The College Hill Independent: April 14, 2011

8/7/2019 The College Hill Independent: April 14, 2011

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T H E C O L L E G E H I L L

INDEPENDENTVOLUME XXII, ISSUE 9

APRIL 14, 2011BROWN/RISD WEEKLY

Al Jazeera //3

Voodoo // 9

Fur// 11


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THE INDY IS:MANAGING EDITORS Gillian Brassil, Erik Font, Emily Martin NEWS Emily Go-

golak, Ashton Strait, Emma Whitford METRO Emma Berry, Malcolm Burnley,

Alice Hines, Jonah Wolf FEATURES Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, Eve Blazo, Kate

Welsh ARTS Ana Alvarez, Maud Doyle, Olivia Fagon, Alex Spoto LITERARY

Kate Van Brocklin SCIENCE Maggie Lange SPORTS/FOOD David Adler, Greg

Berman OCCULT Alexandra Corrigan, Natasha Pradhan LIST Dayna Tortorici STAFF WRITER Erica Schwiegershausen CIPHRESS IN CHIEF Raphaela Lipin-

sky COVER/CREATIVE CONSULTANT Emily Martin X Fraser Evans ILLUS-

TRATIONS Annika Finne, Becca Levinson DESIGN Maija Ekey, Katherine Entis,

Mary-Evelyn Farrior, Emily Fishman, Maddy Jennings, Eli Schmitt, Joanna Zhang

PHOTOGRAPHY John Fisher, Annie Macdonald SENIOR EDITORS Katie

Jennings, Tarah Knaresboro, Erin Schikowski, Eli Schmitt, Dayna Tortorici, Alex

Verdolini

COVER ART Fraser EvansX PAGE Myles ODonnell Lawson

Contact [email protected] for advertising information. // theindy.org

e College Hill Independent receives support from Campus Progress/Center

for American Progress. Campus Progress works to help young people advo-

cates, activists, journalists, artists make their voices heard on issues that

matter. Learn more at CampusProgress.org.

A SEX COLUMN:

THE ISSUE:News

WEEK IN REVIEW p.2by Emily Gogolak, Anna Matejcek, and Ashton Strait

AL JAZEERA: THE ARAB WORLD

AND POPULAR OPINION IN FLIX

p.3

by Emma Whitford

ArtsA MAGIC OPERATION p.9by Annika Finne

OccultTHE ONENESS OF BEING p.12by Alexandra Corrigan and Dia Barghouti

MetroEYE SPY p.5by Alice Hines

Features

A BRIEF CONSIDERATION OF TROPICAL DISEASES p.7by Gillian Brassil

FROM THE EDITORS:

EPHEMERA:Tryin to catch me riding dirty

Dirty talk comes in many forms, and no two people sexy-babble alikeso whetheryour mouth is a fountain of filth in the bedroom or as tightly sealed as a zipperedgimp mask, dont worry, because youre normal. Whether youre naughty ornice, you can spice up your boudoir routine with some linguistic encouragement.

Dirty talk often springs from a well-liquored tongue revealing raw sexual de-sires you might not usually share or unusually obscene enthusiasm, but to becomea Zen sex master is to meditate on the internal source of these desires and pro-claim them with confidence.

So if youre trying to get down and dirty, own your urges and keep in mind thatsexy babble is a form of semi-serious intimacy requiring comfort and a level oftrust from all parties involved. Take it slow, keep it real, and let your creativejuices flow.

Bediquette: It is polite to express ones pleasure during a sexual act. It is ad-visable to use caution, however when boldy proclaiming your darkest fantasies,especially with new partners. When asked to talk dirty or reveal your secret fanta-sies, always start vanilla and work your way to chocolateor even a banana split

If you want to tell me your secret fantasies or have a burning question eating atyour soul, email [email protected] and someone will get back to youshortly.

Metro editor Malcolm Burnley reporting on Hypocrisy at the Home Show (4/7/11)

UP TO SPEED p.13by Belle Cushing

RECONSIDERING REAL FEEL p.11by Maud Doyle

OpinionsFOOD FIGHT

p.15by Fraser Evans, Jared McGaha, and Wilson Foster

LiteraryA CONTRAST, A KENNING OR UNTITLED.

p.17by Robert Sandler

Last summer, I had occasion to drink alcohol in a bar. I was with a friend of mine, andtwo of her friends, and they had just come from a stand-up comedy performance. Iopened with what I thought was a totally reasonable rhetorical question: Doesntstand-up make you feel uncomfortable? Like, isnt it just people up there trying *sohard* and like, kind of being funny, but mostly struggling? Turns out both of the newfriends were aspiring stand-up comics. I was embarrassed.

On Wednesday night, I had the opportunity to watch Michael Ian Black, KevinAllison (both alums of MTVs hit-and-miss 90s sketch comedy show The State), andsundry Brown University personalities perform at something called RISK!, whichwas not a board game event. Instead, it was like a comedy inflected version of TheMoth; everyone got up and told stories. It was kind of cool. Kevin Allisons impres-sion of Michael Showalter (another The State veteran) was the best part. But I hadan epiphany as I watching.

Over spring break, in Portland OR, I had an opportunity to go to a cool, pro-gressive strip club. Allegedly (i.e. dont fact-check this) Portland has the most stripclubs per capita of any city in America. So theres cool ones. The epiphany at the stripclubit wasnt about feminismwas that watching someone strip was a lot like watch-ing stand-up comedy. Its kind of awkward. And to do it well just means that youraudience is so affected that they dont notice you trying really hard. Which is fine, un-less youre not that good at itstripping, or telling jokes. When someones not good,at least for me, I am just thinking about what the person is feeling, and not happilyobjectingfying/laughing at them.

I write this because, after sitting in an auditorium watch people telling jokes to tryto make me laugh for 1.1 hours, I ended up in front of a computer, where I noticed thatone of the trending topics on Twitter right now is #YouLookedGoodUntil, yieldedsuch delightful tweets as: Diibbz305 #YouLookedGoodUntil I found out yo ass cant

cook! or WHOsDiamondMind #YouLookedGoodUntil you hit from the bong andcoughed the bong water+your spit all over me. . .or JaeThaAlien #youlookedgoodun-til the next morning! i turned over n all i saw was BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!!! LOL.

Then I actually lolled, all without having to worry about whether Jae Tha Alienis trying too hard, or feels insecure about his performance as a comic/stripper. EJS


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SOMEONE STICKS UP FOR IMMI-GRANTS, FINALLYI think things are going to go crazy onthis, Utah Republican state Rep. StephenSandstrom told USA Today in March about

the recently passed state laws concerning il-legal immigration. Sandstrom had proposeda bill similar to Arizonas infamous SB 1070,whose anti-illegal immigrant sentiment causedthe federal government to sue the state to preventits enforcement. Sandstroms bill passed through theUtah legislature at the same time as the guest-workeract, a bill which would allow illegal immigrants whocurrently lived and worked in Utah to receive guestworker permitsessentially legalizing their residencyin the state, though they would remain subject to de-portation by federal immigration officials.

Yet in this reddest of red states, it was the guest-worker act that passed with all its key provisions intact.In fact, Sandstrom was so appalled by the watering-down of his proposals measures that he skipped thesigning ceremony in protest.

Utah has a long history of leniency towards illegalimmigrants that might have predicted this political up-set. For example, illegal immigrants in Utah can getdriving privilege cards to obtain car insurance, andthey are also allowed to pay in-state tuition at publicuniversities. Despite the overwhelmingly conserva-tive political climate of the state, the Latter Day Saintschurchs compassionate stance on immigration as wellas the large, imbedded immigrant population havecombined to foster relatively liberal attitudes towardimmigration reform issues.

Unfortunately, Sandstroms predictions of con-troversy may still ring true. There are many Republi-cans gearing up to oust those legislators who supportedthe guest-worker act in the next election. The guestworker bill is also still awaiting federal approval, a nec-

essary step because the law violates the federal govern-ments mandate that it is illegal to knowingly hire anillegal immigrant.

Still, what Sandstrom is calling an absolute trag-edy for the state of Utah has been hailed by many as awelcome step forward in the immigration debate. Re-publican state Sen. Chris Bramble told the LA Times,Something has got to break the gridlock on immigra-tion policy in the United States. If weve done nothingmore than push the debate further down the road thana year before, its hard to say thats bad for the coun-try. AS

GOODBYE, GLENN BECK!Last Wednesday, Fox News announced thatit will drop Glenn Becks TV programap-

propriately titled The Glenn Beck Showby

the end of this year. Known to some as a bravedefender of American freedom, and to others asan erratic, gloom-and-doom conspiracy theorist,

Beck has filled the networks 5pm slot since early2009. At the peak of Becks popularity last year, over

three million viewers tuned in each evening to hear himcriticize Obama and voice his suspicions of social jus-ticesomething Beck believes to be a code word forCommunism and Nazism.

TVs conservative wunderkind, however, appearsto have reached the end of his golden years. Becksviewership has dropped to approximately 1.6 millionover the past year, and his credibility, already consid-ered shaky by many, has been seriously undermined.A series of inflammatory statements made by Beck inlate 2009, in which he labeled Obama a racist with adeep-seated hatred of white people, prompted both

Fox News and the larger conservative political commu-nity to begin re-evaluating their relationships with Beck.

In response to the TV hosts incendiary criticismof Obama, Color of Change, an online advocacy groupdedicated to strengthening the political voice of African-Americans, organized an advertising boycott of TheGlenn Beck Show. The boycott has since convincedmore than 300 advertisers to deny Fox News their ad-vertising dollars, costing the network millions and, ac-cording to Color of Change, pushing Fox Newss TV ex-ecutives to view Becks increasingly erratic behavior asa liability to their ratings and their bottom line.

