An incendiary piece of video art, more like a short film–of raids, profiling and state terrorism–done by director Romain Gravas, for a new M.I.A. joint, “Born Free.”
It was initially posted on Youtube yesterday, but taken down for “the violent and sexual images.” On Vimeo, not a mass video viewing site, it has had over half a million viewers since it went up yesterday.
What’s up with John McCain’s home state? The state legislature has just passed an immigration law that basically targets the state’s Latino population for random stops and demands of their ID’s. As my man, Siddhartha Mitter, remarked yesterday: Apartheid nostalgics will be pleased to learn that the Pass Laws have been dusted off and reinstated, in Arizona. Separately, they have also given official sanction to the fantasies of “birthers” who claim President Barack Obama was not born on US soil.
Made Siddhartha think of Public Enemy’s 1990 tune “By the time I get to Arizona.”
Jon Stewart, on last night’s “The Daily Show,” unpacks the maverick politics of John McCain, who is engaged in a tough re-election bid against a Tea Party candidate in Arizona and has been flip-flopping on his positions to gain traction with that crowd. To make his point Stewart throws in a Zimbabwe reference to make his point. Watch for yourself. It comes with about one minute left in the clip. With apologies to my Zimbabwean peoples, but Stewart could not have said it better.
The media blog that is not about famine, Bono, or Barack Obama. For that, go to Newsweek. Frequent contributors are media expert Brett Davidson; academics Sean Jacobs (he started AIAC), Neelika Jayawardane, Kathryn Mathers, Marissa Moorman, Lily Saint, Melissa Levin and Dan Moshenberg; writer and health advocate Caitlin L. Chandler; filmmaker Dylan Valley; writer and academic Abdourahman Waberi; and graduate students Boima Tucker, Anni Lyngskaer, Sophia Azeb, Tom Devriendt, Loren Lynch, curator and filmmaker Basia Lewandowska Cummings, writer and journalist Elliot Ross, writer Orlando Reade; Hinda Talhaoui; and Mikko Kapanen. Pre-August 2009 posts are archived here.
