, smell,” Portela tells Colossal. “You have tons of details that make our senses and brain record a specific ‘scene’ of that moment. When you got home and you look at your photographs on screen, you only have a frame in two dimensions. It’s frustrating how much information you just lost… I wanted my shots to look like as if they came straight out of a manga. Vibrant and electric.”

Portela’s series Glow is an ongoing archive of urban images from his trips to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, New York City, and more. Each photograph is edited with a wash of neon-inspired pink, blue, and purple lights. Although previous series have included photography taken on the street, more recently he has begun to produce aerial views of the sparkling cities below. You can see more images from the Belgo-Portuguese photographer and filmmaker on Instagram and Behance. (via This Isn’t Happiness)

New work from Lisa Ericson (previously) continues the Portland-based artist’s hyperrealistic compositions of animals. Set on deep black backgrounds, her paintings showcase unusual combinations of peacefully co-existing fauna. Pelicans support rabbits, snakes, and ocelots, while tree frogs and songbirds find homes on the shells of turtles. Her most recent paintings are on view through May 25 at Antler Gallery in Portland, in a show titled Invisible Promise, alongside work from Scottish artist Lindsey Carr. You can see more from Ericson on Instagram.

By Lee Camp, May 14, 2018, TruthDig.

The post The Pentagon Can’t Account for $21 Trillion (That’s Not a Typo) appeared first on World Beyond War . . ..

French artist Julie Gonce's artworks imitate the beauty and detail of natural forms—budding flowers, moss growing within fallen branches, and dew delicately balanced on strands of fresh grass. Gonce has been creating her glossy sculptures since 1997, and uses her torch similarly to how a conductor uses a baton—with precision, passion, and timely delicacy. Her sculpted forms ask the viewer to be attentive to our changing planet, and to notice how beautiful and bountiful nature is as it continually replicates.

Gonce was raised around artists who ignited her creativity and influenced her to create unique work. “I grew up surrounded by artisans and artists, and I quickly discovered that I wanted a hands-on profession,” Gonce tells Colossal. “I chose glass by chance, but when I did a glassblowing training course I was immediately drawn to it.”

Gonce is passionate about preserving ancient French glassmaking techniques and uses traditional methods including glassblowing, lampworking, and glass beadmaking. When glassblowing, Gonce brings a rod of glass up to the required temperature and blows air into it to create a voluminous shape. Her lampworking involves two rods of glass which are brought together and stretched and sculpted into a chosen object. She then uses a glass beading technique which involves winding molten glass around a metal rod which she then cools and draws glass beads from.

Using two different types of glass (borosilicate and soda-lime), Gonce fuses her sculptures with natural forms: wood, seeds, mushrooms, paper, textiles, metals, bones, and even feathers. “Stitching is present in all of my sculptures, that’s how the materials are bound,” she explains.  

Torchworking requires Gonce to be in perfect command of her body; by being aware of her breathing and movements she can create various shapes in molten glass. “At the heart of all of my creations, there is always the pleasure of seeing the flame and the glass melting,” says Gonce. “What I love about glass work is that there is nothing between the glass and the flame but the torch worker’s hands.”

Gonce’s relationship with the natural world is the source of her artistic inspiration, which provides her with a means of escaping everyday life. She gains motivation from living near a forest where she is constantly surrounded by ever-changing textures and lustrous colors which is reflected in the detail of her designs. “I need to live close to nature since it is my source of inspiration,” she says.

Gonce’s manipulation of glass creates movement as light dances upon her sculptures, much like how light ripples amongst flowers and plants swaying in the breeze. Gonce is currently exhibiting her sculptures at Galerie Collection in Paris alongside other several other French artists’ work. The exhibition runs until early 2019. You can see more of her pieces on her website.

For a recent commission from indie record label Albert’s Favourites, London-based designer Tim Easley created an intricate circuitboard completely out of plasticine clay. The finished work measures approximately 20 inches square (50 x 50 cm) and took the artist about 80 hours to complete. He then photographed the clay circuitboard with birds-eye and angled aerial views to create the final album artwork.

Easley created the project for the London-based electronic music duo Modified Man. He describes the work, which envisions an abstracted future perspective on today’s technology, on Behance:

Easley created the project for the London-based electronic music duo Modified Man.He describes the work, which envisions an abstracted future perspective on today’s technology, on Behance: “The idea behind the cover was how the modified men of the future may make artwork out of ancient circuit boards, not quite understanding what they were for because of their crude appearance.”

You can see more from Easley on Behance, Instagram, and Twitter.

 

Seattle's Uber unionization law is on hold again. by Heidi Groover

In a decision issued Friday, a panel of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges struck a significant blow to Seattle's effort to allow drivers for services like Uber and Lyft to unionize.

Seattle passed the first-of-its kind unionization law in 2015, outlining a process by which drivers for services like Uber and Lyft could unionize and bargain with the companies over issues like pay. The law has faced a flurry of legal challenges, including from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber argues Uber and Lyft drivers don't have the right to unionize under federal law because they are independent contractors and that Seattle's law violates federal antitrust regulations. Last year, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed the Chamber's case. The Chamber appealed.

Now, a panel of three U.S. Court of Appeals judges has upheld one of the Chamber's central arguments and rejected another.

Unlike the U.S. District Court, the Court of Appeals judges found the ordinance violates federal antitrust law because it allows "price fixing" of ride hailing prices "by private cartels of independent-contractor drivers." The District Court judge found that Seattle’s law is allowed under standards that allow state immunity from antitrust laws in certain cases. The Court of Appeals panel rejected that analysis because Washington state law does not expressly allow private parties to set the fees drivers pay to Uber and Lyft.

State law does allow for the regulation of ride-hailing services, including "safety and equipment requirements." In arguments before the 9th Circuit of the Court of Appeals, the City of Seattle argued that allowing drivers to negotiate with companies like Uber and Lyft is in fact a safety issue. In an interview after those arguments, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes told The Stranger, "Paying starvation wages to drivers, there's an impact on public safety." (Uber drivers on different sides of this issue tell vastly different stories about how much they're making.)

But in their ruling, the panel of judges wrote that the state law "lends no support to the city's position."

The panel of judges rejected the Chamber's other argument: that the ordinance is preempted by the National Labor Relations Act. The mixed decision sends the case back to District Court for more proceedings on the anti-trust claims.

The decision is a setback for Seattle's novel law, hailed by labor advocates as a way of granting rights to workers at the whims of the so-called gig economy. In a statement, Don Creery, an Uber and Lyft driver and member of the App-Based Drivers Association, said drivers were "deeply disappointed" with the decision. “Anti-trust laws were put in place to protect the little guy from monopolistic practices from large corporations, not to shield a company like Uber—valued at over $70 billion—from negotiating with its workers over fair pay and working conditions.” Uber spokesperson Caleb Weaver called the decision "a win for rideshare drivers, riders, and the entire Seattle community."