In addition to the revenues Becks provocativestatements have cost Fox News, several conservativeshave raised questions about the effect this debacle mighthave on the conservative movement at large. Washing-

ton Post columnist Jennifer Rubin claims that Beck isout of fashion in a time of increasingly mature conserva-tive leadership. Now is not the time for rants and con-spiracy theories.

While it is not surprising that Becks conspiracytheories and unfounded accusations have irreparablydamaged his credibility among both Democrats and Re-publicans, it does seem premature to assume that thiswill tone down rhetoric among the American conserva-tive leadership. From snide comments about Obamasmasculinity made by the Republican Mean Girls, tothe conservativeand potential GOP candidateDon-ald Trumps refusal to recognize Obamas birth certifi-cate, it looks like the red-herrings and rhetoric are hereto stay, for conservatives and liberals alike. AM

by Emily Gogolak, AnnaMatejcek, and Ashton

Strait

A HANDFUL OF CHERRIES MAKES THE MEDI-CINE GO DOWNThe next time you open your medicine cabinet andreach for the Advil, you may want to take a look in yourfruit basket instead. A report presented at the Experi-mental Biology annual meeting in DC this week added a

new topping to the standard list of painkillers: cherries.Researchers at Michigan State University, wherethe study was conducted, found that the cherry is notonly full of anti-oxidants (and great with vanilla), butis also an anti-inflammatory powerhouse. What makesthe cherry, well, the cherry may in fact be the culprit;the report reveals that anthocyanins, responsible forthe fruits bright red color, are also responsible for itspain-relieving properties. Dr. Muralee G. Nair, lead re-searcher and Professor at the University, was confidentin what he calls the cherry effect. His lab results showthat consuming 20 tart cherries would reduce pain. Itis as good as ibuprofen, he said.

In fact, it may be better. Recent research has re-vealed unsettling statistics on the serious side effectsfrom common pain relievers or non-steriodal anti-in-famatory drugs (NSAIDs) According to the Annals ofInternal Medicine, NSAIDSwhich include over-the-counter options like ibuprofen, Motrin, Aspirinareresponsible for an estimated 7,600 deaths and 76,000hospitalizations in the U.S. every year.

So if youre hurting, grab a handful, think of GeorgeWashington, and remember that killing pain is a wholelot sweeter than it used to be. EG

WEEKINREVIEWWEEKINREVIEW


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3 |NEWS

AL JAZEERAl Jazeera is Arabic for The Is-landa reference to the ArabianPeninsula, which is broken up

into Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, SaudiArabia, and the United Arab Emirates.The news network and satellite channel isfunded by the Persian Gulf emirate of Qa-tar; it broadcasts news and current events24 hours a day. While few Americans haveaccess to Al Jazeera through their cableproviders, the networks YouTube chan-nel has a huge following here. In fact, itsthe most watched channel on YouTube,receiving 2.5 million views per month.

Over the course of the last fifteenyears, while the networks mission hasbeen consistent, its reputation in theWest has fluctuated drastically. Labeled

the voice of terrorism by the Bush Ad-ministration, Al Jazeera has experienceda major upswing in Western favor in re-cent months. Between February 7 andMarch 4, viewership of Al Jazeera Englishincreased by 450 percent, drawing about100,000 additional viewers.

The stations patron is the Emir ofQatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist RonSuskind described the Emir of Qatar ina phone interview with the Independent:The Emir is this giant guy, and he lovescoming to the West. He rents out floorsof hotels. Al-Thani launched Al Jazeerain 1996. It was not an immediate hit in theArab world. Suskind recalls, The othercountries in the region were calling upthe al-Thanis all the time, saying Tell AlJazeera to withdraw. Add a correctionhere. Many regimes were upset by cov-erage that cast them in a negative light.

From the beginning, Al Jazeera wassomething new to the region: a largelyindependent news source with no appar-ent stake in preserving the status quo.But only recently has the world come torealize how significant a departure thatreally is. As revolutionary fervor sweepsthrough the Middle East, Al Jazeera is inthe middle of it, with coverage that in-spires as much as it explains. The dem-onstrators in various squaresTehran,

Cairo, Tunisia, Syriaare the viewership

Al Jazeera has right now, says Suskind.The images of the protestors are beingmirrored right back at them, and peopleare saying, Wow, that could be me too!Two years ago, an amateur journalistwas jailed for showing film of an uprisingin the small Tunisian city of Gafsa. Theevent wasnt covered on Facebook orAl Jazeera, so the news didnt spread toother towns. Al Jazeeras willingness toincorporate social media, acting on theopportunity posed by the proliferationof access to documentation equipment,is a key to its success. Al Jazeera is a re-ally fascinating hand-and-glove fit withself-determination movements, says Sus-kind. And we know how central a freeand independent media is to the nursing

of social action and informed consent. Iwould be hard-pressed to imagine whatis happening in that region without AlJazeera. How would it happen otherwise?The folks in Egypt would never be gettingdispatches from Tunisia on the old Egyp-tian state-controlled TV.

Many Al Jazeera reporters and pro-ducers speak with pride about the cata-lytic role their station has played in recentevents. Mhamed Krichen, a newscasterfor Al Jazeera, told the New York Times inJanuary, I mean, we shouldnt think thatour role is to release the Arab people fromoppression. But I think we should also becareful not to avoid any popular move-ment. We should have our eyes open tocapture any event that could be the startof the end of any dictator in the Arabworld.

NOT AN EASY JOBBut many in the West still dont trust AlJazeera. Late last year, evidence surfacedthat Al Jazeera might be tailoring its cov-erage to support Qatars foreign policyagenda. WikiLeaks released a memo fromthe US ambassador to Qatar, Joseph LeB-aron, that stated: Al Jazeeras ability toinfluence public opinion throughout theregion is a substantial source of lever-age for Qatar, one which it is unlikely torelinquish. LeBaron speculated that Al

Jazeeras more favorable coverage of

Saudi Arabias royal family has facilitatedQatari-Saudi reconciliation over the pastyear.

Wadah Khanfar, director-generalof Al Jazeera, immediately dismissed theclaims that his network is beholden to theEmir. He explained in an opinions piecefor Al Jazeera, [The skeptics] focusedon the source of our funding rather thanour reporting, in an attempt to tarnish ourwork. Its true that Al Jazeera receivesits funding from a government. However,Qatars prime minister openly criticizesAl Jazeera, and has talked about the head-aches caused by our independence,Khanfar insists. We subject the state of-ficials to the same hard questions and jour-nalistic standards we have for everyone

else one only has to look at the screento witness this.By giving precedence to on-the-

ground coverage, Al Jazeera counterswhat Khanfar identifies as the simplisticversion of events echoed by Westernoutlets, especially during the Bush admin-istration. (In the words ofThe Nation, Vir-tually all we heard about were the ubiqui-tous terrorists, the omnipresent beardedradicals.)

As Suskind points out, The images[presented by Al Jazeera] are so impor-tant, and the people are getting that. Theyare playing to the cameras. Its really in-teresting [to see these] protestors offera statement of purpose, all this stuff thatmoves and persuades people. In the up-surge of revolutionary fervor, grievancesexpressed on Al Jazeera are resonatingwith viewers across national borders.

Al Jazeera brings international cover-age to a region that has long suffered fromstrict media curtailment. Tony HorwitzB80, who covered the first Gulf Warfor the Wall Street Journal and later wona Pulitzer Prize for national reporting,described the difficulties he encounteredreporting from the region between 1987and 1993 in an e-mail to the Independent.

When we talk about Al Jazeera,Horwitz wrote, its important to remem-ber what a steady diet of propaganda and

censorship citizens of the Middle East

have been fed for many years. Whateverone thinks of the content, its liberatingfor people to actually have informationindependent of the state, from an Arabsourcea scarce commodity for many de-cades.

WHAT COVERAGE IS GOOD COV-ERAGE?Abderrahim Foukara is the Washingtonbureau chief of Al Jazeera Arabic. Headmitted in a recent interview with Time,To be honest, I dont know what objec-tive journalism means. The environmentin which you broadcast obviously colorsyour coverage. If you are an Americannetwork broadcasting from the US, you

will be broadcasting with a sensibilitywhich may not look necessarily objectiveto an audience in another part of theworld.

American audiences can get on boardwith a station that gives voice to democrat-ic revolutionaries, but in the aftermath of9/11 the US government voiced its dis-trust of a news network that was the firstto receive and broadcast messages fromOsama bin Laden. Then-Defense Secre-tary Donald Rumsfeld called Al Jazeerasreports about US military actions in Iraqvicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable.

The shift in Western favor towardsAl Jazeera can also be credited to the factthat the network, especially its Englishversion, is a lot less overtly radical thesedays. Al Jazeera English was launched onNovember 15, 2006, and became the firstinternational English-language news chan-nel to broadcast across the globe from theMiddle East. Al-Jazeera Englishs mission,as stated on its website, is to provide in-dependent, impartial news for an inter-national audience and to offer a voice toa diversity of perspectives from under-reported regions. In recent months, itsbeen the go-to network for internationalnews in the United States. Suskind attri-butes this to its level of journalistic profes-sionalism: Theyve evolved. Sometimesat the start the coverage was [] a little

tendentious. It took them a while to un-

the arab world and popular opinion in flux

Why popular opinion towards the Arab worlds leading news network is shiftingby Emma Whitford

by Emma Whitford design and graphics by Mary-Evelyn Farrior


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derstand that you want to go with what ismost judicious. [This is] one of the reasonsthey are so instrumental now.

