I did this one for a commentary of a book by Prof. Richard Bessel on the post-war Germany. As you can guess, I took inspiration from the wonderful characterization by Bruno Ganz in “The Downfall”.
On a more personal side, from many years ago I was intrigued by this watercolor by the young Hitler when he tried to be admitted in the Vienna’s School of Arts:
I find a remarkable contrast between the detailed treatment of the building (according to his sister he aspired to become an architect) and the rude, even clumsy one of the human figures. I wonder if this is a sign of a particular “blindness” to figure out the place of human social complexity in an idealized, perfect architectural environment.
Many have speculated with the contra-factual development of History if Hitler wasn’t rejected to enter the School. I find this speculation futile. To anyone with a minimum knowledge of the traumatic period of the Weimar Republic should be evident that Hitler was an accident. In the polarized, chaotic politics of Germany after years of inflation and war payments to France all the Capitalist establishment was akin to hail anyone aimed to crush the Communist menace and regain its due place to German capital. An so the did.
It looks like South Carolina governor will make it through the end of his second term, despite his weakness for an Argentinean girlfriend (I can empathize with him: I married mine). But who saved him from being impeached was his vice, Andre Bauer, with beauty pieces like this one:
My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that.
So, Republicans and Democrats at once showed their moral concerns and avoided to give a potential candidate runner an edge by letting him to seat at the governor’s desk.
The funniest side: Bauer himself, as a child of divorce, was feeded at the expenses of the State. Conservative politics disease seems to cause short memory.
On December 29 passed away the great American artist who revived the journalistic caricature in the sixties and established the style for others until his retirement three years ago.
Perhaps he regarded himself as a painter “who did caricatures for a living”. But his published works show the evidence of his true commitment with his subjects as well as with his ethics.
Born in a Jewish working class family, he never lost his attachment to the old socialist Yiddish culture. The same one which saw the Western Civilization to betray the humanistic promises of the Enlightenment and became crushed in the Holocaust. Todays predominance of religious, nationalistic tendencies amid the Jewish communities can’t be understood without taking this material and cultural catastrophe into account.
Being myself the offspring of one of the remnants of this almost extinct culture I felt close to Levine’s approach to caricature. But i never heard of him until my mid twenties after some years of Art (and History) studies and portraiture practice. He became decisive in my life turn nonetheless.
I went to study History in Jerusalem after the military Junta took over in Argentina and used to do portraits outside the Old City to supplement my scholarship but never felt comfortable there (their view of History was too conservative to my taste). I had no idea what to do or where to live when an article from The International Herald Tribune felt into my hands. It was headlined “The fine line of David Levine” and contained an interview together with some of his drawings. Then I knew what to do. I went to Tel-Aviv with a “portfolio” of just three caricatures (Carter, Sadat, Begin); asked for anybody (Lapid) at any newspaper (Maariv) and got my first job.
I never dreamed of become a pro caricaturist before. I was a fan of Hermenegildo Sábat, the Uruguayan caricaturist who shocked the media in Argentina with his crosshatching (close to that of Levine) in the seventies. But his style was too wild to follow after. Levine had a more rationalist approach, closer to my sensitivity. He opened the path along which I walked since 1978 and I’m grateful to him for that.
Farewell maestro!
As I failed to keep a regular posting pace lately I’ll retrieve some works of long-term interest.
This article shows a rather realistic evaluation of current increasing troubled relationship of the Obama administration with its southern continental neighbors, even sought from a right- leaned point of view. On the other hand, you can say that the American performance in the Honduras affair dropped down the sweet-talking mask and showed off the old same corporative permanent interests policy.
The other sign of the current trend was the recent tour by Arturo Valenzuela, the Chilean-born, hard-to-explain-haircut Undersecretary of Hemispheric Affairs, who failed to shake hands with any relevant president.