Holmes spun the decision the city's way. In a statement, Holmes said the city is "obviously disappointed" with the anti-trust ruling, but "very pleased with the court’s unequivocal holding that a city law allowing independent contractors to engage in collective negotiations is not preempted by federal labor law." Holmes' office is now "evaluating its next steps."

And some legal experts say the ruling doesn't foreclose on similar efforts in other states. By rejecting the preemption argument and focusing mostly the lack of clarity in Washington State law, the court left the door open for unionization efforts in other states—or clarity from the Washington State Legislature.

States like California and New York could "pass a statute tomorrow" regulating Uber and Lyft drivers," Stanford law professor emeritus William Gould told Bloomberg. "All they have to do is be more explicit and provide for some level of state supervision as well as municipal supervision."

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by Charles Mudede

This year's ByDesign Design and Architectural Festival opens with a stunning documentary, Dream Empire, about the real estate madness in China. The very scale of it will humble your wildest imagination. In comparison, it makes Seattle's construction and property boom look like something that would be missed if one just blinked. In China, whole Seattles are conjured out of nowhere. Capital there is hungry for the biggest bucks possible. It displaces the poor without a thought, and produces spectacles that overwhelm and paralyze some of the best bullshit detectors in the world.

The documentary follows Yana. She is only 24 years old, speaks enough English, and is the partner in a small company that hires white and black people to perform at real estate promotion events. The blacks are either "primitive" Africans or Western rap/R&B stars. The whites are either "elegant" Europeans or cowboys/hicks. They provide cosmopolitan cool to a real estate development that will be occupied entirely by duped Chinese people.

The doc begins when Yana is rising. She is getting more and more work, and looking all over Chongqing, one of the most Blade Runner-like cities on earth, for foreigners. The business grows. Her partner, however, is a dick. He and Yana do not have the same class background. She comes from a rural area; he comes from an urban middle-class family. Her self-willed command of English is her main asset. But to her horror, her young body is also another asset. (Like Walter Benjamin, the Stranger art critic Emily Pothast sees the obvious link between sex work and commodified labor.) Eventually there's a real estate bust in the Chongqing area, business dries up, and she eventually sells her share of the company. The last scene of this doc will break the heart you have for images of urban loneliness. It's comparable to the ending of Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angel.

Two things to think about. First: Today, Wall Street gained 400 points on nothing more than the promise from Chinese president Xi Jinping that he and his government, which is communist, are pro-free trade. Investors are now looking to China, to Shanghai (the next Wall Street—and Wall Street will become the next City), for the future of the neoliberal program, which seems to be floundering or sending mixed signals in Trump's America. The second thing is found in the opening chapter of David Harvey's last book, The Ways of the World. It concerns China's construction boom. Harvey is convinced that China's building frenzy pulled the whole world out of the real estate crash of 2008. In my opinion, this crash left an ideological vacuum that's now filled by Trump, after Obama spent his entire presidency pretending as if it wasn't there. But China represents, on a global scale, a Minsky displacement event, not a correction. Its construction boom is fueled by debt. That dark fact is captured in the excellent documentary Dream Empire.

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Finally, some good news. by Steven Hsieh

Washington became the first state in the country to prohibit internet providers from blocking content or creating "fast lanes" for service.

Gov. Jay Inslee signed the bill on Monday, two months after the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) announced it would repeal Obama-era restrictions on paid “fast lanes."

Of all the issues to defy the Trump administration on, net neutrality might as well be the easiest sell. Big tech corporations, including Amazon, revolted when the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality in December, and a poll taken around the same time found that 83 percent of voters oppose the FCC’s plans. Pretty much everyone who isn’t CenturyLink or FCC chair Ajit Pai believes in an open internet.

Basically, it’s a political slam dunk.

"Any day the State of Washington protects something that Trump tries to take away is like winning the Super Bowl,” Inslee said during a phone interview.

The FCC’s order prohibits state and local governments from passing their own net neutrality laws. But Washington’s new law says the state can restrict internet service providers from creating paid fast lanes through its Consumer Protection Authority. Inslee said he is confident that Washington’s net neutrality law will stand.

Inslee said on the phone he is confident Washington’s law will stand. Attorney General Bob Ferguson has already sued the FCC over its decision.

While Washington was the first to pass a net neutrality bill, several other states have introduced similar legislation.

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From the moment he arrived, Egor lived for mayhem. The time was 1982, and the place was the first online game world, called MUD (short for Multi-User Dungeon). Before Egor there had been duels, pranks, and the occasional fire-breathing dragon, all amiably playing out in the MUD world, hosted on the servers of the University of Essex. A rough kind of social contract had held.

Egor was the screen name of a player who set out to test the limits. He learned the shortcuts allowed by the code. He wrote scripts that let his character level up quickly. He discovered a way to fake other players’ logins. With a borrowed screen name, he would go on sprees of destruction, and watch with amusement as the real player logged on later to face a raging mob. He “ganked” new players—killed them before they knew which end of the sword to hold.

Thirty years down the road, an online multiplayer scene would grow geometrically from those few hundred players logging into the Essex server. About 618 million people now participate in online worlds; on a given day, the most popular might boast 2 million people playing at the same time. The…
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For over 15 years, Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi has rendered the subtle details of mountains, cherry blossoms, and dense forests with the most unlikely tool: Microsoft Excel. The 77-year-old illustrator shunned the idea of paying for expensive painting supplies or even a basic drawing program for his computer, saying that he prefers Excel even over Microsoft Paint because it has “more functions and is easier to use.” Using simple vector drawing tools developed primarily for graphs and simple shapes, Horiuchi instead draws panoramic scenes of life in rural Japan.

Great Big Story recently visited Horiuchi at his home for a brief interview and a behind-the-scenes look at how he works in the video above. If you’re even slightly skeptical, here’s two of his earlier Excel artworks you can download and explore yourself:

— Cherry Blossoms at Jogo Castle (2006)
— Kegon Falls (2007)

You can explore more of Horiuchi’s Excel drawings on his website and at Spoon & Tamago.

Julian Jaynes was living out of a couple of suitcases in a Princeton dorm in the early 1970s. He must have been an odd sight there among the undergraduates, some of whom knew him as a lecturer who taught psychology, holding forth in a deep baritone voice. He was in his early 50s, a fairly heavy drinker, untenured, and apparently uninterested in tenure. His position was marginal. “I don’t think the university was paying him on a regular basis,” recalls Roy Baumeister, then a student at Princeton and today a professor of psychology at Florida State University. But among the youthful inhabitants of the dorm, Jaynes was working on his masterpiece, and had been for years.