According to McClatchy Washing-ton correspondent William Douglas, theWhite House, Congress, and EmbassyRow all currently consider Al-Jazeera tobe reliable coverage of whats happeningin foreign hot spots. Hillary Clintonsaid in March, Viewership of Al-Jazeera

is going up in the United States becauseits real news. You may not agree with it,but you feel like youre getting real newsaround the clock. The coverage of revo-lutionary events as they take place in theMiddle East has drawn media analysts torefer to Al-Jazeeras CNN moment.Its coverage of uprisings has contributedto its current popularity and prominence,just as CNNs coverage of the Persian GulfWar did back in 1991.

The networks increased viewershipcan also be attributed to a decline in inter-national coverage by United States cableand network news organizations. Therehas been an overall dip in ratings for TVnetworks in recent years, and as a result,networks have closed many of their for-eign bureaus.

REVOLUTIONS IN THE SPOTLIGHTOn January 14, Tunisian President Zineel-Abidine Ben Ali fled his country, mark-ing the culmination of the Jasmine Revo-lution, a sudden wave of street proteststhat erupted on December 17 when Mo-hamed Bouazizi, an unemployed, univer-sity-educated Tunisian, set himself on fire.Tunisian authorities had confiscated theproduce he was sellingthe only meanshe had of sustaining himself and his fam-ily. Al Jazeeras on-site coverage spreadBouazizis story across the nation, and

around the world. Al Jazeera was offi-cially banned in Tunisia, but Lutfi Hajji,an independent journalist, worked under-cover in Tunisia as Al Jazeeras eyes andears on the ground. Hajji was constantlytracked and harassed by secret police,but local contacts still managed to sendhim amateur videos of police violence viaFacebook. These grainy cell phone videosended up in official Al Jazeera broadcasts.According to the New York Times, Hajjisreporting methods blew the seeds of re-volt across the country.

A March installment of Al Jazeerasbi-weekly current affairs program Peo-

ple and Power analyzed the currentrevolution in Yemen in the context ofthe general revolutionary fervor in theMiddle East. The protests to oust Presi-dent Ali Abdullah Saleh officially startedin Yemen on January 26, in the immediateaftermath of the success in Tunisia. Theepisode opens with a Yemeni woman ex-plaining to a reporter, The young peopleand students breathed the Jasmine-filled

air of Tunisia, and started their protestsimmediately. As the program continues,dramatic footage of protests, the effectamplified by swelling music and the shakyhandheld cameras, is juxtaposed with adetailed profile of Tawakkol Karman, aYemeni mother of three and head of theorganization Women Journalists WithoutChains. Al Jazeera puts a spotlight on thegravity of the civil rights violations in Ye-men by depicting peaceful protestors be-ing beaten by the police. It also providesKarman with a wide audience for heranalysis of the oppressive nature of theYemeni government.

Karman explains that part of her rev-olutionary effort is to establish a free andindependent press. As it now stands, for-eign press materials are regularly confis-cated and Arab and Yemeni reporters areoften beaten. Saba Net, Yemens officialnews agency, published on Saturday April9 that, In view of the overt and repeatedinterventions in Yemens affairs by suspi-cious media, Al Jazeeras office in Sanaa[the capital city of Yemen] was closed withsealing wax. Authorities withdrew thelicense granted to Al Jazeera by the Ye-meni Ministry of Information, accusingthe network of implementing a sabotagescheme aimed to inciting strife, hatredand fighting in a number of provinces ofYemen.

Last Friday, just before revoking hisenvoy in Qatar, President Saleh made aspeech before tens of thousands of sup-porters that was broadcast on nationaltelevision. In the speech, he listed AlJazeera among the primary threats toYemeni power and sovereignty. Accord-ing to Al Jazeeras correspondent on theground, He singled out Qatar and AlJazeera and said, We dont have to followtheir agenda. A statement released byAl Jazeera English details the correspon-dents treatment by Yemeni police andSaleh supporters: They took my phone;they started shouting saying that I was a

spythe soldiers told me that I was not al-lowed to film [] they held a gun to mystomach. It was a very threatening envi-ronment.

Salehs administration has not under-mined the threat posed by Al Jazeeras on-the-ground footage and detailed profilingof revolutionary platforms.

OPPOSITION FROM THE RIGHT

The only cities that provide Al Jazeeraon their basic cable are Washington, DC;Toledo, Ohio; and Burlington, Vermont.Al Jazeera English went into talks withComcast at the networks PhiladelphiaHeadquarters in February and sent outa press release announcing that it hadhanded over 13,000 letters from Comcastsubscribers who want access to Al JazeeraEnglish. However, Comcast has yet to an-nounce any sort of agreement. Al JazeeraEnglish lacks clout with media giants suchas Time Warner, Scripps, and DiscoveryNetworks, which own most of the chan-nel listings on Comcast. Fast Companydescribes them as companies that run anold boys network. Theyre not inter-ested in a channel with small potentialmarket shares. They also have conserva-tive investors to please.

Cliff Kincaid is president of the con-servative Americas Survival, Inc. (ASI)and director of the Accuracy in the Media(AIM) Center for Investigative Report-ing. He explained in an interview with theIndependent, Cable and satellite providersought to consider that they might be creat-ing a situation in which homegrown Jihadswill decide to wage Jihad. Were not call-ing on the channel to be banned, but cableshould be wary about giving them moreaccess. In an article on AIMs websitein March, Kincaid points to Yusuf al-Qa-

radawi, a correspondent with Al JazeeraArabic, as a threat to American audiencesdue to his anti-American and anti-Semet-ic diatribes. Kincaid warns that, Cablesystems like Comcast that are consideringcarrying al-Jazeera need to know that[Qaradawi] is poison and hate in the mediamarket and a threat to ignite more cases ofhome-grown Jihadism.

AIM is less overtly partisan than ASI.The organization describes itself as a citi-zens media watchdog whose mission is topromote accuracy, fairness and balance innews reporting. It cites the WikiLeaksdocuments about Qatar as evidence that

Al Jazeera is a tool for Qatars foreignpolicy agenda. Kincaid explained in theinterview, Al-Jazeera is not an indepen-dent news network. The government ofQatar pays the bills and picks the person-nel. Al-Jazeera is not an independent newsstation, but follows the government line.

Kincaid also argues that the per-ception that Al Jazeera is always on theground covering breaking news is false,

especially when it comes to reporting onrevolutions in the Middle East: Its likean arsonist who starts the fire and then in-vites everyone over to watch the inferno.In terms of Al Jazeeras mission, Kincaidclaims that it has nothing to do with de-mocracy at all; it has to do with a radicalagenda.

SHAPING THE FUTUREAl Jazeera is still a novelty. It also doesnthave much competition. The West neverhas to contend with one unchallenged me-dia perspective, simply because the pub-lic has a vast number of options. Suskindexplains, People are drinking only fromtheir favorite water fountainsI have myset of facts, you have your set. There isno shared set. In the Middle East, whereAl Jazeera currently dominates, there isan opportunity for this expansion to takeplace. Populations of the Arab world,South Asia, and North Africaregionswhere Al Jazeera is firmly establishedhave set the first, second, and third stan-zas of a new relationship with media thatthey didnt have before. And in the last tenyears thats been a big change, as people inthat part of the world now have choices.With Al Jazeera as their primary source,many of them are ready for some competi-tors. And maybe thats where Westernmedia outlets come in. After all, many of

them are looking to expand economically.Theyre always looking for new models,right? Says Suskind. Theyve got [poten-tial] advertising dollars there too, in thedeveloping part of the world.

Suskind speculates that five to tenyears from now, There will be mediaoutlets from other parts of the world thatwill have footholds in the Arab part of theworld. People get to a certain point [andsay], Okay. Im ready for choice now. Imready for variety.

EMMA WHITFORD B12 isnt losingsleep over the Emirs headaches.

I reported from the Mideast from 1987to 1993 and in terms of information tech-nology, it was often closer to the 19thcentury than the 21st. The Internet didntyet exist (at least out there), I never sawa cell phone (satellite phones started toappear in about 1991 among some of thewell-heeled TV correspondents cover-ing the first Gulf War) and even landlinephone service was crackly and unreliable,or nonexistent in troubled places like Su-dan. I often sent my news stories by telex,and sometimes by hand (giving hard copyto someone who could carry the story outof wherever I was and transmit it).

On top of that, what technology wasavailable was closely monitored by the gov-ernments of the countries I was reportingfrom. In Saddam Husseins Iraq and otherpolice states, your dispatches couldnt goout until a censor from the Ministry of In-formation had a look at it []. The citizensof these countries had almost no access totrue information. The media outlets thatexisted, print and radio and TV, were allstate-controlled and offered a steady dietof state propaganda. In some countries,they jammed the BBC World Service andother foreign news services. It was veryweird, even thenbefore we were ac-

customed to constant access to informa-tion. Id go to Iraq and turn on the TV oropen the newspaper and there would benothing but images of school kids sing-ing the praises of Saddam. I was stuck inthe bubble and had this weird sense thata nuclear bomb could drop somewhereand I wouldnt hear about it. For weeks ata time I was almost completely sealed offfrom the outside world.

