الفن و الثورة

Attended an interesting seminar during the weekend, where former Black Panther Minister of Culture and graphic artist Emory Douglas spoke about his pieces in the context of ‘Art and Revolution’.

Showing us illustrations from the late sixties up til now, he spoke about the situation for black people in the US now and in the past, the work of the Black Panthers, and also how discriminatory practices at home have always been analogous to imperialist policies abroad.

These are two of his latest illustrations, made only last year I think. The first one represents the situation today of a huge over-representation of blacks in prison, and how that can be seen as a continuation of slavery. Quite a powerful image. And the Obama one, no need for further explanation there. Pretty clear.

To see more of his art work and read about him and the Black Panthers, check out what Urbis and MOCA writes about their exhibitions of his images.

غرقت سفينة من ساحل طرابلس

The failure in Copenhagen to reach an agreement that actually has some kind of potential for change (Greenpeace describes the “deal” as something more like a 24 hour Head of State tourist brochure of Copenhagen than a climate trety) is not the only weather-related story of concern this weekend. The crazy storms here have now caused something more serious than soaked feet and flooded streets: Thursday the Panamanian-flagged cargo ship Danny F II went down off the Tripoli coast in northern Lebanon. Some 30 of the ship’s 83 crew members are still missing and 11 have been found dead. Danny F II also carried 10 000 sheep and 18 000 cattle, all of whom went down with the ship. The search for survivors has been extremely hard due to the heavy winds and rainfalls, but today finally, alhamdulillah, the weather has eased a bit – I’m actually writing this sitting outside with a cup of tea for the first time in two weeks – so I hope they will be able to speed up the search now.