From the age of 6, Jaynes had been transfixed by the singularity of conscious experience. Gazing at a yellow forsythia flower, he’d wondered how he could be sure that others saw the same yellow as he did. As a young man, serving three years in a Pennsylvania prison for declining to support the war effort, he watched a worm in the grass of the prison yard one spring, wondering what separated the unthinking earth from the worm and the worm from himself. It was…
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Economic growth will destroy everything. There’s no way of greening it – we need a new system.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 22^nd November 2017

 

Everyone wants everything – how is that going to work? The promise of economic growth is that the poor can live like the rich and the rich can live like the oligarchs. But already we are bursting through the physical limits of the planet that sustains us. Climate breakdown, soil loss, the collapse of habitats and species, the sea of plastic, insectageddon: all are driven by rising consumption. The promise of private luxury for everyone cannot be met: neither the physical nor the ecological space exists.

But growth must go on: this is everywhere the political imperative. And we must adjust our tastes accordingly. In the name of autonomy and choice, marketing uses the latest findings in neuroscience to break down our defences. Those who seek to resist must, like the Simple Lifers in Brave New World, be silenced – in this case by the media. With every generation, the baseline of normalised consumption shifts. Thirty years ago, it was ridiculous to buy bottled water, where tap water is clean and abundant. Today, worldwide, we use a million plastic bottles a minute.

Every Friday is a Black Friday, every Christmas a more garish festival of destruction. Among the snow saunas, portable watermelon coolers and smart phones for dogs with which we are urged to fill our lives, my #extremecivilisation prize now goes to the PancakeBot: a 3-D batter printer that allows you to eat the Mona Lisa or the Taj Mahal or your dog’s bottom every morning. In practice, it will clog up your kitchen for a week until you decide you don’t have room for it. For junk like this we’re trashing the living planet, and our own prospects of survival. Everything must go.

The ancillary promise is that, through green consumerism, we can reconcile perpetual growth with planetary survival. But a series of research papers reveal that there is no significant difference between the ecological footprints of people who care about their impacts and people who don’t. One recent article, published in the journal Environment and Behaviour, finds that those who identify themselves as conscious consumers use more energy and carbon than those who do not.

Why? Because, environmental awareness tends to be higher among wealthy people. It is not attitudes that govern our impacts on the planet, but income. The richer we are, the bigger our footprint, regardless of our good intentions. Those who see themselves as green consumers, the paper found, “mainly focus on behaviours that have relatively small benefits.”

I know people who recycle meticulously, save their plastic bags, carefully measure the water in their kettles, then take their holidays in the Caribbean, cancelling their environmental savings 100-fold. I’ve come to believe that the recycling licences their long-haul flights. It persuades people they’ve gone green, enabling them to overlook their greater impacts.

None of this means that we should not try to reduce our impacts, but we should be aware of the limits of the exercise. Our behaviour within the system cannot change the outcomes of the system. It is the system that needs to change.

Research by Oxfam suggests that the world’s richest 1% (if your household has an income of £70,000 or more, this means you) produce around 175 times as much carbon as the poorest 10%. How, in a world in which everyone is supposed to aspire to high incomes, can we avoid turning the Earth, on which all prosperity depends, into a dust ball?

By decoupling, the economists tell us: detaching economic growth from our use of materials. So how well is this going? A paper in the journal PlosOne finds that while in some countries relative decoupling has occurred, “no country has achieved absolute decoupling during the past 50 years.” What this means is that the amount of materials and energy associated with each increment of GDP might decline, but, as growth outpaces efficiency, the total use of resources keeps rising. More importantly, the paper reveals that, in the long term, both absolute and relative decoupling from the use of essential resources is impossible, because of the physical limits of efficiency.

A global growth rate of 3% means that the size of the world economy doubles every 24 years. This is why environmental crises are accelerating at such a rate. Yet the plan is to ensure that it doubles and doubles again, and keeps doubling in perpetuity. In seeking to defend the living world from the maelstrom of destruction, we might believe we are fighting corporations and governments and the general foolishness of humankind. But they are all proxies for the real issue: perpetual growth on a planet that is not growing.

Those who justify this system insist that economic growth is essential for the relief of poverty. But a paper in the World Economic Review finds that the poorest 60% of the world’s people receive only 5% of the additional income generated by rising GDP. As a result, $111 of growth is required for every $1 reduction in poverty. This is why, on current trends, it would take 200 years to ensure that everyone receives $5 a day. By this point, average per capita income will have reached $1m a year, and the economy will be 175 times bigger than it is today. This is not a formula for poverty relief. It is a formula for the destruction of everything and everyone.

When you hear that something makes economic sense, this means it makes the opposite of common sense. Those sensible men and women who run the world’s treasuries and central banks, who see an indefinite rise in consumption as normal and necessary, are beserkers, smashing through the wonders of the living world, destroying the prosperity of future generations to sustain a set of figures that bear ever less relation to general welfare.

Green consumerism, material decoupling, sustainable growth: all are illusions, designed to justify an economic model that is driving us to catastrophe. The current system, based on private luxury and public squalor, will immiserate us all: under this model, luxury and deprivation are one beast with two heads.

We need a different system, rooted not in economic abstractions but in physical realities, that establish the parameters by which we judge its health. We need to build a world in which growth is unnecessary, a world of private sufficiency and public luxury. And we must do it before catastrophe forces our hand.

www.monbiot.com

 

 

The absolute horror of the Republican tax bill has been somewhat obscured recently by the never-ending deluge of mass shootings, rambling madness from President Trump, and sexual harassment allegations against, apparently, every fourth man on planet Earth. But the bill did pass the House, and it is nothing less than all-out class war on the 99 percent by the plutocracy holding the reins of the Republican Party. It's up next in the Senate, as early as next week.

The rest of the country should remember this assault, and repay the favor with interest.

The Republican donor class and their employees in Congress are barely even attempting to hide the fact that this tax "reform" is about transferring as much income and wealth to the ultra-rich as possible, on their direct orders. It's a huge corporate tax cut, a cut to Trump Organization-style "pass-through" companies, plus a sharp cut in the inheritance tax, which would be abolished completely in 2024. Oh, and a new tax subsidy for private jets. Why?

.@RepChrisCollins (R-NY) on tax reform: "My donors are basically saying, 'Get it done or don’t ever call me again.'"

— Cristina Marcos (@cimarcos) November 7, 2017

The tax benefits for ultra-wealthy children in particular would be stupendous. The youngest generation of idle rich families, like the Trumps, Kochs, Waltons, and Rockefellers, would be able to inherit billions upon billions tax-free — which would also blow a huge hole in the capital gains tax, by enabling owners to just transfer appreciated assets to their children instead of selling them.

This will blow up the deficit — but much to my surprise, Republicans are attempting to offset some of the cost by jacking up taxes on the middle class.

Grad students in particular are getting absolutely gored, with a reclassification of their tuition waivers as income. The way grad students generally get through school is with a meager stipend in the $20,000-30,000 range, plus a waiver of the headline tuition. Since tuition often comes to $45,000 or so, this would more than double their taxable "income," resulting in tax increases of 300-400 percent. Students — who are barely scraping by on what they have now — are facing a total tax rate of something like half of their take-home income, and are rightfully panicking.