While Iraq was the extreme, someother countries werent much better. InSaudi Arabia, they not only censored anypolitically sensitive news, but also any-thing they judged Islamically inappropri-

ate. You could sometimes find an Inter-national Herald Tribune, but it would beliterally scissored to excise any mentionor images of alcohol, uncovered women,Christianity. Even in Jordan, which wasvery open by Middle Eastern standards,any mention of Israel was verboten. Theweather report would refer to the West-ern Heights, which meant the occupiedWest Bank just a short drive from the Jor-danian capital, Amman.

Tony Horwitz B80 on the nature of Mideast reporting before the Internet


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When Martin-Copeland shut its doors for good in1993 due to competition fom overseas imports, oneof its head engineers, Attleboro native Andy Cloutier,purchased the old equipment and started BK Optical,teaching his family how to make the products.

Kuczewski apprenticed at BK from 2009 to 2010.I basically stalked [Andy] until he agreed to take meon. I would come whenever I had time. I would runaround and clean stuff up and get to know what themachines did, writing down model numbers and try-ing to research.

In January 2010, Cloutier died unexpectedlyof complications from a brain hemorrhage. A fewmonths later, his widow and daughter liquidated thefactory and auctioned off the remaining inventoryand machinery.Naturally, Kuczewsky and Halpin gotfirst pick. It was everything they would need to start a

business for a very minimal investment.It was both unfortunate and lucky, Kuczewski

says. In addition to the machines, they acquired vin-tage cellulose acetate plastic, custom rivets, and thou-sands of pieces of of hardware still in boxes, most im-ported from Europe and of higher quality than is easilyfound today.

Of course, the windfall also brought about cre-ative constraints. Most of the plastics they use intheir line are the same ones that BK used in the 80sand 90s. And while they are a rare find, some of thecrazier patterns--for example, amn iridescent greenfeather texture--have e to be handled with care.

Were not trying to break the design that no onewill wear, Kuczewski says. It has to work on some-ons face.

The real challenge, though, was setting up thefactory. Many of the machines were still in BKs base-ment, unused for years. After moving from Att leboro

to Fall River (no mean feat with multiple pieces of

lasses are art to hang on the wall of your face.Of course, they help you seebut as any-

one who has ever purchased nonprescription wouldknow, its more about how others see you. Glassescan enhance the brow, reduce the nose, match a bi-kini, hide a hangover. Chinese judges of the Ming dy-nastywore colored spectacles to hide their eyes andemotions, as well as to appear distinguished. Glassesare the difference between Jackie K. and Jackie O.,Harry Potter and Terry Richardson.

Lee Allen Kuczewski looks good in glasses. Stand-ing behind the counter in Providence Optical on Wey-bosset Street, the 28-year-old New Bedford native issurrounded by frames hanging on walls and stackedin drawersclassic tortiseshell, blue 80s flat-top sun-glasses, delicate cat-eyes. But his thin plastic frames,circular silhouette fading from warm bark to clear,look like they were made for him.

As it turns out, they were.A gold foil stamp onthe inside of the temple reads Lee Allen, the nameof the company Kuczewski started last year with hisfriend and bandmate Declan Halpin. In their factoryon the third floor of Border City Mill, a former textileplant in Fall River, MA, they sculpt vintage plasticsinto funky yet subtle frames with cool gradients andiridescent details.

This is New England jewelery and eyewear, ver-sion 2011. If their glasses are modern takes on retroshapes, Kuczewski and Halpin are the new faces of anindustry that once employed thousands in the region,but has been in steady decline since the early 90s.

Before becoming an optometrist, Kuczewskiwas an anthropology student at UMass who studiedGhanaian drumming and Javanese Gamelan. (He andHalpin became friends through drumming.) Whileapprenticing at an optical store in Taunton, MA, hebegan taking apart eyeglasses. Tinkering lead to col-lecting, customizing, and eventually, creating. Beforestarting Lee Allen, Halpin was a full time artist. Apainter with a technical background in boatbuildingand metalsmithing, he is also a Computer Aid Designconsultant for the jewelry industry, a skill he now ap-plies to eyewear.

A WIND IN FALL RIVERLee Allen is the only company in New Englandandone of three in the USthat designs and manually pro-duces its own line of eyewear in-house. But for nearlytwo centuries, RI and Southern MA were worldwidehubs of eyewear and jewelry manufacturing.Nehemi-ah Dodge,a Providence jeweler who opened his storeon North Main Street in 1794, invented the techniqueof rolling and plating gold around less expensive met-als, birthing what would later be called costume jewel-ry. In the twentieth century, the thriving industry pro-duced everything from brooches to cigarette lighters,sunglasses to casino dice.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the industry inevitablyheaded towards East Asia for cheaper labor, where it

remains today. In this sense, the Fall River studio, withits high ceilings and 24-pane mill windows, is some-thing of a time-warp. Most of the surface area is takenup by pieces of bulky, army-green machinery, datingfrom the 1950s or earlier. To the untrained eye, themachines seem more suited for bolting together car

engines than whittling delicate eyeglasses.The machines are literally the relics of optical

industry giants. Before they belonged to Lee Allen,they belonged to BK Optical, a family-owned eyewearmanufacturer in Attleboro. Before that, the machinesbelonged to Martin-Copeland, one of the largest jew-elry and eyewear manufacturers in the US. Whenfounded in Providence in 1880, Martin-Copelandmade eyewear and gold chains from the Manufactur-ers building, where the Dunkin Donuts Center cur-rently stands. In 1982, Martin-Copland employed 600people in the RI region.

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2,000-pound equipment), the two spent from June to November rewiring and testing machines. Nothingcame with manuals. Wed find old pieces of paperscattered around the basement about how to contact[someone] in France if there were any problems,Kuczewski says. So we went thorough everything inthe inventory, looked at every single part, and triedthings out.

It was playing on the verge of fighting, Halpinsays. But once we figured it out, most of it worked.The stuff is steel--its not from Ikea.

They managed to get some machines runningthat they still dont quite understand. For example,one refrigerator-sized machine uses electromagneticX-ray current to shoot tiny slices of metal into a mol-ten hunk of plastic that will later become the templeon a pair of glasses, or one of the stems that rests on

the ear.The graphic designer up the hallways computer

goes fuzzy when we use this. Halpin says.We hope its not giving us cancer... Kuczewski

laughs.Most East Asian factories today use automated

equipment that makes eyewear production cheaper,easier, and more standardized. However, this pro-duction style doesnt allow for certain materials liketortishell, buffalo horn, or cellulose acetate plastic. Orfor the creative freedom that comes from being able

to test ones ideas and manufacture small quantities.While certain places in Germany and France have

continued to produce eyewear in a similar way to LeeAllen, New England and the rest of the US have all butabandoned this kind of manufacturing. In this region,old machines like the ones we found were mostly soldfor scrap when factories closed, Kuczewski says.

With such small overhead costs (and such fewcompetitors in their small market), the team expectsthey have a good chance of getting their line sold instores and eventually expanding. The next step willbe traveling around the country to show samples tooptical stores. The collection will be available in Provi-dence Optical some time in the next few weeks, sell-ing for about $250 a pair.

A COLLECTORS EYEAbove the black cases of samples in the studio, a dis-play of vintage frames hangs on one wall for inspira-tion. One pair of thick tortoiseshell Emmanuel Kahnswith clear plastic cut-outs in the temples catches myeye. Kuczewski, who also collects eyewear, has justcome across a whole lot of the classic 70s-era Frenchdesigner.

Kuczewski wont tell me where he found theKahns. As with any kind of collectors item, there areplaces, people, and forums to know. Kuczewskis fa-vorite eyeglasses to collect are those of the 1720sthefirst time someone decided to attach templesand thedelicate wire frames of the 1830s (which he suspectsmay soon regain popularity).

Some of the bespoke pieces that Lee Allen pro-duces may well become collectors items. The two are

in the process of designing and producing a murderseries for Stevie Boi, fashion personality and stylist.One resembled a nine millimeter pistol with the trig-ger guard repeated in the lens, held up only by the sup-port of the hand. The pieces are for editorial spreads,never to be sold or worn outside the pages of a maga-zine.

On the opposite side of the lens, Kuczewski andHalpins other bespoke project is a pair of frames fora client with a medical problem that prevents his eyesfrom producing tears. As of now, the client goes towork in onion goggles that create a micro-climatearound his eyes but dont at all resemble normal glass-es. We think we can do better in coming up withsomething that is both refined and functional.

When every pair of glasses was manufactured

in an atelier, the building that currently houses LeeAllen, Border City, was becoming a booming textilemill. Today, garment sweatshops have relocated, ashave ateliers and manufacturers. Lee Allen is whatemerges in the ashes of industry, once mass produc-tion has been shaken up enough to be recreated.

ALICE HINES B11 has perfect vision.

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A MAGIC

OPERATIONTHE MAKING OF HAITIAN

VODOU FLAGS

BY ANNIKA FINNE

We begin by using knivesand carpet tacks to stretchmuslin over small wooden frames.The room is full of tapping. Thereare about ten of us, a combinationof adults and students from Brown andRISD, sitting in the basement of the Rites andReasons theater learning how to bead Vodou flagsfrom Haitian artist Myrlande Constant. Upstairs,Constants flags hang alongside the flags of her students

and colleagues in a kaleidoscopic array of sequins and beads.She wears loose clothing and quietly commands the room.Professor Katherine Smith, a friend of Constants and a director ofthe exhibition, translates her answers to our questions.

As she is teaching us, the language barrier becomes meaninglessit iswatching and copying that count, not our combined Creole and Englishvocabulary. The beading itself is so slow and meditative that it is easy to forgetthe extraordinary nature of our situation and the extraordinary nature of

Constantherself.