Valenzuela’s press declarations aroused a storm of critics in Argentina by stating that the country lacks “juridical safety” for investments. This statement was linked to a long battle waged by the large Kraft Foods Corp. against its workers and existing local labor legislation.
The conflict burst in July when 3000 workers at the corporation’s owned Terrabussi cookies factory halted working until “swine flue” sanitary measures got accomplished. In fact, this was the last in a row of strains caused by the managers pressure to cut the staff and extend labour hours turns. The managers laid off hundreds of workers, including all of the left-of-the-government elected delegates. Ensuing months witnessed a row of mobilizations to ensure the reincorporation of all the ousted with cuts of the main freeway near the plant and lots of leftist students battling the police forces.
Labour officials and judges pressed the managers to withdraw, so the ousted went back in to their jobs and the capitalist offensive got a defeat. It was a clear cut show of class-struggle under the bourgeois law and the law prevailed, no more, no less. But, according to Obama’s envoy, this means “juridical insecurity” for foreign investors. Who seems to be the actual constituency to be protected by the Obama administration. No wonder, then, if he finds increasing troubles in the neighborhood in the time ahead.
The Chilean people is choosing today his leaders and the multimillionaire Sebastián Piñera (owner – between other companies – of the national airline) seems to be guiding comfortably the first round. The discolored Christian-democrat Eduardo Frei and the Socialist postmodern ‘rebel’ Marco Enríquez-Ominami dispute the privilege of entering as the option in the second round.
Whatever the final score would be, what is sure is the irreversible way of the country towards the immersion in the capitalist global liberalism. Does a country can with industrial weak bases (the national revenue keeps on depending basically on the exportation of copper) develop successfully this way?. For a while it could seem like that because of the incorporation of external aspects of modernization (new buildings, managerial organization). But other recent experiences (Ireland, Iceland, even Spain) have showed the risks of this route.
Obama seems destined to be somewhat controversial even when he has done nothing to deserve it. And this seems the main reason for all the noise around the Nobel Peace Prize, that still he did nothing to deserve it. Moreover, a cursory analysis of the list of the political colleagues predecessors, seems to show a tendency to give the prize to those who have finished a war or signed a peace treaty, no matter how many innocent victims have been responsible for previously.
Thus understood, the criterion of the Norwegian committee seems to have been so far to encourage wild animals to stop shooting in exchange for a glamorous prize. But now the approach seems to have changed to reward the most beautiful speeches and the best voice to tell them, though the protagonist is developing a devious war with many civilian casualties in two sovereign countries invaded by his troops. It seems easy to agree with the columnist of El Pais, when implied that this was not a Peace prize but one for the Communication.
Interestingly, the reasons cited by the committee seem to agree with some international surveys that show a dramatic improvement in the image of the United States of America in the world. And that, in the Age of Marketing, is crucial even for a committee of experts that demonstrates once more, how far the media construction of Common Sense exerts its influence penetrating any citadel.
Perhaps, the Norwegian committee should take the opportunity to put set a new subcategory for presidents of countries at war, adhering to the creative advertising of the Bushies: the Preventive Nobel Peace Prize.
PS: I just realize (damn Google!) that the “preventive peace prize” idea has been employed previously by Gerald Loftus of the Avuncular American blog. He’s a diplomat who resides in Europe; and a very articulated one as such! My excuses to him.
The old conservative coaches the liberal to get untied
While the battle over the Public Option in the health care system attracts all the attention these days, other issues of equal importance goes less noticed. Not to me, mind you (in fact, I just happen to be assigned as illustrator to a good columnist at the Río Negro daily in Argentina). Two articles give different evaluations of the Obama’s record to this date on security and military matters.
Garry Willis in the New York Review of Books looks disappointed. He sees the new President already trapped by the network of secrets and responsibilities delivered to the Oval Office by the Intelligence and the National Security agencies. Many promises seems to never be fulfilled and the extraordinary concentration of power gathered by the Executive through many decades will not be given back to the Legislative as intended by the Constitution. I find Willis’ claim interesting as in order to accomplish with his liberal demands from the present state of things, you’ll need nothing short of a revolutionary action.