The mortgage interest deduction is also getting slashed for upper-middle-class homeowners, and the deduction of state and local taxes (especially punishing to blue state residents) is being reduced — and eliminated entirely in the Senate bill. What's more, under congressional rules, the deficit increase could trigger huge cuts in social insurance programs, particularly Medicare.

There are a few other provisions that will benefit some middle-class families, but most of them will expire after a few years. By 2027, according to an analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation, rich people would continue to benefit, while families earning from $10,000 to $75,000 will face increased taxes.

It's honestly quite surprising to me that Republicans didn't just figure out the biggest deficit increase they could get away with, hand almost all of it to the top 1 percent, and throw a couple of pennies to everyone else to claim it's a "middle class tax cut." That was the George W. Bush political formula, and it worked quite well.

The only possible conclusion is that the plutocracy is no longer satisfied with taking almost all the income growth. They now want to diminish everyone else's share; as George Carlin once said, "they want more for themselves, and less for everybody else." The most notable victims reflect the cultural enemies that the Republican Grievance Industrial Complex has been whipping its base up in a frenzy over for decades — college students, coastal elites, and comfortable liberals — but the pain will be broadly shared. As Mike Konczal details, in broad terms it is an assault on workers to benefit capitalists: people who own things instead of working.

We now know there shall be no quarter from the ultra-rich in their quest to take as much of the national income and wealth for themselves as possible. So they should be given no quarter either.

At the earliest opportunity, a left-wing economic reform bill should deliberately destroy the power of the plutocrats: Break up their monopolist corporations, sharply increase taxation on their capital gains and dividends, levy a confiscatory tax rate on income over $1 million and a 100 percent inheritance tax on estates over $1 million, and kneecap finance with burdensome regulations. Then, strengthen the lower class: Ban "right-to-work" laws at a national level, increase the minimum wage and index it to inflation, beef up the welfare state, and spend to achieve full employment.

Some of the wealthiest and most privileged people who've ever existed are attempting to loot the pockets of penniless grad students so they can have even more money to spend on stuff like $450-million paintings. They've forfeited any right to deference or consideration.

Ceramicist Hitomi Hosono (previously) creates porcelain vessels layered in hundreds of leaf sprigs and other botanical forms. These monochromatic elements are based on plants Hosono encounters during walks through East London’s greenery. “It is my intention to transfer the leaf’s beauty and detail into my ceramic work,” she explains, using it as my own language to weave new stories for objects.”

Her technique is inspired by Jasperware, a type of stoneware covered in thin ceramic reliefs invented by Josiah Wedgwood in the late 18th century. Like Wedgwood, she carefully applies her delicate forms to a porcelain base. From start to finish a larger work will take Hosono nearly a year and a half to complete. Much of this time is spent drying, as her densely layered works often need 10-12 months to completely dry.

Hosono’s solo exhibition, Reimagining Nature: Hitomi Hosono’s Memories in Porcelain, is currently on view at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in London through December 15, 2017. You can see more of her layered botanical sculptures on the artist’s website and through her gallery Adrian Sassoon.

Photographer Elsa Bleda captures hazy moments that linger on the outskirts of the cities she visits in Eastern Europe and South Africa. Bleda is drawn to nighttime scenes bathed in colored light, such as a flock of pigeons illuminated by pink neon, or a lone gas station emitting an eerie blue glow. The images she chooses to shoot also have a limited human presence, which gives a dystopian feeling to the work’s empty streets and snow-covered buildings.

Previously, Bleda has presented exhibitions showcasing images she has taken in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Her upcoming solo exhibition with Red Bull will take a look at Durban, South Africa. You can view a preview of her exhibition alongside a list of songs the photographer chose to fit the mood of each work on Redbull’s website. More of her night-based images of South Africa and Istanbul can be found on her Facebook, Instagram, and Behance. (via This Isn’t Happiness)

New work from literary jeweler Jeremy May (previously) transforms the dense layers of books into jewelry that carries the words within each individual, wearable form. Littlefly, his line of rings, necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, reinstalls the finished jewelry in the book that it was originally extracted from, but each piece also has a life of its own with abstract patterns and sculptural shapes.

Using a combination of oil and acrylic paint, ink, and found photographs, Seattle-based artist Mary Iverson (previously) investigates the relationship between humans and their environment in her landscape overlay paintings. Iverson builds worlds where dramatically angled, brightly colored geometric shapes are caught in webs of competing perspective lines and grids, superimposed over otherwise tranquil scenery.

Iverson described her work to Amadeus Magazine: “In following my interests and working to resolve an artistic dichotomy within myself, between my love and nature and my fascination with the shipping industry, I came upon a visual solution that metaphorically echoes what we are facing in the world today.”

These paintings are included in Correspondence, her exhibition with Scott Albrecht at Andenken Gallery in Amsterdam, NL. The show opens on November 11. You can also see more of Iverson’s finished and in-progress works on Instagram.

This week, representatives of three major internet platforms — Google, Facebook, and Twitter — are testifying before Congress about their role in facilitating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But a fourth giant sat comfortably removed: Amazon.

Instead of getting yelled at by lawmakers, Amazon is on the verge of winning a multibillion-dollar advantage over retail rivals by taking over large swaths of federal procurement.

Language buried in Section 801 of the House-passed version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which is being hashed out in a conference committee with the Senate, would move Defense Department purchases of commercial off-the-shelf products to “online marketplaces.” Theoretically, that means any website that offers an array of options for paper clips or office furniture; in reality that signals likely dominance for Amazon Business, the company’s commercial sales platform.

Section 801 stipulates that the program should be designed “to enable Government-wide use of such marketplaces.” Scale, then, is key. Over time, this change would give platforms like Amazon access to all $53 billion in federal government commercial item purchases.

“It seems like Amazon wrote it,” said Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which has written critical reports about Amazon in the past. “It will accelerate the transfer of more and more government spending to Amazon.”

The online marketplace provision, which still has to get through a House-Senate conference, coincides with a significant ramp-up for Amazon Business, which only launched in 2015. Last week, the company introduced Amazon Business Prime, a $499 membership that comes with free two-day shipping for its business-to-business products. The announcement tanked the stock prices of its main industrial supply competitors, Fastenal and W.W. Grainger.

Amazon Business has already surpassed 1 million customers and $1 billion in sales. Its business-to-business growth made up part of its 34 percent revenue increase in the last quarter. But federal procurement is the holy grail, the lucrative market to tap. Perhaps that’s why, for the head of Amazon Business’s public sector division, the company hired Anne Rung, who ran the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy until fall 2016. This made Rung effectively the top purchasing officer in the United States.

“She probably can’t go back and lobby [her former colleagues at OMB] based on the cooling-off period,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project On Government Oversight, referring to federal ethics laws. “But nothing would prevent her from lobbying others on Amazon’s behalf.”