These flags weretraditionally made by

male priests within Vodoutemplesnot for the art market, and not

by women. They came to Brown not insecured cargo planes but in duffel bags and

suitcases.

Constants work is part of Reframing Haiti: Art,History, and Performativity, an exhibition that

is running in the Haffenreffer Museum, the CohenGallery, and the Rites and Reasons theater at Brown,

as well as the Ewing Gallery at RISD, until April 21. Thedarkness of the Haffenreffer Museum houses an altar to

Lasirene (consecrated by Vodou priestess Manbo Marie Evans)that overflows with abundantly sequined dolls next to Goyachampagne cola bottles. The Cohen Gallery in the Granoff Centerbursts with paintings hung Grand Salon style. Everyone smiles in

awe and appreciation in front of Constants flags, bending close tosee the beading, moving back and forth to

see the way that light plays across the sequins. Knowledgeabout the purpose and context is not necessary for

appreciation. That being said, the work provokes all kindsof questions: how does an artist working in a traditionally

Our wholesocial environ-ment seems tous to be filled withforces which really existonly in our minds. mileDurkheim

All art is a magic operation, or, if youprefer, a prayer for a new image.Charles Simic


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ARTS| 4religious medium navigate thecontemporary art market? How

does Haitian art represent Haititoday? How can we possibly make

Vodou flags under the fluorescent lightsof the Rites and Reason basement?

As a medium, vodou flags have a loaded history.Vodous origins has many parallels to that of

Christianity: the single God Mawu lived amongst humansuntil quarrels drove the androgynous deity into divine

realms, leaving the lwa spirits behind as go-betweens.There is a vast pantheon of these lwa, and in Haiti thelwa have become conflated and merged with Catholicsaints through the religions translation of Catholicisminto its own vernacular. Papa Legba and St. Anthony areinterchangeable, as are St. Patrick and Danbala.

Vodou flags are usually dedicated to a specific lwa. Theycouple imagery of that spirit with the spirits vv, or linearpattern imbued with divine energy. A flag dedicated toDanbala will include both an image of the snake-spirit andcorresponding vv. Temples generally have at least twoflags that are used ceremonially to invoke the spirits theyrepresent. It is implicit that, as the flag is waved, the spirit

follows in its wake. The imagery of the flags is inclusive:they bear the influence of French cavalry banners and evenreflexively use the vv patterns to reference their ownpatterns. In the 1970s, increased global exposure of Haitianart led to the emergence of a commercial market for theflags, encouraging progressively more complex patterning.In this tradition Constant is a pioneer. She and her motherestablished the use of beads instead of and in conjunctionwith sequins, treating the beads as pigments in a way thatenables more painterly tableaux with subtly undulating

waves of color, perspective, and depth.

We are offered a glimpse into the complexity of theflags subject matter in Constants description

of the narrative in one of her larger flags,casually folded next to us on a corner

table. The scene is a cemetery. Thecentral figures are the lwa spirits

of the dead, Baron Samedi andhis wife Maman Brigitte. Theyguard the sleep of the dead. Inthis flag, they have left briefly

and on their return findsorcerers attempting toraise zombies. On rearinghorseback, the lwa drivethe sorcerers from thecemetery. In the upperleft hand corner anangels hand pointsto a version of theTen Commandmentstablets. Implicit in theflag is the fact thatMaman Brigitte issimultaneously theCatholic St. Brigidand Baron Samedi isSt. Expedite.Theremust

be tenthousand beads on this flag, five thousandsequins. The exuberant detail ofthe work is harmonious with theexuberant detail of the religion, theform harmonizing and amplifying thecontent.

A Haitian student of Constant made twoflags that hang at the back of Rites andReasons. Both depict the earthquake that struck

Haiti in 2010. Constant is not convinced that theflags are successful. It is too soon, she says; the studentdoes not understand the event yet, and that makes the flagitself confusing and difficult to read. These things need to bethought about, sat with, for some time before depicting them. Theearthquake flags show chaotic scenes of figures being saved by the lwaand figures already dead. Compared to the other flags, which are more concerned withspirits and their attributes, these flags seem journalistic. Yet when asked about whetherthis reflects a topical shift in the content of Vodou flags, Constant seems confusedthat I would even ask that question. The lwa spirits are everywhere, in everythinginexplicable; they are absolutely of this moment. The inclination to place the spiritual ina realm removed from the present does not exist in Vodou.

Constant assumes the role of teacher with ease and authority as we begin to bead,

moving from flag to flag and fixing our frayed string and dropped beads with a deftnessthat is expected but still astounding. We work in intense silence; it is only on the secondnight of the workshop that we earn the right to listen to some music. She shares withus a book of vvs that was owned by her grandfather, a Vodou priest. Constant doesnot comment on the content of our flags, though as we are considering our designsshe does demand at least one of us to do a vv pattern for Papa Legba, the lwaintermediary between the divine and humanity.

We relax a little, as her request makes explicit the fact that it is all right for us, aswhite Westernersin Haiti all foreigners are considered white regardless of actualskin tone to bead these powerful symbols. For a religion that draws power fromexuberant incorporation of other religions and general bricolage mentality, our freeinterpretations of vv designs and labored beading seemed somehow right. Eventhe way in which this commercialized flag making has developed seems to be more a

Vodou-like embrace of capitalism than selling out. Constant is refreshingly happyabout the money she is making with her work; she shares none of the angst embodiedby our beloved concept of the starving bohemian artist.

Tied to this hesitancy over whether we are really allowed to create our own Vodouflags is the question of how these flags made for a commercial audience are reallymeant to be displayed. Can you really have a sacred flag hanging over your couch?Constant seems to find the question inconsequential. Over the couch is fine, sheresponds. You can treat the flag properly and sacredly, you can give it rum andofferings, and it will have the power it was made to havebut if you want to have it asa decorative item, then that is all right, too.

The attitude is consistent with the whole practice of Vodou, the whole ethostheworld is strange and mysterious. We acknowledge its mystery and our inability tochange it, our powerlessness in face of natural disaster or any other of the myriadinexplicable things in our lives.

Reframing Haiti celebrates power and mystery in our world. Eventhough Providence may be more corseted in the grand traditionof East Coast coldness than Port au Prince, the sequinedlwa live here just as much as anywhere else. AsAndre Pierre said, We are made bymagic. All of us in general aremagicians.

Design by Annika FinneFlags by Myrlande Constant

Vvs of Danbala, Papa Legba, Gran Bwa,and Marassa Jumeaux


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I

Houston, we have a Body: Stop talking about smartphones and lie on a shag

1. On view in the Museum of ModernArts permanent collection.2.Love and Other Drugs, featuring Hatha-ways nude body, was released on DVDand Blu-ray in March.3. Donavans show at The Pace Gallery inNew York City closed Saturday, April 9.

n 1936, when Europe was deeply in-vested in improving industry, urbaniza-tion was rampant, and a dehumanizingdivision of labor was being established asthe norm, Mret Oppenheim covered ateacup in fur.

Now, culturally knee-deep in real-time screens and programmed to sleepmetaphorically with our Blackberries, weare, contrary to critical belief, demand-ing a Renaissance of the body. When weartificially release seratonin and we arehappiest and most comfortable with our-selves, we dont tweet about it: we lie onfur naked and talk to people. More thanthe orbital pleasures of Google Earth, wecrave the visceral, the textured, the hairy.

Supposedly, Oppenheims objet-terri-ble (entitled Object1) was inspired by a con-versation in a Paris caf with Pablo Picas-so. Admiring Oppenheims fur bracelet,Picasso said that one could cover anythingin fur, to which she replied, Even this cupand saucer. Andr Breton invited Op-penheim to participate in the first Surreal-ist exhibition dedicated to objects shortlyafter, so she bought a teacup, saucer, andspoon at a department store and covered

them in the fur of a Chinese gazelle, trans-forming the demure objects of femalesocial decorum into a notorious, sensual,Venus fly-trap.

The contemporary artist Jenny Hol-zerwho, at the opposite end of the spec-trum, generally uses text in neon and LEDlightssaid of Oppenheims Object: Itssinister I like that the fur would be away to muffle sound. Its like she killed offthe chit chat part of the tea ceremony.Object is resonantit speaks not intellec-tually but rather bypasses consciousness;visceral material engenders visceral reac-tions in generations of human viewers.

Today, as we know, online arts platformsand archives proliferate, nytimes.com hasa special arts section devoted to the twit-terization and GPS-mapping of the musealexperience, and the cyberization of ourlives has been widely trumpeted from alldirections and hailed as The Future. Oftenthis harkening cites a digital future to befeared, or at least critiqued, but one thatsnonetheless inescapable.

Older cultural critics and institutions,not to be left behind, have embraced thisFuture in the fight to stay relevant, butin so doing they may miss the point. In

March, the Arts section of the New YorkTimes ran a story on the Museum of Natu-ral Historys initiative to make 20-some-things tweet about The Brain: TheInside Story (#AMNHtweetup). Thefull-length Times article included only 151characters describing the live event, andnone on the exhibit, so the museum canonly hope that the 318 tweets by partici-pants covered the event adequately.

On the other hand, there has beena quieter, but consistent cultural movein the direction of tangibility. Everyoneseems to be growing beards these days,and the very people for whom Facebook-stalking is easier than conversation wearwooly sweaters, fur skirts, and leatherpants, not gore-tex. Michael Pollan hasbecome one of todays leading culturalcritics by writing on food, rather than onHollywood or Reality TV or the Internet.And while Tron: Legacywas a total disaster,Anne Hathaway was lauded for the simpleact of being naked,2 because, in the end,wed still rather see human skin.