On the other hand, Joseph Cirincione in Foreign Policy seems to be far more optimistic as he sees the decision to abandon the missile shield projected for East Europe as a sign of Obama’s ability to build a pragmatist approach, not constrained by the plans already deployed by the Neocons before his arrival.
We have to wait an see. The signs are still unclear. In Colombia an agreement of facilities to use six military bases (where an undisclosed number of troops will be private contractors) weighs on the “business as usual” side of the balance; while the prolonged negotiations in the case of the Honduras coup (supported by the lobby of American fruit and coffee enterprises) keeps the hope alive that Obama seeks to detach himself from the secular Imperialist policy towards the backyard.
Eisenhower warns of a Military Industrial complex danger
Belatedly, here is the illustration I did for this article by Andrés Oppenheimer who -I must say- shows this time a lot of sense. Micheletti has been caught in surprise and exposed as a truly dictator, closing TV an radio stations.
Obama too is pressed to a disambiguation on rejection of any kind of coup. At the last G-20 summit he asked Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández ( as told from her inner circles), about what Latin Americans expect from him if they complaint about past American interventions?; her answer: “true leadership”.
But the real star of this chapter isn’t at the picture: Brazil’s president “Lula” da Silva is said to staging Zelaya’s return (even noticing Obama about it) and saying loud and clear that no alternative solution to the restoration of legality will be allowed. So he is displacing the colorful, outspoken Chávez as the leading voice of the region. One progressive but with good sense at the same time.
Mr. Robert Morgenthau has revealed himself as the new American super-hero. He exerted his penetrating insight powers to foresee hidden facilities in Venezuela’s remote places where the still non-existing Iranian weapons of mass destruction are going to be stored. No probe, no evidences but, does anybody doubts he knows what is he talking about? It is the old “first time a tragedy, second a farce” scenario (thinking of Cuba’s missile crisis).The problem with this kind of nonsense is no one of these “evil doers” have mastered the nuclear cycle. Argentina does, but (despite friendly ties with Chávez) has an unsettled feud with Iran because of the later involvement in the bombing of the Jewish communal Center in 1994. The true is these countries are major oil producers and are more concerned with their huge social problems more than with the Armageddon. But got undependable regimes who found a common enemy; so are subjected to the ruthless “character assassination” delivered from the moral Olympus where Morgenthau rules.
What happen when a society grows to become the center of the World? It takes advantage of its dominant position over lesser countries to suck their resources by commercial and/or financial channels. And what happens when the standard of living for the peoples in those lesser countries drop down year after year? They try to immigrate to the center, seeking jobs and bringing their culture with them. How do conservatives in the center deal with these sudden changes in their environment? They complaint about the loss of ancient virtues and customs closing their eyes to the causes. It was so in ancient Rome and it is in the USA today.
Lou Dobbs has been playing Cicero for a time now from the CNN cathedra, complaining about the evils Hispanic immigrants where bringing with them. From the language they refuse to forget to supposedly dangerous diseases. Now a coalition of American Hispanic organizations and activists has taken action into their hands, calling for a boycott on Dobbs’s advertisers. While the rather conservative Andrés Oppenheimer (of Argentine stock) agreed with the boycott because Dobbs has been giving his opinions as if it were plain informative stuff, others warns of turning the man into a martyr.
To me, as a foreigner, what calls my attention is the course these organizations chose to go. Cause this way is the American way, not the one Hispanics were supposed to bring with their culture. And this is the best proof of the degree to which Hispanics have integrated into the mainstream traditions of their new environment. Even if they talk of their Spanish language and culture pride; of La Raza or any other peculiarities, they are, in fact, assimilated to the systemic web of the American society. This phenomena should be the best argument to convince Dobbs to change his rhetoric, even before the boycott shows itself successful with his advertisers and employers.