The idea for online marketplaces came out of the House Armed Services Committee and its chair Mac Thornberry; he initially put the proposal in a standalone bill. Currently, to acquire off-the-shelf items like bottled water or pencils, government agencies sign long-term contracts with suppliers or use the General Services Administration “schedules,” a kind of catalog which sets prices for procurement.

In its NDAA summary, the committee argues that this is too burdensome and too expensive, citing a recent inspector general report showing higher-cost IT products in the GSA schedules than on the open market. “A solution is obvious to most consumers,” concludes the summary, “allow the government to use online commercial sites like Amazon, Staples, or Grainger just as businesses do.”

The definition of an “online marketplace” merely refers to a commercial, non-government portal selling products. And GSA, under the law, must select more than one online marketplace for this purpose. But eligible platforms must offer multiple suppliers for the same product, with constantly changing selection and prices. “I don’t think Grainger does that,” said Mitchell. “Every reference implies we’re talking about a platform where third parties are selling. If that’s the case, we’re talking about Amazon, Walmart [through its e-commerce site Jet.com], and not really anybody else.”

Indeed, Section 801 has been informally dubbed the “Amazon amendment,” and experts believe only one or two companies would have the wherewithal to participate. That means monopoly or duopoly control of $53 billion in federal purchasing.

The online marketplaces, which can be given no-bid contracts, explicitly eliminate the need for government procurement officers to seek out competitive bids for commercial products. As long as they visit the marketplace, that would satisfy any rules about competition, because of the multiple sellers on that platform. But that assumes the platform is a neutral arbiter of what gets purchased.

Amazon not only hosts third-party sales, it competes against those third parties with its in-house brands. Amazon places costs and parameters on third-party sellers on its platforms that can inhibit their ability to compete. And the company has mastered the technique of driving buyers to preferred products, by adjusting search results, or controlling what gets into the “buy box,” the top option it suggests for purchases. Often those preferred suggestions cost more than rivals.

“I don’t think what’s happening on Amazon is a market,” said Mitchell. “It’s a private arena that Amazon controls.”

Even if Amazon always served up the best alternative for any product, it extracts money from third-party sellers for the privilege of using the platform, of anywhere between 15 and 20 percent. If Pentagon procurement, and potentially all federal procurement, shifts predominantly to Amazon, it would collect billions of dollars annually without doing much of anything. The online marketplaces would satisfy small business purchase requirements as well, meaning that a significant portion of what small businesses earn from government spending would leak through to Amazon. A 15 percent skim could represent as much as half of a small business profit margin.

Holding data on regularized federal spending decisions can also prove valuable. “I can imagine Amazon saying, we looked at the data and can make a lot of money selling the Defense Department chairs,” said Mitchell. “We’ll either arbitrarily or through a rule change or increase in fees induce the fiercest competitor in making chairs to leave the portal. And we’ll own that business.”

With the bill mandating dynamic pricing, Amazon can also capitalize on data. If it knows that procurement officials are less attentive buying products on a Friday afternoon, or that they always buy a certain product on a certain day of the month, Amazon can jack up prices at those moments.

This is also another troubling example of government outsourcing. The GSA schedules were created for the purpose of buying commercial items in bulk at a better price than the open market, which makes sense because the government is the nation’s largest purchaser. “There’s a thought GSA isn’t getting the best prices,” said Scott Amey of POGO. “My feeling is, I don’t want to pay what other businesses pay.” In this sense, the government would be effectively giving up its leverage to Amazon.

Technically speaking, there are safeguards in the proposal to prevent ripoffs. A marketplace cannot feature any product based on an exclusive fee; procurement officials are supposed to be able to screen for suppliers and products that have been suspended from government contracting; the GSA is supposed to get full purchase data, including comparison prices from other suppliers. “For the government, that kind of transparency and accountability would be revolutionary,” the House Armed Services Committee report states.

But by the time GSA gets the data, the purchases will already have been made. After-the-fact GSA reports might improve matters over time, but billions could be lost in the process. And Amazon doesn’t have to take fees to feature its own products; they can just blame it on the algorithm.

Amazon has targeted government purchasing at the local level. In January, the company won a contract with U.S. Communities, a coalition of 90,000 local governments. Amazon famously spent years denying the payment of sales tax to local governments; now it’s a major supplier of local government office supplies. Federal agencies also have accounts with Amazon, including at the Department of Homeland Security. “They want to be the go-to source at every level of government,” Mitchell said.

The Senate version of the NDAA, one of the few bills Congress passes every year, does not include the online marketplace provision, meaning a compromise will have to be reached. Negotiations in the conference committee began two weeks ago, and in earnest in the last week. There’s no timeline on when that might be completed.

The Coalition for Government Procurement, an assembly of federal acquisition experts, recommended last month that Section 801 be made into a pilot program, calling the proposal “the most consequential procurement policy changes in a generation.” CGP wants to test compliance with statutory requirements, impact on small business, the use of data and fees, and other unintended consequences.

“Don’t hand over all our purchasing to Amazon,” Mitchell said, referring to the conference committee. “The lack of transparency and accountability is astonishing. Whatever problems there may be with the GSA, this would only compound the same issues.”

Top photo: A view of a conveyor belt system that is under construction at a new Amazon fulfillment center on Aug. 10, 2017 in Sacramento, Calif.

The post The “Amazon Amendment” Would Effectively Hand Government Purchasing Power Over to Amazon appeared first on The Intercept.

Last published in 1978, The Wines of Gala is Salvador Dalí’s eccentric guide to wine grapes and their origin. Filled with over 140 appropriated artworks and collages collected and created by Dalí, the book is an equally surreal follow-up to TASCHEN’s reprinting of the artist’s cookbook Les Diners de Gala. In addition to Jean-François Millet’s The Angelus, which was a constant point of reference in Dali’s works, visuals include a Bacchus-like kitten, and a sort of tableau vivant featuring Dali himself.

In keeping with Dalí’s efforts to create artwork based on his emotions, memories, and dreams, the artist chose to organize the wines in the book by how they influenced his mood. The groupings are appropriately imaginative classifications including such section titles as “Wines of Frivolity,” “Wines of the Impossible,” and “Wines of Light.” A section in the book also outlines Dalí’s method of ordering wine by emotional experience, quoting the artist’s famous credo: “A real connoisseur does not drink wine but tastes of its secrets.”

The 296-page wine bible published by TASCHEN is now available for pre-order. (via It’s Nice That)

 

Photographer Stefan Draschan visits museums around Europe to see not just the artwork but the people observing the artwork. In his series People Matching Artworks he patiently waits for museum-goers who unintentionally coordinate with the art they’re observing, and snaps a candid photo of the coincidence. You can follow the tumblr for this project, as well as a behind-the-scenes tumblr, and find links to Draschan’s other observational collections on his website. (via Kottke)

October 27, 2017, NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security.