In 2007, Tara Donovans show at the Met-ropolitan Museum of Art was extended

for nearly a year by popular demand, re-vealing a collective desperation for a tex-turization of the dull minimal walls of thewhite gallery space. The clouds of mask-ing tape that mutated across the walls ofthe Met used a banal material to trans-form the desolate white space weve be-come accustomed toDonovans workdoes not intellectualize the nature of pen-cils and pins and masking tape throughblow-ups or repetition but instead impliesthe universality of organic form.3

Of course the popular digital art of to-day makes valid points about our culturalinvestment in the digital, in the web, innew media. Cory Arcangels massive pho-tographic works, like his blow-up imagesof Photoshop color gradients, are righton target when it comes to cultural criti-cism.4 He points out, in large-scale, some-thing everyone sees on their computerswhen theyre juicing up their digital pho-tographs, suggesting the programmationof the way we see and interpret images,the new iconography of the digital image-making processes, the tendency we haveto mediate the world we live in and color-correct it (and yes, even if youre antiqu-ing a Facebook photo, youre engagingin new-age mediation).

You can get Arcangels work in de-scriptionit doesnt need to be seen to beunderstood. There is, however, anothervision of art-making that has returned tothe New York art scene from history. Thefirst retrospective on Lynda Benglis inNew York, and the first retrospective in20 years, is currently on view at The NewMuseum,5 and engages the empathetic aswell as the intellectual mode of receivingmeaning. Benglis, who rose to promi-nence during the 60s and 70s, takescolor off the walls and pours it onto thefloor in glowing frozen waterfalls of foamand rubber. Her vision is moving whereasArcangles is only intellectually stimulat-ing. Occupying the same physical space asa work of art makes it immediately acces-sible not just to your mind but also to yoursensory body, and you feel the humanityof the gesture of pouring paint.

Granted, entire artists careers have beenmade on reproductions (see last weeksarticle on bestseller Richard Prince), oron the masculine minimalist smoothingof surfaces. But the massively popular ret-rospective of 1960s New York artist Paul

Thek at the Whitney, which ran from Oc-tober 2010 to January of this year, againsuggests a different trend. Theks nod tothe contemporary fad for masculine mini-malism in the late 60scolored plexiglassboxes that acted as vitrines for sculpturesof bovine hunks of meatoccasionallygrew hair. While everyone else was paint-ing comic strips and silkscreening Brilloboxes, Thek was modeling beeswax intohunks meat.

By the time Thek died of AIDS in1988, he had already been forgotten byart history. Though he had just one soloshow during his lifetime, the recent PaulThek: Diver, a Retrospective reinstatedhis deeply personal and peculiar hands-on work in art historical memory. At thesame time, the mass production of stain-less steel balloon animals is finally fallingout of fashion (that is, Jeff Koonss cur-rent solo show is in Atlanta,6 not in Man-hattan).7

The wild success of artists likeMaurizio Cattelan and Damien Hirst, too,has to do with bodies: bodies are univer-sally comprehensible, universally compel-ling. Suspending the body of a horse froma wall, its head swallowed by the immac-ulate drywall, as Cattelan did in After

Nature at the New Museum in 2008, iscompelling even before you think aboutit (though we could possibly agree that,unlike Object, you shouldnt try to thinkabout it too deeply). And everyone lovesa tiger shark suspended in a tank of form-aldehyde because, well, everyone lovesa tiger shark. Easily one of Hirsts mostfamous works, The Physical Impossibility ofDeath in the Mind of Someone Living8 (that is,the tiger shark) has mesmerizing rough,greying, sagging skin and a cavernousmouth of teethand yes, standing in frontof all those rows of teeth is an embodiedexperience.

Still, these artistic initiatives in the worldof skin-to-skin contact are usually dis-cussed in terms of market value (Hirstand Cattelan), the 1960s New York canon(Thek) phenomenology and MacArthurgenius grants (Donovan), geology andJackson Pollack (Benglis). It is easy towrite about intellectually stimulating andcritical workthe texts of Jenny Holzer,or the digital images of Cory Arcangel,or the reproductions of Richard Prince.On the other hand, writing about Op-

penheims Object is hardbecause ideasand emotions that drive it are felt ratherthan stated. But that doesnt mean that weshould stop trying.

In the digital age, thinking about hu-manity is more productive than worryingabout the possibility of losing our human-ity. As we fall deeper down the cyber rab-bit-hole, and our eyes become increasing-ly mediated by the inches-small screens towhich we constantly refer, we must alsorecognize that we crave texture. We arestill sensory humans, with hair, and toe-nails, and teeth, and emotional instincts,and we want to feel things. 2001 has comeand gone, and there was no space odyssey,the machines did not take over the spaceship, and the universe did not dissolve intofloating, abstract shapes. Instead, when avolcano erupted in Iceland, ashes spreadout against the sky in a funeral for science,and no amount of technology could pre-dict where or when the ash clouds weregoing to move next, and we find ourselvesvery much tied to this material world.

MAUD DOYLE B11 lies on fur nakedand talks to people.

4. Corey Arcangel: Pro Tools, anexhibition of new work, will be at theWhitney Museum May 26 - September11, 20115. Lynda Benglis is on view at The NewMuseum through June 19, 20116. Moustache by Jeff Koons is showing

at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta,through May 29, 20117. Jeff Koonss work made record salesfor a living artist in 2008 (including a25.7$ million magenta balloon flower(Balloon Flower, Magenta)). But in 2009,during the recession, the auctions sales

of high-value works plummeted by 50percent.8. Nearly always on view at the Metro-politan Museum of Art, it is one of theirmost popular contemporary works.

RECONSIDERING REAL FEEL by Maud DoyleGraphic by Emily Martin


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THE ONENESS OF BEING

OCCULT| 12

The Sufis in the Masjid al-Farahgather on Thursdays in a hollowed-outtownhouse on West Broadway coveredwith Persian rugs. The center is uniquelyopen to the public, allowing not only ob-servers but an embrace of the dilettanteinterested party. Men and women arrivearound eight, then mingle before theceremonies, sipping tea, until the femaleImam begins to gather about thirty mostlytwenty-something adults on their knees.She calls out a blonde couples names near

the back of the center, announcing theirnewborns first visit to the center.Colloquially known as the mystical

practice of Islam, Sufism inspires imagesof whirling dervishes chanting the nameof Allah in divine revelations. The beliefsoften are conflated with Hinduism, Bud-dhism, Kabballah, and Christian Gnosti-cism. In America, literature is its biggestprophetRumi is the best-selling poet forthe third year in a row; the original Turk-ish devotee to the spiritual practice joinsIbn Arabi, a poet and philosopher, in ris-ing popularity, especially as Islam contin-ues to be the fastest growing religion inAmerica. Theres little mystery why whenone experiences the centers openwarmth.

The Imam, after infor-mally greeting and setting

the intention for the ceremony on Thurs-days, gathers the mostly-young, mixed-ethnicity congregation to sing passagesfrom the Quran and other Sufi poets.The songs are mostly in English, save forthe most important first chapters of theQuran. An elder of the center for years,a man by the name of Tom from NewJersey, explained the rigid adherence toaccessibility and openness, in oppositionto centers adhering to formality and theArabic language. We focus entirely on

complete equality and Sufisms true es-sence rather than form. The holy Imam,throughout the singing ceremonies, alter-nated names for Allah with Buddha, Krish-na, Jesus, and other forms of the divine.

Sufisms true essence, as named byits poets and philosophers, is a belief inthe oneness of being. Sufis often claim,resultantly, that not only all is God, but,further, I am God. This claim has led tonearly constant political persecution sincethe formalization of the branch of Islam inthe eleventh century.

In the era of new age-y tolerance, thecenter has still met its share of controversyfor its unabashed espousal of love. The

nature of this communitys practiceshave inspired a strong reaction

globally, but what remains leastinvestigated seems to be the

Sufism in downtown Manhattan

by Alexandra Corrigan and Dia BarghoutiIllustration by Alexandra Corrigan

truly shocking confirmation of the divinein the perceivable world. Instead of focus-ing on an afterlife, Sufis confirm mystic,magical experience in everyday life.

The second half of the ceremony onThursdays morphs from a singing chantinto a fully realized Dhikr, where partici-pants and observers link arms and begin todance to their chants. Forty congregants,intermingled regardless of gender, age ,orstatus, perform the sacred bodily ritualof chants and communal dances in order

to inspire revelation. Often, the chantsreturned to a repetition of Hayy, orLifeinterpretable as confirming ouroneness of life in this moment, or as thelife of Allah.

These practices differ from centerto center, but generally align themselveswith an all-pervasive new understand-ing of love and selfhood. Sufism, accord-ing to Ibn Arabi, attempts to destroy theego-based conception of the individualself. Through the creative imagination,one reach a new understanding of a morereal intermediary world of concepts andequanimity. Overall, the universe consistof three worlds: the first apprehended byintellectual perception, the second by thesenses, and the third through imagination.The third world is an intermediate worldthat consists of idea images. In the inter-mediate world, the image and imaginationare utilized for spiritual experience. Thisintermediary space for creativity trans-lates, perhaps, into the continued impe-tus to create the Park 51 Islamic CulturalCenter in Manhattan.

Sufis attempt, through their practicesand studies, to discover hidden meaningthat can only be accessed through revela-tion. Revelation of the esoteric meaningof all parts of reality are achieved by Sufisthrough Tawil. Tawil translates to theunderstanding of the world through sym-

bolsboth by using them and transform-ing all aspects of reality into symbols. Butthe symbol can never be fully explained;it must be re-deciphered constantly. Inthe unveiling of this oneness, non-dualistunderstanding of the universe, the Suficongregation in Manhattan attempted,as Tom explained, to relentlessly unveillove. The imaginative spirit, so stampedout in the hyper-capitalist downtown,produces this radically different experi-ence and knowledge of a reality. Perhapsinstead of asking the architectural form orpublicity statements to provoke unity, theongoing ceremonies of the Islamic Cul-tural Center could provoke some similar

inquiry.

DIA BARGHOUTI B12 and ALEXAN-DRA CORRIGAN B12 must be re-deci-

Last fall, controversy poured outof a block less than a mile fromGround Zero. News agencies vo-

raciously covered the tension followingthe announcement of an Islamic CulturalCenter in downtown Manhattan. Butthe abandoned Burlington Coat Factorywhose renovation caused a media outcryhad already been home to an overflowof devoted Muslims. Every Friday since1985, the Masjid Al-Farah houses a Mus-lim congregation in Tribeca. Sandwiched

between two trendy bars on Broadway,the townhouse-turned-devotional cen-ter had become so popular that spiritualleader Feisal Abdul al-Rauf raised funds toexpand. He began housing services in theabandoned factory blocks away and gen-erated plans for a proposed redesign. Theproposal, named Park 51, would serve asa community center for the arts and offerfaith services on Thursdays and Fridays.

The stylistic debate of intention,content, and predicted use in Manhattandominates the narrative. Months afterthe media explosion, who lies behind thecontinued effort? And why? The center,

staffed by various religious leaders bothfrom Turkey and America, continuesto grow in spite of the rhetoric of ten-sion. Blocks from a traditional Mosque,the Masjid al-Farah caters to an esotericbranch of Islamic thought named Sufism.


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n China, a businessman reaches speedsof 220 mph en route from Beijing to a

meeting in Tiajin. Weekenders pop downfrom Paris to Marseille in three hours andtwenty minutes. Trains in Japan donteven touch the tracks, floating an infini-tesimal distance above magnetic rails at360 mph. High-speed trains are defined bythe European Union as capable of reach-ing at least 124 mph; Americas closest at-tempt, the Acela Express, which connects

Boston to Washington, is lucky to surpass100 mph.With an increasing global trend to-

ward speedy train travel, and federalfunding and support for the construc-tion of high-speed rail at home, Americafinds itself at a critical moment in publictransport. A century after the rise of carsand planes transformed the Americaneconomy and lifestyle, trains are makinga comeback.

BACK ON TRACKThe US is a latecomer in the internationaltrend toward high-speedization. We donot merely lag behind other nations in ourdevelopment: the others are completely

lost from view.Worldwide, high-speed rail is becom-

ing a priority for the future. Brazil is cur-rently undergoing plans to open a line be-tween Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro by the2016 Olympics; Spain has over 1000 milesof track in construction; there are eventalks of a route linking Europe and Africaunder the Mediterranean Sea. The firsttrue high-speed Shinkansen bullet trainstook off in Japan just in time for the 1964Olympics. France followed the trendwith the introduction of the TGV (train

grande vitesse) linking Paris to Toulouseat speeds of 125 mph.

Part of the reason for this discrepancystems from different regions responses toWorld War II. Europe and Asia focusedtheir rebuilding efforts on improvingnational rail systems, while America in-dulged in big cars and glamorous planes.Highways and airways received nationalattention, and the railroad system was for-gotten. Americas landmark rail system,

which facilitated much of the industrial-ization of the Northeast and the settlingof the West, is now struggling to remainrelevant.

In 1981, with the founding of Am-trak, America began to slowly wake up itslong-dormant rail system. Initially formedas a governmental organization, Am-trak was meant to become independentof federal subsidies within a few years ofits founding. But the company has yet tobecome entirely independent and reliesheavily on government funding, a reflec-tion of the difficulties in profitability facedby inter-city rail.

AMERICA IS NOT EUROPE

While proponents of high-speed rail haveoften cited European rail networks todemonstrate Americas untapped poten-tial in the field, critics denounce this viewon the grounds that America is, simply,not Europe. As a country, we are toosprawling, too reliant on automobile andair travel, and too attached to our tax dol-lars to commit to the high-speed invest-ment, critics say.

Proposed high-speed systems wouldnot be organized around American sub-urban sprawl from coast to coast, but

rather in terms of corridors of intercon-nected urban centers called megaregions.As defined by America 2050, an infra-structure and policy research initiative,megaregions represent the emergence oflarge metropolitan areas encompassingmultiple cities that share infrastructureand economic concerns, where mostof the nations projected growth will oc-cur, according to America 2050s report.High-speed rail has been slated as the only

efficient method of serving such regions,which are too large for travel by car, andtoo small for travel by plane. Initiative co-chair Robert Yuro sees the potential for afuture national rail to provide the samekind of backbone for a 21st-century na-tional mobility system that the interstatehighways did in the late 20th century.These megaregions include the GreatLakes, Texas and the Gulf Coast, and Cali-fornia and the Southwest. Plans for a rail toconnect northern and southern Californiaare already underway, but the mostcitedmegaregion, according to America 2050,is the Northeast, comprising Boston, NewYork, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, andPhiladelphia.

The Acela system that currentlyserves the area is slow and expensivecompared to foreign trains. For manytraveling from Providence to New York,the prospect of paying at least a hundreddollars more to reduce travel time by nomore than an hour is rarely worth it, evenwhen the alternatives are a gridlockedI-95 or a hair-raising trip on a discountbus. Northeast high-speed rail wouldtransform the economy of the region,insists Yuro. We should get on with it.

Still, though America is having diffi-

culty firing its first bullet train out of thestation, it is not for lack of trying. PresidentObama has emphasized the implementa-tion of a national high-speed network asa major part of his administration, withgoals of making fast trains accessible to80 percent of Americans within 25 years.This pipe dream faces major barriers,however, as demonstrated by the recentcancellation of the federally funded high-speed train imagined between Tampa and

Orlando. Mirroring actions of governorsin Wisconsin and Ohio, Florida GovernorRick Scott shot down the proposal due tofears that signing up for high-speed railgifts from the government would meangetting roped into future costs to be paidby the state.

The United States Department ofTransportations (USDOT) initial choiceto fund fast trains in Florida was an oddone. USDOT pursued this option mainlybecause of the possibility of rapid imple-mentation, a feather in the Obama admin-istrations cap that would demonstrateAmericas high-speed capability by 2015.The funds were fought for and won byformer Florida governor Charlie Crist,

and the proposal was chosen over per-haps more effective investments, despitethe fact that someone getting off the 168mph train in Orlando or Tampa wouldbe stranded in cities almost impossible tonavigate without a car.

The $2.4 billion that had been pledgedby the government to finance the endeav-or is now up for grabs.

THE LITTLE STATE THAT COULDRhode Island is among the group of twen-ty-four states, the District of Columbia,

SPEEDUPTO


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The fast track to Americas future in transportby Belle Cushing

and Amtrak who have submitted an appli-cation for the use of the funds by the April4 deadline. In a letter sent to USDOT Sec-retary LaHood in February, Senators JackReed and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) re-ferred to the plans as critical investmentsin our nations transportation and eco-nomic future. The letter went on to de-tail the proposed projects to improve cur-rent regional and commuter rail servicewhile facilitating high-speed Acela travel

on existing rails. The money would alsogrant the Providence train station, whichdrowsily yet determinedly funnels passen-gers through to Washington and Boston,refurbishment and safety modifications.Put bluntly by Charles Saint Martin of theRI Department of Transportation, thecurrent station is in rough shape.

Floridas loss should be Rhode Is-lands gain, says Senator Reed. We canquickly put this money to work creating jobs, improving our infrastructure, andexpanding high-speed rail service to moreRhode Islanders.

Saint Martin, however, seems un-convinced of the necessity of high-speedtrains. For him, the important part of the

proposal includes the extension of thecommuter rail to T.F. Green Airport, North Kingston, and Warwick, provid-ing in-state rail service for the first timein a very long time. In regards to theprospect of a high-speed route, RIDOTis glad Rhode Island is part of that [high-speed] linkage. However, the long-termgoal is far removed from the states cur-rent focus on improving existing transit,expanding the commuter rail, and lessen-ing highway congestion where possiblewithin the state.

Senators Reed and Whitehousebrought Secretary LaHood to Providencein the fall to show him first-hand the statesrail potential, but as Rhode Island is upagainst ninety other proposals, the com-petition remains stiff.

NEXT GENERATIONAnother contender for the funds is Am-trak, which has endorsed the researchput out by America 2050 in January of a

complete report on High-speed Rail inAmerica. The company hopes to launch aroute connecting Boston and Washingtonwith trains running at speeds of over 200mph. Passengers would be able to makeit from New Yorks Penn Station to Bos-tons South Station in 84 minutes, aboutthe same amount of time as the commuterrail from Providence with its crowdedtracks and habitual delays. The realizationof such an ambitious project, though esti-mated to eventually earn an annual profitof one billion dollars, would in the mean-time cost about $140 billion, to be paid forby Amtrak and federal (read: taxpayers)funds.

Though Providence sits within a

megaregion, it is small enough to be over-looked for inclusion in the rail routes infavor of the larger cities like Baltimoreand Philadelphia. Providence nearly lostout to unlikely Woonsocket for a spaceon Amtraks Next Generation plan, butfollowing discussion with governmentofficials, it was put back on the projectedhigh-speed map.