Mr. President, Excellencies, my Civil Society colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning. I bring to you the traditional greetings of life, joy, hope and freedom, from the ancestral territories of Afro-descendant peoples in Colombia.

I speak today in my capacity as a member of the human rights team of the Black Communities’ Process, the Afro-Colombian Solidarity Network, the Black Alliance for Peace, and the Special High Level Body for Ethnic Peoples. I am also speaking on behalf of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. I am a woman of African descent, and a peace and human rights activist who has spent half of my life educating and fighting for the cultural, territorial and political rights of Afro-descendant women and our communities and for our free-self-determination. It is an honor and a great responsibility to have been nominated by my global colleagues, to represent today the women and peace and security civil society community at this important debate.

I was extensively involved in the historical Havana peace process between the Colombian Government and the guerrilla group, FARC. Representing the Afro-Colombian National Council for Peace coalition (CONPA), I advocated to ensure that the rights and expectations of Afro-descendant peoples would be part of the Peace Accord that Colombia, and the world, celebrate today. I can speak first hand to the importance of inclusive negotiations and implementation processes, which support the participation of women from ethnically and racially diverse backgrounds and are emblematic of the goals and principles of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000).

Colombia has become a new source of hope because of the comprehensive peace agreement reached. Two provisions were particularly progressive and could bring radical changes to future peace processes around the world: one, the explicit inclusion of a gender perspective as an intersectional principle, and the second, the inclusion of the Ethnic Chapter which provides important safeguards to ensure the respect of autonomy and the protection and promotion of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples’ rights from a gender, family and generational perspective. The inclusion of these two specific principles is a historic advancement regarding peace and security that the UN and other countries experiencing violence and armed conflicts could learn from. The Peace Accord was very important for civil society and Indigenous and Afro-descendent people, and we continue to expect the engagement and active participation of women, ethnic groups, and their communities, in its implementation.

Colombia, however, risks wasting this opportunity for peace if it does not completely disarm itself and if the communities most impacted during the internal armed conflict, including women human rights leaders and activists, continue to be ignored in the implementation of the Peace Accord. I am here today to make visible their urgent calls and want to stress that for my people, it is actually a matter of life and death.

There are three urgent priority areas I want to focus on in my statement: participation of ethnically diverse women; ensuring the security for human rights defenders, civil society activists and Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities; and inclusive monitoring and implementation of peace processes.

First, is ensuring the ongoing participation of women, especially from diverse communities, in all areas relating to the implementation of the Peace Accord. As with women around the world, women in Colombia, and particularly Afro-descendant women, we have been mobilizing for decades to make visible the violations of our rights but also to ensure significant transformations in the way peace and security is approached. My dear sister Rita Lopidia from South Sudan was here last year giving testimony on the importance of South Sudanese women participating in ongoing peace and security dialogues. In Afghanistan, the few women on the High Peace Council need to continue fighting to have their voices heard. In Colombia, there is not a representative of Afro-descendant women on the High Level Body on Gender, the body that was established to oversee the implementation of the agreement’s gender chapter.

As parties to the Peace Accord work with the international community to demobilize FARC fighters, paramilitaries and other armed actors have filled the power vacuum left by FARC forces in many areas in Colombia. This has created an urgent need for local women’s organizations and community leaders to be consulted and participate in the design of local protection strategies to keep our communities safe. The Security Council and international community must support the Colombian government in designing and implementing gender-responsive, community based security and self-protection systems in consultation with Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities. The failure to listen to our security concerns and warnings has had devastating results.

This brings me to my second point, which is the need to guarantee our integral and collective security. Security involves the safety of leaders and communities and the respect and protection of territories and territorial rights. The proliferation of weapons is fuelling increased fear and forced displacement among largely Indigenous and Afro-descendent communities and negatively impacting on women’s participation and mobility, as well as resulting in increased sexual and gender based violence. We are alarmed at the increasing number of assassinations and threats to human rights defenders and peace activists across Colombia. For example, in Tumaco, a municipality near the border with Ecuador, urban leaders and members of the Community Council of Alto Mira and Frontera, continue to be targeted by paramilitary groups and FARC detractors who seek territorial control in order to grow and sell coca. Just last week, we buried Jair Cortés, the sixth leader killed in that municipality, and we had to urgently move out several women leaders and their families who received death threats.

Sexual and gender-based violence and the stigmatization that comes with it, especially for Indigenous and Afro-descendent women and their children, is also a matter of integral and collective security. The silence around these crimes is as appalling as the crimes themselves. Women activists risk their lives to bring cases before the justice system. There is an urgent need to establish a direct line of communication between Indigenous and Afro-descendent authorities and representatives of women organizations in all mechanisms of the Comprehensive System for Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition to ensure these cases are prioritized, that perpetrators are brought to justice and survivors provided with lifesaving medical and psychosocial services.

Finally, it is crucial that the framework plan for the implementation of the Peace Accord includes specific goals and indicators designed to measure the progress and outcomes of policies, programs and reforms in a manner corresponding to the needs, values and rights of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. It is critical that the Colombian government and its implementation commission (CSIVI) accept and integrate the ethnic perspectives and indicators, including the specific gender ethnic indicators, developed and provided to them by Indigenous and Afro-descendant organizations earlier this month. Political will on these indicators is needed, as is to include them in the legal framework of the Peace Accord. They will help effectively transform the war-like conditions preventing the well-being, social development and collective security of Indigenous and Afro-descendent women and our communities.

For Afro-descendant women in Colombia and Indigenous women leaders worldwide ensuring our collective security also means that the principles of free, prior and informed consent; consultation; autonomy; cultural integrity, and meaningful participation are respected and our human rights enshrined in national and international human rights standards are fully promoted and protected. Peace in Colombia and elsewhere, is not simply a matter of ending war and violence but addressing collectively the root causes of conflict including social, gender and racial injustice and promoting the well-being of all people of all races and religions. It is about supporting the efforts of local women activists to demilitarize and disarm our whole societies, and curbing the flow of small arms as prescribed in the Arms Trade Treaty and other legal instruments. It is the responsibility of all actors, including the Security Council, the UN system, regional and sub-regional organizations, and importantly, Member States, to fulfil their obligations. The women, peace and security agenda, if implemented and financially resourced, can be the pathway to peace in my country and around the world, where gender equality, women’s empowerment and protection of women’s rights are central to conflict prevention and sustainable peace.

Thank you.

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The post Statement by Ms. Charo Mina-Rojas at UN Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security appeared first on World Beyond War . . ..

Absolutely the best.

I stumbled across this at 0600 this morning when I couldn't sleep and was surfing randomly, watched for a couple minutes, and then was hooked for the entire 40-minute presentation.

This is the video equivalent of a "longread."  Forty minutes is a significant chunk of your time, but I think this is worth viewing for any reader of TYWKIWDBI who shares my general worldview.