Cliff Cole, a manager of Amtrak,defines the proposed route as one thatpermits true high-speed operationsatleast 200 mph. The possibility of a trip

to New York in less than an hour wouldmake Providence a simultaneous suburbof both Boston and the Big Apple. Wecould see an increase in commuters, farmore frequent weekend trysts in Manhat-tanand, perhaps, a return the citys one-time industrial prosperity.

ALL ABOARD?The benefits of such long-term invest-ment are not limited to the international

prestige that would come with inclusionin the high-speed race. High-speed rail isbecoming increasingly relevant becauseof the need for environmentally sustain-able practices and independence fromforeign oil. Train travel offers a more ef-ficient means of transportation than airor highway, and does not rely on increas-ingly costly imported fuel. Amtrak claimsthat the gas saved simply by diverting pas-sengers away from automobile and airtransport could reach up to 40 billion gal-lons. (While trains running on electricitywould burn a significant amount of fossilfuels, planners are considering the pros-pect of renewable energy resources.) Railsystems reduce congestion of airways and

highways, are less dependent on weatherconditions, and offer an alternative op-tion for the reluctance to fly that hasgained hold since 9/11.

The success of such a route would de-pend on ticket pricing. Amtrak would becompeting with the likes of MegaBus andthe Fung-Wah, and would have to con-sider their ridership seriously, since manypotential ticket buyers already have cars.Planners can look to systems in Franceand Germany, which feature affordableticket prices, including special rates for

families and students.Beyond the benefits of rail in gen-

eral, the attraction of specifically high-speed trains remains questionable. Asidefrom the sleek aesthetic of futuristic bul-let trains propelling America forward,the costs may outweigh the benefits.Given the current budget crisis, perhapsthe billions of dollars needed to invest inhigh-speed infrastructure would be bet-ter spent somewhere else. And where are

we going that we need to get there so fastanyway? High-speed connections are ca-tered toward professionals who conductbusiness in other nearby cities, facilitatingday trips without requiring an overnightstay in a hotel. These routes are currentlyonly considered functional in corridorswith multiple employment centers. As ofnow, plans for a transnational system arenot feasible, and high-speed routes wouldremain limited to megaregions. Ideally,however, proponents view the initialinfrastructure as an investment towardan eventual comprehensive system thatwould connect multiple, disparate cities.Whether or not we make the 2050 goal, afuture of fast trains is the inevitable light at

the end of the tunnel.

BELLE CUSHING B13 is a girl grandevitesse.

illustration by Alexander Dale


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t the beginning of the year, a fewof my housemates approached me

with an invitation to participate along with

them in a local produce delivery program.As a member, I would receive a weekly as-sortment of vegetables, all grown on localRhode Island farms. At first this soundedgreat, but when I looked at the servicesonline order form, my enthusiasm quicklywaned. While the selection was signifi-cant, it was primarily composed of ob-scure and specialized ingredients, thingswhich hardly lent themselves to standardweeknight cooking. More-over, the options were allrestricted by complex sched-ules of seasonal availability.In the end, I declined theoffer, opting instead to stickwith my local Stop and Shop.

Prior to this offer, Ihad never dedicated muchthought to where my foodcame from, nor had I everfelt that I ought to. Most ofthe food in my grocery storeis the product of Big Agricul-ture, grown and distributedby large corporations usingmethods of mass production.I understand the reflexivedistrust of food produced insuch an industrial and anon-ymous way, but the moreI considered it, the morenatural it seemed that my

food would be purchased ata grocery store rather thandelivered to my doorstep bya local farmer.

Ever since humansstopped chasing our mealsfrom place to place andstarted trying to grow themin the ground, weve been on a trajectorymoving from many people exerting greateffort to produce very little, towards fewpeople using refined methods to providegreat quantity; its this very trajectory ofefficiency that is directly responsible foreverything we call civilization. After all,there is not much time for arts and cul-ture, let alone science and economic de-velopment, if the entire population musttoil in the fields all day simply to survive.

Viewed in this light, the history ofagricultural innovations is in many waysachronicle of liberation. In ancient times,improvements in irrigation and the do-mestication of animals allowed somemembers of the community to leave thefields and establish a rudimentary econo-

my by becoming merchants and artisans.Even so, the majority of the populationwas still relegated to laborious farm work;

it wasnt until the industrial revolutionand the invention of motorized machin-ery that the common man was finally giv-en the option of a non-agrarian life. Theadvent of refrigeration opened up hugeswaths of previously uninhabitable landto large-scale development. And with theapplication of pesticides and genetic en-hancements, harvests have become morereliable and efficient than ever. Modern

agriculture, far from an unnatural aber-ration, is the logical product of millenniaof progress, and in many ways a crowninghuman achievement.

Members of the local food move-ment, however, find this state of affairsdeeply troubling. Admittedly, locallygrown produce is often marginally fresh-er than more distant alternatives, andthe sensationalized image of pesticide-drenched, genetically mutated, and as-sembly-line-packaged food is disturbing.Given the constant refinement of agricul-tural production throughout history, how-ever, it seems puzzling to draw the line atmodern efficiencies. When Native Ameri-cans advised the Pilgrims to slip a fish headunderneath their corn crop, no one ob-

Seasoned debate on local

by Jared McGaha and Wilson Foster

Illustrations by Annika Finne

jected to this fruitful but counterintuitivesuggestion. Yet if anyone had protestedon the basis of a mystical dedication to the

purity of the dirt, he would have justifiablywound up on trial for witchcraft. Frost-resistant oranges and blight-immune po-tatoes produced on mega-farms are notcauses for paranoia, but miraculous solu-tions to real dangers. When viewed criti-cally, the local food movement is essential-ly a small group of people conflating theirpersonal notions of what is natural with anobjective standard, and imputing a norma-

tive ethic onto the geographical origin oftheir neighbors dinners.

Proponents of the local food move-ment are eager to attack the agriculturalindustry for the environmental impactof transporting food over long distancesand the alleged health effects of pesticidesand fertilizers. While these predictablearguments might be valid observationsand although Big Agriculture is far fromperfectthe fundamental impossibility oflocal food as an alternative renders theman irrelevant sideshow to legitimate scien-tific and economic debate.

If local food activists were to considertheir own demands seriously, they wouldbe forced to acknowledge the unsustain-ability inherent in their supposedly sustain-

able utopia. To create a society in whichevery persons food was grown withinfifty miles of his home would require

enormous sacrificespecifically, the dimi-nution of the lives of a third of the popula-tion to the very form of menial farm workthat people have been struggling to escapefor centuries. As a consequence of the in-efficiencies inherent in small-scale farmoperations, many more farmers wouldbe required to feed the same number ofpeople, not to mention the fact that farm-ing in many regions is completely unpro-

ductive. Since there is simplynot enough land surroundingmost urban areas to feed exist-ing populations, a realizationof the local food dream wouldhave to be accompanied bymass resettlement campaigns.While there may be somethingquaint in the image of a hum-ble farming class, few peopleare volunteering for the role.The local food movement is somyopically transfixed on its ar-bitrary criteria that it has failedto comprehend the extent towhich its principles are incom-patible with our most treasuredpersonal freedoms.

Not surprisingly, the localfood movement seems mostlycomprised of members of therelatively privileged classes.After all, theres not much

time to worry about your avo-cados SkyMiles if it takes two jobs just to put dinner on thetable. Only those who are eco-nomically protected from theimplications of a truly agrarianeconomy are capable of launch-ing complaints against the in-

novations that have empowered so many.While locally-grown produce is in-

deed local, and not subject to some of thetreatments of mass-produced food, con-sumption of it is a personal taste and notgrounds for a political movement. Thoughmembers of the local food movement arewell-intentioned and admirable in theirpassion, the nature of their project re-mains in many ways, artificially oversized.

WILSON FOSTER B11 and JAREDMCGAHA B11 drink DDT for break-fast.

A


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ur food system is designed to pro-duce a great quantity of inexpen-

sive calories and is extremely good at it.

Efficiency and mechanization are di-rectly responsible for our modern civiliza-tion, including our reliance on geneticallyuniform crop production and fossil-fueluse. The food industry requires consisten-cy in raw materials, which leads to a loss ofagricultural biodiversity. But biodiversitysustains production and maintains agro-ecosystems in the long run.

How we feed ourselvesis profoundly intertwinedwith a dependence on arti-ficially cheap energy. Manypeople will be faced withthe responsibility of grow-ing their own food if wearent prepared when fossilfuels run dry, which at cur-rent consumption rates isroughly estimated to occurin 50 to 120 years. ColinCampbell, a geologist withover 40 years of experiencein the oil industry, analyzedthe discovery and produc-tion of oil fields around theworld. In his book The Endof Cheap Oil, he wrote thatwithin the next decade,the supply of conventionaloil will be unable to keep upwith demand.

Cheap energy promot-

ed the integration of oil andnatural gas in farm practicesand removed the need fordiversity in plant life. Cheapenergy removed the needfor diversity in animal life,creating feedlotsconfinedanimal cities that separatethe fertilizing benefits offarm animal droppings from farmland andcreate pollutants. Cheap energy led togovernment-subsidized grain that sells formuch less than it costs to grow. Cheap en-ergy means that food often travels incred-ibly long distances.

The economical mindset in the foodindustry encouraged the production ofchemical fertilizers, which are made fromnatural gas, and pesticides, which aremade from petroleum. Pesticides encour-age high crop yields and prevent diseases,mosquitoes, lice, and bedbugs, and

Documents

The College Hill Independent: April 14, 2011