The topic is the future of global energy - basically the rise of solar and wind and the imminent plunge of coal and oil.  The numbers are staggering (and largely unappreciated by the general public).  The implications are for major disruptions in energy markets - and the geopolitical balance - within our lifetimes (within yours moreso than for old guys like me).  The presentation is at a South African symposium, so some of the focus is there, but the implications are worldwide - especially for the Middle East and for Russia.

And best of all this is a first-class presentation.  I spent the best hours of my professional life on stages and behind podiums giving lectures.  This guy - Ramez Naam - is superb as a speaker.  Pacing, diction, gestures, and the composition of his visual aids are all outstanding.  And I drool with envy looking at the setup in this auditorium with huge screens that I would have killed to have when I was lecturing.

Give it a try for at least 5 minutes to let him get past the introductory remarks; I think you'll want to hear it all.  Awesome.

Academic philosophy in ‘the West’ ignores and disdains the thought traditions of China, India and Africa. This must change

By Bryan W Van Norden

Read at Aeon

If the game Cards Against Humanity and those refrigerator poetry magnets had a digital baby bestowed with machine learning, it would look something like Botnik. This Seattle-based startup is actually the comedic offspring of Jamie Brew, previously a head writer for ClickHole, a satirical website connected to The Onion, and Bob Mankoff, cartoon and humor editor of Esquire and former cartoon editor of The New Yorker.

“Bob and I started Botnik after a series of long phone calls converging on the idea that comedy writing isn’t a problem that an algorithm can solve,” Brew said. “We didn’t really care for fully automatic creativity (such as Google DeepMind’s attempt to win The New Yorker Caption Contest) and were far more interested in human-machine collaboration.”

Botnik builds a “predictive keyboard” of words taken from various sources — beauty ads, nature shows, famous poets, dialogue from “Seinfeld” episodes and even combinations of sources, including the unlikely triumvirate that is Beowulf/Maya Angelou/forklift manual. Botnik users can enter their own source to create a keyboard.

The program analyzes the sentences in the source to build a model of which words are likely to follow each other. Then a user calls up a keyboard and starts creating her or his own computer-assisted quips. As each word is selected, the Botnik app churns out 18 choices for the next word based on the highest probability of continuing the sequence.

The results are almost universally quirky, and they’re often funny and clever. Last month, Brew and friends used the app to write a parody episode of “Seinfeld” and the script went viral on Twitter.

Botnik users can test the tool and their comedic chops through writing jams. Past topics include Buzzfeed quizzes, which begat, “Can You Match These Disney Princess Outfits To The Mental Illnesses They Reveal?” and Halloween safety tips, one answer being: “The bible says that children love when we dress them like pumpkins and eat their regular clothes.”

A spoof on Wired reviews inspired some gems, including, “If you asked 1,000 people what innovation is, the seventh would say ‘jeans with bluetooth’” and “The iPhone 8’s 2½-gallon bucket is a wonderful addition. It holds a lot of caramel.”

“We want to show the world an emerging kind of machine-human creative collaboration that brings us great joy,” Brew said, “and that we believe can do the same for billions of others.”

Botnik, which launched last year, was one of nine early-stage startups that recently participated in the first-ever Alexa Accelerator. The budding companies spent three months building their B2C and B2B technologies that incorporate Alexa, Amazon’s popular artificial intelligence and machine learning-powered voice platform.

The team plans in the future to sell ads and offer modular in-app purchases and a “freemium” versioning of the app.

We caught up with Brew for this Startup Spotlight, a regular GeekWire feature. Continue reading for his answers to our questionnaire.

Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: “Botnik is a community where people use computational language tools to remix and transform existing content into new jokes, stories, screenplays and more.”

Inspiration hit us when: “Google DeepMind tried and failed to enter The New Yorker Caption Contest, and Bob saw that the computer comedy world was desolate and empty. Then, after reading an interview where Bob mentioned Botnik, Rodrigo Prudencio of Amazon reached out and invited us to apply for this summer’s Alexa Accelerator.”

VC, Angel or Bootstrap: “Angels. We keep seeing their faces in all our pieces of toast.”

Our ‘secret sauce’ is: “Our community of coders, comedy writers and ordinary citizens working together to explore the wilds of human-machine collaboration.”

The smartest move we’ve made so far: “Finding an amazing mentor in Jean Paoli, an ex-Microsoft leader and one of the inventors of XML.”

The biggest mistake we’ve made so far: “Poorly framing our product in our first round of user testing. We gave people the predictive keyboard loaded with stuff like Yelp reviews and expected them to figure out on their own that this tool would help them write an absurd parody of Yelp reviews. This did not work.”

Would you rather have Gates, Zuckerberg or Bezos in your corner: “Gates, for a triumphant exit.”

Our favorite team-building activity is: “Jamie repeatedly losing to Bob at ping pong.”

The biggest thing we look for when hiring is: “A deep love for — and suspicion of — both machines and people.”

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: “Work with people you can talk with for hours. And invest in Botnik.”

Mental health is a hot topic at the moment, and rightly so.

Speaking out about said issue is rising Manchester-based artist, RUNAH, who describes her new single ‘This Silence’ as one that “explores feelings of isolation, pain and bodily disconnection, which can be felt not only by the sufferer, but also by those who seek to support them. It’s of great importance to me to acknowledge both parties.”

Her folktronica-based music has a delicate approach and ‘This Silence’ showcases her ability to write sensitive and forward-thinking music with captivating visuals.

Sounds like: MIEARS, Gabrielle Aplin, Aurora, Bon Iver, Bonobo, Laura Marling

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The post RUNAH – This Silence appeared first on Indietronica is a new music blog.

Below is my column in USA Today on the Arpaio pardon and its historical context.  While I have been critical of the Arpaio pardon, the history of presidential pardons is quite checkered.  Moreover, I agree with critics that the Justice Department made a major mistake in the timing of its prosecution of Arpaio shortly before the election.  That does not change the fact that Arpaio was in flagrant violation of a court order and warranted the contempt conviction.  I also disagree with New Jersey Christ Christie in aspects of the following statement: 

“I think the pardon power is an extraordinary power for any executive, both the governor, and I’ve used it, and the president. My understanding has always been that one of the prerequisites you look for in giving a pardon is contrition for what you were convicted of. I didn’t see that in Sheriff Arpaio. And so, to me, one of the things that you need an acknowledgment of is an acknowledgment of guilt, first off, is required for pardon.”

While Christie can demand that from individuals as governor, it is certainly not a mandatory requirement for a presidential pardon. Contrition is a common element in presidential pardons in the review of petitions but it is not a threshold requirement.  While a smaller subset of pardons, some pardon beneficiaries, like Richard Nixon, maintain that they were not guilty of any crime.  Indeed, pardons can be used in cases where a president believes that someone was wrongly charged or convicted — as is the case with Trump’s rationale for the Arpaio pardon.  Of course, in such case presidents normally give the courts an opportunity to review the conviction on appeal before executing a pardon.   This is not one of those cases.  Arpaio might have good-faith arguments in favor of his immigration arrests, but those arguments do not give him license to ignore a court order — which he did for 17 months.

Here is the column:

 

President Trump’s pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been widely condemned across the political spectrum. Arpaio committed flagrant contempt of court in continuing patrols targeting immigrants in Arizona for 17 months. While Trump described Arpaio as a “worthy candidate” for a pardon, Trump’s action flouted both the purpose and process for presidential pardons.

Having said that, Arpaio pales in comparison to some past misuses of pardon authority. In a system of overlapping checks and balances, this is one of the few near absolute powers.  Ironically, the provision has proven the fallacy of self-restraint by politicians in their use of unchecked authority. Left to their own devices and interests, presidents have repeatedly used this power for their personal political and familial interests.

There are a host of troubling elements to the Arpaio pardon. Trump reportedly bypassed his own Justice Department and pardon staff (which would have been unlikely to support clemency for Arpaio). Arpaio was not even sentenced and was looking at either no jail time or less than six months.  Moreover, Arpaio remained defiant in the case and has not accepted responsibility.

The biggest problem with the pardon is the crime itself. The greatest cause for concern is the impact of this pardon on our principles underlying the rule of law. Our legal system depends on compliance with court orders ranging from search warrants to injunctions, particularly for law enforcement officials. Arpaio put himself above the law while claiming to enforce it.

If Trump felt Arpaio warranted clemency, he could have simply negated his sentencing. That is what George W. Bush did with Scooter Libby, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.  Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction for lying about his conversations with reporters about the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Bush refused calls for a pardon as inappropriate and instead commuted Libby’s 30-month prison term but not his $250,000 fine. Conversely, Trump negated Arpaio’s entire conviction while proclaiming that he was merely doing his job.

Trump’s hints of a forthcoming pardon at his Phoenix rally last week drew a response illustrating its popularity with his base. If politics did triumph over principle, he would not be the first such president to yield to temptation:

• Thomas Jefferson was accused of using the power to pardon his political allies convicted under the Alien and Sedition Act (though, in fairness, Jefferson was opposed to the Act).  He also pardoned Dr. Erick Bollman to allow Bollman to testify against his arch rival Aaron Burr in 1807 for treason. Bollman ultimately refused to accept the pardon and thus did not testify.

 

• President Warren Harding and his Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty were repeatedly accused of selling pardons.  One such pardon was given to Ignacio Lupo.  Known as “Lupo the Wolf,”Lupo was one of the top mobs enforcers and suspected in at least 60 murders.  There was a mob war raging that impacted the lucrative bootlegging business that reported funneled money to Daughterty.  Lupo’s release helped Giuseppe “Joe” Masseria win the war.
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt pardoned Conrad Mann, a close political associate of Kansas City boss Thomas Pendergast. Pendergast made a fortune off illegal alcohol, graft, and gambling.  He is also credited with putting Harry Truman into office.  Roosevelt pardoned Mann for running an illegal lottery.
• Harry Truman pardoned one of Louisiana’s most corrupt politicians George A. Caldwell, a Democrat. “Big George” Caldwell was notorious for skimming money off government projects, including the building fund for Louisiana State University. As State Superintendent of Construction, this public servant made $6000 annually but built one of the biggest mansions in Louisiana with air conditioning and sold gold bathroom fixtures.  He was finally prosecuted for tax evasion and bribery but pardoned by Truman.
• Richard Nixon pardoned the infamous Teamster Union Leader Jimmy Hoffa in 1971 and Hoffa supported Nixon for reelection as president in 1972. The mob later reportedly murdered Hoffa to keep him from disclosing mob control of the union.
• Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon in what many felt was a political payback for his resignation. While there is no evidence of a quid pro quo, the pardon was denounced by many as sparing Nixon (and Republicans) from an impeachment anda trial.
• George H.W. Bush issued pardons for individuals involved with the Iran-Contra affair, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.  Both Ronald Reagan and Bush were viewed by some as directly or indirectly responsible for the criminal conspiracy. Various sources indicated that Reagan and/or Bush had prior knowledge of the illegal sale of missiles to Iran to secretly (and unlawfully) fund the guerilla war in Nicaragua.
• Bill Clinton was a serial abuser of pardon authority, using the power to benefit family, friends, and political donors.  Clinton granted a pardon to his own brother Roger Clinton and his friend (and fellow Whitewater business partner) Susan McDougal. Most notoriously, he pardoned a man who is generally viewed as one of the least worthy recipients of a pardon in modern history: the fugitive financier Marc Rich. Rich was a major Democratic donor and entirely unrepentant for his tax evasion, racketeering, fraud, and illegal dealings with Iran.

 

Trump’s pardon of Arpaio looks almost papal in comparison to some of these pardons.  None of that alters the fact that the Arpaio pardon was unwarranted and unwise. Justice Anthony Kennedy once complained that the pardon process had been “drained of its moral force.”  If so, the Arpaio pardon is the dregs left at the bottom of a now depleted and despoiled process.

Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

 

Filed under: Columns, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Politics, Society

Japanese artist Hirotoshi Ito’s sculptural works are a surreal contradiction of materials that seemingly shouldn’t exist, and yet here they are. The smooth stones of variable shape and size are each embedded with zippers that open to reveal hidden objects like collections of coins or marbles, while some of his more popular works incorporate a rather sinister toothy mouth. Ito finds the rocks in a riverbed near his home and works with the natural shape of each object to form the pouch and scene inside.

Ito had a solo show last month at Little High Gallery in Tokyo called “Mysterious Stone!” and you can see more of his ongoing stone carving work on Facebook. (via Geyser of Awesome)

Photographer Kanghee Kim juxtaposes day-to-day moments to create scenes that peek into an alternate world, subtly placing faux reflections in coils of cable or in the streak of a rear windshield. The Brooklyn-based photographer’s manipulations come from the desire to manifest magical moments in the mundane, using post-production edits as an additional artistic medium within her work.

“I started to think of [my photography] as a painting and allow the post-production process to act as a kind of mark-making,” said Kanghee to i-D. “Photoshop is widely used in commercial photography to refine the details and make the images look flawless.”

Kanghee decided that she wanted to do the opposite with the tool, keeping the flaws that appeared in her images rather than editing them out. The works’ small imperfections highlight the human quality of each combined moment rather than glossing over it. You can view more of the photographer’s softly edited images and unexpected reflections on her website and Instagram. (via This Isn’t Happiness)

International duo, Glassio, share new single ‘Papaya’.

An energetic track that bursts into a vibrant chorus, Glassio have once again managed to perfectly blend indie pop attitudes with trending dance sounds.

Sounds like: Hot Chip, Metronomy, Foals, Jagwar Ma, Rüfüs, Flume, Odesza, Bob Moses, Glass Animals, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs

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The post Glassio – Papaya appeared first on Indietronica is a new music blog.